Wiscon Day 4 - Report 12

Wiscon 32's Guests of Honor were L. Timmel Duchamp and Maureen McHugh. I'm normally not a fan of speeches, but both speeches were incredibly interesting. You can read Duchamp's on her website. Or you can grab the pdf directly from this link. Well worth a read. One of the talking points was about Karen Joy Fowler's story, "What I Didn't See" and whether you need a feminist background to understand it, or if it should be expected of any science fiction reader to have read Tiptree's story, "The Women Men Don't See".

Maureen McHugh told us what she's up to now, which is creating ARGs. I had just finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, so at least I knew what an ARG was! But other than having some vague sense they existed, I had no idea what they were all about. So this speech was very interesting to me. Now if I can just remember it's Alternate Reality Games and not Augmented Reality, which is something quite different. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

Announcements warned us of the storm. Though I didn't even notice the storm while it was going on, so I'm not sure what all the hype was about. Stomach bug still a topic of conversation. Contagious? Food poisoning? They were collecting information from afflicted parties.

The Tiptree Award was won this year by Sarah Hall for The Carhullan Army aka Daughters of the North. She wasn't there, so I didn't get the full experience of watching chocolate being awarded. The short listed winners were called up on stage, which included Delia Sherman for the Interfictions anthology. Then more people were called up to help lead the singing. There was a song about the winning novel.

After that, I went to the panel The Brave New World of 21st Century Publishing. I was late for it, so it was underway. My mind may not have been with it, as it was getting rather late, but I decided it wasn't going to be terribly interesting and left after a few minutes. It was a small room, so I felt kind of bad about arriving late and leaving so soon after. But I was determined to hit parties since it was my last opportunity.

Which means I missed yet another panel block, and Gender in Virtual Worlds sounded interesting too.

I think the parties basically confirmed for me that I'm not into parties. They're crowded and noisy, so it's hard to have a good conversation. I was even leerier than usual about free food, but I did try my first cheese curd at the Small Beer Press party. I talked to a one or two people, apart from people I already knew. It was easier to have a conversation by the elevators than in any of the parties.

I did feel I must've missed out on something. Earlier parties had had raffles or given away earrings at the haiku earring party. Sunday night was a fancy dress party with academic garb, which was kind of cool to see though.

Each party had a thing of hand sanitizer outside of the rooms. May not have helped, but couldn't hurt. People have later said that the Sunday night parties were dead because of the stomach thing, but if that's dead, then I'm rather glad I didn't go earlier!

That was my last chance to see most people before everyone's flights in the morning, so it was worth it for that.

Wiscon Day 5 - Report 13

I didn't really do anything Wisconny on Monday. But to wrap up this con report, I shall be complete.

I had a reservation on the 9:30 shuttle, so once I got myself out of bed and packed, we went to check out. It was still a bit early, so I sat in the lobby. In retrospect, I should've gone up to pre-reg for next year's Wiscon or something like that, but it was nice to just sit too. People were queuing up at a little hotel kiosk and it took me some time to figure out what for. They were reserving rooms for next year. So let that be a warning to anyone wanting to go to Wiscon next year.. the best rooms are already taken.

On the shuttle, I remembered I hadn't left my room key in the room or at the desk, so I gave it to the driver.

The Madison airport is small and it was quite quiet when I arrived. I could've easily taken a later shuttle. Even if security did scrutinize my ID card very closely and then ask to see another form of ID. No idea what was up with that. Sometimes I get questioned for its lack of expiration date, but not usually by airport security.

Out the window, in the distance, those of us waiting for the flight could see an airplane with its nose down and emergency vehicles around it. I Googled when I got home, but never found any news about it. So I guess it wasn't as exciting as it looked.

On my second plane, I was sat next to a kid with a cold. I figured I was doomed by that point to come home sick. But.. somehow I stayed healthy. All that hand-washing is good for something!

So, all in all, a good first Wiscon experience. Next year I would not arrive any later than I did, but I would plan to stay Monday night and leave Tuesday. And I think I would try to go to more panels. Writing up the con report made me realize just how many panel blocks I'd skipped. I didn't think I had!

Hope to see you all at Wiscon 33!

Doctor Who: Thoughts on "Midnight" and its relation to "Turn Left"

Spoilers for "Midnight" and "Turn Left". So those of you watching your Doctor Who on the Sci Fi Channel can click the cut in three weeks or so, okay?

( Spoily spoily spoilers )

Spoilers for Season 4 up until and including "Turn Left" are okay in the comments. Please don't include spoilers for the episodes after that. Or I'll sic Ianto on you.

What Makes a Robot Gay?

The Feminist SF blog had a recent post about the trailer for Wall-E and the apparently straight robots. You can see that post and the comments.

And today I found that io9 is running a poll on Who is the Gayest Robot in Science Fiction?. It's a whole lot of fluff and obviously not meant to be taken seriously, but here I am getting a bit serious with it anyhow.

How do you define gay when it comes to robots?

- First they're going to need a sex. Or at a least a gender.

Technically all robots should be biologically neuter, since they have no biology. So thus, no gay robots. But that would be a non-starter, so let's assume a gender is enough.

Do they have to be androids and thus be in human form with appropriate equipment and preferably 'fully functional'? Or is it enough to have secondary sexual characteristics such as a masculine or feminine voice or plastic facial hair? Or is it yet enough for them to wheel around on pink treads or carry advertisements for Old Spice? Or maybe it all comes down to the names and pronouns they're given by humans.

- So assuming you have a male robot, however you define male, or a female robot, however you define female, what would make one gay?

( Click here for gay robots. )

Anyone up for publishing a gay robot anthology?