Wrap up the First

Aaaaand the last few days have all gone blurry. On Friday it felt like I'd been at the Con for a week; on Sunday I couldn't believe I only had one day left. This post is going to be a bit scattershot in covering impressions of the actual Con activities. On the 6 hour drive from Montreal to Portland, Maine on Monday I had lots of lovely time to think about lots of things that I learned at the Con, and I think a number of blog posts will result. But first - the Con!

Curtis got 4 attendees for his engineering Kaffeeklatch, which was very nice. They had questions about the Space Station, and he got to tell stories (engineering campfire stories, I call them). He definitely enjoyed both that and the panels he was on. We got a very nice crowd for the fencing demonstration, despite it being at 9am on Sat. We gave all comers a chance to wail away at each other with Nerf sabres, which was received enthusiastically. More and more people trickled in as the hour went on, and we must have had more than 40 people by the end. Yay, fencing!

The Blogger Reading with Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Pablo Defendi of Tor also had a good audience, about 12. They had no idea who I was, but On Charm seemed to go over well. Teresa read Slush Killer, which I'd read before, but it was awesome to hear her doing it live. We wrapped up early (even long blog posts tend to be shorter than short stories) and had a nice conversation with the audience. At the very end we could have gotten into a great discussion in response to a question on blogging as performative writing, but then we were out of time. I'm hoping another blog post will come out of that one.

Saturday wrapped up by having dinner with some Locus folks and authors, then fireworks (gorgeous!), repaired to the bar with Niall Harrison, Nic Clarke and Abigail Nussbaum (also got to get all fangirl at Gord Sellar), then waylaid by Locus folks again before actually getting back to my room. A longer night than intended, but lovely whichever way you slice it.

On Sunday I joined the British contingent (Niall, Nic, Abigail & Paul Kincaid) tracking down the elusive "SF Theory Without Tears" panel, which had changed both room and time. I don't think it's quite what we hoped for; the moderator Ann Crimmins focused on pedagogy and using theory in the classroom instead of a discussion of theory & its uses -- a bit unfortunate since I could listen to Dr. Veronica Hollinger go on about the latter all day. Still, the panel was well attended despite the confusion, and a goodly number of folks in the crowd were teachers, so that was probably quite useful.

I ran the Q&A session with David Hartwell, and that went well. I just wish there had been more people. Still, David can be eloquent on just about any topic, as he was here. I led off with a question about his support for sf scholarship (such as IAFA), and he mentioned how much sf happens in places away from the community: stories in local newspapers in the 1830's that have steam-driven mechanical men, that sort of thing -- very interesting. Two other points he made that I'd like to highlight:

• In response to a question about trends in sf, he thinks that sf writers who are dealing with cutting edge research on consciousness (like Peter Watts and a previous con panel) may well radically change the notion of character in literature, and that it is exciting thing to watch.
• In response to a question on what typically goes wrong in written sf even from very good writers, he focused on setting. Too often writers get lazy on setting and end up setting stories in the generic FantasyLand (TM). He says that he often asks writers to go back and make the world come alive and make it their own. Very good advice for aspiring writers!

The rest of Sunday was spent in a haze of Hugo stuff - getting ready for the pre-Hugo reception (where everyone was too nervous or busy to make much conversation - but I got to see this year's Hugo base up close; it is really gorgeous in a way that doesn't come across fully in the pictures I've seen); attending the Hugos; being very close to passing out because I'd skipped dinner; getting dinner at the hotel; getting within ~20 yards of the Delta party hotel before once again falling into a group of Locus folks headed the other way on a mission; helping with a data recovery crisis; and then drinking & talking. Whew! That's an amazing sequence of events that led to me having my very first WorldCon where I never hit any of the parties. Still, I had my share of time talking with editors, critics, and the occasional author in the Intercontinental bar, so I don't feel deprived.

Monday was also chaotic. Niall Harrison moderated a panel on Non-fiction that might interest SF fans, which inevitably became a bit of a list-making panel, but there were some fine suggestions there (I'll post my jotted list tomorrow). I made a last trip through the dealer's room, then headed up to my last panel, where I had to moderate "Mundane SF vs Science." In the meantime, Geoff Ryman had just lived through what he described as his "worst panel ever" which involved Patrick Nielsen Hayden walking out and also people filking. So I made sure the Mundane SF panel went more smoothly. Luckily the other panelists (Mark Olson and Henry Spencer) were sympathetic to the fact that the panel title was stupid: Mundane SF is an aesthetic movement that is no more in opposition to science than Modernism was. Still, I tried to balance the time for people who wanted to talk about science and those who wanted to talk about writing; I think it went well. Of the panels I was on, it was the best attended. Afterwards I finally got to meet someone I'd been looking for the whole Con: Sissy Pantelis, an editor of the French sf magazine Galaxies and a Mind Meld participant. I'm so glad I didn't miss her altogether; it's important to get faces to go with the names, and so rare that you can meet up with people who live in Greece!

Then there was some chaos as we offered Geoff a lift to the airport; he needed to get there early as he hadn't been able to confirm his flight reservation. After a bit of logistical wrangling, we got him there in (we hope) plenty of time. Then we headed back to the states by way of Vermont, which was perfect and much needed decompression time. Got into Portland ~11:30 pm, then headed off to the airport around 5:30 the next morning, so if this post is less than totally coherent, lack of sleep is my excuse. But we're home now safe & sound - that's the important part. And while I'm processing a whole ton of things that I heard and thought throughout the Con... I'm also already starting to plan for 2010 in Melbourne. Woohoo!

PS: This is my favorite picture from the Con; I've met all the gentleman individually, but seeing them in all their 6' 5"-or-greater stature en masse was quite something. After that photo was taken, they all went zombie-walking off to the post-Hugo party.

A More Moderate Evening

My last panel got out at ten, and very few people are in the hotel bar (many more Delta parties tonight). After thorough deliberation and a glass of wine, sanity won out (given that Curtis & I have a 9am thing tomorrow--a fencing demonstration!) and we're back in our room. Our Con has been such that we haven't even been inside the Delta (party hotel) yet--we'll probably get there tomorrow.

Today was largely spent working the Locus table--awesome because of all the interesting people who come by to chat.

I hit a 3:30 panel titled "Are We Conscious and Does it Matter?" with Kathryn Cramer, Peter Watts, Daryl Gregory and James Morrow. They were surprisingly sanguine about the possibility that consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of our complex brain system that doesn't really add much value; the primary identified evolutionary value seemed to be imagination and the ability to model possible futures. I'm still a bit confused: while research shows that your arm is getting nerve impulses to go for a glass of water before you're consciously aware that you're hungry, what about the fact that a lynch mob of people who have already decided to kill someone can be talked out of it? i.e. isn't consciousness more complex than that, and if we only rationalize unconsciously made decisions, why can our minds be changed by argument? However, I didn't get to ask that question, because the audience was quite keen on having its say, whether called upon or not. Kathryn really had her hands full with that crowd. And of course, most of the folks stood up to lecture or ramble on rather than ask specific questions. Times like that make me sympathetic to those who'd like to ban audience participation at panels, but I didn't feel that way by the end of the night (about which more later).

5 pm saw my first panel of the Con, and the only one I felt really qualified for: the Hugo Short fiction handicapping panel. Between Ann VanderMeer, Jonathan Strahan, Niall Harrison, and Bill Fawcett, we talked about all the Hugo short fiction nominees and some that didn't make the ballot. There was quite a bit of unanimity: Ted Chiang for short story, toss up for Novelette but we're rooting for Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Gambler," and while Novella wasn't terribly strong this year, Ian McDonald's "The Tear" is probably a leading contender. However, other factors may influence the "will win" as opposed to "should win," so we'll have to see.

Ran out for Greek food, and made it back in time for a panel on Post-Modernism and Post-Humanism with Geoff Ryman, Daryl Gregory, Nancy Kress and Geza Reilly. The panel was a little fuzzy on post-modernism, but could hold forth on post-humanism--which was fine because that's what the (packed) audience really wanted to hear about.

Then I had to run for my last (9 pm!) panel of the night: Mainstreaming the Geek Dream. It focused on how the Internet has changed things since it became really popularly useful in ~1995. There was a healthy age range on the panel (Duncan McGregor, older comp sci guy; Sandra Manning, older physics/math teacher; myself; and straight from the Chesley awards, Neil Clarke, middle-age online person). However, we weren't exactly sure where to take the panel after some general comments on how we use the Net and how things have changed (and some of the dangers associated with putting yourself out on the Net), but the audience, sparse though it was, led us on a discussion of many and varied topics: the generational divide, search engine algorithms and search engine optimization, the Pirate Parties in Europe and some associated copyright issues, the arms race between students and school admins, mobile phone technology, etc. It turned into a fun discussion, for which I give all credit to an enthusiastic crowd, and made me feel good about audience participation again.

Off to bed now! Tomorrow is my really busy day, so probably not much blogging for me. And I haven't been having much luck with Twitter (I live tweeted the entire Stross/Krugman panel on Thursday night, but even though I used the #worldcon09 hash-tag, I don't think it showed up anywhere), so I may be dark until Sunday.

OMG, is it Only Friday?

The great part? There's 3 1/2 more days of solid Con to go! The bad part? My brain and stomach are already partly fried! I always forget how overwhelming WorldCon can be, and I also forget that travel + odd food + odd eating hours + liquor = stomach troubles. I shall endeavour to moderation, but no guarantees.

It's already been a great Con. Dinner with Niall, Nic and Abigail on Wed. was wonderful, and we started but didn't finish a very interesting conversation on voice and style in reviewing. Soundbite from Gary Wolfe: "Voice is attitude and style is the presentation of that attitude." I'm still meditating on that one. Farah Mendlesohn also suggested some good books, including (I think I heard this right) Reading like a Writer. Is stayed up rather too late and drank rather too much, but all my favorite people were right there in one bar room! Such are the trials and tribulations of WorldCon.

Needless to say it was not an early morning on Thursday, but that's OK because the con didn't really start until the early afternoon. I (and most other critics in attendance) went to a panel on "One Genre or Many" featuring Farah, Gary, Ellen Klages, Patrick Rothfuss and Michael Swanwick. It was a very entertaining panel, although it didn't come close to answering the prompt. Highlights:

• There's a spectrum of classification, from calling every aisle in the grocery store "Food" to getting in to sub-sub-sub-sub genres -- probably neither extreme is very useful.
• Michael Swanwick mentioned that he views genre as reading strategies.
• Farah likes thinking of theoretical approaches as filters one lays over a book, some of which may be more or less appropriate to the book at hand.
• Also from Farah, the fact that sf lacks a consistent (?) critical language in which to have these discussions. I thought this was the most interesting point, but it didn't get a lot of follow-up at the time. More things to think about.

I missed the first bit of the panel as I went to track down someone to fix a microphone problem. The ConOps folks were extremely helpful and got the tech guy over immediately. It took him awhile to track down the issue, but by the end of the panel all the mics were working. He left before we had a chance to thank him, but I want to give a shout-out to the great folks who make conventions run and fix problems when they arise!

After that I headed to the dealer room, which is a bit small. However, it's harder for me to actually get through a dealer room now: instead of making a simple sweep through, I keep running in to people I know and stopping to talk. Takes much longer that way!

I caught part of the "Putting the World in WorldCon" panel, ably (although a bit tyrannically) managed by Jetse de Vries--I appreciated it though, because he kept a laser focus on how the lit of the panel's members differed from US/UK sf/f. The panelists were Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Spain), Tore A. Hoie (Germany and Norway) and Kyoko Ogushi (Japan).

I'm in the dealer room at the Locus table now, and running out of charge on my netbook. More to come later. One last note, though: Anticipation is running Kaffeeklatches for scientists as well as authors. So Curtis will be doing a Kaffeeklatch tomorrow morning at 11 in his role as a Systems Engineer for Boeing and NASA -- spread the word, or come on down yourself! It's experimental, but I think it's an excellent idea.

More to come when I get back online. That's the problem with WorldCon -- so much stuff & so little time!

WorldCon Day -1

Got in to Montreal last night, and we're already having a lovely time. Over the course of the con I'll be twittering more than blogging (I'm Spiralgalaxy on twitter, see link on sidebar), but I figured I'd get a blog post out before things got crazy.

The drive from Maine to Montreal was absolutely gorgeous: straight through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and lovely farmland in Canada. No wait at the border, and the agent there even smiled when we said we worked for NASA. The drive (about 5 1/2 hours) was also a nice transition time between the family-oriented vacation time and the sf-oriented vacation period.

Checked into the hotel with no problems, and we really like our room at the Intercontinental. And the convention center is just across the street. Went down to the bar and met up with editor-folks and Locus folks. Also ran into Farah Mendlesohn, Edward James, and was introduced to Kari Spelling. Thus did WorldCon officially begin as far as I was concerned.

Today we slept in, then followed Farah's directions to a bank to hit an ATM for Canadian dollars. Then an easy walk to a lovely place called Muffins Plus for lunch/brunch. Very nice food and perfect portions--I finished my entire chicken cesar salad wrap, a rarity for me!

We went in and registered for the convention. Good side: great badge holders & no snags at registration. Down side: no programming grid or pocket program. With any luck something of the sort will show up later? Will do my program participant sign in tomorrow.

The afternoon was taken up walking around the city, especially down by the river, where we saw lovely things like the Chapelle-Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours pictured above. The walk down by the river has gardens & museums and is just lovely (although Curtis managed to turn his ankle on the path there early on--but he bravely soldiered on to see more!). We went back via a pedestrian boulevard named Place Jacques-Cartier with tons of cafes, restaurants, street vendors, mimes, etc. Found a good liqour store for some wine and brandy and made our way home for Curtis to put his foot up before heading out for dinner--should be meeting up with Niall Harrison and Abigail Nussbaum soon here.

Programming looks good, as always. Too many good panels; I've already identified at least three time slots with two panels each that I'd like to catch. C'est la vie. And it doesn't look like there will be any drastic changes to the schedule I posted last week.

Off to dinner! Looking forward to seeing many of you soon.

It's That Time Again!

Hard to believe that WorldCon is getting so close... only 2 weeks now! And my first vacation-from-work is even closer! Next Thursday I'll be flying to Maine to visit family before driving to Montreal. We'll be in Montreal from the Tuesday night before WorldCon to the Monday afternoon. Here's what my official schedule looks like so far:

When: Fri 17:00
Location: P-516AB
Title: Handicapping the Hugos II: The Short Fiction
Session ID: 590
Description: Our panellists survey the Hugo-nominated short stories,
novelettes, and novellas: they tell us what they want to win, what
will win, and why.

When: Fri 21:00
Location: P-518BC
Title: Mainstreaming the Geek Dream
Session ID: 37
Description: How did the internet change as it became mainstream? And
what is ahead now that we have increasing pressure on P2P networks,
national filtering and other restrictions?

When: Sat 9:00
Location: P-517D
Title: Fencing Demonstration
Session ID: 49
Description: A demonstration of the noble arts of modern and
Renaissance fencing. Try some moves for yourself. En garde!

When: Sat 14:00
Location: P-512AE
Title: Author Reading: The Bloggers
Session ID: 246

When: Sat 15:30
Location: P-518A
Title: A Fine Line
Session ID: 621
Description: "Publishers have got to live, like anyone else, and you
cannot blame them for advertising their wares, but the truly shameful
feature of literary life before the war was the blurring of the
distinction between advertising and criticism. [Reviewers] churned
forth their praise: 'masterpiece', 'brilliant', 'unforgettable' and so
forth - like so many mechanical pianos." (George Orwell) Is this still
true (if it ever was)?

When: Sun 15:30
Location: P-514AB
Title: Question Time with David Hartwell
Session ID: 154
All Participants: David Hartwell, Karen Burnham
Description: You are invited to submit questions beforehand to the
box held at the Kaffeeklatsch sign up table.

When: Mon 14:00
Location: P-522B
Title: Mundane SF vs Science
Session ID: 102
Description: Mundane SF aims to extrapolate from the science of
today. But science doesn’t work like that. What’s happened to the
paradigm shift?


A reading for bloggers? Any suggestions of anything I've written here that you'd be thrilled to hear read aloud...? Yeah, didn't think so. Still, it could be fun for my fellow readers and the three confused people in the audience.

Anyway, if you don't see me elsewhere, I'll be spending lots of time behind the Locus table, freeing up some of the staff members to go out and do interviews and journalism... more important than ever this year. So drop by and visit! And if you see me walking around the con, feel free to say hi! I should be relatively easily recognizable by the magical skin markings:

In Memoriam

I hadn't thought that I'd be writing something like this for a friend, not so soon. Certainly not for Charles Brown (1937-2009). While I knew his health wasn't great, it seemed like it had been doing better this year than last, and I was looking forward to seeing him at WorldCon in Montreal. Certainly WorldCon won't feel the same without him.

All I can add to the lovely testimonials by critics such as Cheryl Morgan and Graham Sleight is my own specific Tale of Charles.

I'd been reading Locus since 2001, when I went to my first WorldCon in San Jose. After reading it for awhile, I knew that I really, really wanted to do that. After a few disastrous attempts at reviewing in 2004, I spent the early months of 2006 really working on it (and starting Spiral Galaxy's first incarnation). I finally got up the courage to introduce myself to Charles and Gary K. Wolfe at the WorldCon in Los Angeles, 2006. At first I stalked them at panels, then I signed up for their joint Kaffeklatch. (I hovered around and made sure I was the first name on the list!) At the end of the Kaffeeklatsch I said "are you guys doing anything now, or could we [meaning any klatsch-mates who wanted to join in] buy you a drink?" This was an early lesson to me in how free booze can win an editor's heart. [The story of how those drinks actually got paid for is a longer story for another day.]

But here's the important bit; the really Charles bit. After WorldCon was over, he got in touch with me, a few weeks later. He was in LA to see the opera and could use a ride back to the airport Sunday morning. Would I join him for brunch, then give him a lift to LAX? I thought it over for perhaps an entire picosecond before accepting.

So I went to brunch then, and also the next month. After that he never really felt well enough to jaunt down to LA for the opera anymore. However, just the fact that he went out of his way to show some interest in me was all the encouragment I needed. If he hadn't contacted me, I sure never would have contacted him--I'd have hated to pester someone who didn't have time. He gave me lots of advice, and really seemed to enjoy telling stories to someone young enough not to have heard them already. I got to have some meals with him; I got the house tour, and a whisky tasting (during which I could finally at least begin to appreciate the stuff). He introduced me to lots of people who have been instrumental in getting me into this crazy situation I'm in today: part reviewer, critic, scholar, editor, and who knows what else?

We didn't talk as much once I moved to Houston, and I didn't get to talk to him much at ICFA this year (by then knew enough people on my own, so I was able to move around without constantly clinging to the Locus folks). I'm sorry about that--you always think you'll have another chance. Still, there's a very real way in which I wouldn't be here, part of the great conversation that we all love, if it weren't for Charles Brown. It's a small legacy compared to what he's left us with Locus, but I for one appreciate it.

All my best thoughts are with the Locus folks tonight: I hope that Amelia, Liza, Kirsten, Teddy, Tim and Francesca all make it through this--not unscarred, but at least OK.

On Charm

It took a short story collection from 1908 to finally crystalize an aesthetic principle that had been sloshing about in my brain. Reading The Sword of Welleran and Others by Lord Dunsany (the incomparably named Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany) was a revelation. In reading it I was transported in a way that is much too rare. In approaching this review then, I had to try to elaborate what exactly about it I loved so much. The too-obvious answer was that it reminded me very much of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman stories (unsurprisingly, as Gaiman will sing Dunsany’s praises every time he’s asked about influences). Digging deeper, I had to ask: What is it I love so much about Gaiman? That required meditation.

During that time of reflection, duty called and I continued reading slush pile stories for Strange Horizons. Here’s what they don’t tell you about the slush pile before you start: it’s really not that bad. Very few of the stories are submitted by illiterate mouth-breathers. Most of them are at the very least competent. The vast majority (unsurprisingly) fall into the RUMIR category. Yet we still reject at least 98% of them (see Jed Hartman for exact statistics). A number of the stories cover subject matter very similar to Gaiman and Dunsany: the gothic, the epic, the mythical. Yet so few of them achieve the heights that those two authors reach reliably. What’s the difference? For the most part, the slush story lacks a certain spark. It’s probably indefinable, but my meditations have finally yielded a name for this mysterious quality: I’ll call it charm.

The charm of Gaiman and Dunsany stories (and others spring to mind, not just in fantasy: I believe Connie Willis’ charm has propelled her to her vast number of Hugo statuettes) comes from their ability to hold the big and the small in mind all at once. While the stories are often epic, mythic, and touching, they are also aware that things don’t always go smoothly. Not in a “The Dark Lord is thwarting me” way or even an “All my choices have come to ill” way, but in more of a “herding cats” sort of way. These stories have the confidence to be playful. The dream-speaker runs afoul of the overly literal mind; the heavenly song is interrupted by the soulless being who talks during the theatre (see Rev. Book’s ‘special hell’); “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth” is laid low—who knew?—by none other than Sacnoth; Lines such as: “And the long ride was a hard and weary one for Soorenard and Akanax, for they both had mortal wounds; but the long ride was easy for Rollary, for he was dead.”

What makes for a charming story? At the very least, it can’t take itself 100% seriously. There must be some perspective, some awareness that humor is what keeps our worlds from crashing in on us even when they are literally crashing in on us. The stories should have at least some people that act like people: not everyone is a hero or a villain; most of them just try to get by on their own ground (see the Discworld novels and the “pile of money the size of St. Paul’s” it has charmed out of its legions of readers). It helps when the prose sings on the sentence level as well. I hasten to add that this is not because of any Hemingway/Asimovian journalistic “transparency,” but because the words are a joy and you want to keep going from one to the next. Dunsany’s is an odd brand of poetry; you’d think too many of his sentences begin with “And…” for it to work (“And Iraine was the last of the captains, and rode away alone”), but from those humble, biblical roots he spins unforgettable imagery. And while this doesn’t directly relate to Dunsany so much, I’d also like to make a pitch for that brand of charming dialog that manages to sound natural while being funnier, more rhythmic, and more charming than any of us can ever manage in real time (see Mssrs Shakespeare, Whedon, and Scalzi for various examples of that craft).

So many of the very deep, very serious gothic investigations of grief, philosophical deconstruction of fae, and musings upon the fates of gods that come through the slush pile could use a dash of charm: an awareness that gods come and go but that someone out there will always be trying to herd cats with only the most marginal success. Does every story need to be charming? Not at all, it would be antithetical to the purpose of certain kinds of fantasy and science fiction—the kinds that focus on the grand ideas of things, and less on the human scale. I can’t see what this sort of aesthetic would really add to Greg Egan’s work, and he’s one of my all-time favorites. But even some of those grand and serious works could do with a little more confidence—the confidence to bring up the silly to further enhance the sublime (see also Neal Stephenson, he manages it even in Anathem).

So what of The Sword of Welleran and Others? I’ll leave you with this: GO READ IT. Not every story in it is a flat-out winner, but the first three entries count amongst the finest fantasy I have ever read. If that wasn’t clear enough: EVERY PERSON WHO ENJOYS THE WORK OF NEIL GAIMAN MUST GO READ DUNSANY. Go forth, all the legions! (And as it’s available on Project Gutenberg, there is no excuse for avoiding it.)

RUMIR

A few folks have actually picked up and used my RUMIR abbreviation, which I first mentioned in my review of Joanna Russ' The Country You Have Never Seen. I thought I would give folks an easier definition to link back to, instead of wading through short story reviews to find it.

RUMIR: Routine, Unoriginal, Mildly Interesting, and Readable.

Excellent short hand for so many stories out there. Derived from a Joanna Russ review:

Harry Harrison’s One Step From Earth is a collection of nine stories bound together loosely (and not altogether truthfully) by the idea of matter transmission. There is another hypertrophied introduction, hypertrophied in this case because it has nothing to do with the stories; in fact the matter transmitter described in the introduction is of the kind used in only one of the nine. Two of the tales don’t really need matter transmission at all. The stories are routine, unoriginal, mildly interesting, and readable.

Progress Report

Progress is being made on collecting a solid data set for the story-classification project. The recent switch from SciFi.com to SyFy.com has completely hosed the amazing archives that had been living there, but Google cache links came to the rescue. Here's what I've got in the main three categories so far: all of these stories are available online. I'm also willing to consider new categories or different splits, but with the provision that I have to be able to collect ~100 story data sets for each category that I examine--even with a movement as widespread as New Weird (which I wouldn't be able to use anyway, since I'm limiting the categories to stuff that's clearly science fiction) I'm not sure there are 100 short stories fitting the bill out there online. Still, thanks for all the suggestions and links! Keep them coming and I'll keep you posted!

The stories below have not been thoroughly vetted yet: some may be too long, or not properly sf. Let me know if I've made any gross mis-inclusions. Also, if you trip across *any* short stories online that fit these categories, (core sf, correct time period, under 10,000 words) please shoot me a link. With so few Golden Age & New Wave stories out there, it looks like I may be suffering through a lot of OCR for science.

Golden Age (1934-1955)
(17 stories)

Anderson, 1953, Security

Bester, 1953, Star Light, Star Bright

Boucher, 1943, They Bite

Brackett, 1940, Martian Quest

Brackett, 1941, Interplantary Reporter

Clarke, 1946, Rescue party

Heinlein, 1939, Life Line

Leinster, 1946, A Logic Named Joe

Matheson, 1954, Dance of the Dead

Miller, 1955, The Hoofer,

Padgett (Kuttner/Moore), 1945, Line to Tomorrow

Simak, 1955, Project Mastodon

Van Vogt, 1946, Child of the Gods

Smith, 1952, Scanners Live in Vain

Tenn, 1954, Party of the Two Parts

Weinbaum, 1934, Martian Odyssey

Wellman, 1941, Devil's Asteroid

New Wave (1964-1980)
(19 stories)

Aldiss, 1969, Supertoys Last All Summer Long

Blish, 1966, How Beautiful With Banners

Delany, 1967, Aye and Gmorrah

Disch, 1964, Minnesota Gothic

Disch, 1964, Descending

Effinger, 1973, New New York New Orleans

Effinger, 1976, Contentment Satistication, Cheer...

Harrison, 1970, By the Falls

Lafferty, 1965, Slow Tuesday Night

Malzberg, 1969, The Market in Aliens

Pohl, 1967, The Day the Martians Came

Russ, 1972, When it Changed

Saberhagen, 1967, Mr. Jester

Smith, 1967, Under Old Earth

Spinrad, 1967, Carcinoma Angels

Tiptree, 1973, The Women Men Don't See

Tiptree, 1969, Beam Us Home

Wilhelm, 1967, Baby You Were Great

Zebrowski, 1970, The Water Sculptor

Zelazny, 1967, Auto-da-Fe

Post-Cyberpunk (1990-Present)
(34 stories)

Asher, 2003, Watchcrab

Bacigalupi, 2005, People of Sand and Slag

Baxter, 2000, The Gravity Mine

Baxter, 2008, Last Contact

Bear, 2007, Tideline

Brin, 2000, Reality Check

Brotherton, 2009, The Point

Burstein, 2003, Paying it Forward

Chiang, 2008, Exhalation

Daniel, 1995, Life on the Moon

Doctorow, 2007, Printcrime

Egan, 2000, Only Connect

Gaiman, 2007, How to Talk to Girls at Parties

Goonan, 1995, The String

Gregory, 2005, Second Person Present Tense

Jones, 2007, The Tomb Wife

Kowal, 2008, Evil Robot Monkey

Kress, 2005, My Mother, Dancing

Landis, 1991, Walk on the Sun

Levine, 2005, Tk'Tk'Tk

Levine, 2007, Titanium Mike Saves the Day

McLeod, 2007, Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?

McDevitt, 2005, Henry James, This One's For You

Reed. 2007. The Hoplite

Resnick, 2000, Elephants on Neptune

Resnick, 2003, Robots Don't Cry

Resnick, 2008, Article of Faith

Reynolds, 1997, Spy in Europa

Rucker, 2006, The Third Bomb

Sawyer, 1998, The Hand You're Dealt

Scalzi, 2008, After the Coup

Swanwick, 2001, The Dog Said Bow-Wow

Swanwick, 2008, From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled

Utley, 1996, A Silurian Tale

Help Needed!

Hi Everyone! I'm calling on the hive mind of awesomeness out there to help me with my next ICFA paper. I've got an idea for a combination of two of my favorite things: science fiction and pattern recognition algorithms.

Here's the idea: I feed a whole bunch of science fiction short stories into a pattern recognition algorithm and then see if it can correctly identify the era of origin for a bunch of other short stories. The three eras I have in mind are the "Golden Age" (1934-1955), the "New Wave" (1964-1980) and "Post-Cyberpunk" (1990-present). The question is, after I train the algorithm on a whole bunch of core sf texts from each of these identifiable eras, would it then be able to correctly place, say, "All You Zombies" as being Golden Age? I've had good luck using this technique to distinguish non-fiction articles from short stories (92% accuracy), and I'd like to expand the approach.

So here's what I need help with: first off, please attack my premises! How legitimate are these categories? How reasonable are the cut-off dates? Do you think that this sort of classification will be too hard or too easy for a poor little computer program? Are there more interesting questions I could be asking using this sort of technique? Contrariwise, is this approach too reductive?

Next up, I need help tracking down about 100 short stories for each time period. Ideally the stories would be purely sf, no slipstream or other fuzzy genre stories (trying to eliminate variables for the poor little algorithm). They would also be less than 10,000 words long and available in full text online (for ease of data collection).

I've already got some initial ideas of course:

Golden Age

• Asimov Robot stories
• Heinlein's Future History stories
• Bradbury's Martian Chronicles
• Stanley Weinbaum's "Martian Odyssey"
• Stories like those found in "Adventures in Time and Space"
• "Cold Equations"
  

New Wave

• Philip K. Dick
• James Tiptree Jr.
• Dangerous Visions and Again Dangerous Visions
• Barrington J. Bayley
• Philip Jose Farmer

Post-Cyberpunk (probably will need another name for this era)

• Cory Doctorow
• Charles Stross
• Ted Chiang
• Stephen Baxter

Hopefully that gives you a flavor of what I'm looking for? There's no guarantee that this will work, or even that it will produce an interesting ICFA paper (I'm also kicking around an idea for an XKCD-based paper, for instance). It's early days. But I'd like to give it a try, especially now that my super-sekrit intensive-data-collection reader response theory project is on hold.

Thanks in advance for all comments and suggestions!