More Readercon Panels!
READERCON 26
July 9 - 12
at the Burlington Marriott (Burlington, MA)
PLEASE NOTE THIS CORRECTION FROM THE EMAIL VERSION OF THIS POST: Online registration is now closed. You can still register at the door. Registration Info .
Readercon is less than two weeks away! We're so excited about this year's speaker panels. Here are just three samples from the general-interest category:
Modern Gods
Corporations, multinationals, and governments (or seats of office) can be like modern gods: they exist solely because people believe in them and pretend they exist. Many of the non-governmental entities also have political power in many countries, and all can theoretically live forever. They fight with other "gods" and are regularly broken into multiple demi-gods in defeat or simply by choice. They can exist like this, rise again, or simply fade away. Are other trappings of god there too like receiving worship, capriciousness, jealousy, wrath, etc...?
Mystery and Spec Fic Crossovers
Genres don't exist in a vacuum. There are many books that draw from both the speculative fiction and mystery toolboxes, in both macro ways--China Mieville's The City & The City and Peter F. Hamilton's The 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 impacted crossover works?
I Put Books in Your Books So You Can Read While You Read
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. 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?
For more panel descriptions, see our previous post "Five Great Reasons to Attend Readercon 26"
Readercon covers the whole of imaginative literature (or "speculative fiction") from hard science fiction to fantasy, horror, and the unclassifiable, but with a special emphasis on the most literary, ambitious, and cutting-edge work in the field. Our regular Program Participants include writers, editors, publishers, and critics from the Northeast, and those from around the world with a special affinity for our emphasis.
Be seeing you soon!
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