Worldcon day 1: one panel

So it's the first day of the Worldcon, and I watched an all-Zoom virtual panel, on the topic of "Can We Enjoy the Art of Unethical People?" The Zoom worked very well, everybody was clearly visible as well as audible. The Discord comment channel sucked, though. I couldn't figure out how to submit a post; no instructions I found online worked, and the con's e-mail help line was worse than useless.

In another universe, I'd haven taken notes and submitted a summary, but I think it's been recorded and you can watch it later. What I have instead is some of my own thoughts in response.

First I should say, that we in classical music have faced this dilemma for centuries. Richard Wagner and Ludwig van Beethoven are unquestionably two of the greatest composers there ever were; we could not do without their music; yet they were both thoroughly unsatisfactory human beings.

Our answer has been yes, we listen to their music, while acknowledging their personal failings. The only exception is in Israel, which maintains an unofficial boycott against Wagner.

Of course, the fact that they're both long dead makes it easier; they're not making any money off our purchases, and this distinction was made at the panel; one panelist mentioned that the estate of Roald Dahl is trying to make amends or at least apologies for his failings.

Yet I'm a little uncomfortable with the dead v. alive distinction. If they're not in prison, a person needs to be able to make a living; is it right to withhold money you would otherwise spend on their work because of their past misdeeds? On the other hand, continuing unapologetic offenders like Rowling - the idea of giving them money is repulsive, and there's probably enough cretins who agree with them that they won't starve.

The panel also talked a lot about the difference between misdeeds in life and as depicted in fiction. Stories being as they are, you have to expect repulsive things to happen often enough. How does the author convey that they don't approve? General opinion was, don't worry about it; you can't control what people think. Nobody mentioned Resnick's Kirinyaga, but that would have been a good example. Koriba gets his comeuppance, but not until the last story; the first one seemed to a lot of readers as if he had authorial approval.

Sometimes you have to depict misbehavior to convey the point. Someone brought up the n-word in Huck Finn. It would have been false to the setting of the story to leave that out; that's the way people talked then, and we need to know it. That the word didn't have the encoding then that it does now was one important point.

On the difference between life and fiction in general, I remember an old comment: "Murder is illegal. Writing about murder is not. Sex is not illegal. Writing about sex is." Of course restrictions on writing about sex have loosened over the years, but it's still a good distinction.

The question was asked, should we write about authors we disfavor? Yes, we should; people need to know. One panelist recounted having been, in her youth, a big David Eddings fan, only much later learning of his unethical behavior and being taken aback. I was taken aback by that, as I hadn't heard anything about Eddings. So I looked him up and found he'd been imprisoned for child abuse before he became an author. This was on the public record but was not generally known until after he died - or by me until just now.

Tim Curry, who just died, got a mention. His original fame was for Rocky Horror, which surprises some people today, though it's where I first heard of him. He recently wrote: Is Rocky Horror problematic today? Yes it is. But remember it was written just a few years after being actively gay ceased being illegal in England, and it was daring and necessarily transgressive at the time.

There was much more to the panel, but that's enough for a post.

ghost at Worldcon

The Worldcon is coming up, but though it's only a few hundred miles from here, I'm not going. Remembering from past LA Worldcons the sheer expanse of the Anaheim Convention Center, I don't think I'm any longer up to the expenditure of space and of time that goes with attending a Worldcon.

But I will be there virtually, for at least part of the con. I was contacted by programming and decided to volunteer. So I'll be on four all-online panels, all of them on Saturday. I'm moderating two of these, "Memories of the Worldcons Past" and "Writing Fantasy in Real Worlds," and will be a panelist on two others, "Fandom as a Found Family" and "Foundational Fantasy You Should Read." I'll try to report on these after they happen.

Because they're online and panelists can be anywhere, these programming tracks run 24 hours. My first panel is at 4.30 am. At the` time I signed up for programming, this would have been fine, being about the time I'd get up anyway. But in the last few weeks, it's been just after I finally fall asleep. I don't know what's going to happen, but the last time I tried to get up in the early morning, I was groggy and exhausted all day.

stupid stupid software creatures

There is one additional thing I'm using AI for, besides asking it to find words that I know but have slipped my mind. And that is, finding commands or fixing glitches in programs and apps. This occurs constantly.

For instance, the upcoming Worldcon is using Discord for its chat function, and while I've used Discord before when Mythcon employed it for the same purpose, I didn't much like it and it's been a long tiem since then. But as a panel moderator, I'd best use it, so I followed the con's advice to try it out and get used to it.

And then I had to ask Google AI, "How do you log off Discord?", a question I remember having to ask some help function on a previous occasion. The answer is that the log off command is hidden at the bottom of a non-obvious menu.

Sometimes the answer doesn't work, or it refers you to a command that I can't find where it's supposed to be, so I resubmit the question with "I've done X" or "There is no Y" added in. The following is an actual example from today of my adding no fewer than five "I've done X" to my original question because none of the previous answers worked.

in Excel, I've highlighted the cells I want to print, and I've cleared the print area, and I've re-selected the data range, and I've selected Set Print Area, and I've changed the print setting to Print Active Sheets, and the cells are not empty or hidden, but when I go to print them, I get an error message that says "we didn't find anything to print"

The actual solution turned out to be "close the program and start over," which hadn't occurred to me because I'd already tried that and it didn't work the first time.

If software makers had access to AI question logs concerning their products, they could learn a lot about what users can't figure out. In the meantime, these glitchy programs and their stupid user interfaces are as bad as AI.

lost Gilbert and Sullivan

I attended an online Zoom presentation by the Lamplighters, the San Francisco Gilbert & Sullivan society, of three songs recently discovered (like, three months ago) that were cut from G&S's opera Iolanthe before the work was finalized for regular performance in 1882. They were found by a G&S scholar named Marc Shepherd, who was browsing through a rehearsal score in the British Library that apparently nobody else had examined closely before. Sullivan's practice was to destroy any material he didn't use in the final opera, but this rehearsal score must have been missed. Probably they were deleted for the reasons that songs are often deleted from stage musicals at a late stage: unnecessary for plot development, slowing down the action, difficult to sing.

I hadn't heard of this discovery before - except for the text of the third song, which Gilbert published among his poetry - nor did I know until the program that the songs had already been released. Here is Shepherd's account of the songs, and here they are being sung by, as the Lamplighters also did them, professional-quality G&S performers.



I don't find them hidden gems, but they're enjoyable enough, especially in these performances, and I'm glad we have acquired these nuggets.

movies with Benedict Cumberbatch in them

I came upon a list of lesser-known Cumberbatch film performances, and decided to watch a few, mostly late at night in between fitfully trying to get to sleep. So my evaluations may not be totally reliable.

Starter for 10 (2006)
As in "starter question, ten points." James McAvoy plays a whiz kid student at the University of Bristol who aims at winning at a varsity tv trivia quiz show. He barely makes the Bristol team, and then both his quizzing and his academic work, as well as the movie, are derailed by his attempts at beginning a love life. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the prissy team captain, who chokes under pressure. Intermittently and modestly amusing.

Amazing Grace (2006)
I actually saw this when it came out. I didn't get very far on a rewatching. Recounts the political campaign by haughtily moral William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) to outlaw the slave trade in the British Empire around 1800. Benedict Cumberbatch plays his semi-reliable ally William Pitt. Pitt, as you'll recall from The Madness of King George, where he was played by Julian Wadham, was a rigid and rather characterless fellow, so Cumberbatch doesn't have much to do. Like many political history movies, it's written mostly as pontifications based on the screenwriters' reading of the history books. I quit after Pitt outlines his secret plan to become Prime Minister, which relies both on a surety of future knowledge and an oversimplification of those events that stretches credibility.

Four Lions (2010)
Whackabout comedy about a group of inxompetent radicalized British Muslims who want to become suicide bombers. Comedy on such a subject is a risky business, and to enjoy this movie you have to overlook that (spoiler alert, sort of) they do all manage to blow themselves up, and a lot of people get killed, not all by the terrorists. The movie tries to brush that aside as incidental or insignificant. It's the erratic pacing, rather than the content, which makes this film duller than it could be. Benedict Cumberbatch has a cameo role as a police negotiator.

Black Mass (2015)
An unrecognizable Johnny Depp plays real-life Boston mob boss "Whitey" Bulger, who throughout this film is more usually called Jimmy. Focuses on his subsidiary career as an informant for the FBI on the competing mobs and whether the FBI gets anything worthwhile out of this. (Mostly they don't.) Kevin Bacon plays the FBI supervisor who's disgusted by the whole thing. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Jimmy's respectable and politically successful brother Billy, who maintains a distant but friendly relationship with Jimmy but utterly refuses to do any favors solicited by third parties or otherwise get involved on Jimmy's behalf. (Jimmy, who is utterly ruthless, especially in his way of assuring minions that they haven't screwed up just before he has them whacked, isn't foolish enough to ask Billy for anything.) Quite a powerful true-crime theillwe.

Brexit: The Uncivil War (2019)
British tv movie about the Brexit referendum campaign. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Dominic Cummings, the campaign director for Vote Leave, and the focus is entirely on Cummings and his unorthodox methods of running the campaign. He succeeds by targeting non-voters and by appealing entirely to their emotions rather than making intellectual arguments. It's only after he wins that he begins to realize what an uncontrolled id he has unleashed. This, unlike Amazing Grace, is how you make a movie about politics, and Cumberbatch is set loose to give an impressive performance. First-rate, if the subject interests you.

didn't go

This weekend there was an Asian Food Fest at the San Mateo fairgrounds. I was hoping to attend and have a report here. The fest opened each day at 10 AM, and I know from past experience with such events that if you want to accomplish anything without standing in line for an hour first, you'd better get there early. Furthermore, parking is expensive, but the fairgrounds are a block from a train station, so if I caught the 9:12 AM train from my local station, I'd be there by opening. But that requires getting up early, and my current so-called sleep schedule has me waking up about 9:30. Of course I could set an alarm and be groggy all day, but that's not compatible with attending a festival nor desirable for a voluntary event. So I didn't go.

more distress

So here's another one. A few days ago I lost my datebook, a little paper-and-pencil calendar in which I write all my appointments. (I don't like electronics for this purpose.) It occasionally disappears and usually turns up again within a few days, but this time I wasn't so sure: a lot of things have vanished from obvious spots lately and never turned up again, like a bill on the kitchen table.

So I set out to find a substitute and re-create the calendar. Instead of mail-ordering another, my usual source, because I didn't want to wait, I checked the few remaining office supply stores. I found the ideal substitute in the office section of Walmart, of all things.

At this time, my upcoming appointme3nts are mostly medical and concerts, the latter not starting till next month. I sorted through my tickets, and checked websites of vendors I subscribe to that haven't sent their tickets yet. My main medical provider lists all my upcoming appointments online, but others, such as dentists, don't. The ones I couldn't reach by phone were very local, so I just went in and asked at the counter.

I know I got everything this way, because a day or two ago the original datebook turned up. In a place I had already looked through thoroughly. Elven intervention, both positive and negative, is not out of the question.

sleep

I haven't been posting much, not just because not much is happening, but because I'm not in a position where I can get much writing done, even light writing like this, let alone more serious material.

The problem is that, since my return from my trip, I've been suffering from the worst ever attack of a recurrent problem: inability to fall asleep. Along about 10 pm I start feeling sleepy, but lying down produces nothing. Instead of the peaceful relaxed feeling that has always accompanied incipient sleep for me, I feel agitated and jittery, or I start experiencing what I could call dreams, though I'm still awake at the time. For some reason I can't stand these, and get up immediately, which stops them. By then I'm no longer sleepy, and that lasts maybe half an hour before I start feeling sleepy again, and the cycle begins anew.

This goes on for maybe six hours, then I finally fall asleep and am out for most of the morning. During the rest of the day I find that no position, sitting, lying down, or standing, is wholly comfortable, so I move around in a distracted way.

My doctor has given me a pill to promote sleep, and the first night it worked pretty well, but the second night it's made me feel sleepier without putting me out.

I'm very tired of and annoyed by this.

Music@Menlo: more bites at the apple

Having returned from my trip with a week yet to run on the Menlo Festival, I was able to attend a few more events. I didn't have tickets to any of the mainstage events, long since sold out and I hadn't wanted to plan far enough in advance to get tickets.

But the concerts by the young professionals in their 20s, and by the teenage students, are free and tickets aren't available until 9 AM on the morning of the event, at which point they vanish rapidly. So I got to a few of those.

The highlights of these events were the Saint-Saëns Piano Trio No. 1 in F, Op. 18, one of the first attempts to make chamber music that sounded distinctively French, full of unusual and striking effects; and Mozart's Divertimento for string trio in Eb, K. 563. The pre-concert remarks warned that this was an unusually long work, but I'd never heard it before, despite its size and importance and the fact that it's fully mature Mozart. I had the rare experience during this performance of falling into a state of perfect contentment. The music could have gone on indefinitely as far as I cared. Even my daily aches and pains vanished for the length of the work. I got to speak to violinist Julia Schilz afterwards to thank her for a performance that really touched the soul.

This is the last year the founding artistic directors are in office, but I expect Menlo will continue on its wonted path of emphasizing the classics. Even incoming co-artistic director Dmitri Atapine, who's been known to play Ligeti's Cello Sonata at the Festival, explained why the student concerts stick to the heart of the repertoire. Sometimes the students come in eager to play new and modern works, he says, but then he asks, "How many Haydn quartets have you played?" When the answer is "none," he says they need more grounding in the classics first.

Also in the music biz, Lyric Theatre did another "Gilbert and Sullivan Sing-Off." Following the same format though with different content than last year's, it took the form of a supposed competition between three G&S companies, one which plays the works straight, one which tinkers with them - especially gender-swapping - and one which is just goofy. A lot of unusually Loud singers this time, the most effective of which was Leslie Oesterich in the gender-swapped role of Sir Roderic singing "When the Night Wind Howls." The theme of the show's script was that community theater groups, even of contradicting artistic principles, support each other's endeavors.

Dave Nee, 1953-2026

A pillar of Bay Area sf fandom died last week. From Dave's husband, Scott Marley, via Sarah Goodman and Rich McAllister, "Dave was just walking down the street when he collapsed and could not be revived."

I'm not one to write a proper obituary. But I know from personal knowledge that Dave was one of the three partners of The Other Change of Hobbit bookstore when it opened in 1977. He would have been about 24 at the time. It had grown out of the Portable Bookstore that he and Debbie Notkin and Tom Whitmore would bring to aftermeetings of the Little Men club and sell new books to members, often clearing me out of whatever cash I'd intended to keep for the weekend.

Eventually they scraped together the wherewithal to open a brick-and-mortar bookstore, literally between the brick walls of Berkeley's cavernous under-garage mall off Telegraph Avenue - in the space where the Berkeley Public Library's resale book shop is now - licensed the "Change of Hobbit" name from Sherry Gottlieb, and set to business.

It was quite successful for some years, but eventually both other partners left for other things, leaving Dave and a somewhat stable support staff. The shop changed location at least three times before declining bookstore business led it to dribble to a close.

But in the early days it was gangbusters, especially when the presence of the store made it an obvious site for meetings of the Little Men, which had previously subsisted on members' living rooms. Already a veteran of various local newszines Before My Time, Dave started up a monthly club newsletter, usually two pages, sometimes more, titled The Rhodomagnetic Bulletin, after the club's Rhodomagnetic Digest of distant days of yore. This had not just meeting information and relevant news, but articles, often goofy humor by Mike Ward, and reviews. I wrote my first two published reviews, of Humphrey Carpenter's Tolkien biography and then The Silmarillion, at Dave's request for the Rhodomag.

Dave had one other intellectual interest that I shared to an extent, in classical music. But as with his interest in SF as a bookseller, he pursued this to an extreme extent. Dave was the kind of person who'd collect 60 different recordings of Brahms's First Symphony and be ready to discourse on the differences between all of them. I visited his apartment once and it was packed with shelves upon shelves of LPs. He'd also record operas on tape off the radio on the store's sound system, and my greatest sin was to have turned off the radio once because I had to start the meeting. But we'd occasionally have juicy conversations about whither the San Francisco Symphony and so on.

As you've already gathered, Dave was gay. He was just about the first out gay person I ever met (I was from very straightlaced suburbs, and chose Berkeley for college partly to expand my horizons - it worked, too). I remember thinking, "So he's gay. Interesting. But so what?" and I've been comfortable in the company of gays, lesbians, bis, and trans people ever since. I'm sure that Dave's cool and matter of fact attitude towards life helped my understanding.