Thursday, April 1, 2021

CoNZealand Fringe Transcript: A New Century of Conversation: What books from 2000-2020 will we still be talking about in 2100?


During CoNZealand, a group of fans put together a set of panels, which took place outside convention hours, which would be available for free via Youtube and offer a taster of the Worldcon experience to those unable to participate in CoNZealand's programming hours, or hadn't bought a membership but were interested in the kind of content provided. The result was a set of 15 panels over 6 days, archived and available for all at www.conzealandfringe.com.

As a fringe event in the tradition of Edinburgh Fringe and other international collateral events, CoNZealand Fringe was conducted entirely outside core programming hours and spaces, and panels were not official CoNZealand programming. CoNZealand Fringe is not endorsed by CoNZealand.

Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together is pleased to host the transcripts of CoNZealand Fringe panels for fans who are unable to watch the videos or prefer a written format. This is the transcript for A New Century of Conversation, which ran on Wednesday 29 July 2020 at 8pm BST/3pm EDT/12pm PDT/7am NZST (next day) and is available here. Other panel transcripts are available via our transcript hub.

A New Century of Conversation: What books from 2000-2020 will we still be talking about in 2100?

Panel Description: Speculative fiction is often defined as works in conversation with each other. What works of recent SFF do we want to be part of the conversation in 2100? What stories, trends and movements from the last two decades do we hope will persist, and are there elements we want our successors to outgrow? What is our era of SFF going to look like to future generations? This panel takes a whirlwind tour through the genre fiction of the new now, stopping off on what we think are modern masterworks, overlooked gems and reflecting on the great stories the first two decades of this millennium gave us.

Host: Kitty G. (she/her)


Moderator: Sean Dowie (he/him)


Panelists: C. (she/they), Kris Vyas-Myall (they/them), Stew Hotston (he/him)


Sean: [Hello] everybody and welcome to our panel where, in case you didn't read the title which I'm sure you did, we're talking about books that came out in the last 20 years that still will be talked about in 2100. I am the moderator Sean. But before I introduce myself I’d like to take it over to my illustrious panel guests to tell a little bit about their story, about their past, about who they are. And go ahead.

 

Kitty G: Shall I dip in first because I'm kind of not a panel guest?

 

Sean: Of course. I totally hijacked it from you. 

 

Kitty G: No worries!

 

Sean: You go, you say your thing.

 

Kitty G: Yep, we are doing a panel. I'm not actually gonna be part of the panel, but you can see there's loads of amazing panellists. This is part of the CoNZealand Fringe kind of content. So it's an extra load of panels that are going on and you might have seen them on Twitter and so on. There's loads of links below to all of our panellists but this particular one - and I'm just basically here to have a platform for everyone and make sure it's working, which it does look like it is. We are having comments come in already. So, I'm going to zip off, but I will be monitoring all the comments that you guys put in there. So, if you've got any questions let us know as we go and I will put some up on the screen for the panellists to address. And now we'll get back to Sean to introduce the other panellists.

 

Sean: OK, Have fun. Thank you, Kitty, thanks for hosting this on your channel. It's great to be here, and I already introduced - I already hijacked the panel so you know who I am but now let's have everyone else talk about themselves for a bit. So, anyone can go first. 

 

C: I'm good. Hi, I'm C. I'm a book blogger at The Middle Shelf. I've been reading sci fi since I was 13 so as you can see from my white hair, it's been quite a long time now.

 

Kris: Hey, Hi, I'm Kris, I blog at Cloaked Creators, Geek Syndicate, Galactic Journey, and ramble on about books a lot on Twitter. So, hello to you all.


Sean: Stew?

 

Stew: I'm Stew and I'm an author, but also I write a blog where I typically discuss things that get me excited and given that I work in finance, that can be finance, but it's nearly always the intersection of politics, identity, and sci fi and fantasy. 

 

Sean: All right, and I am Sean, I am a contributor for the fanzine Nerds of a Feather, and I review books for other places. 

 

So, let's start with a, kind of simple question, we're gonna, we're gonna not only talk about books but, from what I gathered from the comments from the panellists, there is also going to be some predictions of the future because part of the book success lies in the context in which it's published and by understanding what we're headed towards in 2100. I think we can understand what books will be popular in 2100. But before we do that, a lot of books that became classics didn’t start out as popular, so what is an underrated gem that you really hope that will be popular in about eighty years?

 

C: Oh, So many.

 

Kris: I think one I’ll go for is possibly An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, because I don't think that that, that got sort of like some sort of attention within the blogging community but didn’t get a lot of mainstream attention but it's one that feels like it's bubbling up, and it's one that feels like it's… one that can continue to be relevant for quite a few years to come. I think, on a similar vein also I would put Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman, which didn't really get much attention outside of Australia when it was published, but again it's one that I'm regularly sort of like seeing creeping into people’s consciousness. It’s one that sort of like as soon as someone reads it they'll then recommend it to three or four other people. So I imagine that are those ones that could do, and I really hope they do get more attention in the future.

 

Sean: Yeah. Yeah, I second An Unkindness of Ghosts, I haven’t read the other one. But, Yeah.

 

C: I totally support also Terra Nullius, it was… well, Kris made me read it, and it was such an amazing experience. And, welI, I'm still not over it. I would recommend Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, which is absolutely wonderful. She has the most amazing prose, and it takes place, well, it starts with a young girl and, at some point she ends up on another planet but you realise that this is an amazing metaphor, about a lot of things but mainly about the Antillean context and it's written so magnificently I... Well, it should be much more widely read, really.

 

Kris: I mean that's definitely the case for all of Nalo Hopkinson’s books because you look at other ones like Brown Girl in the Ring or The Salt Roads they are incredibly lyrically well written, and they have beautiful messages in there and they really, well they just don't seem to have got either the attention, but also they don't seem to have the same distribution and also like, they don’t seem to be reprinted regularly as like, as, say, something that they should be. So, for example, we might get a hundred copies of Edgar Rice Burroughs or a Heinlein reprint every year. But we'll never see - but lots of those smaller ones like that just don’t, just seem to appear and then fade away. It's very - and they don't turn up again enough as they should do.

 

Stew: I think for me, I’m going to look up one of the titles, it’s a Japanese translation but I can't remember the title and it's only just occurred to me, otherwise it would have been on my list but the other one is Embassytown by China MiĆ©ville. And for me, I think that is the most effective book I've read about the nature of - kind of how language defines your ability to communicate and what brings you, what you can bring to other people if you can't communicate, or if you can communicate, and how it might change you. So for me, that, that is such a stunning exploration of that entire subject, but it's, everybody I speak, or… so often when I mention it to people, they're like, oh I’ve not read that one. And for me, if you're going to read any of MiĆ©velle’s works, that's the one I, that's the one I think is the best.


[Pop-up from Ellana Rose Thornton-Wheybrew: This is going to make me spend so much money…]

 

C: I totally agree with you, Stew, because it is such a clever take on linguistics, but at the same time, it is so seamlessly integrated to the story itself -

 

Stew: Yes - 

 

C: That it's not like it's a lesson in linguistics, it's just, it grows naturally, you know,

 

Sean: As a huge fan of Embassytown, I endorse that book and both of your descriptions for sure. That's a great way to describe it.

 

So, a lot of speculative fiction that was popular last century were dystopians - dystopian novels that people see as predictive of the future. So what dystopian novel in the last 20 years do you think people will read in 2100 and be like ‘oh that that's just like us now’, that's so accurate. Based on like what, where we are in the world right now, and where do you think the world will be. If that makes sense, yeah.

 

C: I think that one thing that is missing from a lot of dystopia I used to read 20 years ago, is the impact of climate change. To me, this is something major, we're only beginning to see it. And, I don't remember reading it that much, you know that much, it had to occur in some books but…

 

Kris: One of the few I think that was, oh, we’re going into last century, but The Sea in Summer by George Turner, but that's one that’s sort of like, again it was one that sort of popped up in the 80s and then just never reappeared. When I did a survey of like big science fiction work that everyone had read, that was read by like two people, of like hundreds of people that responded to it. So, yeah, the few climate change books that were out there last century, they sort of like, they didn't make a huge impact, whilst, like you said, nowadays it almost seems insane that you would do a book about the future and not, at least, I mean you could mention it to the side and not have it as the main plot but it's definitely something that you need to cover off in there, for sure.

 

Stew: Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one. I was at a conference last year - London: Future economies, which was held in London, and there was a big section on climate fiction. And I think, where we struggled was that there was not yet, and I still see this in fiction as I read it now, it’s just my view, but I don't see yet a great climate novel. One, one that provide - and for me,what does make great climate novel? Because that's quite, it's quite a personal view but for me a great climate novel would, would be one that offers you a sense that something can still be done? All the climate novels I've come across, and climate novels I've seen this year have all been thousand years after the disaster. 


[Pop-up from WorldsInInk: Pandemic Fiction might be the dystopian of 2100]


Stew: And I think for me that's, that doesn't leave me thinking oh, well there's something to be done here in real life. It doesn't explore the issue in a way that makes me feel like there's hope. It just feels like it's too late. And so, yes it's utterly dystopian, but in the same sense, it's, for me it's very, very grim. And I'd like my dystopian science fiction to at least have a sense that this is something we might reflect on and do differently now.

 

Sean: Right, yeah, for sure climate change is, it's ravaging us for sure, but then it's still preventable. So, I think we should have constructive books to not only offer hope but also push us in the right direction. WorldsInInk made a good comment about how pandemic fiction might be the dystopian of 2100. So, do you think there is a book that's like emblematic of the COVID crisis that came out in the last 20 years?

 

C: Huh! [Laughs]

 

Stew: So there's a book that came out last year called The Last. And it is set in a hotel in the Alps, after some unexplored catastrophe basically leaves the people in the hotel, understanding that they are probably the only people left. And they, they are essentially quarantined, they don't really dare leave the place. I don't want to say too much more without, without it becoming spoilers, but I think a book -  that book for me, not only is it really well written. And for me, the cream of the kind of - the cream of the unanticipated, kind of, caught the mood of the moment from last year. But I also think that it, it kind of kind of presents to us a world in which people are a bit more like we are now you know. I think if you read dystopian fiction, written in the last four or five years. It's all very much…everybody's at each other's throats, everybody's, you know, out for themselves, there's no cooperation. I think someone mentioned earlier that everybody's hair is probably good in the novel. And The Last kind of tackled, it feels in a more realistic sense that people do cooperate and there is a sense that they're trying to work together.

 

Kris: I feel like to some extent pandemic fiction is kind of now occupying the place that bomb fiction used to occupy back in the last century. So, rather than dystopian fiction it's more just like, ‘Okay, so what happens to us after civilization collapses’ and seems to be operating in that one, and that's possibly what gives us the space to be ‘hey we're at, we may be good, or we may be at each other's throats’, whilst obviously a lot of dystopian fiction inherently has to have the negative view of humanity in order to believe that it's going to come about. I suppose you could have it as an accident but generally in dystopia you have to believe that there is something that's inherently flawed in human nature to bring this about.


[Pop-up from Ellana Rose Thornton-Wheybrew: I hope that the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers will still be read, but in a way that’s like “The hope they had back in 2020 was fulfilled! Yay for people!” rather than “Oh you sweet summer child”]

 

C: I think it may be the time to mention it, of course, The Fifth Season by [N.K.] Jemisin. I'm doing that early so that you know we can come back to it very often. But it is dystopian, and The Broken Earth is, can also be read as a metaphor for climate change and pandemic because it is open to every interpretation. And at the same time, because it focuses on a person, and her own internal struggles and her own internal conflict in a society that doesn't want her, it takes such a universal, you know, angle, at the end you, it’s, well it's perfect of course.


[Pop-up from Lis Riba: Sarah Pinsker’s “Song [for] a New Day” is set about 10 years AFTER a pandemic, where social distancing has become the norm - not a grim dystopia, doesn’t revert to primitivism. Feels really prescient]


Kris: I think -

 

Sean: Yeah, it really is.

 

[Crosstalk]


Sean: [gestures] go ahead, go ahead

 

Kris: I think that it reflects something I was thinking about in terms of what will actually survive to 2100 as literature. I don't think it's going to necessarily be the books that are the most accurate. Because if we think, say, back to the work of Jules Verne, probably his most accurate work was Paris in the 20th Century, but nobody reads that because it's actually just really boring because it's just someone goes to Paris -


[Pop-up from Adrienne Joy: I like Blackfish City a lot for climate fic - still quite dystopian but a city that feels very lived in]


[Laughter]

 

C: It is so boring.

 

Stew: It isn’t a great book, but you're right. 

 

Kris: Yeah, exactly. But what people like is something like, if you put the alternative which is H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Now, we’re not all Morlocks, we're not all are Morlocks and running around in underground tunnels and being eaten by the rich but what that’s able to do is one, it's a very well written book, and two you're able to keep applying it to situations so, he was commenting on Edwardian society, but you're able to see stuff to do with human nature and the way in which power is always consolidated to one group, and so on. I think that's why work like The Broken Earth is more likely to survive than one necessarily that's exactly predictive of the future, because what it is, is it's not so much that we need - we will need books that are going to be exactly like we are in 2100. What we, what we're going to be remembering is books that are able to still speak to us in new ways in 2100.


[Pop-up from WorldsInInk: How do you define a future classic?]

 

Sean: Uh, so -

 

C: May I also mention All City, you know, going back to climate change. Another one that I read, thanks to Kris, because All City happens in the very near future. So, there is, climate change, it is the start of the novel, but at the same time, it happens in the capitalist system that we know in a future New York, which is like the actual current New York but worse, and I think in the end such a book, just like many other dystopian future books, reflect our times, in a way, how do we project ourselves in those situations in the future and how we are at the moment so, we won't be able to deal with all that, maybe. Not that way.

 

Sean: Yeah, that's a good point. So, there's been a lot of recommendations in the comments for either pandemic fiction or fiction with hope and one person in terms of the hope thing when you mentioned the Wayfarer trilogy, and that, the first book is something that started out as being self-published and self-publishing is the - It used to be a niche but it's expanding. So are there any books that you feel - that are still self-published or have moved on from self-published to published - that you think will be a future classic and will be emblematic of the expansion of the industry, if that makes sense? Published or like or even like the Martian which started out as self-published but then moved on. But if not, we can do another question.


C. I -


Kris: I think it’s very hard to tell with that kind of thing, because the thing is, we might hope that it becomes quite big, I think there's some great self-published out there, it can be very variable. But one of the problems, is if the, if they don't, I think, a lot of them if they aren't going to end up getting on to a major publisher at some point, they're gonna end up being lost in the mass of other books coming out, and I just don't know-


[Pop-up from Ellana Rose Thornton-Wheybrew: There’s a novel from 1827 - Tale of the 22nd Century Mummy - which is amazing. Has women wearing trousers]


- unless it really gets picked up and revived by some people who are really going to get - whether it's really going to be, whether it's really going to last the test of time… I think that's just one of those things that's unfortunate so… oh, ah, excellent recommendation of the [Tale of the 22nd Century Mummy], that is a brilliant book, I’d also quite recommend it.

 

Stew: So, I've got one, which was by F.D Lee called In the Slip, which came out last year -

 

Kris: Ah yes!


Stew: - which I thought was pretty good. And it's the type of book, I thought it was of a quality, which certainly puts it in the kind of top 10% of self-published, which is the type of stuff where I kind of look at it and think, that's the type of stuff that agents and editors or gatekeepers in the more traditional part of the industry would be looking at and going actually that that is the type of thing we would publish as well. But, yeah, I would highly recommend In the Slip.

 

Sean: Yeah. Okay, good recommendations. So, we talked about dystopian novels. So that's one sub-genre that could be still popular in the future but, um, are there any sub genres that you either think will be popular in the future, or that you really want to be popular in the future, in 2100. Any of them stick out? And if so, what is a good book from that sub-genre?

 

C: I would love to read more weird fantasy, and I hope - and by weird fantasy, I mean something like Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng, of which I am a big fan. And, I think it offers something that isn't bound by the rules of genre, and I hope to see the literature going further that way, you know. To me, this may be something that should be explored so, so, so much more and read so much more widely, to stop being constrained by boundaries, you know?


[Pop-up from Matthew Cavanagh: On Self published - I highly recommend Blackout by Kit Mallory - UK dystopia/hopepunk] 


Kris: Yeah, absolutely, I would agree with that. I feel that actually, if, weird fiction is possibly what I feel like this decade is going to be remembered for when people look back on it. Often - because often when we look back on decades we don't remember everything that's going on. We remember a few things, like there wasn't actually that much cyberpunk, or new space opera going on in the 80s, but that's what people remember it for. People don't remember that people were still writing 200 big dumb object stories back then. 


[Pop-up from Infinite Text: Solarpunk]


Kris: But what I really hope is, that, I actually hope that none of the trends we have are going to be the big one out there. I want there to be new trends because I feel that if we're still doing exactly the same things as we were now, 80 years in the future, I hope that if they are doing it they're doing something completely new and different with it. And it's moved on and not just reviving, just not just being ooh early 21st century revival, how nice. 

 

Sean: Yeah.

 

C: That's so true.

 

Sean: Andrea from infinite text, who I know in real life, said solar-punk - hello Andrea. Thank you for contributing. 

 

And so, especially this year there's been a lot of changes, whether it be COVID or Black Lives Matter or the advancement of other issues. So what - and some classic books are a staples from a major social event, so like what book do you think represents either Black Lives Matter or the Me Too movement or the COVID crisis or any other major event that has happened in the last 20 years that you think people will like go to in 2100 and -


C: [holds up The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle]


Sean: Yeah, the Ballad of Black Tom. Yeah. Good choice. 

  

Stew: For me, The Underground Railroad. I just think that iss such a remarkable book, such a remarkable book. I've read it - I think I've read it three times now and every time I think, yeah, there's more to pick apart from it. But I totally, I totally endorse The Ballad of Black Tom as well. 

 

Sean: Yeah -

 

C: It's just such an amazing novella - book - in general.

 

Kris: There's a lot of Lovecraftian - of great Lovecraftian re-imaginings recently. Particularly by people of colour doing really well. Like, I'd say Lovecraft Country is another one that I think is absolutely emblematic.

 

Stew: Yes, it's amazing. 

 

Kris: Also it's a - in terms of moving away from Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movement, I feel like The Power by Naomi Alderman is one that I think is going to be remembered for that, because it's one that, I feel like it didn't actually make as much impression on the science fiction community but it's one that sort of like stuck in the mainstream imagination, and it's still selling. I still see it on bookshelves and supermarkets sometimes. I still hear people that don't even read science fiction, they'll still be picking up and discussing it. 

 

Sean: Yeah.

 

Stew: One of the commenters, Matt, Matt Cavanagh has asked whether we think epic fantasy can evolve this decade or is it stuck in its mega sized trilogy format. 

 

Sean: Great question. Yeah.

 

Stew: In the context of this discussion we won't remember any of those trilogies in 100… nobody will be talking about trilogies in 100 years, I think, for capitalist reasons because there's three volumes right? So, if I'm assuming we'll still be reading paper as much as we're reading digitally but I don't see people picking up three books and thinking this trilogy is a classic. Lord of the Rings set aside right? As a grandfather of the genre. But, I, so for me it sits back in: what are the standalone books? And I think we, I personally see trilogies as a feature of the market, rather than - and this is no disrespect to people writing trilogies at all - but rather than kind of delivering something that is there to explore an idea to advance conversations about the world.


[Pop-up from Kitty G: 10 books+ only XD]


Stew: And someone's going to raise N.K. Jemisin, as they probably should, and shut me down, but I kind of think if you look back, if we look back in 80 years, and people are going, “oh yeah it's trilogies that we remember”. I would be really surprised.

 

Sean: Yeah, for sure. I feel like that is also representative of the last century where there was not as many trilogies as now but there aren't many trilogies that have stood the test of time and it's mostly standalone, especially in the speculative fiction realm that have remained classics.

 

And, so, I have a bit of an ego stroking question for the authors and if you're, if you haven't written a book, reviewers or bloggers, what is one book, blog post or review that you hope will still be read in 2100 of yours. 

 

C: Oh! [laughs]

 

Kris: Goodness, I really hope none of it’s going to be read in that time. 

 

C: Yeah, me too!

 

Kris: One, I'm pretty sure I'm not that interesting and two, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be… that anything that would have been written nowadays is going to be horrendously out of date and horrendously politically incorrect for whatever we, however we've evolved in that time. I really hope that I'm not going to be picked up, as probably people will say, “Hey, oh look at the bad writing that was done in 2010. It's terrible.”

 

C: I tend to write my reviews you know just, pretty quickly. And it's full of mistakes also, syntax, grammar, all the stuff - so yeah, don't remember it. Just remember the books I'm talking about because I think they are good.

 

Sean: Yeah, well, I mean if you're passionate about a book sometimes it bleeds into a review, no matter how fast you type it and, you know, passion is infectious so you never know. Stew what about you?

 

Stew: So, quite a big thread of what I write about when I'm not, whether I'm writing books or whether I'm writing a blog, is about identity and about who we are, what it means to be us. And if I was going to pick one thing I'd love, I wrote a post for, as part of my role as a Clarke Awards judge this year, and it was about where we are right now in terms of diversity in genre publishing or the utter lack of it.


[Pop-up from Kopratic: I’m reminded of The Giver, which I feel like a lot of people are surprised to find it’s the first in a quartet.]


And if, if people would look back in 100 years and kind of look at that as a historical document and say, “how quaint how, how things have changed.” Then - then I'll be very happy that they'll be able to look at it and go, “look how far we've come”. 

 

Sean: Yeah, and I highly recommend people read your posts about the Arthur C. Clarke awards because it is a good read. Kopratic, sorry if I'm mispronouncing your username but, they mentioned that The Giver is something that's widely beloved but it's part of a quartet and no one really knows that. So maybe we'll be in a world where like the first book in a series becomes really popular like, the first Mistborn becomes a classic I don't know, and then everyone forgets that there were sequels.

 

C: That would be very interesting actually, because I'm thinking about two trilogies that I love, and when you read only the first book, you have a very different view of the story as a whole. The first one is the first one in Rosewater, in the trilogy Rosewater by Tade Thompson, because if you read only the first one. It is so nihilistic. Okay, sorry I don't know how to pronounce it…. nihilistic? 

 

Stew: That’s right, yeah

 

C: Either way, you got me. Um, you know, at the end of it, because Kaaro walks away, so it's such a bleak view compared to the complete story, and the other one is Dawn by Octavia Butler, which is. Okay. Not in our timeframe but, you end up with a completely different view if you read only this one, than when reading the whole trilogy, because it's the same way you end up with something that feels so charged by the moral and ethical dilemma. So, it's very interesting.

 

Sean: Yeah.

 

Kris: I'm very curious also whether or not though, on that grounds whether or not shared universe stories are gonna, whether or not we will have one from them, or whether or not we'll have lots from them will be remembered, or whether none of them will be remembered. I was thinking, for example, like, one of the books that sort of like everyone's seems be excited about and talk about it and has read, he’s sort of this century, is Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. Discworld series. Everyone seems to love that, but you can't really read it standalone, it only makes sense if you've read like, all of the other Watch books beforehand. So then, like, is that really going to be remembered in that way if you're like, “oh, but it's really good but you have to read these six books beforehand”? And then also, same token, the Xuya series, I believe that’s the correct pronunciation by Aliette de Bodard. So, those, none of them need to be read after each other, but they do complement each other, and then, so, will they if they do survive in the future, will they, will be collected into like a big volume and done together, or will it be just like say people will pick up On A Red Station, Drifting or The Tea Master and the Detective. It’s always, I don't know. It’s an interesting thing.


[Pop-up from Matthew Cavanagh: Would any short story collections survive?]

 

C: I don't agree with you about Night Watch because, well, people who follow my Twitter feed, know about my gran. My gran, she discovered Terry Pratchett at 85, because of me. And she's like me, she doesn't read stuff in the good order, so she, actually Night Watch was the second book in The Watch she read. She only read Guards Guards, and then she skipped to Night Watch. Why? Because she liked the title! And in the end, she loved it nonetheless, because the book was telling something that spoke to her, you know, the sense of that failed revolution. The sense of loss, because you are now older and you contemplate your younger self. So, yeah, I think that shared universes, yeah, might still work, the gems may still emerge.


[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: The most amazing Gran in history!]

 

Sean: I agree with both of you. I think that there will be a change in like what books will be read and some sequels, will probably be excluded from like the must-read list. But I think there you still can get something out of it for sure, it will just change the whole context of how you read it. 


So, Matthew Cavanagh asked a great question: would any short story collection survive and I, I'd like to know your opinion. 


C: [Holds up Nine Bar Blues by Sheree RenƩe Thomas on screen]


Sean: Oh, I just bought that, I'm excited to read it. 

 

C: I just finished reading it, it is just glorious. If you can't see the title. It's Nine Bar Blues by Sheree RenƩe Thomas, and it is absolutely, absolutely brilliant. And yes, if one deserves to survive. This one does really -

 

Sean: I’m really excited to read it now then.


[Pop-up from Kopratic: What direction do you see short stories going in for the future? Are there any recently written short stories you think will be talked about in 80 years?]

 

Stew: For me maybe Kelly Link, who writes kind of on the weird end of fiction. She's got a couple of short story collections out, and I would, I would put both of those in a little time capsule to be uncovered in 100 years because I think they're magical. Yeah.

 

Sean: Yeah. I think that can be totally linked as well.

 

Kris: I was gonna say The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu I think is one I can see surviving. 

 

C: Oh!

 

Sean: Yeah

 

Kris: And I do think that, on that grounds, I think the ones that are going to survive, are the ones that are already very well curated collections. I think that some of the ones where they have often been just like say, the first 10 books by an author, or possibly if they are an original anthology but some of the stories are amazing and some of them are not. I think those ones won't last, but they'll still be remembered because I think they will be re-collected. So, we'll start to get new collections because, like, even back in the day like, back in the 50s like, everyone would tell you that the great, the greatest book of all time was Adventures in Time and Space by Raymond J. Healy, which is just a collection of his - of their favourite stories from, from Astounding in the 1940s, but nobody has read it today. Unless you're a really obsessive fan of the 40s and want to get hold of it. Because like, they just stopped reprinting it because, who cares? Because nobody wants to just read those, but if they want to read those stories, they'll put them into new collections that are better and speak to them at that time. So, I think, that's where - I think a lot of short stories will last but I'm not sure if there's too many other things than some of these really core short stories that will survive. At least that's my view.

 

Sean: Right. So Kopratic asked a two part question. And one of, the first part of the question is what direction do you see short stories going in the future? Maybe, maybe my observations are off but I've noticed that people are gravitating more and more towards short fiction. Do you think that will be a continued thing because… saves time, doesn't require as much attention, and we're becoming a nich - a society that's increasingly obsessed with instant gratification. So, do you think shorter will become, will short fiction become the new novel in terms of popularity?

 

C: I don't agree with you on that, Sean, I think that a lot of people are reading short stories because short stories are amazing at the moment.

 

Sean: I agree with that.

 

C: The quality is just outstanding. I mean, I you only have to pick FIYAH or Strange Horizons or Three Crows Magazine and you find such amazing stories.

 

Sean: Yeah, for sure, yeah but it's - there's a tonne of great short fiction out there. I think short fiction is better than ever and I'm glad that it's getting, it’s starting to get it’s proper due. But anyway, does anyone else have anything to say?


[Pop-up from The Book Finch: Many countries will probably end up having their own SFF classics canon, like with any other literature]

 

Stew: I think I think a lot of people are accessing short fiction now because it's available in ways that it wasn't before. If you think, before you could access it online you had to go into a bookshop and hope that that you'd stumble across a good collection whereas now that, you know, if you've got a good Twitter feed, when you're a member of a number of groups in your social media, you've got loads of ways of discovering these short stories and collections of short stories that were never there before. I think that's allowed a real growth in that part of the genre, and I really love that. And I think there's such a, as an author I think there’s really, it's a really different discipline to kind of scrunch down a story into 1000 or 5000 or seven or 10,000 words and make it count. And it's a real different discipline to writing a long piece of work but. But, will we give up long pieces of work? Well, I think, if Brandon Sanderson can write a 10 volume epic that, you know, mil..thou, hundreds of thousands of people are  reading, I don't think we're in any danger of one overtaking or eclipsing the other right now.

 

Sean: Yeah, we seem to be in a good place in fiction where, for sure. As you said short fiction is easily accessible, and at the moment, like we saw Brandon Sanderson making millions of dollars by writing bricks of books, which is impressive. So, The Book Finch says “speaking of reimaginings, which current authors do think future authors will be taking inspiration from and reimagine their work?” So yeah, I just parry that question back to you.

 

C: Wow.

 

Stew: That’s pretty difficult! I was thinking about, particularly on the science fiction side, what type of stuff are people gonna be writing about in terms of subject matter in 100 years? And none of the technologies I could think of that are important in terms of genre right now are going to be important to us in 100 years. You know, I think even if you have strong opinions about them now and even if they seem that they can't ever go away. I just don't see what's going to be, what is the science fiction, what's the hard science fiction story going to be in 100 years? I just don't know. So, I don't know how, I don't know how I could identify some of those people - maybe in fantasy, potentially, but also maybe people who are writing - like, so Tade I think will be much imitated, particularly Rosewater I think will be much imitated for a number of reasons, some of which are really important, like he's breaking new ground with his voice. But I think others are more prosaic like, he just writes really well, and I think people will want to ape the style as much as they want to ape the content, but I think beyond that, I find it really hard to kind of start to narrow that down.

 

Sean: Anyone else, or..?

 

C: It's funny because-

 

Kris: It’s -

 

C: Oh, sorry Kris.

 

Kris: No, go on!

 

C: Um, because I was thinking about Aliette de Bodard and Adrian Tchaikovsky. To me, they are both major writers at the moment. And I was thinking that actually they both take their inspiration from something that comes before them, whether it is tradition, whether it is Golden Age, and they are inside this current which is going forward. And I do hope that they would be authors, future authors will be taking inspiration from. Because it would mean that there is a movement which goes, you know, always creatively going further, it will be beautiful to just think about that.

 

Kris: I was thinking about what sort of, thinking about what was actually, so what is actually being reimagined, in terms of looking at that part of the question. I think what it often is, is it's works that you, that a lot of these people would have encountered when they were younger, and liked, but they also recognise the problematic aspects. So, it's almost trying to square the circle a lot of time of reimagining is going: ‘Okay, there's some bits of this of like, there's some bits of this that I really don't, and I feel like there's definitely something more that I can, something more in here that isn't being explored that I could get out of it’. So, I think it's… I think it's honestly going to be stuff that we consider maybe to be sort of like, really exciting - that maybe sort of, like something’s very exciting now, but then sort of like, there's areas in which there could be significant improvements to it. The problem is working out exactly what there is, is very hard whilst you're inside it, but I imagine it's probably going to be maybe more the space adventure stories that we had, things like The Martian or The Expanse series where people pick it up and go “It looks great now but then there'll be some elements of it that are just not going to date well. I feel like possibly also The Three Body Problem and that series I feel like that's gonna be, there's gonna be one that's going to be very interesting for people to reinterpret in the future because it’s got lots of interesting elements but even now, some bits of it look a little hokey and there's some things that sort of like, I occasionally go, ‘hmm, I'm gonna have to overlook that’. 

 

Sean: Yes, sure.

 

C: I remember. 

 

Stew: I -

 

C: Sorry.

 

Stew: No, go on.

 

C: I remember, you know when we arrived in 2000 and everyone was making fun of how people imagined the year y2k in the past, you know, with all the spaceships and all stuff. And I think that 100 years later, they will probably laugh, just as much as we did when we turned the century.

 

Sean: Yeah, it's definitely tricky to like, try to show technology in the future, because it's probably, it's arguably the most rapidly developing part of our life that's happening right now, and it's only a matter of time before it catches up and then surpasses the futurist book. 


[Pop-up from the Book Finch: Suddenly thinking about Harry Potter ^^;;;]


Sean: So, since we're CoNZealand adjacent, is there any piece of work, either novel or short fiction, that is nominated for a Hugo this year that you think deserves to still be read in 80 years from now?

 

C: Is it the moment when I say that I don't remember who is nominated for a Hugo?

 

Stew: I’m looking it up!

 

Sean: OK, it’s OK.


Stew: Should have thought ahead.


C: I’m looking it up too! 

 

Kris: I feel the novellas category rather than the novel category for me, I feel like is one where there's some amazing strength in there. And ones which I can see, I would really hope that they would last, and I feel like they can still have interesting…so, things like The Deep and This is How you Lose the Time War have very interesting things to say. I feel like they're going to in the future. I do want, I'm very curious to see how the recent arrival of these sort of standalone novellas being sold. How, whether that's going to be something that's going to last, or whether or not that's something that's going to end up sort of like petering out, and some of them sort of like maybe sort of get lost, just because of the format they're in, but it's one that's interesting to see whether or not those categories are still remembered compared to say novella category 20 years ago. I doubt if many people probably read many of the things that were novellas because they would be published in like a specialist collection and then rarely reprinted.

 

Sean: Right. A lot of good comments from the viewers about good books. The Deep I agree with, A Memory called Empire yes, This is How you Lose the Time War, Middlegame… Yeah.


[Pop-up from Kopratic: *furiously looks up the nominees*]


C: Stewart, do you want to go?

 

Stew: Yeah, you were talking about, just to go back a step to the last question related to this, I think The City in the Middle of the Night represents, I think, a current within genre fiction right now, and people have mentioned hopepunk in the comments. I, if I'm honest, I detest the label, because I think it mis-labels both words in that, in that label are not appropriately applied, But nevertheless the thing that Charlie has achieved in that book and others, like Becky Chambers, and… it’s that that they are full of hope, without it being twee, without it being kind of naĆÆve? But there's, there's hope in there because people are shown, yes, they may well be flawed, but it's not grim. They may…it’s not evil, they're not malicious, they're not self-serving as their primary drive, but they're people who are looking to build a better future. And I think that, as, as a current I can see over the next 20 years becoming a really, really powerful movement within the genre, and I really, you know, and I'm all for that. I think it's a great move within the genre. And what I really like to see I think, I only have to look at doomscroll on my Twitter feed to get depressed, but I don't necessarily need that in all the books I’m reading. So yeah, that's something I think will be much imitated and I think it will be something recognised in 40, 50, 60 years, people will look back and say, actually, that was a movement within the genre, and one worth studying and thinking about.

 

Sean: Yeah, for sure hopeful counter… counterprogramming for the depressing social media comments.

 

Stew: [laughs] Exactly.

 

Sean: So, I am out of questions but we still have, I think, 18 minutes left so if anyone, either on the panel has questions or the viewers have questions, I'd love to hear them.


[Pop-up from Lis Riba: What about stories with non-print elements, like some of the different variants of “Stet”?]

 

Kris: So, one thing I wanted to bring up, which okay, we’ll jump to this in a minute, but, it was just interesting that I tend to have a look up what sort of like 80-70 years ago, people were considering to be the absolute classics of the genre, or not the classics but just the ones that they were like the best of the genre at the time so, in… so, here in, so for science fiction, in 1943, there is a poll that was done by The Zombie. And here's the top five books of their time they thought would be great so: Slan by A. E Van Vogt. Final Blackout by L. Ron Hubbard, Space Hounds of the IPC by E.E Doc Smith, Invaders from Infinite by John W Campbell and Forgetfulness, by John W Campbell.

 

C: Ugh. [laughs]

 

Kris: It interesting to be like, that's not what we're remembering...

 

Sean: No not at all.

 

Stew: Interestingly, though, three of those names have cast long shadows over the genre. Right?

 

C: Yeah. Yeah, maybe not the one they were expecting.

 

Sean: Yeah, just, yeah. They got, they got their description of their predictions wrong. 

 

C: Yeah. I liked Lis's question that we just saw about non-print storytelling. I think that non-print storytelling has a problem, which is proprietary formats, because, we cannot read VHS any more, you know, I remember when I was a kid watching VHS. I do still have the tapes. I can't read them anymore. So what about stories with non-print elements - will we still be able to read them in 50 years?

 

Sean: Yeah, hmm…

 

Stew: I think it's a really good question actually, something, something from… kind of one of the other jobs I do. I think we will… the future of storage is format independent. And I, so I totally agree with you. I think it's really difficult to build stuff that relies on specific formats outside of paper and an electronic version that ultimately can be converted into any file, because I think it tends to, it tends to be …the stuff I've seen that’s worked for me has been interactive in some way and it's been about exploring, you know, you click on something or you go somewhere, there's a little bit of exploration to do, and there’s a discovery to make. And that has worked, but I don't see that if I'm really honest as anything more than a novelty right now. I've not seen anything that makes me think “ah yes this, this is integrated so well. But I want everything else that I experience from, from a text point of view to have this sort of built into it.”


[Pop-up from Infinite Text: @Zach Morgenstern asked about how do you see the future of sci-fi children’s works, art, and/or graphic novels for older audiences]

 

C: Hmmm…Yeah,

 

Kris: I was just thinking about the Sarah Gailey.. I think it’s a Sarah Gailey short story from last year. “Stet”? 

 

Sean: Yeah.

 

Kris: That was, I think it was a…no I remember just having a discussion with someone about it, because someone - I think it, it might have been the Hugo packet or might have been somewhere else but they downloaded a copy of it, but because of that it wasn't able to be interactive, so they had a completely different experience reading it, and they thought oh this is there's not much to this compared to when I'd read the interactive version, so yeah I think that like, there's going to be sort of like quite a few things lost in those ways,

 

C: Yes, there was Arcadia too, I don't remember the writer. Shame on me. He was nominated for the Clark award at the time. Ha, blimey. Sorry. If anyone remembers.

 

Kris: Is it Ian Pears?

 

C: Yes, thank you! Yeah, there was an interactive side to it, and it changed the story completely from the print experience but I can't read the interactive side anymore because it was on my iPad and my iPad died. So. Yeah.

 

Sean: Hopefully someone will crack the code to connect experimentation with longevity and accessibility, but I think there’s a lot of good creatives out there so there's hope. So, my good friend Zach Morgenstern asked about How do you see the future of sci fi children's work, art and/or graphic novel novels for, for older audiences. Do you think there's going to be like more of a crossover - there already is a bit of one. Do you think it's going to increase or decrease or… yeah?

 

Stew: So I think you'd have to look at Tales From the Loop from last year, or 2018, I think it’s a great example of that crossover and I would love to see more of that. I don't know how you make it mainstream. And so good old capitalism comes in and says is that necessarily ever going to be something that makes enough money for people to want lots of it, but I would lap it up personally.

 

Sean: Yeah, same here.

 

Kris: I think it often is children's works, like they will actually often get even more remembered anyway, and I feel like it’s going on there. So, like you go to the 50s and people  would be very sniffy about a lot of children's fantasy that was coming out of Britain at the time. But then, but then that's also the ones we remember fondly, and I do feel like some of these barriers are starting to, are starting to break down and thinking about like children's graphic novels that like, they're often actually the ones that are outselling the sort of like, they often like, you go to a bookstore they're ones that are outselling, say, a Dark Knight's: Metal that DC has decided to put out as a collection this year.


[Pop-up from Adrienne Joy: That’s a really interesting point - will we still be reading in 80 years? Or will we be watching popular future-Youtubers do dramatic readings of past classics?]

 

C: Yeah, I can’t tell. I stopped at Diana Wynne Jones, sorry.

 

Sean: Okay, well, at least we got some interesting points.

 

Stew: Sorry just, just a little bit more on, on children's work specifically. 

 

Sean: Yes!

 

Stew: I have children, 14 and 12, and they read a lot, because I've trained them well. And then, I think I look at what they're reading now and I look at what friends of our’s children who were same age reading 10 or 15 years ago, and the market is radically different. You know, a lot of those friends with older children they read, they read Harry Potter and they read a couple of other series, and those are the big things they read, and my kids can go into the shop now and they can look and they can kind of - and Harry Potter is just a tiny piece on the shelf, because there's so many, there's so many series, there's so many options for them. And I think that's a great thing because that is building, it’s building into them a desire to want to read and to read and to read because there's so many different worlds, so many different options for them. And when I look back what I was reading at their age, I look at classics, and I think, Ursula K. Le Guin for instance, I look at that I think it's still relevant, but then I look at what my daughter is reading and I think it's gonna find it really hard to compete with what you’re reading, because it's so, there's so much, it's so well put together and there's so many options for her to choose from, that I, I kind of look at some of those classic books I think they're a little bit stuffy, they're a little bit…  they're still brilliant but they haven't aged into what people, what my children want to read now. So I think there's a really big growing market there, and the more power to it, because those people are going to come out of that period of their life being adult readers, and I think that's, you know, that can only be good for all of us.


Sean: I agree.

 

C: If I may jump on that. I'm currently rewatching… well, I'm currently watching for the first time, Blake’s Seven. I had never watched Blake’s Seven. And the first few episodes, I was just shocked by the storytelling. You know, I grew up - well, it started at the time I was born in 1978, so I should know this kind of storytelling. But, in fact, it was such a dated, you know, kind of storytelling. And I wonder in 80 years, will our way of telling stories be just as dated?

 

Sean: My guess would be yes, we're moving at such a fast pace these days and things are changing so often that, you know, and that actually goes into Adri’s question: Will we still be reading in 80 years or will we be watching popular future-YouTubers do dramatic readings of past classics? So will, will we be changed that much or not only will the way books are written be changed, but will the way books be conveyed to the reader or listener in this case be changing too?

 

C: I'm going to say two things. The first one is that studies are proving that we are, at the moment, reading, so, so, so much more than we ever did. Why? Because before, there were a lot more persons who didn't have access to books, or to - or weren't taught how to read. So it's not a matter of, [dramatic voice] we are reading less, it’s awful, civilization - civilization is collapsing, no it’s not, it's - well, yes it is, but not along the same route. The second thing is will we be able to read? Actually will we still have the time, the resources, the leisure? I think that in one way or another storytelling will always exist, because since humanity existed, it existed. You know, it's part of us. So, it doesn't matter that we will read as we do it at the moment. What matters are the stories.

 

Sean: Yeah.  And The Story Collector says I do think oral storytelling will always be a thing, especially…especially if you look at how audiobooks are selling like hotcakes. 

So yeah that is true. There, there is a, there's still a fair share of readers, but people are changing the way… I do consider like audiobooks still reading, so there are, people are changing the way that they consume.


[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: @Kitty G, exactly! I think it’s related to accessibility and time constraints as well.]


[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Or just uploading stuff directly to our brains via aug/neuralink]

 

Stew: Absolutely. And actually, the important thing for me about audiobooks, is that what I've discovered is a lot of friends who don't read, have discovered work through audiobooks, because they do listen. And so, for me that's that's bringing in people who wouldn't have accessed books in the traditional paper format, or even on Kindle or whatever-


[Pop-up from Kopratic: I hope audiobooks remain popular in the future]


Stew: - Because they, it was, it was the fact that the words were on a page that was the problem for them. And the fact that they can now sit in their car or they can be at the table working on something and they can have the book playing in their ear, for them that has transformed the way they access stories and I think that's brilliant. 

 

[Pop-up from Ellana Rose Thornton-Wheybrew: Accessibility is essential - audio books were only for the blind but now they are mainstream; ebooks allow more people to read without having to physically hold books. Libraries doing both are so important.]


Sean: Yeah, I do, I do think we're in a good place where books still exist, reading is still an option. It's just an expansion, it's not taking away from readers, it's just adding people who didn’t read in the past.

 

Kris: Um..

 

C: Absolutely, and someone mentioned - oh, sorry Kris

 

Kris: No, you go on. I think it’s good.

 

C: Someone mentioned accessibility and audiobooks are such, such an important part for people who are dyslexic, who are blind or who have visual impairments and they are still in contact with what literature is putting out at the moment. It’s fantastic.

 

Sean: Yeah.

 

Kris: I can remember when I was younger with um, audiobooks like, it was still on cassette tape back then. But, it was, I remember sort of like, learning to read certain things where, if didn’t have time with someone else, with parents both working, I would have an audiobook version, I’d be bought an audio book on tape, and then bought the actual book. And then what it was then you could just follow along and that way then I was learning reading interactively even though there wasn't someone around to talk to.

 

Sean: Yeah. And I know people who do that for various reasons and like, it's some people think that augments the experience to have it both like, seeing the words and listening to it, it's like you're getting double the... well it’s the same content, you're getting double the power of it. And you're also getting different interpretations like what you may read in your head may sound different from what the audio reader is expressing, and that could definitely change your interpretation of the story. Any more questions? I think we have like five or six minutes left, so.


[Pop-up from Ellana Rose Thornton-Wheybrew: I wonder what will be popular title wise - long titles are fairly popular, but the longer titles are ridiculous to remember sometimes]


Sean: Or did anyone else want to expand on the whole audio thing, or are we good there?

 

C: Oh, I can show up books and you tell me if you think that they will still be read in 80 years! Okay: that one. [Holds up The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams on screen]

 

Stew: The Ninth Rain.

 

C: The Ninth Rain! Yeah! By Jen Williams. Posterity! What do you think?

 

Sean: I think so, it's a, it's a good one. It's a good one.

 

Kris: I feel it's gonna be sort of like, I don't think it's gonna be one that will sort of like be one of the absolute sort of like classics. But I feel like it's gonna be one of the ones that sort of like, fantasy fans are going to keep talking about reading? Just like there's people that sort of like really remember the days of fantasy in the 80s, and they are sort of like most of the big titles that are there and I feel like that's what that's gonna go in there. Also, I feel like, just looking at, because I developed my own list of what I would like to be the future, in so,o;ar, I also feel that actually some of these slightly more literary fantasies that have been coming out of the last 20 years… I hope are still going to be read. Things like, I was thinking about The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, and more recently, Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron, because I feel like, they’re still, like they show a great deal of skill and style and there’s still going to be - and there's still lots of, like, interesting elements you can discuss with them, they're still relevant and they still are also just a fun read to go through. And you can definitely just pick them up and enjoy them. Which, I mean, I'm pretty sure that some people will still be reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and I think that's a great book for the years, but at the same time, it's a very hard one I find to recommend to people. Because, I say it's brilliant …but it's also over 1000 pages long and you have to read a lot of footnotes.

 

Sean: Yeah.

 

C: The BBC Show is good.

 

Kris: Yeah, and people pick it up. Yes.

 

Sean: Any, any other books that you want to?

 

C: Oh yes!  I have plenty.

 

Stew: I’m just going to jump in while you are picking yours up. So, it was published in ‘96, I think, in Japan but it’s only just made it into English and that's The Memory Police.

 

Sean: Oh yeah,

 

Kris: Oooh…

 

Stew: by Yōko Ogawa.  Oh my word it's a tremendous book, it is an absolutely tremendous book. And one of the reasons it's tremendous is that, obviously written when it was written. It's extremely prescient about how fascism comes to take a hold of society, and what it, what you will go through as an ordinary person dealing with fascism, the contortions you will go through to continue to try to live your life as new rules are laid down, and laid down and laid down until there's nothing left for you. And not only is that, you know, that is so subtly woven throughout the book but it's just so beautifully written. I remember picking it up and opening the first page and thinking, “Oh, I'm really going to enjoy this book” in the first two or three paragraphs, so that comes with a very hearty recommendation, and it's one that I really hope, it's certainly stood the test of time over the last three decades. I hope, I hope people will still be looking at it and going, yes you know this is a subtle exploration about how 

politics can go wrong.

 

C: I ahh.  Ah.. sorry Sean

 

Sean: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

 

C: I think that political stories may last longer, because we are always, always confronted to the same dangers and the same issues and, maybe in different ways, and in different forms, but extremism sadly will always be a part of humanity. And so, these books, they may last because they tell something that we will always encounter.

 

Stew: Yeah. Lis Riba asked what the book title was, it's The Memory Police.

 

Sean: Yeah. And Katie asks “What do people think about Game of Thrones longevity”, any… I …some person said that it already is starting to lose this longevity and I agree, but I'm open for rebuttals, if anyone has it.

 

Kris: If I was to take a guess, I would say it's going to have some memory but not a huge amount. I feel it’s going to be like… If I was to make a prediction, I feel like it's gonna be maybe be something like the Belgariad is thought of now. It has its fans. It was very well regarded at the time, it's still going to have some people that do it, but it's not going to be necessarily one of the all-time classics, in the same way. At least that's my feeling about it and I think that also does to some extent go down to, I think what we've talked about before with sequels as well, that, like, you can enjoy A Game of Thrones I guess as a standalone, but it's still like, it's not like it's: ‘Ooh, it's a neat storytelling that has has gone there and then you can then put it down there if you want to’. I feel like that when people go to rediscover it and then they find that they have to pick up a lot of other books…

 

C: Hmm..

 

Kris: …to actually understand it, It’s gonna be those kind of series that you have to read a lot of to get to the end of them and they’re not discrete in themselves, I feel like those are probably not going to do as well. But that's my guess.

 

Sean: I think we're out of time so do you all want to let people know how they can find you, like on social media? I think there's like social media somewhere…within something? But I'm not technically astute, not technologically astute so tell people your Twitter or your blog or your website or anything. 

 

C: Okay I’m going -

 

Kris: Ok I’ll go first -

 

C: Oh, go.

 

Kris: Sorry, I can be found on twitter at @hammard_1987, or you can find me at most places blogger on the internet. Most commonly, at Geek Syndicate, Galactic Journey and Cloaked Creators. 

 

Sean: Okay.

 

C: I am on Twitter I am @themiddleshelf1. Don't forget the one because the other one I think is building shelves, really, and my blog is themiddleshelf.org.

 

Sean: Okay, I heard that it links to Twitter or below so you don't have to say that but you can say your website or something.

 

Stew: And my last novel Tangles Game you should go to find it any good bookshop. 

 

Sean: Alright.

 

C: And it’s great!

 

Sean: And I am at nerds-feather.com and also reviewing for FIYAH literary magazine, and some other places, sometimes, mostly just those two. And, yeah, thanks, thanks for, thanks to the panellists for facilitating such a great discussion thanks for the viewers for asking such great questions too and being very interactive and being nice and amazing. And I think, I think we've covered everything that I wanted to cover. Thank you very much. Oh, I think Kitty’s coming on. 

 

Kitty G: I’m back to end things. No, thank you guys that was interesting I was listening on the whole time and nodding and sighing and so on, but it was really interesting. I'm sure everyone had a great time we had some great discussion. Thank you to you guys.

 

C: Thank you very much!

 

Stew: Thank you!

 

C: Good Bye!

 

Kitty G: And there will be other panels as well so if you guys want to go and check out the timetable that's also linked below to the other Fringe content. Thanks everyone for joining us. Have a great rest of your day. 

 

C: Bye!

 

Stew: Bye!

 

Special thanks to Amy Brennan for drafting the transcript of this panel, with help from https://otter.ai.
Responsibility for final text lies with Adri Joy - for any corrections or comments, please get in touch via Twitter.