Snatched from the Sun

I'm thinking of proposing a talk at Readercon.  Would you be interested in this, if you saw it on a program?

Snatched from the Sun:   Alternative Shakespeares and the Zemblance of Reality

Why does a small but vocal and impassioned band of conspiracy theorists believe that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare?  Why do they read his work for the common stage as encrypted secret history?  Like the delusional Kinbote in Pale Fire, they must see through the text to read what they desire:  the story of a genius suppressed, a king uncrowned.  Why do they think that Hamlet was a selfie?

I have long been fascinated and infuriated by these Kinbotean crackpots.  Their antics drove the writing of my Tiptree Award-winning novella, Cry Murder! In a Small Voice, in which I imagined an alternate alternate history of the Earl of Oxford.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of self-published lunacy.  Along the way, we’ll explore the shipping of John Donne’s muse, sepulchral monkey-heads, canals on Mars, vice-versal doublets, the Elizabethan elevator pitch, the seacoast of Bohemia, ciphers, triflers, Templars, and the true author of As You Leak It.

Nine