some things I said on Baycon panels

Unfinished Tolkien: The Children of Hurin

It's a common criticism of Tolkien that Frodo and the Fellowship get every possible break from providence. Even acts of evil - the attack of Saruman's orcs on the party, the final treachery of Gollum - turn unexpectedly to good, and if the reader doesn't notice this, Gandalf points it out for you. But this isn't the work of a clumsy authorial hand. Providence, fate, luck, really are looking out for Frodo. Tolkien was a Christian and believed in these things. Frodo can't waft to the Mountain without exertion, but if he makes the supreme effort, then his fate will help him. In The Children of Húrin the exact opposite situation prevails. Morgoth has placed a mighty curse on Húrin and all his kin. It is the essence of this curse that Morgoth need not reach out and zap them on individual occasions. Their luck has gone all wrong. Where for Frodo and the Fellowship, even evil deeds done to them rebound for good, here even the kindest and most generous deeds rebound for evil; and Túrin's own character dooms him in the same way that Frodo's character saves him. Circumstances all go against Túrin despite all his efforts, and this story is far more explicit about the role of fate than anything Gandalf says, for Morgoth explains it all to the captive Húrin, and - in a frame of bone-chilling cruelty - binds him and makes him watch it unfold: all the sorrow that will strike down his wife and children.

Plot Point Research

I absolutely agree that it's important to get details correct, and the best way to do so is not by research but by really knowing the subject. If it isn't something physical that you can learn by doing, but a matter of vocabulary and terminology, read lots of original sources and see how the terms are actually used. There seems to be a requirement that American fantasy authors can't write about British nobility without getting the terminology all wrong. The rules are very complicated, but you should make at least an effort to study them. In fact, if you follow just one simple rule it'll eliminate 90% of the errors, and that rule is: you can't be Lord Firstname and Lord Lastname at the same time. So if your character's name is Lord Peter Wimsey, he's called that or Lord Peter, but he can't be called Lord Wimsey. And if he were Lord Wimsey, it'd be just as wrong to call him Lord Peter. They mean totally different things.

Energy Policy

My only personal connection with energy policy was a stint working for a pilot nuclear fusion project at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, pushing papers around rather than formulating policy. So I claim no expertise on fusion, but the impression I got there accords with the comments of the previous speaker, that fusion is a hopeful but technically tricky, rather Rube Goldbergesque proposition. So I'd just like to point out that we already have a tested, functioning, fairly reliable fusion reactor a mere 93 million miles away, which strikes me as a safe distance for it, and my proposal for an energy policy is a humble suggestion that we spend a little more time thinking about how best to utilize it.

The Seven Wonders of the World

Two of the original Seven Wonders were Really Big Statues, so for the modern list I'd like to consider some of the really big, awe-inspiring statues I've personally seen. There's a reconstructed replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, and inside by the altar, as is speculated that the original once had, is a towering, forty-foot high statue of Athena, painted in bright, garish colors as is now believed the Greeks did. You walk into the building and see that thing looming at you, and you say "Oh my god!" which is the right reaction, as it is a god. Then there's a statue outside the Museum of Natural History in New York. To enter the museum, you walk up this long flight of outside stairs, and at the top of the stairs is a huge, monumental, oversize statue of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse facing out towards Central Park. You walk around the statue, and behind it are the doors to the museum. So when you're done in the museum, you open those same doors, and as you do so, right in front of your face is the biggest bronze horse's ass you have ever seen. This remains one of the most memorable sights I have ever seen in New York, and I would like to nominate that horse's ass as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.