When I was a panelist on Outer Place’s “Science of Star Wars” panel last year, I thought that was going to be the high point of my nerd career for a while: I got to talk about sci-fi with a physicist, two PhDs in psychology, and professional Star Wars prop-makers. That’s me, second from the left.
Then I got to moderate a panel on robotics, AI, and sci-fi at Columbia University’s BRITE conference with a NASA astronaut, a PhD from the New School, a decorated fantasy/sci-fi author, and the director of the PKD Film Festival. Now, I’m moderating another panel at Silicon Valley Comic-Con. My editor and I are heading out to San Jose on the 20th to hit the show floor as press, then we’ll be presenting on Saturday. In short:
If you want to come see the panel, it’s on Saturday April 22nd, 2017, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm, Room 211ABCD. The title is “Droids and Death Stars: The Science of Star Wars,” and we’ve got a kick-ass panel of experts lined up. I’ll be running the discussion and queuing the laser light show.
Hey, so you probably heard I was asked to speak at the Glasgow International Fantasy Conference on my 2015 project, The Rats in the Walls. The talk went great, and I’ll be publishing the full text soon, but in the meantime I wanted to give some of the high points of the trip.
First off, while walking around Glasgow, I could catch a few glimpses of the Glasgow Necropolis, which was awesome. I’d never seen a graveyard like it, and the ‘skyline’ of monuments on the hill made it look like a true city of the dead. The giant doors in the hillside were especially cool–they made me think of the gates of a city, leading into the earth.
Second, the actual Conference took place in Glasgow University’s chapel, which was beautiful. The University is over 550 years old, and a lot of the passages still feel more like a castle than a modern building. The presentations, including Phil Harris’ talks on worldbuilding and game design, Rob Maslen’s lecture on the book as a fantastical object, and Julie Bertagna’s speech about her YA fantasy series, Exodus, were fantastic.
Third, I ended up meeting some great people at the Conference, including professors, writers, and academics. It was great to hang out with fantasists, instead of having to expand the gathering to include the other SF genres, like sci-fi and horror. There’s a lot of things unique to fantasy, and for once I was able to talk with people who were familiar and excited by the ins and outs of fantasy worldbuilding without having to explain what it was or how it worked. Most surprising of all, I was surprised when I found out the University had recently christened a new Masters in Fantasy Literature program, and that many of the attendees were members.
Fantasy has been dismissed for decades as commercial, not ‘serious’ literature. Most people who get their writing degrees see a significant stigma attached to writing fantasy in a university setting, including the director of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, who I interviewed recently for Outer Places. It was good to see more attention and credit given to fantasy as a genre at Glasgow U. At the same time, I felt a bit uneasy when the time came to present papers: GIFCON did so much to accord itself with traditional academia, both in the topics that were presented (including a Marxist interpretation of Dark Souls) and the way people spoke about them. For example:
While listening to a presentation about using a psychoanalytical approach to the dreams and visions in Game of Thrones, the moderator asked the presenter if he had thought about alternate interpretations of the characters’ dreams, ones that didn’t fall in line with his thesis. The presenter responded that there were a lot of visions/dreams that didn’t match up, but he’d focused on the ones that did.
As someone who’s gone through a Bachelors Degree program and written a couple academic essays for Clarkesworld, I’ve slowly realized that academia, especially academic scholarship on literature, is primarily focused on viewing one tiny facet of a subject in one very specific light, then discrediting or ignoring anything else that contradicts it (or admitting the contradictions and claiming that you’re ‘grappling’ with a complex topic that defies even self-definition). I know I’ve been guilty of this–it’s hard to take a complex world and distill a consistent, meaningful pattern from it into writing, rather than just be selective about what you pay attention to and pretend that everything else falls in line. But that latter attitude encourages a very narrow view of any given topic, and the moment it’s presented outside of its very familiar (and tolerant) academic setting, it suddenly appears incredibly myopic and (sometimes) even indulgent.
The ‘indulgent’ element is especially galling. So much scholarship, when it gets down to it, seems to be initiated because the author thought it ‘interesting.’ Certain aspects or viewpoints on a topic are discarded because the author thought it would be ‘more interesting’ to explore what they wanted to write about. There’s also very little consideration for an audience outside other experts in the field, which means all this supposed knowledge will never reach anyone outside a small circle of people. These aren’t new concerns, but they are persistent, and it makes me wary about treading deeper into the academic sphere as a speaker or writer.
GIFCON was a great experience and I hope it grows over the coming years, but I hope that it takes a note from its popular audience and material and moves away from emulating contemporary academia. I don’t know. I’m certainly not advocating for anti-intellectualism, but at the same time, attending GIFCON and seeing fantasy taken ‘seriously’, it throws into sharp relief that there are deep problems in the way academia approaches knowledge and literature. Maybe there’s something to be said for being underground, unexamined, and mocked by the establishment–it means we don’t have to play by the rules.
P.S. The milk in Scotland is delicious, cheap, and plentiful. 10/10.
After a month of preparing, I’m heading to Scotland on Monday to speak at the Glasgow International Fantasy Convention on my Rats in the Walls project!
You can check out the details of the project here, and read an excerpt from my speech here. You can also check out the promo video Alex Sherman and I made for the project here.
The following is an excerpt from my upcoming GIFCON presentation speech on my Rats in the Walls project, which was a limited ARG that took place from March–May 2015. This part of the speech talks about the four guiding principles I used to structure the whole project.
What defines an ARG?
If you look at other ARGs, like the ones for the film The Dark Knight or the games Portal 2 and Halo 3, you’ll notice a couple uniting traits: these are multimedia stories, they allow audience participation, they pretend to take place in the real world, and they are actually essentially marketing campaigns.
Real-World Stories
“Real-world” means that ARGs have a lot in common with a hoax. A great example of an early alternate reality story is H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, where the world of the story and reality became indistinguishable and suspension of disbelief was achieved to the point that Wells managed to cause a national panic. ARGs are identical to everyday life, but there’s a divergence from reality where the story takes place. Conspiracies and espionage stories do well because they take advantage of a hidden dimension that seems real.
Utilizing Multimedia
“Multimedia” means that you’re not constrained to work on a page. Using Twitter as a platform meant I could incorporate videos, pictures, text, hashtags, and reach people online and on their phones. Much of the work I did was live performances, chalking circles, walking around with a sign, and handing out flyers. I also worked with a friend of mine to create a promotional video for the project.
Since the project was meant for the Twitter Fiction Festival, much of the “narrative” aspect had to be communicated in a way that matched the medium. To create the “events” of the purely fictional parts of the story, like trains being abducted or the communications between Kilroy and Bill Bratton, I had to create a number of fake Twitter accounts that reported on events as if they were real people reacting to developments happening around them.
Audience Participation
On the other side was audience participation. ”Audience participation” means that you’re allowing people to take part in the story’s development. This is where the ‘game’ aspect comes in with an “alternate reality game”—the audience become players attempting to guide the narrative. In this respect, DMs, hypertext authors, and game designers have a much better handle on creating these narrative structures than traditional authors: you have to learn to create contingencies and alternate outcomes and plotlines, so that players’ choices have significance. Other aspects include being able to manage players, keeping them interested, and stopping them from breaking the game.
Marketing as Storytelling
The “marketing” aspect is interesting. With an ARG, your story is your marketing, and you gain your audience by catching people’s interest. ARGs, when done right, are really a form of viral storytelling, which means being shared and talked about is as important as the story itself, because that’s how you get readers. Publicity from ANIMAL New York, the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, and photographers like Daniel Albanese helped gain exposure through news outlets, but ideally, you’d want to make your ARG as shareable as possible. Tapping into specific communities and targeting certain kinds of people online or in real-life is essential.
This was so much fun. The panel was titled “T-1000 to HAL 9000: How Realistic Are Hollywood’s Robots?”, and we got together NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, sci-fi writer Matt Kressel, Professor Peter Asaro, and Dan Abella, the director of the PKD Film Festival. The panel starts at 2:26:00 in the video (it should automatically start there).
Last month I saw a post on the SFWA website calling for papers and presentations for GIFCON, the Glasgow International Fantasy Convention, and decided to submit a presentation on my Rats in the Walls project. Now, I found out I’ve been accepted–I’m going to Scotland to be a speaker at the con (March 29th-30th)!
“The Rats in the Walls,” inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, was something I put together for the Twitter Fiction Festival, but it quickly became something bigger. It received some coverage by folks like The Dusty Rebel and ANIMAL New York, and it kept me sane while I was unemployed. Otherwise, I might have been up in a clock tower with a rifle rather than drawing chalk summoning circles.
Here’s the abstract for the presentation:
The Rats in the Walls: Storytelling That Blurs History, Reality, and Fantasy
Two years ago, an anonymous figure in a white mask began appearing in Lower Manhattan, handing out cryptic messages and drawing occult diagrams in chalk. ‘Kilroy’, as the figure called himself, claimed to be the spokesperson for an enigmatic group called ‘THE RATS IN THE WALLS’, which was planning an apocalyptic event that would shake all of NYC. In reality, this was the beginning of a carefully planned, city-wide fictional narrative played out over two months and multiple mediums, including scavenger hunts, original video, and live performances.
“The Rats in the Walls” project incorporated elements of New York history, graffiti culture, and the work of H.P. Lovecraft to create an innovative, meta-textual storytelling experience that turned Lovecraft’s signature obsession with cosmic horror and local history into a narrative that blurred the boundaries between fantasy, reality, and urban legend. My presentation would take the form of a faux-journalistic account of the history of the Rats in the Walls, beginning with Lovecraft’s “Horror at Red Hook” (which will be treated as history) and ending with the fictional apocalyptic event Kilroy and the Rats brought about in 2015.
Along the way, the presentation will illustrate how the project incorporated elements of alternate reality games (ARGs), alternate history, worldbuilding, and metatextuality. The importance of live storytelling, the use of technology to create dynamic narratives, and the practical challenges and methods that come with allowing wide-scale audience participation will also be addressed.
My experience at Comic-Con this year can be summed up in one gif:
This year, I got a Speaker Pass to Comic-Con, thanks to Outer Places, my new freelance employer. I was signed up to speak on “The Science Awakens: The Science of Star Wars” panel, which meant I had to study up on what kind of blaster Han Solo used (DL-44) and what that Starkiller Base runs on (quintessence). Best of all, I had an excuse to rewatch all of Harry Plinkett’s Star Wars reviews and see the new one on the Force Awakens, So I rolled into NYCC ready to nerd out with the best of ’em.
I also got my yearly reminder that Comic-Con is the biggest fucking thing ever. This year, NYCC had a record attendance of over 180,000, apparently. Here’s a shot of a section of the floor, seen from the VIP Lounge.
The panel was on Saturday, but I had events to report on all four days. In between my reporting, though, I did a lot of other stuff.
First, I visited the Dark Horse booth and got a copy of “I AM A HERO,” which is one of the best manga I’ve read in years. Good call, Dark Horse booth staff.
“You will never experience true serenity until you’re holding 15-pound recreations of giant video game guns.”– Me
Met up with Daft Punk and asked them about the ALIVE: 2017 tour. They said nothing. I think Bengalter was on drugs.
Saw Paul & Storm at the Bell House and celebrated Storm’s birthday. They sang “Opening Band,” but no one threw panties.
Listened to Jonathan Coulton play some new songs off his upcoming album, including “Brave.” That’s JoCo’s 11-year-old son in the corner. Coulton came on stage, then looked over at his son and asked the audience “Can you see him too?”
Saw some of the best cosplay I’ve ever seen. There were a thousand Harleys, Negans, Dippers, Deadpools, and Team Rockets, but there were a couple gems.
My favorite purchase this year was definitely my new grimoire. It’s a bound leather book with hand-made paper pages and deckled edges from Poetic Earth. They said they’d sell me a Necronomicon for $2000 (along with a certificate of authenticity), but I was dubious.
Then Saturday rolled around, and it was time for the panel. Here are some shots from behind the mic on the stage. We had a full house!
Besides my editor and me, we had Drs. Travis Langley and Mara Wood, Charles Liu, and two FX designers, one of whom had a fully accurate recreation of Wedge Antilles’ helmet from the original trilogy. I’m still looking for the official video of the panel, but it was a lot of fun.
During the panel, Dr. Liu and I exchanged a couple ideas about the nature of hyperspace, with Dr. Liu speaking a bit about 10th-dimensional physics. When it came my turn to speak, I had to physically stop myself from saying “Well, Chuck, we got a theory about magic…and miracles” and busting into a recitation of “Miracles” by ICP.
I also got to talk a bit about artificial intelligence and the sentience of droids by bringing up the Lovelace Test as a possible alternative to the Turing Test, then a bit about the economic realities of flying starships around and building something like the Death Star.
We ran through our whole time, got to fan questions, and ended up having to cut the whole thing short to stay within our time slot. It was a great thing to see a whole room filled with Mandalorians, Stormtroopers, and Jedi–the whole thing was a blast.
Pictured: me having fun.
The thing I loved most was the sense of wonder, community, and genuine excitement. There were so many people my age and older who were psyched beyond belief, but the kids were the best. You could just tell this whole thing was blowing their minds. And some of the conversations I had within a 2-mile radius of Javits Center were great–geeks just radiated out across the city, and odds were, the person next to you on the train had just seen something amazing.
Listened to Jonathan Coulton play some new songs off his upcoming album, including “Brave.” That’s JoCo’s 11-year-old son in the corner. Coulton came on stage, then looked over at his son and asked the audience “Can you see him too?”
Besides my editor and me, we had Drs. Travis Langley and Mara Wood, Charles Liu, and two FX designers, one of whom had a fully accurate recreation of Wedge Antilles’ helmet from the original trilogy. I’m still looking for the official video of the panel, but it was a lot of fun.