Going to Readercon this year? Good, me too! Here’s where you can find me:
Friday July 08
7:00 PM 6 Sensuality and Exploitation. Gillian Daniels (moderator), Ben Francisco, Elaine Isaak, Nicholas Kaufmann, Vinnie Tesla. Sex in fiction, as in real life, is often fraught with questions. Our panelists will discuss sex in science fiction and fantasy and what they consider representative or exploitative. Where and when do you draw the line? Is someone’s trashy beach read someone else’s master’s thesis in 20th- and 21st-century courtship?
Saturday July 09
10:00 AM 5 Instant Communication in Genre Fiction. Nicholas Kaufmann, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (leader), Kit Reed, E.J. Stevens, Paul Tremblay. In a 2015 interview on Atlas Obscura, R.L. Stine said, “Cell phones are the worst thing for writing horror. Cell phones ruin almost every plot.” There are certainly a number of plots that rely on people being isolated and out of communication range, which is difficult to achieve these days. Other genres are influenced by pervasive interconnectedness: for example, fantasy novels often feature some sort of magical long-distance communication, perhaps because readers get impatient when characters have to wait a long time for news, and science fiction has tricorders and ansibles. How are genre writers working both with and against 21st-century reader assumptions around communication speed, expense, and accuracy?
3:00 PM CL Kaffeeklatsch. Nicholas Kaufmann, Jo Walton.
Sunday July 10
10:30 AM B Reading: Nicholas Kaufmann. Nicholas Kaufmann. Nicholas Kaufmann reads an excerpt from a novel in progress titled The Scarred Man.
12:00 PM 6 What Libraries Can Do for Writers. Susan Jane Bigelow, Matthew Cheney, Nicholas Kaufmann, Jess Nevins, Emily Wagner (leader). Our panel of librarians and writers talk about the surprising hidden resources of libraries, and how your local library can help you with research, writing space, applying for grants, and much more.
I plan on talking primarily about how convenient their public restrooms are.
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