STRANGE TALES and WEIRD STORIES
We always say "Next year we'll just teleport to the hotel," but we always end up driving down the citric highways of central Florida, enjoying the orange groves and canals and abundant vegetation. A gravitational pull draws hordes of migrating sun-worshippers to their extreme southern destinies or dooms; embedded almost unnoticed within this constellation of commuters is the Conference of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
We arrived early enough to get a lanai room with a balcony, which was a pleasant change from the usual rooms. Donna enjoyed the balcony, and the view.
The hotel cat welcomed arrivals for a while, then moved on.
We sidled into Ballroom A in time to hear most of the panel on Visual Arts in the Fantastic, moderated by Jeff Vandermeer and featuring Joe Haldeman, Judith Clute, Guest of Honor Charles Vess, and Guest Scholar M. Thomas Inge.
Haldeman, Clute, Vess, Inge, Vandermeer, Donald Morse
We made it to the fabled Wednesday session, just in time to hear Susan A. George gingerly chair a session on zombies, in which Frances Robles decided to stop worrying and love them and Marc Leverette outed them as the ultimate capitalist consumers.
George, Robles, Leverette
Listening intently was fantasy author Steven Erikson. Alas, both scholars were discussing the movie-monster variety of zombie rather than the time-transcending warrior mummies in Erikson's tree-consuming epic Book of the Malazan Fallen.
Erikson
Then there was the reception in Regatta, opening the conference in the usual raucous style. I think they were speaking Klingon at the next table, or maybe two tables over.
It was a blast!
And so to bed.
Donna arose and went to support Robert van der Osten's paper on tattooing in Bester and Bradbury, chaired by Grace Dillon, while I slept.
But I was awake in time for an important event: the panel in honor of Brian W. Aldiss, O.B.E. for Services to Literature. Brian's work is a sort of Unified Field Theory which bridges the gap between space opera, pulp fiction, poetry, Finnegan's Wake, New Wave sf, and Kubrick's narrative theory. And that's without mentioning the Horatio Stubbins books.
His O.B.E. is well-deserved, and these eminent scholars gathered in a sunny room to honor him, cheer him, and give him what those young whippersnappers today call a "shout out."
Tom Shippey brought a poem he'd written for Brian's 65th; he read from it as David Hartwell looked on.
Shippey and Charles Brown had lots of good words to say about Brian's friendship and advice over the years.
Moderator Bill Senior, John Clute, and Edward James all paid their tributes to the Grandmaster.
There was a pretty good crowd, too.
Afterwards, we milled around in the hallway, waiting to be fed. Charles Vess was waiting to give
a slideshow after the Guest of Honor Luncheon.
Guest of Honor Charles Vess
Then Donna went to chair a session for Brecken Rose Hancock and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. while I went to Authors' Reading III chaired by Christine Mains. Patricia McKillip and Stephen R. Donaldson are always surprising, and Timothy J. Anderson's story stopped our hearts a time or two.
Mains, McKillip, Anderson, Donaldson
Author Readings IV turned out to have nothing at all to do with transfusions, other than the usual exchange of ideas, stories, and views that keep this conference pink and healthy. Graham Sleight hosted John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, and Brian Aldiss.
Kelly, Aldiss, Sleight
John Kessel read from his new book, which he was happy to show to the crowd.
Brian Aldiss always has a story to tell.
After this session, we went foraging for food, returning to find that elves or trolls had been
trying to break into our room. We dare not go a-shopping for fear of little men?
It was probably a raccoon.
We slept in and missed some things we'd have liked to see, but the 10:30 session was crucially important to our mission: Poetry. Brian Aldiss once said that sf and poetry have a lot in common: both have a sly, surprising music; neither are particularly easy to write. Besides, this conference needed poetry. It's a wild call and a clear call that cannot be denied. Below, host P. Andrew Miller speaks to Lorraine Schein, Marilyn Jurich, and Rebecca Rowe.
Donna Hooley and David Lunde
Donna Hooley got an extra round of applause for her hat.
David Lunde and Judith Kerman
Brian Aldiss is always a hit with the ladies. Rebecca Rowe and Marilyn Jurich listen as Brian expounds upon 'What is the matter with Mary Jane?'
After the poetry, we were fed and entertained at the Guest Scholar's Luncheon. First, Donald Morse advised us that the Cardiff Giant had forgotten his t-shirt
and that posters were on sale featuring the striking image MASQUERADE by Vess.
Then Stefan Hall introduced us to the MAD man himself, M. Thomas Inge.
When that harsh tropical sunlight dulled down to a coppery tint on the horizon, and it was safe to emerge, the Lord Ruthven Assembly met once again. Radu Florescu reflected upon how much of his work has become almost public property.
There was a pretty good crowd.
Then we went out and got something to eat, and so to bed.
Saturday morning we arose to hear more poetry. Judith Kerman, far right, presented Bryan Dietrich, Michael Arnzen, Gina Wisker, Joe Haldeman, Tenea Johnson, and David Van Becker, below.
David Van Becker read at last.
Gina Wisker and Joe Haldeman listen as Tenea Johnson performs.
Bryan Dietrich and Michael Arnzen
Joe Haldeman always has a whole hard drive full of things to read.
Judith Clute and Gay Haldeman in the audience
We went out and got some fast food, so when we returned and found a poolside book launch party for John Clute and Judith Clute we didn't have to stand in line for the twenty-dollar hotdogs, but just enjoyed the party.
The line went on forever.
Gary Wolfe and Tom Shippey acted decisively to secure refreshments.
Past Presidents Chip Sullivan and Bill Senior held court in an arbor.
Brian Aldiss is a veteran of many a book launch party.
Brett Cox and Jeanne Beckwith soaked up the sunshine.
Curt Steindler alerted us to an incursion of iguanas beside the car park. The wily little monsters fled our approach, but I got a snap of one before they submerged.
Then it was time for the final sessions of ICFA 27.
This led to the reason we drove here instead of flying or teleporting: we didn't want to scramble the AI in our laptop, which Donna needed in order to present her multimedia presentation entitled Artist Incognito: Brian Aldiss, You Da Man. Brian was one of the first to turn both a critical and a preservationist eye upon old SF magazine covers and the artists who painted, or in some cases perpetrated them. Not only that, he's an accomplished artist in his own right and has illustrated or adorned some of his own publications.
Donna managed to show an array of pictures collated by Brian, painted by Brian, influenced by Brian, or purported to be Brian, and even partly narrated by Brian before letting session chair Ronald Meyers turn the floor over to Darja Malcolm-Clarke for her Graduate Award-winning paper Subversive Metropolis: The Grotesque Body in the Phantasmic Urban Landscape.
left Meyers, right Malcolm-Clarke
The last session played out like a movie, beginning with Rhonda Brock-Servais' take on Sheriff Harry Truman of Twin Peaks: Masculinity and the Other Lawman and Caroline Eades' explanation of French non-fantastic films and ending with a cinematic run-for-the-laptop cliffhanger that resolved just in time to project Victoria Amador's comparison of Dracula's Brides with Hitchcock's Blondes on a handy wall.
You can't get much more fantastic than that without crossing into surrealism.
So, we did. The seven PM Wine and Beer Reception, courtesy of the Wyndham, flowed into the eight PM IAFA Awards Banquet. Maybe I should have said gurgled.
Donald Morse plays the brushes on a box as Faye Ringel tickles the ivories to provide impromptu entertainment.
Brian Aldiss whispers to Kathleen Ann Goonan at the head table during the 2006 Banquet. Joe Hill won the William Crawford Award.
We hated to leave without a visit to the nearby Triffid Reservation. I had to drag Donna away from the plants. Seriously.
Unexpected shock: the passings of Bud Foote and Daniel Timmons, and of Octavia Butler.
And then, it was all over and we had to let gravity pull us back up the peninsula, back to pressing responsibilities and a more mundane existence, through the palms and canals back into pines and ponds, gradually recompressing into our usual workday selves. Until next year, and who knows what that will be like? We may have to ride a bike to get here, or fight our way in a tank past barricades.
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