Description:

Michael A. Burstein (M), John Clute, Debra Doyle, Geary Gravel, China Miéville, Delia Sherman

There are, perhaps, three kinds of beginnings to stories: those that promise no ending, those that promise an ending which is later delivered, and those that promise a different ending than the one provided. Are these, in fact, three ( Read more... )

At the request of yhlee in comments to the Readercon structure panel report, some quick thoughts about the structure of the Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors).

This discusses the ending of the duology and contains enormous, book-destroying SPOILERS.

( Sarantine Mosaic structure, SPOILERS )

Description:

Michael A. Burstein (M), John Crowley, Thomas M. Disch, Greer Gilman, Pamela Zoline

There's a small group of novels with overt organizing structures, like Thomas M. Disch's 334, John Brunner's The Squares of the City, John Crowley's Ægypt, and (most famously outside the genre) Ulysses. We suspect that this is the tip of the iceberg ( Read more... )

Description:

Eric M. Van (+M) with discussion from R. Scott Bakker, John Clute, John Crowley, Glenn Grant, John Langan, Charles Oberndorf

Talk/Discussion (60 min.). What brain mechanisms (and evolutionary rationales) underlie the fundamental narrative elements of plot, character, and style? Which narrative element seems to be more fundamental ( Read more... )

Behind the cut is my weekend at Readercon, minus detailed panel descriptions where noted. Those writeups are coming in separate posts, because they are very long and because I want to invite discussion on them.

( Readercon in brief )

We'll be at Readercon this weekend, staying at the hotel in a room under my name. We're getting in on Friday night, time uncertain; we'll be around Saturday day and Sunday day (Saturday night we have family commitments).

Notes on panels below the cut.

( Readercon possible panels )