Rivers and Streams

Hello from Seattle! I left home on Wednesday morning and got as far as Salem, OR (about an hour south of Portland). Arrived in Seattle around 3pm on Thursday, checked into the hotel, got my con badge, and did a quick spin around the dealer's room (where I ran into zahraa) before heading off to Writers with Drinks, an amazing reading featuring Cecelia Tan, Andrea Hairston, Charlie Jane Anders, Annalee Newitz, Darcie Little Badger, and Becky Chambers. All the readers were excellent, and Charlie Jane provided them all with hilarious and extravagant fictional introductions, including herself. I think it's fair to say that this was the con-related event I was most excited to attend, and it lived up to my expectations.

I had half-planned to spend this morning at Pike Place Market, but it started raining last night and hasn't really let up, so I took it easy instead, visiting the art show and dealers room and then attending a few panels:

• Martha Wells guest of honor reading, where she started with a passage from Queen Demon, the forthcoming book in her current fantasy series, and then answered some questions before rounding it out with her in-progress Murderbot story, which is scheduled for next May.
• A panel called A Genre in Conversation with Itself, which is about the phenomenon of SFF authors writing stories in response to other stories. I picked this one mostly because of the panelists: Neil Clarke (editor of Clarksworld magazine), Becky Chambers, John Scalzi, Isabel Kim (the author of a Hugo-nominated short story that was a response to "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas")... and George R. R. Martin. Therefore, it was going to be a fascinating conversation and/or a train wreck, and either way I wanted to see it for myself. GRRM was almost 15 minutes late, complained a lot about film adaptations of books (Starship Troopers was a particular focus of his ire), and mourned the impulse to rewrite "The Cold Equations" with "a happy ending". Fortunately, other members of the panel managed to pull the panel back on topic and to talk about things less than 30 years old. The two insights I most appreciated came from Becky Chambers. First, she mentioned that Omelas and "The Cold Equations" are both stories taught in high school or college now, so lots of people have read them, and that explains not just the fact of many response stories but that they tend to come in waves, as each new generation of writers comes into their careers. The other was to note that a lot of "response fic" is appearing in the form of video games -- she specifically mentioned Clair Obscur as a response to the Final Fantasy series, which immediately added it to my to-play list.
• More Martha Wells content: a live recording of the podcast Ink to Film, in which an author and a filmmaker read a book, then discuss its film adaptation. They also sometimes interview creators, and today they talked to her about Murderbot. They opened with a lovely series of videos from the show's main cast sharing their love and congratulations with Martha, then discussed the process of writing the books, optioning the story to filmmakers, and then creating the show. Although Wells wasn't directly involved with making the adaptation choices or writing the screenplays (although she did read all the screenplays and provide feedback), she got to choose between several teams who wanted to buy the option, and she was able to pick the people she felt most understood the character and the story she was telling. When we got to Q&A, she had to demur on almost every question about why specific changes were made: "You'd have to ask Phil and Chris; that was all Phil and Chris." That said, she seems extremely happy with the final product, which is great to hear (especially since I, too, loved that TV series a lot).

I then spent the rest of the evening with friends: dinner with illustratedpage and her friend (who was a surprise!Mawrter) followed by an hour at a local cat cafe with bookishdi, both lovely and relaxing times.

Tomorrow: Pike Place, several readings, and the Hugo Awards, god help us all.