#ICFA Panel: Remix Culture, SF/F and Books in Conversation

I moderated a panel at ICFA (which I had proposed) entitled: Remix Culture: SF, Fantasy, and Books in Conversation and I would like to write a coherent blog post about it, but that’s difficult because while moderating I didn’t get to take good notes and also because the smart, deep-thinking panelists had so many great things to say I can’t recreate more than the tiniest fraction of it.

It being the age of remix culture and postmodernism, however, perhaps a collage of intriguing thoughts and questions from the discussion is apropos.

My opening salvo: “A hallmark of literary fiction is that it contains references and allusions to books that came before from the Bible to Shakespeare to the canon. In science fiction and fantasy we engage with genre tropes (sf: space travel, first contact, artificial intelligence, etc/fantasy: prophecy, kingship, elfland, etc) that pretty much require any book in a subgenre or using a trope to be in conversation with books that share that trope.”

The fantastic panelists:

Max Gladstone: author of fantasy novels known as the Craft Sequence, described as “tales of wizards in pinstriped suits and gods with shareholders’ committees.” Also a copyfighter.

Therese Anne Fowler: author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald and currently working on a novel about the Vanderbilts

Sam J. Miller: whose short stories have been in a lot of magazines lately (and shortlisted for some awards, I believe?) and who is working on a novel for HarperCollins right now called The Art of Starving, about a gay boy whose eating disorder gives him superpowers

Julia Rios: a former editor of Strange Horizons, now editing for Uncanny Magazine, also a writer and whom I also know as an incisive fantasy and sf cultural commentator from her work on the podcast Skiffy and Fanty and other panels she’s been on

And me (Cecilia).

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Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.

Fantasy Worldbuilding at #ICFA with Kameron Hurley et. al.

The panel on fantasy worldbuilding at ICFA was packed, every chair taken, people standing in the back, etc. I ended up sitting on the floor at the foot of the panelists’ table. It was well worth it! What I present here is a partial transcript of the conversation and I emphasize PARTIAL because I can only capture maybe half of what is actually said. I assure you if there are non-sequiturs or nonsense in what follows it is my fault in omission/transcription and not in what was said, which was highly intelligent, coherent, and thought-provoking.

Moderator, A.P. Canavan: Welcome to the annual fantasy panel where we try to get academics and writers in polite conversation with each other. Barring that we try for as much bloodshed as possible! (audience laughter)

The panelists:
Sarah Pinborough (BBC, The Dead House, Dog-Faced Gods)
Steven Erikson (Forge of Darkness),
Kameron Hurley (Gods War, Mirror Empire, etc)
Audrey Taylor (academic, Building Worlds- book on Patricia McKillip)

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Mirrored from blog.ceciliatan.com.