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Ad Astra, Et Al
Mar. 29th, 2009 01:21 pmSpent, as advertised, Friday night and most of Saturday at Ad Astra, while Cal stayed over with his paternal grandparents and a good time was had by all. By the end of the run, I'd had a nice reading, shot the whatever with many people I often see and often don't see, met some new people, and done what I later realized were far too many panels for comfort. There was only really one of them I didn't enjoy, but "luckily", a sudden back spasm helped me leave early and recuperate. However, I'm not sure any of them were worth recounting in detail...maybe the Steampunk one, "Full Steam Ahead", where I played the surrogate audience member who got to ask people to elaborate on why they find the genre so enticing. By the end, we'd sort of decided that "retro-futurism" might be a better tag, thus allowing us to elaborate on the idea of imagining "the future" while still working inside the strictures of whatever accepted physics/mechanics was for that particular era (Victorian, Edwardian, Fin de Siecle, WWI, WWII, 1950s, etc.).
I mean, people were thinking about going to the moon back in the 1600s--they just couldn't foresee any better way to do it than to rely on the moon's ability to attract dew/tidal force, because the idea of rockets hadn't quite made it past "but fireworks are for display purposes only" and "so what, we build the world's biggest arcquebus? That's ridiculous!" And the other interesting thing is that while mass-production led to all sorts of technologies becoming accessible to people other than the rich, none of the technologies involved had yet become obsolete, and even mass-production itself hadn't become "normalized"--there were a thousand, equally "good" ways to do/make things, and form wasn't necessarily sacrificed for function, while steam was reckoned just as potentially "good" as clockwork, ether, magic, etc. Interesting stuff, even for a not-so-proud Luddite like me.
Otherwise: Didn't drink too much, didn't spend too much. I bought Kindred by Octavia Butler, which I'd been planning to for a while, and four more Marvel Essentials for five bucks each: Luke Cage: Power Man #2, Power Man and Iron Fist #2, plus Spider-Woman #1 and #2 (...and dude, that last is one odd series, far weirder than even I remember--which is pretty funny, considering I spent most of the first volume going: "Oh yeah, I read that one...and that one...and THAT one...shit, how many of these did I collect?" How odd? Well, it really should be gone into in proper detail at another date, but how's this: One of her villains is a woman whose primary power is telekinetically unravelling cloth; another is a kid possessed by a poltergeist who hypnotizes people and sews their lips together; two more are actually life-sized voodoo dolls animated by their "mother"'s sick will. And that's not even counting the black albino woman who can turn her hatred into super-strength, and was once in love with a mutant playa with a mandrill's head whose power was getting super-powered ladies to do anything he asked them to. I kid you not, about any of this.).
[Steve: What were they ON, these comic-book writers?
Me (shrugging): It was the Seventies.]
But now it's done, and now I'm home, and now I have to go do food-shopping, send the correspondence I desperately owe various people, get ready for Monday's three-event Cal-oriented grind. Oh, and write, too--as ever. Always write.
Ta, all.
I mean, people were thinking about going to the moon back in the 1600s--they just couldn't foresee any better way to do it than to rely on the moon's ability to attract dew/tidal force, because the idea of rockets hadn't quite made it past "but fireworks are for display purposes only" and "so what, we build the world's biggest arcquebus? That's ridiculous!" And the other interesting thing is that while mass-production led to all sorts of technologies becoming accessible to people other than the rich, none of the technologies involved had yet become obsolete, and even mass-production itself hadn't become "normalized"--there were a thousand, equally "good" ways to do/make things, and form wasn't necessarily sacrificed for function, while steam was reckoned just as potentially "good" as clockwork, ether, magic, etc. Interesting stuff, even for a not-so-proud Luddite like me.
Otherwise: Didn't drink too much, didn't spend too much. I bought Kindred by Octavia Butler, which I'd been planning to for a while, and four more Marvel Essentials for five bucks each: Luke Cage: Power Man #2, Power Man and Iron Fist #2, plus Spider-Woman #1 and #2 (...and dude, that last is one odd series, far weirder than even I remember--which is pretty funny, considering I spent most of the first volume going: "Oh yeah, I read that one...and that one...and THAT one...shit, how many of these did I collect?" How odd? Well, it really should be gone into in proper detail at another date, but how's this: One of her villains is a woman whose primary power is telekinetically unravelling cloth; another is a kid possessed by a poltergeist who hypnotizes people and sews their lips together; two more are actually life-sized voodoo dolls animated by their "mother"'s sick will. And that's not even counting the black albino woman who can turn her hatred into super-strength, and was once in love with a mutant playa with a mandrill's head whose power was getting super-powered ladies to do anything he asked them to. I kid you not, about any of this.).
[Steve: What were they ON, these comic-book writers?
Me (shrugging): It was the Seventies.]
But now it's done, and now I'm home, and now I have to go do food-shopping, send the correspondence I desperately owe various people, get ready for Monday's three-event Cal-oriented grind. Oh, and write, too--as ever. Always write.
Ta, all.
