The Moon Goddess and the Son
You'd expect a novel focused on the nuclear standoff between the USA and USSR to age poorly. This one has been improving over the past twenty years. The discussions of the continuity among the Mongol, Czarist, and Soviet governments of Russia are useful guides to Putin's regime. The comments on American culture ("Don't try to sell them parachutes, just have the splints ready") also hold true. The space development story line holds up, more because the lack of progress we've made than any prescience on Kingsbury's part. The best reason for rereading is the characters--they're real, and I like them, even when they're being idiots (a small portion of the time).


Rainbows End
Professor Vinge wanted to write a monograph on user interface design given the technology of 2025, but didn't think anyone would read it. So he gave us this novel instead. It'll probably look bad ten years from now but it's a good extrapolation from now. On first read I was put off by the very unsympathetic protagonist. He's another variation of the SF trope of the guy from the present brought to the future so all the characters have an excuse to explain the things they're used to. Instead of freezing him or throwing him through time, Vinge rescues Robert Gu from Alzheimer's-induced senility. He becomes our guide to a very strange--but believable--world. Telepresence, virtual reality, and data overlays over our view of the real world are constant. A big political event is the equivalent of Warcraft and Pokemon fans clashing over whose imagery will be used to decorate a library. Terrorists are empowered even more by the new technology, while the good guys scramble to stay a step ahead of them. The book's biggest danger comes from someone seeking to control us all for our own good.

Highly recommended to everyone planning on living another fifteen years or more.


Watchmen (the comic)
I read Watchmen after the movie came out. Ugh. Comics fans are more nihilistic than I'd feared if this is one of their revered classics. It's an example of Lois Bujold's comment on Ser Galen: "the anguish of making the hard choices always appealed to the romance in his soul." Given Dr. Manhattan's powers there's multiple ways to avert nuclear war if anyone can convince him to bother. Ozy was in a perfect position to convince him, but wanted to reserve playing god to himself. Moore would rather write about horrid situations requiring brutal choices than make the effort to find a solution that doesn't need millions of innocents killed.

Edit: There will be no further discussion of Watchmen here, because it's unpleasant and I've already spent more time thinking about it than I want to.

celticdragonfly and I snuck off to see Harry Potter 6 this weekend. I loved it. ( Spoilers for movie and book 7 )

10,000 Year Explosion
Some folks have the idea that human evolution ended with civilization. With no predators or starvation we don't have the selection pressure weeding out the weak genes so our genome will be static. That would be true if we bred randomly. Given that people tend to be very selective there's a lot of opportunity for new genes to propagate through the population in a few generations. This book tackles the evidence of recent changes in the human genome and tells their stories.


The Box
Anyone who reads a book about the history of shipping containers must be a compete geek, right? Well, I wasn't keeping it a secret. But there's a lot more to this book than boxes. Shipping your freight in a container that doesn't have to be opened from factory to customer can by a great savings in time and money. IF, and here's the big if, the whole system is set up to handle 40 foot boxes on ships, trucks, and trains. Without that it's just a box so heavy the longshoremen refuse to handle it.

So we have a history of how companies, vehicles, communities, and government agencies had to change for containers to be effective. Except they didn't change. Almost every company doing ocean shipping before containers went under or was forced to merge. Old ships were converted, then replaced by purpose-built containerships. Ports were abandoned, their traffic taken over by new ones built up from the marshland. Felixstowe became Britian's largest port starting from a minor facility so small the union hadn't bothered to organize it. Unions went from dominating their communities to a handful of crane operators. New York City's longshoremen once could tip a mayoral election. Now the piers hold restaurants and the ships go to New Jersey. Whole systems of government regulations and industry cartels collapsed. The Interstate Commerce Commission wound up being abolished. How often does that happen to a government agency? So there's a heck of a lot of drama in there for a story about boxes. I'd strongly recommend it for anyone interested in how technological changes are resisted by social, commercial, and government forces.


Space Doctor
Harry Stein writing near-term science fiction in 1981. This sort of thing usually ages very badly as technology overtakes it. Well, this one holds up well. Stein wrote a description of building a solar power satellite system from the view point of the doctor treating construction accidents and other aliments of the work crews. There's a few dated moments ("Behold, the marvelous invention of CAD software! And new medical databases you can access over the net!") but all the parts in space hold up just fine. That's because we've made effectively zero progress toward actually building large-scale structures in space since Stein wrote the book. Entertaining reading (as long as you weren't expecting much detailed characterization) but got me brooding a bit on the implications.

I finally got to see Star Trek last weekend. Overall a fun movie. Tossing the existing continuity overboard leaves things open for them to tell whatever stories they want. I'd like to see more good SF movies. But I still have complaints.
( Just in case anyone's still worried about spoilers. )

Yes, it's over a week since the con. It was a busy week.

We didn't get to see as much of Fencon as we'd hoped. Having to replace our minivan on short notice knocked a big hole in the budget. So we couldn't have hotel rooms which kept us away from the late night filking. But we made it out every day of the con even if we weren't there for as long as we'd like.

Friday evening we came out with the kids so we could show them off to joyeuse13, abovenyquist, and Z and vice versa. It was nice seeing our friends again. Z is extremely cute. The kids were also happy to see kd5mdk and jazz007 who we hadn't seen in months. Our kids were quite well behaved. Naturally they were attracted to the video room since it was showing a Disney production. I wouldn't've expected Willy Ley's Man in Space to hold their attention but Jamie loved it. Possibly he'll grow up wanting to fly rocketships just like his father. But I'll try to convince him to do something he can earn a living at.

When I stuck my head in the gaming room I was immediately asked "Are you running a game?" Nope, not this year, though I did at the previous three Fencons. Didn't want to spend all my time chained to the table this year. Probably will next year though--it's good to be appreciated.

Saturday morning we left the kids with their sitter, the wonderful Lee Ann. After breakfast we dropped off the results of the library purge--nine boxes of books, mostly SF paperbacks. I taped "Homeless Books, Please Help" signs to each of the boxes and put them under the freebie table. Instant feeding frenzy. A polite one, mind you. But the books went away quickly. By Sunday afternoon only a couple of dozen were left which went into the charity donation bin.

The best part of the con was getting to see friends. We haven't been able to make many ORAC meetings lately with the kids so I got to see that crowd again. Didn't get to chat much, of course, since they were all busy running the con (and doing a great job). I saw tyledra again after far too long since the last time. I ran into jenna_thorn, possibly for the first time. It was definitely the first time I got to meet sappersgt. I'd been reading LJ since his previous deployment without knowing him in person, though I'd gamed with soldiergrrrl before. We talked about getting up a game of Ogre but never wound up in the same place again.

Not GMing doesn't mean I wasn't gaming at all. A first time player bailed out of a game of a Railroad Tycoon game halfway through so I took his place. The position was as bad as you'd expect but I improved it enough to enjoy myself, going from 6th to 4th place. After that bonafidelis lured me into a Munchkin game.

The filk Guest of Honor was Three Weird Sisters. I'd seen them before at GaFilk and two of their CDs live in my car so this was the big event of the day for me. There was a bit of trouble getting started. I miss the Tyras but I suspect some other people were missing them a lot more right then. It was a great concert. The new song from Mal Reynold's POV gave me goosebumps from scalp to shin. Afterwards I got to introduce myself to weirdsister so now she has a face to go with those comments.

joyeuse13 and abovenyquist hosted a pizza party in their room for their friends. Z was being very cute and enjoying the attention. Lots of fun chatting, but I snuck out to hang with friends in the gaming room again. Didn't stay for the open filking, sigh. Having to drive home means you can't stay up until you're so tired you're falling out of the chair.

Sunday we went to the House MD presentation. Writer Doris Egan did a live commentary on the episode "House vs. God." She had some lovely behind-the-scenes bits, including how she won an argument with one of the medical consultants by finding current research on cancer-attacking viruses. Okay, House may not be science fiction, but SF fans love it. It's the only show out there which shows the scientific method in action--collect data, form a hypothesis, test it, look at the new data.

We had more filk from the GoHs, this time performing separately as Birds of a Feather (Teresa and Mary) and the Suttons (Brenda with her husband Bill). The latter thrilled celticdragonfly with "Women With Drums." Maybe Laura should bring her doumbek to next year's con.

While saying goodbye to joyeuse13 and abovenyquist I got to meet arthurthedented, another person I'd only known through LJ. It's good to have the real life connection. Hopefully next year we'll be able to have hotel rooms and see even more of everybody.

I re-read a few old Heinleins recently. I suddenly understand why he may have thought Starship Troopers wouldn't get much reaction for it's political content. Most of the juveniles don't have much politics but Space Cadet is about joining the enforcement arm of a world government. This leads to a conversation between Our Hero and one of the academy instructors going roughly like this:

"Sir, when I was on home leave my mom got upset about how the Patrol could nuke our country."

"Well, son, to keep the peace the Patrol has to smack down any country that acts up. That's why we insist on you swearing loyalty to the Patrol instead of your country."

"Yessir, but that means I might have to drop on a nuke on my home town someday. I'm not sure if I could do that, sir."

"No worries, if your ship is ordered to nuke your home town the captain will have you confined to quarters."

"Oh, that's all right then."

Kinda puts restricting voting rights in perspective, doesn't it? The first thing our hero saw arriving at the Patrol was "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" From the rest of the book the answer seems to be "no one," which historically has led to bad ends. The origin of the Patrol is described in the short story "Solution Unsatisfactory" and I still agree with the title.

***
Had my first World PvP honor kill last night. A level 70 belf paladin was attacking the inn in Honor Hold and I took my level 65 warrior to help whack him. Didn't do much damage, but a friendly tree kept me alive and eventually the belf ran out of mana and took off running. I didn't maneuver well enough to stay with him so I was watching him run out the gate with a pack of NPC guards following, too far behind to attack him. Eventually he'd get far enough away the guards would give up and he'd be home free. Then the game decided I was "out of combat" since X seconds had gone by without him trying to hit me or vice versa. Charge. Hamstring. And the guards finished him off.

Note that this wasn't my first World PvP kill. But the guy who rezzed right next to me while I was torch tossing in Exodar doesn't count. He was 15 levels below me. Hopefully he's learned to not suddenly appear next to skulls.

***
My MS paper on the history of the NPOESS program got yet another piece of fan mail. This reporter is working on "bungling in federal contracting" and wants to chat about NPOESS as an example. Thanks, not interested in destroying my career. I'd be tempted if I thought I'd be able to get across how the problems are built in from the beginning by government constraints. Looking at his prior work I suspect he's already written a story about evil businessmen stealing from the government and just wants some quotes to support his conclusions.

***
Another fun Warcraft moment. I was on defense in Alterac Valley. We were getting stomped. After one attack on the general I was left the only player alive in the bunker. Four+ horde 70s came in. Charging them was instant death for me, but they didn't want me interfering as they killed the general (which would automatically win the battle). So they started shooting and dotting me. "Ah, it's just a 65, we'll kill him with the dots and then take the general." I just had to stand there and take it, plinking them with my crossbow (no visible effect). While that's going on the victory screen popped up: "Alliance Wins". I stalled them enough for the Alliance offense to get to their general first. I had a huge laugh.

***
Had an ER visit on Saturday night after splashing boiling water on myself. 2nd degree burn on the belly, nothing critical, but very annoying. celticdragonfly's been taking good care of me. A big part of the annoyance is that I'd just gotten started exercising again after dealing with another problem. It's always something. I also felt bad about making the whole family miss church but after driving me back home at 3am Laura needed sleep and I wasn't up to driving.

***
Jamie's getting better at talking. He's starting up actual conversations. Usually this is a way to avoid going to bed or potty-time or something, but hey, it's progress.

soldiergrrrl posted the link to the Iron Man trailer. I watched it and said, "Okay, I'm in the target demographic for that one." (Note that I've never read an Iron Man comic)

celticdragonfly said "I really didn't follow that."

selenite: "Defense contractor CEO gets kidnapped by bad guys, escapes, and builds himself a supersuit to go fight crime." (Note--going purely by the trailer here)

celticdragonfly: "Yeah, you ARE the target demographic."

You've probably seen mentions that Steven Brust posted his Firefly fanfic novel. It's good. It's in the continuity shortly before the movie. This time the job goes right . . . but Mal manages to find some trouble anyway. He did a superb job of getting the characters right, especially River (which impresses me--she's hard to write). His Guest Star is an interesting person and plays a key role without overshadowing the BDHs. Go read it, y'all.

I haven't been that familiar with Brust before this. I'd enjoyed Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille but not enough to go seek out more of his work. I think I'm going to pick up Freedom and Necessity and give it another shot.

Last week we were watching Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. It ended with the dramatic reveal that SPOILER was a god.
Me: "Oh, we know how to deal with that. Nail him to a stick."
celticdragonfly: "Nah, that only works for three days."
Our handbasket is marked "Express".

***
The Veggietales Pirates movie is good, the quality I expect from them. Probably too scary for some of the under-5 crowd. Jamie watched it from my lap and turned away during the scary bits.

***
One of my favorite RPG settings is Transhuman Space, a hard-SF look at what the human race will be a century from now. A poster on RPG.net complained he didn't like it because it lacked "focus", ie, the set assumption that characters in a game will engage in one mission. (D&D: Kill monsters and take their stuff, CoC: investigate mysteries and go mad from the answers). I replied, "GURPS strives for realism, and reality is notably lacking in focus."

***
I ran into the lovely awamiba at Chikfila while giving the kids some play time. She knew who I was because she recognized the kids. Someday I need to get the church nametag saying "Maggie's Daddy." Not a bad way to be known.

***
I picked up this year's batch of Girl Scout cookies from a co-worker. Turns out he won't be doing it again. That's a prohibited activity here at Lockheed. Why we can hardly imagine.

Three years ago Pyramid published a gaming article I wrote, The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Panic. It was mostly an excuse to explore the Hysteria Department at Illuminati University, but the plot focused on the invention of a "Fear Projector." I wanted an appropriate mad science gadget to drive innocent bystanders into a panic. Naturally there had to be a bit of technobabble describing how this thing worked:

The students used a combination of strobe lights and ultrasonic
vibration to make a working cannon-sized beamer
One of the problems with writing science fiction--even when you're doing mad science--is that it's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Turns out there is a government contract for just that kind of gadget:

Military funded researchers are preparing to test a nonlethal weapon that combines light and sound. Nicholas C. Nicholas, chief scientist of Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory, told an audience yesterday at a nonlethal weapons conference that in the first half of next year, the lab plans to test DSLAD, the Distributed Sound and Light Array Debilitator. It'll use essentially off the shelf technology to see if combining aversive noises with light produce some special debiliating effects.

I think "Fear Projector" still has a better ring to it than "DSLAD", but they probably couldn't get any good names through their review committee.

Joss is asking fans to join the strike.

Oh, boy. The writers' strike is one of the many, many things I've classed as "not important/immediate enough to need to make a decision on." Some of the discussion has been interesting, but I soaked that up in a couch-potatoey way instead of thinking that I might actually get, you know, involved.

But Joss has figured out how to trigger actions from his fans. He's talking about strike activities away from Hollywood, in the cities where we live. Like little cons with signs, bringing out the girls in pretty costumes and boys arguing obscure details of the shows. How can I resist?

Well, first I have to decide if I actually support the strike. And after thinking it over I do. But not for the reasons Joss is asking me to. See, Joss wants to fix the system. He's spent his life in the Hollywood system, he's done great work within it, and he's invested a lot in learning how to work it. All he wants is to tweak it so the writers get a better share.

Now me . . . I don't like the Hollywood system. It's Procrustes. Stories get chopped or stretched to fit the arbitrary time slots they've been assigned. More often they're discarded unseen because they might not pull in enough advertiser-manipulatable eyeballs to justify the huge overhead of the studios.

But it doesn't have to be that way. New companies, owned by the creators, can form and send their art directly to the people who want it. Internet torrents, direct to DVD sales, Itunes, and there's probably more ways to deliver it that haven't even been invented yet. All that's stopping them is the trampling feet of the Hollywood dinosaur herd. Which, right now, makes them awfully damn stoppable.

The strike can change that. If the dinosaurs starve long enough they'll die, and the mammals can grow and spread. So hell, yes, I support the writers' strike. I support keeping the strike going until every writer on the line no longer has a job to go back to. I support keeping the strike going until writers leave it by the half-dozen to form their own companies. I support keeping the strike going until it's a tourist attraction, the last stop at Universal Studios, which has become a pure theme park.

And to have something to do while walking the picket line, I offer a song to sing. This is a filk of a Leslie Fish song. To no one's surprise it needed very little change to become a strike song.

Bring the Studios Down by Karl and Laura Gallagher
A filk of Bring It Down by Leslie Fish

We don't like the shows you've made. Bring it down, bring it down.
We'd take D T V in trade. Bring it down, bring it down.
Let the shows go on wi-fi,
And give up the smallest slice of pie
Just so long as the studios die! Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.

We don't like the work we do. Bring it down, bring it down.
Nothing useful, safe, or true. Bring it down, bring it down.
Faceless bureaucrats in the hills
Drive us down at the pace that kills.
They get dividends, we get bills! Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.

We don't like stale TV. Bring it down, bring it down.
Let us work creatively. Bring it down, bring it down.
Writer’s dream has fallen far.
A million rules have dimmed its star.
We don't like the way we are! Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.

Ads and ratings hem us in. Bring it down, bring it down.
Let us write our best again. Bring it down, bring it down.
Slowly growing deepset rage
Breaks the bars of a paper cage,
Put pure passion on the page! Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.

No reform will save the day. Bring it down, bring it down.
Sweep this system all away. Bring it down, bring it down.
Mindless pap and cliches grating
Grow the worse, with longer waiting.
To save our writing, smash the ratings! Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.
Bring it down, bring it down.

Yet another bit of evidence that Questionable Content is set in a post-singularity society.

"Non-sentient machines can still lead perfectly productive lives in modern society!"

Marten's got a good question there. They've got a boring job, you've got to worry about le cafard.

I arrived at Fencon early to check into the room and get our stuff set up, while celticdragonfly picked up the sitter and got her settled with Maggie and Jamie.

That gave me enough time to attend the "To Infinity and Beyond: the Future of Commercial Space Travel" panel. The high point was actually in the hallway waiting for Connie Willis to finish up, when Jarrod Davis adored my Project Orion t-shirt. The panel wasn't really up to talking about commercial space. For most of the panelists (and audience) space equaled NASA. I was polite, but had to say "That's not true" when one of the panelists claimed that there was no regulation of the safety of commercial space companies. I finally got frustrated enough to make my Fedex speech:

responding to a comment that the return to the Moon will be delayed because people think space is unsafe

Do any of you know how reliable Fedex's planes are? Or how many drivers they've lost in traffic accidents? No. And you don't care. You give them money because they provide a useful service. That's what will make space sustainable--producing something worth buying. You can't get there holding out a cup begging people to drop in some tax dollars, that's always going to leave you one election away from going poof.

Don't think I changed anyone's mind but hopefully it planted a seed or two. I'll be making a couple of suggestions about next year's space panels to the concom, once they've had some time to catch up on sleep. Afterwards I went out to dinner with Kip McMurray and his wife Claire. We'd dealt with some of the same NewSpace people and gossiped a bit.

While we were looking for a place to eat we spotted a restaurant named "Firefly - modern asian fusion cuisine". Didn't have time to go there this weekend but I think I may organize an expedition to there next year.

My first game session started with only one player, so we did a free form "pilot on shore leave" game. First time I've had to deal with this kind of player. Then a couple more players joined in and we plunged into a Plot. Since they only wanted to play the junior crew members, I let them be the boarding party for the derelict ship and then take control while the captain continued on with his freight run. Smart move by the captain. This could be a short scenario if the PCs decide to escape once they figure out what's going on, but no. These guys were opening all the trap doors. It's a shame they ran out of time. Visualize a guy fishing off the dock, smoking a cigar while sitting on a case of dynamite, and reeling in the giant squid he's hooked. I would've liked to see how it came out, but they didn't make it to Saturday's game.

Once I was done with the game I found celticdragonfly and listened to some filk before falling down.

Saturday began with the hotel breakfast buffet (good, if limited selection) and then a serious exploration of the dealers' room. Lots of nifty stuff as usual. I went wild at the filk table. And I snagged a copy of the new Serenity Found collection, because I was sure there weren't enough of them to last to the end of the con.

The Saturday afternoon game started off with three players. Robert had his Jayne hat to set the mood.

A couple more players joined us soon after. I dropped them into my favorite con scenario. Early on the captain asked "We're being paranoid, but are we being paranoid enough?" No, as it turned out. They managed to come up with a different approach to solving the situation than the previous three groups--frontal assault. I think I managed to calibrate the battle perfectly. They won with the four attacking PCs each getting shot once . . . that's about as close as I could possibly hope for. The crew faked their way onto the bad guy's ship by having one play kidnap victim, screaming and hollering until the captain turned off her radio. Player: "I have no voicecomm and I must scream."

Here's the shootout in action.


One player blew his first roll and wound up out of control in freefall, bouncing around the compartment as the bullets whizzed past him. Then he finally got it together and put three bullets into a bad guy with his first chance to shoot. The victors received their laurels, or in this case a generous cash reward. There was much rejoicing once their vacc suits were patched and bleeding stopped.

From left: me, Kate, Adam, Robert, Doc, Becky.

We wrapped up in time for me to see the Tom Smith concert. Great show. I have one of his CDs and picked up two more.

We joined Andy and Jazz for dinner in the hotel restaurant. Not too great. I suspect they don't want the low-end items to be good to get people to order the expensive ones. I left the table early to take a very tired Alanna off for a lie-down. She did nap, but only while I was sitting up. When I laid down for a (very tempting) nap she woke up, and it didn't take her long to get me back to the couch for a vertical cuddle. But not soon enough for me to catch Blake's 7 in the video room (one of the shows I've been curious about for years but never seen). The video room wasn't meant to be for me this year--I wanted to see Star Cops too but the timing was impossible.

We went back downstairs to watch the Fencon Cabaret, but it was just too crowded so we bailed out and went to the House MD room party. That was fun, and even though the folks there were totally caught up on the series they were kind enough to not spoil us (we're still on 2nd season).

Then it was filking time again. I went to the theme filk room--they were doing Firefly filk and it just sucked me right in. faxpaladin played the "Blue Sun Blues", which was very close to what my day job is like. Scary. apryl_knight gave a beautiful performance of "Mal's Song" with the whole audience joining in on the choruses. Okay, there was less than a dozen of us, but it beat being shoehorned into the open filk room. celticdragonfly sang "Alliance Unification" and I think that may have been the first time she did it in public. I have to say ziactrice had a Very Fine Hat.

As usual I was the first one to collapse.

Sunday I had to get everything packed up before game time, which ate my chance of any more panels. Everyone else was having the same problem, so my noon game didn't actually start until 1:00. Our Firefly GoH, Jarrod Davis, was in the gaming room and got his first look at MWP's Serenity deckplan. He was impressed. It is a gorgeous piece of art.

This time we started with the violence and then got into the social maneuvering. There's not much the crew won't do to avoid having to lay out real money for ship repairs . . . even go drinking and dancing. Unfortunately we lost players at 3:00 as people came by saying things like "four hour drive" and "really, really tired" so we didn't get to finish.

From left: Doc, Ben, Becca, Becky, Chris, me. Shortly after this Becca had to leave and Kate and Adam joined in again.

I tracked the family down in closing ceremonies and took Alanna out for some cuddle time since she was getting noisy. We headed out for a post-con dinner with kd5mdk and jazz007. Then home. I hadn't done any singing at the con, but we discovered on the drive that Alanna will stop crying for Daddy's rendition of "Och, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye." For that celticdragonfly will put up with ose.

Overall my take on this Fencon is "nice con, wish I'd seen more of it." I wanted to do a bunch of gaming to support the Lone Star Shindig but with all the set-up time I didn't get to do much else. Plus it's irritating to bust my butt preparing games only to see that the gaming schedule isn't in the program book, only on the website. I noticed gaming seemed to be the only track to not be mentioned during closing ceremonies as well. So next year I'm going to pass on gaming at Fencon.

A fascinating alternate interpretation of the United Federation of Planets. And I can't see any holes in it from the canon I remember. Of course it would mean there was a lot of important stuff never mentioned on stage . . .

Hat tip to joel_rosenberg.

daveamongus lured me into the discussions on whether science fiction short stories have any future as an genre--or market, depending on the speaker's point of view.

What makes science fiction different from most other kind of fiction is that the author has more "overhead"--the explanations needed to make sense of what's different from the present day. A story has to have characters, plot, ideas, and overhead to work. Golden Age SF shorts made this work by sacrificing characters and sometimes plot to fit the overhead and ideas into their word count.

One shortcut for this is "used furniture." A story can transplant another setting into the future so readers can quickly translate everything. So "space western" stories have more room left for characters and plot by tossing out overhead explanations. Fantasy writers use the European middle ages for the same reason. Sometimes this can save more work for the writer than the reader--Weber's Napoleonic Age references in the Honorverse

The complaints about new short SF stories is that the writers are relying on a different set of used furniture--the past decade or two of literary SF ideas. That's great for readers who've kept up, they can follow the story just fine. But anyone coming from the outside--say a young Babylon 5 fan looking for something to read--gets confused, bored, and looks for something else that's more fun.

SF novels are doing better than shorts because they have room for all elements of the story on top of the overhead. Series are popular because you get more story pay-off for the reader's investment in learning the overhead. But a stand-alone short story can't do that.

The short stories I've read recently are spin-offs from longer pieces of fiction. Bujold has a couple of shorts in the Vorkosiverse, naominovik has one up on her website. They work well because almost all the overhead is in another book. Fanfic works the same way, capitalizing on the parent work's investment. So that's one model for successful short fiction. This is analogous to "DVD extras", things that can't stand on their own but the fans still seek out. Baen has sold story collections on that model as Honor Harrington spin-offs as well as the "Grantville Gazette" collections in the 1632-verse. Lee and Miller have sold shorts in their Liaden universe as chapbooks.

In the heyday of Analog many authors had series of short stories that would build on each other. That only works if you can depend on the readers to have read the original stories, otherwise each one has to have enough overhead to stand on its own. Or--and this is working for webcomics such as Schlock Mercenary--you could make the earlier episodes available online. That lets readers immediately answer any questions they have by going back to the earlier story with that bit of overhead explanation. Putting up shorts online for free horrifies the writers who think every bit of writing should be paid for in advance, but a few pioneering webcartoonists have made successful livings from the stories they've put out for free.

A third model for shorts might be the "free sample". An author with a book on the market could post a short story in the same setting--not an excerpt--as a way to intrigue new readers who might buy the book. This could be a good home for those lovely scenes that were fun to write but had to be cut to keep the plot from bogging down. Technically these may not be "short stories" since they still can't function on their own, they depend on the reader seeking out more of setting to be a satisfying experience.

I think the stand-alone short story is a relic of the 20th century. Modern readers want a full story with a plot and characters they care about (whether or not they're textured enough to satisfy critics). The magazine format can't work because it disconnects the story from the context needed to enjoy it. An online magazine could work if it presents every story with links to its setting (the archive of other stories and possibly a faq). Like webcomics, a webzine would need to build up a critical mass of material before finding people willing to pay for it. Trying to convince new readers to pay for shorts in advance is a futile exercise.

I day tripped to Lazydragoncon yesterday. It was in McKinney, so I got to do the usual con drive along the 635 and 75, passing the hotels for fencon and ConDFW along the way.

The hotel was too small for a regular con but worked for a relaxicon. If people are just there to hang out with friends they don't need programming space. Some more rooms for spontaneous gatherings/events could have been useful but everyone seemed to be having a good time as it was.

I got to the gaming room with enough time to set up before my 1pm start. There wasn't any published schedule, but I recruited a few players and we jumped into the game. I've been coming up with new scenarios for the Lone Star Shindig and this was my first chance to playtest them.

It started out well. They didn't twig too quickly to the show references. The tension stayed high with a minimum of violence (one nasty fight, which is about the minimum I'd have for a con game session). By the time most of the secrets were revealed they were running back to their Firefly with the Captain commanding "Set course for not here!"

Then they reenacted one of the scenes from Young Frankenstein. "No matter how cruelly I beg you, no matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door!" Or rather they reenacted how it would have worked if the Doctor had shoved Igor in there with the Monster as punishment for screwing up the experiment. I wound up laughing so hard I still have some sore muscles today. Made it real hard to keep role-playing a confused, scared 18-year-old girl, I tell you.

Then story went into improv for a while until I could toss another plot hook at them. Lots of fun was had. I'm feeling better about fencon now. They weren't able to come back for the second session, so I cancelled it.

I ran into several friends from ORAC and saw rixende at the SCA demo. I was tempted to stay for the parties--especially the fencon room party--but decided to get home to celticdragonfly and the kids.