The internet: it’s what we have instead of a memory
I’m at Boston Logan airport, just about to head home after a terrific but exhausting Readercon. It was great to meet so many people there, and in particular to have such a good response to the talk I gave. I’m probably not going to be able to pull together a full con-report, but a few footnotes:
- The clear star of the convention (apart from Junot Diaz, who turned up unannounced and claimed he was just there as Samuel R Delany’s driver) was Twitter entity Litcrithulk, who was by my count the most cited authority anywhere. I think.
- Rose Fox and I recorded an installment of Jon Armstrong‘s “If you’re just joining us” podcast, on notable recent sf/f books, which should be on iTunes shortly.
- On a couple of panels, I referred to a great David Langford short story about an unanticipated downside of humanity being uploaded to computers: spam email. I couldn’t remember the title, but happily have now found it: “New Hope For The Dead“.
- One of the great highlights of the con for me was getting to meet Noel Sturgeon, the daughter of Theodore Sturgeon, and participate in her project to record readings of selected Sturgeon stories. Noel also participated in a Roundtable discussion on Sturgeon with John Clute, Gary Wolfe, and myself, which should be appearing in Locus this autumn.
I’m sure there are many more things to record, but right now my notes are filled with gnomic utterances like “characters with flanges!” and “John Crowley = Olaf Stapledon” that I’m not entirely sure I can decode…
Graham Sleight 