#readercon

[katherinecrighton]

Upcoming (and, whoops, prior) appearances: SFWA Nebula Conference and Readercon

So in keeping to true ridiculous form, I have both a conference I will be at and one I was just at. Let’s get the old one out of the way first– SFWA‘s 2023 Nebula Conference Online was a hybrid event held in Anaheim, CA, and over Zoom, which is fortunate because I? Am not in Anaheim. The majority (or possibly all?) of the panels were recorded; you can still register and get access to them until…

[rsagarcia]

Good News (The Readercon Special)

Hi Everyone! I have news! And a lot of it is good. Most crucially, my doctors have determined that the abnormality in my heart can be managed without surgery. The change in my cancer medications has me feeling a lot better, though we have to keep monitoring. I still have several more tests to do and a long list of medical appointments to keep to determine the nature of the autoimmune issues I’m…

[romiesays]

Readercon 2023 - Schedule

I’ll be at Readercon this weekend. If you want to catch me for a conversation, probably easiest to ambush me after one of these panels:

THURSDAY

Worldbuilding: From the Mundane to the Fantastic, Thursday, July 13, 2023, 9:00 PM EDT, Salon A

Some of the most beloved speculative fiction worlds have foundations based in the mundane. Examples include Stephen King's horror fiction, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and works by William Gibson. These worlds are both recognizable and Other. What makes them so successful and memorable? Are there similar worlds that tried and failed? What can authors learn from these worlds when creating their own?

FRIDAY

Meet the Pros(e) Party, Friday, July 14, 2023, 10:30 PM EDT, Salon 4

SATURDAY

Celebration and (Mis)Interpretation, Saturday, July 15, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT, Salon 4

Every now and then a book will explode in popularity among exactly the people its author meant to malign. What does it mean for a work when it is praised for supporting everything it stands against? Are the readers (always or ever) wrong? How do authors navigate acquiring fandoms that they meant to condemn?

SUNDAY

Celebrating Speller's Editorial Impact on SF/F, Sunday, July 16, 2023, 12:00 PM EDT, Salon B

As an editor for multiple presses, a prolific critic, and a passionate advocate for the field, Maureen Kincaid Speller was instrumental in promoting and sustaining the speculative fiction scene in the UK and beyond. From her reviews and essays to her convention committee work, she amplified the voices of emerging SF/F authors and encouraged critical discourse. In this panel, we'll explore Speller's influence on the field and discuss the ways her efforts have shaped the world of science fiction and fantasy.

BookTok and Bookstagram: Reading Culture on Social Media, Sunday, July 16, 2023, 1:00 PM EDT, Salon A

Recent years have seen an explosion in the influence of social media communities, often made up of hobbyists rather than professionals, in the publishing market. How does influencer marketing affect the industry? How are authors and editors thinking about these communities?

It is also very possible I will be doing some karaoke and/or jamming more generally. If you hear keyboards and singing, reasonable odds I’m near where that sound is.

[cdgorri]

Good morning ☀️You might have heard, I'll be joining an incredible author lineup for 4 days of bookish fun with some pretty amazing readers at Literary Love Savanna this July. I hope you can make it! I plan on having exclusive swag, limited edition paperbacks, plus a 6ft photo op! A couple of us attending authors decided to introduce ourselves by promoting our books in this awesome #bookfair! Check it out: https://books.bookfunnel.com/lls2023sales/3ke2k1c3e5 #lls #readercon #authorsigning #bookcon #savannah #cdgorribooks https://www.instagram.com/p/CpPm6svul43/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ktempestbradford]

There is so much to talk about with this article. So much. In this post I want to focus on a specific part of it: the reactions of Lindelof and Cuse to what the writers and actors experienced. Here are several quotes [emphasis mine].

“What can I say? Other than it breaks my heart that that was Harold [Perrineau's] experience,” replied Lindelof, who said he did not recall “ever” saying that. “And I’ll just cede that the events that you’re describing happened 17 years ago, and I don’t know why anybody would make that up about me.”

Lindelof told me he didn’t remember any negative incident with an editor, adding that he seeks out input from collaborators and that he’s “never threatened anyone’s career.” Lindelof also said he had no recollection of anything Hsu Taylor said about events connected to “Ab Aeterno.” He said she was a “great writer who executed at a high level” and he’s “stricken” that she was made to feel the way she felt at that time.

Regarding the other allegations leveled at him and the show, Lindelof said he had no memory of the incidents and comments I related. He told me he was “shocked and appalled and surprised” by the incidents I described to him, and said more than once that he did not think anyone was making anything up. “I just can’t imagine that Carlton would’ve said something like that, or some of those attributions, some of those comments that you [shared]—I’m telling you, I swear, I have no recollection of those specific things. And that’s not me saying that they didn’t happen. I’m just saying that it’s literally baffling my brain—that they did happen and that I bore witness to them or that I said them. To think that they came out of my mouth or the mouths of people that I still consider friends is just not computing.”

I'm not going to quote Cuse's responses here because they all boil down to: "I don't remember doing/saying that" or "Nuh uh, that didn't happen!" which is... certainly a choice.

You're going to see a bunch of people siding with and empathizing with Lindelof and praising him for saying that what happened was wrong, etc., and I will push back every time I see it because of all those instances of him saying he doesn't recall and doesn't remember. I don't think he's lying. I do think it's indicative of an ongoing problem with him as a writer and showrunner and it needs to be called out.

I'm going to tell you a story that explains my point. Also putting it and my conclusions under a cut as this is long. Please do read.

Many years ago I became friends with a white woman writer in the SFF community who lived in NYC during some of the time I did. She knew many of the writers and editors in our community who also lived in NYC or nearby. At the time, the majority of these editors were white and most were men. She became particularly friendly with some of them.

A couple of years into our relationship we were at ReaderCon together. One day at the hotel bar I was sitting with this woman (we'll call her Karen for the purposes of this story) and two other BIPOC male authors who had both published multiple books at this point and were people that Karen felt were impressive and important. During the conversation someone (probably me?) brought up the online conversations/debates/fights currently happening about representation in the SFF genre and the way certain editors were part of the problem. I want to say this was even before RaceFail happened.

Karen revealed that she'd been talking to important people like Gordon van Gelder about the things I'd been saying online and how, well... the things I was saying were just crazy. Crazy things! I was acting so crazy.

I don't remember the exact phrasing, but I remember the repeated categorizing of me/my words as Crazy.

I also don't remember exactly what I said in response. I do remember how I felt in my body at that moment. I was suddenly flooded with, I think, adrenaline or something and I wanted to run away because otherwise I was going to start throwing things. I couldn't believe this person, who claimed to be my friend, was saying this to me.

I also remember that I felt trapped because I was in a booth and the two other writers were on either side of me so I couldn't just get up and leave. It turned out I didn't need to do that. Because immediately both of them were like: Hold up. Hold the EFF up.

They both pointed out to Karen that the things I brought up in those online discussions were real issues that did need addressing and that I wasn't crazy and the only reason she thought so was because I was a Black woman and when white people or even people perceived as being white said the same thigs I did, people in the community listened, so what the heck was even wrong with her.

I just sat there, pretty quiet, still trying to calm myself down while this all happened and also felt so very grateful for how these two guys (also friends) stood up for me without hesitating, without equivocating, without giving Karen an inch to continue to talk about me in such a way. I don't even know how that conversation ended or if I even talked to Karen again at the con. I did decide right then that I was going to pull back from our friendship because of it.

A year or so later I ended up having to have a conversation with Karen because of some nonsense she pulled at WisCon. In that conversation I mentioned the discussion we had at ReaderCon and how that truly affected my view of her, a person who was supposedly my friend and who constantly tried to say she was an ally to BIPOC. And that's when she said: What discussion?

At first I wasn't sure if she was feigning ignorance or not. The more we talked, the more I realized she wasn't. She didn't remember the incident. And in that talk I realized why: It didn't have that big of an impact on her.

Even with her being essentially told off by the other two, for her, having conversations where she casually parroted some white, male editor's racist and misogynistic view of me was of little note because she and the other people she spent a majority of time with were doing it all the time. It was just a Tuesday for her. And so after ReaderCon when she continually asked if I wanted to hang out or go on writing dates, she did so as if she had not said some absolutely egregious stuff to me weeks before. Again, to her: a Tuesday.

Having had more experience in life with certain kinds of racists, sexists, ableists, and bigots in general, I can say that this phenomenon was not specific to Karen. It is endemic with a certain kind of person who is devoted to the status quo/dominant paradigm.

So when Lindelof says that he doesn't remember doing and saying these things, he's probably not lying. Because for him, it was business as usual, a Tuesday. Normalized on a number of levels. He was a fish in water and the water was composed of racist, sexist a-holes doing whatever they wanted because no one above them put a stop to it. And that is a problem even 20ish years later.

That Lindelof had to be told he did these things and that he, in all this time, has not reflected on them, not realized on his own that what he did was terrible, apologized, and worked his butt off to not only ensure the shows he runs do not have this atmosphere but to also throw every bit of work that he can to those writers (not necessarily on his shows, but others) is proof that it continues to be a problem. And that he has a lot of work to do to atone for all these things he can't remember--starting by doing a real deep dive into why he can't.

Cuse can't be saved. I suggest we introduce him to a nice oubliette.

[duckprintspress]

Readercon

Just a quick note that in less than an hour I'm hitting the road to go to Boston (or, well, Quincy) for Readercon!! I'll be participating in a panel at 3 p.m. today, about fanfiction and original fiction, and the rest of the convention I'll be vending in the Bookshop!

If you're gonna be there, come say hi!

[charliejaneanders]

I'm at ReaderCon!

[katenepveu]

9 Fandom Peeps to Get to Know Better:

from @measured-words!

3 ships I like: I don't think these will be a surprise based on the volume of my reblogs:

Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, The Untamed (specifically the show; I still haven't read the novel);

Hua Cheng/Xie Lian, Tian Guan Ci Fu by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (a.k.a. TGCF a.k.a. Heaven Official's Blessing; I'm behind on the donghua and haven't read the manhua but I don't believe there's any particular reason to distinguish adaptations at present);

Gideon/Harrow, The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. Unlike the other two, this is an ongoing work and not a romance, so I am not particularly holding out hope for a happy ending. That's okay! It'll be the right ending, and that's more important. (I'd say, and we'll always have fic, but I haven't had much fic-reading urge for this series. Who knows what'll happen when it's over, of course.)

First ship ever: this is a surprisingly tough one! Of the important books of my childhood and adolescence, some of them had romantic relationships, but I never really wanted to bang the characters together like dolls and say "Now kiss!", which is what shipping feels like to me. (You'd think there'd be something in Mercedes Lackey but mostly I wanted various characters/a nap.) I did get mushy over the very early, as in the first book, Lan/Nynaeve scenes in The Wheel of Time, which I think predates anything else that comes to mind?

Last song I heard: unfortunately the talus battle music from Tears of the Kingdom is stuck in my head, which is driving out all else.

Favorite childhood book: well, not to be a complete nerd or anything, but I did use to check out the three paperback volumes of The Lord of the Rings every year in elementary when we went to Vermont on vacation, so.

Currently reading: nominally re-reading TGCF along with folks on Mastodon, but I am of course behind. I have three Naomi Mitchison books in (gasp!) paper to read, as she is Memorial Guest of Honor at Readercon this year; The Conquered is due back the soonest so that's theoretically next. In practice I have a very busy few weeks coming up and the answer is probably "some comfort fic rereads."

Currently watching: the TGCF donghua. I rewatched S1 on mute at 1.5 speed (sorry, I know) and have seen precisely one episode of S2.

Currently consuming: water?

Currently craving: pectin jelly beans, which used to be available around this time of year but Russell Stover has apparently stopped making them. There are candy shops on the Internet that sell them but I'm not sure I want to go that far.

Tagging people on Tumblr terrifies me, so please chime in anyone who likes!

[ktempestbradford]

I LOVED her so much. Legend.

I also was introduced to middle aged fans early on just as I was discovering fandom proper and it 100% benefitted me as a person and as a fan and as a creator.

However, to this...

I went to Philcon a few years ago, which tends towards older fans, and an older woman I was talking to sadly told me that she thought fandom was dying out, because she never saw younger fans any more.

...I have a different take on why this is. Or another reason beyond what's stated by @ordinarytalk. I definitely see the dynamic they talk about in online spaces. But in meatspace--more specifically SFF con space--the more prevalent problem is the cons themselves.

My first con that wasn't a Star Trek con was WorldCon. Millennium Philcon, actually! I was so excited to go after years of hearing about it from people in my SFF writing workshop. It was a chance to meet them all in person (the workshop was virtual; yes, even back in 2000) and to go to panels to see the authors and editors and artists that had shaped wee!Tempest into the budding writer I was then. I loved it and decided I would go every year.

And I did, for a while. Soon I started to notice that it was hard to find other Black people at WorldCon. There were some, as well as other BIPOC, but not so many that I didn't clock every single one of them through the course of the convention.

This also happened at every other con I attended: Lunacon, ReaderCon, World Fantasy...

The first year I went to WisCon (which I LOVED), a friend of mine related this conversation to me.

My Friend: It's weird that there aren't that many POC at this con. Another Person: Well, have you met Tempest?

I will say that whenever I did find other BIPOC (with verrry few exceptions), they were as glad to see another brown face as I was and so I got to know many of them and some are still dear friends. Black women a generation or two older than me were especially kind, looping me into their circles immediately.

About 10 years into attending cons regularly as a fan and a baby writer, the continued lack of BIPOC started to bother me. I stopped going to WorldCon regularly, some cons I ditched altogether, and I started to keep track of which cons were more welcoming to BIPOC attendees and focusing on those. In some cases, SFF cons were downright hostile spaces for BIPOC. Yet if you said so out loud, you were shouted down by people insisting that no SFF fan would ever be racist because this is the genre of futurism and inclusiveness!

That kept happening. And so, many of us stopped attending cons that made it clear they did not care about us.

BIPOC weren't the only people doing this. LGBTQ+ folks were clocking the same patterns, sometimes with the same cons. As were women. As were people with disabilities.

Despite SFF being an allegedly welcome, open, inclusive, progressive community, the fight for marginalized people to simply exist at the con without dealing with a constant barrage of microaggressions, plain old aggressions, sexual harassment, disability harassment, and way worse, raged on for decades. And is still raging in some quarters.

The pushback to "radical" inclusiveness, even at a self-described feminist convention, for instance, often came from the following groups:

Older People (pre-Gen X fans)

White People (mostly cis men but a not-insignificant number of cis women)

Sociopaths (a state of being that knows no identity, sadly)

But let me be clear: Older People and White People have also been part of the push for real progressiveness and inclusivity. I will never discount our actual allies.

I still point it out because, from my observation, the Older People who get mad at those of us trying to make conventions more progressive and inclusive tend to then huddle up at conventions where they control everything so thoroughly that nothing changes. Plus, they also seem stuck in a certain kind of fandom mentality where this kind of book or media or whatever counts while the rest (generally including games, anime, cartoons not specifically for adults, and sometimes comics) is trash and thus won't be talked about at the con.

Guess what younger fans really love?

This is why WorldCon, aka the World Science Fiction Convention, one of the preeminent genre cons in the USA, gets about 3-5,000 attendees when it's held in North America, but DragonCon, an all-media con that embraces everything from TV and movies to games (video, TTRPG, LARP, and more) to anime to comics to books, now gets something approaching 100,000 attendees every year and is still growing.

Fandom is not dying out. It's growing and changing and evolving as it should. It is true that one would not know that if one is mostly attending cons where the average age is 60.

It doesn't have to be this way and folks who are older do not have to be left behind. It's gonna take work on everyone's part to ensure that doesn't happen.

There needs to be more value put on cross-generational fandom spaces for sure. Online and off. Younger folks need to actively welcome older folks just as much as older folks need to actively welcome the younger ones. I'm not saying it's anyone's job to rehabilitate racist Uncle Bob on the concom nor Auntie "Why do kids these days have so many pronouns" Betty who runs the con suite. Ignore them, leave them behind.

Just recognize that not all the folks over the tender age of 35 are Those People. Many are not. Many want to hear about all the stuff you love they've never heard of because nothing makes them happier than to hear about that nerdy shit you're obsessed with as long as you're cool hearing about the nerdy shit they're obsessed with and have been for 25 years. They're 100% down with gender neutral bathrooms and pronoun stickers and deep analysis of the problems of race in Star Wars and they want to know that anime is more than Sailor Moon.

We may not be able to revivify the cons or fandom that are dying out because the fans in them are literally dying of old age. We can be sure to make space for fans of all ages in the cons that have already made space for younger people, BIPOC, the Alphabet Mafia, disabled fans, and other marginalized groups. Because we fought hard to open up those spaces for ourselves and we know how much that meant and the effort it took. We can make that effort for older generations who show us the respect and openness we asked for.

Now that I am entering my Auntie Era (the 40s caught up to me!) I'm where the older Black women who welcomed me were 20+ years ago. I intend to act as they did: embracing any younger folk or folk newer to the community I find and helping them feel part of both the micro-community and the larger one. And I hope, 20 years from now, 25 year olds will still be okay hanging out with me and telling me all the details of why Star Wars: Episode 54 is a betrayal of everything the director of Episode 39 did to revive the franchise.

I hope that I will be as open to change as I am now.

(sorry that got long...)

tbh shoutout to the over 40s on tumblr, sorry the internet acts like yall belong in the retirement home when ur literally just regular adults with hobbies

[katherinecrighton]

Upcoming appearance: Readercon 33!

It’s that time of year again: My schedule for Readercon 33 is live! As per usual, the con is taking place at the Boston Quincy Marriott in Quincy, MA, from July 11 – 14, with Guests of Honor Rebecca Roanhorse and Amal El-Mohtar. If you have any interest in the practical craft of writing or the current issues on the minds of genre publishing professionals, I absolutely recommend registering and…

[virtualmemoriespodcast]

Episode 607 - Christopher Brown

With his phenomenal new book, A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and Other Wild Places (Timber Press), Christopher Brown shifts from novels into nature-writing/memoir/nonfiction mode and I am HERE for it. We talk about the eco-cosmos of East Austin, TX, the years of observation that opened him to the hidden pockets of wildness in urban environments, why solitude in nature is a myth, what we have to gain from taking a long walk, Long Time vs. the short presence of Anglos in Texas, how 2020's lockdown turned off global capitalism and showed how society might truly change, and how this book mutated from when we talked about it at Readercon 2023. We get into Bruce Sterling's unforgettable critique of his writing, the process of turning a narrative of colonization into one of decolonization, (eco)psychogeography & the Situationists, why he (begrudgingly) brought the personal/memoiristic into the book and how it helped him come to terms with himself, and what a workshop with horror writers taught him about the truth-telling power of non-redemptive storytelling. We also discuss the design flaws of the agricultural revolution, how his readers in different regions respond to his FIELD NOTES newsletter, the nature of mysticism and writing a narrative about transcending the self, hiking a Massachusetts marsh in summer with Jeff VanderMeer, and plenty more. Follow Christopher on Bluesky, Instagram and Mastodon, and subscribe to his FIELD NOTES newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter

Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show

[megpie71]

To quote the original metaphor:

"If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without realizing it, you need to get off my foot.

If everyone in your culture steps on feet, your culture is horrible, and you need to get off my foot.

If you have foot-stepping disease, and it makes you unaware you’re stepping on feet, you need to get off my foot. If an event has rules designed to keep people from stepping on feet, you need to follow them. If you think that even with the rules, you won’t be able to avoid stepping on people’s feet, absent yourself from the event until you work something out.

If you’re a serial foot-stepper, and you feel you’re entitled to step on people’s feet because you’re just that awesome and they’re not really people anyway, you’re a bad person and you don’t get to use any of those excuses, limited as they are. And moreover, you need to get off my foot." (Hershele Ostropoler in http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/31/readercon-harassment-etc/#comment-346433)

I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human. Never ever ever stepping on someone’s foot is not really achievable, and therefore is not necessary to being a Good Person: what matters is that you do not step on others’ feet deliberately, and – most importantly – that you react kindly and calmly to any inadvertent foot-stepping you have been doing being brought to your attention, so that you can make best use of it as something that will help you reduce the amount of foot-stepping you will do in the future.

[sumikosaulson]

My schedule at Readercon!

[brownthrasher]

Looking back at my list of books I read in 2023 (32 per my list on goodreads), my most read authors this year were T Kingfisher (5) and Victoria Goddard (only 3? must not be counting the rereads). Shortest and longest books belong to Goddard, who writes at two volumes. Outside of them, i also enjoyed To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Blackgoose, the Sandman in audio format, and Station Eternity by Lafferty. Man, I was harsh on my reviews this year,

Overall, the number of books I've read the past couple years is significantly decreased, 30s vs 50s. But that's okay, because it's just a hobby. (I think the internet/fanfic/computer games take up more time; also I've been trying to get in more exercise, and doing some spinning as well)

Maybe I should try to read some nonfiction for 2024? Let's be honest, I still have at least four books out right now on my wishlist, and still a dozen books from readercon and boskone that I want to get to.

[deepdarkspaceblog]

2022 Shirley Jackson Award Winners

The 2022 Shirley Jackson Award winners were announced at Readercon 32. #horror #books #shirleyjacksonaward

The 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards for outstanding achievement in horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction have been announced. Congratulations to all the winners! Novel WINNER (TIE): The Devil Takes You Home, Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland) WINNER (TIE): Where I End, Sophie White (Tramp) Novella WINNER: The Bone Lantern, Angela Slatter (PS) Novelette WINNER: What the Dead Know,…