Contrafibularities

This year's Readercon schedule—quite modest, which means that I can actually go and hear other people.  Hope to see to see some of you there.

Thursday July 7

9:00 PM    A    Reading: Greer Gilman. Greer Gilman. Greer Gilman reads from a work in progress: a third Ben Jonson mystery, "A Robe for to Go Invisible."


Saturday July 9

11:00 AM    6    Sorting Taxonomies. John Benson, Greer Gilman, Kate Nepveu (leader), Peter Straub, Jacob Weisman. Why do we group our fictions by genre first instead of other possible taxonomies? For instance:--By relationship: what kind of relationship appears in this fiction, and how much is it foregrounded?--By level of violence: violent, nonviolent or anti-violent?--By prose: ornate, simple, vivid, inventive?--By paradigm: is this fiction centred on people, ideas, or action? Those are a few possible ways a reader might choose between works, depending on what they want to read--all of which might include any combination of genres. Our panelists will discuss ways they choose what to read, and give some comparisons of like works from disparate genres.


Sunday July 10

10:00 AM    BH    New Worlds for Old . Susan Jane Bigelow, Greer Gilman, Theodora Goss, Lauren Roy, Ann Tonsor Zeddies. Our GoHs have created their own worlds and retold stories. What's the difference in approach between creating from "scratch" and "reimagining"? Is one harder than the other? Do we ever really create worlds wholly our own or are we always cannibalizing bits of other worlds? Would we be able to tell meaningful stories in worlds utterly different from our own? How much of a world is physical and how much is societal behaviors and norms?

2:00 PM    6    Ace, Aro, and Age . F. Brett Cox, Greer Gilman, Keffy Kehrli, Sonya Taaffe, Jo Walton. Readers looking for asexual and aromantic characters in speculative fiction have to look hard. The only human characters who aren't likely to wind up married off are either children or the elderly, thanks to mistaken cultural notions about youthful innocents and withered crones. How can we expand speculative fiction to include explicitly asexual and aromantic identities, and how does that inclusion force us to also address our ideas about sexual and romantic orientations and age?

Nine