So this year was my ninth Readercon, I think, and probably rated about average, since the guests of honor were Rudy Rucker and Howard Waldrop (who I don't think appeared together, and I'm not sure if they even knew each other). Both men are fairly soft-spoken. Waldrop is sort of a low-key Bruce Sterling, although he did get riled up about G.W. at one panel, but just for a few seconds. Rucker, who seems exceedingly mellow, as though still recovering from his last acid trip, speaks carefully and thoughtfully, catching you offguard when he throws in some profanity. Very professorial. The other guest of honor was Hal Clement, sort of the "we'd better honor him 'cause he'll be dead soon" entry, who usually has some good anecdotes about the old days but needs other people around him to constantly feed him questions as his stories tend to be short and to the point.



A lot of panels trod over familiar ground, there were very few special items worthy of note, and a few pros were conspicuous by their absence, particularly James Patrick Kelly and Robert Sawyer. Here's a rundown of what I saw:



Friday:



Adventures in Other Dimensions, with Michael Burstein, Paul Levinson, Rudy Rucker and others. Burstein did a good job of explaining the physics behind other dimensions. The panel flipped back and forth between other dimensions meaning parallel universe and other dimensions meaning those beyond the basic three. Much discussion of Flatland and some of its responses, including Rucker's own "Spaceland", which I picked up later in the dealers' room.



SF's Greatest Generation, with Hal Clement, Barry Malzberg, Andrew Porter, Allen Steele and others. A few war stories from Clement, who said his first few sales to Campbell earned him enough money to make a sizeable dent in the $600 tuition bill from Harvard. Some discussion about how people's view of technology shifted after WWII, so that old-fashioned space opera was no longer sufficient, giving rise to writers such as Clement who were more rigorous in their scientific background.



Saturday:



The Fiction of R.A. Lafferty, with Bryan Cholfin, Darrell Schweitzer, Michael Swanwick, Howard Waldrop and others. I've never read much Lafferty, but Cholfin had cleaned out a closet and brought some free copies of a Lafferty book he'd published about 15 years ago, so I grabbed one for future reference. What I've read is largely inscrutable, and most of the panelists were in total agreement that this was a hallmark of Lafferty's work, that even after repeated readings you weren't always sure what was going on. Lafferty is held up as an example of someone who writes what they want to write with no concern for its salability or the market or the audience or anything. Apparently Lafferty was very conservative in real life, but this didn't manifest itself in his writing, either.



Reversals in Definition of the Term "Space opera", talk by David Hartwell. Subtitled "From Shit to Shinola". Hartwell began by saying that space opera started as a purely pejorative term for the kind of crap that was being published in Amazing back in the 30's and 40's. Hartwell detailed his research for references to space opera through the ensuing decades until in the '70's Del Rey books was marketing space opera as a good thing, such that by the present day authors such as Bujold are proclaiming that they write space opera.



Political Rebellion in SF&F, with Samuel Delaney, Greg Feeley, Howard Waldrop and others. Chip Delaney said, "There is political sf about rebellion and there is political sf about revolution. And then there's Howard Waldrop." Feeley pontificated for a while, lots of polemicizing about politics in general, and the evolution of political agendas. Delaney was interested in how things like civil rights, from his perspective, went from being for something (equality) to being against something (racism).



Has SF Become too Specialized?, with Tom Easton, Scott Edelman, Barry Malzberg, Allen Steele and others. This ended up being the ubiquitous panel about how nobody reads sf any more and which of the various scapegoats is most at fault. Edelman took the opposing viewpoint that those of a young age who want to seek out sf can still seek it out, and find good stuff to read, whether new or classic. Much was made of writers like Greg Egan writing stuff that was so cerebral that it ran the risk of endangering the field by alienating new readers who come into contact with it first (although I thought "Singleton" was pretty accessible). Malzberg provided comic relief as the voice of doom.



The Death and Possible Coming Rebirth of SF, with Judith Berman, John Clute, David Hartwell, Patrick Neilsen Hayden, Allen Steele. Allen Steele was on way too many panels this year. He's never short of opinions but most of them aren't that interesting. John Clute, on the other hand, started this whole discussion with something he wrote about how sf is dead, which is bound to stir up trouble. What he means is that the classic idea of SF arose as a response to the industrial revolution, and now that in this enlightened age industry has been fully assimilated into our society the SF as we know it from the past is no longer viable. People didn't necessarily disagree with this, and no one wanted to extrapolate on what future science fiction would be like.



September 11 and Fiction, with Paul Levinson, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Howard Waldrop, Gordon Van Gelder. Some personal remembrances of 9/11, and some examination of how it impacted the field, particularly from the editors, based on what they saw submitted shortly thereafter. Levinson spoke at length about how one of his favorite bookstores had been the Borders in the World Trade Center plaza. Some talked about writers' sensitivity to certain subjects in the months after the event, wanting to change existing submissions (which GVG discouraged) or avoid writing about certain things (invasions, assassinations, etc.). The fact that most american publishing is centered in New York they felt almost makes it a hindrance to any near-term examination of 9/11, and that small presses or other outlets further from Ground Zero may be where we first start to see a fictional dialogue come together.



Interviews with Hal Clement and Howard Waldrop, GoH speech by Rudy Rucker. Waldrop recounts his life story, talks about how certain stories got written. I haven't read any of them, so not much of note there. I did pick up an old Ace paperback short story collection of his, have to give it a try some day. Saw the tail end of Clement's interview, he was talking about his artwork. Rucker had visual aids with his speech, which I didn't get a copy of, but he's hoping to publish it somewhere eventually, or put it online. His talk dealt mostly with writing, which is kind of interesting as he's a computer scientist and mathematician.



Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition: Glenn Grant wins again, audience comes in second again. Six rounds this time, including two "lightning rounds", which actually helped move things along pretty well. The ubiquitious Lionel Fanthorpe citation, and two rounds devoted to someone's cover letter and synopsis for a novel submitted to some web zine, stretching the definition of "published", but not the definition of "bad".



Sunday:



The Golden Age of SF is now, with Hal Clement, Paul di Filippo, David Hartwell, Farah Mendlesohn and others. Ms. Mendlesohn managed to talk almost as much as di Filippo (no small feat) about the state of SF, supporting the notion that there is more good stuff being published now than ever. Hartwell thinks this is true of short SF, but thinks there's only a couple of really top notch novels being published every year. They harkened back to the old days when people could read everything being published. Clement reminisced about his SF fan group that would get together periodically, and the meetings "consisted of total silence" as everyone just read stuff all afternoon. Mendlesohn said you can kind of still do that if you limit yourself to British sf, although the short fiction market is now basically down to Interzone.



The Career of Rudy Rucker, with Paul di Filippo and a bunch of who-dats. Some people had an association with Rucker from early on (di Filippo said they both had their first stories published in Unearth magazine right around the same time). Others were mere sycophants. Rucker was in the audience, so they couldn't say too much anyway. I left about half way through, not because of the panel, but because it was time for lunch.



Ambizione!, with John Clute, Ellen Kushner, Barry Malzberg, David Alexander Smith, Howard Waldrop and others. From a quote attributed to Italo Calvino that literature was inherently the process of setting a standard that could not be reached. Most people refuted this, and the discussion involved more what the panelists own authorial ambitions were or had been and whether they had achieved them or not. Malzberg said his only ambition was to make a living as a science fiction writer, and he failed. Kushner talked about the notion of doing something that would last, something that would still resonate years later, but said she was writing something that, stripped of its fantasy trappings, was on a topical feminist subject, acknowledging that there was a contradiction there. Malzberg said what difference did it make if you were remembered or not, since you wouldn't be around to enjoy it.