Halfling Mythcon, day 1
31 July 2021 | Kalimac’s Corner | David Bratman
This was the first of a two-day online Mythcon, something we (the Mythopoeic Society) weren’t prepared to do last year, and are doing in a sort of half-baked manner this year, hence “Halfling.” Full daytimes of three tracks of programming, each track with its own Zoom link, plus additional conversation rooms which (unlike Zoom chats) can be preserved, in a separate service called Discord. About 160 people signed up, typical for Mythcon, and most of the papers had about 12 – 25 attendees, typical for Mythcon. Outstandingly user-responsive tech team.
The day began with an informal gathering in one of the Zoom rooms, featuring a lot of discussion of how unexpected spellings threw us as children. Most memorable was one man who confessed that he stopped reading T.H. White because the word sword had a w in it.
I got through 6 papers and discussion sessions before the typical hot afternoon intermittent failures of my internet connection caused me to give up. Learned surveys of the historical philology and of the Christian faith at the root of Tolkien’s work and an inter alia demonstration that Gandalf is the result of Tolkien rethinking who Odin ought to be; discussions of the whither of the Society’s awards and of favorite fantasy short fiction; and a paper on Superman.
This last was particularly interesting,…
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