Something aesthetic, something frenetic...

My Readercon schedule this year is small but delectable, a little box of intellectual bon bons

Thursday July 10

9:00 PM
Books in Conversation.
Greer Gilman, Catt Kingsgrave, Scott Lynch, Cecilia Tan, Rick Wilber.

Books and texts are often said to be in conversation with each other, with some writers openly discussing how they wrote something in response to another work in genre. The classic example is Samuel R. Delany's Triton and Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, which can both be read as a conversation with each other as well as with Joanna Russ's The Female Man. A more recent example is Lev Grossman's Magicians books, which are particularly in conversation with the work of C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. Our panelists will discuss what their work is reacting to, and talk about where this impulse comes from.

Friday July 11

11:00 AM
Mystery and Speculative Crossovers.
Meriah Crawford, Chris Gerwel, Greer Gilman, Nicholas Kaufmann, Adam Lipkin (leader).

There are many books that draw from both the speculative fiction and mystery toolboxes, in both macro ways (China Miéville's The City & the City and Peter F. Hamilton's Great North Road are catalyzed by hard-boiled murder investigations) and micro ways (urban fantasy was initially defined by its relationship to noir, now often more evident in tone than in plot). Where is this crossover most satisfying? How do magic and advanced technology open up new avenues of investigation or methods of befuddling the detectives? How have trends, tropes, and developments in each genre influenced crossover works?

2:00 PM
Where the Goblins Go: A Tour of Hells and Underworlds.
C.S.E. Cooney, Greer Gilman, Jack Haringa (moderator), Faye Ringel, Sonya Taaffe.

Many types of underworlds feature prominently in religion, folklore, horror, and fantasy. We will discuss the varied roles of hells and netherworlds in world mythology and how authors from Dante to Valente have explored (and exploited) these concepts in fiction.

5:00 PM
I Put Books in Your Books So You Can Read While You Read.
John Clute, Amal El-Mohtar, Francesca Forrest, Greer Gilman, Kenneth Schneyer (leader).

Nested stories consist of at least one outer story and at least one inner story. Usually the characters in the outer story are cast as the audience of the inner story, as in Hamlet or the Orphan's Tales books. But inner stories have another audience: the reader. How do we read inner stories? When our attention is brought to its story-ness, are we more conscious of being the audience than when we immerse ourselves in outer stories? Do we see ourselves as separate from the audience characters—thinking of them as the "real" audience even though they're fictional—or do we connect with them through the mutual experience of observation? And when do inner stories take on lives of their own, separate from their frames?

Saturday July 12

1:00 PM
Reading: Greer Gilman.
Greer Gilman.

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

Nine