All geeked out

Continuum continues, but without me today. My brain, refreshed by all the SF & F talk at Continuum 7, decided it would rather spend the day at home writing. Also, I just couldn't get myself excited about getting out of bed at the crack of dawn and catching the early train to Melbourne this morning because that's what I'll be doing tomorrow morning, and the morning after, and the con finishes at 16.00, so here I am. And happy to be here too, I am.

As for Continuum 7, well, there were panels about the nature of writing, about writing tropes, about making money from writing (as per usual, the verdict was that it's difficult), about YA writing, about how networking can help you sell your writing, about the writing market for werewolves, vampires, zombies and other assorted monsters.

But it's important at these conventions to get away from all the earnest navel-gazing-about-writing panels and make sure one enjoys the fun of SF & F in all its forms (I still treasure fond memories of constructing a Lego Dalek at Worldcon.) So I also went to a get-together for chatting about Joss Whedon and all things Whedonesque (apparently you have to keep watching 'The Dollhouse' until episode 6, and then it all comes together and becomes the most brilliant series ever), saw clips of upcoming SF movies, and sat in on a live recording of 'The Writer and the Critic' podcast with Kirstyn McDermott, Ian Mond and their special guest Catherynne M Valente, who was one of the convention's GOHs. Unfortunately, I had to exit before the Q&A session to catch the Sunday night train home - drats.

Best of all, I went to a session with John Richards, who since 2006, together with co-writer Adam Richard, has pursued the goal of getting a new ABC comedy about a group of gay SF fans called Outland from the fund-it-yourself-with-unpaid-actors pilot (which starred Narelle Harris) to production stage. We got to be the first audience to see a couple of scenes from the series, and John was endearingly nervous that we might not like it. He needn't have worried - within seconds everyone was laughing. It was immediately obvious, as he had already said himself, that his two main influences were the BBC shows Spaced and The Book Group, both absolute favourites of mine. Each episode of Outland, as with The Book Group, takes place in a different member's home, and is also built up around a specific SF work - one of the two clips we saw used the grotty corridors and sense of lurking danger in a public housing towerblock to evoke the atmosphere of Alien. Very funny stuff.


Alas, even before it has aired, not everyone is getting the series. Yesterday, in the Sunday Age's magazine 'M' they did a few piece called 'The G Word' about how Aussie television is chary of writing in homosexual characters. The journo wrote about Outland: This new comedy from the ABC is all about geeky gay sci-fi fans. One the one hand, it's faintly dispiriting to have the gay characters portrayed as weird and marginal. On the upside, at least they're on TV.


The journo is utterly missing the point. The overarching joke is that the main characters are weird and marginal because they're top notch, every-breath-they-take sci-fi nerds obsessed with the minor details of mainstream and obscure SF works, not because of they're gay.

I love Christine Anu there in the middle as as the only woman, indigenous, wheelchair bound, tick-as-many-minority-boxes-as-possible-for-ultimate-SF-cred character.

Anyway, that was a fun session. Now, back to my day.