Fantastic Genres II
by
This weekend, I attended the Fantastic Genres II, a very small academic conference held at SUNY New Paltz, in New Paltz, NY. The con director was John Langan, a semi-regular F&SF contributor, and a friend of mine. The conference was held once before, two years ago. The first one was really great; this one was good too, though not quite as well-organized. Apparently they received a grant to put on the first one, but this time they did not, so there weren’t as many resources at their disposal.
The motel I stayed at was a dump, yet charged $135 per night. But Doug Cohen and Chris Cevasco bunked with me, so the costs were reduced to merely annoying, rather than outrageous. The walls of this place were ultra-thin; we were just sitting in our room one night talking at regular volume, and people in the next room were pounding on the walls for us to be quiet. Admittedly, it was like 11:30, but still–what kind of construction is that?
Doug, Chris, and I drove up to the conference a bit early on Friday so that we could do a lecture for John Langan’s creative writing class. There was probably twenty students or so, most of whom appeared to be interested in what we had to say. Only one of them, as Doug said, looked to be glassy-eyed. As you might guess, we talked about writing and breaking into print, etc. Langan had his students write up the beginning paragraph of a story as an assignment, so after the discussion period, we looked them and provided some feedback. That was pretty tough, actually; critiquing on the spot (and in person), with only one paragraph to work with. But I think we managed to provide some constructive criticism.
Later on Friday, the conference kicked into gear. After the lecture, we had to head over to motel dump to check-in, and managed to get lost both on the way back to my car (i.e., we couldn’t find the right parking lot) and when we drove back to the campus (i.e., we couldn’t find the right parking lot to park in, and didn’t really know where the building was we were supposed to go to). Once we finally found it, we picked up our name badges and headed to the only panel being offered at that time, which was only described as “Octavia Butler.” (Since this was such a small conference, there was generally only one thing going on at a time; the only exception being that there were readings scheduled against the panels throughout the day.) So, turned out the Butler panel was actually just two academics presenting their papers on Butler. Both had interesting things to say, but we three all would have preferred a discussion about Butler’s work.
After that was the dinner break, during which a rather large group of us trekked over to a Tex-Mex place curiously called Bacchus. Our entourage included John Langan, guests of honor John Crowley (writer) and Joan Gordon (critic) and probably 10 or 15 others. Later, F. Brett Cox and Alex Irvine joined us as well. Dinner was pretty great — great service, great food, great conversation…during which John Crowley said I look evil. I’m not entirely sure where that came from, but I believe it grew out of a conversation about knee-breaking, which someone was talking about doing to an editor who owed her money.
After dinner, the only things scheduled were two readings: one by a student group, and the other by Doug Cohen. So Chris and I, and two other intrepid souls attended the reading. John Langan made a cameo appearance, but rushed out in the middle. He later claimed that it had nothing to do with the quality of the material being read.
On Friday night, there wasn’t anything going on apparently; we didn’t run into anyone after the reading, so we just ended up back at the motel and chatted for a while before turning in.
Saturday night was more fun; after the con, a large group of people headed over to this large field adjacent to one of the other local motels — the one recommended initally by the con organizers on the website, which I had dismissed as too seedy looking after perusing the website. And seedy it was, but the field was cool (and I remember hanging out in the field at the first conference). There was much liquor (dunno who actually paid for it); alas, no soft drinks for me (I don’t drink), but it was cool anyway. Would have been somewhat cooler if we could have had a bonfire or something; not just so we could see (visibility wasn’t *too* bad, as there was a full moon), but because it was a little too cold out that night, even with jackets.
So there was this one picnic table where a bunch of people had congregated, but there wasn’t enough room for everyone. However, there was another table back toward the edge of the field. So a couple of us guys went over to drag it over. Turned out to be really heavy. And initially, we couldn’t pick it up at all. We quickly realized one of the legs seemed to be stuck in the ground. So we used some leverage and muscle and managed to free it, then carried it over… only to discover the reason the one leg was stuck in the ground: it was actually attached to a big block of cement, which we had pulled out of the ground when we picked it up. So when we set the table down, it couldn’t sit flat due to the cement block. We did discover, however, that if someone sat in an anchor position, others could safely sit on the top part, which was about two feet in the air. It was like a see-saw; if the anchor person got up, watch out. Curiously, one person sitting in the anchor position was enough to keep the table down, even with two grown men sitting on the other side.
One thing I was bummed about: apparently there was a shooting star overhead at one point, and I totally missed it. The people I was talking to saw it, but by the time I looked up, it was already gone. Apparently it was pretty striking. Alas.
During the day on Saturday, Doug, Chris, and I (along with Hannah Wolf Bowen) did a panel: “How I Did It: Breaking Into Print,” for which I was moderator, since I don’t have any personal experience stories about breaking into print, unless you count non-fiction, which no one seemed to want to talk about. Afterward, we got into a lengthy and interesting conversation with two of Langan’s students, who were manning the registration booth. We had been on a mission to find coffee, but that was delayed by conversation until we came upon lunch time, and then went in search of food after Nick Mamatas and Hannah came by, and spotted Jeff Ford, who we then followed to the promised land (which, sadly, ended up being the SUNY student union).
We hung out there until Nick had to get back for his reading. We all attended that, then heard Hannah read afterward, and then listened to Chris read a half hour later. After that, we sat in on a panel “The Fantastic Genres: Where to Start Reading.” Turned out to be pretty interesting, even though none of us needed a primer. I’d actually planned to cut out early so I could catch Alex Irvine’s reading, but (1) it was a good panel; and (2) I didn’t plan ahead and sat far from the door, meaning I’d have to walk across the entire class to leave, which seemed slightly disruptive.
After that, we finally went and found a coffee place, as Doug was in desperate need of caffeine. Hung out there for a while, too long in fact, because it forced us to rush our dinner so we could get back in time for Jeff Ford’s reading, which I didn’t want to miss. I’m so glad I didn’t; it was so good, after he was done, I blurted out “That was fucking brilliant.” I think the name of it was “The Bedroom Light”; it’s due to be published in Ellen Datlow’s forthcoming anthology, Inferno, I believe. We attended three other really good readings after that: (1) Paul Witcover; (2) Sarah Langan; and (3) John Langan (though there were back-to-back Langans, they’re not related).
Sunday only had a few panels, including one with me on post-apocalyptic SF. John Crowley was also on the panel, and seemed to think I said some smart things, so that was pretty cool. I mean, he’s John freaking Crowley. That was at noon; prior to that we caught the end of a panel on zombies, after which Doug and I scored some free promotional t-shirts for Kim Paffenroth’s new book Gospel of the Living Dead. After that was a horror roundtable discussion. And then the con ended in the firey apocalypse of my panel.
