That Readercon schedule I shared with you a few days ago? You can ignore it. Because the committee put its finishing touches on the program today, and I can now share with you the full list of what I’ll be doing the weekend of July 8-11.

Though I’ll be arriving at the con Thursday, my official participation doesn’t begin until the next day, with a very busy Friday:

Theodore Sturgeon Short Story Readings
Friday, 11:00 a.m., Room 730
Twenty-five years after Sturgeon’s death, Readercon is organizing a set of readings of some of his best stories by authors who love his work. The readings also celebrate the upcoming publication of the thirteenth and final volume of The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon by North Atlantic Books, edited by Paul Williams. The stories being read demonstrate Sturgeon’s unusual range, comprising fantasy, sf, horror and comic pieces. They will be moderated by his daughter, Noël Sturgeon, who is the Trustee of the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. (I’ll be reading “It Was Nothing—Really!”)

Reading
Friday, 5:00 p.m., Room New Hampshire/Massachusetts
This is when I’ll be reading one of my own stories. What will I read? I haven’t figured that out yet. But it will be something I’ve never read at a Readercon before.

Why Aren’t I Repeating Myself? Why?
Friday, 8:00 p.m., Salon F
with David Anthony Durham, Patrick O’Leary, Paul Park, Jennifer Pelland, and Michael Swanwick
Some writers hone a single approach for their entire careers, while others are much likelier to produce work that is, by their own track record, sui generis. Why are these writers driven to explore new genres, styles, themes, and structures, when most of their peers need less variety? Is it simply a product of having wide-ranging interests? Or something deeper? Since we suspect that many such writers may find the phenomenon mysterious to themselves, we encourage them to trade notes about their specific motivations for writing works that took them to new stylistic, structural and thematic territory.

The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award: The History So Far
Friday, 9:00 p.m., Maine/Connecticut
with John Clute, Alan Elms, Barry Malzberg, and Gordon Van Gelder
One of the founders of the award [Alan Elms] is joined by past and present judges and all is revealed. How did Smith’s daughter and Elms and Benko come to found the Cordwainer Smith Foundation? Where did the idea for the Award come from? How have the judges been chosen, and how have they gone about choosing the winners? How did the Award come to Readercon? To be followed immediately by the presentation of this year’s award (across the corridor).

The Double-Driven Story
Sunday 2:00 p.m. Salon G
with Felix Gilman, John Kessel, Marilyn Mattie, and Graham Sleight
We divide stories into “character-driven” and “plot-driven,” but in fact many stories aspire to a perfect confluence of protagonist and plot. In these “double-driven” stories, there exists a mutual need and intimate fit between the two elements: the one adolescent whose precognitive powers could enable a planetary revolution, the one ruler whose extraordinary past qualifies him to outlaw torture. This notion is a useful critical tool: imagine how much better the Foundation series would have been if we’d had a genuine sense of Hari Seldon and the forces in his life that led him to invent psychohistory. We’ll look at double-driven stories and examine how understanding this structure can yield insight into why certain stories work as well as they do.

See you there!