Readercon schedule
Jun. 29th, 2007 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lagilmanFriday 1:00 PM. Kaffeeklatsch
drop by, chat for a while, see me decide I may have had enough cafFiend for the day...
Friday 6:00 PM. Discussion (60 min.) Bookaholics Anonymous Annual Meeting
Laura Anne Gilman, Nancy C. Hanger (L), Walter H. Hunt, Joshua Palmatier, Diane Weinstein
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!
Saturday 10:30 AM. Reading (30 min.)
Laura Anne Gilman reads from the new "Retrievers'" novel, Burning Bridges.
if everyone who shows up has already read BB, I may read instead from FREE FALL, to taunt you some more...
Saturday 12:00 Noon. Sense of Wonder, or Sense of Cool?
John Joseph Adams, Thomas A. Easton, Laura Anne Gilman, Ernest Lilley (M), Ian Randal Strock
SF seeks that sense of wonder, but we think much of today's best sf brings forth a different feeling. To some of us, stories such as those in Charles Stross's _Accelerando_ sequence evoke a response more along these lines: "It really might be like that? Cool!" The emotion is less an awed contemplation of the universe and its inhabitants, and more the delight we have toward a new, really loaded computer, electronic gadget or online capability-what can we do with it, what are the implications? What the author shows us may be amazing, beyond present technology or knowledge, but it feels better understood and more under our control than the cosmic wonders of older sf. Cool is more widely shared than wonder, but less, er, wonderful. Can this be part of the reason for the decline in the popularity of sf-cool can be reliably found in more places? Does fantasy supply wonder more reliably today?
Saturday 3:00 PM. Autographing
Sunday 10:00 AM. I am forced into speech because a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife: Horror and Social Observation.
Michael Cisco, Karen Joy Fowler, Laura Anne Gilman, Adam Golaski (L), John Langan
It's easy to think of our two GOHs as being quite different--a writer of dark fantasy and horror, and one of fine observation of individual and social consciousness. But we've noticed that these seemingly disparate approaches to literature have a surprising common ground. In the novel of social observation, the protagonist often begins with an incorrect model or set of assumptions about the way the world works, and discovers through a series of revelations, some slowly accumulating and some shattering, that the world is in fact more complex and difficult to navigate. That sound a lot like horror to us--and, in fact, it's precisely John Clute's proposed archetypal horror novel structure (see the blurb for "Awe, Horror!"). What would Jane Austen and H.P. Lovecraft agree about? And where would they part ways?
Shit. I need to go do some homework before the convention....
drop by, chat for a while, see me decide I may have had enough cafFiend for the day...
Friday 6:00 PM. Discussion (60 min.) Bookaholics Anonymous Annual Meeting
Laura Anne Gilman, Nancy C. Hanger (L), Walter H. Hunt, Joshua Palmatier, Diane Weinstein
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!
Saturday 10:30 AM. Reading (30 min.)
Laura Anne Gilman reads from the new "Retrievers'" novel, Burning Bridges.
if everyone who shows up has already read BB, I may read instead from FREE FALL, to taunt you some more...
Saturday 12:00 Noon. Sense of Wonder, or Sense of Cool?
John Joseph Adams, Thomas A. Easton, Laura Anne Gilman, Ernest Lilley (M), Ian Randal Strock
SF seeks that sense of wonder, but we think much of today's best sf brings forth a different feeling. To some of us, stories such as those in Charles Stross's _Accelerando_ sequence evoke a response more along these lines: "It really might be like that? Cool!" The emotion is less an awed contemplation of the universe and its inhabitants, and more the delight we have toward a new, really loaded computer, electronic gadget or online capability-what can we do with it, what are the implications? What the author shows us may be amazing, beyond present technology or knowledge, but it feels better understood and more under our control than the cosmic wonders of older sf. Cool is more widely shared than wonder, but less, er, wonderful. Can this be part of the reason for the decline in the popularity of sf-cool can be reliably found in more places? Does fantasy supply wonder more reliably today?
Saturday 3:00 PM. Autographing
Sunday 10:00 AM. I am forced into speech because a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife: Horror and Social Observation.
Michael Cisco, Karen Joy Fowler, Laura Anne Gilman, Adam Golaski (L), John Langan
It's easy to think of our two GOHs as being quite different--a writer of dark fantasy and horror, and one of fine observation of individual and social consciousness. But we've noticed that these seemingly disparate approaches to literature have a surprising common ground. In the novel of social observation, the protagonist often begins with an incorrect model or set of assumptions about the way the world works, and discovers through a series of revelations, some slowly accumulating and some shattering, that the world is in fact more complex and difficult to navigate. That sound a lot like horror to us--and, in fact, it's precisely John Clute's proposed archetypal horror novel structure (see the blurb for "Awe, Horror!"). What would Jane Austen and H.P. Lovecraft agree about? And where would they part ways?
Shit. I need to go do some homework before the convention....
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-30 02:19 am (UTC)I'm planning something very similar for DragonCon and I love that.
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Date: 2007-06-30 10:36 am (UTC)