Posts
.
Boskone is this coming weekend! So, for the convenience of anybody who'll be in attendance and wants to look me up (or avoid me, for that matter), here's my final schedule for the weekend:
Friday
8 p.m. The Zombie Panel (me, Bob Eggleton, Seanan McGuire, Sonya Taafe, and moderator Jon Langan)
A panel about zombies.
Saturday
Noon Reading. (0.5 hour)
Assuming I've finished writing it by then, I'll be reading "The Scarecrow's Boy."
1 p.m. Literary Beer.
I sit down at a table with anybody who wants to be literary and drink beer. I believe there's soda or water or such for those who don't care to drink that early in the day. You have to sign up for this, but it's pretty easy to do.
2 p.m. Autographing.
Serious collectors tell me that autographs should ONLY be dated on the year of publication or on a date when the author does something significant like win a major award or commit suicide. So if you see me dating my signature for anything but The Dragons of Babel, try to cheer me up, okay?
3. p.m. Good Things Come in Small Packages: The Craft of Short Fiction (me, Beth Bernobich, Kelly Link, and moderator James Patrick Kelly)
This one is of particular use to gonnabe writers.
4 p.m. Masters of Short Fiction: A Conversation (me, James Patrick Kelly, Howard Waldrop, and moderator Patrick Nielsen Haden)
How did Kelly Link miss being stuck on this panel? And has anybody else noticed that they haven't left me any time for lunch?
Sunday
10 a.m. Moonwise of Babel: A Conversation on the Nature and Uses of Deep Fantasy (me, Greer Gilman)
"Two fantasists talk seriously about matters they find intensely interesting." This was my idea. I have no idea what we're going to talk about. I'm hoping it will be great.
Et un amuse bouche . . .
On Saturday, I picked up a copy of Eclipse 1, the first in a new original fiction anthology series from Nightshade Books, edited by Jonathan Strahan. And, holy cow, does it have an astonishing lineup of writers: Lucius Shepard, Peter S. Beagle, Jeffrey Ford, Ellen Klages... and on and on. It's got a very strange story by Bruce Sterling which I'm only halfway through so I can't begin to tell you what it's about. It's even got a new story from Eileen Gunn!
But the highlight of the book has got to be Andy Duncan's "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse." It's currently on the Nebula preliminary ballot and I think pretty sure to be on the final ballot, despite the fact that it's neither science fiction nor fantasy. I don't even think it's slipstream. But that doesn't matter. It's good enough to make principled men go against their conscience and vote to give a genre award to a mainstream story. Honest.
Just in case somebody from Nightshade chances across this, here's a blurb you can use however you like, with my blessing:
"You don't have to buy this astonishingly brilliant and entertaining anthology. But if you don't, I have no respect for you at all. None whatsoever."
-- Michael Swanwick
*
2 comments:
Well, actually, they did leave you a lunch break, though whether it's sufficient is another question. They seem to have left you a break between 12 and 12:30.
And one does wonder whether you are expected to take your lunch in liquid form at 1pm. Or whether various lean and hungry looks on your part will elicit sufficient sympathy (not from me, mind) to actually deliver food to where you are chained, writing your name over and over and trying to think of something clever while listening to complete babel, as it were.
I intend to enjoy watching you zip about from place to place. You and that other guy, what's-his-name, who is similarly scheduled. And to think you actually volunteered to do this.
Oz
Oh, I'll manage to get food somehow -- I've got friends. And, really, I do enjoy being on all that stuff. It's why I'm there, after all.
But I also like to complain. It's sort of a hobby with me.
Post a Comment