The best in this kind are but shadows

This weekend will be Readercon 31—my thirtieth.  Good gracious.  Even on my tiny screen, it was lovely to see the old, familiar faces—Delany is looking quite Jove-like, and spoke from out of a thunderstorm.  It will be even better to hear them all on panels.

I have just one, with some excellent people.  The upside is that I can actually listen to most of the program. Luxury!

Darmok and Jalad and Merriam and Webster
Sunday 6 pm, Main Track 2
Leah Bobet, John Chu, Francesca Forrest, Greer Gilman, Sarah Smith

At the "Decolonizing the Imagination" panel at Readercon 30, Cadwell Turnbull observed that linguistics as an academic field is restricted and distorted by underrepresentation of marginalized groups. How does that affect the ways languages, including constructed ones, are used in speculative fiction? What can authors do to overcome biased notions of what makes a language sound "magical" or "alien"?

Nine