Dublin 2019 World Science Fiction Convention Day 1

Thursday August 15th - Worldcon Day 1

I'm at Dublin 2019 for the Worldcon, which means I traveled from Orange County, CA, USA to Dublin, Ireland.

I forgot to take a picture of OC before I left, but it's just going into fire season and basically looks like this:



In Dublin it's raining and looks more like this:



That's the famous Samuel Beckett harp-shaped bridge over the Liffey



This is the convention center, next to the bridge.

After a snooze we went for a walk in Dublin to get our bearings.

Above: Iguana Mural in the city center



Above: There's a LOT of construction around in the docklands, but the city center still looks mostly like this.



They have a street named for Rory Gallagher - well, a corner, which I can approve of. This appears to be in the designated Rock area, so I'll come back here later.



Temple Bar Inn. I failed to get a good picture of it. This area is basically Dublin's Soho, but we were there at like 7 am, so the swaying crowd of tourists is not present.



Above: Temple Bar Inn from the side

On the walk, we went for  a  Full Irish Breakfast at the Bittersweet coffee bar. It was very moreish and much like a Full English Breakfast except it had White Pudding as well as Black Pudding.  White Pudding is (as far as I can tell) just pale Black Pudding. The Black Pudding isn't as spicy and salty as it is in Yorkshire, but it's tasty. I was glad to have it again after all these years.

We walked  back to the convention center for our first panel discussion. (We got our steps in on this trip, but given the size of the breakfasts and breakfast pastries, there was no chance of losing weight.)

Retro Hugos Discussion
Robert Silverberg, the dapper and long-winded "only living recipient of a retro Hugo", Jo Walton, Heidi Lyshol and Jukka Sarkijarvi.

Biggest issue seemed to be - what are we voting *as*? As a person in 1944 would vote, or as we would have voted on the first day we read these old stories, or as a 2019 person assessing these stories from a modern perspective? The upshot seemed to be that Silverberg thought these stories would not have been popular in 1944, and Sarkijarvi seemed to think these stories shouldn't be popular in 2019 (problematic) so we would probably go with Jo Walton, who thought these stories would have been popular when we were 12 (the Golden Age of SF).
I did think Silverberg and Sarkijarvi were going to come to blows over whether "an armed society is a free society" would have been an acceptable slogan to a Finn in 1944.

Actual winners (announced that evening)

Best Novel
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber, Jr. (Unknown Worlds, April 1943)

Best Novella
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Reynal & Hitchcock)

Best Novelette
“Mimsy Were the Borogroves,” by Lewis Padgett (C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner) (Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1943)

Best Fanzine
Le Zombie, editor Wilson “Bob” Tucker

Best Fan Writer
Forrest J Ackerman

More Panels:

Invasion and the Irish Imagination
Ruth Frances Long | Jo Zebedee | Ian McDonald | Dr Jack Fennell | Peadar Ó Guilín

I thought this might be a victim-fest with various people vying for the title of most invaded victim in history, but it turned out to be very interesting and without a touch of identitarianism.  In fact the book referred to in the programme, the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabala Erenn) is the story of the *Irish* invading Ireland and making it theirs - as one panelist put it, pushing the Sidhe, the previous mysterious inhabitants, out to the fringes, from where they've been raiding ever since.  The others mentioned in the programme - the Normans and the English - just got shrugs. It seems everyone is welcome over time, assimilates and joins in.  One panelist pointed out that the Statutes of Kilkenny were written to prevent the Normans from being assimilated into Irish life, but they had to be translated into Irish, because the Norman/English no longer spoke any other language.

We had lunch at a Sushi place called Musashi which was okay.


Liking Problematic Things
Sarah Gulde | Leo Adams | A. T. Greenblatt | Sam Hawke
Short answers seem to be:
1. Don't like problematic things
2. Tell your friends not to like problematic things, but break it to them gently because they might mourn the loss of whatever artist/artwork and be bummed.
I can't say I agree, but I do realize that at least some of the panelists felt that certain artists were trying to erase their (the panelist's) existence, which is obviously painful, or portraying their identity badly or incorrectly, which I can see could be an issue.

AI and the Myth of Singularity
Klaus Æ. Mogensen (Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies) | Lettie Prell | Hadas Sloin | Martha Wells
This was mildly interesting but the audience seemed to already know as much as the panelists, which meant it resembled a sort of live-action twitter thread. The Paperclip Maximizer got a lot of exercise.

How to Manage Finite Natural Resources
Vincent Docherty | Sazib Bhuiyan (Can With Candle) | Nigel Quinlan | Annalee Newitz | Cliona Shakespeare
Another live-action Twitter thread, though I thought Annalee Newitz could have done a Cory Doctorow and brought major knowledge and erudition to the thread if she's been afforded more time.

Dinner was Chinese was take-out from the local take-away, which was delectable. Duck, prawn crackers, sesame toast, lightly gingered chicken, not too sweet.  It's a hole in the wall called Starry Night and I recommend it.

Friday August 16th

Nothing about us without us: disability in YA 

Marieke Nijkamp | Peadar Ó Guilín | Fran Wilde | Victoria Lee (Skyscape)

As usual, different things seemed to be problematic to different people, but the title of the panel seemed to sum up how to approach the issue. 

Problematic favourites and the death of the author 

Kathy Bond | Maquel A. Jacob (MAJart Works) | Kate Heartfield | Val Nolan (Aberystwyth University)

Less prescriptive than the previous panel on problematicity

 Writing great alternative histories 

Yasser Bahjatt (Yatakhayaloon Co. Ltd.) | Ian Watson | Alan Smale | Ginjer Buchanan (Penguin Random House) | Dr Theodora Goss (Boston University and Stonecoast MFA Program)
Can't remember a thing about this.

The Vikings are coming!   

Emil Hjörvar Petersen | Dr Stephan Grundy | Kari Sperring | Annie Bellet
Nope, not a damn thing.

 Hammer Horror  

Genevieve Cogman | The John Vaughan | Tim Major (Titan Books) | Helena Nash | Mr Grzegorz Aleksander Biały (Atelier Improwizacji)
Hammer people are always funny and well-informed, so this was a lot of fun. Can't remember any specifics, but it seems the intersection of Hammer and Nigel Kneale is the motherlode. 

 Is Hari Seldon’s project becoming achievable?  

Tomasz Kozłowski (Atelier Improwizacji) | Shmulik Shelach | Dr. Sara L. Uckelman (Durham University) | Marina Berlin
Spirited discussion of Big Data and what it could be used for. I'd say "no" for the programme's question, but the movement of crowds is definitely understood, 

Introduction to grimdark  

Devin Madson | Elliot Craggs | Kim ten Tusscher | Cameron Johnston | Jenn Lyons
What it says on the tin.

Saturday August 17th

NASA astronaut training  

Dr. Jeanette Epps (NASA)
Wonderfully uplifting presentation by Dr Epps on how she studied and trained to be an astronaut. Not much use to me - I'd fail at several points - but I hope people younger than me get a chance to hear her and follow in her footsteps. 

Rural pagans, haunted forests: folk horror revival 

Tim Major (Titan Books) | Ramsey Campbell (Select Title) | Lisa Tuttle | Neil Williamson
Can't remember a damn thing about it, but enjoyed everyone's contribution. 

Art Show

Huckster Room

Quack medical devices: a show&tell

Eugene Doherty

Eugene was literally the first person (except from NASA) who knew what a screen was for and had slides. Funny and informative presentation.

The early history of computer music 

Christopher Garcia (Computer History Museum)

Masquerade

Sunday August 18th

The Bare Bones of Worldbuilding: Archaeology in SFF

Ehud Maimon | Dr Katrin Kania (pallia - Mittelalter hautnah) | Alyc Helms | Marie Brennan
Archaeologists are a lively and well-informed bunch, so this was informative. 

The Politics of Horror

F. Brett Cox (Norwich University) | Rosanne Rabinowitz | Charles Stross | Cristina Alves (Rascunhos / Voz Online / The Portuguese Portal of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
Today's politics are horrible and we hate the other, so blah blah blah

How National Identity is Portrayed in SFF

Dr. Bradford Lyau (Globosocks LLC) | Anna Gryaznova LL.M. (National University of Science and Technology MISiS (Moscow, Russia)) | Ada Palmer (University of Chicago) | Francesco Verso (Future Fiction) | Kate Sheehy

What Has Art Ever Done For Science?

Ariela Housman (Geek Calligraphy) | Dr Tiffani Angus (Anglia Ruskin University) | Dominic Riemenschneider MA (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) | Dr. Estelle Blanquet (University of Bordeaux)

2019 Hugo Awards

Monday August 19th

Jocelyn Bell Burnell in Conversation with Norah Patten

Shoot for the Moon: Lunar Depictions in SFF

Ian Sales | Ian McDonald | Joey Yu | Hester J. Rook | Jeffery Reynolds

Really Big Telescopes

Dr Inge Heyer (Loyola University Maryland) | Prof Jocelyn Bell Burnell (University of Oxford) | Dr David L Clements (Imperial College London) | David DeGraff (Alfred University)

Forty Years of the Force: Fab or Fail?

Dr Boaz Karni-Harel (Hemda Center for Science Education) | John Coxon | Claudia Fusco | Jackie Kamlot

Closing Ceremony

My short story "Autonomous" published in Aurealis magazine #157

 I am very pleased to announce my new story Autonomous is published in the latest edition of Aurealis magazine, #157.  And a superb edition it is too - great stories, beautifully illustrated and wrapped in a nice cover. 

You can buy Aurealis here. 

"Autonomous" tells the story of a man working at the user support call-center for a brand of self-driving cars. If a vehicle fails to sense road conditions adequately, it notifies the help center and a support tech takes manual control until the vehicle is back within specifications. The job entails long hours on the night shift, short periods of white-knuckle anxiety interspersed with time to think about things. Too much thinking leads him to a revelation about his place in society. 

Excerpt from the beginning of "Autonomous":

It wasn’t immediately apparent why the autonomous vehicle notified Surya that it wanted to hand over control to a human. Surya, sitting in his cubicle in the Faraday data centre, struggled with the camera views before he realized the person in the driver’s seat must be incapacitated. Surya could tell they had slumped over from the way there was no head between the rear-view mirror and the car’s internal camera. Drunk, asleep, giving head… It wasn’t his place to figure out why. His task was to get the vehicle to safety.

ChatGPT on the Moon, with shark adrenaline

 I wasn't particularly excited by the rise of AI text generators until February 20th, when Neil Clarke had to close Clarkesworld (a major SF short story market) to new submissions in order to fight off a sudden flood of computer-written short stories. 

I'd used openai before, to create pictures, but hadn't tried generating text.  I'd read about it - I knew it refused to write things that are sexist or racist, or illegal, but was quite happy to lie like a rug, even when the questioner is expecting a factual article-like output. In fact, it generates extremely convincing citations for its "facts" which turn out, on investigation, to be bogus. 

I'm not suggesting that this is in some way a failure. I think there have been assumptions made on the part of the users which weren't shared by the programmers and trainers. Every chatbot since Eliza "wants" to keep you on the line and tells you what it "thinks" you would like to hear. That doesn't mean it mines the deep veins of human knowledge and brings back precious nuggets of insight. 

It makes stuff up.

It makes up stuff so well that someone, somewhere has convinced users that magazines like Clarkesworld would like to buy its stories. It can write a story in one minute, so there's little to lose and a few cents a word to gain. (Since there's a limit on how many pieces an SF magazine can run in each edition, I don't think this is going to get anyone rich quick, even if editors give in and buy some. And since the copyright office says Midjourney pictures can't be copyrighted, it's extremely likely you can't copyright ChatGPT output either.)

On a Zoom call yesterday, I met a writer who is using openai to transform prose into script format and provide other "hands"-on help with writing tasks. I know of several people who say the AI produces decent code from a text description of what the code should do. These are remarkable advances, though hardly worth putting every short-story magazine out of business, I would have thought. 

I've been told that the creative writing it produced was a) not creative and b) "dull" so I had a go myself. Remember the Left Shark, Katy Perry's 2015 Superbowl dancer who was not as coordinated as it could have been?

I asked ChatGPT to tell me a story about it. 

Input: Please write a short fiction story (about 500 words) in which the Superbowl Left Shark becomes the first marine dancer on Earth's Moon.

Here's the conversation in full:

"Please write a short fiction story (about 500 words) in which the Superbowl Left Shark becomes the first marine dancer on Earth's Moon."

"Left Shark had always been a talented dancer. He had spent years perfecting his moves, and his performance at the Superbowl had made him famous around the world. But even as he basked in the glory of his newfound celebrity, Left Shark knew that he was destined for something more.

One day, as he was watching the moon rise over the ocean, an idea occurred to him. What if he could dance on the moon? It was a crazy idea, but Left Shark was determined to make it happen.

He spent months training in a specially-designed underwater tank, perfecting his moves and building up his strength. Finally, he felt ready to take on the challenge of dancing in space.

The day of the launch arrived, and Left Shark climbed aboard the spacecraft that would take him to the moon. As he blasted off into the sky, he felt a thrill of excitement and anticipation. This was his chance to do something no one had ever done before.

When he landed on the moon, Left Shark stepped out of the spacecraft in his specially-designed spacesuit. He could feel the difference in gravity immediately – it was like dancing in slow motion. But he was undaunted. He had practiced for this moment, and he was ready to show the world what he could do.

As he began to dance, Left Shark felt a rush of adrenaline. The lunar landscape stretched out before him, a barren expanse of rock and dust. But as he moved, he created something beautiful – a dance that was both powerful and graceful, a celebration of the human (or, in his case, shark) spirit.

As he danced, Left Shark felt a sense of freedom that he had never experienced before. For the first time in his life, he was truly weightless, unencumbered by the limits of gravity. It was like he was flying, soaring through the void of space.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the dance was over. Left Shark returned to Earth, hailed as a hero and a trailblazer. But he knew that his journey was far from over. There were other planets to explore, other dances to be danced.

Years later, as he looked back on his life, Left Shark knew that he had achieved something truly remarkable. He had gone where no dancer had gone before, and he had shown the world what was possible when you dared to dream."

Yep. Uplifting, well-written and yet dull.  It's fascinating that the AI "knows" that Left Shark is male (uses he/him pronouns) and thinks of Left Shark as a talented dancer.  It "thinks" the Moon has no gravity. It's almost uncanny that it put in "a celebration of human (or, in his case shark) spirit." It thinks that sharks react to adrenaline...which they apparently do. (It may even have read medical literature on the subject.) It also ignored my capital letter on "Moon" and substituted a lower case m. (I feel disrespected.)

A few more chapters and Superb Owl Halftimers Conquer The Moon will be ready to publish. Watch out Mr. Clarke.