Wiscon - Day 2

[oyceter]

I started out by going to yhlee's paper on free will, Fred and Angel, and stayed through other people's presentations (one on Nausicaa as the saintly heroine and one on Jessica Jones in Alias the comic as feminist symbol by her stepping out of the margins and other topics that made me want to read the comic). I was particularly interested by the talk on Nausicaa as the saint, because the presenter said he was using his reading in a larger paper comparing Nausicaa to Watchmen and another western comic I can't remember.

It was neat, because the talk about apocalypse and the destruction of the human race in favor for the ecology made me think of X and how X works as a response to Nausicaa, which I didn't know about since I've never read the manga. Since I bought it a few years ago, I should probably dig it out and read it now.

After this, I finally got to meet up with rushthatspeaks, my other roommate. Awake, that is. So rushthatspeaks, Yoon, and I headed out to a Nepalese restaurant for lunch, in which we were very lucky and probably snagged the last empty table there. As such, we got to have asparagus, a ground bison stew with tomatoes, peas and other spices, along with the momocha, small dumpling-like things that remind me a lot of Shanghai pork dumplings with soup in them. Except these had a sort of lentil and bean mixture, which was delightfully chewy and nutty, along with a very delicious tomato sauce that was more salsa than sauce. Also, I got mango lassi! I love mango lassi.

We topped off lunch with Ben & Jerry's ice cream, which now has baklava flavor, which tastes precisely like baklava, down to the slight floury flavor of the filo dough. I am bemused by this, particularly because it's still ice cream. I resisted, being too full from lunch.

Food in SF/F panel

And then, panels! Justine Larbalestier moderated this one, with Nora Jemison, Mary Kay Kare, Janet Lafler and Melissa Scott as the panelists. I missed the first few minutes due to ice cream (I feel ice cream is always an acceptable excuse), so I wasn't quite sure what the panel was going to be on. It started out talking about the frequent portrayal of eating as a biological necessity that wasn't particularly valuable in and of itself in SF, ergo the frequent mentions of food pills or food generators or etc.

Then the conversation went more to the delight of food (I fully sympathize), fads of Slow Food and fast food, science and technology in food preparation, the example being the new cutting-edge restaurants in Spain that deep freeze and make emulsions and powders and etc. There was, of course, discussion of how the ethos of slow food is a class-related thing, along with sustainable agriculture and organic foodstuffs, and how eating healthy can be seen in the US as a privilege of the well-off, due to government subsidies of certain, not so healthy foods.

Also, Justine Larbalestier said her favorite fruit was the mangosteen, and I think I did a small "Yay" because... mangosteen! Best fruit ever!

Oh, and I wanted people to talk more about food and culture. While there was discussion of the importance of food and culture (ex. being Chinese New Year food differing from region to region in China), along with the necessity of talking about food in world building, someone said something about people's common reaction to alien foods, which is largely, "Yuck, what is this?!"

I thought that was interesting, since I tried feeding more traditional Chinese snacks to my roommates and friends in college, and frequently got that sort of reaction. Reaction to food as a means to portray xenophobia and horrific differences? I asked, and the panel sort of talked about this, along with the divorce between food consumption and preparation, and ergo, the disgust over eating offal and brains and internal organs and the like.

Oh! And I think this is when I got to meet jinian!

Then there was a panel on the literary history of women in SF/F with Justine Larbalestier moderating again.

I had almost been brave enough to go talk to her after the food panel, but she seemed like she was in a rush, so I didn't. Then I managed to bump into her in the bathroom, and I nearly introduced myself, except I didn't and then she left. Meeting authors is extremely nerve-wracking right now.

Anyway, I'm not going to blog about the literary history one, because I have absolutely no background knowledge, so I found it rather educational. Except for the part where I forgot everything that was in the panel, because I didn't take notes. I did, however, get book recs for Pearl Cleage (speculative feminist fiction disguised as chicklit), Larbalestier's new anthology of historical stories in SF/F by women, Molly Gross (apparently historical novel on a homesteader), Penelope Williamson (western romance!), Lisa Yazek (no idea), and Siberia (hard SF YA).

I proceeded to not introduce myself to Justine Larbalestier for the fifteenth time and went to see a panel on feminist romance, which I feel requires another post all together.

Good lord, this con report is going to be huge!

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Baby Brother's Blues. It's only out in hardcover, so I got an earlier one, Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do, which has some minor fantastical elements, at least in the first few chapters.