Innominate Eastercon - Friday

This year’s 68th Easter Science Fiction convention saw us driving to the Birmingham Hilton Metropole, next to the NEC, the same hotel as used for Illustrious in 2011.  We left plenty of time for the drive, as the travel-pundits were predicting road chaos.  There was no road chaos. That left us plenty of time for lunch before starting to go to the sessions.

The first session I attended was a two-person panel on Biotechnology and the Law.  Dr Helen Pennington and Dr Colin Gavaghan talked on a variety of aspects of how the law is maybe failing to keep up with scientific advances.  CRISPR/Cas9, a technique to edit out genes from the genome, was mentioned a lot, including the fact that it can be used to produce GM organisms that are indistinguishable at the DNA level from organisms “naturally” bred to have the gene removed.  The consensus was that items should be labelled so consumers could exercise choice: some don’t want to eat GM food, some prefer GM food, as it doesn’t tend to have the trace amounts of natural fungal microtoxins that organic food does. Nevertheless, Scotland and New Zealand have banned the growing of all GM crops, not just food crops, in order to present a clean “green” image; this is ironic, given that Scotland does not exactly have a healthy food reputation!  The current “over the counter” availability, cheapness and ease-of-use of CRISPR led on to discussion of potential dangers; the panellists weren’t too worried, given the difficulty of keeping the GM organism alive: “any back-garden bio-terrorist is likely just to kill themselves, and a couple of neighbours”.  Given the potential untraceability of GM organisms, the suggestion was the most important legislation change is to require registering trials and publishing results, as is now beginning to happen for medical trials, to stop the covering up of “mistakes”.

Victorian times: Dinner in the Iguanodon Model, 1854

Next I went to a talk on Dinosaurs in fact and fiction by Dr Will Tattersdill. Dinosaurs are complicated: there are the “real” dinosaurs that existed in Deep Time, and there is our changing knowledge of dinosaurs since their discovery in Victorian times, to our better but still imperfect knowledge today.  They form a perfect link between the “two cultures” of arts and sciences: you can’t have a dinosaur without scientific activity and physical evidence, but you need imagination and art to “flesh out” a whole animal from a few bones or partial skeleton.  As science advances, our knowledge increases, but our dead images, our wrong images, stay with us, too, in books, in toys.  Arguing that these “old” dinosaurs are wrong is robbing us of our pasts, of our childhoods, in much the same way that arguing Pluto is not a planet does.  We have a nostalgia for outmoded science. In his essay “Dinomania” Stephen Jay Gould writes “When I was a child, ornithopods laid their eggs and then walked away forever.  Today these same creatures are the very models of maternal, caring, politically correct dinosaurs.”  Just look at the tenses and model of time in that quote!  Will speculates that dinosaurs are perfect for SF readers: we have the “cognitive agility” to hold multiple worlds, each with their own rules, and complex models of time, in our heads; this skill is needed to hold all the different “human pasts” of dinosaurs, too.  The talk covered more: history, cultural imperialism, phylogenetic trees, gender, SF stories, … you name it.  Brilliant stuff; I’m looking forward to his book due out end of 2019.

Next came David Allan’s quiz, loosely based on Pointless.  The team of 4 did well, hampered as they were on occasion by one of the options not appearing on their sheets, only on the screen visible to the audience.  Picture round: Name the alien.  Alternate letter round: Fictional planets: _A_I_O_R (Majipoor), _A_L_F_E_ (Gallifrey), A_R_K_S (Arrakis), M_D_E_I_ (Midkemia),  Title of First Novel in Trilogy on Being Given the Second, … When the surprisingly low scores for some of the more obvious options were revealed, the audience demanded to know who on earth the consulted panel were.

Then it was time for the opening ceremony.  As traditional, the Guests of Honour were invited up onto the stage, as were the con committee, for applause.  Afterwards, Dr Emma King from the Royal Institution gave an excellent presentation that involved lots of things going bang.

For the final item of my day, I went along to a panel on Making Money from Art and Craft in the SFF Community.  I am not myself an artist, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a friend who is, who sells a few fantasy-related items on eBay.  I went to find out if there is more they could do.  In summary, and unsurprisingly, if you want to make more than just your costs back, you are going to have to move from a hobby to a profession, which many crafters don’t want to do.  But I did discover the existence of something called silver clay.  I won’t do anything with this knowledge, other than enjoy the fact that I now know about this.

one picture in the style of another

Rather than just looking at others’ work, I’ve been playing around with the “one picture in the style of another”, using the software available online at authors’ website.

I’ve been systematically trying pictures, each in the style of all the others, to come up with an interesting set.  I got the following:

(click to embiggen)

The four original pictures are each a 500 x 500 pixel portion of: Hokusai’s The Great Wave, van Gogh’s The Starry Night, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and a woodland scene I photographed at Wai-O-Tapu in New Zealand.

The leading diagonal shows the original pictures.  Each row shows one original in the style of all the other pictures; each column shows all the pictures in the style of one original.

I think I like the “in the style of the Great Wave” column best, but they are all interesting and nice to look at, especially the twiggy Mona Lisa.

Hours of harmless fun available…

one thousand miles

I’m now back home in the UK, after a lot of sitting in planes.

Here is almost, but not quite, a map of the travelling I did while in New Zealand.

Google maps gives me a “route cannot be modified further”, so I cannot put in the precise route from Dargaville to Whangarei.

Now I didn’t actually drive all of that myself: the trip to Cape Reinga was in a coach.  But hey, I travelled about a thousand miles.  Well, plus the 20 thousand plus miles to get there and back!

I saw so many stunningly beautiful and amazing things.  And yet the map shows how little of the country I actually covered: less than half of North Island, and none at all of the larger (and I am told, even more beautiful) South Island.  Next time…

Hamilton Gardens

Today was another relaxed day with my friends, breakfasting on duck egg and honey pancakes, chatting, then pottering around their smallholding.  In the afternoon we visited the nearby Hamilton Gardens.  This has a variety of different areas: we explored the Paradise Collection, the Fantasy Collection, and the Productive Collection, leaving the Cultivar Collection for another time (maybe!).

These collections were individual gardens in a variety of styles.  Interestingly, these gardens were not linked by a continuous path, but each was reached through a small "portal" area, which acted like a palette cleanser between one garden and the next.

Google Earth view of the various gardens.  The three "portals" are visible as walled circles (left, centre), and a hedged square (right).  The circular "snail" towards the centre top is the entrance to the entire collection.

First we went to the Paradise Collection, accessed through the square hedged portal.

portal area to the Paradise Collection

panorama: Japanese Garden of Contemplation

view through a ceramic bamboo screen: Chinese Scholars Garden

the 1.4m long, 250kg, bronze Celestial Yuan of Taihu

view down to the Chinese Scholars Garden

a riot of spring colour in the Indian Char Bagh Garden

Italian Renaissance Garden

The Paradise Collection also included an English Flower Garden (which brought it home to me more forcefully that it is barely even spring here at the moment), and a Modernist Garden (hmm, yes, well).

Then it was off to the Fantasy Collection, through its circular portal.

the Tudor Garden -- although it reminded me more of Portmeirion

pavilion: Chinoiserie Garden

There was also a Tropical Garden in this collection, but since I was in sub-tropical rain forest earlier in the week looking at massive trees, I was not as taken with it as the others.  Further gardens are being prepared, including a Surrealist Garden,  We glimpsed parts of this in skeletal form through a hedge; a suitably surreal experience.

Finally, the Productive Collection, through its circular portal.  This portal was rather interesting.

Google Earth view of the portal: there seem to be strange curved lines running across it.

the portal from the ground, showing the various curves in closeup

My friend asked me "do you know what this is?"  I stared at it for a while, and it was the asymmetrical figure eight shapes that gave it away, especially combined with the spike casting a shadow (out of view).  The figure eights look like analemmas, the shape traced out in the sky by the sun at a given time of the day over the year.  Here it's the path of the shadow cast by the sun.  There were three analemmas, for the path traced at noon, and at an hour before and after noon.  The long curves going across the picture are the paths traced by the shadow of the spike over a day, for several different days of the year.  What a wonderful concept!  An it might get incorporated into a future plan for our own garden, to complement the armillary sphere we got a few years back.

Finally, it was the Productive Collection.

traditional Maori productive garden: Te Parapara Garden

The collection included a Herb Garden, Kitchen Garden, and Sustainable Backyard, all interesting ideas, but probably better viewed in the summer, when there is more growing.

Then after dinner, the sky was dark, and clear again, so I went out to gawp at the alien stars. And tonight, it was even darker than yesterday, and I spotted both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds!  Perfect.

falling, stars

Today was quite relaxed, staying with friends.  In the morning I looked round their smallholding, with its bees, chickens, ducks, and cows.  In the afternoon we took a short trip out to Bridal Veil Falls.

We walked down a staircase by the 55m drop, stopping half way to take a panorama view:

Bridal Veil Falls, from half way down: panorama view

Then we went on down to the bottom.

Bridal Veil Falls creating rainbows

The noise was tremendous:

Yes, another portrait mode video, but it’s a portrait mode waterfall!

Then we had to walk back up the 55m of staircase…

After that, we drove up to Raglan, to wait and watch the sunset, while drinking hot chocolate.

sunset at Raglan

The reason for this wait, apart from good hot chocolate, was that I had yet to see the southern night sky, due to clouds.  Even my earlier sighting of the full inverted moon had been after dawn.  But tonight was forecast clear, so we waited for sunset, then post twilight, and drove to an unlit place.

The sky!  Full of stars!  Alien stars!!  It was a most peculiar experience, seeing a sky full of completely unfamiliar star patterns.  Oh yes, I identified the Southern Cross, but wasn’t the same seeing it for real as seeing a picture.  For one thing, it’s tiny!

The Milky Way towards the galactic centre is splendid: broad and structured.  I stayed looking up and around for quite a while.

a short round trip of about 140 km

inside holes in the ground

Today was the Waitomo caves.  I booked the “triple cave combo”, and drove along to the first one, the Ruakuri Cave, to join the 9am tour party.  The rain was hammering down outside, but inside it was (mostly!) dry, cold, and quiet.  We had an excellent guide, who knew the history of the cave system, and also had been involved in digging out mud in order to open it up to tourists.

The tour lasted nearly 2 hours, with many wondrous sights.  To get in, we descended a deep shaft using a large spiral ramp.

I didn’t manage a good photo of the entry ramp, so I got a postcard

The sights started almost immediately, with wonderful stalactites (growing down) and stalagmites (growing up).  We learned the water deposits new material at about a cubic centimetre a century.

Stalactites, up close

amazing coral-like structure

sheets of rock

atmospheric lighting

so many stalactites

caves within caves

a large cavern (note the handrail at the bottom, for scale)

other people enjoying the caves in their own way

a giant funnel

After walking round in dazed wonder, we re-emerged blinking into daylight.  The rain had just about stopped, and it was a short drive up to the next site: the Aranui Cave.  This was a shorter tour, just under an hour, but no less spectacular.

small stalactites and stalagmites, some connected

A ceiling full of spikes.  Some are broken.  This cave has been open longer, and in the early days, before it was known how long the stalactites took to grow, tourists were allowed to break pieces off as souvenirs.

over 6 feet high: like a vast leg

a ceiling like ice cream

a vast cavern; see handrail at bottom for scale

a petrified waterfall

I’m running out of things to say other than “wow!”

so fragile to have survived so long in a geologically active region

more petrified falling water

the huge cavern on the way back: see heads at bottom for scale!

this is what makes the stone features -- slowly

When we left this cave, not only had the rain stopped completely, but the sun had come out, and it was a beautiful day.  I had no specific time on my ticket for the third cave trip, so I decided to do the short Ruakuri bush walk, which my host at last night’s B&B had told me was the “best bush walk in New Zealand”.  It goes along a river which itself goes through a natural tunnel (the path goes over the top though).

The sign suggested it was a 30 minute tramp.  I took an hour.  (That sounds better than “it took me an hour”.)

a natural tunnel

the path goes through a twisty tunnel of its own

beautiful mossy trees

a view from inside the river tunnel (view accessed down a dark unlit staircase...)

another tunnel along the path: at least with this one, I could see the other end!

a view down to the river

the other end of the natural tunnel

Although I have no sense of direction, I did get a bit confused along this path as the river seemed to switch direction.  Then I saw a map: the river performs a 180° turn in the tunnel.

On the walk I passed two other people, until I got close to the end, when I passed a noisy crowd of about 10 teenagers on a tramp.  Like with my Kauri forest visit, the solitude was part of the experience.  I don’t know if it is the best bush walk in New Zealand; however, it is an excellent bush walk.

Next, back down the road to the Waitomo glowworm cave.  We weren’t allowed to photograph in this one, as there were a lot of parties milling about, and it gets very dark.  There was a short walk through a big cavern with lots of stalactites: very impressive, then, once our eyes had adjusted, onto a boat to see the glowworms.  Um, wow!  There is a big cave system with a lake that the boat moves slowly and silently down, and a relatively low roof, utterly smothered in glowworms.  When the boat is still, it looks like an exceptionally starry night (except that the points of light are too evenly spaced for stars).  When the boat moves, the shape of the roof becomes apparent.  I’m running out of superlatives, but, amazing!

Official photo of the glowworm caves

Once I had done with Waitomo, I headed off to the Otorohanga Kiwi House, to see some more kiwis.  This site again had a night enclosure, with four kiwis in separate pens.  The largest kiwi, a mature female, was very active, strutting around her enclosure, probing the ground for food.  Then it was feeding time.  The keeper entered her pen with the food, and the kiwi went bonkers, running around, really fast, and kicking the keeper, really hard.  The keeper told us after that she had been hospitalised twice over the years, once from a deep peck, and once when a kick hit her knee (rather than her tough boots).  So much for fragile sweet little birds!

three stuffed kiwis on display; the live kiwis are in a much darker environment

There was a lot more to see, but I had had my fill for the day, and finished off with a short drive to Tamahere, where the friends I’m staying with over the weekend live.

from Waitomo, via caves, to Tamahere, ~ 90km