Lunchtime Classics continue

My previously reported lunchtime classics series at Waterstones Liverpool One has been received positively. Positively enough that I've been able to confirm and secure readers for the coming weeks which will takes us into September. There may be one or two extra ones added onto the end (I'm in discussions with the Playhouse Theatre to do something tied into their upcoming production of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, and I've yet to rule out doing a second reading myself to top-and-tail the bill).

Here are the upcoming dates:

Current Research in Speculative Fiction [CRSF] 2012

This year's Current Research in Speculative Fiction conference went really well.

I've just published the conference report on the CRSF blog so I won't repeat the material here, head over there to read it. There were thirty-five papers spread over thirteen panels. We had, in all, fifty delegates at the conference and they travelled from as far afield as Ankara University, Turkey, in the East and University of Virginia, USA, in the West, with representatives from institutions in twelve countries in Europe and North America.

One delegate described it as:

"superb, balancing nerd-excitement and the thrill of academic SF perfectly."

Which as the organiser, is exactly what I want to hear so I'm a happy (if tired) chap. Now, to start planning 2013...

Hay Diary 2012

Last weekend I was down in Hay-on-Wye working as a steward at the world famous literature and the arts festival, now in its 25th year. It has long been an ambition of mine to be in Hay when the festival is on and the opportunity to steward (representing Waterstones in this instance) was too good to pass up, especially as I didn't have to pay for my travel or my camping.

The now iconic central field of the festival site

I wanted to do a detailed diary-style blog post for each of the three days that I was at the festival but the fact I was far too busy to make any sort of notes, coupled with the fact that since I got back I've been too busy to write this blog post, means that I'm working from memory and the few grainy photos I managed to snap on my phone and so I thought it wisest to restrict myself to a single post.

Hay-on-Wye

I arrived in Hay-on-Wye with a fellow Waterstones affiliated steward after a 50 minute bus trip from Hereford, it was my first visit to the town itself, let alone to the festival, and I delighted in the location and layout of the place, every other shop was a bookshop and the streets seemed to resemble more a squiggle than the straight line of a single high street I've so long ago become accustomed, and bored, with. Perhaps it was this euphoria that sent us in completely the wrong direction, back over the bridge, over the river Wye, to the wrong campsite before trooping valiently to the otherside of the small town to our designated lodgings located, confusingly enough, in England. For you see, Hay-on-Wye is such a border town that our campsite managed to be still part of Hay but actually over the border, as was the Co-Op accross the road which meant we could at least get carrier bags for free...

Tim Minchin on stage

All the Waterstones stewards eventually converged on the festival site, on the opposite side of the town to our campsite (but still only a 15 minutes walk - it's not a big place), and I instantly fell in love with the occasion. The Hay festival site is a series of temporary event venues (to call them tents is like calling a cathedral a church, not wrong but inaccurate) ranging from the small seminar room sized Hay-on-Earth to the massive 1600 capacity Barclay's Pavilion connected by a warren of white cellophane canopied walkways along which the book lovers scurry from event to bookshop to cafe. After some brief orientation we were left to our own devices and told to report back later for our first piece of stewarding duty: helping to staff the pavilion for a Tim Minchin gig that evening.

From my perspective at least the gig went off without a hitch and so began my time stewarding Hay. Given that we were only going to be on site for Saturday and Sunday I aimed to see and do as much as I could in that time, to get as full a taste of the festival as I could within the constraints of my responsibilities as a steward and within the time limit allocated to me by the limited time I could be away from Liverpool. On the Saturday, feeling wide awake despite the heavy snorer five feet from my head in the next tent, I attended numerous events from historical fiction author Philippa Gregory talking about her new book The Changeling, to poet Simon Armitage talking about walking the Pennine Way the wrong way and without any money (detailed in Walking Home). Some of the event suprised me, I had no idea I would find John Thompson's talk "Merchants of Culture" so interesting, but then given that it revolved around the book industry and the future of publishing I suppose I was predisposed to be fascinated. Similarly the environmental discussion over at Hay-on-Earth "Should be Leave the Oil in the Ground?" was an enlightening dalliance into the world of eco-politics. In the evening, just after the rain had started to fall (and would not stop until some time early on Monday morning) I was sent over to the music festival part of Hay, located at a different site at Hay Castle, "Sound Castle". There I was treated to an electronica/jazz fusion drumming performance by Munich-born drummer Christian Prommer that I had no right to enjoy and yet truly did.

Christan Prommer

Harry Belafonte

The next day was more of the same, which was no bad thing. It started with a business talk at 9am by amongst others the CEO of Waterstones, James Daunt, "Business Breakfast: The Future of Books". I was then sent, in the persistant drizzle, to accompany some members of the RSPB as they led some children on a photography walk. Later I got to sit in on the filming of Mariella Frostrup's The Book Show for Sky Arts where she interviewed poet Lemn Sissay, critic Stephanie Merritt (aka author SJ Parris), plus singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte. One of the highlights of not only my day but also my time at the fesitval was the massively entertaining session I enjoyed watching Oliver Jeffers use an iPad to illustrate chapters from his life and books as he entertained a venue full of children, not long later in the same venue I was then able to see none other than Salman Rushdie with film maker Deepa Mehta talking about the upcoming film adaptation of Midnight's Children, it was then back off to Sound Castle to see Ghostpoet, a hip-hop style act kind of in the vein of The Streets and another completely unexpected pleasure.

Ghostpoet

I think that's what I loved the most about Hay, the unexpected pleasures. I went in fully expecting to see some top quality authors and commentators and be both entertained and inspired by their work and the way in which they delivered it. I got that. But it was the unexpected pleasures of working alongside some genuinely friendly and welcoming people from the guys who took us to a local pub on the first night to Tim at Sound Castle and his terrifying tale of potholing, and everyone in between. It was the food (oh God! The food!) which was amazing, it was the good nature of the punters who [largely] smiled and nodded and chatted with you as they queued in the rain or as you directed them to the other side of the site because of one of the all too frequent venue changes. It was trying to celebrity spot even though you don't know what half the famous authors look like (I'm fairly sure Ian McEwan walked past me at least twice, and I'm 100% sure I showed A. C. Grayling to his seat, and that I nearly knocked over former Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan in the gift shop as he was announcing to his wife that he needed a wee).

I had an absolutely amazing time at Hay, not event tainted by the atrocious journey back to Liverpool - complicated not just by a Bank Holiday but by a train breaking down further down the track in Abergavenny. I would heartily recommend that anyone with a love of people and books attend it at any opportunity they can, I know I certainly intend to book off a week of holiday next year and head South again to work as a steward, this time under my own steam. My only regret would be that I had to leave when I did, and not just because I missed personal idols like Stephen Fry and Terry Pratchett (although - no lies: that's a big part of it) but also because I felt so amazingly invigorated by environment and am already itching to go back.

Event: China Miéville Talk - 30.05.12

In Liverpool to promote his new novel Railsea, this was Miéville's third visit in three years. Full disclosure: I organised this event in my capacity as a Waterstones Bookseller.

Anyone who has seen China Miéville speak knows he is a thoughtful, intelligent and eloquent speaker and so it was no real shame when he only read from Railsea for five minutes and instead spent nearly 50 minutes answering questions from the audience. I can't hope to replicate that entire session here but from my notes I thought it might be interesting to give an insight into a selection of the topics he covered. Its also worth noting that most of this is constructed from notes and memory, not recording, and so I wouldn't hold China Miéville to any of the comments reported here (although I've tried to be as fair and accurate as I can be).

Obviously, given that this was primarily a publicity trip a reasonable number of questions revolved around the new novel, Railsea. He said that his publisher is marketing it as a novel for all ages, which is just a cheeky way of saying "everyone should buy it", and that whilst the idea of a reading age for a piece of fiction, and the entire concept of teen/adult fiction is something of a grey area, he thinks he was writing this for a younger version of himself as the kind of book he would have liked to read as a young teen. When pushed on precisely how young he commented that his other "young adult" title Un Lun Dun was written for the version of himself who was reading Alice in Wonderland and that Railsea was probably for a slightly older China.

Reminiscing on that younger China he reflected on when precisely it was that he realised he was reading genre. He pointed out that all young kids are reading stories about monsters and magic and the question he asks is not "how did you get into genre?" but "how did you get out of it?" That said, he admitted that the version of himself who he had in mind when writing Railsea was probably genre-aware and actively seeking out work classified as fantasy. Ursula Le Guin, in particular the Earthsea books (!), Joan Aiken and Michael De Larrabeiti came in for particular praise as authors who he adored at this particular age.

Of Railsea itself he described it as an idiotic joke homage to Moby Dick which he's been mulling over for five or six years, with a 'search for the giant yellow mole' unsubtlely replacing Ahab's white whale. He explained how he likes to take a silly idea and be very straight with it, to almost 'alchemically de-silly it.' As for why he wanted to riff off Moby Dick, its partly because its such an iconic and iconoclaustic text and partly because since almost the moment he was first published people have been making Miéville-Melville jokes and that this was almost an attempt to lance that particular boil face on.

Miéville was also drawn on his new foray into comics with his authoring of DC's Dial H. He said it was a title he had always loved and that over the years in various conversations with DC he'd always finish by telling them that they should let him revive Dial H until finally, when DC rebooted their entire universe recently, they finally turned around and said "okay". Of all the conversations with DC, Marvel, and others, Dial H was 'the one comics project that I've been desperately trying to get off the ground for six years', and finally the stars aligned.

A brave member of the audience also broached the topic of the Christopher Priest "rant" over this year's Arthur C. Clarke award. Miéville was very philosophical about the whole thing, as you'd expect, pointing out that vigorous debate over a short list is a good thing and that we, as consumers of geek culture *should* be being more critical not just over awards but over everything (he confessed he's as guilty as anyone of doing this but we need to stop going to see a film just because it has a monster in it!), besides, as he said, if anyone has earned the right to be pissy and kick up a fuss its Christopher Priest. The one piece of the article he did object to however, was the accusation that Embassytown was lazily written. Miéville said that he's since spoken to Chris Priest and told him that he'd rather be accused of being incompetent than indolent: 'I make mistakes all the time... but I work very hard.' He also admitted that of course its hard to hear criticism such as that from a figure you've long admired. That said, when asked if he now had an imaginary Christopher Priest on his shoulder watching over his newer writing he remarked that he's always had a stylistic policeman, or more appropriately a commissar, but for him its an imaginary M. John Harrison; after all, he repeated, it matters that we are critical about our stuff.

Inevitably the topic of the Bas-Lag books and Perdido Street Station in particular was raised. As he has done on other occassions I've seen him speak, Miéville refused to rule out ever returning to Bas-Lag, but he did say that the manner in which Perdido in particular was written was very much a way of working he could never return to. He said he was still immensely proud of that work but that it's a young persons book and he'd just turned 40. One interesting insight into Perdido that we gained was that it was originally going to be a story about photography being invented in a fantasy world and that he'd gotten reasonably far along with it until he found out he was ripping off a story by Brian Aldiss called The Malacia Tapestry, which is about photography being invented in a fantasy world, and which he's read years ago as a child and since forgotten about.

One of the most interesting questions for me was from a lady who asked about the lyrical nature of Miéville's work. He responded that he thinks "sonically" and will often play a piece of music on repeat whilst trying to perfect a certain scene so that eventually he comes to associate that music with that scene. He even compared the way he works to a young child making space ship noises as he draws a space battle. If his work is lyrical he suggests its because of a love of Anglo-Saxon poetry, a lot of which certainly made its way into Embassytown. He said that a few years ago he'd had his ears tested through a fear that he was losing his hearing, as it turned out his hearing is very good but he struggles to filter out sound meaning that he is acutely aware of background noise and struggles to focus on one person in a noisy room for example. For this reason he said he was unable to watch Doctor Who as he finds the over the top 'cheap' orchestra too distracting.

He was asked who he thinks should direct one of his books to which Miéville responded that he's not a fan of the idea that 'if a book is very good, and eats its greens, it might grow up to become a film.' That said he's favour someone like Guillermo Del Toro, or Nicolas Winding Refn whose work he's particular impressed by.

Overall it was an interesting and fun event, although my big regret remains not asking him if he is aware of CouldTheyBeatUpChinaMieville.wordpress.com and if so does he agree with their outcomes. Ah well... there's always next time.

Lunchtime Classics

Working at Waterstones funds my Ph.D, it also distracts from working on the actual thesis more than a 20(ish) hour a week part-time job should. That said, I can't complain too strongly as working there has given me plenty of opportunities to launch initiatives and schemes of my own devising, as well as have fantastic opportunities to meet and communicate with authors and publishers who I admire.

The latest distraction I've provided myself with is a new series of readings and talks entitled "Lunchtime Classics". The intention with Lunchtime Classics was to get a few people from the Universities in to talk about certain texts or authors that they were particularly passionate about and to pitch it for the general public, I e-mailed around the different Universities in Liverpool sounding out interest expecting replies to mostly come from postgraduate students with a handful of established lecturers as a bonus. I thought I could run the talks monthly, bi-weekly at best, and keep them going until the Summer when I could review their success.

What I got astounded me. I tend to be pretty optimistic about how these things are going to turn out, after all they're my idea and if I don't have faith in them who will? But nevertheless I couldn't have dreamed I'd get such a positive response. Sure, John Moore's University ignored me entirely (name and shame!), but the University of Liverpool and Edge Hill University have come forward with a whole raft of prominent names, Liverpool Hope University have also made encouraging noises and made contact. I suppose the real surprise was when The Reader Organisation got in touch, since I'd overlooked contacting them myself, to tell me they'd heard about the plans and wanted to be involved if possible. And so after batting e-mails backwards and forwards for a week or two I managed to pull together a programme of readings that will be weekly and run until at least the end of August!

Below is a poster which shows off the first few weeks of the schedule, a more complete programme will follow once I iron out a few more details with people further down the line, as you can see the roster already looks pretty strong.

I decided to take the first session myself not for egotistical reasons, but because I expect it to be the quietest and least attended of the events and would hate for someone else to go through that and be disheartened by the scheme's prospects. It is for a similar reason that the early part of the roster is a little heavy with researchers that I know personally, again allowing me to cushion the blow should the whole thing take a while to get off the ground.

Most of the events occur on a weekday between 12 and 1pm. The exceptions to this rule, and indeed the reason why the talks aren't on the same day each week, are because of the availability of the speakers. Whilst the time allocated is an hour the actual process should take approximately 40 minutes with half that time being spent on a micro-lecture providing biography of the author, historical context, emphasising the literary importance of the piece, etc... and the other half of the time being spent reading from the original material. Because the events will be shorter than the time slot the hope is that we can start late and finish early, allowing people to fit the whole thing into their lunch breaks (assuming they take their break between 12 and 1...). The events will be held in the Illy café in Waterstones Liverpool One, and the manager of the café has agreed to give a generous 10% discount to everyone who attends.

I hope you can attend some of these readings and if you have any questions about them, or would like to be involved somehow, then please get in touch. Also feel free to repost the poster wherever you like - all publicity for the readings is appreciated.

Deadline for abstracts for CRSF 2012 draws near

The deadline for abstracts for the 2nd annual conference for Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) at the University of Liverpool is the 23rd of March.

We've received a reasonable number of abstracts so far but there is still time to get your submission into the team via e-mail: crsf.team@gmail.com. Please keep your abstract to 300 words and include a short biography of approximately 100 words.

All papers based on the study of science fiction, fantasy, or horror will be considered. Here is the CfP in full: