Conflux

For a far more thorough report, you’ll want to look at Tessa’s report, but I will endeavour to cover the two days I was there…

First up, I think I should actually describe the event, as it appears from reading a couple of articles in the media that the world at large either has no idea, or completely the wrong idea about SF (that’s Speculative Fiction – which includes Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror) Conventions.
A SF Con in Australia is usualy a gathering of authors and fans of speculative fiction for the purpose of celebrating, discussing and advancing the genre as well as most importantly a place to have fun and meet a lot of very nice like minded people.
It is not a place where hundreds of freaky star trek fans wander round in spock ears (Sorry to disapoint you ABC).
The staple of the con is usualy the panels, which are always very interesting, entertaining, and funny. There’s also many presentations and speeches, various book launches, readings, signings, a traders room, sometimes art shows and awards ceremonies, and plenty of parties.
Conflux had approximately 35 published novel authors in attendance, and of the rest of the attendees, very few would not have been writers of some sort, whether published or aspiring.
Rather than being intimidating for a non writer like myself, it all comes together to create a wonderfully contagious environment of creativity.
Ok now, into the gory details

Sunday
First up was “Writing in Created Universes – Just how hard is it?”, which was a discussion on the experience of using someone else’s world and / or characters. On the panel were Greg Benford, who writes for Star Trek Enterprise, Johnathan Blum who writes Doctor Who books, Sean Williams who has written 3 books in a 19(!) book Star Wars series, and Matthew Farrer who has written a Warhammer 40k novel.
There was quite a large variation in the experiences of each of the authors, as each setting had its own unique quirks. The Star Wars universe sounded the most intimidating – with Sean being given a huge tome that constituted the Star Wars Bible and being told pretty much that the story he was going to write was detailed on page xxx paragraphs 3 to 5, or something similar. However, he insisted that he still had plenty of freedom in what he could do.
From what Greg was saying about Enterprise, it sounds like the series is in quite a bit of trouble – their audience has dropped significantly and the only reason that the show continues is because they’ve put so much money into it that the stuido is determined to get to the magic 100 episode mark, which apparently is what indicates the show was a success (you don’t want to have been involved with a show that never got to 100), and is also the point at which repeats start being shown.
Doctor Who sounded fairly easy to deal with, as the nature of it is that every story is in a different setting. It’s also the only one of these that I have actually read anything of – but only one, and it was a novelisation of an episode, so it doesn’t really count….
Warhammer gave even more freedom, as being a gaming setting, it’s designed for stories to be written in.

Next I headed to “Romancing the Genre” with Trudi Canavan, Louise Cusack, Cory Daniells, Genda Larke, Fiona McIntosh and Rebecca Locksley.
This was a fairly interesting panel where the authors discussed their widely differing approaches to romance and love in their works. Some attempt was made to distinguish romance from love, but I’m not sure that any two had the same definition. All agreed that romance was an important part of the story, but the way in which it was important varied from being the main driving force behind the story, to being another component that could be put in to add depth and interest.

Immediately after, in the same room was “Cartography and the art of Maps, Can you find your way?”, with Trudi Canavan, Ian Irvine, Russell Kirkpatrick and Glenda Larke.
Probably the most signficant piece of advice from this panel was not so much about the maps as far as they relate to the story, but the more pratical consideration of getting the thing on to the small, low quality paper in the standard paperback without ending up with an indecipherable black smudge.
Overall, another interesting and entertaining panel. I’m rather intrigued by the sound of Glenda’s world in which the geography is unstable and has a habit of changing frequently, making the job of cartographer very important in her world. I might have to hunt out her books at some point.

Next was lunch, and Tessa was minding the art show, so I alternated between keeping her company, and looking at the art on display.
There was a lot of really good stuff there…I was particularly interested in a set of four silk hangings, named Winter Dragon, Summer Dragon, Spring Dragon, and Autumn dragon. Unfortunately, whilst I could have probably afforded one, I definitely couldn’t manage all four, and I kind of felt like I needed all of them or none – one would be out of place no matter where I put it, but the set would be able to make their own place.

After lunch I headed to “My blaster is bigger than your sword – mutterings about humorous SF and Fantasy” with Robbie Matthews, Chuck McKenzie, Ben Peek, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Stewart Barrow.
They are all very funny people, and it was an extremely amusing panel. Unfortunately most of it was “had to be there” sort of stuff, so there’s no way I can relate the experience here. If you missed it, then you missed out :P
I did come away with something to think about though – and that is that humour about the genre gets old fast – don’t write comic fantasy in which the only joke is the fact that it’s fantasy. This sounds fairly obvious, but I have a feeling that it’s a trap that’s very easy to fall into.

Next was the Ditmars – but I didn’t really feel inclined to sit through a 2 hour awards ceremony, so I took the oportunity to visit the Bridge Crew room, and see if I could get a game in.
For those who don’t know, Bridge Crew is hybrid Starship Simulator / live action roleplaying game based very loosely on a certain long running Science Fiction TV series.
Players take on the roles of officers in control of an inter galatic starship, under the command of a capatain, and act out various scenarios thrown at them by the GMs.
Most of the players, with the exception of the Captain sit at a computer console and basically perform the roles they would do if they really were on the bridge of a spaceship. The GMs control the other ships in the universe, and sometimes NPCs are used to add even more roleplaying to the mix. All in all its a very unique, and fun game that can seem a little daunting at first, but anyone can pick up quite easily when given a little training.

Unfortunately there was a crew in the process of being trained when I appeared, and no free spots, so I watched them for a bit and in the end decided to go see the Ditmar ceremony afterall.
The ceremony was actually quite entertaining, I entered in time to see a fairly convincing enough promotion of the use of a Cane Toad as the award trophy – and when Kirsten Bishop was presented her award for best novel – only to get an impressive looking glass trophy she exclaimed something along the lines of “Where’s my Cane Toad!”
Those present at the awards were also witness to the rare occurrence of Jack Dann being rendered speechless at being awarded the Peter McNamara award for his contribution to SF in Australia.

After the awards was “Is Dark Fantasy the new horror? Can fantasy exist without magic?” with Kirsten Bishop, Trent Jameison, Garth Nix and Simon Brown
I can’t actually remember much about this one – except that the panelists didn’t really know how to classify dark fantasy. I think I agree with Tessa’s definition, but it’s kind of hard to see what that really has to do with horror….
They got onto more familiar ground with the second part of the question, but there was still a problem with definitons, as they weren’t quite sure if magic meant spells and the like, or included “magical” creatures. The conclusion was “Yes, it can”.

That finished our involvement for the day, as we decided not to go to the masquerade – which sounds like it might have been a minor error in judgement, but the extra sleep was almost certainly a benefit.

And I’m afraid that’s all I’m doing for now. I had not expected it to take so long, and cause my wrists so much pain to write all this up, so I’ll leave Monday for tomorrow.