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readercon 18 KRW ©2007 program guide The conference on imaginative literature, eighteenth edition readercon 18 The Boston Marriott Burlington Burlington, Massachusetts 5th–8th July 2007 Guests of Honor: Lucius Shepard Karen Joy Fowler Memorial Guest of Honor: Angela Carter program guide Policies and Practical Information ..................................................................... 1 Bookshop Dealers ................................................................................................ 4 Readercon 18 Guest Index .................................................................................. 5 Readercon 18 Program ........................................................................................ 6 Thursday ........................................................................................................ 7 Friday ............................................................................................................. 7 Saturday ....................................................................................................... 15 Sunday.......................................................................................................... 23 Readercon 18 Committee .................................................................................. 28 Readercon 19 Advertisement ............................................................................ 29 Program Participant Bios.................................................................................. 30 Hotel Map........................................................................................................... 51 Program Grids ..............................................Back Cover and Inside Back Cover Cover Image The Bloody Chamber ©2007 Karl R. Wurst Program Guide Contents ©2007 Readercon, Inc. PO Box 38-1246, Cambridge, MA 02238-1246 [email protected] http://www.readercon.org page 1 readercon 18 policies and practical information Policies § Cell phones must be set to silent or vibrate mode in panel discussion rooms. ] No smoking in programming areas or the Bookshop, by state law and hotel policy. Ø w v Only service animals in convention areas. No weapons in convention areas. Young children who are always with an adult are admitted free; others need a membership, see Children at Readercon below for more information. y Any disruptive or inappropriate behavior may lead to being asked to leave the convention. U Readercon reserves the right to revoke membership at any time for any reason. No refunds will be given. [ Ç Readercon reserves the right to refuse membership. Æ No Eating or Drinking by customers in the Bookshop Party Policy: We encourage open parties, however parties in a room not in the party block will be shut down. Open parties (parties with an open invitation to all attendees and with an open door) may not serve alcohol. Closed parties (parties by invitation only and with a closed door) must make alcohol service arrangements with the hotel. Hospitality Suite – Room 630 Our Hospitality Suite (or Con Suite) is in Room 630 again this year. Take the elevator to the 6th floor, turn left out of the elevator, left again, and Room 630 will be on your right. Volunteer and Earn Exclusive Readercon Stuff! Readercon is entirely volunteer-run. Our volunteers help with Registration and Information, keep an eye on the programming, staff the Hospitality Suite, and do about a million more things. If interested, go to Information the person there will know what to do. It’s fun, you’ll meet new people, and you can earn Readercon incentives that are available to volunteers only: 1 hour Readercon Pen 3 hours Readercon Flashlight 6 hours Readercon Travel Mug 8 hours Readercon 19 membership All these items will be awarded cumulatively, so work 8 hours and get all four! program guide page 2 Tiptree Bake Sale Please consider purchasing some of our delicious goods or make a monetary contribution at the bake sale to benefit the James Tiptree Jr. Award. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender. Created in 1991 by Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler (one of this year's Guests of Honor!), the award is named after Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. and in doing so, helped break down the imaginary barrier between "women's writing" and "men's writing." For more information on the award see: www.tiptree.org. This year the Tiptree Bake Sale is located in the cloak room off the Ballroom Lobby. Kaffeeklatsches Kaffeeklatsches are small gatherings of attendees with a program participant, chatting informally. Because seating is limited, we ask that those interested sign up in advance at the Information Table. The Kaffeeklatsches are in Rooms 456 and 458 this year. Take the elevator to the 4th floor, turn left out of the elevator, left again, and Rooms 456 and 458 will be at the end of the hall on your right. Or take the stairs behind the elevators up one floor. At the top of the stairs, turn right and go out the door just before the next flight up. Turn left and Rooms 456 and 458 will be at the end of the hall on the right. You must go all the way to the end of the hall before you can see these rooms. The Meaning of Badge Colors Purple............................................. Guest of Honor Orange .................................. Program Participant Red ........................................................ Committee Green.............................................................Dealer Thank You The Readercon Committee would like to thank Arisia Inc. for the generous use of their credit card facilities. page 3 readercon 18 Children at Readercon A child will be defined as any person who has not yet had an eighteenth birthday. Children under the age of 15 who will be using Readercon child care services will pay for a membership (to cover child care costs) and will be given a ReaderKids badge (and no conference materials). The badge must have the Readercon attending parent's name on the front of the badge and contact info on the back. This badge must be worn at all times while on hotel grounds. Children under the age of 15 who will be staying with a parent at all times receive a free membership, a ReaderKids In Tow badge, and no conference materials. The badge must have the Readercon attending parent's name on the front of the badge and contact info on the back. This free badge must be worn at all times while on hotel grounds. Children under the age of 15 may not be left unattended in any convention area or public hotel space. Being part of Readercon child care is considered attended. Children 15-17 years old who come to the convention with a parent and plan to go to programming independently, can purchase a membership at half the at-door price. They will receive a ReaderTeen badge and a Program Guide and a Souvenir Book, and we will require a parent's name on the front of the badge and contact info (ideally a cell phone number) on the back. This badge must be worn at all times while on hotel grounds. Children 15-17 years old must be able to observe the same behavioral guidelines as any adult. If we see a child who is being disruptive, or seems to need a parent and has no parent around, we will try to contact the parent. If we cannot contact the parent within 15 minutes, we will contact hotel security and ask them to assume supervision of the child. Any disruptive or inappropriate behavior may lead to being asked to leave the convention. Readercon reserves the right to revoke membership at any time for any reason. No refunds will be given. This policy has been established for the following reasons: • • • • Liability issues raised by the hotel due to unattended children left to play in hotel common areas and the pool area. Liability issues raised by Readercon for the same reasons, as well as for the comfort of all attendees. Liability issue of minor children left at Readercon without a parent or appointed guardian on hotel premises. Note that these children may be held by hotel security, the Department of Social Services contacted, and the child turned over to its care. It’s all about safety. We want our children to be safe, and we want yours to be as well. program guide Joseph T. Berlant PO Box 809 Schenectedy, NY 12301 Michael Borden 282 Hooper Street Tiverton, RI 02878-1210 bookshop dealers Klon’s Interplanetary Books 305 Stoneland Drive Athens, GA 30606-2455 page 4 Larry Smith, Bookseller 3824 Patricia Drive Upper Arlington, OH 43220-4913 Somewhere in Time Books 322 Whittier Hwy Moultonboro, NH 03254-3627 21 Hobson Avenue. St. James, NY 11780-3032 www.jgonbooks.com www.broaduniverse.org NESFA Press Terminus Publishing Clarkesworld Books PO Box 809 Framingham, MA 01701 www.nesfa.org/press/ 6644 Rutland Street Philadelphia, PA 19149-2128 New Genre PO Box 172 Lemoyne, PA 17043 Broad Universe PO Box 172 Stirling, NJ 07980 www.clarkesworldbooks.com Dark Hollow Books PO Box 119 Ossipee, NH 03864 www.darkhollowbooks.com Dragon Press/NYRSF PO Box 78 Pleasantville, NY 10570 www.nyrsf.com/dragon_press.html Eyrie House Books 3 Thoreau Lane Tyngsboro, MA 01879-2731 home.comcast.net/~eyriehouse/ Genre Ink PO Box 548 Antrim, NH 03440 www.genreink.com Henderson’s Books 18100 Chestnut Ridge Petersburg, VA 23803 Edward G. Hutnik 410 Whitney Ave., Apt 1 New Haven, CT 06511 Kuenzig Books PO Box 452 Topsfield, MA 01983 www.kuenzigbooks.com NIEKAS Publications PO Box 270092 West Hartword, CT 06127 www.new-genre.com Old Earth Books PO Box 19951 Baltimore, MD 21211-0951 www.oldearthbooks.com Pandemonium Books & Games 4 Pleasant Street Cambridge, MA 02139 www.pandemoniumbooks.com Prime Books 9710 Traville Gateway Dr, # 202 Rockville, MD 20850 [email protected] Science Fiction Poetry Association www.sfpoetry.com SFRevu www.sfrevu.com Small Beer Press 176 Prospect Avenue Northampton, MA 01060 www.smallbeerpress.com www.lcrw.net Tigereyes Books Vanishing Books PO Box 391289 Cambridge, MA 02139-0014 www.vanishingbooks.com Art Vaughan’s Used Books 620 Hammond Road York, PA 17402-1321 www.scififantasybooks.com Wesleyan University Press 215 Long Lane Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress Withywindle Books 67 Electric Avenue Lunenburg, MA 01462 www.withywindlebooks.com page 5 readercon 18 readercon 18 guest index Numbers indicate the program items as listed on the following pages. indicates a past Guest of Honor Karen Joy Fowler.............................................. 4, 10, 36, 88, 96, 130, 133, 136, 162 Lucius Shepard....................................8, 26, 30, 47, 88, 98, 123, 132, 142, 153, 164 John Joseph Adams...........................70, 97 Mike Allen................59, 112, 123, 140, 153 Ellen Asher ........................................5, 115 Paolo Bacigalupi ......................88, 121, 139 Amelia Beamer ......................................116 Elizabeth Bear ...39, 54, 108, 129, 160, 172 Judith Berman.....................66, 78, 96, 144 Steve Berman ..........36, 119, 126, 154, 176 Abby Blachly ..........................................108 Holly Black...........14, 23, 56, 119, 126, 154 Ellen Brody ............................................128 Charles N. Brown ......................................3 Michael A. Burstein.......................111, 163 S. C. Butler ......................36, 115, 169, 176 James L. Cambias ...........................89, 178 Jeanne Cavelos ..............................109, 115 Ted Chiang.............................................135 Michael Cisco ...........................31, 136, 148 John Clute ....1, 3, 40, 71, 107, 124, 159 F. Brett Cox .......................2, 11, 30, 61, 89 Kathryn Cramer ............20, 39, 71, 79, 122 John Crowley.............5, 10, 28, 73, 102, ................................................106, 124, 144 Shira Daemon ........................................107 Michael J. Daley ..........36, 45, 56, 165, 176 Don D'Ammassa ..........................5, 24, 152 Ellen Datlow....................23, 40, 70, 79, ..................................................90, 119, 142 Daniel P. Dern .................................89, 171 Paul Di Filippo.................2, 11, 47, 78, 120 Chris Dolley .....................................64, 169 Debra Doyle .............84, 100, 134, 150, 162 Ron Drummond .........................11, 66, 172 Sarah Beth Durst ......56, 76, 113, 121, 154 Thomas A. Easton ...........................97, 135 Scott Edelman..................34, 107, 129, 172 David Louis Edelman ................80, 88, 175 Jeffrey Ford....................6, 17, 85, 119, 132 Carl Frederick................................117, 135 Jim Freund ........................................ 48, 71 Craig Shaw Gardner ....................... 78, 134 James Alan Gardner ....................... 31, 162 Chris Genoa......................... 35, 48, 62, 153 Laura Anne Gilman ............. 14, 50, 87, 97, ........................................................ 130, 136 Greer Gilman............. 20, 92, 106, 145, 162 Adam Golaski ................. 24, 57, 67, 90, 96, ................................................ 133, 136, 158 Theodora Goss .............. 11, 23, 46, 72, 107, ........................................ 119, 123, 145, 157 Glenn Grant............................. 30, 125, 134 Gavin J. Grant........................... 23, 44, 125 Leigh Grossman ........................ 22, 58, 177 Elizabeth Hand ................ 1, 28, 30, 66, 81, .................................................. 91, 102, 145 Nancy C. Hanger ..................................... 50 David G. Hartwell............... 1, 5, 20, 79, ........................................................ 122, 173 Jeff Hecht ........................................ 53, 163 Nina Kiriki Hoffman ........... 56, 85, 95, 119 Ken Houghton ............................... 116, 144 Walter H. Hunt ......... 50, 75, 125, 143, 160 Alexander Jablokov......................... 96, 147 Matthew Jarpe ................ 53, 114, 125, 146 Kay Kenyon .................... 5, 17, 37, 64, 105, ................................................ 131, 156, 168 John Kessel............ 11, 42, 48, 88, 116, 149 Donald Kingsbury ......... 122, 141, 151, 163 Rosemary Kirstein ............ 62, 64, 103, 161 Mary Robinette Kowal ................ 16, 32, 47 Matthew Kressel ................. 44, 49, 90, 101 John Langan................ 15, 57, 75, 118, 136 Fred Lerner ....................................... 65, 89 Paul Levinson...... 27, 41, 58, 103, 135, 166 Shariann Lewitt ................................ 47, 64 Ernest Lilley...................................... 71, 97 Kelly Link ............ 10, 33, 44, 106, 119, 154 program guide page 6 Barry B. Longyear ..............27, 45, 78, 110, ........................................................138, 162 James D. Macdonald ..........58, 64, 84, 100, ........................................................134, 150 Barry N. Malzberg ............1, 10, 17, 65, ............................................................77, 96 Nick Mamatas..........................................40 Laurie J. Marks .............17, 25, 51, 80, 172 Louise Marley ............19, 39, 135, 150, 163 James Maxey .....................................17, 52 Maureen McHugh............8, 60, 80, 96, 116 Victoria McManus .......11, 29, 39, 116, 141 Anil Menon.............................................125 Yves Meynard ..................................31, 134 Kathryn Morrow ..............37, 106, 159, 173 James Morrow ..........37, 39, 68, 88,115, ........................................124, 144, 159, 173 Sharyn November......................30, 56, 154 Kim Paffenroth ........................................40 Joshua Palmatier ..............50, 94, 115, 167 Paul Park .....................47, 82, 93, 106, 162 Jennifer Pelland ................................69, 90 Tom Purdom ........................43, 71, 89, 149 Laura Quilter...................................58, 108 Faye Ringel ..............................................86 Darrell Schweitzer...........2, 10, 24, 63, 123 Hildy Silverman .............................. 13, 153 Vandana Singh.............. 9, 17, 72, 157, 173 Graham Sleight ........... 1, 3, 11, 57, 66, 107 Sarah Smith ................ 2, 83, 104, 124, 145 Wen Spencer.............................. 80, 99, 170 Ian Randal Strock ..................... 31, 97, 168 Michael Swanwick .............. 57, 93, 106, ........................................................ 127, 144 Sonya Taaffe................ 7, 48, 123, 140, 145 Jeffrey Thomas........................................ 38 Paul Tremblay................................... 21, 90 Jean-Louis Trudel ......................... 155, 173 Catherynne M. Valente........ 11, 23, 55, 72, .................................... 84, 94, 123, 140, 157 Eric M. Van.............. 78, 124, 134, 137, 153 Gordon Van Gelder ............... 65, 71, 77, 79 Konrad Walewski ............................ 66, 173 Sean Wallace ........................................... 79 Peter Watts........................ 58, 80, 163, 174 Elizabeth Wein .......... 56, 74, 113, 119, 177 Diane Weinstein................................ 24, 48 Jacob Weisman................................ 65, 112 Robert Freeman Wexler.......................... 12 Rick Wilber ........................................ 31, 64 Paul Witcover ............................ 18, 57, 172 Gary K. Wolfe ................................ 3, 40, 65 Plus Mary Alexandra Agner (123), Erik Amundsen (123), John Benson (140), Jedediah Berry (119), Leah Bobet (101, 123, 140), John Bowker (101), Tempest Bradford (72, 157), M. J. Danville (69), Michael DeLuca (72, 157), Lila Garrott (123), Jack Haringa (118), Barbara Krasnoff (101), Heidi Lampietti (69), Joy Marchand (72, 157), Neil Marsh (67), Drew Morse (123), Peter Payack (123), Margaret Ronald (69), Lorraine Schein (123), Morven Westfield (69), Trisha J. Wooldridge (69), and Phoebe Wray (69) readercon 18 program All items fill a 60 minute program slot unless otherwise noted. All items begin 5 minutes after the nominal time, but attendees are urged to arrive as promptly as possible. Panels end 5 minutes before the hour. (L) indicates Leader (Participant / Moderator) (M) indicates (non-participant) Moderator only. Times in italics are before noon, others are noon and later. E F H 456/458 Location Key Grand Ballroom Salon E ME Grand Ballroom Salon F NH Grand Ballroom Salons H, I & J VT Kaffeeklatsches – Rooms 456/458 RI Maine/Connecticut New Hampshire/Massachusetts Vermont Rhode Island page 7 thursday readercon 18 1. 8:00 F “The Real Year” Is Ageless! John Clute, Elizabeth Hand, David G. Hartwell (L), Barry N. Malzberg, Graham Sleight. Readercon 4 Guest of Honor John Clute introduced the concept of the “real year” of a work of fiction in the January 1991 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction, and it has proven to be one of the handiest critical concepts in the field and the basis for several past Readercon panels. According to Clute, every sf text, regardless of the year it claims to be set in, has an underlying “real year” which shines through, the secret point in time that gives the work its flavor. The closer the “real year” is to the present, the more cutting-edge the fiction reads; but most authors have a characteristic real year, one often based upon key childhood or adolescent experience and concerns (the real year of most Ray Bradbury stories is 1927). It’s been exactly a decade since our last “real year” panel, and the concept casts light on almost every interesting development in the field since. 2. 9:30 F What Single Novel Is Most Emblematic of Readercon? F. Brett Cox (L), Paul Di Filippo, Darrell Schweitzer, Sarah Smith. “Readercon, to my mind, is all about books like this one.” What’s the one book? Obviously it’s different for every attendee. Our answers will tell us a lot about what Readercon means to people, and what our favorite books mean to us. We’ll hope to hear from every pro in attendance and as many readers as possible. Note: please limit descriptions of plots and contents to the initial premise, i.e., what the reader might learn in the first chapter. friday L 10:00 Ballroom Hallway Registration opens. 10:00 Ballroom Lobby Information opens. 3. 11:00 F A Heinlein Roundtable. Charles N. Brown (M), John Clute, Graham Sleight, Gary K. Wolfe. (60 min.) Locus magazine interviews our panelists for a Heinlein centenary piece. 4. 11:00 NH Karen Joy Fowler reads from a work in progress. (60 min.) 5. 12:00 F Reading the Super-Long Narrative. Ellen Asher, John Crowley, Don D’Ammassa, David G. Hartwell (L), Kay Kenyon. It’s one story, but it’s coming out a volume at a time, at an interval of a year or much longer. Some of us have the self-control to wait till it’s all in print, but most of us don’t. Even if we consume it at one go, works of this size present challenges to the reader that single-volume works don’t. And if we read it a volume at a time, the challenges mount. Do you re-read the entire book before each new volume? Or do you resign yourself to missing some of what’s going on? 6. 12:00 NH min.) Jeffrey Ford reads an unpublished story, “The Drowned Life.” (60 7. 12:00 VT Moly.” (30 min.) Sonya Taaffe reads “Notes Toward the Classification of the Lesser program guide friday 8. 12:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Lucius Shepard; Maureen McHugh. 9. 12:30 VT page 8 Vandana Singh reads from the novella “Infinities.” (30 min.) 10. 1:00 F Brilliant But Flawed. John Crowley, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Barry N. Malzberg, Darrell Schweitzer (L). William Hope Hodgson’s fiction often has scenes of great visionary power, but there’s no denying that it also has qualities that could qualify it for the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose competition. Characterization is lacking, prose is creaky—but then there are the images. Our reading experience of flawed texts like Hodgson’s can vary remarkably, from reader to reader or even from text to text. At times it’s possible to be taken in by the one good aspect of a text while ignoring many flaws, while at the other extreme, there are times when a single flaw can poison our experience of an otherwise excellent work. We’ll start our discussion by talking about works we’ve found problematical and whether we sank or swam with their weaknesses. What part of our response lies in ourselves, and how much in the text? Can we figure out what sorts of readers can or can’t read what sorts of flawed works? 11. 1:00 H The Slipstream / Fabulation / Magic Realism Canon. F. Brett Cox (L), Paul Di Filippo, Ron Drummond, Theodora Goss, John Kessel, Victoria McManus, Graham Sleight, Catherynne M. Valente. (c. 100 min.) There are lists galore of the best 100 sf, fantasy, or horror novels, but nothing at all for their odd cousin, the slipstream novel. Until now! Each panelist has submitted a list of the best 50 or 100 works of fiction of all time that are in some important way non-mimetic or fantastic, but would not ordinarily be regarded as sf, fantasy, or horror. We’ve compiled the lists and provided you all with a handout; the panelists will talk about the best and most controversial of the works. 12. 1:00 NH Robert Freeman Wexler reads from a new novelette, “Sidewalk Factory: A Mini Story-Suite.” (30 min.) 13. 1:00 VT Hildy Silverman reads “Picky,” forthcoming in an anthology from the Garden State Horror Writers. (30 min.) 14. 1:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Laura Anne Gilman; Holly Black. 15. 1:30 NH John Langan reads from “Snow,” an upcoming story. (30 min.) 16. 1:30 VT Mary Robinette Kowal reads “Body Language.” (30 min.) 17. 2:00 F Writing and the Rest of Life. Jeffrey Ford, Kay Kenyon (L), Barry N. Malzberg, Laurie J. Marks, James Maxey, Vandana Singh. Writers often experience conflicts between their writing and their family and job obligations. Is it possible to use these conflicts productively? If that’s impossible, how do you build a firewall between work and the rest of life? Does being enmeshed in or removed from your real life while you’re at the keyboard result in different flavors of fiction? 2:00 H The Slipstream / Fabulation / Magic Realism Canon. (cont.) F. Brett Cox (L), Paul Di Filippo, Ron Drummond, Theodora Goss, John Kessel, Victoria McManus, Graham Sleight, Catherynne M. Valente. (c. 40 min.) page 9 friday readercon 18 18. 2:00 NH Paul Witcover reads from “Everland,” the title story in his forthcoming collection from PS Publishing. (30 min.) 19. 2:00 VT Louise Marley reads from her short story collection, Absalom’s Mother & Other Stories. (30 min.) 20. 2:00 Gilman. 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer; Greer 21. 2:30 NH Paul Tremblay reads “There’s No Light Between Floors” from Clarkesworld Magazine. (30 min.) 22. 2:30 VT Leigh Grossman reads “Watching Shadows.” (30 min.) Æ 3:00 Room 630 Con Suite opens. 3:00 E Bookshop opens. 23. 3:00 F The Retold Fairy or Folk Tale. Holly Black, Ellen Datlow, Theodora Goss (L), Gavin J. Grant, Catherynne M. Valente. It’s become a thriving and very interesting sub-genre, highlighted by Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Tanith Lee’s Red As Blood, the Fairy Tales Series of novels edited by Terri Windling, and the Snow White, Blood Red series of anthologies edited by Windling and Ellen Datlow (there are doubtless many other examples). We’ll discuss the appeal of these works and the myriad evident approaches. What are the separate advantages of hewing close to the original and of taking great liberties? 24. 3:00 H The Fiction of William Hope Hodgson, Current Cordwainer Smith Award Winner. Don D’Ammassa, Adam Golaski, Darrell Schweitzer (L), Diane Weinstein. The outgoing judges of the Award (including Readercon stalwarts John Clute and Scott Edelman) selected the author of A House on the Borderland and The Night Land at last year’s Readercon. These novels have achieved a cult status within the horror field. 25. 3:00 ME Implausible Teaching. Laurie J. Marks. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). Marks teaches Freshman English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where the majority of incoming freshmen haven’t been well served by their high schools, and are firstgeneration Americans or first-generation college students. Marks says it’s a bit like being a medic in the trenches during WWI: “I have a clear sense of purpose, but I’m shell-shocked, and I wish I had some ammunition.” When she was in graduate school, one of her mentors advised, ‘Don’t teach writing. Teach students.’ This implausible emphasis on audience rather than subject has surprising implications for all teachers. Marks will review practical, theoretical, and ethical aspects of teaching students, with lots of examples, slides, and even a handout. 26. 3:00 NH Lucius Shepard reads a new story, “Larissa Miusov,” or from a rewrite of his 2005 novel Viator. (60 min.) 27. 3:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Barry B. Longyear; Paul Levinson. program guide 28. 3:00 E friday page 10 Autographs. John Crowley; Elizabeth Hand. 29. 3:30 NH Victoria McManus reads “Detox” (by “Elspeth Potter”) from the forthcoming anthology So Fey: Queer Faery Fiction, and if time allows, “Poppies Are Not the Only Flower” from the forthcoming Lipstick on Her Collar, and Other Tales of Lesbian Lust. (30 min.) 30. 4:00 F Rebel, Rebel: Ex-Rocker Writers. F. Brett Cox (L), Glenn Grant, Elizabeth Hand, Sharyn November, Lucius Shepard. The attitude of rebellion (or the conscious stance of being a societal outsider) is central to rock ‘n’ roll and important in sf, where rebellion is both a frequent theme of the fiction and inherent in the career choice. We ask our writers with a significant rock ‘n’ roll past (as performer, critic, DJ, or the like) to reflect on the theme of rebellion in their lives and fiction. How has their early experience as an outsider shaped their approach to character in fiction? 31. 4:00 H Smooth and Lumpy Expanded Universes. Michael Cisco, James (L), Yves Meynard, Ian Randal Strock, Rick Wilber. There are convincing and unconvincing ways for a writer to build on a created world. The introduction of the Bene Tleilax in Dune Messiah strikes many readers as an off-note, because it’s inconceivable that the organization wouldn’t have been mentioned in the original novel. In contrast, the Order of the Phoenix fit beautifully into J. K. Rowling’s world. Isaac Asimov spent the last years of his career relentlessly expanding and merging his created universes, with controversial results. What other examples stand out? What are some of the tricks of the trade? 32. 4:00 ME Remember to Breathe: The Secrets Behind Great Public Readings. Mary Robinette Kowal. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). You may be a good writer, but reading aloud is a separate skill. Learn to make your words sound as great out loud as they do on the page. Using both demonstration and audience participation, we will explore voicing, narration and pacing. 33. 4:00 NH Kelly Link reads an untitled new story. (30 min.) 34. 4:00 VT Scott Edelman reads “The World Breaks” from the upcoming anthology Nation of Ash. (60 min.) 35. 4:00 VT Chris Genoa reads from his forthcoming novel, The Monkey and the Barrel: A Novel of Kung Fu and Foolish Love. (30 min.) 36. 4:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Karen Joy Fowler; Steve Berman, S. C. Butler, and Michael J. Daley. 37. 4:00 E Autographs. Kay Kenyon; James and Kathryn Morrow. 38. 4:30 NH Jeffrey Thomas reads from Deadstock. (30 min.) page 11 readercon 18 friday 39. 5:00 F “The Singularity Needs Women!” Elizabeth Bear, Kathryn Cramer, Louise Marley, Victoria McManus (L), James Morrow. At Readercon 14 (2002), GoH Octavia Butler said, “As the only woman up here, this may be a strange question, but I can’t help wondering how much of this speculation about a post-human future has to do with men’s desire to control reproduction.” We sadly can’t ask Octavia exactly what she meant, but we want to pursue this striking statement. Does the post-humanist ideal of freedom from bodily constraints clash fundamentally with the ideal of freedom for the more than half of the population with female bodies? Or might the Singularity actually be a means to the freedoms sought by feminism? Has anyone written fiction about how these ideals interact, and if not, is this an opportunity? 40. 5:00 H Awe, Horror! John Clute, Ellen Datlow, Nick Mamatas, Kim Paffenroth, Gary K. Wolfe (L). The May 2007 issue of Locus featured a roundtable discussion of horror, focusing on John Clute’s model of horror story structure as presented in his recent book The Darkening Garden. Gary K. Wolfe beautifully summed up Clute’s most important idea: the best horror tales don’t “need to set out to scare us – they reveal to us that we’re already scared.” Clute calls the feeling evoked at the end of a horror tale when the true and inimical nature of the world is revealed “vastation,” which Peter Straub argued was in fact a form of transcendence. Elsewhere in the issue, authors Ramsey Campbell (admitting to being a horror writer) and Caitlin R. Kiernan (denying the same) both argue that the best horror evokes the emotion of awe rather than fear. We think they’re talking about the same feeling as Clute and Straub, and that this insight is the key to relating Clute’s ideas to the more conventional view in which horror is defined not by its characteristic story structure but by the effect it produces on the reader. We’ll review Clute’s model and then focus on its (arguably awesome or awful) final stage. 41. 5:00 ME Writing Sequels. Paul Levinson. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). Which novel or novels should you choose for a sequel (when you have at least three choices)? When should you go public about writing the sequel (and perhaps risk giving away part of the ending of the prior novel)? In the long run, is a writer better off writing a sequel, or a novel in a brand new universe? This talk will consider these and other fascinating facets in the realm of sequeldom. 42. 5:00 NH John Kessel forthcoming stories. (60 min.) reads “Powerless” or “Pride and Prometheus,” 43. 5:00 VT Tom Purdom reads “Installment Eight: Doubling Up,” from his online When I Was Writing, A Literary Memoir, telling how he sold his first Ace Double in 1963. (30 min.) 44. 5:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant; Matthew Kressel. 45. 5:00 E Autographs. Michael J. Daley; Barry B. Longyear. 46. 5:30 VT Theodora Goss reads from her short story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting. (30 min.) program guide friday page 12 47. 6:00 F Hunted Jaguars: Fiction in Another Land. Paul Di Filippo, Mary Robinette Kowal (L), Shariann Lewitt, Paul Park, Lucius Shepard. Much memorable speculative fiction has been set either in the developing world or in an obviously fantasticated version of it. These stories are attractive to writers and readers for a number of different reasons. Our panelists talk about the genesis of these stories and their motivations for using such a setting. 48. 6:00 H Absent Friends: Remembering the People We’ve Lost This Year. Jim Freund (M), Chris Genoa, John Kessel, Sonya Taaffe, Diane Weinstein. Jack Williamson, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., John M. “Mike” Ford, Wilson “Bob” Tucker, Nelson Bond, Robert Anton Wilson, and Lloyd Alexander are among the sf greats who’ve left us in the last year. We pause to remember them and others, and celebrate their time with us. 49. 6:00 ME Why the Small Press Matters. Matthew Kressel. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). Why are big names like Jeff Ford, Rick Bowes, Catherynne M. Valente and others sending their stuff to the small press? Why should we pay attention to smaller markets like Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede, Say, and Sybil’s Garage? If one were to start a small press magazine, what pitfalls should one look out for? 50. 6:00 RI Bookaholics Anonymous Annual Meeting Laura Anne Gilman, Nancy C. Hanger (L), Walter H. Hunt, Joshua Palmatier. Discussion (60 min.). The most controversial of all 12-step groups. Despite the appearance of self-approbation, despite the formal public proclamations by members that they find their behavior humiliating and intend to change it, this group, in fact, is alleged to secretly encourage its members to succumb to their addictions. The shame, in other words, is a sham. Within the subtext of the members’ pathetic testimony, it is claimed, all the worst vices are covertly endorsed: book-buying, book-hoarding, book-stacking, book-sniffing, even book-reading. Could this be true? Come testify yourself! 51. 6:00 NH Laurie J. Marks reads from Water Logic and/or Air Logic. (30 min.) 52. 6:00 min.) VT James Maxey reads from his just-published novel Bitterwood. (30 53. 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Matthew Jarpe; Jeff Hecht. 6:00 54. 6:30 NH Elizabeth Bear reads from novel-in-progress All the Windwracked Stars, from Whiskey and Water (published days ago by Roc), and/or something else (audience choice). (30 min.) 55. 6:30 VT Catherynne M. Valente reads from The Orphan’s Tales, Vol. II: In the Cities of Coin and Spice, forthcoming from Spectra in October. (30 min.) 7:00 E Bookshop closes. page 13 friday readercon 18 56. 7:00 F Young (and Very Young) Adult F&SF. Holly Black, Michael J. Daley, Sarah Beth Durst, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Sharyn November (L), Elizabeth Wein. This is a golden age for young adult speculative fiction, and part of the blossoming comes from the broadening of the YA category to include middle readers, between the ages of 8 to 12. Novels like The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau and The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen have joined classics like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time in school curricula across the nation. Magical tales by Diana Wynne Jones, Cornelia Funke, and Neil Gaiman grace the shelves next to reprints of Roald Dahl. Our panel of YA and very YA authors discuss their work, and the challenges and essentials of writing for a young audience. 57. 7:00 H The Fiction of Lucius Shepard. Adam Golaski (L), John Langan, Graham Sleight, Michael Swanwick, Paul Witcover. Shepard won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1985. In the twenty-two years since, no less than thirty of his stories have been finalists for major awards, including winners “R&R” (Nebula for novella, 1987), “Barnacle Bill the Spacer” (Hugo for novella, 1993), and “Over Yonder” (Theodore Sturgeon Award, 2003). He’s a three-time winner of the International Horror Guild Award for long fiction, an eight-time winner of the Locus Award, and a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award for his collections The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends of the Earth. 58. 7:00 ME The Public Domain Land, by William Hope Hodgson, et al. Leigh Grossman, Paul Levinson (L), James D. Macdonald, Laura Quilter, Peter Watts. The fiction of William Hope Hodgson, this year’s Cordwainer Smith winner, is in the public domain. Much of it is online, and a number of writers have written excellent new works in the Night Land universe. Would Hodgson be as well remembered as he is without this freedom to use his work? What can we make of this example, in light of current debates on intellectual property/copyright issues? 59. 7:00 RI Speculative Poetry Workshop. Mike Allen. Talk / Workshop (60 min.). What is speculative poetry? How do you write it, why would you want to, and which editors will buy it? Come prepared to write on the fly. 60. 7:00 NH Maureen McHugh reads “The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large,” a forthcoming story. (60 min.) 61. 7:00 VT F. Brett Cox reads something you haven’t heard before from his forthcoming work. (30 min.) 62. 7:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Rosemary Kirstein; Chris Genoa. 63. 7:30 VT Warrior.” (30 min.) Darrell Schweitzer reads a recent short story, “Thousand Year 64. 8:00 F Filling In the Middle. Chris Dolley, Kay Kenyon, Rosemary Kirstein, Shariann Lewitt, James D. Macdonald, Rick Wilber (L). Stories are often conceived of with a beginning and an ending and nothing in between. The writer’s challenge is to figure out how to get from the start to the end, to figure out what could possibly happen to bring about the ending given the initial conditions. [Some more stuff here . . . eventually say:] A look at the nature of the middle of stories and at some of the techniques for filling them in. program guide friday page 14 65. 8:00 H Beyond Dick and Tiptree: SF Writers Who Deserve Biographies. Fred Lerner, Barry N. Malzberg, Gordon Van Gelder, Jacob Weisman (M), Gary K. Wolfe. There haven’t been too many literary biographies of sf greats. A few candidates for future biographies led famously interesting lives, such as Paul Linebarger / Cordwainer Smith and Theodore Sturgeon. We suspect that there are others whose lives were more interesting than they might seem at first glance. A discussion of the best candidates and of the issues involved (scholarship, commercial viability). 66. 8:00 ME The Readercon Book Club. Judith Berman, Ron Drummond (L), Elizabeth Hand, Graham Sleight, Konrad Walewski. In celebration of its 25th anniversary edition, an in-depth discussion of John Crowley’s Little, Big. 67. 8:00 RI “Nightfall,” Forgotten Classic of Horror Radio. Adam Golaski with Neil Marsh. Talk (60 min.). “Nightfall” was broadcast in the late ‘70s / early ‘80s as an original horror anthology series for the CBC. Thirteen episodes were rebroadcast on NPR in the early ‘80s. Golaski and expert Neil Marsh play excerpts, talk about the history of the show, the many literary adaptations done, and about their own enthusiasm for “Nightfall”—a radio show as good as “Lights Out!” and “Inner Sanctum”—just not as well known. 68. 8:00 NH James Morrow reads from novel-in-progress The Philosopher’s Apprentice. (60 min.) 69. 8:00 VT Broad Universe Rapidfire Group Reading. Jennifer Pelland (host), with M. J. Danville, Heidi Lampietti, Margaret Ronald, Morven Westfield, Trisha J. Wooldridge, Phoebe Wray. Broad Universe is an international organization of women and men dedicated to celebrating and promoting the work of women writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror. (60 min.) 70. 8:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Ellen Datlow; John Joseph Adams. L Æ 9:00 Ballroom Hallway Registration closes. 9:00 Ballroom Lobby Information closes. 9:00 Room 630 Con Suite closes. 71. 9:00 ME F&SF Reviewing in the Blogosphere. John Clute, Kathryn Cramer, Jim Freund (M), Ernest Lilley, Tom Purdom, Gordon Van Gelder. A guide to what’s online, and a discussion of the ways in which online reviewing differs from the print variety. What are the good and bad aspects of the more personal and informal tone of much online criticism? page 15 friday readercon 18 72. 9:00 RI Creating Interfictions. Theodora Goss (L), Vandana Singh, Catherynne M. Valente, with Tempest Bradford, Michael DeLuca, Joy Marchand. Discussion (60 min.). Meet with editor Theodora Goss and several of the Interfictions writers to discuss how the anthology was created. How did the writers think about their stories—did they set out to write “interstitial,” or did the stories just come out that way? How did the editors select the stories that appear in the anthology? What does “interstitial” mean anyway? And when can you start submitting for Interfictions 2? 73. 9:00 NH John Crowley reads from a work in progress. (60 min.) 74. 9:00 min.) VT Elizabeth Wein reads from The Mark of Solomon and new work. (30 75. 9:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Walter H. Hunt; John Langan. 76. 9:30 VT Sarah Beth Durst reads from Into the Wild. (30 min.) 77. 10:00 F/H The 2008 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award Ceremony. Barry N. Malzberg, Gordon Van Gelder. (15 min.) The Smith Award, honoring a writer worthy of being rediscovered by today’s readers, is selected annually by a panel of judges that includes longtime Readercon stalwarts Barry N. Malzberg and Gordon Van Gelder. Past winners include Olaf Stapledon, R.A. Lafferty, Edgar Pangborn, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, and Leigh Brackett. Ç 10:15 F/H Meet the Pros(e) Party. (105 min.) Each writer at the party has selected a short, pithy quotation from his or her own work and is armed with a sheet of 30 printed labels, the quote replicated on each. As attendees mingle and meet each pro, they obtain one of his or her labels, collecting them on the wax paper provided. Atheists, agnostics, and the lazy can leave them in the order they acquire them, resulting in one of at least nine billion Random Prose Poems. Those who believe in the reversal of entropy can rearrange them to make a Statement. Wearing labels as apparel is also popular. The total number of possibilities (linguistic and sartorial) is thought to exceed the number of bytes of data in George W. Bush’s brain that correspond to objective reality. saturday L Æ 9:00 Ballroom Hallway Registration opens. 9:00 Ballroom Lobby Information opens. 9:00 Room 630 Con Suite opens. 10:00 E Bookshop opens. program guide saturday page 16 78. 10:00 F Must Great Narrative Art Have Humor? Judith Berman, Paul Di Filippo, Craig Shaw Gardner, Barry B. Longyear, Eric M. Van (L). (90-100 min.; continues in RI) (Was: Getting No Respect: Humor as the Rodney Dangerfield of Aesthetic Responses.) At Readercon 17, Eric M. Van presented the beginnings of a neuroscientific theory of aesthetic responses to narrative art. There were four fairly obvious responses, which corresponded to the standard qualities of beauty (of prose or cinematography), character, plot, and depth of meaning. The surprise was that humor seemed to be a fifth primary quality rather than a subset of any of the other four. The notion that humor is as fundamental a story quality as plot or character suggests that every great narrative work should possess it, an assertion we’re not sure we’ve heard before. We’ll analyze the nature of humor by looking at our favorite jokes, comedy routines, and prose passages, and try to answer the titular question. Can we name any great works of narrative art that are essentially humorless? 79. 10:00 H The Year in Short Fiction. Kathryn Cramer, Ellen Datlow, David G. Hartwell (L), Gordon Van Gelder, Sean Wallace. 80. 10:00 ME Other Points of View. David Louis Edelman, Laurie J. Marks (L), Maureen McHugh, Wen Spencer, Peter Watts. In several places, Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club adopts a first-person plural viewpoint: “we” are thinking about the conversation described, and the reader gets to think about who, exactly, “we” may be—not everyone in the room! While third person and first person singular are the standard viewpoints in fiction, here we talk about the alternatives, and when we (you?) can best employ them. 81. 10:00 RI (30 min.). How (and Why) I Wrote Generation Loss. Elizabeth Hand. Talk 82. 10:00 NH Paul Park reads from The Hidden World, the forthcoming final volume of the Roumanian Quartet. (60 min.) 83. 10:00 VT Sarah Smith reads a work in progress, Memory House. (30 min.) 84. 10:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald; Catherynne M. Valente. 85. 10:00 E Autographs. Jeffrey Ford; Nina Kiriki Hoffman. 86. 10:30 RI Willa Cather: Medievalist and Fan. Faye Ringel. Talk (30 min.). So, all you ever knew about Willa Cather you learned in high school, when you were assigned “O Pioneers!” or “My Antonia”—and you’ve avoided her realistic novels ever since? Who knew about Cather’s early years, when she was a fanatical medievalist who wrote romantic poems, idolized the troubadours, and devoured tales of fantastic adventure? If she had grown up in 1990 instead of 1890, she would have posted on LJ and joined the SCA. Ringel has just returned from following Cather’s footsteps through Provence. Come and learn more about this surprising American master. page 17 87. 10:30 VT Bridges. (30 min.) saturday readercon 18 Laura Anne Gilman reads from the new “Retrievers’“ novel, Burning 88. 11:00 F Political Beliefs and Fiction. Paolo Bacigalupi, David Louis Edelman, Karen Joy Fowler, John Kessel (L), James Morrow, Lucius Shepard. Both our Guests of Honor have histories of political activism. We’ve learned from other authors that the relationship between strongly held political beliefs and fiction is not always what it seems: apparently apolitical stories have hidden political motivations, or the overt political elements which would seem to be central to a story’s conception are in fact late additions. Our panelists discuss their stories with political elements or motivations. How do different creative circumstances (e.g., coolly rational vs. mad as hell) lead to different flavors of fiction or different degrees of success? 89. 11:00 H “The Door Dilated,” Needless Exposition Contracted: Heinlein as Narrative Innovator. James L. Cambias, F. Brett Cox, Daniel P. Dern (L), Fred Lerner, Tom Purdom. Robert A. Heinlein was the first sf author to regularly write about the future as though the reader already lived there. From our current perspective it may be hard to imagine just how radical an innovation this was. We celebrate the centenary of his birth by examining the profound influence he’s had on the art of sf storytelling. 90. 11:00 ME Short Fiction Outlets You’ve Never Heard Of. Ellen Datlow, Adam Golaski (L), Matthew Kressel, Jennifer Pelland, Paul Tremblay. A survey of the obscure places that short speculative fiction appears today, for both writers and readers. 11:00 RI Must Great Narrative Art Have Humor? (cont.) Judith Berman, Paul Di Filippo, Craig Shaw Gardner, Barry B. Longyear, Eric M. Van (L). (c. 40 min.) 91. 11:00 NH Elizabeth Hand reads “Winter’s Wife.” (30 min.) 92. 11:00 VT Greer Gilman reads from the new third story in the Ashes cycle, following “A Crowd of Bone” and “Jack Daw’s Pack.” (60 min.) 93. 11:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Michael Swanwick; Paul Park. 94. 11:00 E 95. 11:30 NH min.) Autographs. Joshua Palmatier; Catherynne M. Valente. Nina Kiriki Hoffman reads a new “pseudo sf” story, “Discards.” (30 program guide saturday page 18 96. 12:00 F James Frey Recapitulates Santa Claus. Judith Berman, Karen Joy Fowler, Adam Golaski (M), Alexander Jablokov, Barry N. Malzberg, Maureen McHugh. We don’t have to tell you how valuable invented stories are to the human mind—after all, you’re here at this convention. And yet James Frey was unable to sell A Million Little Pieces until he passed it off as true, and when it was exposed as mere autobiographical fiction, we were hugely pissed. In fact, our experience was the precise opposite of reading a fantastic narrative, as we suffered the unwilling suspension of belief. Which is furthermore what every five-year-old undergoes when they learn the truth about Santa or the Tooth Fairy. It seems that for all the importance of made-up stories, true ones may be even more important, and learning to tell them apart may be the most important thing of all. Is one of the functions of fiction to teach us how to do this? 97. 12:00 H Sense of Wonder, or Sense of Cool? John Joseph Adams, Thomas A. Easton, Laura Anne Gilman, Ernest Lilley (M), Ian Randal Strock. Sf seeks that sense of wonder, but we think much of today’s best sf brings forth a different feeling. To some of us, stories such as those in Charles Stross’s Accelerando sequence evoke a response more along these lines: “It really might be like that? Cool!” The emotion is less an awed contemplation of the universe and its inhabitants, and more the delight we have toward a new, really loaded computer, electronic gadget or online capability – what can we do with it, what are the implications? What the author shows us may be amazing, beyond present technology or knowledge, but it feels better understood and more under our control than the cosmic wonders of older sf: Cool is more widely shared than wonder, but less, er, wonderful. Can this be part of the reason for the decline in the popularity of sf-cool can be reliably found in more places? Does fantasy supply wonder more reliably today? 98. 12:00 ME Talking Film With Lucius Shepard Lucius Shepard. Discussion (60 min.). Our GoH is a longtime film reviewer for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Join him for a free-flowing film discussion. 99. 12:00 RI New Writing Tricks. Wen Spencer. Talk (60 min.). Learning how to write has been described as being like backing up a flight of stairs; you don’t know you’ve gotten better until you realize you’re one step up. Spencer shares some writing tricks she’s discovered that she’s never seen in how-to books. 100. 12:00 NH progress. (30 min.) Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald read from a work in 101. 12:00 VT Sybil’s Garage Group Reading. Matthew Kressel (host), with Leah Bobet, John Bowker, Barbara Krasnoff. “A Magazine of Speculative Fiction, Poetry & Art” mixes 21st-century sf, fantasy, horror and slipstream fiction with 19th-century engravings. Its fourth issue is out now. (60 min.) 102. 12:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. John Crowley; Elizabeth Hand. 103. 12:00 E Autographs. Rosemary Kirstein; Paul Levinson. page 19 saturday readercon 18 104. 12:30 RI Ergonomic Solutions on the Cheap (And a Few Otherwise). Sarah Smith. Discussion (30 min.). Discussants share ergonomic goodies, experiences, tips and tricks. With a hands-on demonstration of the semi-legendary Comfort Keyboard, the Cadillac of ergonomic keyboards. 105. 12:30 NH Kay Kenyon reads from Bright of the Sky. (30 min.) 106. 1:00 F Fantasy as Inner Landscape. John Crowley, Greer Gilman, Kelly Link, Kathryn Morrow (L), Paul Park, Michael Swanwick. It’s easy to criticize fantasy for its apparent acceptance of outmoded social structures, and in fact we’ve done so in past panels such as “Elfland Über Alles” and “The Return of the Prime Minister.” But are the social structures of fantasy actually a metaphor for inner experience? The king, the knights, the aristocracy, and the noble peasants who aspire to one or more of the above – do these appeal to writers and readers not because of any fondness for their reality, but because they provide a map of human experience and growth? Readercon hopes to put the audio recording of this panel online at some point after the convention. 107. 1:00 H Blindsided by the Fantastic: Slipstream as Fiction Without Expectation. John Clute, Shira Daemon (M), Scott Edelman, Theodora Goss, Graham Sleight. Sf films like The Truman Show, Open Your Eyes / Vanilla Sky and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were not marketed as sf, and for good reason: the tales were more effective if we didn’t know beforehand that they were science fictional. There aren’t too many novels that are more effective if the sf aspect blindsides us—Sarah Canary is one, and Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings is another—probably because the authors know that the game will be given away when “science fiction” is stamped on the spine. Is there any hope that slipstream can be established as the genre (or anti-genre) where such reframing of the story is possible? What kind of books might be written if authors had this freedom? 108. 1:00 ME What’s On Your Bookshelf?: LibraryThing. Abby Blachly, Elizabeth Bear, Laura Quilter, with avaland (L), AsYouKnow_Bob. Discussion (60 min.). Join the LibraryThingers who lurk among you to celebrate (or learn about) LibraryThing, a fast-growing online service to help you catalog your personal library online. It’s also an amazing network connecting people with similar libraries all over the world. We’ll share the thrills, the chills and agonies. With over 200,000 members and 13 million books catalogued, LibraryThing “is quietly achieving cult status among bookworms around the world, creating a network with one of the highest IQs in cyberspace.”—Business 2.0 magazine. 109. 1:00 RI Odyssey Writing Workshop Presentation. Jeanne Cavelos. Talk (60 min.). Director Cavelos discusses the pros and cons of writing workshops, and describes the workings of Odyssey, an intensive six-week program for writers of sf, fantasy, and horror held each summer at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. Odyssey is an internationally respected program with guests that have included George R. R. Martin, Dan Simmons, Elizabeth Hand, and Harlan Ellison. Former and current Odyssey participants will share their experiences. 110. 1:00 NH Barry B. Longyear reads “Starborn” and some other stuff. (60 min.) program guide saturday page 20 111. 1:00 VT Michael A. Burstein reads “The Soldier Within” and/or “Moving Day” (two short stories). (30 min.) 112. 1:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Mike Allen; Jacob Weisman. 113. 1:00 E 114. 1:30 VT from Tor. (30 min.) Autographs. Sarah Beth Durst; Elizabeth Wein. Matthew Jarpe reads from Radio Freefall, forthcoming next month 115. 2:00 F The Case for Archetypal Evil in Fantasy. Ellen Asher, S. C. Butler, Jeanne Cavelos, James Morrow (L), Joshua Palmatier. The pervasive trend in modern fantasy is to give the bad guys moral complexity and psychological depth – good reasons to be bad. This approach stands in stark contrast to the legions of past Dark Lords who were utterly evil because, well, they were utterly evil. Tolkien, however, wrote pages of philosophy on the nature of Melkor / Morgoth (published in Morgoth’s Ring), suggesting that our rejection of the old model was a reaction only to badly done Dark Lords. Is there an argument for making things at least somewhat black and white (how much psychological depth does a human sociopath have, anyway)? 116. 2:00 H The Fiction of Karen Joy Fowler. Amelia Beamer, Ken Houghton (L), John Kessel, Maureen McHugh, Victoria McManus. Fowler’s first book, the short fiction collection Artificial Things: was a finalist for the 1986 Philip K. Dick Award and was largely responsible for her winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer the following year. Her critically-acclaimed novels include Sarah Canary, which won a Commonwealth Award, and the more recent New York Times bestseller, The Jane Austen Book Club. Her short fiction has been extensively published in anthologies and venues both in and out of the genre and her collection, Black Glass, won the 1999 World Fantasy Award. 117. 2:00 ME The Megaverse, the Landscape, and the Anthropic and Holographic Principles. Carl Frederick. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). Frederick discusses the new new physics, including the nature of dark energy, the cosmological constant, and the accidental push creationists have given to modern theory. Recent work by Leonard Susskind, Gerard ’t Hooft, Alan Guth, Steven Weinberg et al. is so new that many physicists are still unaware of it. It’s all very science-fiction-like – and some of it might even be true (or true enough). 118. 2:00 RI Dead Reckonings. John Langan with Jack Haringa. Discussion (60 min.). A discussion about the new review journal of the horror field, edited by Jack and S.T. Joshi. 119. 2:00 NH The Coyote Road Group Reading. Ellen Datlow (host), Steve Berman, Holly Black, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Kelly Link, Elizabeth Wein, with Jedediah Berry. The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, an anthology edited by Datlow and Terri Windling and illustrated by Charles Vess, will be published in two weeks by Viking Juvenile. Over half the contributors are present or former Readercon program participants. (60 min.) page 21 saturday 120. 2:00 VT 121. 2:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Paolo Bacigalupi; Sarah Beth Durst. 122. 2:00 Kingsbury. E readercon 18 Paul Di Filippo reads “The New Cyberiad.” (60 min.) Autographs. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer; Donald 123. 3:00 F The Rhysling Award Poetry Slan. Mike Allen (L), Theodora Goss, Darrell Schweitzer, Lucius Shepard, Sonya Taaffe, Catherynne M. Valente, with Mary Alexandra Agner, Erik Amundsen, Leah Bobet, Lila Garrott, Drew Morse, Peter Payack, Lorraine Schein. (60 min.) (A “poetry slan,” to be confused with “poetry slam,” is a poetry reading by sf folks, of course.) Climaxed by the presentation of this year’s Rhysling Awards. 124. 3:00 H Towards a Promiscuous Theory of Story Structure. John Clute, John Crowley, James Morrow, Sarah Smith, Eric M. Van (L). The world is bad, and there is a revelation as to how to make it good. That’s fantasy (according to John Clute’s theory of fantasy structure, grossly oversimplified). The world seems to be good, and is revealed to be bad. That’s horror (ditto; see the blurb for “Awe, Horror!”). The world is good, and there is a revelation that it is becoming bad. That’s the awful warning sf novel (according to us). The world seems to be bad (closed or restricted), and is revealed to be good (open). That’s the most common version of the sf story structure known as “conceptual breakthrough” (ditto). All of these story structures share a contrast between two versions or views of the world and hinge on the discovery or recognition of the difference. Are there other specific story structures that use these two elements, perhaps in combinations different from the above? Just how crucial is the difference between a world that can and will be changed and one that can’t or needn’t be? How about the difference between discovering the truth about the world, and recognizing a truth we knew but were denying? 125. 3:00 ME The Challenge of Near-Future Political Scenarios in SF. Gavin J. Grant, Glenn Grant, Walter H. Hunt (L), Matthew Jarpe, Anil Menon. Most writers shy away from the near future out of fear of being overtaken by events, and this is doubly true of political scenarios (Charles Stross has written about looking over his shoulder while writing his upcoming Halting State). Who has done this successfully, and what can we learn from them? What are the arguments for creating realistic near-future scenarios even if they are destined to become outmoded, i.e., is there something we get from these above and beyond the mere prediction? 126. 3:00 min.). RI How I Wrote Ironside. Holly Black with Steve Berman. Talk (30 127. 3:00 NH Michael Swanwick reads from The Dragons of Babel, forthcoming from Tor next January. (60 min.) 128. 3:00 (60 min.) VT 129. 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Elizabeth Bear; Scott Edelman. 3:00 Ellen Brody reads “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” by Angela Carter. program guide saturday page 22 130. 3:00 E Autographs. Karen Joy Fowler; Laura Anne Gilman. 131. 3:30 RI How I Wrote Bright of the Sky. Kay Kenyon. Talk (30 min.). 132. 4:00 F Lucius Shepard Interviewed by Jeffrey Ford. (60 min.) 133. 5:00 6:00 F Karen Joy Fowler Interviewed by Adam Golaski. (60 min.) Ballroom Hallway Registration closes. 6:00 Ballroom Lobby 6:00 E L Information closes. Bookshop closes. 134. 8:00 F/H The 21st Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition. Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, Craig Shaw Gardner (L), Glenn Grant, Yves Meynard, Eric M. Van (M). (90 min.) Our traditional evening entertainment, named in memory of the pseudonym and alter ego of Jonathan Herovit of Barry Malzberg’s Herovit’s World. Ringleader Craig Shaw Gardner reads a passage of unidentified but genuine, published, bad sf, fantasy, or horror prose, which has been truncated in mid-sentence. Each of our panelists—Craig and his co-moderator Eric M. Van, champion Yves Meynard, ex-champion Glenn Grant, and new challengers Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald (as always, writing as a team)—then reads an ending for the passage. One ending is the real one; the others are imposters concocted by our contestants (including Craig) ahead of time. None of the players knows who wrote any passage other than their own, except for Eric, who gets to play God as a reward for the truly onerous duty of unearthing these gems. Craig then asks for the audience vote on the authenticity of each passage (recapping each in turn by quoting a pithy phrase or three from them), and the Ace Readercon Joint Census Team counts up each show of hands faster than you can say “Bambi pranced.” Eric then reveals the truth. Each contestant receives a point for each audience member they fooled, while the audience collectively scores a point for everyone who spots the real answer. As a rule, the audience finishes third or fourth. Warning: the Sturgeon General has determined that this trash is hazardous to your health; i.e., if it hurts to laugh, you’re in big trouble. A 8:00 ME Narrative Games. With Val Grimm. Once Upon a Time, Baron Munchausen, and Exquisite Corpse; games where you craft a narrative can be fun, and we’re hoping to round up enough players to keep things interesting. We’ll also add a twist to these old favorites to add to their challenge and inspire the players. If you have your own narrative games, bring them; it doesn’t matter if you've made them up or if someone else has. Our group of storyphiles will choose a game (or two, or three) by vote, and talk the night away. 10:00 RI Song Circle. With J. Spencer Love. Join your fellow enthusiasts, experienced and not, for a late night song circle. Æ 12:00 Room 630 Con Suite closes. page 23 L Æ sunday 9:00 Ballroom Hallway Registration opens. 9:00 Ballroom Lobby Information opens. 9:00 Room 630 Con Suite opens. 10:00 E readercon 18 Bookshop opens. 135. 10:00 F Beyond Spacetime and DNA: The Other Sciences in Hard SF. Ted Chiang, Thomas A. Easton, Carl Frederick, Paul Levinson (L), Louise Marley. A reader might easily think that physics (and specifically quantum mechanics and relativity) and biology (and specifically genetics and neuroscience) are the only fit subjects for hard sf. But Hal Clement based most of his fiction on chemistry, and Kim Stanley Robinson has made wonderful use of geology (planetary science) and climatology. We’ll discuss the best exceptions to the seeming rule, and talk about scientific fields that deserve more attention (anyone for rheology?). 136. 10:00 H I am forced into speech because a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife: Horror and Social Observation. Michael Cisco, Karen Joy Fowler, Laura Anne Gilman, Adam Golaski (L), John Langan. It’s easy to think of our two GoHs as being quite different—a writer of dark fantasy and horror, and one of fine observation of individual and social consciousness. But we’ve noticed that these seemingly disparate approaches to literature have a surprising common ground. In the novel of social observation, the protagonist often begins with an incorrect model or set of assumptions about the way the world works, and discovers through a series of revelations, some slowly accumulating and some shattering, that the world is in fact more complex and difficult to navigate. That sounds a lot like horror to us—and, in fact, it’s precisely John Clute’s proposed archetypal horror novel structure (see the blurb for “Awe, Horror!”). What would Jane Austen and H.P. Lovecraft agree about? And where would they part ways? 137. 10:00 ME Extreme Brain States and Brains. Eric M. Van. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). Recent research now puts the prevalence of synaesthesia not at .05% of the population but at an astonishing 5%, of whom 99% were unaware that everyone’s brain didn’t work that way. Van’s own interest in neuroscience began when he discovered that he personally falsified one of the leading theories of personality traits. A brief, informal talk about unusual brain states (including myriad states of consciousness) and brains leads into a free-for-all discussion where audience members are invited to share their own unusual experiences and characteristics. How many different states of consciousness have Readercon attendees had among us? 138. 10:00 RI How to Write Good. Barry B. Longyear. Talk / Workshop (120 min.). Longyear presents a crash course on getting started in fiction writing (based on his online writing seminar, “The Write Stuff”) in the form of an introductory talk and Q&A followed by a uniquely structured open workshop of stories. No story is required for attendance (there’s a lot to learn by seeing the writing problems of others addressed). Authors should bring a printout of their story and the question(s) they want answered about the piece (if there are no questions, the story should be in front of an editor); all attendees are urged to bring a notebook or recording device. There is no limit to the number of workshopped stories (Longyear says he’s never gotten too many in 24 years of practice). program guide 139. 10:00 NH sunday page 24 Paolo Bacigalupi reads a new story. (30 min.) 140. 10:00 VT Mythic 2 Group Reading. Mike Allen (host), Sonya Taaffe, Catherynne M. Valente, with John Benson, Leah Bobet. Mythic is a series of trade paperback digest anthologies of fantasy prose and poetry, published by Mythic Delirium Books in conjunction with Prime Books. (60 min.) 141. 10:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Donald Kingsbury; Victoria McManus. 142. 10:00 E Autographs. Ellen Datlow; Lucius Shepard. 143. 10:30 VT Walter H. Hunt reads from his next novel, A Song in Stone. (30 min.) 144. 11:00 F See It Like Saruman: Reconciling Fantasy and Progress. Judith Berman, John Crowley, Ken Houghton (L), James Morrow, Michael Swanwick. History is written by the winners. That explains why Tolkien never mentions that the destruction of Fangorn Forest and other efforts towards industrialization by Saruman significantly raised the standard of living for the wild men of Dunland, in fact creating (for the first time in Middle Earth) a comfortable middle class. While there is a natural opposition between the romantic and pastoral ideal embodied in traditional fantasy and the Enlightenment ideal of progress (especially in its modern industrial and technological modes), we don’t believe they are completely incompatible. What works of fantasy have attempted to accommodate both? In what interesting new directions might the heroic fantasy novel be taken if the true positive effects of modernization were acknowledged? Readercon hopes to put the audio recording of this panel online at some point after the convention. 145. 11:00 H The Fiction of Angela Carter. Greer Gilman, Theodora Goss, Elizabeth Hand, Sarah Smith (M), Sonya Taaffe. Carter is just now, years after her death, becoming recognized as a classic author. She is fast becoming one of the most studied authors in the US and the UK. A literary original, she has inspired such authors as Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Ali Smith, and many authors within our own ranks. 146. 11:00 ME Molecular Self Assembly and the Origins of Life. Matthew Jarpe. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). Life didn’t begin with DNA (or even RNA). Before macromolecules began to catalyze and codify, other molecules had to compartmentalize. The chemical reactions of life cannot proceed without unequal concentrations of reactants in different places. What are the thermodynamic forces that lead to this un-thermodynamic situation? And what does this mean to the search for life on other planets? 147. 11:00 NH Alexander Jablokov reads “The Boarder,” a story forthcoming in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. (30 min.) 148. 11:00 VT (30 min.) Michael Cisco reads from his recently-published novel, The Traitor. 149. 11:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. John Kessel; Tom Purdom. 150. 11:00 E Autographs. Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald; Louise Marley. page 25 sunday readercon 18 151. 11:30 NH Solward. (30 min.) Donald Kingsbury reads from novel-in-progress Finger Pointing 152. Don D’Ammassa reads “Choosing Sides.” (30 min.) 11:30 VT 153. 12:00 F SF Cinema in the DVD Era. Mike Allen, Chris Genoa, Lucius Shepard, Hildy Silverman, Eric M. Van (L). Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Primer, The Prestige—this millennium has seen an upsurge in the number of great sf movies with plots so challenging or intricate that they genuinely require (and hugely reward) the repeat viewings now made possible by DVD. We relate to these stories very differently than we do to their relatively witless SFX blockbuster brethren; in fact, in some ways they’re as much like literature as cinema. We’ll talk about these films and others, about great predecessors from before the DVD, and about the promise of what at times almost seems like a whole new art form. Note: we’ll poll the audience as to whether to avoid spoilers for each of these films, but attendees are strongly urged to see them all beforehand. 154. 12:00 H After Rowling and Pullman. Steve Berman, Holly Black (L), Sarah Beth Durst, Kelly Link, Sharyn November. The Harry Potter books and His Dark Materials have been watersheds in the history of YA speculative fiction. We’ll survey the field in the years since the Rowling and Pullman series began, and look at how it has been influenced by the two masterworks. Does China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, for example, show their influence? 155. 12:00 ME What, No Flying Car? Jean-Louis Trudel. Talk (60 min.). Why you expected one and why you may not see a technological singularity in your lifetime. 156. 12:00 RI Storyboarding. Kay Kenyon. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). How to build scenes using classic elements such as Relationships, Dialogue, Subtext and Action. Learn to create drama where before there was loose inspiration and drift. 157. 12:00 NH Interfictions Group Reading. Theodora Goss (host), Vandana Singh, Catherynne M. Valente, with Tempest Bradford, Michael DeLuca, Joy Marchand. See Creating Interfictions (program item #72) for the background of this anthology. (60 min.) 158. 12:00 VT Adam Golaski reads “Worse Than Myself.” (30 min.) 159. 12:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. James and Kathryn Morrow; John Clute. 160. 12:00 E Autographs. Elizabeth Bear; Walter H. Hunt. 161. 12:30 VT Rosemary Kirstein reads from the untitled fifth volume of the Steerswoman series. (30 min.) L 1:00 Ballroom Hallway Registration closes. 1:00 Ballroom Lobby Information closes. program guide sunday page 26 162. 1:00 F Personal Archetypes. Debra Doyle, Karen Joy Fowler, James Alan Gardner, Greer Gilman, Barry B. Longyear, Paul Park (L). The Jungian notion of archetype is a useful tool for explaining why certain fantasy tropes speak powerfully to us. But clearly, not everyone responds to every archetype to the same degree, and this may well be one of the reasons why different people respond differently to different books. (One of us, e.g., is moved nearly to tears by any well-done scene of communication with animals, and suspects that not everyone else is.) As readers, where do our personal archetypes come from? Early life experience, or our first favorite books? (Or is the latter hypothesis begging the question?) 163. 1:00 H I Have a Truly Marvelous Proof of This Proposition Which This Story is Too Commercial to Contain. Michael A. Burstein (L), Jeff Hecht, Donald Kingsbury, Louise Marley, Peter Watts. Actual calculations are generally excluded from sf — they’re not what the reader is looking for. But hard sf often requires that the writer do the math and/or the physics and chemistry, and many stories are backed up by thick sheaves of notes that the reader never sees. Our panelists discuss examples from their personal experience. Should the “technical appendices” be published more often? Isn’t the Web the natural place for them? 164. 1:00 ME Lucius, Central America, and Us. Lucius Shepard. Talk (60 min.). Lucius Shepard talks about his current involvement in Central America, the region’s history, how that relates to his writing, how Central America affects us, and how we can affect its people. Includes a 15-minute video. 165. 1:00 RI Persistence Pays Off: Shanghaied to the Moon’s Fifteen-Year Trajectory from Ms. to Book. Michael J. Daley. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). It took over 40 rejections and a half-dozen rewrites over the years until Daley’s YA novel found that one editor who fell in love with it. A success story for aspiring writers in need of courage, pros gathering rejections, and the general reader who wonders just what it takes to make it as an author. 166. 1:00 NH Paul Levinson reads from Unburning Alexandria, the sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates. (30 min.) 167. 1:00 VT Joshua Palmatier reads from The Cracked Throne. (30 min.) 168. 1:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Kay Kenyon; Ian Randal Strock. 169. 1:00 E Autographs. S. C. Butler; Chris Dolley. 170. 1:30 NH Wen Spencer reads from Endless Blue, forthcoming from Baen in December. (30 min.) 171. 1:30 VT Daniel P. Dern reads from Dragons Don’t Eat Jesters, and/or a novel in progress. (30 min.) Æ 2:00 Room 630 Con Suite closes. 2:00 E Bookshop Closes page 27 sunday readercon 18 172. 2:00 F Intimidated by Story Potential. Elizabeth Bear, Ron Drummond, Scott Edelman, Laurie J. Marks (L), Paul Witcover. There is nothing more discouraging or terrifying than the prospect of actually writing a story you’ve conceived, or finishing one you’ve started, and having it be (inevitably?) a pale shadow of that shining slab of brilliance you knew it could be, if you only had the chops to do it justice. And yet without that dream of the perfect tale, what would be our motivation to write better? The infinite potential of the great story idea can lead to writer’s block or to the disappointment of falling short. How do you learn to profit from dreams of greatness and avoid these pitfalls? 173. 2:00 H SF in Other Tongues: What Are We Missing? David G. Hartwell, James Morrow (L), Kathryn Morrow, Vandana Singh, Jean-Louis Trudel, Konrad Walewski. English-speaking writers are responsible for most of the sf we talk about here. And yet, from Verne to Kafka, Borges to Lem, non-Anglophone fantastical literature has delineated, enriched, and shaken up the field. The SFWA European Hall of Fame, published last month by Tor Books, represents an attempt by editors James and Kathryn Morrow to “liberate” sixteen contemporary classics of Continental science fiction into English via nuanced translations fashioned through extensive three-way cyberspace conversations. Does this anthology and other such efforts foretell the shape of transmutations to come? 174. 2:00 ME How I Wrote Blindsight. Peter Watts. Talk (30 min.). 175. 2:00 (30 min.) NH David Louis Edelman reads from his forthcoming novel MultiReal. 176. 2:00 VT Steve Berman, S. C. Butler, and Michael J. Daley read. Berman reads from his debut novel, Vintage, and/or from an upcoming YA fantasy story; Butler from his novel Reiffen’s Choice; and Daley from his novels Space Station Rat and Shanghaied to the Moon. (60 min.) 177. 2:00 456/8 Kaffeeklatsches. Elizabeth Wein; Leigh Grossman. 178. 2:30 NH James L. Cambias reads “Balancing Accounts.” (30 min.) F Readercon 18 Debriefing Members of the Readercon 18 Committee. 2 3:00 (60 min.) program guide page 28 readercon 18 committee Readercon Committee volunteers take on so many different tasks that the following summary of “who did what” will be necessarily incomplete. Some jobs rotate from year to year, and usually the outgoing person helps with the transition. If you are interested in joining the Readercon Team please send email to [email protected]. Louise J. Waugh chaired. B. Diane Martin was Hotel Liaison. Michael Matthew and B. Diane Martin were the Guest-of-Honor Liaisons. David Shaw managed the web site. Progress Reports were managed by Merryl Gross and Karl R. Wurst. Flyer Design was managed by Lois Ava-Matthew. Merryl Gross took over the membership database this year, so she now knows where you all live. At-Con Registration is being managed by Adina Adler with the assistance of Karl R. Wurst and volunteers. The program subcommittee (Program Co-Chairs Michael Matthew and Eric M. Van and Lois Ava-Matthew, Ellen Brody, Daniel Dern, Richard Duffy, Val Grimm, David Shaw, Robert van der Heide and Louise J. Waugh) may be held responsible for nearly all of the panels, together with their descriptions in the Program Guide; thanks to Charles N. Brown for "A Heinlein Roundtable," Jim Morrow for "SF in Other Tongues," and Don Keller for the title and first half of "Fantasy as Inner Landscape." Thanks as well to Greer Gilman, Teresa Nielsen-Hayden, Sarah Smith, and Gordon Van Gelder for the ideas we turned into "Personal Archetypes," "The Challenge of Near-Future Political Scenarios in SF," "Hunted Jaguars: Fiction in Another Land," and “Absent Friends: Remembering the People We’ve Lost This Year” respectively. And big thanks to Paul Di Filippo for graciously loaning us the title "The Singularity Needs Women!" and to Bob Devney for the Octavia Butler quote that inspired the panel. For other items in the "Discussions, Etc." tracks we thank the leaders for their ideas, enthusiasm, expertise, and write-ups. The online program signup site was constructed by Mark Moline and David Shaw, with additional input from Eric Van and Michael Matthew. Eric, Michael, and Ellen constructed the schedule using Eric's FoxPro programs and color-coded Excel grid, with help from Bob Colby and especially Richard Duffy, head of Program Ops. The Program Guide was compiled by Karl R. Wurst, with Karl editing the front matter, Eric editing the program section, and Richard and Ellen the bio-bibs. Robert van der Heide produced room signs, name tents and any other signs connected to Readercon. Sound and A/V is being managed by J. Spencer Love with help from others. Track managers are Spencer, Bob Colby and others. Susan de Guardiola is coordinating the Green Room. Lois Ava-Matthew was the Bookshop Coordinator, and produced the Bookshop Notes. Joan D. Waugh is managing the Con Suite, with assistance from Volunteers Kat Morrison and David Haseman.Val Grimm produced the Restaurant Guide. Jamie Siglar and B. Diane Martin coordinated the Tiptree Bake Sale this year. Dawn and Thom Jones-Low are managing Readercon Volunteers and the Information Table. Thanks to Erwin Strauss (not a committee member, but a fabulous simulacrum) for supplying his patented flyer racks (and much else). The Souvenir Book was edited by the Ad Hoc Editorial Collective, with bibliographies by Val Grimm, layout and design by David Shaw, and special editorial assistance and ad solicitation by B. Diane Martin. page 29 readercon 18 program guide page 30 program participant bios About SF Awards One of our assumptions is that some of the people using these pages are at least somewhat unfamiliar with the SF field and its awards. In any case, there are now so many awards in the sf field that anyone who doesn’t read Locus cover to cover is bound to get confused. Therefore, this brief list. The Hugo Awards are voted by the membership of the annual World Science Fiction Convention and given there Labor Day Weekend. The Nebula Awards are voted by the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), and, unlike all others, are referred to by the year under consideration rather than the year the award is given (i.e., the year after the work appeared). They are given at a banquet in April. The World Fantasy Awards are nominated by past attendees of the World Fantasy Convention and a jury, selected by the jury, and given in October at the convention. The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is voted along with the Hugo. Writers are eligible for the The Crawford Award is given annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, for the best first fantasy novel. The Solaris Award is the award given to the winner of the Solaris magazine writing contest, and is the oldest such literary award in Canadian SF. The Boréal Awards are awarded at the Boréal convention. The Aurora Awards are voted by members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. The Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du Fantastique québécois is presented annually by a jury to an author for the whole of his literary works in the previous year. The Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire is a juried award recognizing excellence in science fiction in French. The Lambda Literary Award is presented by the Lambda Book Report to the best sf/fantasy novel of interest to the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community. The John W. Campbell Memorial Award (not to be confused, etc.) for the year’s best novel is voted by a jury and given at the Campbell conference at the University of Kansas in July. The Mythopoeic Awards are chosen each year by committees composed of volunteer Mythopoeic Society members, and presented at the annual Mythcon. The Society is a non-profit organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, known as the “Inklings.” The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is a companion award for the year’s best work of short fiction (any length). The Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (commonly referred to as the Skylark) is awarded at the annual Boskone convention by the The Philip K. Dick Award for the year’s best paperback New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) to someone who has contributed significantly to science fiction. The award is voted on by the NESFA membership. first two years after they are published. original novel is sponsored by the Philadelphia SF Society and Norwescon, voted by a jury, and given at Norwescon in March. The James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award for the work of fiction which best explores or expands gender roles in sf or fantasy, is awarded annually by a 5-member jury selected by Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler. Various conventions (notably Wiscon, but including Readercon) have hosted the ceremony. The British Science Fiction Awards for novel and short fiction are voted by the attendees at Eastercon, the British national con, in April. The British Fantasy Awards are voted by the attendees at Fantasycon in the UK. The Bram Stoker Awards for horror fiction are voted by the members of the Horror Writers of America and given at their annual meeting in June. The Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel published in Great Britain is sponsored by Clarke, voted by a jury and given in March. The Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award for the year’s best first novel is sponsored by Balticon, voted by a jury, and given there in March. The Locus and Davis Reader’s Awards are based on result of reader’s polls (the latter polling readers of Asimov’s and Analog separately, for the best fiction published in those magazines). John Joseph Adams is the assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and is the editor of the forthcoming reprint anthology Wastelands (Night Shade Books, February 2008). He writes reviews for Publishers Weekly and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. He is a reporter for SCI FI Wire, and his non-fiction has also appeared in: Amazing Stories, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Kirkus, Locus, Novel & Short Story Writers Market, Science Fiction Weekly, Shimmer, Strange Horizons, Subterranean Magazine, and Writer’s Digest. Mike Allen, past President of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, will again be MC for Readercon’s Rhysling Award “poetry slan.” He’s also the editor and publisher of Mythic 2, the latest in a fantasy anthology series, featuring the likes of Leah Bobet, Richard Parks, Cherie Priest, Lawrence Schimel, Sonya Taaffe, Catherynne Valente, Jo Walton, and others. And he’s also the long-time editor of the poetry journal Mythic Delirium which his wife Anita co-edits. His own recent books include a retrospective of 10 years of his poetry and fiction, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead, called “poetry for Goths of all ages” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. His short stories have turned up recently in Interzone, H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror and Helix, his poetry in Asimov’s Science Fiction and the Nebula Awards Showcase series. All that stuff happens in his spare time: by day, he’s a newspaper reporter at The Roanoke Times who covers criminal and civil courtroom trials; though his favorite assignment to date remains page 31 his interviews with the inventor of The World’s Only Ass-Kicking Machine. He also performs regularly at the local improv theatre, and has played both God and the Devil, though not yet in the same skit. Along with his wife, his household also includes a demonic, demanding cat, and a loving, goofy dog. Ellen Asher was the editor of the Science Fiction Book Club for thirty-four years and three months, thereby fulfilling her life’s ambition of beating John W. Campbell’s record as the person with the longest tenure in the same science fiction job. She has recently become a lady of leisure, which means she’s as busy as ever but doesn’t have to get up early in the morning. When she’s not meeting friends for lunch, she rides horses and takes ballet classes, and does about as well at both as you’d expect of a middle-aged editor who grew up in New York City. Her hobbies are growing things in flower pots on the window sill and not watching television. In 2001 she was the recipient of NESFA’s Skylark Award, of which she is still inordinately proud. Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing often focuses on environmental and social themes, including genetically modified foods, energy collapse, ecosystem decay, drought, poverty, and industrial pollution. His novelette, “Yellow Card Man” (Asimov’s, Dec. 2006), a story of poverty and social displacement set in a future Bangkok, is currently a Hugo Award finalist. His other stories include: “Small Offerings,” (Fast Forward 1, Pyr Books), “Pop Squad,” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct./Nov. 2006), “The Tamarisk Hunter,” (High Country News, June 26, 2006); Hugo finalist and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner “The Calorie Man” (F&SF, Oct./Nov. 2005); Hugo and Nebula Award finalist “The People of Sand and Slag” (F&SF, Feb.2004); and Sturgeon Award finalist, “The Fluted Girl” (F&SF, June 2003). He is currently putting together a short story collection for Night Shade Books and working on a novel set in the same universe as “Yellow Card Man.” His website is at windupstories.com. readercon 18 starred review), “brilliant” (VOYA), and “a richly imaginative tour de force” (Locus). Her short fiction, which has twice been shortlisted for the Sturgeon Award, has appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate, and in her chapbook Lord Stink and Other Stories (Small Beer Press, 2002). She is also a recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award for her non-fiction. She blogs at filomancer.livejournal.com, and she lives and works in Philadelphia. Steve Berman is the author of the novel Vintage: A Ghost Story (2007, Haworth Press). He also has edited Charmed Lives (with Toby Johnson, Lambda Literary Award finalist, 2006, White Crane Books) and So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction (anthology of GLBT-themed fantasy stories, Haworth Press, forthcoming October 2007) and Magic in the Mirrorstone (young adult fantasy anthology, Mirrorstone Books, forthcoming February 2008). His short story collection Trysts (2001, Lethe Press) includes “The Anthvoke” (Gaylactic Spectrum finalist, 2001); a further collection, Second Thoughts (Haworth Press, forthcoming 2008) will include “The Price of Glamour” (a notable mention in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror). He has new short fiction releasing in Japanese Dreams (2007, Prime Books), The Coyote Road (2007, Viking), Distant Horizons (2008, Haworth Press) and The Beastly Bride (2010, Viking). He was a 2006 Clarion graduate. He lives in southern New Jersey. Abby Blachly, LibraryThing’s “Head Librarian,” got her MS in Library and Information Science and her MA in History from Simmons College. Abby worked in publishing at Houghton Mifflin, before becoming an archivist and then later a corporate indexer/cataloger. At LibraryThing, a social book cataloging website, Abby’s job description is “everything but the coding”... She lives in Boston with her ever-growing (but entirely cataloged) book collection. Amelia Beamer is an Assistant Editor at Locus Magazine, where she also writes reviews, primarily of non-fiction. Her publications include an article on the 1950s magazine die-off in Foundation and a short story in Lady Churchill’s s Rosebud Wristlet. Holly Black is the author of several contemporary fantasy novels for children, teenagers, and whosoever else might like them. The books include the bestselling Modern Faerie Tale series and the Spiderwick Chronicles. She is currently working on a graphic novel. Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Ellen Brody is a graduate student and most of what she Baggins, but in a different year. This, coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, the mispronunciation of common English words, and the writing of speculative fiction. currently writes is nonfiction. She was the Program Chair and CoChair of Readercons 9 and 10, and has continued to work on the program ever since, as well as on other aspects of the convention. She has also directed, acted, produced, designed, and everything else in theater. Her favorite previous roles include: Viola in Twelfth Night, Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, Mrs. X in The Stronger, Joan in Saint Joan, Harriet Stanley in The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Ruth in Blithe Spirit. At an audition, a director once handed her the first three pages of an Agatha Christie novel and said “read.” She got the part. This is the tenth consecutive Readercon at which she has read a selection by the Memorial Guest of Honor. She grew up in New England and lived in Las Vegas for seven years. She now resides near Hartford in a tiny apartment with a presumptuous cat and has no plans to leave the Northeast ever again, except on brief exploratory excursions. She has six novels and two short story collections in print, and eleven more books under contract. She was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She’s a Locus Award winner, and has been nominated for several other major genre awards, including the BSFA, the Lambda Award, and the Phillip K. Dick Award, for which she received a special citation for Carnival. Charles N. Brown is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of 27-time Her available publications include: The Jenny Casey trilogy: Hammered, Scardown, Worldwired (Bantam Spectra, 2005); Carnival (Bantam Spectra, 2006); short story collections: (Night Shade Books) The Chains That You Refuse (2006); Abigail Irene Garrett and Sebastien de Ulloa mysteries: (Subterranean Press) New Amsterdam (mosaic novel, 2007); and several dozen short stories and poems in various venues. Hugo winner Locus magazine which he founded in 1968; he has been involved in the science fiction field since the late 1940s. He was the original book reviewer for Asimov’s, has edited several SF anthologies, and written for numerous magazines and newspapers. Also a freelance fiction editor for the past 35 years, many of the books he has edited have won awards. He travels extensively and is invited regularly to appear on writing and editing panels at the major SF conventions around the world, is a frequent Guest of Honor and speaker and judge at writers’ seminars, and has been a jury member for several of the major SF awards. Judith Berman’s first novel, Bear Daughter (Ace, September 2005), a finalist for the Crawford Award, has been called “utterly absorbing, unforgettable... truly original and unique” (Booklist, Michael A. Burstein is the winner of the 1997 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. To date, he has published about 40 stories. Stories of note include: “TeleAbsence” (Analog, program guide page 32 July 1995; Analytical Laboratory Award, Hugo nominee), “Broken Symmetry” (Analog, February 1997; Hugo nominee), “Cosmic Corkscrew” (Analog, June 1998; Hugo nominee), “Reality Check” (Analog, November 1999; Nebula nominee and Sturgeon nominee), “Kaddish for the Last Survivor” (Analog, November 2000; Hugo nominee and Nebula nominee), “Spaceships” (Analog, June 2001; Hugo nominee), “Paying It Forward” (Analog, September 2003; Hugo nominee), “Decisions” (Analog, January/February 2004; Hugo nominee), “Time Ablaze” (Analog, June 2004; Hugo nominee), “Seventy-Five Years” (Analog, January/February 2005; Hugo nominee), “TelePresence” (Analog, July/August 2005; Hugo nominee), “Sanctuary” (Analog, September 2005; Analytical Laboratory Award, Nebula nominee). an essay, “Stop Her, She’s Got a Gun!” in the book Star Wars on Trial (BenBella, 2006), a novella, “Negative Space” (which was given honorable mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, in the anthology Decalog 5: Wonders, and a chapter, “Innovation in Horror,” that appears in both Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association and The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing (Writer’s Digest Books). She has published short fiction, articles, and essays in a number of magazines. Burstein is a 1994 graduate of Clarion. He has served as Secretary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Vice President of the New England Science Fiction Association, and is an elected member of his local Town Meeting and Board of Library Trustees. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife Nomi, who works as a technical writer. This summer, he taught as a guest lecturer at the Odyssey workshop. Since she loves working with developing writers, Jeanne created and serves as director of Odyssey, an annual six-week summer writing workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror held at Saint Anselm College (www.odysseyworkshop.org). Guests have included Dan Simmons, George R. R. Martin, Jane Yolen, Harlan Ellison, and Elizabeth Hand. Jeanne also teaches writing at Saint Anselm College. When not writing, he edits science textbooks and teaches with Grub Street. In addition, Jeanne runs Jeanne Cavelos Editorial Services. Among the company’s clients are major publishers and best-selling and award-winning writers. www.jeannecavelos.com More information can be found on his webpage at www.mabfan.com, or on his blog, mabfan.livejournal.com. S.C. Butler (Sam) is the author of the Stoneways Trilogy: Reiffen’s Choice (2006 Tor Books); Queen Ferris (forthcoming fall 2007 from Tor Books); and an as yet unnamed volume (to come in late 2008/09, also from Tor Books). A former bond trader, he always preferred Middle-earth to the Chicago Board of Trade. He has no pets. James L. Cambias is a game designer and science fiction writer. He was raised in New Orleans and educated at the University of Chicago; he now lives in western Massachusetts. He started writing roleplaying games in 1990, but only published his first science fiction in 2000 with a pair of short stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Mr. Cambias has two stories coming up in F&SF, and is the cocreator of the new card game Parasites Unleashed! from Zygote Games. Jeanne Cavelos is a writer, editor, scientist, and teacher. She began her professional life as an astrophysicist and mathematician, working in the Astronaut Training Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Her love of science fiction sent her into a career in publishing. She became a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she ran the science fiction/fantasy program and created the Abyss imprint of psychological horror, for which she won the World Fantasy Award. In her eight years in New York publishing, she edited a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, and worked with numerous award-winning and best-selling authors. Jeanne left New York to pursue her own writing career. Her latest book is Invoking Darkness (Del Rey, 2001), the third volume in her best-selling The Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy, which is set in the Babylon 5 universe. The Sci-Fi Channel called the trilogy “A revelation for Babylon 5 fans ... Not ‘television episodic’ in look and feel. They are truly novels in their own right.” Her book The Science of Star Wars (St. Martin’s, April 1999), was chosen by the New York Public Library for its recommended reading list. Of the book, CNN said, “Cavelos manages to make some of the most mind-boggling notions of contemporary science understandable, interesting, and even entertaining.” The highly praised The Science of The X-Files (Berkley, 1998) was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her first Babylon 5 novel, The Shadow Within (reissued by Del Rey in 2003), was named “one of the best TV tie-in novels ever written” (Dreamwatch magazine). Other recent work includes Jeanne has also edited an anthology, The Many Faces of Van Helsing (Berkley, 2004), which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. She is currently at work on a biological thriller, Fatal Spiral. Ted Chiang is the author of the collection Stories of Your Life and Others (2004, Pan Macmillan). His short fiction has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon awards. A new novelette, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” is forthcoming in F&SF and as a chapbook from Subterranean Press. Ted lives outside of Seattle, Washington with his partner Marcia Glover. Michael Cisco is the author of The Divinity Student (International Horror Writers Guild Award for best first novel of 1999), The San Veneficio Canon, The Tyrant, a contributor to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases and Album Zutique, and his work has appeared in Leviathan III and Leviathan IV. His new novel, The Traitor, is published by Prime. Secret Hours, a collection of his Lovecraftian short stories, is published by Mythos Books. His columns and the occasional review can be found at TheModernWord.com. He lives in New York City. John Clute was born in Canada in 1940, he has lived in England since 1969 in the same Camden Town flat; since 1997, he has spent part of each year in Maine. Critic Guest of Honor at Readercon 4; received a Pilgrim Award from the SFRA in 1994; was Distinguished Guest Scholar at the 1999 International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. He was Associate Editor of the Hugo-winning first edition (Doubleday, 1979) of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, general editor Peter Nicholls; with Nicholls, he co-edited the second edition (St. Martin’s, 1993), which won the British Science Fiction Special Award, the Locus Award, the Hugo, and the Eaton Grand Master Award. With John Grant, he co-edited the Encyclopedia of Fantasy (St. Martin’s, 1997), which won the Locus Award, the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, the Mythopoeic Society Award, and the Eaton Award. He wrote solo Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (Dorling Kindersley, 1995) (Locus Award, Hugo), which is actually a companion, not an encyclopedia. Book reviews and other criticism have been assembled in Strokes: Essays and Reviews 1966–1986 (Serconia, 1988), Readercon Award; in Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews (Serconia, 1996), Locus Award, and in Scores: Reviews 1993–2003 1993– 2003 (Beccon, 2003). The Book of End Times: Grappling with the Millennium appeared in 1999. There are two novels: The Disinheriting Party (Allison and Busby, 1977) and Appleseed (Orbit/Little Brown, 2001; Tor, 2002), which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. The Darkening Garden: a Short Lexicon of Horror appeared in late 2006 from Payseur & Schmidt. page 33 Forthcoming books include Houston Do You Read: Reviews 2003– 2008, and a third edition of the Encyclopedia of SF, co-written and -edited with David Langford and Peter Nicholls (Editor Emeritus), due for publication online in late 2008, it is hoped: the book grows like Topsy. F. Brett Cox’s fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he co-edited, with Andy Duncan, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic(Tor, 2004). In 2006, his short stories “My Whole World Lies Waiting” and “Petition to Repatriate Geronimo’s Skull” appeared in, respectively, Rabid Transit: Long Voyages, Great Lies and Phantom 0. Forthcoming are short stories “The Serpent and the Hatchet Gang,” in Black Static and “Mary of the New Dispensation” in Postscripts, as well as an essay in The Cultural Influences of William Gibson, the “Father” of Cyberpunk Science Fiction: Critical and Interpretive Essays (Edwin Mellen Press). Other fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Century, Black Gate, The North Carolina Literary Review, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, The New England Quarterly, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Paradoxa, Science Fiction Weekly, Science Fiction Studies, and elsewhere. Brett has served as a juror for the Sturgeon Award and on the additions jury for the Stoker Award. He is a member of SFWA, HWA, and the Cambridge SF Writers Workshop and attended the 2005 Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop. A native of North Carolina, Brett is Assistant Professor of English at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, and lives in Roxbury, Vermont, with his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith. Kathryn Cramer and husband David Hartwell have a small son, Peter, and a younger daughter, Elizabeth. Although it is rumored that David picks out Peter’s loud clothes, for the most part it is Kathryn who shops for Hawaiian shirts in toddler sizes. Although the family has had two good cats, Kathryn is now mother to a growing menagerie including also a variety of frogs, fish, a handsome bunny, and occasional wild visitors. Their Pleasantville house and grounds are a work in progress. Kathryn has painted murals on the decks, rebanked the front yard, and put in an herb garden. She works continually on over-elaborate play areas for Peter including a house of sticks and a Stone-Henge-influenced circle of stumps. Kathryn occasionally writes essays and stories, and has recently written bits of filler for the New York Review of Science Fiction when there are awkward gaps in the layout, a hard sf short-short for Nature, and a remembrance of Jenna Felice of which she is especially proud. Her title with NYRSF is technically Art and Web Site Editor, but it is a holdover from the days when NYRSF had a larger core editorial staff. At present, she lets the web site languish for years at a time and instead does the second shift on the magazine layout each month. Nonetheless, this gets her on the Hugo ballot each year. She won a World Fantasy Award for best anthology for The Architecture of Fear co-edited with Peter Pautz; she was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her anthology, Walls of Fear. She has worked for publishers, literary agents, for software companies, and as web site designer. Other web sites she lets languish disgracefully are David’s home page (www.panix.com/~dgh), Wonderbook (www.wonderbook.com), and the Philip K. Dick Awards page (wiz.cath.vt.edu/exper/kcramer/PKDA.html). She also blogs, at www.kathryncramer.com. After years of failing to sell anthologies under her own name, she has resumed coediting anthologies with David Hartwell. She coedits the new Harper Eos Year’s Best Fantasy series with David Hartwell, and joined him as editor of his Year’s Best SF series for Harper Eos. John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942, his father then an officer in the US readercon 18 Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky, and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 14th volume of fiction (Endless Things) in 2005. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He has thrice won the World Fantasy Award: for Best Novella (Great Work of Time), novel (Little, Big) and in 2006 the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. He finds it more gratifying that most of his work is still in print: the Ægypt Cycle, which began to appear in 1987 with Ægypt, and has just concluded with Endless Things (now available from Small Beer Press), will begin appearing in a new uniform edition from Overlook Press starting in September with The Solitudes, the true title of the first volume. Presently, Lifetime Achievement or no, he is at work on a new novel, about workers building a bomber during World War II. In addition to fiction, Crowley has issued a volume of nonfiction mostly about books (In Other Words), and for many years he worked as a writer of films, mainly historical documentaries. These include The World of Tomorrow (the 1939 World’s Fair) and FIT: Episodes in the History of the Body (produced and directed by his wife Laurie Block). He lives in Massachusetts. Shira Daemon’s fiction has appeared in Strange Kaddish, Tomorrow Magazine, Writers of the Future, Splatterpunks II, and Xanadu III. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Review of Science Fiction, her Locus column, various encyclopedias and other odd places. She is married to Kenneth L. Houghton. Their latest joint productions are Valerie Jenna Rose and Rosalyn Pandora Houghton. Michael J. Daley has enjoyed a lifelong love of science, spaceships, and science fiction. He writes his stories on a solarpowered laptop in a 5-foot-by-5-foot square tower room. This keeps him well acquainted with the cramped conditions in spaceships and space stations! He is hard at work on a sequel to Space Station Rat (Holiday House, 2005) to be called Rat Trap and is planning another book detailing Stewart’s ongoing adventures with Val Thorsten, the stars of his second sci-fi novel, Shanghaied to the Moon (Putnam, 2007). Space Station Rat has been nominated to the kid-chosen reading prizes in the states of Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. Michael keeps his hand in renewable energy education by conducting Pizza Box Solar Oven building workshops so kids can cook their own solar s’mores. When not traveling the stars, Michael lives in Westminster, Vermont, with his wife, children’s author Jessie Haas. Don D’Ammassa is the author of the novels Blood Beast, Servants of Chaos, Scarab, Haven, Dead of Winter, Castaways of the Lost Island, Narcissus, and Murder in Silverplate as well as over one hundred short stories for Analog, Asimov’s, and other publications. His Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and a companion volume, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction, have both recently appeared from Facts on File. He reviewed for Science Fiction Chronicle for almost thirty years, does the sf and fantasy annotations for Gale’s What Do I Read Next series, and has contributed articles on the field to numerous books and magazines. His reviews and other writing now appears on www.dondammassa.com. He is currently writing full time, when he isn’t shelving books, reading, watching movies, or chasing the cats. Ellen Datlow, a Guest of Honor at Readercon 11, was editor of SCIFICTION, the fiction area of SCIFI.COM, the Sci-Fi Channel’s website for almost six years, editor of Event Horizon: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for one and a half years, and fiction editor of Omni Magazine and Omni Online for seventeen program guide years. Over her career she has worked with Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, Octavia E. Butler, Garth Nix, Gregory Maguire, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bruce Sterling, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, George R. R. Martin, William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Carroll, William Burroughs, and others. In addition to her magazine work, Datlow has also edited numerous anthologies: Omni Book of Science Fiction, volumes one through seven, Zebra Blood Is Not Enough, (William Morrow, 1989), Alien Sex, (Dutton, 1990), A Whisper of Blood, (William Morrow, 1991), Omni Best Science Fiction One, (Omni Books, 1991), Omni Best Science Fiction Two, (Omni Books, 1992), Omni Best Science Fiction Three, (Omni Books, 1993), Snow White, Blood Red, (with Terri Windling, Morrow/Avon, 1993), OmniVisions One, (Omni Books, 1993), OmniVisions Two, (Omni Books, 1994), Black Thorn, White Rose, (with Terri Windling, Morrow/Avon, 1994), Little Deaths, (Millennium (UK), Dell (US), 1994), Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, (with Terri Windling, AvoNova/Morrow, 1995), Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex, (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), Twists of the Tale: Stories of Cat Horror, (Dell, 1996), Lethal Kisses—Revenge and Vengeance, (Orion (UK), 1996), Black Swan, White Raven, (with Terri Windling, Avon Books, 1997), Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers, (with Terri Windling, HarperPrism, 1998), Silver Birch, Blood Moon, (with Terri Windling, Avon Books, 1999), Black Heart, Ivory Bones, (with Terri Windling, Avon Books, 2000), Vanishing Acts, (Tor Books, 2000), A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales, (with Terri Windling, Simon & Schuster, 2000), The Green Man (with Terri Windling, Viking, 2002), Swan Sister (with Terri Windling) for middle grades (Simon &Schuster), The Dark: New Ghost Stories(Tor), The Faery Reel (with Terri Windling) (Viking), Salon Fantastique (with Terri Windling (Thunder’s Mouth), The Coyote Road (with Terri Windling) (Viking), and (so far) eighteen annual volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, (the first sixteen with Terri Windling, St. Martin’s Press, 1988–2002; the most recent three with Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, 2003–2005). Forthcoming works include, Inferno (Tor), The Beastly Bride (with Terri Windling) (Viking), and \it The Cinderella Game and Other Villainous Tales (with Terri Windling) (Viking). Tied (with Terri Windling) for winning the most World Fantasy Awards in the organization’s history (seven). She has also won multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Editor, an International Horror Guild Award for The Dark, and two Bram Stoker Awards (one with Terri Windling, the other with Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link). Datlow lives in New York City with two wonderful cats. By day, Daniel P. Dern is still an independent technology writer, but by setting aside some time each morning for the past year and a half, he’s managed to finish writing his first sf novel (working title Dragons Don’t Eat Jesters), which includes a minimum of “one dragon, two princesses, four dogs, a lot of riddles, some explosions, and a lot of really weird stuff.” His science fiction stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies—most recently “For Malzberg It Was They Came,” which appeared in (and sparked the notion for) F&SF’s Malzberg tribute in their June 2003 issue)—plus “Bicyclefish Island” (inspired at a previous Readercon), in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, “Yes Sir That’s My,” in New Dimensions 8, ed. by Robert Silverberg (reprinted in Best of New Dimenions and in Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves ed. by Marty Greenberg), “All for Love and Love for All” in Analog, “Stormy Weather” in Worlds of IF, and “White Hole” in Ascents of Wonder ed. by David Gerrold. A graduate of Clarion East 1973 and of 1.5 sessions of the BMI Musical Theater Workshops, he is the author of The Internet Guide for New Users (McGraw-Hill, 1993), was the founding editor of Internet World magazine (valuable collectible sets still available, at reasonable prices!), and most recently, Executive Editor for page 34 Byte.com (he’s got a few Byte.com pocket protectors left, feel free to ask for one). He’s also a very amateur magician (including kids shows at sf conventions). (“Performing for free means never having to say ‘Here’s your refund.’ ”) He lives with Bobbi Fox and their dog Grep (and the obligatory still too many books and obsolete computers), in Newton Centre. Paul Di Filippo’s career began either in 1977, when his first story appeared in Unearth magazine; or in 1982, when he quit his job as a COBOL programmer to devote himself fulltime to writing; or in 1985, when his second and third stories appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Twilight Zone Magazine; or in 1995, when his first book, The Steampunk Trilogy, debuted. 2006 saw the publication of his twenty-fifth book, Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct, a milestone he is very proud of. His new novel with Payseur & Schmidt, Cosmocopia, will debut at WFC 2007. He intends to retire now in stages over the next forty years. Chris Dolley is an English author of SF novels, a pioneer computer games designer, and the man who convinced the UK media that Cornwall had risen up and declared independence. His novel Resonance (2005, Baen) was the first book to be plucked from Baen’s electronic slush pile. His second novel Shift (2007, Baen) comes out during Readercon. He’s currently working on books three and four. His short fiction (“The Sleeper and the Flame”) appeared in the first issue of NFG. In 1981 he formed Randomberry Games and designed Necromancer, one of the first 3D first-person perspective dungeon games. He also wrote the most aggressive chess program ever seen—in COBOL, on a teletype. The program was given special permission to enter the 1978 Home Office Chess tournament where it won its first match, drew its second and had to be dragged off its opponent in the third. When chairman of Plymouth Charities Week he formed the Free Cornish Army and convinced the UK media that Cornwall had risen up and declared independence—a stunt so successful that the 1974 General Election result was pushed off the front page. Customs posts were set up on every bridge into Cornwall and the money raised donated to charity. The story was later written up in the legendary humor magazine Punch. He now lives in France with his wife and a frightening collection of animals. Debra Doyle was born in Florida and educated in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania—the last at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her doctorate in English literature, concentrating on Old English poetry. While living and studying in Philadelphia, she met and married her collaborator, James D. Macdonald, and subsequently traveled with him to Virginia, California, and the Republic of Panamá. Doyle and Macdonald left the Navy and Panamá in 1988 in order to pursue writing full-time. They now live in a big 19th-century house in Colebrook, New Hampshire, where they write science fiction and fantasy for children, teenagers, and adults. They have collaborated on many novels, including the Circle of Magic series: (all Troll Books, 1990), School of Wizardry, Tournament and Tower, City by the Sea, The Prince’s Players, The Prisoners of Bell Castle, and The High King’s Daughter; the Mageworlds series: The Price of the Stars (Tor, 1992), Starpilot’s Grave (Tor, 1993), By Honor Betray’d (Tor, 1994), The Gathering Flame (Tor, 1995), The Long Hunt (Tor, 1996), The Stars Asunder: A Novel of the Mageworlds (Tor, 1999), and A Working of Stars, Tor, 2002. Other novels include Timecrime, Inc. (Harper, 1991), Night of the Living Rat (Ace, 1992), Knight’s Wyrd (Harcourt Brace, 1992 Mythopoeic Society Aslan Award, Young page 35 Adult Literature, 1992), the Bad Blood series: Bad Blood (Berkley, 1993), Hunters’ Moon (Berkley, 1994), and Judgment Night (Berkley, 1995), and Groogleman (Harcourt Brace, 1996). Books written under the name Robyn Tallis are Night of Ghosts and Lightning (Ivy, 1989), and Zero-Sum Games (Ivy, 1989). Pep Rally (Harper, 1991), was written as Nicholas Harper. Books written as Victor Appleton are Monster Machine (Pocket, 1991), and Aquatech Warriors (Pocket, 1991). Books written as Martin Delrio are Mortal Kombat (Tor, 1995), Spider-Man Super- thriller: Midnight Justice (Pocket, 1996), Spider-Man Super-thriller: Global War (Pocket, 1996) and the Prince Valiant movie novelization (Avon). Under the pseudonym Douglas Morgan, they published the military technothriller Tiger Cruise (Forge, 2000) and a collection of annotated sea chanties What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor (Swordsmith Books, 2002). James D. Macdonald is also the author of The Apocalypse Door (Tor, 2002). Their short stories have appeared in Werewolves (Yolen, Greenberg, eds.), Vampires (Yolen, Greenberg, eds.,), Newer York (Watt-Evans, ed.), Alternate Kennedys (Resnick, Greenberg, eds.), Bruce Coville’s Book of Monsters (Coville, ed.), Bruce Coville’s Book of Ghosts (Coville, ed.), Bruce Coville’s Book of Spine Tinglers (Coville, ed.), A Wizard’s Dozen (Stearns, ed.), A Starfarer’s Dozen (Stearns, ed.), Witch Fantastic (Resnick, Greenberg, eds.), Swashbuckling Editor Stories (Betancourt, ed.), Camelot (Yolen, ed.), The Book of Kings (Gilliam, Greenberg, eds.), Tales of the Knights Templar (Kurtz, ed.), On Crusade: More Tales of the Knights Templar (Kurtz, ed.), Alternate Outlaws (Resnick and Greenberg, eds.), Otherwere (Gilman and DeCandido, eds.), A Nightmare’s Dozen (Stearns, ed.), and Not of Woman Born (Ash, ed.). Their most recent works include Mist and Snow, an alternatehistorical naval fantasy set in the Civil War, (Eos, December 2006), and the short story “Philologos: or, A Murder in Bistrita” (forthcoming in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). Ron Drummond has published profiles and critical studies of figures as diverse as composers Hector Berlioz and Pauline Oliveros, jazz guitarist Pat Martino, and novelist Steve Erickson. He co-edited and wrote the introductory essays for the eightvolume edition (the first in 200 years) of The Vienna String Quartets of Anton Reicha (Merton Music, London, 2006). His essay on ancestral memory and the music of Jethro Tull, “Broken Seashells”—which takes as its point of departure (or arrival) an incident from Drummond’s visit to the Isle of Skye in December 2003—was written at the behest of Steve Erickson and published in the fourth issue of the CalArts literary journal Black Clock; it has since been reprinted on the official Jethro Tull website, www.jethrotull.com/news/BC4D4.pdf. Google “Dao Gaia” for his LiveJournal. As publisher of Incunabula, quality small press of Seattle, Drummond has published two books by Samuel R. Delany and the short story collection Antiquities by John Crowley (short-listed for the World Fantasy Award in 1994), and is currently in production on the 25th anniversary edition of John Crowley’s Little, Big (www.littlebig25.com). Drummond has worked editorially with Samuel R. Delany more often than anyone else alive, most recently on Delany’s new novel, Dark Reflections (2007). Drummond has also worked extensively with John Crowley, editing Dæmonomania (2000) and Endless Things (2007), and, for ElectricStory.com, definitive versions of Ægypt and Love & Sleep. He’s worked with Greg Bear and Eileen Gunn, among many others, and once edited the draft translation by poets Olga Broumas and T Begley of Open Papers, a collection of essays by Nobel Laureate Odysseas Elytis. Drummond’s design for a World Trade Center memorial, the Garden Steps, was featured on CNN.com and Seattle’s KOMO-TV News and was the subject of an experimental documentary by the readercon 18 award-winning indy filmmaker Gregg Lachow. The design was praised by architecture critic Herbert Muschamp and lifelong New Yorker Samuel Delany, among many others. Drummond submitted the Garden Steps to the official international design competition for the WTC Memorial in June 2003; though not chosen, it was digitally archived at www.wtcsitememorial.org/ent/enti=832166.html. A native of Seattle, Ron Drummond currently lives in historic Lansingburgh, New York. Sarah Beth Durst is a writer of children’s and young adult fantasy novels. She started writing fantasy stories at age 10, got an English degree from a fancy college in New Jersey, and then began actively “aspiring.” Her debut novel, Into the Wild, was published just a few weeks ago, released in hardcover on June 21, 2007 from Razorbill/Penguin. (She is very, very, very excited about this.) It’s a fantasy adventure about fairy-tale characters who’ve escaped the fairy tale, and what happens when the fairy tale wants its characters back. Sarah lives in Stony Brook, NY with her husband, her daughter, and her ill-mannered cat. She also has a miniature pet griffin named Alfred. Okay, okay, that’s not quite true. His name is really Montgomery. Tom Easton thinks the Readercon~5 badge in his collection marks the first Readercon he ever attended. Five years ago, he found out why he keeps coming—that’s how he met his wife! He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and has been reviewing books for Analog since 1978. He holds a doctorate in theoretical biology from the University of Chicago and teaches at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. His latest books are Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society (McGraw-Hill, 8th ed., 2008), and Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Environmental Issues (McGraw-Hill, 13th ed., 2008). David Louis Edelman is the author of Infoquake (Pyr, 2006). Infoquake was named Top SF Book of 2006 by Barnes & Noble (which called the book “the love child of Donald Trump and Vernor Vinge”) and nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. He is also a web designer, programmer, and journalist. Over the past twelve years, Mr. Edelman has programmed websites for the U.S. Army and the FBI, taught software to the U.S. Congress and the World Bank, written articles for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, and directed the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies. Mr. Edelman lives with his wife Victoria outside of Washington, DC, where he has recently finished MultiReal, the sequel to Infoquake. MultiReal is tentatively scheduled for release in Spring 2008 by Pyr. Scott Edelman (the editor) currently edits both Science Fiction Weekly (www.scifi.com/sfw/), the internet magazine of news, reviews and interviews, with more than 635,000 registered readers (since September 2000), and SCI FI, the official print magazine of the SCI FI Channel (since September 2001). He was the founding editor of Science Fiction Age, which he edited during its entire eight-year run from 1992 through 2000. He also edited Sci-Fi Entertainment for almost four years, as well as two other SF media magazines, Sci-Fi Universe and Sci-Fi Flix. He has been a fourtime Hugo Award finalist for Best Editor. Scott Edelman (the writer) has published more than 65 short stories in magazines such as The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, Science Fiction Review and Fantasy Book, and anthologies such as Crossroads: Southern Tales of the Fantastic, Men Writing SF as Women, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Forbidden Planets, program guide Summer Chills, and The Mammoth Book of Monsters. Upcoming stories will appear in the anthologies Nation of Ash and Aim for the Head, and the magazine PostScripts. He has twice been a Stoker Award finalist in the category of Short Story. Jeffrey Ford is the author of a trilogy of novels from Eos Harper Collins—The Physiognomy, Memoranda, and The Beyond. His novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque (Morrow/Harper Collins), was published in June 2002 as was his first story collection, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant & Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press). The summer of 2005 saw the publication of Ford’s 6th novel, The Girl in the Glass, from Harper Collins (August 2005), and a stand-alone novella, The Cosmology of the Wider World, from PS Publishers (July 2005). His second collection of short stories, The Empire of Ice Cream, appeared in April of 2006 from Golden Gryphon Press. His short fiction has appeared in the magazines Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sci Fiction, Event Horizon, Black Gate, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, MSS, The Northwest Review, Puerto Del Sol, and in the anthologies Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, Vols. 13, 15, 16 & 18, Years Best Fantasy of 2002, The Green Man: Tales From the Mythic Forest, Leviathan #3, Album Zutique, Witpunk, The Silver Gryphon, The Dark, Trampoline, Thackery T. Lambshead’s Guide to Exotic & Discredited Diseases, and Polyphony #3, The Faery Reel: Tales From the Twilight Realm, 2005 Nebula Showcase, Flights: Tales of Extreme Fantasy, The Book of Voices, The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales. His stories have been nominated multiple times for the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and once each for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He is the recipient of three World Fantasy Awards, a Nebula, and in 2005 won The Fountain Award (for a short story of exceptional literary quality) from the Speculative Literature Foundation. Ford lives in South Jersey with his wife and two sons. He teaches Writing and Literature at Brookdale Community College in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Guest of Honor Karen Joy Fowler: see the Souvenir Book. Carl Frederick is a theoretical physicist, at least theoretically. After a post-doc at NASA and a stint at Cornell University, he left his first love, quantum relativity theory (a strange first love, perhaps), to become Chief Scientist at a small company doing AI software. And recently, he returned to the arms of his beloved (so to speak). For recreation, he fences epee, learns languages, and plays the bagpipes. He lives in rural, Ithaca, New York. And rural is good if you play the bagpipes. He is a graduate of Odyssey SF Writers Workshop, and a Writers of the Future first place winner. Most-recent stories include, in Analog: “The Spacemice Incident” (Jul/Aug 2003), “The Study of Ants” (Sep 2003), “Misunderstanding Twelve” (Apr 2004), “The Fruitcake Genome” (Dec 2004), “General Tso’s Chicken” (Mar 2005), “Much Ado About Newton” (May 2005), “This Little World” (Jun 2005), “Prayer for a Dead Paramecium” (Jul/Aug 2005), “The Speed of Understanding” (Sep 2005), “Hotel Security” (Dec 2005), “The Skeekit-Woogle Test” (Mar 2006), “The Emancipation of the Knowledge Robots” (Apr 2006), “The Door That Does Not Close” (Jun 2006), “The Teller of Time” (Jul/Aug 2006), “Man, Descendent” (Nov 2006), “Double Helix, Downward Gyre” (Jan/Feb 2007), “A Higher Level of Misunderstanding” (May 2007), “A Zoo in the Jungle” (Jun 2007), “Yearning for the White Avenger” (forthcoming), “The Engulfed Cathedral” (forthcoming); in Asimov’s: “We Are the Cat” (Sep 2006), “Leonid Skies” (forthcoming); in Baen’s Universe: “Weredragons of Mars” (Jun 2007), “Concentration of Dogs” (Aug 2007). ESLI: (reprints—all in Russian translation): “The Study of Ants” (Mar 2005), “Prayer for a Dead Paramecium” (Jun 2006), “We Are the Cat” (Jan 2007), “Man Descendant” (Nov 2006), “A Zoo in the Jungle” (forthcoming). Jim Freund has been involved in producing programs of and about literary sf/f since 1967 when he began working at New York page 36 City’s WBAI at age 13 as an intern for Baird Searles. His live radio program, “Hour of the Wolf,” continues to be broadcast every Saturday morning from 5:00 to 7:00, and is streamed live on the web. Archives of past shows are streamed for about 8 months after broadcast. (Check www.hourwolf.com for details.) Over the years, he has produced over 200 radio dramas, and long ago lost track of how many interviews and readings he has done or presented. His work has been twice nominated and once a winner of the Major Armstrong Award for Excellence in Radio Production. Jim has also dabbled (occasionally with great success) in producing for the New York stage. Jim lives in Brooklyn with writer Barbara Krasnoff. The couple have no pets at this time. Craig Shaw Gardner is the author of four trilogies for Ace Books: the fantasy spoof The Exploits of Ebenezum, comprising A Malady of Magicks (1986), A Multitude of Monsters (1986), and A Night in the Netherhells (1987); its sequel, The Ballad of Wuntvor: A Difficulty with Dwarves (1987), An Excess of Enchantments (1988), and A Disagreement with Death (1989); the SF spoof trilogy The Cineverse Cycle: Slaves of the Volcano Gods (1989), Bride of the Slime Monster (1990), and Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies (1990); and an Arabian Nights trilogy: The Other Sinbad (1991), A Bad Day For Ali Baba (1992), and The Last Arabian Night (1993; 1992, Headline (UK) as Scheherazade’s Night Out). The first three trilogies have been published as omnibuses from the SFBC. Dragon Sleeping, (Ace, 1994) did indeed turn out to start a trilogy, and was followed by Dragon Waking (Ace, 1995) and Dragon Burning (Ace, 1996). Another trilogy (supposedly written by one “Peter Garrison”) came out after that: The Changeling War, The Sorcerer’s Gun (both Ace, 1999), and The Magic Dead (Ace, 2000). His more recent credits include an original horror novel, Dark Whispers, written under the name Chris Blaine, the story collection The Little Purple Book of Peculiar Stories (Borderlands Press), stories in Imaginings (Keith de Candido, ed.), Weird Trails (Darrell Schweitzer, ed.) and Quietly Now (Kealan Patrick Burke, ed.), and a regular book review column for H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror. His novella, An Embarrassment of Elves was included in The Fair Folk, edited by Marvin Kaye, which won this year’s World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. Craig has also written novelizations of the film Lost Boys (Berkeley, 1987), the game Wishbringer (Avon, 1988), and the films Batman (Warner, 1989), Back to the Future 2 and 3 (Berkeley, 1989 and 1990), and Batman Returns (1992). His novel The Batman Murders (Warner, 1990) was the first title in a series of original Batman novels. Of late, he has written deeply serious books concerning Spider-Man and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His short horror and fantasy fiction has appeared in Halflings, Hobbits, Warrows and Weefolk (Searles and Thomsen, eds.), Shadows 8 and 9 (Grant, ed.), Halloween Horrors, The First Year’s Best Fantasy (Windling and Datlow, ed.), The Ultimate Werewolf, Freak Show, In the Fog, and The Game’s Afoot. Among his proudest accomplishments are wearing a gorilla suit in public and repeatedly hosting the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition with a straight face. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. You can find out more about Craig’s Fabulous Lifestyle by visiting www.CraigShawGardner.com. James Alan Gardner (“Jim”) is the author of several novels including Expendable (Avon, 1997), Commitment Hour (Avon Eos, 1998), Vigilant (Avon Eos, 1999), Hunted (Eos, 2000), Ascending (Eos, 2001), Trapped (Eos, 2002), Radiant (Eos, 2004), and (for street cred) Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze (Del Rey, 2005). His latest book is Gravity Wells (Eos, 2005), a collection of short fiction including “Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream” (Asimov’s, Feb. 1997) which was on the final ballot for both the Nebula and Hugo awards. Other short fiction has appeared in such magazines as F&SF and Amazing, as well as several paperback anthologies. He is a graduate of Clarion West (1989) and a two-time winner of the page 37 Aurora award. He lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with his wife Linda Carson and a pensively sincere rabbit named Basil, both of whom are also working on novels. Chris Genoa is the author of the underground hit dark SF comedy Foop! (2005, Eraserhead Press), the historical fiction comedy Lick Your Neighbor (forthcoming), and the kung fu fantasy comedy The Monkey & the Barrel (forthcoming). He was born and raised in Philadelphia, he studied English, chemistry, and film at the College of William and Mary, King’s College London, and the University of New Orleans, and he currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. www.chrisgenoa.com Greer Gilman’s new book, the second in her Ashes cycle, is complete. Set in the mythscape of Moonwise (1991, Roc), her first novel, it is a triptych of variations on a winter’s tale. Two stories from the cycle have appeared. Her novella “A Crowd of Bone” won a World Fantasy Award in 2004. It was published in Trampoline (2003, Small Beer Press). “Jack Daw’s Pack” came out in Century (Winter 2000), and was a Nebula finalist for 2001. It has been reprinted in Jay Lake’s anthology, TEL: Stories (2005, Wheatland Press), and in the 14th Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Moonwise has reappeared in hardcover (2005, Prime Books). It won the Crawford Award and was shortlisted for the Tiptree and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards. “Down the Wall,” a Cloudish story, appeared in the Datlow and Windling anthology Salon Fantastique (2006, Thunder’s Mouth Press). Her poem “She Undoes” from The Faces of Fantasy (1996, Tor) has been reprinted in Women of Other Worlds (1999, University of Western Australia Press), and in Jabberwocky (2005, Prime Books). In 2008, Ms. Gilman will be the Special Guest Writer at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Last year, she gave a paper on “Shakespearean Voices in the Literature of the Fantastic” to the Shakespeare Association of America. She was a John W. Campbell finalist for 1992, and a guest speaker at the Art/Sci’98 Symposium held at the Cooper Union in New York. She has been interviewed by Michael Swanwick for Foundation (Autumn 2001), by Sherwood Smith for the SF Site, and by the Harvard University Gazette (Oct. 11, 2001). A Fellow of the Lithopoeic Society, and a sometime forensic librarian, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and travels in stone circles. Laura Anne Gilman spent fifteen years as an editor, using her non-existent spare time to write three media tie-in novels (the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels Visitors and Deep Water; and Poltergeist: The Legacy: The Shadows Between), as well as a number of short stories in various genres. She also co-edited the anthologies Otherwere: Stories of Transformation and Treachery and Treason. In 2002 she made the move to full-time writer with the “Retrievers” series published by Luna Books, starting with Staying Dead in 2003, followed by Curse the Dark, Bring It On, and Burning Bridges, with Free Fall scheduled for July 2008. She also wrote the Grail Quest YA trilogy for HarperCollins (2006), and and had close to thirty short stories published in national magazines and anthologies, garnering her a number of “Year’s Best” honorable mentions. She can be found online at www.lauraannegilman.net. Adam Golaski is Horror Fiction Editor for New Genre (www.new-genre.com) and an editor at Flim Forum (www.flimforum.com), a press “interested in poetry that postulates then questions the idea of the poem as experiment.” Issue #11 of readercon 18 Supernatural Tales includes the essay “The Editor as Author: Charles L. Grant and Shadows” and the story “Andie.” Excerpts from the manuscript Color Plates will appear in Lit #13 and appear in the current issue of Sleepingfish; the poem “On Beaujolais Nouveau Day” will appear in Spinning Jenny #10 and several poems, including “Smoke” and “Ruby Earring” will appear in word for/word #12; “Woods (Marion)” appears in the current issue of Essays & Fictions and “What Water Reveals” will appear in the upcoming Tartarus Press anthology. Adam is currently editing a selected poetry of Paul Hannigan for Pressed Wafer; read Adam’s introduction to Hannigan and his poetry—an essay called “This is Not Sad, This is Not Funny”—in the May issue of Open Letters (www.openlettersmonthly.com). Theodora Goss’s short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting, which includes “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm” (nominated for a World Fantasy Award) and “Pip and the Fairies” (nominated for a Nebula Award), was published by Prime Books in 2006. Interfictions, an anthology of “interstitial” short stories that she co-edited with Delia Sherman, was published by Small Beer Press in 2007. Her short stories and poems have been reprinted in a number of “year’s best” anthologies, including Year’s Best Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens. Visit her website at www.theodoragoss.com. Gavin J. Grant runs Small Beer Press and, with Kelly Link, publishes the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Del Rey will publish The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet this autumn. He co-edits The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror with Link and Ellen Datlow for which they have received the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards. He co-hosts the KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading Series with Datlow. His short-story publications include “Janet, Meet Bob,” (Lone Star Stories, 2007), “Yours, Etc.,” (Salon Fantastique, 2006), “We Are Always Where We Are,” (Strange Horizons, 2006), “Heads Down, Thumbs Up,” (Scifiction, 2005), “Hold Tight,” (Strange Horizons, 2004), “Editing for Content,” (Scifiction, 2001), and “Rhythms and Complications,” (The Third Alternative, 2004). He used to work at Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston. Now he lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. Glenn Grant’s story “Burning Day” was reprinted by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer in their anthology Year’s Best SF 10 (Harper/EOS 2005), and selected by the 2005 Tiptree Award jury for their Long List of recommended fiction. Glenn’s short stories have appeared in Interzone, Northern Stars, ArrowDreams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas, and Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic. With David G. Hartwell he co-edited Northern Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction, (Tor hc, 1994; Tor tpb, 1998) and a second volume, Northern Suns (Tor hc, Spring 1999; Tor tpb, 2000). Glenn’s reviews and non-fiction have appeared in Science Fiction Eye, The Montreal Gazette, NYRSF, Science Fiction Studies, bOING bOING, Singularity, Going Gaga, and Virus 23. He edited and published three issues of Edge Detector magazine, and was a founder and contributer to the underground comic zine Mind Theatre. His illustrations can be seen in the GURPS: Traveller line of SF RPG books from Steve Jackson Games. He has been nominated for the Aurora Award for his editing and for his illustrations. Born in London, Ontario, he now lives in Montréal. His online home is www.istop.com/~ggrant/. Leigh Grossman is an editor, writer, reviewer, and college instructor. In addition to teaching writing and science fiction at the University of Connecticut (and online), he has written or cowritten nine books, including The Red Sox Fan Handbook (Rounder Books, 2005), The Wildside Gaming System: Fantasy Roleplaying edition (Wildside Press, 2004), The New England Museum Guide, and The Adult Student’s Guide. Grossman has also reviewed genre fiction for Absolute Magnitude, Horror magazine, program guide page 38 and Wavelengths. He is the president of Swordsmith Productions, a book production company (and onetime publisher) that has done production work on thousands of books for other publishers over the past decade. Previously, he was the pre-press production supervisor at Avon Books, an editor at Byron Preiss Visual Publications/Multimedia, and a full-time college-level history and writing instructor. He lives in northeast Connecticut, or you can visit him on the web at www.swordsmith.com. Hugo nominee in both Short Form and Long Form. He is a 1988 World Fantasy winner (Special Award, Professional), and was a finalist at least four other times (three times runner-up). He has edited or co-edited many anthologies including the long-running annual series Year’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy. Recent projects include The Space Opera Renaissance (co-edited with Kathryn Cramer, Tor, 2006) and The Science Fiction Century, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (Orb Books, 2006). Elizabeth Hand’s most recent books are the psychological thriller Generation Loss; Illyria, a Shakespearean fantasy; and Saffron & Brimstone: Strange Stories. She is also the author of Mortal Love, Black Light, Waking the Moon, Glimmering, Winterlong, Aestival Tide, and Icarus Descending; the short-story collections Bibliomancy and Last Summer at Mars Hill; numerous film novelizations; and the Boba Fett series of Star Wars juveniles. Her short novel, Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol, was published in 2006 by Beccon Publications in a limited edition with original etchings by artist Judith Clute. Forthcoming works include the Weimar/Universal Pictures mashup Pandora’s Bride. Since 1988, she has been a regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World. She also writes for the Village Voice and does a review column for Fantasy & Science Fiction, and has contributed to Down East Magazine, among numerous others. With Paul Witcover she created and wrote the groundbreaking 1990s DC Comics series Anima. In 2001 she received an Individual Artist’s Fellowship in Literature from the Maine Arts Commision and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her fiction has received two World Fantasy Awards, two Nebulas, two International Horror Guild Awards, as well as the James Tiptree Jr. and Mythopoeic Society Awards. She lives on the coast of Maine, where she is working on a YA novel about Arthur Rimbaud, and takes great pride in being one-quarter of the litblog The Inferior 4. Hartwell is a senior editor at Tor/Forge. He was a consulting editor at NAL (1971–’73) and at Berkley (’73–’78) and director of SF at Timescape (’78–’83) and Arbor House/Morrow (’84–’91). In the meantime, he has consulted for Gregg Press (’75–’86), Waldenbooks Otherworlds Club (’83–’84), Tor (’83–’94), and the BOMC (1989), edited Cosmos magazine (1977–’78), and been an administrative consultant for the Turner Tomorrow Awards (1990– ’91). He was editor and publisher of The Little Magazine (1965– ’88; literary), co-publisher, with Paul Williams, of Entwhistle Books (1967–’82), and co-publisher, with L.W. Currey, of Dragon Press (1973–’78). Since 1978 he has been Dragon Press’s proprietor; since 1988 they have published The New York Review of Science Fiction, a 19-time Hugo nominee as best semiprozine (1989–2007) and two-time Readercon Small Press Award Winner (1989, ’91); he is the magazine’s reviews and features editor. Nancy C. Hanger ([email protected]) has been a freelance writer and editor for the last 24+ years, specializing in science fiction and technology, including books and articles about computers and the Internet, as well as health-related issues. She was the production manager and a contractor for Baen Books for over 16 years. Her book production company, Windhaven Press (www.windhaven.com), provides editorial consulting, development, and prepress production for mainstream publishers, including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin’s Press, DAW Books, Penguin-Putnam, and Bantam Books, among many others. She lost count many years ago, but has professionally copyedited, edited, proofread, consulted on, typeset, designed, or just generally fooled around with over 2,000 books since beginning her freelance career. Her health-care book, The First Year: Lupus–A Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed, was published in late 2003 by Marlowe & Co. and is currently in its second printing. She has been contributing editor for Byte.com and a stringer reporter for Wired News. She was the developmental editor and coauthor for The Internet World Guide to Essential Business Tactics for the Net (Wiley), and has been a developmental/reviewing editor for other Internet-oriented books such as Phillip Greenspun’s Phillip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing (Morgan Kauffmann). In her copious spare time she is a consultant in online community development and navigability, formerly in management and consulting for several of the top three portal companies. She currently lives in southern New Hampshire with her husband, three cats, and over 12,000 books in an 18th-century farmhouse and barn that have been completely renovated (read: we are now unequivocally house-poor). She is a compulsive knitter. David G. Hartwell, a Guest of Honor at Readercon 13, has an elaborate website (www.davidghartwell.com) that includes many unusual sights. Last year he won the Hugo for Best Professional Editor, having been a finalist for that award on 14 previous occasions. This year he is a Best Professional Editor His book reviews and articles have appeared in Crawdaddy (1968– ’74) and Locus (1971–’73), Publishers Weekly, Top of the News, and The New York Times Book Review, and in Best Library Essays, Editors on Editing, and other books. He is the author of Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction (1984, Walker/McGraw-Hill, rev. ed. 1996, Tor). He has been a founder and administrator of a number of sf institutions: the World Fantasy Convention and Award since 1975 (board chairman since 1978); the Philip K. Dick Award since 1982; Sercon since 1987. He was a judge of the first Readercon Small Press Awards. He is an Advisory Board member of the SF Hall of Fame and Museum and presently a Hall of Fame Judge. He earned his Ph.D. (in comparative medieval literature) from Columbia; he has taught sf and contemporary literature and writing at the Stevens Institute of Technology (1973–’76), at Clarion West (1984, ’86, ’90, 2000), Clarion South Writing Workshop, Brisbane, Australia (2004), and has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Summer School (1987– ’93), and at New York University (1993). He lives in Pleasantville, New York. Jeff Hecht is a free-lance science and technology writer and Boston correspondent for the global science weekly New Scientist, where he covers subjects from space to dinosaurs. When inspiration strikes, he writes the occasional piece of short fiction, which has appeared in places including Analog, Asimov’s, Interzone, Nature, Nature Physics, Odyssey, Twilight Zone, Year’s Best Horror Stories, Alien Pregnant by Elvis (Friesner and Greenberg, eds.), Great American Ghost Stories (McSherry, Waugh, and Greenberg, eds.), New Dimensions (Silverberg, ed.), and Vampires (Yolen and Greenberg, eds.). His nonfiction has appeared in many magazines, including Technology Review, Analog, Laser Focus World, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Cosmos, and Optics & Photonics News. His two most recent books are BEAM: The race to make the Laser (Oxford University Press, 2005) and the 5th edition of Understanding Fiber Optics (5th ed., 2005, Prentice Hall). If he hasn’t finished the new edition of Understanding Lasers by Readercon, IEEE Press is going to be seriously annoyed. His other books include City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics, part of the Sloan technology series (Oxford University Press, 1999) Understanding Lasers 2nd ed. (IEEE Press, 1994), Vanishing Life: The Mystery of Mass Extinctions (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993, juv.), and Optics: Light for a New Age (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988, juv.). He holds a B.S. in electronic engineering from the California Institute of Technology and an M.Ed. in higher education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. page 39 Nina Kiriki Hoffman has written scads of books, a number of them published, including The Thread that Binds the Bones (Avon, 1993, Bram Stoker Award winner for first novel), The Silent Strength of Stones (AvoNova, 1995, finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy awards), A Red Heart of Memories (Ace, 1999, World Fantasy and Endeavour award finalist), Past the Size of Dreaming (Ace, 2001, Endeavour award finalist), A Fistful of Sky (Ace, 2002) and Catalyst (Tachyon, 2006, Philip K. Dick award finalist). Her next novel from Ace will be Fall of Light, sequel to A Fistful of Sky. In 1992, Hoffman collaborated on a young adult novel with Tad Williams, Child of an Ancient City (Atheneum, 1992, subsequent reprints by Tor and elsewhere in the world). Her other work for young adults includes three novels in the R. L. Stine’s Ghosts of Fear Street series and one Sweet Valley Junior High book. Her YA novel A Stir of Bones (Viking, 2003) was a finalist for the Stoker and Endeavour awards and made the New York Public Library list for the Teen Reader and the ALA Best Books for Young Adults list. Her YA novel, Spirits that Walk in Shadow, was published by Viking in 2006 and has been a finalist for the Locus and Mythopoeic awards (so far). Hoffman published two short story collections with small presses, A Legacy of Fire (Pulphouse, 1990), Courting Disasters and Other Strange Affinities (Wildside, 1991). More recently, some of her Nebula-award finalist short fiction appeared in her collection Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors (Five Star, 2003, Endeavour award finalist). readercon 18 book appearing later this year. He is also a contributor to the anthology Hal’s Worlds, dedicated to the late Hal Clement, with his first published short story “Extended Warranty,” drawn from the Dark Wing universe. In 2008 his first novel beyond the Dark Wing universe, A Song In Stone, will be published by Wizards of the Coast as a part of their new Discoveries imprint; this book deals with the mysterious healing music of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, and the confluence of the development of polyphony with the rise of Gothic architecture... among other things. He also has an alternate-history novel in development. He has a background in history, with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and he speaks two other languages (German and Spanish). A member of the Masonic Fraternity, Walter H. Hunt has served as Master of two different Lodges in Massachusetts, and completed a very successful Master’s year in 2005-06. He and his wife and daughter are involved in a colonial reenactment group and attend Renaissance fairs whenever possible. Alexander Jablokov (pronounced ‘Ya-’) is the author of Carve The Sky (1991, Morrow/Avonova), A Deeper Sea (1992, Morrow/Avonova), Nimbus (1993, Morrow), River of Dust (1996, Avon),Deepdrive (1998, Avon Eos). His stories have appeared in the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois, ed.); and in Asimov’s, Amazing, and Aboriginal SF. The Breath of Suspension, a collection of his short fiction, was published by Arkham House in 1994 and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He has at long last finished his next novel, Remembering Muriel. She has sold more than two hundred short stories to various magazines, including Aboriginal, Amazing Stories, Analog, Asimov’s, Hitchcock’s, Tomorrow, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, Cicada, and F&SF. She has placed many stories with TeknoBooks anthologies as well. Matthew Jarpe is the author of Radio Freefall, which you Forthcoming stories include “The Listeners” (Coyote Road, a trickster young adult anthology edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, Viking), “Rags and Riches,” (in a fairy-tale villains anthology also edited by Terri & Ellen for Viking), “Under the Surface” (Firebirds III, edited by Sharyn November, Viking), “Trophy Wives” (Fellowship Fantastic, edited by Kerrie Hughes and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW), “Hostile Takeover” (Wizards, Inc, edited by Loren L. Coleman and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW) “The Curse Tablet” (Ages of Wonder, edited by Rob St. Martin, Julie E. Czerneda, and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW), and “My Tears Have Been My Meat” (Better Off Undead, edited by Dan Hoyt & Martin H. Greenberg, DAW). Kay Kenyon has spent the last few years writing a four-book In addition to writing, Hoffman works at a bookstore part time, teaches short-story writing through a local community college, works with teen writers, and does production for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her home plays host to many musical instruments and assorted cats. Kenneth Houghton is settled in suburbia; his appreciation of J.G. Ballard has been enhanced immensely. He and his wife Shira Daemon are the proud parents of Valerie Jenna Rose Houghton (Running Wild), who wants to garden, and Rosalyn Pandora Houghton (The Unlimited Dream Company). In his spare time, he contributes actively to the Marginal Utility blog (atbozzo.blogspot.com) and wonders why the house isn’t cleaner and the books aren’t in order. Walter H. Hunt has been writing for most of his life, both professionally as a technical writer in the software industry and as an author of fiction. In 2001, his first novel, The Dark Wing, was published by Tor Books; the second book in the series, The Dark Path, was published in 2003. The third book in the series, The Dark Ascent, was published in 2004, followed by the fourth book, The Dark Crusade, in 2005. All four of these books have been published in German by Random House/Heyne, with the fourth He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Mary, his son, Simon, and his daughter, Faith. can’t buy yet. Wait until August, 2007 and you’ll be able to run out and get a copy, although if you think you might have OCD you should get two copies to preserve symmetry. Radio Freefall, a Tor book, is his first novel. It’s about a rock musician, a computer hacker and a wild artificial intelligence who team up to bring down the most powerful man in the world. It’s a little bit cyberpunk, a little bit hard SF, and a little bit VH-1 “Behind the Music.” Matt has published short fiction in Asimov’s and F&SF. He works at a pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he discovers drugs (not the fun kind). He lives in Quincy, Massachusetts with his wife Michelle Morris and their son Sam. epic SF series. The first book, Bright of the Sky, debuted in hardcover this spring (2007, Pyr) to a starred review in Publishers Weekly and true love from both sfnal and mainstream reviewers. Her other novels include The Braided World (2003, Bantam Spectra; John W. Campbell finalist), Tropic of Creation (2000, Bantam Spectra; Science Fiction Book Club pick), Rift (1999, Bantam Spectra), The Seeds of Time (1997, Bantam Spectra) and Maximum Ice (2002, Bantam Spectra; Philip K. Dick finalist; also published in France with a title translating as A Very Large Ice Cream Cone). A World Too Near, the second in her series, is forthcoming (2008, Pyr). Although she usually doesn’t have enough time to write short, her short(er) work has been anthologized, podcast and translated into Russian and Canadian. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies beginning with “New Voices in Science Fiction” (Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best SF list; Resnick, ed.) and with no end in sight. She lives in eastern Washington State where she is the president of a spring literary conference, Write on the River. Born in Buffalo, New York in 1950, John Kessel is the author of two solo novels, Good News from Outer Space (Tor, 1989) and Corrupting Dr. Nice (Tor, 1997), and one in collaboration with his alter ego James Patrick Kelly, Freedom Beach (Bluejay, 1985). He program guide also has two short-story collections, Meeting in Infinity (Arkham, 1992 House) and The Pure Product (Tor, 1997). His novella “Our Orphan” won the 1982 Nebula Award, and his 1992 story “Buffalo” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Locus Poll, and his novella “Stories for Men” shared the 2002 James Tiptree Jr. Award with M. John Harrison’s novel Light. He has been nominated seven other times for the Nebula and four times for the Hugo. His play version of “Faustfeathers” won the Paul Green Playwright’s Prize in 1994, and his one act “A Clean Escape” has been produced by the Allowance Theater in Raleigh, and as an audio drama by the Seeing Ear Theater, and most recently as an episode of the upcoming ABC TV series “Masters of Science Fiction.” With Mark Van Name and Richard Butner, he organized the Sycamore Hill Writers’ Conference, which produced the anthology Intersections. Donald Kingsbury’s novels are Courtship Rite (Timescape hc/pb, 1982; Hugo finalist) and, set earlier in the same history, The Moon Goddess and the Son (Baen, 1985, expansion of Hugo finalist novella which first appeared in Analog and was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Fantasy and SF (Asimov, Waugh and Greenberg, eds.); and two novels set in Larry Niven’s Known Space, The Survivor in Man-Kzin Wars IV (Baen, 1991, reprinted by Tor, 2006, in The Space Opera Renaissance (Hartwell and Cramer, eds.) and The Heroic Myth of Lieutenant Nora Argamentine in Man-Kzin Wars VI (Baen, 1994). Stories have also appeared in Northern Stars (Hartwell and Grant, eds.), and Far Futures (Benford, ed.). His 2001 novel from Tor is Psychohistorical Crisis, an expansion of “Historical Crisis” (the story that appeared in Far Futures). He is currently writing for Tor The Finger Pointing Solward, a continuation of his Courtship Rite world. His short fiction and science fact essays have appeared in Analog and Astounding. He lives in Montréal. Rosemary Kirstein is the author of the Steerswoman series, beginning with The Steerswoman and The Outskirter’s Secret, rereleased in a combined edition as The Steerswoman’s Road. Volume 3, The Lost Steersman, was published in September 2003, and Volume 4, The Language of Power, in September 2004, all from Del Rey Books. Work is underway on Volume 5. Kirstein’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s and in Aboriginal SF. Ms. Kirstein is pleased that her books have been translated into German, allowing all her German relatives to finally understand what she does with her time. However, her own ability with German is limited, and she is unable to discern whether her attempts at graceful prose, exciting action, sparkling characters, and deep sense of wonder have survived the process. In other words, she can’t tell if the German version sucks. THEREFORE, if you are fluent enough in reading German to be able to tell if a book is well-written, walk up to Ms. Kirstein and say so. The first person to do so will be given a set the German books (Das magische Juwel, Das Geheimnis des Saumlanders, Der verschwiegene Steuermann, and Die Sprache der Macht, published by Bastei Lubbe), and Ms. Kirstein’s e-mail address. All she asks is that you drop her a line with the good or bad news, as the case may be. Mary Robinette Kowal is a professional puppeteer who moonlights as a writer. Last week, she drove cross-country with her husband and two cats to move from Portland, Oregon to New York City. She is very tired. Her short fiction appears in Apex Digest, Strange Horizons, All-Star Stories: Twenty Epics, Cicada, Prime Codex and Cosmos. She also is the art director for Shimmermagazine. In addition to puppetry, Mrs. Kowal also performs as a voice actor, recording work for authors such as Orson Scott Card, Tobias Buckell, Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear, and John Scalzi. Visit her website, www.maryrobinettekowal.com. Matthew Kressel runs Senses Five Press, the publisher of Sybil’s Garage and the forthcoming anthology Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy, with much help from his friends. His page 40 fiction has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Dred Tales, and Alien Skin Magazine and will soon be appearing in Electric Velocipede and The Field Guide to Surreal Botany. He is looking for an agent for his first science fiction novel (wink wink, nudge nudge). Along with being a member of the Manhattan-based Altered Fluid writing group, he likes plants, has an unhealthy obsession with the film Blade Runner, and was told that, unlike others, he gets more eloquent when he drinks. Such is the way with writers, he supposes. His website is at www.matthewkressel.net. John Langan’s new story, “Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers,” will be appearing shortly in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His first collection of stories, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, is scheduled to appear this time next year, while his novel, House of Windows, is currently under consideration at a number of publishers. He’s completing his dissertation, Lovecraft’s Progeny, a consideration of the influences upon and of H.P. Lovecraft, at the CUNY graduate center. His story, “Tutorial,” (F&SF August 2003) was on Locus magazine’s “Recommended Reading” list for 2003. His previous stories include “Mr. Gaunt” (F&SF September 2002; reprinted in Silverberg and Haber’s Fantasy: The Best of 2002), which was nominated for the International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction; and “On Skua Island” (F&SF August 2001), also nominated for an IHG Award for Long Fiction. His reviews have appeared in Dead Reckonings, Erebos, Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and The Internet Review of Science Fiction. His essays on weird writers have appeared in The Lovecraft Annual, IROSF, Lovecraft Studies, and Fantasy Commentator; he has essays forthcoming on Fritz Leiber and William Peter Blatty. He is Publications Editor for Erebos, the new, invitational journal for horror writers, and staff reviewer for Dead Reckonings, the new review of horror fiction. He is an adjunct instructor at SUNY New Paltz. He lives in St. Remy, NY, with his wife, Fiona, and their son, David. Fred Lerner has been a librarian and bibliographer for more than thirty-five years, and was one of the founders of the Science Fiction Research Association. He has produced teachers’ guides for several science fiction publishers, and was science fiction columnist for Voice of Youth Advocates and the Wilson Library Bulletin. He now serves as Contributing Editor, Science Fiction and Fantasy for the NoveList website. His first book, Modern Science Fiction and the American Literary Community (Scarecrow Press, 1985), was a scholarly study of science fiction’s changing reputation in America. In The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age (Continuum, 1998) and Libraries Through the Ages (Continuum, 1999), he has written about the history of libraries. His first published story, “Rosetta Stone” (Artemis, Winter 2000; reprinted in Year’s Best SF #5) has been described by anthologist David G. Hartwell as “the only SF story I know in which the science is library science.” Fred Lerner lives with his wife Sheryl in White River Junction, Vermont, where he is Information Scientist at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. As producer of the PILOTS Database, an online index to more than 30,000 publications on PTSD, he claims to have seen more literature on the subject than anyone on the planet. Paul Levinson’s The Silk Code, a first novel featuring Dr. Phil D’Amato, was published by Tor (David Hartwell, editor) in October 1999. It won the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction novel of 1999. Levinson’s next novel, Borrowed Tides, was published by Tor in March 2001; it was a May 2001 Selection of the SF Book Club. Phil D’Amato returned in Levinson’s third novel, The Consciousness Plague, published by Tor in March 2002; the novel was a Spring 2002 Selection of the SF Book Club and the Mystery Guild; it won the Mary Shelley Award, given for page 41 the first time by the Media Ecology Association for the best fiction about technology and communication, in 2003; Mark Shanahan’s audio-book was a finalist for the Audie Award in 2005. D’Amato appeared again in The Pixel Eye, 2003, which was a finalist for the Prometheus Award in 2004. The Plot to Save Socrates—a timetravel, historical novel, about just what it sounds like—was published by Tor in February 2006; Entertainment Weekly called it “challenging fun.” Levinson’s science fiction in Analog has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards. “Loose Ends” (novella, May 1997) was a triple nominee. “The Chronology Protection Case” (novelette, September 1995) was a finalist for the Sturgeon Award in 1996, the Nebula Award in 1996, and has been reprinted four times, including in Nebula Awards 32: SFWA’s Choices for the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (Harcourt, 1998); Jay Kensinger’s 40-minute low-budget movie of the novelette has played at numerous cons. Mark Shanahan’s radioplay of the novelette, performed at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City in September 2002, was nominated for an Edgar for best play by the Mystery Writers of America in 2003. “The Copyright Notice Case” (novelette, April 1996) won CompuServe’s HOMer Award for the Best Science Fiction novelette of 1996 and was a finalist for the 1997 Nebula Award; “The Mendelian Lamp Case” (novelette, April 1997) was reprinted in David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best Science Fiction #3 (HarperPrism, 1998). All of the above stories are now available on Fictionwise.com. Levinson’s scholarly books include Mind at Large (1988; new paperback edition, 1998), and The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, published worldwide by Routledge in Fall 1997. Digital McLuhan: a Guide to the Information Millennium was published by Routledge in May 1999, and won the Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship. RealSpace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet was published by Routledge in 2003, and Cellphone: The Story of the World’s Most Mobile Medium, and How It Has Transformed Everything was published by Palgrave/St. Martin’s in 2004. These books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and eight other languages. Levinson has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Scarborough Country, The CBS Evening News, The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and more than 500 radio and television shows, and is frequently quoted in The New York Times and USA Today. He has published more than 100 scholarly articles on the history and philosophy of communication and technology, and his essays have appeared in Wired, Omni, and The Village Voice. Levinson is interviewed every Sunday on KNX 1070 all-news radio in Southern California, streaming live at www.knx1070.com at 7:20am Pacific time. He maintains several blogs and podcasts, all of which can be found at infiniteregress.tv. Levinson is Professor and Chair of Communications and Media Studies at Fordham University, and was President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, 1998– 2001. Shariann Lewitt (“Shariann,” and the first syllable rhymes with “far”, not “hat”) is the author of First and Final Rites (Ace, 1984), USSA #2 and #4 (young adult sf/thrillers, Avon, 1987), Angel at Apogee (Ace, 1987), Cyberstealth (Ace, 1989), and its sequel Dancing Vac (Ace, 1990), Blind Justice (Ace, 1991), Cybernetic Jungle (Ace, 1992), and Songs of Chaos (Ace, 1993). Memento Mori was published by Tor in 1995, Interface Masque by Tor in 1997, and Rebel Sutra by Tor in 2000. Succubus and the City, written under the name Nina Harper, will be out from Del Rey in April next year. With Susan Shwartz she wrote Whitewing (published as Gordon Kendall, Tor, 1985). Her short fiction has appeared in Perpetual Light, (Ryan, ed.), Habitats (Shwartz, ed.), Magic in Ithkar #2 (Adams and Norton, eds.), Friends of the Horseclan (Adams and Adams, eds.), Tales of the Witchworld #2, (Norton, ed.), CounterAttack: The Fleet, Book 2 (Drake and Fawcett, eds.), readercon 18 Breakthrough: The Fleet, Book 3 (Drake and Fawcett, eds.), Carmen Miranda’s Ghost is Haunting Space Station 3 (Sakers, ed.), Newer York (Watt-Evans, ed.), and Battlestar Book One (Drake and Fawcett, eds.). Several other short stories have appeared in various magazines, the most recent of which is the French translation of the story “A Real Girl” which was reprinted from the original that appeared in Bending the Landscape, Vol. 2. She lives in the Boston area. Ernest Lilley is the editor of SFRevu (www.sfrevu.com) and TechRevu (www.techrevu.com) and is a freelance editor and photojournalist who regularly writes for science and technology publications. His monthly column, Unleashed Computing, appears in Byte.com. He likes station wagons, roadtrips, and digital photography, and currently lives in the Gernsback Continuum with that classic trope of SF, a beautiful red-headed heroine, who happens to be captain of a warship. He’s also the editor of Future Washington, and anthology that came out in 2005 from WSFA press, which features contributions by a number of top ranked authors, including Kim Stanley Robinson and Cory Doctorow. Following the fleet, he is currently transitioning from DC to Norfolk, VA. Kelly Link is the author of two collections, Magic for Beginners (Harcourt) and Stranger Things Happen (small beer press), which is also available online as a free download under the creative commons copyright. With her husband Gavin J. Grant, she edits the fantasy half of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin’s) and the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, as well as running Small Beer Press. Her short stories have won the James Tiptree Jr, World Fantasy, Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Awards. In 2008, Viking will publish her young adult collection. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. Barry B. Longyear is into ducks, blood spatter, incontinent police gorillas, lords and ladies, Magic Moles, and this is just the first of his Jaggers and Shad series, the AnLab Award-winning “The Good Kill,” appearing in Analog (and read in its entirety at last year’s Readercon). More delicious tales to come, background, research pics, links, and interesting J&S tidbits soon to be revealed on www.JaggersAndShad.com. Barry is the first writer (and perhaps the only) to win the Nebula, the Hugo, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer all in the same year. In addition to his acclaimed “Enemy Mine” series, his works include numerous short stories, two Alien Nation tie-ins, the Circus World series, the Infinity Hold series, and novels ranging from Sea of Glass to The God Box. His more recent SF works include The Enemy Papers (all three novels of the Enemy Mine series, including the never-before published The Last Enemy and the Drac bible, The Talman), Dark Corners, hard-hitting stories for ebookers, and Infinity Hold #3 which is the complete Infinity Hold trilogy, including three full novels: Infinity Hold, Kill All The Lawyers, and Keep The Law). Over the past few years he has turned his attention to writing murder mysteries, which required training in becoming a private investigator (an ICS graduate!) and researching numerous grisly forensic texts that have been the scientific basis for much of the Jaggers and Shad series of stories. In addition, he has been offering his online writing course, The Write Stuff, available through his website. At the con Barry will be reading “Starborn,” a very short story recently published in a very exclusive (read “teeny”) market. Hence, you are unlikely to have seen it. The remainder of the hour will be taken up with the opening to “The Hangingstone Rat,” the next exciting episode in the Jaggers and Shad series. All his books, except the Alien Nation tie-ins, are currently in print in Authors Guild Backinprint.Com Editions. Complete information on his books and the online writing course are available through his website: www.barryblongyear.com. He resides with his wife, Jean, in New Sharon, Maine. For James Macdonald, see the entry under Debra Doyle. program guide Barry N. Malzberg was Guest of Honor for Readercon 4. He is the author of the novels Screen (The Olympia Press hc/pb, 1968; erotic literary), Oracle Of A Thousand Hands (The Olympia Press hc, 1968; erotic literary), The Empty People (as by K. M. O’Donnell, Lancer, 1969), Dwellers Of The Deep (as by K.M. O’Donnell, Ace Double, 1970 ), In My Parent’s Bedroom (Olympia Press, 1970; literary), Confessions of Westchester County (The Olympia Press pb, 1971; erotic literary), The Falling Astronauts (Ace, 1971), Gather in the Hall of the Planets (as by K. M. O’Donnell, Ace Double, 1971), In My Parents’ Bedroom (The Olympia Press pb, 1971; erotic literary), The Spread (Belmont, 1971; erotic literary), Universe Day (as by K. M. O’Donnell, Avon, 1971), Horizontal Woman (Leisure, 1972; Leisure, 1977 as The Social Worker; erotic literary), Overlay (Lancer, 1972), Beyond Apollo (1972, Random House/Carroll & Graf), which won the John W. Campbell Award, The Masochist (Tower, 1972; erotic literary), Revelations (Warner/Avon, 1972), In the Enclosure (Avon, 1973), Herovit’s World (Random House/Pocket, 1973; slipstream), The Men Inside (Lancer, 1973), Underlay (Avon/International Polygonic, 1974; mainstream), Guernica Night (Bobbs-Merrill hc, 1974; Nebula finalist), The Destruction of the Temple (Pocket, 1974), Tactics of Conquest (Pyramid, 1974), The Day Of The Burning (Ace, 1974), On a Planet Alien (Pocket, 1974), The Sodom and Gomorrah Business (Pocket, 1974), Conversations (Bobbs-Merrill hc, 1975; ya), Galaxies (Pyramid/Gregg Press/Carroll & Graf, 1975; selected by David Pringle for Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels), The Gamesman (Pocket, 1975), The Running of Beasts (with Bill Pronzini; Putnam’s/Black Lizard, 1976; suspense), Scop (Pyramid, 1976), Acts of Mercy (with Bill Pronzini; Putnam’s/Leisure, 1977; suspense), The Last Transaction (Pinnacle, 1977), Chorale (Doubleday, 1978), Night Screams (with Bill Pronzini, Playboy Press hc/pb, 1979; suspense), Prose Bowl (with Bill Pronzini, St. Martin’s hc, 1980), The Cross of Fire (Ace, 1982), and The Remaking of Sigmund Freud (Del Rey, 1985; Nebula and Philip K. Dick Award finalist). His collection of SF criticism and essays, Engines of the Night (Doubleday/Bluejay, 1982), was a Hugo finalist for Best NonFiction, won the 1983 Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction and included the Nebula short story finalist “Corridors.” His novelettes “Final War” and “A Galaxy Called Rome” were Nebula finalists for 1968 and 1975 respectively; “In the Stone House” (from Alternate Kennedys, Resnick, ed.) was a Hugo finalist for novelette in 1992. His Hugo and Nebula finalist “Understanding Entropy” is in Nebula Awards 30 (Sargent, ed; Harcourt Brace, 1996). Breakfast in the Ruins (essays on science fiction) was published by Baen Books in April 2007. His short story collections are Final War and Other Fantasies (as by K. M. O’Donnell, Ace Double, 1969), In the Pocket and Other S-F Stories (as by K. M. O’Donnell, Ace Double, 1971), Out from Ganymede (Warner, 1974), The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg (Popular, 1975), The Best of Barry N. Malzberg (Pocket, 1976), Down Here In the Dream Quarter (Doubleday, 1976), Malzberg at Large (Ace, 1979; reprints), and The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady (Doubleday, 1980). His stories have appeared in Best SF: 1968, 1970, 1971 and 1975 (Harrison and Aldiss, eds.), 1972 World’s Best SF (Wollheim, ed.), The Best Science Fiction of the Year #10 (Carr, ed.), Best Detective Stories 1972 (ed. Hubin) and 1979 (Hoch, ed.), The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense 1981 and 1992 (ed. Hoch) and the Second Year’s Best Fantasy (Datlow and Windling, eds.). His uncollected short fiction can be found in Mars, We Love You (Hipolito and McNelly, eds.), Every Crime in the Book (Mystery Writers of America), The Liberated Future (Hoskins, ed.), Final Stage (Ferman and Malzberg, eds.), The Graduated Robot, Journey to Another Star, Long Night of Waiting, The Missing World, Science Fiction Adventures from Way Out, Survival from Infinity, and Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters (all Elwood, ed.), Miniature Mysteries and 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short page 42 Stories (both Asimov, Greenberg and Olander, eds.), Tricks and Treats (Gores and Pronzini, eds.), 101 Mystery Stories (Pronzini and Greenberg, eds.), Graven Images (Ferman, ed.), Laughing Space (Asimov and Jeppson, eds.), Shadows 2, 3 and 4, and Horrors (all Charles L. Grant, ed.), Dark Lessons (Muller and Pronzini, eds.), The Science Fictional Olympics (Asimov, Greenberg and Waugh, eds.), Chrysalis 5 (Torgeson, ed.), Tales of the Dead (Pronzini, ed.), Bug Eyed Monsters (Pronzini and Malzberg, eds.), The Second and Seventh Omni Books of Science Fiction (Datlow, ed.), New Dimensions 12 (Randall, ed.), Microcosmic Tales (Asimov, Carr and Greenberg, eds.), Asimov’s Aliens and Outworlders (McCarthy, ed.), Speculations (Asimov and Laurance, eds.), Witches (Asimov, ed.), Triumph of the Night (Phillips, ed.), Universe 15 (Carr, ed.), In the Field of Fire (Dann and Dann, eds.), Shaggy B.E.M. Stories, Alternate Presidents and Alternate Kennedys (all Resnick, ed.), Tropical Chills (Sullivan, ed.), A Treasury of American Mystery Stories (McSherry, Waugh and Greenberg, eds.), Phantoms, Dragon Fantastic, and Horse Fantastic (all Greenberg and Greenberg, eds.), What Might Have Been? Vols. 1 and 2 (Benford and Greenberg, eds.), Foundation’s Friends and After the King (Greenberg, ed.), Dick Tracy: The Secret Files (Collins and Greenberg, eds.), Universe 1 and 2 (Silverberg and Haber, eds.), Full Spectrum 3 (Aronica, Stout and Mitchell, eds.), Machines that Kill (Saberhagen, ed.), Stalkers (Gorman and Greenberg, eds.), MetaHorror (Etchison, ed.), and a number of other anthologies in the last two years; and in Fantastic Stories, F&SF, Amazing, Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine, Eternity, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Asimov’s, Skullduggery, Analog, Fantasy Book, Omni, Espionage, NonStop Science Fiction Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Twilight Zone, and more. F&SF devoted a special section to Malzberg in the June 2003 issue. He is also the author of the novelization of the film Phase IV (Pocket, 1973), of thirteen novels as Mel Johnson and one as Claudine Dumas for Midwood Press, of five novels as Gerrold Watkins and one as Francine Di Natale for The Traveller’s Companion series, of the first 14 novels in the Lone Wolf series from Berkeley as Mike Barry, of a novel for Warner as Howard Lee and of one for Playboy Press as Lee W. Mason. He lives in Teaneck, New Jersey with his wife Joyce. Nick Mamatas is the author of the forthcoming novel of neighborhood nuclear superiority (for kids!) Under My Roof (Soft Skull Press 2007), the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-nominated Lovecraftian Beat road novel (for shut-ins!) Move Under Ground (Night Shade 2004, Prime 2006), and the Stoker-nominated Civil War ghost story (for Marxists!) Northern Gothic (Soft Skull, 2001). All three books have been translated into German and published by Edition Phantasia. Under My Roof will also be published in Italian in 2008. Nick’s short stories have appeared in slicks including the men’s magazine Razor and the German-language rock magazine Spex, genre publications such as Polyphony, ChiZine, and Strange Horizons, ’zines including Brutarian Quarterly and The Whirligig, in the horror anthologies Poe’s Lighthouse and Shivers V (Cemetery Dance 2006 and 2007), Corpse Blossoms (Creeping Hemlock, 2005), and in comic book form in Flesh For The Beast (Media Blasters, 2004). His pornographic fiction has appeared in the webzines Fishnet and Suicide Girls, and in the anthology of novellas Short & Sweet (Blue Moon, 2006). Nick’s reportage and essays on politics, publishing, popular culture, and art have appeared in Razor, The Village Voice, Silicon Alley Reporter, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Artbyte, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Pages, In These Times, Clamor, The Guardian (UK), in various Disinformation Books and Ben Bella’s Smart Pop anthologies, and in dozens of other magazines and anthologies. With Kap Su Seol he translated and edited the first English edition of the definitive account of South Korea’s 1980 Kwangju Uprising (and subsequent US-backed massacre), Kwangju Diary (UCLA Asian Pacific, 1999). page 43 readercon 18 A native New Yorker, Nick now lives a few miles from Readercon, in Somerville, Massachusetts. the Game Developers Choice Awards.) She’s taught at Clarion and Clarion West. Laurie J. Marks says: I live in Massachusetts in a 115-year- She moved to Austin, Texas in 2006, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. So far, she thinks Austin is great, but every time she says that, someone feels compelled to tell her how hot Austin is in August. old Victorian home with my wife, Deb Mensinger, our Welsh corgi, Widget, Deb's kitty, Nikko, and our senior cat, Evil Demon. Fire Logic (Tor, May 2002, winner of the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for best novel) is the grown-up version of my first novel, which I began writing when I was twelve. I revised and rewrote it well into adulthood before abandoning it to write my first five published novels: Delan the Mislaid (DAW, 1989), The Moonbane Mage (DAW, 1990), Ara’s Field (DAW 1991), The Watcher’s Mask (DAW, 1992), and Dancing Jack (DAW, 1993). I returned to Fire Logic at around the same time I moved to Massachusetts, earned an advanced degree, and began my teaching career. In the next six years I revised, threw away, and rewrote parts of the novel at least fifteen times. Between the day I was a twelve-year-old with this crazy idea I might write a book, and the day I finished the last revision of Fire Logic, thirty years passed. The next book in the Elemental Logic series, Earth Logic, was published by Tor in March 2004, and both books are available in both hardcover and paperback. Water Logic is finished and now available. (Although peace has been established in Shaftal, not everyone likes the idea). Air Logic will follow. After that I’ll write a non-series fantasy tentatively titled The Cunning-Men, in which a highwayman and a doctor discover some nasty secrets, about their city, about the industry on which their city depends, and about each other. I teach composition, creative writing, and science fiction at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. I am a member of SFWA and Broad Universe, and I regularly attend Wiscon, a feminist science fiction convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. Louise Marley is a recovering concert and opera singer who now writes science fiction and fantasy for Ace and Viking. Her novel The Terrorists of Irustan was shortlisted for the Nebula, the Tiptree, and the Endeavour Awards. The Glass Harmonica shared the Endeavour Award with Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling. The Child Goddess was a Campbell nominee and winner of the Endeavour Award. Singer in the Snow is a young-adult fantasy which was a Best Books for Young Adults nominee in 2006. Louise doesn’t write much short work, but what there is has been collected in Absalom’s Mother & Other Stories by Fairwood Press. When Louise isn’t writing, she’s walking her wheaten Scottie, practicing yoga, cooking health food, or drinking great wine. James Maxey is the author of the dragon-fantasy novel Bitterwood (2007, Solaris Books). His previous novel was the cultclassic superhero tale Nobody Gets the Girl (2003, Phobos Books). His short stories can be found in nearly a dozen anthologies including the just released Prime Codex, which reprints “To the East a Bright Star,” which first appeared in Asimov’s. His short story “Empire of Dreams and Miracles” won a Phobos award in 2001. James is a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writers Workshop and Orson Scott Card’s Writers Boot Camp. James lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with two cats, two robots, and an imaginary friend. Maureen McHugh is the author of four novels and a collection of short stories. Her first novel, China Mountain Zhang (Tor, 1992) won the James Tiptree Award, the Locus Award for First Novel and the Lambda. Her collection Mothers & Other Monsters (Small Beer Press, 2006) was a finalist for The Story Award. She published short fiction in Asimov’s and Fantasy and Science Fiction, including her Hugo-winning story, “The Lincoln Train” (F&SF April, 1995). She also worked on several internet games, including “I Love Bees,” where she was managing editor. (“I Love Bees” won a Webby Award and an Innovation Award at Victoria McManus lives in Philadelphia. Under her erotica pseudonym, Elspeth Potter, she’s sold thirty short stories, many of them genre. Her recent interview with James Patrick Kelly appeared in Strange Horizons. Outside of writing, she sings with the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. She completed her undergraduate degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College and has a Master’s Degree in Anthropology from Temple University. Upcoming and recent fiction by Elspeth Potter: “Place, Park, Scene, Dark.” Spring 2008. Tough Girls 2. Haworth Press. Lori Selke, ed. [Summer 2008] “Poppet.” January 2008. Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 6. Robinson (UK)/Carroll & Graf (USA). Maxim Jakubowski, ed. “Silver Skin.” [Fall 2007] Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures. Haworth Press, Lynne Jamneck, ed.—a compilation of “Camera” and “Wire” (reprints) with new story, “Toy” and new connecting material. “Detox.” [October 2007]. So Fey: Queer Fairy Fictions. Haworth Press. Steve Berman, ed. “The Princess on the Rock.” [August 2007]. Cross-Dressing: Erotic Stories. Cleis Press. Rachel Kramer Bussel, ed. “Poppies Are Not the Only Flower.” [Spring 2007]. Lipstick on Her Collar, and Other Tales of Lesbian Lust. Pretty Things Press. Rakelle Valencia and Sacchi Green, eds. “The Magnificent Threesome.” May 2007. Cowboy Lover: Erotic Tales of the Wild West. Thunder’s Mouth Press. Cecilia Tan and Lori Perkins, eds. “17 Short Films About Hades and Persephone.” January 24, 2007. Fishnet Magazine. Heather L. Shaw, ed. “Mo’o and the Woman.” January 2007. Best Lesbian Romance 2007. Cleis Press. Angela Brown, ed. “The Token.” December 2006. Alleys and Doorways. Torquere Press. Meredith Schwartz, ed. “Poppet.” June 2006. Sex in the System: Stories of Erotic Futures, Technological Stimulation, and the Sensual Life of Machines. Thunder’s Mouth Press. Cecilia Tan, ed. “Worship.” January 2006. Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 5. Robinson (UK)/Carroll & Graf (USA). Maxim Jakubowski, ed. Anil Menon worked for about nine years in software R&D worrying about things like secure distributed databases and evolutionary computation. Then he shifted to a different kind of fiction. His stories may be found in magazines such as Albedo One, Chiaroscuro, InterNova, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Strange Horizons and anthologies such as TEL: Stories and From The Trenches. His story “Standard Deviation” was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (2005). He was nominated for the 2006 Carl Brandon Society Parallax Prize. His novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Penguin/Zubaan Publications) is scheduled for release in Winter 2007. Yves Meynard was born in 1964, in the city of Québec, and has lived most of his life in Longueuil. He has been active in Québec SF circles since 1986. He served as literary editor for the magazine Solaris from 1994 to 2001. Since 1986, he has published over forty short stories in French and English, winning many awards for his short fiction, including several Boréal and Aurora awards, along with the Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du Fantastique Québécois, Québec’s highest award in the field, in 1994. His work has appeared in, among others, Solaris, imagine ..., Yellow Submarine, tomorrow, Edge Detector, Prairie Fire and various anthologies, such as Northern Stars and several Tesseracts. His story “Tobacco Words” (tomorrow 19) was reprinted in Year’s Best SF 2. program guide He started publishing books in 1995, and has fourteen under his belt to date: La Rose du désert, a short-story collection (winner of the 1995 Boréal Award for best book); Chanson pour une sirène, a novella in collaboration with Élisabeth Vonarburg; Le Mage des fourmis, a YA fantasy novel; a YA fantasy diptych, Le vaisseau des tempêtes and Le Prince des Glaces; the first three volumes of a YA fantasy series: Le fils du Margrave, L’Héritier de Lorann, and L’enfant de la Terre; the beginning of another YA fantasy series, Le messager des orages, Sur le chemin des tornades and Le Maître des bourrasques, written in collaboration with Jean-Louis Trudel; and the novella Un Oeuf d’acier. Early in 1998 Tor Books published his first novel in English, a fantasy titled The Book of Knights. It came out in Fall 1999 in French, under the title Le Livre des chevaliers. The Book of Knights was a finalist for the 2000 Mythopoeic Award for best novel. Yves was co-editor, with Claude J. Pelletier, of Sous des soleils étrangers and of three books by Québec author Daniel Sernine: Boulevard des Étoiles, À la recherche de M. Goodtheim and Sur la scène des siècles. With Robert Runté, he was co-anthologist of Tesseracts 5. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Université de Montréal and earns a living as a software developer. In 2006, he released a commercial graphics program for the Mac, available at www.synthimax.com. But his life’s greatest achievement has been winning the last two Kirk Poland competitions. James Morrow, a Guest of Honor at Readercon 17, has been writing fiction ever since, shortly after his seventh birthday, he dictated The Story of the Dog Family to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. This three-page, sixchapter fantasy is still in the author’s private archives. Upon reaching adulthood, Morrow proceeded to write nine novels and enough short stories to fill two collections, winning the World Fantasy Award twice, the Nebula Award twice, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire once in the process. Morrow’s most recent effort is The Last Witchfinder (William Morrow/Perennial/QPBC/SFBC, 2006; Locus Award finalist, John W. Campbell Memorial Award nominee, BSFA Award finalist, New York Times Editors Choice), a postmodern historical epic about the birth of the scientific worldview. Last month saw the publication of The SFWA European Hall of Fame (Tor, 2007), an anthology of sixteen Continental SF stories translated into English under the editorship of Jim and his wife, Kathryn Morrow. An earlier Jim and Kathy collaboration, a set of Tolkien Lesson Plans (2004) for secondary school teachers, appears on the Houghton Mifflin website. Among science fiction readers, Morrow is best known for the Godhead Trilogy, a satiric meditation on the death of God, comprising Towing Jehovah (Harcourt Brace/Harvest/SFBC, 1994; World Fantasy Award, Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Hugo nominee, Nebula finalist), Blameless in Abaddon (Harcourt Brace/Harvest/SFBC, 1996; New York Times Notable Book), and The Eternal Footman (Harcourt Brace/Harvest, 1999; Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist). His other novels include The Wine of Violence (Holt, Rinehart and Winston/Ace/SFBC, 1981), The Continent of Lies (Holt, Rinehart and Winston/Baen, 1984), This Is the Way the World Ends (Henry Holt/Ace/SFBC, 1986; Nebula finalist, John W. Campbell runner-up), and Only Begotten Daughter (Morrow/Ace/SFBC, 1990; World Fantasy Award, Nebula finalist, John W. Campbell runner-up). In the sphere of short fiction, Morrow’s work includes the Awardwinning novella “City of Truth” (Legend (UK)/St. Martin’s/Harvest/SFBC, 1991), and the Nebula Award-winning story “The Deluge” (Full Spectrum 1, Aronica and McCarthy, eds.). Other Morrow stories have appeared in Synergy 1 and 2 (Zebrowski, ed.), God: An Anthology of Fiction (Hayward and Lefanu, eds.), What Might Have Been 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Benford and Greenberg, eds.), There Won’t Be War (McAllister and Harrison, eds.), Full Spectrum 3 (Aronica, Mitchell, and Stout, eds.), page 44 Embrace the Mutation (Schafer and Sheehan, eds.), The New Wave Fabulists (Morrow and Straub, eds.), Mars Probes (Crowther, ed.), and Conqueror Fantastic (Sargent, ed.). His three collections are Swatting at the Cosmos (1990, Pulphouse), Bible Stories for Adults (Harcourt Brace/Harvest/SFBC, 1996; World Fantasy finalist), and The Cats Pajamas and Other Stories (Tachyon, 2004). He edited Nebula Awards 26, 27, and 28. A full-time fiction writer, Jim lives in State College with his wife, his son, and two professional dogs. In February William Morrow will publish The Philosopher’s Apprentice, which the author describes as Frankenstein meets Lolita on the Island of Dr. Moreau. Kathryn Smith Morrow is a charter member of the Penn State Science Fiction Society, founded in 1969—the year she attended her first convention, a Philcon. Despite having earned a writing degree from Penn State, where Phil Klass/William Tenn was her academic advisor, and doing occasional freelance journalism and editing, she has not quite managed to publish any sf thus far. However, she peddled a great deal of the stuff during her twenty-five year career as a bookseller, during which she served on the Paracon committee (1980-1984) and on the 1983 and 1986 Worldcon committees. She was also Professor Klass’s T.A. for his literature of Science Fiction course in 1981 and again in 1987. Having involuntarily retired from independent bookselling for the usual reasons (store closed), she is currently multitasking as the wife of a full-time writer, the mother of a teenager and two dogs, and an irregularly frequent contributor to The New York Review of Science Fiction. Kathy collaborated with husband Jim in creating online lesson plans for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the Houghton Mifflin website in 2004, and co-edited with Jim The SFWA European Hall of Fame, published in June 2007 by Tor Books. Sharyn November is Senior Editor for Viking Children’s Books and Editorial Director of Firebird Books (www.firebirdbooks.com), which is a mainly paperback (reprint) imprint publishing fantasy and science fiction for teenagers and adults. Her many authors include Charles de Lint, Pamela Dean, Carol Emshwiller, Elizabeth Hand, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Diana Wynne Jones, Ellen Klages, Kelly Link, Delia Sherman, Vandana Singh, and the editorial team of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. She has edited two anthologies for Firebird: Firebirds, called “the best fantasy anthology of 2003” by The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (17th edition), and Firebirds Rising. She was named a World Fantasy Award Finalist (Professional Category) in both 2004 and 2005—in 2004 specifically for Firebird, in 2005 for editing. Kim Paffenroth is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College. His degrees are from St. John’s College (Annapolis, MD), Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of several books on theology, and more recently, scholarly examinations of SF and horror, including his Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006), which won the 2006 Stoker Award. His first novel, Dying to Live: A Novel of Life among the Undead, is just out from Permuted Press. He is currently working on the sequel to his novel, as well as short horror fiction. He blogs at gotld.blogspot.com. Joshua Palmatier is a fantasy writer with a PhD in mathematics. He currently lives in Binghamton, NY and teaches mathematics at SUNY College at Oneonta. His first novel, The Skewed Throne (DAW, 2006), was a Compton Crook finalist for best first novel of 2006. The sequel, The Cracked Throne (DAW), was released in November of 2006, and the third novel in the series, The Vacant Throne (DAW), is scheduled to be released in January 2008. He is currently hard at work on the first novel of a page 45 readercon 18 new series, called Well of Sorrows (DAW, 2009). For information regarding the books or the author, please check out his webpage at www.joshuapalmatier.com or his LiveJournal at jpsorrow.livejournal.com. decorating, an educational comic book on vocational safety, and nineteen years of classical music criticism. He lives in downtown Philadelphia where he devotes himself to a continuous round of pleasures and entertainments. Paul Park lives in Berkshire County with his wife Deborah and Laura Quilter is the founder and editor-in-chief of feministSF.net, a collection of information and communication resources for feminist fans and writers. The site includes various reference and research tools, including bibliographies, wikis, blogs and a blog carnival, archives, forums, listservers, and assorted other tools. (If you’re a feminist and have a project idea, let’s talk.) She is a technical evangelist and educator for women and underrepresented minorities, both in fandom and in progressive and radical politics. She’s a contributor to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Women in SF, and is working on an article about the representation of humorless women in SF. his children Lucius and Miranda. His novel The Tourmaline, second in the fantasy series that began with A Princess of Roumania (2005), came out last year from Tor Books. It was followed by The White Tyger. The last volume in the series, The Hidden World, is due to be published next year. Other recent titles include No Traveler Returns, from PS publishing, and Three Marys and If Lions Could Speak and other stories, both from Cosmos/Wildside. Out-of-print books include The Gospel of Corax, Celestis, Soldiers of Paradise, Sugar Rain, and The Cult of Loving Kindness. Often nominated for the usual awards, he has never won any of them, or anything else for that matter. Jennifer Pelland lives in the Boston area with an Andy and three cats. She’s a 2002 graduate of Viable Paradise, a SFWA web volunteer, and a member of the BRAWL writing group and the Broad Universe advisory board. Her short fiction bibliography includes: “Big Sister/Little Sister” in Apex SF and Horror Digest, issue 3, Fall 2005 (reprinted in Best of Apex 2005); “Blood Baby” in Apex SF and Horror Digest, issue 8, Winter 2006 (reprinted in Best of Apex 2006); “Captive Girl” in Helix issue 2, October 2006; “Dazz” in Coyote Wild issue 2, April 2007; “Erasure” in Apex SF and Horror Digest, issue 4, Winter 2005 (reprinted in Best of Apex 2005); “Flood” in Abyss and Apex, 1st Quarter 2006; “For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great” in Strange Horizons, May 19, 2003; “Immortal Sin” in Tales of the Unanticipated, issue 26, November 2005; “Last Bus” in Electric Velocipede, issue 11, November 2006; “The Last Stand of the Elephant Man” to appear in Helix (date TBD); “Mercytanks” in Helix issue 4, Spring 2007; “Snow Day” in Strange Horizons, March 10, 2003 (reprinted in MP3 format at Escape Pod, June 9, 2005); and “YY” in the Aegri Somnia anthology, December 2006. Her other creative outlet is radio theater. Jennifer plays several of the characters in Wyrd Enterprises’ “The Fantastic Fate of Frederick Farnsworth the Fifth,” she’s performed live for the past two years with the Post-Meridian Radio Players, has recorded with Ollin Productions, and will soon be recording with Silicon Theatre. To read Jennifer’s complete bibliography, or to peruse her blog, go to www.jenniferpelland.com. Tom Purdom’s first published story appeared in the August, 1957 Fantastic Universe. His latest can be found in the August, 2007 Asimov’s, which is now on sale. Purdom’s fiction has appeared in H.L Gold’s Galaxy, John Campbell’s Analog, Avram Davidson’s F&SF, Fredrick Pohl’s legendary Star series, Cele Goldsmith’s Amazing, and anthologies edited by Terry Carr, Donald Wollheim, David Hartwell, Gregory Benford, and Gardner Dozois. Since 1990, he has mostly been writing short stories and novelettes which have ended up on the contents pages of Asimov’s. Anthologized stories that are currently available include “Bank Run” (Science Fiction, the Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, Rich Horton, ed.); “Palace Resolution” (Microcosms, Gregory Benford, ed.) and his Hugo nominee, “Fossil Games” (David Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF 5, Gardner Dozois’ Supermen). He has published five novels: I Want the Stars (Ace, 1964); The Tree Lord of Imeten (Ace, 1966); Five Against Arlane (Ace 1967); Reduction in Arms (Berkley 1970), and The Barons of Behavior (Ace, 1972). Jeffrey Ford recently dubbed him the most underrated writer in the science fiction genre. Michael Swanwick has called his recent science fiction “an astonishing string of first-rate stories... Purdom’s humane take on the future, his willingness to imagine worlds in which people treat each other better than they do now, makes his work distinctive.” Outside of science fiction, his output includes magazine articles, essays, science writing, brochures on home She is an information law attorney and librarian, working on copyright policy, access to information, and technology law. She lives in Boston with her partner Michele (a biologist), five cats, an unfortunately hardy mutant strand of pantry moths, at least one household packrat, not enough books and even fewer bookshelves, and many more ideas than time. Faye Ringel is Professor of Humanities, U.S. Coast Guard Academy. She has published New England’s Gothic Literature (E. Mellen Press, 1995); “Westward the Course: Nostalgia for Imperialism in American Gothic” in Proceedings of the European Association for American Studies Conference, Prague 2004; “SlapShtik: The Three Stooges in the Context of Yiddish Theatre” in Scholarly Stooges. Ed. Peter Seeley, McFarland, 2005; “Bright Swords, Big Cities: Medievalizing Fantasy in Urban Settings” in Medievalism: The Year’s Work for 1995 (Studies in Medievalism, 2000); “Women Fantasists: In the Shadow of the Ring” in Views of Middle Earth, Clark and Timmons, eds., (Greenwood, June 2000; nominated for the 2001 and the 2002 Mythopoeic Society Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies); “Gothic New England” in The Encyclopedia of New England Culture (Yale University Press, in press); “Witches” and “Wizards” in Handbook of Gothic Literature, Roberts, ed., (Macmillan, 1998); “Stealing Plots and Tropes: Traditional Ballads and American Genre Fiction” in Ballads Into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child, Cheesman and Rieuwerts, eds., (Peter Lang, 1997); “Reclaiming the Invisible World: Maryse Conde’s I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem” in Into Darkness Peering: Race and Color in the Fantastic, Leonard, ed., (Greenwood, 1997); “Current Medievalist Writing Groups: Worlds Shared and Unshared” in The Year’s Work in Medievalism 1991, Rewa, ed., (Studies in Medievalism, 1997). She has also published articles and presented conference papers on New England vampires, urban legends, urban fantasy, demonic cooks, neo-pagans, Lovecraft, King, Tolkien, McKillip, mad scientists, Medievalist Robber Barons, Yiddish folklore and music, (separate articles, that is, though now that she thinks of it ...). She has reviewed books for Necrofile, Gothic Studies,The NEPCA Newsletter, and The Journal of American Culture. Her CD of traditional music with fiddler Bob Thurston is Hot Chestnuts: Old Songs, Endearing Charms; she has performed bawdy ballads and piano blues at many a con or parlor. Darrell Schweitzer is the author of The Mask of the Sorcerer, The Shattered Goddess, The White Isle, and about 250 fantasy short stories, which have been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies (Twilight Zone, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, etc.). He now has eight short story collections in print, the most recent of which is Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer (Wildside Press), two of which, Transients (1993) and Necromancies and Netherworlds (a collaboration with Jason Van Hollander, 1999) were World Fantasy Award finalists. He has also been nominated for the WFA for Best Novella and won it, with George Scithers, in the Special Pro category for co-editing Weird Tales. His nonfiction includes Pathways from Elfland a book on Lord Dunsany, program guide page 46 Discovering H. P. Lovecraft, and The Thomas Ligotti Reader. He is also a poet, with a real non-subsidized collection, Groping Toward the Light in print, though his accomplishments in this area are completely overshadowed by his ability to rhyme “Cthulhu” in a limerick. Despite this, he has twice been nominated for the Rhysling Award and won the Asimov’s SF reader’s award for best poem of 2006. Pædiatrics and Child Health. Apart from attending his brother’s wedding, the highlight of his last year was finding that an internet commentator had said, of his NYRSF review of David Marusek’s Counting Heads, “[Sleight] believed he was being incredibly astute and insightful, but really he was trying to recruit Furries.” This is his sixth Readercon, his favorite ice-cream flavour is black currant, and his favorite Vaughan Williams symphony is no 5. His latest publications include the anthology (edited with Martin Greenberg) The Secret History of Vampires published by DAW, “A Lost City of the Jungle” in James Lowder’s Astounding Hero Tales, several translations of his stories in the French magazine Faeries, poetry in Paradox magazine, Mythic Delirium etc. and numerous essays and reviews in The New York Review of Science Fiction. Forthcoming are a story-cycle Living With the Dead to be published as a short book by PS Publishing in England, plus, from Wildside Press The Robert E. Howard Reader, and from Borgo Press (an imprint of Wildside Press), Speaking of Horror II, a book of interviews, The Fantastic Horizon a new collection of essays, and a new collection of poetry. Sarah Smith’s novel, Chasing Shakespeares, a “modern historical” about the Shakespeare authorship controversy, is in its third printing in paperback from Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster (www.chasingshakespeares.com). Samuel R. Delany calls it “the best novel about the Bard since Anthony Powell’s Nothing Like the Sun,” Derek Jacobi calls it “wonderfully entertaining, thought-provoking and highly readable.” Thanks to everyone who came to the February mini-production; If someone hadn’t stolen the film out of my collaborator’s car in New York, you could have seen it here. Guest of Honor Lucius Shepard: see the Souvenir Book. Hildy Silverman is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Space and Time, a 40-year-old magazine featuring fantasy, horror, and science fiction. She is also a contributing editor to Achieving Families, a magazine on overcoming infertility. Her short stories and nonfiction articles have appeared in numerous print and online publications. Vandana Singh is an Indian writer of science fiction and fantasy living in the Boston area, where she also teaches college physics. She was born and raised in New Delhi, India, a place where stories can almost literally be plucked from the air. She came to the U.S. as a graduate student, and, finding herself on alien shores, naturally turned to her first love in the realm of books: science fiction and fantasy—first as a reader and then as a writer. Her stories have been published in anthologies such as Polyphony, Trampoline, Rabid Transit, So Long Been Dreaming, and Interfictions as well as magazines such as Strange Horizons, InterNova and The Third Alternative; they have appeared on shortlists for the BSFA Award and Carl Brandon Parallax Award, and have been reprinted in a couple of Year’s Best anthologies. Vandana Singh writes happily and indiscriminately for children as well as adults; her first book for children, Younguncle Comes to Town, originally published in India, was released in the U.S. in Spring 2006 from Viking Children’s Books and is an ALA Notable book and a Junior Library Guild Selection. A sequel, Younguncle in the Himalayas, is currently out in India. Vandana’s first short story collection for adults, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories, will be published in India this Fall by Zubaan Books. She is also working on several short stories, a young adult novel and an anthology of Science Fiction from India. Graham Sleight was born in 1972, lives in London, UK, and has been writing about sf and fantasy since 2000. His work has appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction, Foundation, Interzone, and SF Studies, and online at Strange Horizons, SF Weekly and Infinity Plus. His essays have appeared in Snake’sHands: the Fiction of John Crowley (eds Alice K Turner and Michael Andre-Driussi), Supernatural Fiction Writers (ed Richard Bleiler), Christopher Priest: the Interaction (ed Andrew M Butler), Parietal Games: Non-Fiction by and about M John Harrison (eds Mark Bould and Michelle Reid), and Polder: A Festschrift for John Clute and Judith Clute (ed Farah Mendlesohn). He’s been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the last two years. In 2006, he began writing regular columns for Locus (on “classic sf”) and Vector (on whatever takes his fancy). He takes over from Farah Mendlesohn as editor of Foundation from the end of 2007. In his day-job, he’s Head of Publications at the Royal College of She is working on something that may turn out to be a ghostly YA, working title Memory House, and the fourth volume of the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy, working title Titanic in New York. Previous volumes were The Vanished Child (Ballantine, 1992; historical mystery; New York Times Notable Book of the Year, London Times Book of the Year), The Knowledge of Water (Ballantine, 1996; historical mystery/suspense; New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and A Citizen of the Country (Ballantine, 2000; historical mystery/suspense; Entertainment Weekly Editor’s Choice). Her “novels for the computer” include the interactive dark fantasy King of Space (Eastgate Systems, 1991) and two web serials, the fantasy Doll Street (1996) and the near-future sf Riders (1996–’97). She is a co-author of the collaborative novel Future Boston (Tor, 1994; Orb, 1995). Her stories have appeared in Aboriginal SF, F&SF and Tomorrow, and the anthologies Shudder Again (Slung, ed.), Christmas Forever (Hartwell, ed.), Yankee Vampires (Greenberg, ed.), and Best New Horror 5 (Campbell and Jones, eds.). Sarah is a member of the Cambridge Speculative Fiction Workshop. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her family. Wen Spencer is an award-winning author of both science fiction and fantasy books. Her novel, A Brother’s Price, was shortlisted this year for the Tiptree Award. Her most recent novel, Wolf Who Rules, is the sequel to Tinker. She lives in Marlborough, MA with her husband, son and two cats. Ian Randal Strock (www.lrcpubs.com/irs.html) is the News Editor of Science Fiction Chronicle: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror’s Monthly Trade Journal, the Copy Editor of KISS: The Official Authorized Quarterly Magazine, and the editor and founder of Artemis Magazine (which is currently on hiatus while he seeks additional funding). He is also a freelance writer and editor (books he’s worked on have been published by Alyson, Doubleday, Padwolf, and St. Martin’s), and a day-trader. He is the vice president of The Lunar Resources Company, and a director of both the Artemis Society International and the Moon Society. He formerly served the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as treasurer, and Greater New York MENSA as president. Prior to starting Artemis Magazine, he was the associate editor of Analog and Asimov’s sf magazines for six years, and during that time, he co-edited Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (St. Martin’s, 1991, 1997) with the magazines’ editors. Ian’s writing thus far has been confined to short stories, nonfiction, puzzles, and opinion pieces. He won the AnLab (Readers’) Awards from Analog for Best Short Story of 1996 (“Living It Is the Best Revenge,” February 1996) and for Best Fact Article of 1996 (“The Coming of the Money Card: Boon or Bane?”, October 1996). “Living It Is the Best Revenge” also appears on the web at Mind’s Eye Fiction (tale.com) and was named one of Pulp Eternity’s Ten Best of the Web, 1998. page 47 His other writing has appeared in Analog, Absolute Magnitude, Games, The Sterling Web, and The New York Times. He is also working on his first novel, and a non-fiction trivia book. Ian is also an artist, working in horology and photography, combining his short-short story writing with his b&w photography to produce Phototales™;, which he’s been exhibiting at science fiction conventions since 1996. The Phototales have won two awards: the Popular Choice Award at Philcon 1997, and a Judges’ Choice Award at Lunacon 1999. Michael Swanwick, a Guest of Honor at Readercon 13, is one of the most prolific and inventive writers in science fiction today. His works have been honored with the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards, and have been translated and published throughout the world. His novels include Jack Faust, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, the Nebula Award-winning Stations of the Tide, and, most recently, Bones of the Earth. Being Gardner Dozois (2001) won the Locus Award for best nonfiction. Collections of his short fiction include Gravity’s Angels, Tales of Old Earth, Moon Dogs, and The Periodic Table of Science Fiction, one story for every element in the periodic table. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. A new collection of short fiction, The Dog Said Bow-Wow, will be released by Tachyon Publications this fall. His new novel, The Dragons of Babel, will be published by Tor Books in January 2008. Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to myth, folklore, and dead languages. Poems and short stories of hers have been shortlisted for the SLF Fountain Award, honorably mentioned in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and reprinted in The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, The Best of Not One of Us, Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2006, and Best New Romantic Fantasy 2. A respectable amount of her work can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics at Yale University. Jeffrey Thomas is the author of the novels Deadstock, Letters From Hades, and Everybody Scream!, and the collections Punktown and Aaaiiieee!!!. His novel Monstrocity was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and his story “The Flaying Season” appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14. Forthcoming are his novel Blue War, a follow-up to Deadstock from Solaris Books, and the collections Doomsdays and Voices From Hades from Dark Regions Press. He and his wife Hong live in Massachusetts. His blog and message board can be accessed through www.jeffreyethomas.com. Paul G. Tremblay has sold short fiction to Razor Magazine, CHIZINE, Horror: The Best of the Year 2007, Weird Tales, Interzone, and Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, among other markets. He is the author of the short fiction collection Compositions for the Young and Old and the novella “City Pier: Above and Below.” He is the co-editor of Fantasy Magzine and the Fantasy anthology. Currently, Paul dabbles in dark arts hoping to facilitate his agent’s efforts in selling a pair of social satire novels. He has a master’s degree in mathematics, which as we all know is a prerequisite for fiction writers. His wife, 2.0 kids, and Rascal the dog often make fun of him when his back is turned. He is tall, handsome, and has no uvula. Jean-Louis Trudel is the author of 27 books in French. These include the novels Le Ressuscité de l’Atlantide (Risen from Atlantis; 1985–7 in imagine ..., Fleuve Noir Anticipation, 1994) and Pour des soleils froids (Cold Suns; Fleuve Noir Anticipation, readercon 18 1994), as well as the collection Jonctions impossibles (Impossible Joinings; Vermillon, 2003). In addition, he is the author of the following juveniles: Aller simple pour Saguenal (One Way Ticket to Saguenal; Paulines, 1994), Les Voleurs de mémoire (The Memory Thieves; Médiaspaul, 1995), the five-volume set of “Les Mystères de Serendib” (Mysteries of Serendib; Médiaspaul, 1995– 1996), the five volume set of “Les saisons de Nigelle” (Seasons of Nigelle; Médiaspaul, 1997–2000), the ten-volume set of “L’Ère du Nouvel Empire” (The New Empire Era); Médiaspaul, 1994–2004), 13,5 km sous Montréal (13.5 km under Montréal; Marie-France, 1998), and Demain, les étoiles (Tomorrow, the Stars; Pierre Tisseyre, 2000). He was an Aurora Award finalist every year from 1992 to 2003—a winner for fiction in 1997, 2001, 2002, and 2003—and he has been a regular Prix Boréal finalist—a winner in 1999 and 2002, and one of three finalists for the 1994, 1995, 1999, and 2001 Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du Fantastique Québécois—winning in 2001. In 1996, he was one of the five French-language finalists for Ontario’s Trillium Book Award. His French short fiction has appeared in imagine ..., Solaris, Galaxies, and in Canadian, French, and Belgian anthologies. He has collaborated with Yves Meynard on several stories and a trio of juveniles, Le Messager des Orages (Stormwise; Médiaspaul, 2001), Sur le chemin des tornades (On the Tornado Path; Médiaspaul, 2003), and Le Ma\iuml;tre des bourrasques (Master of Squalls; Médiaspaul, 2006), writing as Laurent McAllister; they are at work together on a novel. Stories in English appear in Ark of Ice (Choyce, ed.) and Tesseracts 4 (Toolis and Skeet, eds.), Northern Stars (Hartwell and Grant, eds.), Tesseracts 5 (Meynard and Runté, eds.), Tesseracts 6 (Sawyer and Clink, eds.), Tesseracts 8 (Clute and Dorsey, eds.), and, in translation, in Tesseracts 3 (Dorsey and Truscott, eds.) and Tesseracts Q (Vonarburg and Brierley, eds.). Other stories appear in the magazines On Spec and Prairie Fire. His fiction has been translated into English, French, Greek, Italian, Russian, Rumanian, and Portuguese. His translations from French, English, and Spanish have appeared in Canada, France, and the U.S., including his translation of Joël Champetier’s science fiction novel La Taupe et le Dragon, published by Tor as The Dragon’s Eye, and short fiction by JeanClaude Dunyach in various venues, including Interzone, the collection The Night Orchid from Black Coat Press in 2004, and Year’s Best SF 10. He has written commentary and criticism for various outlets, organized sf cons, and edited the newsletters of SF Canada, the association of Canadian sf authors, of which he was president. His educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s degree in astronomy, another master’s in history and philosophy of science and technology, and a doctorate in history. After living in Toronto, where he was born, he now shares his time between Ottawa and Montréal. Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of the Orphan’s Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The GrassCutting Sword, and four books of poetry, Music of a Proto-Suicide, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna, and Oracles. Her short fiction has appeared in The Journal of Mythic Arts, Clarkesworld Magazine, Electric Velocipede, Salon Fantastique, Interfictions, Best New Fantasy, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She is the winner of the 2006 Tiptree Award and has been nominated for the Rhysling and Spectrum Awards along with the Pushcart Prize. She currently lives in a very full household in Ohio with a small menagerie of humans and animals. Eric M. Van is a statistical player evaluation consultant for the Boston Red Sox and devotes most of his spare time either to this convention (he has been Program Chair, Co-Chair, or Chair Emeritus for every Readercon), to working on a draft of a paper on consciousness (with a sidebar of radical physics), or to the massive outline of his novel Imaginary. He was database manager for the program guide Philip K. Dick Society; his observations on PKD have appeared in the New York Review of Science Fiction. He has a long interview in the Voices From Red Sox Nation (David Laurilia, ed.), is a coauthor of The Red Sox Fan Handbook (Leigh Grossman, ed.), has contributed to The Boston Globe and still contributes to Red Sox message board the Sons of Sam Horn. He writes rock criticism for local zine The Noise, and contributes to the web sites of reunited Boston rock legends Mission of Burma (www.missionofburma.com and www.obliterati.net). At the turn of the millennium he spent four years at Harvard University, as a Special Student affiliated with the Graduate Department of Psychology, and hopes to return full-time to the field within the next few years (hence the draft of the paper of the first of his many theories). He lives (and sleeps erratically) in Watertown, Massachusetts. Gordon Van Gelder has been the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction since the beginning of 1997. He became the magazine’s publisher in 2000. Through the 1990s, he worked as an editor for St. Martin’s Press, where he worked on a variety of fiction and nonfiction titles (including mysteries, sf, fantasy, nonfiction, and unclassifiable books). He was an editor (and occasional reviewer) for the New York Review of Science Fiction from 1988 to 1994. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. F&SF has a web site at www.fsfmag.com. Books as editor: (with Edward L. Ferman) The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology (New York: Tor Books, 1999), One Lamp: Alternate History Stories from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), In Lands That Never Were: Tales of Swords and Sorcery from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2004), Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005). Konrad Walewski is a Polish academic, literary translator, and critic. He teaches various courses on American literature (including one of the first courses exclusively devoted to American SF) at the American Studies Center, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland. He has published several articles and reviews on SF literature both in Polish and English. He is working on his doctoral dissertation, which deals with semiotic and mythological aspects of American SF. He has translated into Polish: Smiles on Washington Square by Raymond Federman, Patterns and Synners by Pat Cadigan, Malinski by Siofra O’Donovan, and stories by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Rudy Rucker, Richard Kadrey. He’s currently working on the translation of John Crowley’s Ægypt novels as well as editing an anthology of short stories by contemporary English speaking authors. Sean Wallace has worked full-time for Wildside Press for both its book and magazine divisions, since 2001. In between editing the award-winning Prime Books imprint, issues of Fantasy Magazine, and volumes of the Best New Fantasy and Horror: The Best of the Year anthology series, he occasionally plays a mean game of racquetball. He currently lives in Maryland, with his wife, Jennifer. Peter Watts (www.rifters.com) has spent most of his adult life trying to decide whether to be a writer or a scientist, ending up as a marginal hybrid of both and winning a handful of (very minor) awards in fields as diverse as marine mammal research, video documentary, and science fiction. The overall effect of his prose is perhaps best summed up by James Nicoll, who wrote: “Whenever I find my will to live becoming too powerful, I read Peter Watts”. Nonetheless Watts’ first novel, Starfish (Tor, 1999), netted a “Notable Book of the Year” nod from the New York Times, an honorable mention for John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and rejections from both German and Russian publishing houses on the page 48 grounds that it was “too dark.” (Watts is especially proud of being too dark for the Russians.) The short story that comprised Starfish’s first chapter also won the Aurora, a questionable little Canadian award that will bring no hoarse cries of recognition to anyone’s lips. While Starfish was universally praised for its evocation of the deep-sea environment, the sequel (Maelstrom, Tor, 2001) was set almost entirely on land, neatly avoiding the elements that readers most loved about the first book and replacing them with a sprawling entropic dystopia in which Sylvia Plath might have felt at home, if Sylvia Plath had had a graduate degree in evolutionary biology. The critical response was generally as positive as it was for Starfish; both books received starred reviews from Booklist, and Maelstrom may mark the first time that the NY Times used the terms “exhilarating” and “deeply paranoid” to describe the same novel. Behemoth (Tor, 2004, 2005), the final volume of what had inadvertently become a trilogy, also garnered a fair bit of critical praise (another New York Times rave, starred review from Publishers Weekly), although several reviewers grumbled that Watts had gone too far with this whole sexual sadism thing. Split into two volumes for marketing purposes, it tanked. Watts’ latest book, Blindsight (Tor 2006) might be best described as a literary first-contact novel exploring the nature and evolutionary significance of consciousness, with space vampires. Against all reasonable expectations, it did not tank. In fact it survived rejection from half a dozen publishers, zero preorders from one of the continent’s largest book retail chains, a minuscule initial print run, and a Hail-Mary act of desperation in which its author gave the whole thing away for free online. As of this writing Blindsight is in its fourth hardcover printing, is being translated into several languages, and has made the final ballot for the Hugo, John W. Campbell, Sunburst, And Locus awards—two of which it has already lost, and the other two of which it is widely expected to. Watts’ short fiction is available in obscure magazines and anthologies or bundled together into a thick pamphlet called Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes(2000), from Edge/Tesseract Books. More recent stories can be found in ReVisions (2004, DAW, J. Czerneda and I. Szpindel, eds), Tesseracts 9 (2005, Edge/Tesseract, N. Hopkinson and G. Ryman, eds.), and last year’s edition of G. Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Press). Alternatively, you could just go to Watts’ website where his entire published output is freely available for download under a Creative Commons licence. His cat has appeared in Nature. Elizabeth Wein’s most recent young adult novel, released last month, is The Lion Hunter. It is the first of a two-part sequence called The Mark of Solomon; the second book, The Empty Kingdom, will be out in spring 2008. The Mark of Solomon continues Elizabeth’s chronicle blending Arthurian legend with events in 6th-century Ethiopia. The first three books in this cycle are The Winter Prince, A Coalition of Lions, and The Sunbird. Elizabeth also writes short stories, and has produced an eclectic tale of circus life, trains and Brer Rabbit for “Always the Same Story,” forthcoming in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s anthology The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales. Elizabeth is also a contributor to Sharyn November’s Firebirds anthologies of original fiction for teens, with “Chasing the Wind” in Firebirds (1) and “Something Worth Doing” coming up in Firebirds Soaring (3). Elizabeth has a BA in English from Yale and a PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. She and her husband share a passion for maps, and they both fly small planes as private pilots. They live in Scotland with their two small children. Elizabeth’s web site is www.elizabethwein.com. She keeps an erratic blog at eegatland.livejournal.com. page 49 Diane Weinstein served as assistant editor for Weird Tales magazine for 16 years from 1989 to 2005 and also as art editor for the last 8 of those years. In addition she served as a general allpurpose editorial assistant at Wildside Press for several years before going on sabbatical in 2005. Some of her projects there included collections edited by her husband, Lee. She is an artist in her own right and has exhibited in convention art shows on the East Coast. She is now the Art Goddess (that’s her official title!) for Space & Time magazine. Jacob Weisman is the publisher of Tachyon Publications. He has published books by such renowned authors as Peter S. Beagle, James Tiptree, Jr., Michael Swanwick, James Morrow, Clifford D. Simak, and Carol Emshwiller, as well as anthologies edited by David Hartwell, James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, Sheila Williams, and Karen Joy Fowler. Weisman’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Nation, Realms of Fantasy, The Louisville Courier-Journal, The Seattle Weekly, and The Cooper Point Journal. He was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1999 for his work at Tachyon. Robert Freeman Wexler has published a novella, “In Springdale Town,” (PS Publishing 2003 and reprinted in Best Short Novels 2004, SFBC, and in Modern Greats of Science Fiction, iBooks) and a novel, Circus of the Grand Design (Prime Books 2004). A chapbook of short fiction, tentatively called Psychological Methods to Sell Should Be Destroyed, is coming out from Spilt Milk Press/Electric Velocipede in autumn 2007; novel, The Painting and the City, is due out from PS in early 2009. His stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Polyphony, The Third Alternative, Electric Velocipede, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Rick Wilber’s novel The Cold Road, came out to good reviews in 2003 from Forge. A collected novel, To Leuchars (Wildside, 2000) was called a “minor classic” by the SFSite.com. The son of an ex-Major League baseball player, Wilber’s collection of baseball fiction and essays, Where Garagiola Waits and Other Baseball Stories (University of Tampa Press, 1999) was a finalist for the Dave Moore Award for best baseball book for 1999. His memoir on baseball and the caregiving role, One More Step: Live. Death. Baseball. (McFarland) will be out in 2007, along with the mystery novel Rum Point (McFarland). Several dozen of his science-fiction and fantasy short stories and a number of poems have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. He writes college textbooks on writing and the media and he is a journalism professor at the University of South Florida, where he heads the readercon 18 magazine major. He is also administrator for the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. He lives in Lewiston, NY and in St. Petersburg, FL, and spends entirely too much time on airplanes. Paul Witcover’s first novel, Waking Beauty (HarperCollins, 1997), was short-listed for the Tiptree Award. He is also the author of Tumbling After (HarperCollins, 2005) and Dracula: Asylum (Dark Horse). His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Twilight Zone, and Night Cry, as well as, in collaboration with Elizabeth Hand, The Further Adventures of the Joker and The Further Adventures of Superman. With Ms. Hand, he co-created and cowrote the DC Comic Anima. His biography of Zora Neale Hurston was published by Chelsea House in 1991. He attended Clarion in 1980. His reviews appear in every issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine. www.sff.net/people/stilskin Gary K. Wolfe is contributing editor and senior reviewer for Locus magazine, where he has written a monthly review column since 1991. He has also written considerable academic criticism of science fiction and fantasy, including The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (Kent State University Press, 1979), David Lindsay (Starmont House, 1979), Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship (Greenwood Press, 1986), and Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever (with Ellen R. Weil, Ohio State University Press, 2002). His most recent book, Soundings: Reviews 1992-1996 (Beccon, 2005), received the British Science Fiction Association Award for best nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Locus Award and the Hugo Award. Wolfe has also received the Eaton Award (for The Known and the Unknown), the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association, and the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. His essays have appeared in Science-Fiction Studies, Foundation, Extrapolation, Conjunctions, Modern Fiction Studies, The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and other journals, as well as in many collections and reference books, including recent chapters in Supernatural Fiction Writers, Anatomy of Wonder, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, and Polder: A Festschrift in Honor of John Clute and Judith Clute. A graduate of the University of Kansas and the University of Chicago, Wolfe is Professor of Humanities and English at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He does not, however, know how to write fiction, and has nothing to do with the Roger Rabbit books. program guide page 50 Notes, Autographs, Doodles, Evil Plans… page 51 readercon 18 PATIO REAR ENTRANCE readercon 18 hotel map CONNECTICUT program MAINE registration main floor (third floor) SALON J program SALON I bookshop SALON H FRONT DESK reader café BAR program LOBBY VINEYARD DOWN TO HEALTH CLUB AND POOL program NEW HAMPSHIRE SALON F RESTAURANT CLOSED FOR 2007 MASS. green room SALON G program RHODE ISLAND program VERMONT information RESTROOMS NANTUCKET CLOSED FOR 2007 CLOSED FOR 2007 LOBBY ENTRANCE BALLROOM ENTRANCE RESTROOMS tiptree bake sale ELEVATORS STAIRS third floor guestrooms ELEVATORS STAIRS kaffeeklatsches ROOM 456 ROOM 458 ELEVATORS fourth floor (one floor up from the main floor) con suite ROOM 630 STAIRS sixth floor Readercon 18 Pocket Program SATURDAY Time Panels Readings Salon F Salon H 10:00 AM Must Great Narrative Art Have Humor? The Year in Short Fiction 10:30 AM J. Berman, Di Filippo, C. Gardner, Longyear, Van Cramer, Datlow, Hartwell, Van Gelder, Wallace 11:00 AM Political Beliefs and Fiction "The Door Dilated": Heinlein as Innovator 11:30 AM Bacigalupi, D. Edelman, Fowler, Kessel, J. Morrow, Shepard Cambias, Cox, Dern, Lerner, Purdom Hoffman 12:00 PM James Frey Recapitulates Santa Claus Sense of Wonder or Sense of Cool? Doyle/McDonald 12:30 PM J. Berman, Fowler, Golaski , Jablokov, Malzberg, McHugh Adams, Easton, L. Gilman, Lilley , Strock Kenyon 1:00 PM Fantasy as Inner Landscape Blindsided by the Fantastic 1:30 PM Crowley, G. Gilman, Link, McManus, Park, Swanwick Clute, Daemon, S. Edelman, Goss, Sleight 2:00 PM The Case for Archetypal Evil in Fantasy The Fiction of Karen Joy Fowler 2:30 PM Asher, Butler, Cavelos, J. Morrow, Palmatier Beamer, Houghton, Kessel, McHugh, McManus 3:00 PM The Rhysling Award Poetry Slan A Promiscuous Theory of Story Structure 3:30 PM Allen, Goss, Shepard, Schweitzer, Taaffe, Valente et al Clute, Crowley, J. Morrow, Smith, Van 4:00 PM 5:00 PM 8:00 PM Kaffeeklatsches Autographs VT ME / CT RI 456 (top nm) / 458 Salon E Smith Other Points of View HIW Generation Loss (Hand) Doyle / McDonald & L. Gilman D. Edelman, Marks, McHugh, Spencer, Watts Willa Cather (Ringel) Valente Ford & Hoffman Obscure Fiction Outlets Humor, Cont. Swanwick & NH / MA Park Hand Longyear Discussions, Etc. G. Gilman Datlow, Golaski, Kressel, Pelland, Tremblay see Salon F at 10 AM Park Talking Film with Lucius Writing Tricks (Spencer) Crowley & Shepard Ergonomics (Smith) Hand Burstein Library Thing The Odyssey Workshop Allen & Jarpe Bear, Blachly, Quilter et al Cavelos Weisman The Megaverse, Etc. Dead Reckonings Bacigalupi & Frederick Langan Durst Sybil's Garage Coyote Road Di Filippo Swanwick Carter by Brody Palmatier & Valente Kirstein & Levinson Durst & Wein Hartwell/Cramer & Kingsbury Near-Future Political SF HIW Ironside (Black) Bear & Ga. Grant, Gl. Grant, Hunt, Jarpe, Menon HIW Bright of the Sky (Kenyon) Edelman Fowler & L. Gilman Salon F, 4 PM: Lucius Shepard Interviewed by Jeffrey Ford. 5 PM: Karen Joy Fowler Interviewed by Adam Golaski The 21st Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition. C. Gardner, Doyle/Macdonald, Meynard (champion), Gl. Grant, Van (c. 100 min.) SUNDAY Time Panels Readings Salon F Salon H NH / MA 10:00 AM The Other Sciences in Hard SF Horror and Social Observation Bacigalupi 10:30 AM Chiang, Easton, Frederick, Levinson, Marley Cisco, Fowler, L. Gilman, Golaski, Langan Hunt Discussions, Etc. VT Mythic 2 Kaffeeklatsches Autographs ME / CT RI 456 (top nm) / 458 Salon E Extreme Brain States & Brains How to Write Good Kingsbury & Van Longyear McManus Datlow & Shepard 11:00 AM See It Like Saruman The Fiction of Angela Carter Jablokov Cisco Molecular Assembly & Origins of Life 11:30 AM J. Berman, Crowley, Houghton, J. Morrow, Swanwick G. Gilman, Goss, Hand, Smith, Taaffe Kingsbury D'Ammassa Jarpe (Talk + open workshop, 120 min) Golaski What, No Flying Car? Storyboarding Morrow & Kirstein Trudel Kenyon Clute Palmatier Lucius, Central America, and Us Persistence Pays Off Kenyon & Daley Strock 12:00 PM SF Cinema in the DVD Era After Rowling and Pullman 12:30 PM Allen, Genoa, Shepard, Silverman, Van S. Berman, Black, Durst, Link, November Interfictions 1:00 PM Personal Archetypes I Have a Proof of This 1:30 PM Doyle, Fowler, J. Gardner, G. Gilman, Longyear, Park Burstein, Hecht, Kingsbury, Marley, Watts Spencer Dern Shepard D. Edelman Berman, Butler, & Daley HIW Blindsight (Watts) 2:00 PM Intimidated by Story Potential SF in Other Tongues 2:30 PM Bear, Drummond, S. Edelman, Marks, Witcover Hartwell, J. Morrow, K. Morrow, Singh, Trudel, Walewski 3:00 PM Readercon 18 Debriefing Levinson Cambias Kessel & Purdom Wein & Grossman See the Program Guide for full titles and descriptions of all items Underlined panelists are leaders (participant / moderators); non-participant moderators are also in italics. Doyle/Macdonald & Marley Bear & Hunt Butler & Dolley Readercon 18 Pocket Program FRIDAY Time Panels Readings Salon F Salon H 11:00 AM A Heinlein Roundtable 11:30 AM Brown , Clute, Sleight, Wolfe 12:00 PM 12:30 PM 1:00 PM 1:30 PM 2:00 PM 2:30 PM Reading the Super-Long Narrative Ford Asher, Crowley, D'Ammassa, Hartwell, Kenyon Brilliant But Flawed The Slipstream / Magic Realism Canon Crowley, Fowler, Link, Malzberg, Schweitzer Cox , DiFillipo, Drummond, Goss, Kessel, McManus, Sleight, Valente (c. 100 min) Writing and the Rest of Life Ford, Kenyon, Malzberg, Marks, Maxey, Singh The Retold Fairy or Folk Tale The Fiction of William Hope Hodgson Black, Datlow, Goss, Ga. Grant, Valente D'Ammassa, Golaski, Schweitzer, Weinstein 4:00 PM Rebel, Rebel: Ex-Rocker Writers Smooth and Lumpy Expanded Universes Cox, Gl. Grant, Hand, November, Shepard Cisco, J. Gardner, Meynard, Strock, Wilber 5:30 PM 6:00 PM 6:30 PM "The Singularity Needs Women!" Awe, Horror! Bear, Cramer, Marley, McManus, J. Morrow Clute, Datlow, Mamatas, Paffenroth, Wolfe Hunted Jaguars: Fiction in Another Land Absent Friends (In Memoriam) Di Filippo, Kowal, Lewitt, Park, Shepard Freund , Genoa, Kessel, Taaffe, Weinstein 7:00 PM Young (and Very Young) Adult F&SF The Fiction of Lucius Shepard 7:30 PM Black, Daley, Durst, Hoffman, November, Wein Golaski, Langan, Sleight, Swanwick, Witcover 8:00 PM Filling In the Middle SF Writers Who Deserve Biographies Dolley, Kenyon, Kirstein, Lewitt, Macdonald, Wilber Lerner, Malzberg, Van Gelder, Weisman , Wolfe 8:30 PM Wexler Kaffeeklatsches Autographs RI 456 (top nm) / 458 Taaffe Shepard & Singh McHugh Silverman Black & Langan Kowal L. Gilman Witcover Marley Hartwell/Cramer & Shepard Link Thomas Kessel Marks Bear McHugh Morrow 9:00 PM 9:30 PM Discussions, Etc. ME / CT Salon E G. Gilman Tremblay Grossman 3:30 PM 5:00 PM VT Fowler 3:00 PM 4:30 PM NH / MA Crowley (setup) 10:00 PM Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award 10:15 PM Meet the Pros(e) Party (120+ min.) Genoa Implausible Teaching Longyesr & Marks Levinson Secrets of Great Public Readings Fowler & Kowal S.Berman, Butter, Daley Purdom Writing Sequels Link/Grant & Goss Levinson Kressel Maxey Why The Small Press Matters Bookaholics Anonymous Jarpe & Valente Kressel Hanger et al Hecht McManus Edelman Cox Schweitzer Broad Universe The Public Domain Land Spec Poetry Workshop Kirstein & Grossman, Levinson, Macdonald, Quilter, Watts Allen Genoa The Readercon Book Club: Little, Big "Nightfall" Radio Datlow & J. Berman, Drummond, Hand, Sleight, Walewski Golaski Adams Wein SF Reviewing in the Blogosphere Interfictions Hunt & Durst Clute, Cramer, Freund , Lilley, Purdom, Van Gelder Goss, Singh, Valente et al Langan Crowley & Hand Kenyon & J. and K. Morrow Daley & Longyear Registration and Information: Ballroom Lobby Fri. 10 AM - 9 PM, Sat. 9 AM - 6PM, Sun. 9 AM - 1 PM Bookshop: Grand Ballroom Salon E Fri. 3 PM - 7 PM, Sat. 10 AM - 6 PM, Sun. 10 AM - 2 PM Hospitality Suite: Room 630 Fri. 3 PM - 9 PM, Sat. 9 AM - Midnight, Sun. 9 AM - 2 PM See the Program Guide for full titles and descriptions of all items Underlined panelists are leaders (participant / moderators); non-participant moderators are also in italics.
