I’ll be attending Readercon next weekend (July 9-12, in Burlington, Mass.). Here’s my schedule:

Friday 7:00 PM
Salon F: Autographing

Friday 11:00 PM
Meet the Pros(e) Party

Saturday 12:00 Noon
VT: Group Reading

Federations Group Reading (60 min.)

John Joseph Adams (host) with K. Tempest Bradford, Robert J. Sawyer, Allen Steele, Catherynne M. Valente,
Genevieve Valentine

Readings from the original and reprint anthology (cover blurb: “Vast. Epic. Interstellar.”) edited by Adams and published by Prime Books in January.

Sunday 1:00 PM
Salon A: Panel

We Won, We Lost.  John Joseph Adams, Michael A. Burstein, F. Brett Cox (L), Paul Di Filippo, Robert Killheffer, Michaela Roessner

[Greatest Hit from Readercon 12.]  It’s an sf world. Our once-visionary iconography is now commonplace. The present turns into the future even before we wear it comfortably, let alone wear it out, and this sense of constant change is now the common currency of our culture  rather than our precious private truth. And yet the sf readership shrinks, or at least gets older, every year; as sf media ascends (and merges with real life), the written sf word seems ever more irrelevant-and certainly wins no greater prestige for its creators than in the past. Maybe this has nothing to do with sf, but just reflects the death of reading (a development we perhaps ironically foresaw). But maybe somehow the contents of sf, the accidents, have conquered mass culture, but some crucial part of the form, the essence, has been left behind. Is it an sf world after all? Or just a holographic simulation of one?

ALSO, in addition to these programming items, it looks like I might just be hosting a con-sanctioned Rock Band party in one of the con rooms after hours, sort of as counter-programming to the inevitable Mafia games.