Readercon 14 program | Readercon Web Services

Names followed by an asterisk (*) indicate participation pending finalization of travel plans. All times shown are PM except those ending with "a".

FRIDAY

[1] FRI 3:00 (G) Mind-Boggling the Headbangers: Punk Rock and Spec Fic. Holly Black, F. Brett Cox (+M), Elizabeth Hand, Gwyneth Jones, Shariann Lewitt. Most of Readercon's founders (four out of five) and many of its attendees are heavily into punk / indie rock. What's the connection?
[2] FRI 3:00 (RI) Susan 'Splains Runes. Susan R. Matthews. Chautauqua / Discussion. A rune workshop, with Matthews' Opinionated and Frequently Baseless Pronouncements on the Old Norse Runes Together with Rude Comments about the Younger Rune Row, and stunt readings.
[3] FRI 3:00 (VT) Walter H. Hunt reads from The Dark Wing and its forthcoming (Tor, 2003) sequel The Dark Path. (30 min.).
[4] FRI 3:30 (VT) Aline Boucher Kaplan reads from "Assisted Living," about aliens stealing energy from old folks to power innovation. (30 min.).
[5] FRI 4:00 (G) Don't Read Too Much Into This Panel Blurb. Hal Clement, David G. Hartwell, Alexander C. Irvine, James D. Macdonald, Barry N. Malzberg*, Teresa Nielsen Hayden (+M). When we read Heinlein's The Puppet Masters at age thirteen, we instantly got the irony of the last lines: "Puppet masters--the free men are coming to kill you. Death and destruction!" After all, how could a race that felt compelled to commit genocide be "free?" Of course, years later we realized that Heinlein meant no irony at all. Is reading more into a text than the author intended legitimate, or just an interesting form of misprision? A strong argument can be made that any meaning you can find in a text is fair game, author's intentions be damned. A perhaps equally strong argument can be made that that's just silly.
[6] FRI 4:00 (RI) Bookaholics Anonymous Annual Meeting. Sarah Smith (M), with Shariann Lewitt, Andrew I. Porter, Tonya D. Price, Wen Spencer, and attendees. Discussion. The most controversial of all 12-step groups. Despite the appearance of self-approbation, despite the formal public proclamations by members that they find their behavior humiliating and intend to change it, this group, in fact, is alleged to secretly encourage its members to succumb to their addictions. The shame, in other words, is a sham. Within the subtext of the members' pathetic testimony, it is claimed, all the worst vices are covertly endorsed: book-buying, book-hoarding, book-stacking, book-sniffing, even book-reading. Could this be true? Come testify yourself!
[7] FRI 4:00 (NH) Greer Gilman reads a work in progress, a third story following "Jack Daw's Pack" and "A Crowd of Bone." (30 min.).
[8] FRI 4:00 (VT) Stepan Chapman reads a series of short humorous pieces under the heading of "Insect Mythologies". (30 min.).
[9] FRI 4:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Suzy McKee Charnas; Ellen Datlow.
[10] FRI 4:00 (E) Autographs. Jeffrey Ford; James Alan Gardner.
[11] FRI 4:30 (ME) Reader Cannes 1: Collaborating With Filmmakers. Resa Nelson. Films and Talk / Discussion (90 min.). What happens when science fiction/fantasy/horror writers hook up with a local independent filmmaker? How do writers take a short story and adapt it for a short film? How do you choose a story that will translate to film well? How do you deal with the fact that instead of being the sole "owner" of a story, you now have to work with filmmakers on rewriting a script until everyone is happy with it? If you're a short story writer, how do you write an original script for film? Can you turn it into a short story and sell it after the film has been made? What is it like to see the short film after it's been shot and edited by others---and you have no control over that process? Nelson will address these and other questions as she shows (on a big screen) two 20-minute films: "Intruder" (produced by Nelson and adapted by her from her short story "The Basement Apartment"), and "Follow" (written by Cary Brown with Nelson as associate producer, casting director, etc.).
[12] FRI 4:30 (NH) Patrick O'Leary reads a chapter from The Impossible Bird or a new short story. (30 min.).
[13] FRI 4:30 (VT) Jeffrey Thomas reads "The Fork," from Leviathan 3. (30 min.).
[14] FRI 5:00 (F) Density in Fiction. John Clute, Paul Di Filippo (+M), Greer Gilman, Ellen Key Harris-Braun, Gwyneth Jones. Some books are dense. Reading them is not a matter of breezing through, watching a text-driven cinematic experience in one's mind. Each page--maybe each sentence--raises questions, so that one must stop and think, or page back to find some reference. Many of Readercon's favorite writers work frequently in this mode. In Gywneth Jones' White Queen, for example, the private thoughts of the human characters, in a social milieu only a few years hence yet in many respects quite strange, demand as much of the reader's attention as the thoughts of the alien visitors. There is no necessary relation between density and quality--many great books read quite transparently, and some dense books are merely clotted. Are there stories that should be told densely and stories that shouldn't, or is this choice independent of content? What are the secrets of effective dense writing? What pitfalls must be avoided?
[15] FRI 5:00 (G) Vampirism and Addiction. Holly Black (+M), Richard Bowes, Suzy McKee Charnas, Adam Golaski, Jon F. Merz. For decades, vampirism was a metaphor for sexual pleasure. Now that that is overt, what is it a metaphor for? Is vampire fiction, in which the vampire or vampirism is sympathetic, actually a metaphor for addiction, and the pleasures of drugs? What is the relation of vampirism to the abuse/recovery movement? Is the vampire an addict without any need for recovery?
[16] FRI 5:00 (RI) Electronic Magazines. Mary Anne Mohanraj. Discussion. Pluses, minuses, markets, things to watch out for . . .
[17] FRI 5:00 (NH) Laurie J. Marks reads from Fire Logic (just out from Tor). (30 min.).
[18] FRI 5:00 (VT) Karl Schroeder reads from Permanence, a hard-sf novel which is also an homage to all the golden space-opera he grew up on. (30 min.).
[19] FRI 5:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Octavia E. Butler; Walter H. Hunt.
[20] FRI 5:00 (E) Autographs. Hal Clement; Jeff VanderMeer.
[21] FRI 5:30 (NH) Rosemary Kirstein reads from The Language of Power, book Four of the Steerswoman series. (30 min.).
[22] FRI 5:30 (VT) Charles Coleman Finlay reads "We Come Not to Praise Washington," an alternate history about freedom and slavery in the early American Republic, from the August F&SF. (30 min.).
[23] FRI 6:00 (F) Colonized By The Future. Judith Berman, John Clute, F. Brett Cox (+M), John Crowley*, Andrea Hairston, Graham Sleight. "I think that SF stories today are more and more beginning to sound like Fables of the Third World: Stories whose protagonists, often human, represent cultures which have been colonized by the future. The future may come in the form of aliens, or the catnip nirvana of cyberspace, or as AIs, or as bio-engineered transformations of our own species: but whatever it touches, it subverts. SF stories of this sort can--depressingly--read rather like manuals designed to train Polynesians in the art of begging for Cargo; but they can also generate a sense of celebration of the worlds beyond worlds beyond our species' narrow path."--John Clute. If we accept that sf is somewhat of a barometer (or leading indicator or driving force) of our culture's attitude towards the future, what does this observation about the flavor of much recent sf tell us--about ourselves and about sf?
[24] FRI 6:00 (G) Psi: The Trope That Refuses to Die. Toni Anzetti, Michael A. Burstein, Jeffrey A. Carver (+M), James Alan Gardner, Cecilia Tan. At a recent symposium at Harvard, some extraordinary evidence for limited precognition was presented: some individuals appear to have a small skin conductance response prior to a randomly generated burst of white noise. None of the faculty members present could find any methodological flaws. Once upon a time, psi powers like these were arguably sf's second leading trope (after space travel). We can think of a number of its reasons for its decline, most obviously the death of its great champion, John W. Campbell, Jr., and the rise of skepticism and the continued lack of hard evidence for psi in the real world. And yet the trope is hardly played out. What's the source of our continued fascination with psi? What sorts of things can we uniquely say about being human in a story featuring psi powers? Would actual scientific evidence for psi change the genre, or has psi speculation always been science fantasy rather than anything resembling hard sf?
[25] FRI 6:00 (ME) Writing in Groups: The Genrettes. Delia Sherman with Rosemary Kirstein and Laurie J. Marks. Talk / Discussion. Sherman and her fellow group members talk about the various dynamics of writer's groups, and how to figure out what kind works for you.
[26] FRI 6:00 (RI) Libraries and Culture. Fred Lerner. Chautauqua / Discussion. Ever since the Sumerians invented writing, people have collected the written word and used those collections. The writings preserved in their libraries were intended to memorialize the greatness of emperors and preserve the contents of sacred texts, to proclaim laws and cure diseases--and to sustain a common vision of the past and uphold an order of things in the present. How did the major societies in world history use libraries, and how were those societies affected by the libraries they created or inherited? Based on Lerner's book, The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age.
[27] FRI 6:00 (NH) Sarah Smith reads from Chasing Shakespeares, her novel about the Shakespeare authorship controversy--prefaced by a talk explaining why it is not entirely stupid to consider such a thing. (60 min.).
[28] FRI 6:00 (VT) Steven Sawicki reads from "Invisible Friends Too," the follow up novella to "Invisible Friends" which was published in Absolute Magnitude. (30 min.).
[29] FRI 6:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Scott Edelman; Aline Boucher Kaplan.
[30] FRI 6:00 (E) Autographs. Ellen Datlow; Donald Kingsbury.
[31] FRI 6:30 (VT) Jennifer Barlow reads from Hamlet Dreams, a dark fantasy published by Aardwolf Press in January. (30 min.).
[32] FRI 7:00 (F) Race in F&SF. Samuel R. Delany, Hiromi Goto, Andrea Hairston, Shariann Lewitt, Mary Anne Mohanraj (+M), Sheree R. Thomas. Certainly there have been other literary portrayals of slavery as rich, as challenging to stereotype, and as utterly harrowing as Octavia Butler's Kindred. Yet as readers of imaginative literature, we like to think that a novel like Kindred goes places, does things, moves the reader in ways that no realist text ever could. Race should be a topic that speculative fiction excels at exploring. Yet there is no separate entry for Race or Racial Conflict in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and the entry on Politics observes that "the tendency of genre sf has been to ignore the issue or sanctimoniously to take for granted its eventual disappearance." Use of the alien as a metaphor for the person of color is a standard trope of liberal sf, but perhaps race is one topic that demands a literal approach (e.g., Derrick Bell's "The Space Traders"). Arguments that this overall neglect simply follows from the scarcity of sf writers of color may be confusing cause and effect. With the success of the anthology Dark Matter, the founding of the Carl Brandon Society, and a slow but steady influx of writers of color, we may finally have reached a day when literature's most powerful mode begins to address society's most intractable problem. What sorts of stories do we want to read? What sorts do we need to write?
[33] FRI 7:00 (G) Drugs and Creativity. Richard Bowes, Elizabeth Hand, Matt Jarpe, Lissanne Lake, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Allen Steele (+M). You don't hear much pro-drug talk these days. Nevertheless, there are still those who avow that certain drugs aid the creative process. There are others who'll argue (from experience) that such help is always self-deluding. How could it be that drugs actually help the creative process for some people but are destructive for others? Do these two different outcomes correlate to different approaches (unconscious or conscious) to the creative process?
[34] FRI 7:00 (ME) How Psychohistory Joined the New Age: The Evolution of Asimov's Foundation Series. Donald Kingsbury. Talk / Discussion. How Shirley MacLaine (an ancestor of the Mule) implanted mentalics into Isaac Asimov's mind when he wasn't looking while she was disguised as John W. Campbell. Only Shirley knows for sure what happens in the last 500 years of the Galactic Interregnum. Cool! Decode the master plan with clues from the maze architecture at the website ShirleyMacLaine.com.
[35] FRI 7:00 (RI) How I Wrote Permanence. Karl Schroeder. Talk (30 min.).
[36] FRI 7:00 (NH) Jeff VanderMeer reads a series of mostly humorous short pieces from City of Saints & Madmen: The Book of Ambergris: (30 min.).
[37] FRI 7:00 (VT) Alexander C. Irvine reads from A Scattering of Jades (just out from Tor), a historical conspiracy fantasy involving Aztec myth, PT Barnum, slavery, and Mammoth Cave. (30 min.).
[38] FRI 7:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Paul Levinson; Shane Tourtellotte.
[39] FRI 7:30 (RI) How I Wrote Tainted Trail. Wen Spencer. Talk (30 min.).
[40] FRI 7:30 (NH) Michael Cisco reads from his just-completed novel, The Tyrant. (30 min.).
[41] FRI 7:30 (VT) Jeff Paris reads "The Yayomi Tea Cup": a dimension composed of the remnants of destroyed universes begins to slip through metaphorical chinks into ours, seeking the return of its favorite diplomat. (30 min.).
[42] FRI 8:00 (F) Style vs. Style vs. Style. Samuel R. Delany, Debra Doyle, James Patrick Kelly, James Morrow (+M), Pat Murphy, Allen Steele. "Style . . . properly arises out of content . . . one must therefore, alas, either develop a new one each time out, or opt for the default value of transparent prose."--Norman Spinrad. If Spinrad is right, then the more an author develops a unique, powerful voice, the more limited they become in terms of content--which would be particularly unfortunate for a writer of speculative fiction. Certainly we can all think of writers whose unique voice sometimes comes across as stylistic ossification when it's applied inappropriately. What are the ways out of this dilemma? How do you develop a range of voices?
[43] FRI 8:00 (G) Ecological Disaster as Foreground and Background. Octavia E. Butler, Thomas A. Easton, Gwyneth Jones, Andrew I. Porter, Tonya D. Price, Peter Watts (+M). In the 60's and 70's the notion of ecological catastrophe was so fresh that whole books, like John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, were written about it. In the years since, we seem to have become inured to the notion; ecological damage is now an almost ubiquitous part of the background of imagined futures, but almost never a central plot element. There is currently a healthy scientific debate about the extent of ecological damage and a corresponding policy debate as to how drastic our response needs to be. Is anyone writing sf that focuses on these concerns? Or have all the foreground uses of ecological disaster been strip-mined? And do the ecological backgrounds of current sf do justice to the range of possible futures?
[44] FRI 8:00 (ME) Bodyslamming the Android: The Link Between Speculative Fiction and Professional Wrestling. Craig Shaw Gardner. Discussion.
[45] FRI 8:00 (RI) (How to) Start Your Own Magazine / Press. Dan Barlow, Adam Golaski, Gavin Grant (+M), Jeff Paris. The tools are there, the urge probably pops up now and again, why not go for it? Anyone with real thought (and some money and time) can do it. Start your own 'zine, publish a chapbook, harangue your friends until they contribute stories and more, then make them rewrite it until it's as good as it can be. Or start your own small press and bring new books into print. Or do both! Our panelists share their experiences and lead a discussion on the whys and hows of jumping into the fray.
[46] FRI 8:00 (NH) John Kessel reads "Of New Arrivals, Many Johns, and the Music of the Spheres": a Writer's Heaven story, in continuation of the series that Barry Malzberg wrote in the late 1970s. (30 min.).
[47] FRI 8:00 (VT) Holly Black reads a chapter from her young adult novel Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (forthcoming in October from Simon & Schuster). Set against a backdrop of trailer parks, decrepit merry go rounds, and old beaches, Tithe tells the story of a girl who returns to New Jersey only to find herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient struggle between rival faerie kingdoms (30 min.).
[48] FRI 8:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Jeffrey Ford; Ian Randal Strock.
[49] FRI 8:30 (NH) Daniel P. Dern reads "For Malzberg It Was They Came" (forthcoming in F&SF), and, time permitting, "`As You Know, Bob,'" Said Alice" and/or "Announcements." (30 min.).
[50] FRI 8:30 (VT) Marcel Gagne reads "The Word Unspoken," a new YA short story (published in Explorer). (30 min.).
[51] FRI 9:00 (ME) Online Writing Workshops: Finding a Writing Community via the Internet. Ellen Key Harris-Braun and Charles Coleman Finlay, with Geary Gravel. Talk / Discussion. An introduction to the Web-based sf, fantasy, and horror workshops offered to aspiring writers by Online Writing Workshops, LLC (run by an editor, an author, and a programmer). The OWW for sf&f and the OWW for horror employ professional, award-winning authors, editors, and writing teachers (all wrapped into one in some cases) such as Kelly Link, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeanne Cavelos, and Paul Witcover. But our members find that they learn the most from their peers--other aspiring writers. How does the workshop enable this to work? Does it work for everybody? What do writers need, or need to do, to make it work for them? Also covered: other online writing workshops and online writing-improvement opportunities for sf&f / horror writers.
[52] FRI 9:00 (RI) Leviathan 3: Approaches to Fantasy. Stepan Chapman, Michael Cisco, Jeffrey Ford, Jeffrey Thomas, Scott Thomas, Jeff VanderMeer (+M). Leviathan 3 from the Ministry of Whimsy Press has been described by various reviewers as possibly the best original anthology of the year. Leviathan 3 has a distinctly surreal edge to it, blending the best of cross-genre writing. The co-editor and several contributors discuss their approaches to fantasy and their stories. What makes for a truly original work of fantasy?
[53] FRI 9:00 (NH) Gwyneth Jones reads from Bold As Love and Castles Made Of Sand, her near-future fantasy sequence about the attempts of a rock 'n' roll counterculture to lead a collapsing U.K. (60 min.).
[54] FRI 9:00 (VT) Susan R. Matthews reads from The Devil and Deep Space (forthcoming November 2003), the fourth Koscuisko novel. Sex, violence, and literary revisionism in Dolgorukij poetic sagas. (30 min.).
[55] FRI 9:00 (Vin) Interstitial Arts Summer Institute Planning Meeting. Heinz Insu Fenkl with Theodora Goss, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Sarah Smith, and attendees. Discussion. A meeting of people who are interested in planning the upcoming Interstitial Arts Summer Institute, which will happen next June in upstate New York. Anyone who is interested in creating a venue in which practitioners and academics can talk about literature, music, and art that straddles or transcends the conventions of genre is welcome.
[56] FRI 9:30 (VT) James Alan Gardner reads from Trapped, forthcoming in October. (30 min.).
FRI 10:00 (F/G) Meet the Pros(e) Party. All of the above and then some. Each writer at the party has selected a short, pithy quotation from their own work, and is armed with a sheet of 30 printed labels with that quote replicated on each. As attendees mingle and meet each pro, they obtain one of his or her labels, collecting them on the wax paper provided. Atheists, agnostics, and the lazy can leave them in the order they acquire them, resulting in one of at least Nine Billion Random Prose Poems. Those who believe in the reversal of entropy can rearrange them to make a Statement. Wearing labels as apparel is also popular. The total number of possibilities (linguistic and sartorial) is thought to exceed the number of still-functional synapses in George W. Bush's brain.

SATURDAY

[57] SAT 09:00a (Vin) Kaffeeklatsch. Glen Cook.
[58] SAT 10:00a (F) Is God Change?. Octavia E. Butler, John Crowley, Teresa Nielsen Hayden (+M), Uncle River, Melissa Scott. Let's talk about fictional religions and/or deities that seem to actually "work" for their adherents . . . from the creations of Octavia Butler and Sheri Tepper to the fivefold pantheon in Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion. What does it take to make a religion "work" in fiction? Are those factors that same as those required to make faith "work" in real life? Has reading or writing about religion influenced your own beliefs and practices?
[59] SAT 10:00a (G) The Changing Standards of SF Criticism. John Clute, Scott Edelman, David G. Hartwell (+M), Barry N. Malzberg, Farah Mendlesohn. The standards of sf criticism have changed dramatically over time. Once, characters were merely asked to be sympathetic and interesting; now they are expected to be three-dimensional. This emphasis on characterization has been accompanied by a concomitant reduction in the demand for fast pacing. What are the driving forces behind these changing standards? Are the critics reflecting the tastes of writers, editors, and readers, or are they leading them?
[60] SAT 10:00a (ME) How I Wrote The Kappa Child. Hiromi Goto. Talk (30 min.).
[61] SAT 10:00a (RI) Clarion West 1999 Reunion. Andrea Hairston, Gwyneth Jones, Tom Sweeney (+M), Sheree R. Thomas, Gordon Van Gelder. Gwyneth Jones and Gordon van Gelder taught (as did Octavia Butler); Andrea Hairston, Sheree Thomas, and Tom Sweeney were students. They talk about the experience.
[62] SAT 10:00a (NH) Michael Swanwick reads "The Last Geek"--"as close to an autobiographical work as I'll ever come," says Swanwick. (30 min.).
[63] SAT 10:00a (VT) Daniel Hatch reads "The Princess of Space," in which the disembodied brain of a 20th century man meets the heiress of a space trading company. (30 min.).
[64] SAT 10:00a (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Susan R. Matthews; Mary Anne Mohanraj.
[65] SAT 10:00a (E) Autographs. Paul Levinson; Pat Murphy.
[66] SAT 10:30a (ME) Sound & Spirit: Lord of the Rings Sneak Preview. Ellen Kushner, with guest appearances by Michael Swanwick. Talk / Discussion (90 min.). When Ellen Kushner became host of the national, public radio show Sound & Spirit,in 1996 she swore that someday she would do an entire hour on The Lord of the Rings. This year, she finally pulled it off! Catch a sneak preview of most of the highly-produced radio piece (including an interview with Michael Swanwick), which will be broadcast in November, 2002. Ask Kushner how and why it happened, and discuss Tolkien, sound and spirit with Kushner and Swanwick.
[67] SAT 10:30a (NH) Elizabeth Hand reads from Mortal Love (forthcoming). (30 min.).
[68] SAT 10:30a (VT) Elspeth Potter reads sf/f erotica: "Camera," space opera that appeared in Tough Girls and Best Lesbian Erotica 2002, "Imperial Service," historical fantasy forthcoming in Galatea, and/or not-yet-published lesbian sf "Free Falling." (30 min.).
[69] SAT 11:00a (F) Feminist F&SF: The State of the Art, 2002. Jeanne Gomoll (+M), Gwyneth Jones, John Kessel, Kelly Link, Laurie J. Marks. Gwyneth Jones has written extensively and provocatively on feminist f&sf. Rather than try and fail to summarize her on-the-record (and, in some cases, ten-year-old) views in three sentences of blurb, we've invited Jones and several other worthy volunteers to discuss the current status and future of feminist sf.
[70] SAT 11:00a (G) Size Matters. Ellen Asher, Dan Barlow (+M), Lisa A. Barnett, Don D'Ammassa, Scott Edelman. The pleasures of reading long and short books can be quite different. Long books can engage us in a way that short ones cannot, but short books provide a unique opportunity for total immersion in their world. What are the market forces driving us towards longer and longer books? Do people no longer value the unique pleasure of finishing a novel in one sitting?
[71] SAT 11:00a (RI) From Slan to Hominids: Evolution in SF and Reality. John Costello, with Michael A. Burstein, Hal Clement, Marcel Gagne, Elspeth Potter, Robert J. Sawyer and attendees. Talk / Discussion.
[72] SAT 11:00a (NH) James Patrick Kelly reads "Undone," one of only two stories published last year to be a Hugo finalist and be selected for all three "Year's Best" anthologies (Dozois, Hartwell / Cramer, and the new Silverberg / Haber). (60 min.).
[73] SAT 11:00a (VT) Group Reading: The Thackery Lambshead Guide To Rare and Discredited Diseases. Stepan Chapman, Michael Cisco, Paul Di Filippo, Jeffrey Ford, Jeffrey Thomas, and Jeff VanderMeer read from the anthology forthcoming from the Ministry of Whimsy Press (60 min.).
[74] SAT 11:00a (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. John Morressy; James Morrow.
[75] SAT 11:00a (E) Autographs. John Crowley; David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.
[76] SAT 12:00 (F) I Didn't See that Coming: Transparent vs. Visible Plotting. Michael Cisco, James Patrick Kelly (+M), James D. Macdonald, Paul Park, Melissa Scott, Michael Swanwick. You might have met fifteen people today, fourteen of whom will prove to be completely irrelevant to your future and one who will change it profoundly. And right now you have no more than an inkling as to who the exception might be. The unpredictably of life is extraordinarily difficult to capture in fiction, because it's the author's job to not bother telling us about the fourteen meaningless encounters. Almost every event narrated in a novel can thus be assumed--and is usually perceived--by the reader to be relevant to the future. These readerly expectations present a real challenge to the author who wants to create plots as surprising as real life.
[77] SAT 12:00 (G) The Fiction of John Brunner. Jim Freund (M), Octavia E. Butler, Lissanne Lake, F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, Ed Meskys.
[78] SAT 12:00 (ME) Reader Cannes 2: The Chronology Protection Case. Paul Levinson. Film with Talk / Discussion (90 min.). Levinson's 1995 Analog novelette "The Chronology Protection Case" was a Nebula and Sturgeon finalist, and has been reprinted four times. It marked the first appearance of NYPD forensic detective Dr. Phil D'Amato, who has since appeared in two more novelettes and two novels (The Silk Code, winner of the Locus Award for best first novel of 1999, and The Consciousness Plague.) Film student Jay Kensinger has turned the story into a 40-minute low-low budget film. We'll see the movie (on DVD and a big screen), and then Levinson will tell how he first found out about it (it was initially made without his involvement or knowledge) and discuss the experience of being adapted. The exquisite feeling of seeing his characters come to life on the screen (without having first read the script), the way in which the movie diverges from details of his story yet captures its essence perfectly --all of these experiences have been (and continue to be) one of his most satisfying, peak experiences as an author.
[79] SAT 12:00 (RI) Science Fiction and Music, Part 2. David Garland, with Stepan Chapman, Eileen Gunn, Eric M. Van, and attendees. Talk / Discussion. Not to be confused with "Rock and Roll Part 2" by Gary Glitter. Last year Garland gave a tour through sf-influenced music. We'll recap that for newcomers, move on to a look at musical references in written SF, and round out the hour with attendees filling in the blanks with their own further examples--either musical or literary. Bring your CD's! Plus a bit of do-it-yourself: a theremin (an electronic musical instrument invented early in the last century) will be provided to facilitate other-worldly keening (and/or a sing-along of "Good Vibrations") by one and all.
[80] SAT 12:00 (NH) Pat Murphy reads either from her latest novel or a new short story---possibly one written on the plane in collaboration with Eileen Gunn. (30 min.).
[81] SAT 12:00 (VT) Mary Turzillo reads "Nefertiti's Tenth Life," from Analog. (30 min.).
[82] SAT 12:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Robert J. Sawyer; Sheree R. Thomas.
[83] SAT 12:00 (E) Autographs. Hiromi Goto; Cecilia Tan.
[84] SAT 12:30 (NH) Suzy McKee Charnas reads from her next book, My Father's Ghost, a venture into nonfiction centering on dealing with an aged parent with whom one's relationship is on a questionable footing. (30 min.).
[85] SAT 12:30 (VT) Gavin Grant reads "Janet, Meet Bob." (30 min.).
[86] SAT 1:00 (F) Meta-Fantasy. John Clute, John Crowley, Heinz Insu Fenkl, Terry McGarry, Farah Mendlesohn, Pat Murphy (+M). There are several ways a fantasy novel can break (or at least call attention to) the fourth wall between reader and text. A fictional fantasy world can become real (Jonathan Carroll's The Land Of Laughs, William Browning Spencer's Zod Wallop); the characters may have a sense of themselves playing out a Story (John Crowley's Little, Big); the tools of fantasy (writing, storytelling) may themselves be the tools of the characters in the work and integral to the magic. Why does fantasy lend itself so well to meta-fictional effects? Such touches are, in theory, postmodern, but is the goal of meta-fictional effects in fantasy the same or different as in literary postmodernism?
[87] SAT 1:00 (G) The Career of Gwyneth Jones. Kathryn Cramer (+M), Glenn Grant, Donald Kingsbury, Elspeth Potter, Graham Sleight.
[88] SAT 1:00 (RI) The Future of News. Daniel Hatch, with Michael A. Burstein, F. Brett Cox, Jeff Hecht, John Kessel, Tonya D. Price, Ian Randal Strock and attendees. Talk / Discussion. Will the future bring national media coverage that explains, illuminates, explores, investigates, and communicates? Or will it continue, as it has, to present biased centrist propaganda and lies under the banner of journalism? Hint: The rise of the Internet is already allowing homegrown media critics to band together, compare notes, and coordinate mass e-mail campaigns to fight the insidious mass media that are carrying out the foul agenda of their corporate masters, legitimizing the naked grab for power by corrupt, evil lizards. (And you thought this was just a Philip K. Dick story.) More broadly, does anyone recognize that the current state of politics and mass journalism was accurately foretold by SF writers of the '50s in books like The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law and TV shows of the '70s and '80s like Max Headroom?
[89] SAT 1:00 (NH) Katya Reimann reads from "Codex Rex": in the 17th century, a pirate on shore leave tries to sell a Mayan Codex to a London Bookseller. (30 min.).
[90] SAT 1:00 (VT) Jeanne M. Cavelos reads from Fatal Spiral, a forthcoming near-future biological thriller. (30 min.).
[91] SAT 1:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Toni Anzetti, Geary Gravel, and Rosemary Kirstein; Wen Spencer.
[92] SAT 1:00 (E) Autographs. Jeffrey A. Carver; Alexander C. Irvine.
[93] SAT 1:30 (NH) John Morressy reads either something heavy ("The Man At The Wall") or something light (in progress)--audience's choice. (30 min.).
[94] SAT 1:30 (VT) James L. Cambias reads "Train of Events" (forthcoming in F&SF.) (30 min.).
[95] SAT 2:00 (F) Biological Hard SF. Octavia E. Butler, Hal Clement (+M), Kathryn Cramer, Paul Di Filippo, Gwyneth Jones, Robert J. Sawyer. For years biology was relatively neglected by writers of hard sf. But that's changed dramatically in the last decade or so. Has this been strictly a response to the rise of biotechnology, or was sf (as is more often the case) somewhat ahead of the curve? A overview of this burgeoning subgenre and a look at where it's headed.
[96] SAT 2:00 (G) When They Tell You What You Really Mean. James Patrick Kelly, Ellen Kushner (+M), Barry N. Malzberg, Susan R. Matthews, James Morrow, Patrick O'Leary. It sometimes happens that a work of fiction contains real meaning that is unknown to its author. Many writers have had the experience of learning from critics or other readers what their true concerns have been. What's this experience like? How does finding out what your secret themes are affect your future writing? We can imagine it being very good--or very bad.
[97] SAT 2:00 (ME) The Odyssey Writing Workshop. Jeanne M. Cavelos. Talk. Director Cavelos, a former senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell and winner of the World Fantasy Award, describes the workings of Odyssey, an intensive six-week workshop for fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers held each summer at Southern New Hampshire University. Guest lecturers have included Harlan Ellison, Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, Ben Bova, Terry Brooks, and Dan Simmons. In its seven years of operation, Odyssey has gained a reputation as one of the best workshops in the country for writers of the fantastic.
[98] SAT 2:00 (RI) The Readercon Book Club. Connie Hirsch, Walter H. Hunt, Michael Kandel, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Darrell Schweitzer (+M). Ursula K. Le Guin's Tales From Earthsea and The Other Wind, as the capstone of this extraordinary fantasy sequence.
[99] SAT 2:00 (NH) Ellen Brody reads "What Friends Are For" by John Brunner. (60 min.).
[100] SAT 2:00 (VT) Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett read from Fair's Point, the in-progress sequel to the Lambda Award winning Point of Dreams. (30 min.).
[101] SAT 2:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Paul Park; Michael Swanwick.
[102] SAT 2:00 (E) Autographs. Samuel R. Delany; Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald.
[103] SAT 2:30 (VT) F. Brett Cox reads from a new work of fiction. (30 min.).
[104] SAT 3:00 (F) Changing Times, Changing Minds. Suzy McKee Charnas, John Crowley, Samuel R. Delany, Gwyneth Jones, Ellen Kushner, David Alexander Smith (+M). Something very interesting can happen when an author creates a fictional series over a long period of time, especially a series with some social or political content (explicit or implicit). Society changes, attitudes change, the author's own mind may change--in response to society, as part of a natural process of maturation, or even as a result of writing the books themselves. What happens to the fiction when a writer discovers that the attitudes underlying the later volumes of a series are no longer the same as when the series was conceived?
[105] SAT 3:00 (G) The Fiction of Octavia E. Butler. Eileen Gunn, Connie Hirsch, K. A. Laity, Sheree R. Thomas, Mary Turzillo (+M).
[106] SAT 3:00 (ME) Using Science Fiction to Teach Science. Thomas A. Easton. Talk.
[107] SAT 3:00 (RI) Why Dinosaurs? Jeff Hecht, with Michael Swanwick, Robert J. Sawyer. Discussion. Why are dinosaurs so popular in fiction and fact? They appear in countless sf short stories, from Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur" to Michael Swanwick's "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur"; writers like Greg Bear, Rob Sawyer, Damien Broderick, and Swanwick have written novels about them. Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" became a franchise series, with the dinosaurs more attractive than the story. Small children master polysyllabic dinosaur names, and the public gobbles up dinosaur news. Dinosaur research is in a golden age, with new discoveries emerging at an amazing rate. Hecht's bookshelves are crammed with dinosaur books, and he says he's lost count of the dinosaur documentaries showing on public television and the Discovery Channel. What's going on?
[108] SAT 3:00 (NH) Kelly Link reads something new (30 min.).
[109] SAT 3:00 (VT) F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre reads a number of short items from MacIntyre's Improbable Bestiary (Wildside Press), which he wrote and illustrated. (30 min.).
[110] SAT 3:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett; Karl Schroeder.
[111] SAT 3:00 (E) Autographs. James Morrow; Darrell Schweitzer.
[112] SAT 3:30 (NH) Paul Park reads either "If Lions Could Speak," the title story to a collection, or from his forthcoming A Princess of Roumania. (30 min.).
[113] SAT 3:30 (VT) Dan Barlow reads "A Conversation with Schliegelman," an amusing first-place story from Writers of the Future, vol. XVI. (30 min.).
[114] SAT 4:00 (F) Octavia E. Butler Interviewed by Faye Ringel
[115] SAT 5:00 (F) Gwyneth Jones Interviewed by David G. Hartwell
[116] SAT 6:00 (RI) You Can Choose: Determinism, Free Will, and Minority Report. Eric M. Van. Talk / Discussion. Van briefly explains why physicists increasingly believe that the universe (in the absence of free will) is deterministic, not random, and why neuroscientists believe that most or all of free will is illusory; and outlines his own argument that free will is real but highly limited. And if you buy the last bit, then Minority Report does an amazing job of being both scientifically credible and metaphorically astute.
[117] SAT 6:00 (VT) Michael A. Burstein reads "The New Breed," a story written from the first-person PoV of a woman. (30 min.).
[118] SAT 6:30 (VT) Shane Tourtellotte reads from "The Return of Spring" (Hugo finalist, novelette). (30 min.).
[119] SAT 7:00 (VT) Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald read "`A Death in the Working': an Inquestor-Principal Jerre syn-Casleyn mystery story by Haef Teliau; translation and footnotes by Sommes Vinhalyn, Diregis Professor of Contemporary History and Lecturer in Eraasian Culture, University of Galcen"--not a Mageworlds short story per se, but rather a piece of short genre fiction that might have been written for and read by some of the characters in that fictional universe. (30 min.).
[120] SAT 8:15 (F/G) The 2001 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Ceremony. Pat Murphy, Hiromi Goto; Suzy McKee Charnas, Peter Halasz, Ama Patterson; musical guest: Pat and the Tiptones. (30 min.)
[121] SAT 9:00 (F/G) The 17th Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition. Craig Shaw Gardner (+M), Glenn Grant, John Kessel, Patrick O'Leary, Eric M. Van (M). (c. 75 min.) Our traditional evening entertainment, named in memory of the pseudonym and alter ego of Jonathan Herovit of Barry Malzberg's Herovit's World. Ringleader Craig Shaw Gardner reads a passage of unidentified but genuine, published, bad sf, fantasy, or horror prose, which has been truncated in mid-sentence. Each of our panelists--Craig and his co-moderator Eric M. Van, former runners-up John Kessel and Glenn Grant, and new challenger Patrick O'Leary (competing for the throne left vacant by the simultaneous retirements of defending two-time champion Shariann Lewitt and former thirteen-time champion Geary Gravel)--then reads an ending for the passage. One ending is the real one; the others are imposters concocted by our contestants (including Craig) ahead of time. None of the players knows who wrote any passage other than their own, except for Eric, who gets to play God as a reward for the truly onerous duty of unearthing these gems. Craig then asks for the audience vote on the authenticity of each passage (recapping each in turn by quoting a pithy phrase or three from them), and the Ace Readercon Joint Census Team counts up each show of hands faster than you can say "Bambi pranced." Eric then reveals the truth. Each contestant receives a point for each audience member they fooled, while the audience collectively scores a point for everyone who spots the real answer. As a rule, the audience finishes third or fourth. Warning: the Sturgeon General has determined that this trash is hazardous to your health, should you be recovering from fractured ribs, pulled stomach muscles, or the like (i.e., if it hurts to laugh, you're in big trouble).

SUNDAY

SUN 8:30a (Nan) Closed Workshop.
[122] SUN 10:00a (F) The 2001 James Tiptree, Jr. Award: The Jury Report. Pat Murphy (M), Suzy McKee Charnas, Peter Halasz, Ama Patterson. This year's Tiptree jury discusses Hiromi Goto's The Kappa Child, short-listed novels by Sheri S. Tepper, Hugh Nissenson, Joan Givner, and Ken MacLeod, and other worthy gender-role-challenging works from 2001. Read the jury's annotations of the short list [in the Souvenir Book?].
[123] SUN 10:00a (G) The Real Place of a Book. James L. Cambias, Gregory Feeley, Greer Gilman, Paul Levinson (+M), Michael Swanwick. We've beaten John Clute's wonderful notion of "the real year" of a book almost to death. But not quite! Every novel, regardless of the year in which it is ostensibly set, has a "real year" whose flavor informs it. It occurs to us that every genre novel, whether it's set on Mars or Middle-Earth, also has a "real place," whether it's New York City or a small town in Iowa. The real place of Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter is the Soviet Union; part of the triumph of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars is the extent to which the real place actually is Mars (via, however, Tibet and Antarctica), and this in fact makes the text more challenging in the same way that setting a book in the real present does.
[124] SUN 10:00a (ME) The Hard SF Renaissance. Kathryn Cramer. Discussion. Talk about hard sf with the co-editor (with David G. Hartwell) of The Hard SF Renaissance, an anthology of 1990's hard sf forthcoming from Tor in September (she also just wrote the chapter on hard sf for the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction).
[125] SUN 10:00a (RI) Revisioning Writing. Laurie J. Marks and Rosemary Kirstein. Talk / Discussion. "We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently," writes Adrienne Rich in her classic essay, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Revision." Her statement might be taken as a feminist appeal to "re-see" the overlooked works of women writers of the past. However, in her essay, Adrienne Rich responds to her own challenge by attempting to know her own writing differently. One way we can accept Rich's challenge to re-see ourselves and our experience as writers is through metaphors. In this presentation/discussion, we'll examine the metaphors that writers, including the people in the room, use to describe their experiences and processes. How can other people's metaphors help us to "re-see" and thus "know . . . differently" our own writing?
[126] SUN 10:00a (NH) John Crowley reads from a brand-new non-fantasy novella, "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines". (30 min.).
[127] SUN 10:00a (VT) Andrea Hairston reads from her just-completed novel, Mindscape (30 min.).
[128] SUN 10:00a (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Samuel R. Delany; Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald.
[129] SUN 10:00a (E) Autographs. Octavia E. Butler.
[130] SUN 10:30a (NH) James Morrow reads "Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole," forthcoming in Conqueror Fantastic (Pamela Sargent, ed.) (30 min.).
[131] SUN 10:30a (VT) Jeffrey Ford reads "Creation, " from the May F&SF. (30 min.).
[132] SUN 11:00a (F) The Aliens Among Us. Toni Anzetti, Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Jeanne Gomoll (+M), Geary Gravel, Gwyneth Jones. "The science fiction convention of the alien attempts to present otherness in unitary terms, so that `humanity' is uncomplicatedly opposed to the `alien'; both Jones and Butler focus on the way in which the opposition seeks to suppress the others of both gender and race by subsuming them within a commonsense notion of what it is to be human.--Jenny Wolmark. Let's use this provocative assertion as a jumping off point for discussion.
[133] SUN 11:00a (G) 2001: The Year in Short Fiction. David G. Hartwell, John Klima, Mary Anne Mohanraj (+M), Ian Randal Strock, Michael Swanwick, Gordon Van Gelder. Including a look at the state of the magazines (professional and semi-pro).
[134] SUN 11:00a (ME) Feelings About Possible Feelings: The Cognitive Structure of Human Motivation. Eric M. Van. Chautauqua. "Meta-affective theory" (making its public debut here) reveals that most of what we feel derives from our brains' extraordinary efforts to figure out how we expect to feel in the future. This insight leads to a remarkably detailed taxonomy of emotions (how is being "pissed off" fundamentally different from being angry?), to an understanding of the origin of destructive hostility in type "A" personalities, and to the Holy Grail of any theory of affect: a convincing explanation of the adaptive purpose of brief, reactive depression.
[135] SUN 11:00a (RI) How I Wrote Fire Logic. Laurie J. Marks. Talk (30 min.).
[136] SUN 11:00a (NH) Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman read from The Fall of the Kings, based on the World Fantasy Award-winning novella of the same name; it's finally finished (and substantially revised from versions previewed at earlier Readercons), and forthcoming from Bantam in November, 2002. (60 min.).
[137] SUN 11:00a (VT) Robert J. Sawyer reads "Relativity," forthcoming in Men Writing SF As Women (Mike Resnick, ed.): a solo female astronaut prepares to be reunited with her now-aged family after a relativistic space voyage. (30 min.).
[138] SUN 11:00a (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Daniel P. Dern; Elizabeth Hand.
[139] SUN 11:00a (E) Autographs. Susan R. Matthews; Karl Schroeder.
[140] SUN 11:30a (RI) How We Wrote A Working of Stars. Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald. Talk (30 min.).
[141] SUN 11:30a (VT) William Shunn reads "The Diagnostic Feast," a far-future, post-human story forthcoming in August in Beyond the Last Star (Sherwood Smith, ed.). (30 min.).
[142] SUN 12:00 (F) Someday We'll Look Back At This and It Will All Seem Funny. Paul Di Filippo, Jeffrey Ford, Eileen Gunn, John Kessel (+M), James Morrow. Sometimes we write to exorcise personal pain. And often the best way to do that is to find the humor at its heart. How can it be that there's usually something funny hidden within the grimmest of experiences? Why does finding that humor ease the pain? Is it just the sharing with others? Our brave panelists discuss the roots of black humor--both their own and that of other writers--or, as James Thurber (himself a very funny man with a very painful life) once said, they'll get humor down, and break its arm.
[143] SUN 12:00 (G) In Defense of "Commodity Fantasy". Leigh Grossman (+M), John Morressy, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Darrell Schweitzer, Elizabeth Willey. Perhaps the greatest strength of fantasy as a genre is its accommodation of unique visions; the fantasies we value most are all (at least until imitated) sui generis. John Clute and others have thus decried the rise of "commodity fantasy," whose purpose is instead to give the reader the same familiar, comfortable experience as books previously read. But doesn't this hold all of fantasy up to an impossible standard? No one, after all, rejects a musical performance, baseball game or sexual encounter for providing only familiar sorts of pleasures. Isn't it possible to do truly worthwhile work within "commodity fantasy"? Does more commodity fantasy really mean less that's sui generis, or can the two coexist?
[144] SUN 12:00 (ME) Speculative Fiction and Transhumanism. Jennifer Barlow, Marcel Gagne, James Hughes (+M), Matt Jarpe, John Klima. Over the last dozen years a new international philosophical movement, "transhumanism," has emerged. Transhumanism asserts that it will soon be possible and desirable for human beings to enhance their abilities and transcend human limits using the technologies of genetic therapy and cyborgization (nanotechnology and robotics). Most transhumanists draw direct inspiration from speculative fiction, and many sf writers, such as Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan, Greg Bear, Vernor Vinge, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford, Linda Nagata and Damien Broderick, have addressed transhumanist issues and concerns in a positive way. However, in general, sf and horror fiction is compelled by story-telling imperatives to portray genetically enhanced persons, cyborgs, machine minds and posthumans as dangerous, or at least tragic. This reinforces a public Luddite reaction to the transhuman transition, where "Frankenstein" or "Brave New World" are debate-stopping epithets. How can a more self-conscious current of transhumanist sf build public awareness of the risks and benefits of transhuman technologies, and contribute to a balanced debate on their merits?
[145] SUN 12:00 (RI) Genre Erotica for Mainstream Markets. Elspeth Potter. Talk / Discussion. You might have seen the glossy anthologies of erotic stories in your local mall bookstore. These anthologies, in contrast to magazine markets, seem to be more open to genre stories, so long as the erotic element is creative and hot. Potter offers an introduction to finding calls for submissions and finding the right market for your stories, as well as coming up with new ideas for theme anthologies.
[146] SUN 12:00 (NH) Hiromi Goto reads from The Kappa Child, recipient of the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. (60 min.).
[147] SUN 12:00 (VT) Paul Levinson reads the first chapter of The Consciousness Plague, in a performance with actor Mark Shanahan, who is doing the audio-book version. Plus a preview from his next Phil D'Amato novel, Last Takes, which begins with Phil being called in to investigate . . . squirrels missing from Central Park. (60 min.).
[148] SUN 12:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Hal Clement; Patrick O'Leary.
[149] SUN 12:00 (E) Autographs. Walter H. Hunt; Robert J. Sawyer.
[150] SUN 1:00 (F) The Aging of SF. Judith Berman, F. Brett Cox (+M), Ellen Datlow, David G. Hartwell, Gwyneth Jones, Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Judith Berman's "Science Fiction Without the Future" (New York Review of Science Fiction, May 2001) raised provocative issues about the relationship of modern sf with the future, issues we hope to cover this weekend in panels inspired by that master extrapolator of near futures, John Brunner. But almost buried in Berman's essay is the ancillary observation that the protagonists of sf stories are increasingly middle-aged or even elderly--like their writers and readers. This lack of youthful characters began as an effect of the graying of the sf community, but now it has arguably become one of the causes, in a destructive feedback loop--less young writing blood means fewer stories of interest to younger readers (it's not just altered chronology that led Peter Jackson to make Frodo the same age as his much younger cousins). Is there anything the sf community can do to counter this trend? Should writers and editors be looking for stories that feature younger protagonists?
[151] SUN 1:00 (G) Angela Carter. Stepan Chapman, Elizabeth Hand, K. A. Laity, Delia Sherman, Sarah Smith (+M). Angela, we miss your mordant wit and your stylish prose. We miss your fairy tales that always turned out to be so horribly real. We've been quoting your quip about "too much fin this siecle," and wishing you were here to see your prophecy come true. When we realize there will be no more stories with your distinctive flavors, it's as if we're suddenly missing a limb. And examining the stump of that limb, we realize that we almost certainly chewed it off ourselves. We know that if you were still here you could tell us exactly why we did that, maybe even make us laugh about it with a frisson of dread. (If any of the preceding are sentiments you share, join us for a celebratory wake in honor of Angela Carter.)
[152] SUN 1:00 (ME) Teaching F&SF. Leigh Grossman. Discussion. How do you teach genre fiction to an unfamiliar audience? Can you communicate the "sense of wonder" we felt as readers, or must it be generated spontaneously? Can genre fiction co-exist with other literature, or is it better taught in a separate environment?
[153] SUN 1:00 (RI) E-books: The State of the Art (and Commerce). Robert J. Sawyer, Michael Ward. Discussion. How does the e-book reading experience compare to the original, without the physical instantiation of a book? How does this issue affect the acceptance of the new medium? What's gone right, and what's gone wrong, in the adopting and marketing of e-books? Did a premature push permanently damage the marketplace? Are any of the dedicated reading devices any good? Has greed in pricing, and over-aggressiveness in Digital Rights Management, ruined what should have been a cash cow for all concerned?
[154] SUN 1:00 (NH) Hal Clement reads from Noise (forthcoming from Tor). (60 min.).
[155] SUN 1:00 (VT) Group Reading: Broad Universe. Eileen Gunn, Farah Mendlesohn, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Pat Murphy, and others (60 min.).
[156] SUN 1:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. Donald Kingsbury; William Shunn.
[157] SUN 1:00 (E) Autographs. Terry McGarry; Patrick O'Leary.
[158] SUN 2:00 (F) The Future of Extrapolation. Octavia E. Butler, Glenn Grant (+M), Jeff Hecht, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Graham Sleight, Shane Tourtellotte. Despite the legitimate protest that sf is not prophecy, serious extrapolation about the future has always been a viable sf mode. With each passing year, we move deeper into a stretch of time that our past greats attempted to envision. We thus have more of a chance to compare extrapolated and actualized futures. What lessons are we learning? Is the addition of this reflexive element changing the nature of sf extrapolation?
[159] SUN 2:00 (G) Why Y A? Holly Black, Farah Mendlesohn (+M), Yves Meynard, John Morressy, Katya Reimann. As Ursula LeGuin once wrote, if a writer chooses to write a book for Young Adults only because she's thinks it's "simple" to do so, its audience "will look at it, and they will see straight through it, with their clear, cold, beady little eyes, and they will put it down, and they will go away. Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic." When asked (at Boskone 2002) why she wrote YA, Tamora Pierce replied, "When I change somebody's life it stays changed." Our panelists will discuss the special challenges and rewards--especially the psychic rewards--of writing YA.
[160] SUN 2:00 (ME) Why Don't We Write? Pat Murphy. Talk / Discussion A discussion of writers block, techniques for avoiding it, and some writing exercises that Murphy has found knock her out of it. Attendees should bring paper and pencil. (Incidentally, the writing exercises are borrowed from her pseudonym, Max Merriwell, who's a character in her latest novel, Adventures In Time And Space With Max Merriwell.)
[161] SUN 2:00 (VT) Shariann Lewitt reads from Dream of the Apples, her work in progress. (30 min.).
[162] SUN 2:00 (Vin) Kaffeeklatsches. David G. Hartwell; Terry McGarry.
[163] SUN 2:30 (RI) How I Wrote The Consciousness Plague. Paul Levinson. Talk (30 min.).
[164] SUN 2:30 (VT) John Costello reads "Another Field," by Kir Bulychev, translated by John Costello. (30 min.).
SUN 3:00 (F) Readercon 14 Debriefing. Members of the Readercon14 Committee.

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

Search