Forgotten authors: a panel discussion

So, Archon is coming up in a few weeks. That’s the smallish convention that takes place right across the river from St. Louis; ie, the one that is only an hour and a half from my house, so of course I nearly always attend. 

Incidentally, if you’re in the neighborhood, Archon usually has a really good masquerade, so it’s worth coming just for that. Massively better than other, larger conventions. If you’ve ever been disappointed with a convention’s masquerade, don’t write this one off on that account. Very strong costumer’s guild in St. Louis, apparently. 

I’m on four panels. I kind of like moderating because I guess I’m a control freak in some ways. I mean, most of the time it really annoys me when a panel drifts gently off topic and the moderator doesn’t drag it back. It’s even worse when a particular panelist starts to tell everyone everything about their own books and won’t shut up (I bet I am not the only person to find that seriously annoying), and if I’m moderating I can gently shut that down. 

Also it’s actually easier to do panels as a moderator sometimes, because what you need is a list of questions and then you can pose them to the other people on the panel and go from there.

So I said Sure, I’ll moderate if you want a bunch of times and thus I’m moderating three panels and  I’m on one. Here they are:

Friday 2:00 — To read or not to read: how do you handle reading other people’s books when writing? I’m sure there will be a lot of variation here.

Saturday 1:00 — SF vs Fantasy: how to tell the difference. Lots of blurry lines, you bet.

Saturday 2:00 — Fermi Paradox. I’m not moderating that one, but I must have said it was okay to put me on the panel. The Fermi Paradox is always interesting and I hope we manage to say some stuff that is not already familiar to absolutely everyone.

Saturday 4:00 — Forgotten authors, and finally we arrive at the point of this post. 

I have several authors in mind, not to mention several categories that should help organize the panel discussion a bit. This is also obviously a topic where input from the whole room will be welcome, because surely everyone — everyone — has a favorite author they think is flying / has flown way too far under the radar.

So. Who are the authors you would most want to see mentioned at a panel like this? Drop ’em in the comments and I will make sure they get the mention they obviously deserve.

For example, name an author who has vanished into the mists of time but ought to be much more widely read today.

Or name an author who might be writing today, but is not getting the widespread notice they clearly deserve.

Or both.

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