The first panel I attended was on Kansas City's Favorite Son: Robert A. Heinlein, featuring Dr. Bradford Lyau and Jo Walton. As a native of the KC area, Heinlein was a guest of honor at the first MidAmeriCon forty years ago. Midwest upbringing undoubtedly influenced his writing. The other two members of the Big Three were from New York (Asimov) and Europe (Clarke), and each represented a different sort of mindset.
A great deal of Heinlein's work deals with a dynamic between a romanticization of his Midwest upbringing, and his desire to escape the false assumptions that pervaded it. For example, he claims he lost any lingering religion after reading Charles Darwin (he was raised in the Methodist Episcopal Church, an abolishionist offshoot that split before the Civil War). There was both a desire for sophistication, and a feeling of pride for the place he came from.
One consequence of this upbringing was valuing honor and nobility, in a way that many of us today don't entirely comprehend. Heinlein cared about conduct. Walton argues that part of his rhetorical skill comes from appealing to the reader's desire for self-excellence, to be one of the elite. Much of his contribution to science fiction as a movement comes from trying to make writers and fans see their role in history, and act accordingly.
Two of his lifelong influences were Mark Twain and H.G. Wells, who contrasted country cynicism with a utopian optimism about the future. One peculiar instance of the latter was his belief that he'd outlive communism. He nearly made it--the Berlin Wall fell less than two years after his death in 1988.
After that came Earth, We're Stuck Here! This panel explored the challenges of deep space exploration and trying to live on other planets. There was a lot of tension between panelists on the role the government had to play--some argued that it was nothing but a hindrance, others believed NASA is doing the best they can given the challenges. One of the major issues is radiation dosage. We're safe under Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, but in interplanetary space astronauts will be exposed to both higher cosmic background and occasional solar flares. It's currently estimated that a year in LEO adds 3% lifetime cancer risk (with a base rate around 15%). A 1000 day mission in deep space is estimated at 1 Sievert radiation dose, compared to 150 milliSeiverts for a year on the ISS. So a standard mission to Mars is approximately twice as much radiation as the equivalent time on the space station.
Reduced launch costs could help, though I think a 100x reduction by 2030 is a bit too optimistic. One aspect is marginal cost--a good chunk of the shuttle's enormous pricetag was overhead. Adding another mission to the schedule didn't cost a full $1.5 billion. This means that a successful strategy for reducing launch costs may be cultivating high-volume markets. Unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of new missions in the pipeline, in no small part because NASA is always in a precarious funding situation. Solving that would go a long way toward making the Space Launch System a winning proposition.
Moreover, we don't really know how to operate above LEO. Again, making space access cheaper would do a lot of allow for more experimental missions, but that's a long way out. We may want to take a more cautious approach--going back to Luna, establishing a base, and so on. Understanding the role of microgravity is important. How much is enough? It looks like any is better than none, but is 1/3 adequate? 1/4? 1/6?
My next panel was back to the fiction world, where the biggest conflict was whether War and Peace is a good book. It was on writing, specifically, Writing Major Minor Characters. This is the art of getting the most out of small details--getting enough characterization without going through the whole process of "rounding out" a character. One panelist mentioned that giving a single detail not relevant to the plot is all it takes in short stories (more is necessary in novels, if that's what you're trying to accomplish).
It's important to realize that is minor characters don't contribute to the plot, then you should be asking yourself why they're there at all. The amount of attention and space given to a character should be proportional to their contribution. Does a given scene advance the story? Does a particular person need details given? According to the panelists, a significant skill for writers is realizing when you've written unnecessary material that needs to be taken out.
Sometimes that material can be reworked or added into later drafts. One valuable tactic is uniting throwaway characters into a single, significant castmember. Other times you'll end up with a major character in disguise--someone who doesn't seem important for most of the book but ends up mattering at the climax.
Realize that realistic characters don't need to be well-developed. Connie Willis told a story about a stereotypically slow and annoying person in front of her at the pharmacy. We've all encountered such people, and hated in them for that moment, even though they probably have a long story and rich inner life. The same is true for minor characters. We can recognize such characters, and our minds fill in the rest. Writers can easily let their readers fill in the details so long as they've been pointed in the right direction.
The Opening Ceremonies where a bit underwhelming. It felt a bit disorganized to me, and the audio hookup wasn't that great. I probably should have gone to a talk instead.
The final event of my evening was 1950s Science Fiction Movies, discussing the great and terrible films made in that era. I didn't take very many notes because the lights were off most of the time so we could see the host's slideshow, a couple points stood out. First was the different gender dynamics in various movies. Some still look egalitarian today, while others were already starting to look backwards then. Particularly focus on the conduct of scientists in such films, and importance of script/dialog in an era when special effects couldn't carry a film.
Viewing recommendations include Them!, The 27th Day, and the European cut of First Spaceship on Venus.
 |
| The past and future of transportation, side by side. |
