So calm your waves and slow their churn

My schedule for Readercon! I said I'd post it.

Friday July 13

11:00 AM
Group Reading: Mythic Poetry
Mary Agner, Mike Allen, Erik Amundsen, Leah Bobet, C.S.E. Cooney, Gemma Files, Gwynne Garfinkle, April Grant, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Shira Lipkin, Adrienne J. Odasso, Julia Rios, Darrell Schweitzer, Sonya Taaffe

Over the past decade, speculative poetry has increasingly turned toward the mythic in subject matter, with venues such as Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Stone Telling, Cabinet des Fées, Jabberwocky, and the now-defunct Journal of the Mythic Arts showcasing a new generation of poets who've redefined what this type of writing can do. Come to the reading and hear new and classic works from speculative poetry's trend-setters.

1:00 PM
Theological Debate in Fantasy and SF
Ellen Asher, John Benson, James Morrow (leader), Sonya Taaffe, Harold Torger Vedeler

From Spenser and Bunyan to Michael Chabon and Stephenie Meyer, writers of speculative fiction have engaged in fine-grained, subtextual theological positioning and debate. Leaving aside instances of more obvious religious maneuvering, what happens when implicit or encoded theological dialogues become invisible to readers, either because the passage of time has stripped away their contexts (as with, say, High Church vs. Low Church Anglicanism in Victorian fiction), or because they are only available to the initiated (as with Meyer's LDS-inflected fantasy)? Are these vanishings a loss? Is there something insidious about books whose surface narratives conceal debates to which we lack access, or do these dimensions enrich the texts? Are we 'better' readers if we try to suss them out?

4:00 PM
Wet Dreams and Nightmares
Samuel R. Delany, Gemma Files, Paula Guran (leader), Caitlín R. Kiernan, Sonya Taaffe

Writers such as Caitlín R. Kiernan, M. Christian, Cecilia Tan, and Paula Guran are well known in both speculative fiction and erotic fiction circles for creating what Kiernan calls "weird and transgressive" erotica. How does this subgenre use the tools and tropes of horror and dark fantasy to explore taboo aspects of sexuality and gender? How has it changed over the decades as sexual culture has evolved? And as the romance genre becomes more welcoming of both the erotic and the undead, how will weird erotica maintain its identity as something separate from paranormal porn?

Saturday July 14

11:00 AM
Pointed Experiments in Indeterminacy
Michael Cisco (leader), Peter Dubé, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Peter Straub, Sonya Taaffe.

"Pointed experiments in the manipulation of point of view" is how Gary Wolfe and Amelia Beamer have described several works by Peter Straub; they are "metatextual and metafictional" experiments that lead to the conclusion that "the indeterminate nature of reality is a central inquiry in these books." We can't help but notice that this also closely describes several of Caitlín R. Kiernan's works, notably her novels The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, and her short story "Tidal Forces." Our panelists discuss the ways writers use point of view to interrogate the nature of reality, and their reasons for doing so.

12:00 PM
The Works of Caitlín R. Kiernan
Elizabeth Bear (leader), Gemma Files, John Langan, Sonya Taaffe

Since blazing onto the speculative fiction scene with the story "Persephone" in 1995 and the novel Silk in 1998, Caitlín R. Kiernan has consistently pushed the boundaries of the fantastic, often refusing to be classified and always delighting in transgression. Her work encompasses elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and erotica, to name just a few; she writes short and long fiction, comics and graphic novels, poetry, and song lyrics with equal facility. This panel will attempt an overview of her spectacularly diverse career.

2:00 PM
Reading
Sonya Taaffe

Sonya Taaffe reads her short story "Another Coming," recently reprinted in Brit Mandelo's anthology Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Science Fiction.

3:00 PM
Group Reading: Ideomancer Speculative Fiction
Mike Allen, Leah Bobet, C.S.E. Cooney, Amanda Downum, George Galuschak, Claire Humphrey, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Kenneth Schneyer, Sonya Taaffe

Authors and poets read work from Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, one of the longest-running speculative fiction webzines still publishing.

I am resisting even typing any of the Tiny Wittgenstein-like remarks that leapt to mind when I saw this schedule. The last couple of days have been much better: exploring bike paths with ratatosk, film noir with lesser_celery, a Chaplin comedy and a ridiculously storylike experience with a book-buyer with derspatchel. Today rushthatspeaks and I are going to Providence. I woke up with a different bit of a poem in my head.