Con Breakfast

One thing that Concussion will be remembered by me (and my middle) for a long time to come, was breakfast at the Crowne Plaza.

Wow! Like, wow! As I was up at 6am on the Friday, I assumed that I was lucky to be there before the mad rush, but no, other samplings taken at 10 and 10.30, indicated that the food remained plentiful throughout the breakfast. There were mushrooms (of course), there were fried AND scrambled eggs, there was bacon, there were sausages but then it settled down to the business; square sausags; hagis; rich, dark, fatty black puddings; frid potatoe scone; pancakes (ok so these weren't so good); waffles; cereals; fruit; cheeses; toast; different breads; fruit juices...

*sigh*

The only time I've felt happier with a Convention Breakfast was the 1996 Fantasycon in Docklands where they served kidney. Many people assumed they were funny looking mushrooms and probably were not impressed. But I know good offal when I see it!

Time Shifting and the Mid-Season Break

Last night I caught up with Veronica Mars, (ok, so there's something about nearly 30 blonds at school who solve crimes that works for me) with my new broadband connection I pulled the 3 episodes down in about 45 minutes. They're DVD quality rips. That's cool technology.

Back in 2001 when we first moved to the US it was a bad time in the UK to be a media fan. The point at which we moved was about halfway through what was Buffy Season 5 - and we faced the possibility of arriving in the US having missed the first half and then having to watch the second. In the end we bought S5 on VHS, watched it and then aimed to catch up with the rest of the Season when we arrived.

There is, however, a problem with following any broadcast TV show in the US. The scheduling is a nightmare and they keep having both large and small season breaks. Rather than telegraph these well in advance, the networks just repeat a random episode, even the first part of two parters. I'm not quite so annoyed with the BBC these days as I was, however, life has changed quite a lot in the last 5 years.

I certainly don't really watch much broadcast SF now. Typically, I'll download it and then move it over to the Media Centre in the living room. However, the mid-season break can be annoying, as can the relatively random length of US TV seasons.

An example is Invasion; which I'm rather inexplicably enjoying. They had a major season break at 10 weeks, and now they've had another hiatus at 16 weeks. This was terribly frustrating in the old days but underlines a subject discussed at Concussion. The way which we, especially the fanbase, watch TV is changing. The mid-season break is largely irrelevant, if you can store everything up until the mid-point is over and then catch up and then watch week-to-week. Alternatively, you can wait until it's all over and then watch it.

However, that's not the only "nasty" trick that the US networks pull. You get mid-season "fillers", 12 episode seasons (like Buffy 1) where they'll stick a toe in the water and see what happens, sometimes it works (Buffy), other times they'll have another half season (the superb Carnivale) or they'll just can it (the ultra odd Huff).

Worst still, is where a canned show ends on a cliff hanger, Carnivale for example.

However, repeating a point made at Concussion by coalescent, it doesn't have to be this way. I'll buy a hardback for $20+ sight unseen by a new author, I'll also do the same with an author I like. Charlie Stross is about to move into my hardback column along with Peter Hamilton and a couple of others. (You can move the other way too Mr Baxter!) - this could create an interesting new model and market for TV SF, especially as more people are downloading TV via the internet.

There are several new start ups who are looking at binding the media delivery to targeted ads. Really targeted ads rather than what the TV networks think fans should watch. Frankly, I see an open there for conventions, tie products, certain foods and drinks and books. It could lead to a completely new market in niche advertising.

Welcome to the brave new worlds.

Unintended Consequences

Normally the highlight of a Con, for me, is the book room.

I was rather underwhelmed this time and only bought the one book (Coyote Rising - bah...) but I think the problem lies not in the book room but in me.

I travel a lot on business (as many of you know) and this brings me to the USA every 4-5 weeks. Which means that conventions are no longer my only time to stock up on books that can't be easily had over here...

Also, well, I'm left wondering if the net is slowly killing the classic Con book room? I overhead a couple of people saying they'd had a look around, seen some interesting stuff, but were going to go home and get it on Amazon...

That can't be good news for some of the dealers.

Spoiler Space - Warning Fannish Writing...

I've been accused in the past of spoiling stuff for people. I will admit that I have done this but in my defence, your honour, it was mostly by accident. It has, however, got me thinking about Spoilers, within the Fannish context, and what, at least to me, is our rather schizophrenic attitude towards them.

In years past, at conventions, any media related panel would have to be heavily focused on the Spoiler, especially in terms of what could and could not be openly said about certain things. Between US seasons, Sky and terrestrial TV, these things could get confused. As we discussed at a panel at Concussion (Eastercon 2006) what is happening more and more is that people are watching the shows pretty much in real time as they are broadcast in the US. Will this mean and end to the spoiler warning? Does it actually matter? And, in particular, why is there such a gulf between the media and book formats?

First, I will freely admit that I don't mind spoilers. I don't find that knowing the plot points in advance ruins things for me. It's the handling of the resolution, especially in a TV show that works. Knowing, for example, that the Titanic sinks doesn't alter the story (crap as it was IMHO) - likewise knowing that Sheridan was doomed to die or that Delann faced down the Earth fleet didn't ruin those episodes or part of the B5 arc. Frankly, I’d like a full deck of Lost spoilers right now to explain to me why I’m wasting my time with that show.

However, I’ve friends who would practically ostracise you for letting slip even the most mild of spoiler for a show, even if it didn’t give away one iota of the denouement.

In contract, the book world is different. Reviews often give away quite important parts of the plot, certainly degrees of information that if transferred to the visual media would have people screaming. I like to know what I’m getting myself into with a book, especially by a new author. I started reading Neil Asher because of a recommendation based on a fairly large set of what could be called spoilers about the plot of one of his earlier books. This is fairly typical. I’ll re-read books more frequently than I’ll watch TV shows or movies.

Perhaps, therefore, it is down to other factors and the way people think.

As I’ve said, I don’t mind spoilers, but I will freely admit to being rarely surprised by plot twists and the like. I did a lot of TV writing in the mid-90s and it practically ruined TV for me for about 5 years. You learn a lot of “tricks” about the method of shifting from a concept outline to a script, and you also learn about how to pace the action. A classic example of such a writing trick was the use of the lift in Doctor Who on Saturday, sorry if I spoil anything there [;)]. Technically, it’s Chekhov’s gun; you don’t waste anything in a script. If you show something, it is because there is a purpose for it.

TV, as a media, is more constrained than a book. However, even knowing how the journey ends, isn’t always as interesting to me as the journey itself. Murder mystery and thrillers are similar but quite often the ending is so amazingly implausible that you have to not so much suspend belief, as throw it out of the window.

Now that TV shows are becoming pretty much commoditised, I hope that we can more openly discuss series at Conventions and elsewhere, in more of the way that people are happy to discourse on books without people getting ratty.

But that might just be me…