Readercon reprise

[lesser_celery]

I had intended to post a report last night about my weekend at Readercon, but a series of real-life events that Shall Not Be Named intervened. Now I’m behind the curve, which has the fortunate effect that I can simply refer to others’ already-posted con reports for some of the substance.

I suppose I should start with the obvious and most self-serving. The Best of Not One of Us debuted at the Prime Books table. Here are the cover and table of contents. More, perhaps much more, about that will follow in later posts. Right now, I just want to thank sovay (again) and oldcharliebrown for making this possible. I have only one copy so far, but I’ll mail contributors’ copies in a couple of weeks when I get a big shipment from Prime.

Con highlights, in skeletal form but cut for length.

Friday

I arrived at 2pm and hung out with sovay, erzebet, upstart_crow, yuki_onna, and Geoffrey Goodwin during registration.

At 3:30pm sovay did a marvelous reading (and singing!) of “Chez Vous Soon” (from Not One of Us #35). Her performance was profoundly moving.

When I got back to the book dealers’ room, I received my copy of The Best of Not One of Us. Happy me.

I hung out with time_shark, Anita Allen, and Drew Morse at the SFPA table.

After much unintentional delay, precipitated by the van failing to bring our younger son Derek home from school on time and aggravated by a weekend rush-hour accident blocking Route 95/128, Anke didn’t arrive until 6:30 pm. She and I almost never appear in public together due to Derek’s disability that usually requires the presence of at least One of Us at home. But I desperately wanted her there for the debut on The Best of Not One of Us, on which she has played such an important role.

time_shark gave a semi-private poetry reading for sovay, Anke, and me. Anke and I bought a Klingon linguistics guide for our older son Karl, the linguistics major.

Eight of us dined together at the hotel restaurant. Here I confessed that for two years I was Margaret.

After dinner, Anke and I hung first with hans_the_bold, then with upstart_crow and erzebet.

Saturday

A no-Anke-havin’ day at Readercon.

I attended “From Within Us It Devours,” where several sages discussed different forms and theories of horror.

At noon I attended “The Year in Short Fiction,” an interesting and useful round-up presented by editors of several Best-of collections.

At 1pm I attended the Mythic/Jabberwocky Group Reading, which was a delight that would have been even better had the room not been 92 degrees.

I bought Karl a t-shirt.

The Rhysling Award Poetry Slan was one of the real highlights of Readercon, even better than last year’s. time_shark’s performance of “The Strip Search,” which was later announced as a Rhysling winner, was spectacular. Best communal poetry reading I’ve ever attended.

Then something like thirteen (!) of us went to dinner at an Indian restaurant in Arlington. You can read an account of the dinner and view a list of attendees here. I was at the children’s table (i.e., the end of a very long, single file of tables) with hans_the_bold, so I didn’t say much. But I did thoroughly enjoy the conversation that I heard. It was, indeed, the entire goat.

Sunday

Much buying of books and magazines took place. Purchases included the Holly Phillips novel The Burning Girl, Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners, the debut issue of Mythic, The Fantasy Art of Josephine Wall, and a used copy of Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave (these last two for Anke). My 50-cent purchase this year was The Druid Stone, by Simon Majors (1967). I believe I have explained elsewhere why I buy beaten-up copies of books from the 1950s and 1960s, but I can elaborate at some later date.

A panel about The New Weird fortunately evolved into a fascinating discussion of fantasy forms.

Here endeth my account. Pro christo da mihi potem.

For others’ accounts, see nineweaving and rushthatspeaks.