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!

When I heard earlier in the week that Cory Doctorow would be in Baltimore yesterday for a reading at Red Emma’s Bookstore and Coffee House, I decided to head over. I don’t see Cory often enough, partially because it’s hard to grab extended time with anyone in the maelstrom of a convention, but also because his success as a writer and pontificator out in the “real world” has transformed him from Cory Doctorow into C!O!R!Y D!O!C!T!O!R!O!W. (Not that he thinks of himself like that.)

I arrived half an hour or so before his reading began, and though there were a couple of dozen people already there, Cory was alone at the counter, typing away on his laptop. Was the crowd too in awe of him to go over and speak, or were they just respectfully giving him space to get some work done? No idea, but it meant there was space for me to slip onto the stool next to him and catch up until it was time for him to perform.

He started out by reading a brief section from his new novel For the Win, a clip of which I’ve embedded below. I captured Cory with my new Flip camera, my first attempt to do anything more than experiment with it around the house. It wasn’t the best idea to record him in a dark bookstore with a sunny window behind him, because it caused a halo effect at times, but the place was packed, and by the time I realized how he occasionally appeared to be glowing, it was too late to move. But I think the video is worth sharing anyway.

And here’s the Q&A, chopped into YouTube-friendly chunks. (more…)

Readercon is my favorite convention of the year, and has been for decades. This year’s installment, coming up July 8-11, will be the 21st, and I’ve been to them all. Here are the two panels on which you’ll be able to find me pontificating.

(In addition to these appearances, I’ll also be reading Ted Sturgeon’s “It Was Nothing—Really!” as well as a story of my own during the weekend at times yet to be determined.)

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 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.

I hope to see you there!

On June 24, 1974 (a Monday that year), I woke up in Brooklyn with a big day ahead of me. It was to be my first day on the job at Marvel Comics, and as I headed into Manhattan to that famous address of 575 Madison Avenue, I was thrilled.

But I had no idea that something even more important was in store for me that day, because once I arrived, I met my future wife, Irene Vartanoff, who had started at Marvel just a few months earlier.

One thing we did to celebrate today was to pull out our photo albums to relive some of the old days, so here’s a photo of the happy couple.

OK, all right, you got me. That isn’t me and Irene. It’s instead me and Walter Jon Williams during the 1997 Nebula Awards weekend in Kansas City, Missouri. (more…)

You’ve probably already heard this one. A couple, about to get married, go through their family albums in order to put together a wedding video and discover a photo of the two of them taken during separate family vacations at Disneyland long before they’d ever met.

Just in case this one passed you by, here’s the story:

The reason I’m bringing this up is because it got me to thinking about another photo which might exist somewhere out there—one taken of Irene and me long before we met. (more…)

It’s been a busy week. How can I tell it’s been a busy week? One way is that I went to New York to read at the KGB Bar on Wednesday night, and I’m only just telling you about it on Saturday!

I got to Manhattan early that morning, and until I needed to head downtown in the evening, I spent my time in meetings with my boss. (Not, not Liz Lemon. And no, not Jack Donaghy, either.) The first person I spotted when I got to the bar was my partner in crime that night, Jack Ketchum, who was standing outside catching a smoke. Here we are inside in a photo taken by the evening’s co-host Ellen Datlow.

(For more photos, check out Ellen Datlow’s flickr stream.)

I was glad to see my tribe outside of the usual convention circuit venues. If I lived in NY, I guess I’d be doing it all the time, but for me it was a rare experience to see my friends in something other than a strange hotel.

I read about 85% of the title story from my collection What Will Come After, shortening it so I could fit it into the time allotted. I’d originally been thinking of reading a shorter, lighter story in its entirely, but I was thankful that Ellen and her co-host Matt Kressel thought I should do otherwise. “What Will Come After” is me at my best, and even though I was getting so emotional reading it I almost lost it a couple of times, I’m glad that’s the side of me I got to show off.

There’s a lot more I could share about the trip, including my amazing Thursday lunch at Shopsin’s, which was almost (but not quite) enough to cause me to move back to New York, but I’ll have to leave all that for another time. Yes, I’m that busy.

Kudos to the editors of The Paris Review for including an interview with R. Crumb in their Summer 2010 issue. That magazine has published interviews with writers and poets since it began, but this is the first time it has ever featured an interview with a comics creator.

I’m not so happy that the interviewer described Crumb as “perhaps the most influential cartoonist of his or any generation,” since, even though he’s a great talent, I wouldn’t consider him the most influential. There are many other candidates for that position. No Joe Shuster, no superheroes. No Jack Kirby, no Marvel Universe. And as Cortney Skinner just pointed out to me, can you imagine a world with no Walt Disney?

But that wasn’t what so horrified me I felt compelled to set the issue down and come tell you about it. No, what disturbed me was one of the things Crumb had to say in answer to a question about which art supplies he uses. His response caused smoke to erupt from my ears and nostrils, and I had to stop and vent.

When asked what kind of paper he used, Crumb said:

Well, I use the old Strathmore vellum surface paper, which is the best paper you can get in the Western world for ink line drawing. It has a good, hard surface. I have it mailed from the New York Central Art Supply in New York. For a while I was using this old Strathmore paper from fifty years ago that some guy sent me, it had bad comic art on one side, hacked-out comic work from 1959, 1960, but the paper is superior to anything you can get now. It just holds the ink better. I ran out of that and now I use this new stuff that’s not quite as good.

I don’t often go WTF, but Crumb—WTF? Say it ain’t so!

Alas, I fear that it is.

Can any Crumb experts out there attest to validity of this statement? And—assuming it’s true—can you let the rest of us know what original mainstream comics artwork is now hidden on the flipside of Crumb drawings?

Oh, the humanity!

I spent four hours yesterday morning participating in a mock trial—but I probably won’t be able to tell you any of the details about the case for another two years or so. Since this was an actual local case argued by the same attorneys who’ll eventually face off should it get to trial, we signed a confidentiality agreement barring us from discussing the matter for the next two years—or earlier than that, should we happen to read in the paper that a verdict in the case has been reached—so as not to tamper with the jury pool any further than was done by the staging the mock trial itself and eliminating us as potential jurors.

But what I can say is—

I found out about this from a notice in the local paper two weeks ago advertising for volunteers to take part in a jury focus group. Those accepted would receive $100 for four hours of their time. There were to be three sessions—one Friday night and the other two yesterday. I assume, but can’t say for sure, that the same case would be presented over and over to get better information on possible juror reactions.

Most people hate jury duty, but I love it, and might have volunteered even without the promise of remuneration. I’ve been on juries in Brooklyn, NY and Rockville, MD, and had fun both times.

To volunteer, I was to call a number last Monday only, and was then instructed to send an e-mail with my name, phone number, age, race, and occupation. I received a phone call the next day asking for my political party affiliation and income level, as well as whether I had a WV drivers license. After I answered those questions, I was assigned the Saturday morning session. (more…)

Long before I worked with or beside either of these guys as a comics professional, I interacted with them both in the role of annoying fan with a sketchbook. So to annoy them even further, I present two sketches I got from today’s birthday boys long ago and far away.

First up, a drawing by Neal Adams done at a July 4th Seuling con during those much more innocent days before he started charging $10.00 per sketch in ’72 or so. (And who knows what he’s charging now!)

(more…)

It was a busy week, so I ended up spending most of it with my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard, not getting much of a look at the wider world outside other than what I could see by occasionally lifting my eyes and peering over my computer screen. But in the few, brief minutes I did manage to make it outside, I got to meet a few of my neighbors.

On Wednesday afternoon, while Irene was out front fertilizing the daffodils so that those of you who make it to next year’s spring party will have something to look at, she spotted a tiny wanderer on the driveway who was moving along at a … well … at a snail’s pace, and called me over to look.

(more…)