[SKRIVA] Time & Space in Speculative Fiction
- From: Ahrvid Engholm <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "fictionmags@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <fictionmags@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "planetasf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <planetasf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "rgparaliteraria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <rgparaliteraria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:05:50 +0200
There have been academic conferences on science fiction in Sweden before, but
this one was something I could realistically attend. Even if it meant I had to
wake up 5.30 am to catch the 6.40 bus to the university city of Uppsala, ca 80
km north of Stockholm.
I arrived very tired and found a) there was indeed flooding from the Uppsala
river Fyrisån (approx 2 m above normal; a sight to see, but no danger) and b)
it was difficult to find the venue. I trusted the homepage's claim of "house
4". Here and there and after a sightseeing in the Uppsala research vaults (incl
Svedberg labs for nuclear research) I was directed to another spot 1 km away.
30+ people had met up in the Betty Pettersson hall, incl at least three sf
fans I knew (Tomas C, Johan A, Stefan I) and several with foreign sounding
names. Many of the lecturers where from eg Finland. I believe many in the
audience were foreign students of Uppsala University. The organisers were
something called SALT (Studies in Arts, Languages and Theology) and basically
they did a very good job.
Just one small thing. It is usual for conferences like these to have a WiFi
guest account. I asked about it, but nothing happened. I suspected there may be
problems with this, so I had my 3G modem with me - I had Internet connections
but nobody else had (I also did a few tweets through @SFJournalen from the
conference). Fix a WiFi guest account next time.
The programme was really packed, 11 speakers from 9 to 17. The subects ranged
from very interesting to, I'm afraid to say, the irrelevant. For instance, I
didn't think the piece about South African Museums had very much to do with
speculative fiction. It may be dandy for other meetings, but it was misplaced
here. The "problem" may be that they, as they should, had a Call for Papers in
advance and had to pick from what they got. (Knowing this, I could perhaps have
sneaked in with my recent Harry Martinson research? Next time perhaps.)
A short summary of most of the lectures coming up. These were now and then
interupted with coffee breaks and also a lunch on the house (I took the chicken
sallad, which was perfectly OK).
"Plenary lecture", ie the Main One, was by US researcher Phillip Wegner who
for some reason is very fond of Scottish science fiction and talked about Ken
MacLeod and Iain Banks and alternate history. I sat and took notes all of the
time on my laptop and one of the notes says how he stressed the thing called
"enstrangement" with the example "I remember where I was when Stalin died in
1963". A good lecture, and I also had some chats with Wegner in the breaks.
Second speaker was Jerry Määttä who talked about postapcalyptic "Monuments of
our Ruined age". You should read his Rocket Summer ("Raketsommar"), his PhD
thesis about how sf was received and slowly changed in the Swedish cultural
world in the "long! 1950's decade. This time he talked about the ruins left
behind by faltering civilisations as expressed in science fiction. It was very
good. (The speech, not the ideas of decline...)
Then came Tuomas Kuusniemi with "The Fractal Methaphor in Frank Herbert's
Dune" from the Uleåborg (Oulo) university which may have been the most
brilliant speech of the day. But I must say I had difficulties to understand
the fine points. He talked about perceived time in Dune and how time in
different scales resembled each other, just as graphics in different parts of
the Mandelbrot set resemble each other in different scales. The Einstein of our
conference. He must be on to something.
After Lunch we heard Markku Soikkeli from the Tammerfors (Tampere)
university, talking about christianity and time travel. Eg Behold the Man by
Michael Moorcook. How would religious doctrines change if we had time travel? I
never belived in time travel, but despite this it was rather interesting. A
quote: With time travel you can have both free will and determinism.
Daniel Ogden then talked about "disembodied selves in William Gibson's
Neuromancer". A pointy of criticism is that he spent most of the lecture going
thorugh the plot fo Gibson 's novel (full of "humans" in different stages, from
zero human to almost human). He seems like an intelligent guy, but he should
have taken the plot in 4-5 sentences and then said something *more*. (But I
agree that radio show "Johnny Dollar" was "15 minutes of pure brilliance". I
have heard OTR episodes. Love'em.)
Ingeborg Löfgren's speech "Cavell and Asimov" belonged to those that
appeared to me as a bit obscure-She talked about Asimov's The Bicentennial Man
in relation to the philosopher Cavel. It had to do with what it is to be a
human. Robots arr becoming incresingly popular. Eg Swedish national TV (SVT)
has recently had a minor success with the series "Real people", sold to half a
dozen countries (and a second seson coming up next autumn).
Leila Soikkonen then talked about C L Moore.I think Ms Moore is a very good
writer (later married to Henry Kuttner, andf the couple produced even better
work together) and worth being reminded of. She spent too much time going
through the plots of the stories, but long live C L Moore!
Katja Kontruri, of Jyväskylä university, could perhaps alos be accused of
being irrelevant, talking about the Dinald Duck universe and Don Rosa. However,
I like Donald Duck and Gyro Gearloose is as much science fiction you could ask
for. I liked her lecture especíally because it gave me my only question from
the floor - and the last one of the conference! I had sat silent during the
whole day because others had had the questions I had had on the tip of my
tongue or I was to stupid to understand what to ask.But I had actually met Don
Rosa, when he in 1998 held a speech at the Roýal Library in Stockholm. And I
asked about why he in the mid nougthies decided to give up the Donald Duck
business. The answer was that he was mistreated by Disney, they wanted too much
control over Donald Duc & Co.
After the conference many went to a dinner in one of the student clubs of
Uppsala. I had an offer of a car ride back to Stockholm from Tomas Cronholm,
which I used. To sum it up, I think it was a very good thing to organise this
conference, even if - say - a couple of the lectures should belong to other
conferences. But it shows that what's called speculative fiction (or science
fiction, for me) is getting more and more appreciated in academic circles.
The flood was haunting Uppsala this day. And we see signs of the
science-fiction flood coming...
--Ahrvid
Ps. English information avbout the conference: http://tssfiction.wordpress.com/
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