If I’m getting swine flu I want it NOW

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Not that I think I am getting it, but that’s what worries me. If I can have it now, it should be out of my system this time next Monday: when, if all goes to plan, I should be at or at least near Heathrow for my flight to Montreal … Whereas if I start sniffling and aching around Thursday or Friday, that could really screw up a decent holiday.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Worldcon here I come. H1N1 permitting.

Proof of what a civilised people the Canadians are lies in the timing of flights. Previous flights to North America have all involved getting up at oh-my-god-o’clock and perhaps watching the sun rise over the M25. Next Monday’s flight is at 15.30. How did that happen?

The programme has been published and looks pretty good. And unlike last year, when they put me on two items and cancelled one, this year I feel quite decently used. As well as a reading and signing session (expected attendance … well, who knows):

  • When: Fri 11:00
  • Title: The Golden Duck Awards for Children’s and YA Science Fiction
  • All Participants: Ben Jeapes, Cathy Petrini, Helen Gbala, Henry Melton, Janet McNaughton, S.C. Butler, Michèle Laframboise, Jean-Pierre Guillet, Lindalee Stuckley
  • Description: For picture books, the Eleanor Cameron Award for middle grade books and the Hal Clement Award books for young adults, this award is designed to encourage the people to write those books that capture future SF fans. Lindalee Stuckey introduces the award, and is joined by a number of current authors for children and young adults for discussion.
  • When: Fri 21:00
  • Title: Just A Minute
  • All Participants: Ben Jeapes, David Clements, Pat Cadigan, Paul Cornell, Steve Green, Tom Galloway
  • Moderator: Paul Cornell
  • Description: Only sf/fantasy panelists in this Worldcon version of the venerable British quiz show, in which panelists must extemporize for a minute on a given topic without hesitation, repetition or deviation.
  • When: Sat 10:00
  • Title: Archetypes Without Stereotypes
  • All Participants: Ben Jeapes, Pat Rothfuss, Nalo Hopkinson, Doselle Young
  • Moderator: Pat Rothfuss
  • Description: Thanks to culture and convention, every reader carries a built-in cast of characters requiring little or no explanation. Is there a way to use this built-in knowledge without writing stereotypes or poorly-defined stock characters? What happens when readers don’t share those assumptions?
  • When: Sat 20:00
  • Title: Size Doesn’t Matter
  • All Participants: Ben Jeapes, Bob Neilson, delphyne woods, Karen Haber, Jacob Weisman
  • Moderator: me!
  • Description: Design in SF&F publishing is often better in books produced by the smaller presses, which have fewer resources than their larger counterparts. Is the small press the last refuge of beautifully designed books?
  • When: Sun 11:00
  • Title: Writing for Teens
  • All Participants: Anne Harris, Ben Jeapes, Fiona Patton, Eoin Colfer
  • Moderator: me again!
  • Description: How is writing for YA/teens different? Do you just leave out the sex and long exposition, or is there more to it?
  • When: Sun 15:30
  • Title: The Napoleonic War from Both Sides
  • All Participants: Ben Jeapes, Melinda Snodgrass, Walter Jon Williams
  • Moderator: Walter Jon Williams
  • Description: One of the most important, worldshaping conflicts. A rich source for both fantasy and science fiction. Our panellists try to explain it to you.
  • When: Sun 17:00
  • Title: Science Blogging – The New Science Journalism?
  • All Participants: Ben Jeapes, Daniel P. Dern, Mur Lafferty, Sumitra Rajagopalan
  • Moderator: Daniel P. Dern
  • Description: Touted as a new way of reaching the public, has science blogging matched its initial promise? Has it caused more problems than it solves? [Hell if I know …]

I may not come back with any answers to any of these questions, but I’ll have fun establishing the boundaries of my ignorance.

Nice day for a Wycliffe wedding

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Before today I don’t think I had ever actually heard the wedding march played at a wedding, outside episodes of Friends. The groom was a Brit, the bride was American and the service was a cultural hybrid. Apparently a key part of American weddings is the Installation Seating of the Mothers, which I also haven’t seen before, not even in episodes of Friends. Maybe it’s just a Baptist thing. They send the bridesmaids down the aisle, one at a time, like a couple of practice shots. Then the mothers are escorted in to take their places at the front, in case they are unable to do so themselves. Best Beloved murmured that it will never catch on over here.

Nor have I seen the bride holding her hands up in praise during a hymn before. But this was a Wycliffe wedding so it may be normal.

I always favour smaller weddings over large ones, because I know from experience that the smaller the possible guest list, the more attention you pay to inviting exactly the right people. You want them there. (Even if I did deduce we were on the B-list, only getting the invitation a fortnight ago, but obviously we were at the wanted end of the B-list.) Half the congregation were recently graduated students, suddenly finding an excuse for a reunion. People were happy, and the expression on the groom’s face when his intended appeared at the end of the aisle would have lit up the whole place on its own, with a little left over to power the microphones.

The bride’s brother delivered the address. I tried to picture my sister’s reaction if I had offered to do the same, and delivered a lengthy exposition of the various theological points contained within the reading. Actually, best left unpictured.

The service was in the college chapel and was the first wedding to be held there for six or seven years. The entrance to the chapel is officially through a pair of double doors leading in from the outside. They hadn’t been opened since the last wedding, and the Academic Administrator plus groom had to rugby charge to get them to shift.

Inside these doors is a space of a couple of feet, and then a pair of interior doors. These open easily, because during the last six or seven years this space has been used to store equipment. It had all been cleared away, so only the cognoscenti – i.e. most of the congregation, and me because my wife told me – knew the bride was making her entrance out of the A/V cupboard. And why not? She was a sound vision, ba-boom.

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

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There’s an elegiac little list with this title over at Wired.com: experiences, generally technological, that you may have had but your children haven’t and won’t. I remember far too much of it.

So, I will just mention the things on the list that I never experienced either:

  • Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds
  • 8-track cartridges
  • Betamax tapes
  • MiniDisc
  • Laserdisc
  • Shortwave radio
  • Using jumpers to set IRQs [not even sure what this means]
  • Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it
  • Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID
  • Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time
  • Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load
  • CB radios

A lot of these I was aware of, just didn’t have. Anything computational completely passed me by. When I think of all those times I lamented my thrifty, technosceptic parents … maybe they didn’t do me such a disservice.

Even so, that’s 12 items out of 100. My time may be passing.