Worldcon III -- Star Trek, Pirates, Puppets

(Friday.  Blog supplemental) 

Lest you think I only saw steampunk types at the convention, here’s a picture of someone representing a different aspect of Worldcon: 

tereshkova2001
A Star Trek fan.  Can you tell?

On a different note, I saw Carrie Vaughn on a panel, both yesterday and today.  Yesterday, she talked about the research she did for her young adult pirate novel Steel, which I just ordered through Amazon. 

I asked how to keep from unloading too much research on the reader, which good writers know just bogs down the story.  She said she does the research when she needs to know something for the passage she’s writing.  She’ll put brackets down for needed information as she writes, then go back and fill in the brackets.  I realized I do the same.  If I don’t know what tree is needed for a scene in ancient Greece, I might write “he tended the [     ] tree.”  When I do the research, I go back and fill in the brackets, which in this case was a chaste tree (it really exists).  Thanks, Carrie, for the affirmation. 

The big treat for the evening was the puppet show Whatnot, performed by Mary Robinette Kowal, Jodi Eichelberger, and Lance Woolen. 

 © 2010 Annaliese Moyer
 See my previous entry on Mary 

To call it a traditional puppet show doesn’t do it justice.  The series of pieces they present range from the tragic to the comical.  They also include audience interaction -- audience members choose the next prop for the performers to use.  A standout piece featured two performers wearing tape recorders on their heads, alternately playing lines from science fiction or fantasy that supporters had submitted during the previous weeks.  Whatnot was an unusual treat for us all.