The Readercon program is posted + panels I am on

[kestrell]

Readercon 31
https://www.readercon.org/
will be taking place August 13-15, and will be virtual.
The guests of honor are Ursula Vernon and Jeffrey Ford, with the Memorial Guest of Honor Vonda N. McIntyre.
YouTube will be used to view panels, talks, readings, performances, and events, via links shared in our members-only Discord server
Discord will be used to participate in Q&As, visit virtual fan tables, attend launch parties, chat in kaffeeklatsches, and otherwise interact with program participants and other attendees during and between sessions.

The program can be downloaded in several formats, including an accessible plain text file,
here
https://www.readercon.org/program

I'm on two panels:

Saturday - 2:00 PM
Main Track 1 - I'm In: Infiltration Techniques for Writers - Toni "Leigh Perry" Kelner, Catherynne M. Valente, Kestrell Verlager, Elizabeth Wein, Fran Wilde (mod)
How can characters get into spaces they aren't supposed to be, whether physical or virtual? What makes these scenes feel plausible? Panelists will analyze the literary possibilities in various infiltration techniques--including those that rely on technical skills (such as lockpicking or hacking) and those that rely on social engineering--and suggest useful reference works and successful fictional depictions.

Sunday - 10:00 AM
Main Track 1 - L'État, C'est Quoi? Social Organization in SF/F - Terri Bruce, Ian R. Macleod, Kathryn Morrow, Malka Older (mod), Kestrell Verlager
Let's talk about modes of social organization in science fiction and fantasy: nations, kingdoms, empires, anarcho-syndicalist communes, hives, necromantic capitalism, and more. How do shifts in real-world politics change how we read speculative fiction's use of both real and imagined forms of government? Why is it so hard to make up truly novel social systems, and what does that tell us about how we perceive human (and inhuman) nature?

Comments

Setting a new reply record

[jesse_the_k]

The second panel also sounds fascinating.

Have you read Malka Older's Infomacracy books? She combines very inventive world building with complex thriller -- I adored what I could understand, but I think my brain can no longer decode that sort of stuff.

Re: Setting a new reply record

[kestrell]

No, but I'm writing down the title and author's name. I was thinking of all the stories that features groups of disabled characters, or outsiders which include characters with disabilities, such as the group in Theodore Sturgeon's "Mmore Than Human," or John Varley's "Persistence of Vision," or the group of replicants in "Blade Runner," who fail a test developed by others which supposedly can distinguish between humans and replicants. My point is that there are always these outsider groups, and people with disabilities, or those who fail the test of being human, are always part of those outsider groups, no matter how the other forms of social and political organization may change.

Re: Setting a new reply record

[jesse_the_k]

Lucy Jane Bledsoe's The Evolution of Love is a thriller/love story/meditation on "who counts" set in the immediate aftermath of a Californian disaster. (Can't remember whether it was fire or earthquake.) Folks who could got out; disabled people are left behind and create an interdependent mutual aid network to maintain in the ruins. I'm a big Bledsoe fan -- I particularly love her lesbian-Arctic scientist in the 1940s novel, A Thin Bright Line, which is available on Bookshare.

Another story on a similar theme is Nisi Shawl's most excellent The Future of Work in Wired. Shawl brilliantly envisions a care-work collective in a "benevolent" police state. So dense it’s poetry, and worth the reread to understand the web of mutuality and interdependence in the cracks.

Some stuff only Federal dollars bought. Bridie’s medicine, for instance. But Federal welfare checks took care of most of that sort of stuff, and she had set up the Five Petals Care Collective so anything else important could be covered by trading among themselves. She’d spent a lot of time and love on Thought, the First Petal, before getting around to organizing, which was the Second Petal, Action. Worth it. Five Petals Collective payments were food harvested from seeds they sprouted and planted, milk and eggs from animals they raised. Rides. Clothes salvaged from castoffs. The same rich people whose trendy whims had made nonautomated caregiving so expensive provided the collective with plenty of useful garbage.

Re: Setting a new reply record

[kestrell]

Cool, more titles I'm writing down...

Re: Setting a new reply record

[kestrell]

Even the Murderbot books can be interpreted in this light, as Murderbot's very includsion as a person is defined differently according to which political system Muderbot is in: the capitalist consumer system considers Muderbot nonhuman and property, while Murderbot's new planet defines Murderbot as a person, but that definition is inherent in their social and politcal system, in the way they treat all people.