Looking Forward

[kinzel]

Last evening Rolanni found her preliminary Boskone schedule at hand, and this morning....
mine appears in my email mailbox... an alphabetic accident I wonder?

In any case, prelims look like this, with the constanr caveat that there's still around a month to go and things are subject to change...
==========================
Steve Miller


Sat 11:00am
Straddling the Line: SF and Mystery Hybrids
Is "whodunit meets howdunit" a more natural marriage than with,
say, a technothriller nurse book? Compared to regular SF, must
you plot more rigorously? Can you hide more clues among SF's
many infodumps? Who has arranged this kind of marriage
especially well? How?
Robert I. Katz
Paul Levinson
(M) Steve Miller
Melissa Scott


Sat 12:00 noon
What Can't You Read?
All of us have books that are considered classics or, when we
hear the
description are convinced are exactly the type of book we would
like -- yet we don't. What are some of yours, and why? What
makes some types of books very widely regarded by many yet
nearly unreadable by a few.
Janice Gelb
Fred Lerner
Steve Miller
(M) Patrick Nielsen Hayden


Sat 2:00pm 0.5 hours
Reading
Sharon Lee
Steve Miller


Sat 5:00pm
The Small Press Renaissance
Small presses are becoming more important, not only in
reprinting fiction but also as a source of new fiction. From
the publisher's side, how can you build up a small press? What
are small press opportunities for writers? What kinds of
special things can small presses do that the bigger publishing
houses may ignore?
Beth Bernobich
(M) Steve Miller
Steven Sawicki
Lawrence Schoen


Sun 11:00am
The Ever-Growing Rift -- Pros and Fans
Five years ago at Boskone, we discussed the growing rift. It's
time to look back, to see if things have gotten better -- or worse.
Below is what we asked then. Let's look at those questions
again, five years later.

In recent years, some pros view themselves as separate from the
fannish community, and some fans are happy to have it that way.
It used to be different. What happened? Is it getting worse?
(Yes - but why?) How can this (damaging...OK, argue it if you
want!) trend be reversed?
Gay Haldeman
George R. R. Martin
Steve Miller
(M) Priscilla Olson


==========================================

The committee is still working on the smaller events, the literary beers and kaffeklatches and the like... we hope to have those scheduled, if we happen to have any this time around, by February 1 or so.

As I usually do, I try to look ahead in particular to the panels I'm moderating ... and ask around so I have a wider view to work from....so if you've read this far, what're *your* favorite "science fiction mysteries" ...what was the first you read and recognized as such. Do you avoid such crossovers or seek them out? Can an argument be made that *all science fiction stories* are at heart mysteries?... is Balance of Trade a mystery?

Awaiting your input, I am!

Comments

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Hey, we're doing a panel together!

SF Mysteries

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Probably the first I encountered were Asimov's Wendell Urth ones. He describes in the foreword how at the time it was regarded as impossible (so of course he did it). They are still among my favourites.

I think that SF ideas are now well enogh known that the objections he encountered no longer apply, so that we can easily have SF mysteries, SF thrillers, SF romances (ya think?), etc. and the SF part is basically backdrop just as in a story set in the Wild West or Regency England.

Balance of Trade contains subplots which would fall into the 'mystery' classification, I think, but I don't feel that that's its overall genre. To my mind a 'mystery' story is one where a particular mystery is the main point of the book, and without it there wouldn't be a story. That is true of Asimov's ones, and of Larry Niven's "Gil the ARM" stories, for instance. I wouldn't however class Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" as a 'mystery', even though the core of the story is a quest to find out what is happening.

I think that a core point of the 'mystery' genre is that the reader should be able to work out the answer by the time the protagonist in the story works it out. This, unfortunately, is not true of some of the Sherlock Holmes storiesd where the author witholds a vital piece of information which Holmes produces at the end to put Watson down ("What you didn't know, Watson, is that the coat was yellow, which means that I alone know that the culprit was X!"), and it's not the case in most SF where the characters usually do know more than the reader about their worlds (sometimes we know more than the protagonist does, as in BoT where Jethri at the start doesn't know as much about Liaden culture as I do, because he hasn't read the other books!).

(It's a pity I can't be there. Have fun!)

[sraun]

I think I started with Asimov's Wendell Urth stories. Niven's Gil the Arm shorts. Bester's The Demolished Man. Would The Stars My Destination qualify? IIRC, it's got at least two different mystery plots going at once. Asimov's Caves of Steel and it's sequel (The Naked Sun?)(the only reason I remember Caves of Steel is recently reading Piper's review in verse of it).

Gil holds up nicely - I recently re-read them. I'm certain I've got a bunch more upstairs, but I don't remember them off-hand. I certainly don't avoid them, but I don't seek them out either.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

"Telepathic Intent," which you published as the second half of Buffalogic, Inc., was my first and only attempt at a SF/Mystery/Romance story.

[alethea-eastrid.livejournal.com]

Altered Carbon is probably my favorite. I would obeserve that sci-fi mysteries, for whatever reason (acatully, I have an idea, but will not go into detail here) tend to be cyber-punkish, near future, or both.

I would mention in passing that, while LCSI and J.D. Robb's series are not exactly good (the Robbs in partiular amuse me in a horrorfied sort of way...GENRE CLICHE OVERLOAD!!!!!....) they are both intersting to consider.

I would also note that I will be stalking you on Saturday. :) Nothing personal...you just got the GOOD panels. (I gues this means I'm definately going, then. Sigh.)