The WisCon Chronicles, Volume 1

The WisCon Chronicles #1

by L. Timmel Duchamp (Editor), Eileen Gunn, Ellen Klages

L. Timmel Duchamp has assembled a collage of diverse materials to document the thirtieth anniversary of WisCon, which was a grand reunion of most of the convention's previous Guests of Honor. These include the transcript of Samuel R. Delany's interview of Joanna Russ, several essays reflecting on the diverse aspects of the convention, as well as papers presented in the academic track, panel notes and transcripts, an original short story by Rosaleen Love, and Eileen Gunn's snappy series of Q&A with numerous WisCon attendees, among them Ursula K. Le Guin, Julie Phillips, Ted Chiang, Carol Emshwiller, and Suzy McKee Charnas.

* Introduction by L. Timmel Duchamp
* “The WisCon Questions: A Coven of People Who Attended WisCon 30 Answer Random Personal Questions Posed by * Eileen Gunn” (interspersed throughout)
* Q&A--Julie Philips
* “Wonder Woman: Lesbian or Dyke? Paradise Island as a Woman’s Community” by Trina Robbins
* Q&A—Suzy Charnas
* “Welcome Back to the Beginning” by Rachel Swirsky
* “Feminist Think Tanks”—panel transcript notes by Liz Henry
* “A Think Tank Thing for Feminists” by Rosaleen Love
* Q&A: Carol Emshwiller
* Q&A Mark Rich
* Q&A Ellen Klages
* “Lord of the Monsters” by Andrea Hairston
* Q&A Ted Chiang
* Q&A Ursula K. Le Guin
* Q&A Liz Henry
* “The Feminist Romance Panel: Notes” by Micole Sudberg
* “Is Reading Feminist SF a Theory-Building Activity?”—panel transcript notes by Laura Quilter
* Q&A Lisa Tuttle
* “Piercy’s Gendered Cyborgs: Hope, Threats, and Blurred Boundaries” by Linda Wight
* Q&A Diantha Day Sprouse
* “Uncomfortable Politics in Feminist Writing”—panel transcript notes by Laura Quilter
* “The Cultural Appropriation Panel: Notes” by Yoon Ha Lee
* “Researching WisCon Stories: Revisionist History or Re-visioning the Past with the Future in Mind” by Joan Haran
* Q&A K. Tempest Bradford
* Q&A Spike Parsons
* “Who Wants a Revolution? Will a Reform Do?”—panel transcript notes by Liz Henry
* “We Aren’t Civilized Yet: Reflections from the WisCon 30 Panel on Women Warriors” by Nancy Jane Moore
* “‘A Man Is Like A Nut’: Gender and Magic in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Later Earthsea Novels” by Sylvia Kelso
* The Legendary Joanna Russ Interviewed by Samuel R. Delany
* Q&A Jeanne Gomoll
* “A 40 Year-old Con-virgin Goes to WisCon” by Stephen Gold
* “Sympathy and Power: L. Timmel Duchamp Asks Samuel R. Delany a Question”
* “Dry Eyes” by Nisi Shawl
* “No Man’s Land,” an original story by Rosaleen Love

Genres: Nonfiction

202 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2007

About the author

L. Timmel Duchamp was born in 1950, the first child of three. Duchamp first began writing fiction in a library carrel at the University of Illinois in 1979, for a joke. But the joke took on a life of its own and soon turned into a satirical roman a clef in the form of a murder mystery titled "The Reality Principle." When she finished it, she allowed the novel to circulate via photocopies, and it was a great hit in the academic circles in which she then moved. One night in the fall of 1984 she sat down at her mammoth Sanyo computer with its green phosphorescent screen and began writing Alanya to Alanya.

Duchamp spent the next two years in a fever, writing the Marq'ssan Cycle. When she finshed it, she realized she didn't know how to market it to publishers and decided that publishing some short fiction (which she had never tried to write before) would be helpful for getting her novels taken seriously. Her first effort at a short story was "Welcome, Kid, to the Real World," which she wrote in the summer of 1986. Her next effort, however, turned into a novel. (Getting the hang of the shorter narrative form was a lot harder than she'd anticipated.) So she decided to stick with novels for a while. When in fall 1987 a part-time job disrupted her novel-writing, she took the short stories of Isak Dinesen for her model, tried again, and wrote "Negative Event at Wardell Station, Planet Arriga" and "O's Story." And in 1989 she sold "O's Story" to Susanna J. Sturgis for Memories and Visions, "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A." to Kristine Kathryn Rusch for Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, and "Transcendence" to the shortlived Starshore. Her first pro sale, though, was "Motherhood, Etc." to Bantam for the Full Spectrum anthology series.

After that she wrote a lot of short fiction (mostly at novelette and novella lengths), a good deal of which she sold to Asimov's SF. In the late 1990s Nicola Griffith convinced her to try her hand at writing criticism and reviews. In 2004, Duchamp founded Aqueduct Press; since then editing and publishing books (her own as well as other writers') has claimed the lion's share of her time and effort.

She lives in Seattle.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good, interesting articles and other things in here. Even a short story. It makes me more than ready to go to Wiscon this year!

But it also makes me feel dumb. Lots of very smart people talking about things at a level way over my head. Or past my head, because it's not a subject I've thought a lot about or developed much of an interest in.

This is sort of like a slice of Wiscon. If your slice is skewed towards the academic track and and some of the harder panels.

But it did make me feel like I'd missed out. I missed out on the 30th Wiscon, where tons of past guests of honor were milling about, participating in programming, and being smart and interesting.

This book is a little piece of Wiscon history and fascinating reading (even when it did go over my head).

[Haengbok92 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating essays.

[Mills College Library]

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