Readercon schedule  

(Actually, the con I went to next after Wiscon was 4th Street Fantasy. Accidentally did my first panel drunk. Accidentally ended up moderating my second panel. Messed up Hug Negotiation by not realizing that someone was asking for permission. Nobody got hugged although I would have consented had I realized. Oops. Lots of fun on balance. Met a lot of great people. Had a lot of terrific conversations. Also, there’s a supermarket right next to the con hotel! Yay!)

Readercon is coming up. My schedule goes like this:

Friday, July 10

12:30pm Reading

I’m going to read my short story “The Law and the Profits.” The story is a little too long to fit in the time slot. Hopefully, by Friday, I’ll have an adaptation that does fit…

7pm The Plausible Normal in Future Societies

Chesya Burke, John Chu, Sarah Langan, Adam Lipkin, Scott Lynch

According to author Charles Stross, “If you’re not doing [far-future extrapolation] to the cultural normals as well as the setting and technology, you’re doing it wrong.” Many far-future SF stories are set in a universe with an interstellar polity, advanced transportation technologies, and familiar political structures. The planetary civilizations they tend to portray, however, are middle-class white suburbias that barely exist now. Where are the far-future stories that explore novel and radical gender politics, religious frameworks, ideologies, fashions, and cultural attitudes? What are some tools authors can use to get out of their here-and-now mindsets and imagine a truly transformed future?

I’m really looking forward to chatting with these panels. They’re all awesome.

By the way, the schedule lists me as being involved in the Shirley Jackson Awards. That’s not what I intended. I asked programming not to schedule me opposite the awards so that I could attend. Maybe the easiest way for them to do that was to schedule me for the awards? I’ve asked them to please take me off the list of participants, not that it’ll make a difference to anyone deciding what to do on Sunday at 11am. In any case, as far as I know, I’m not a part of the awards ceremony, although I have Jeff VanderMeer’s acceptance speech and am prepared to read it if he should win. fingers crossed