"Where reading isn't extinct"

Capclave, WSFA’s DC area sf-litcon (as if you didn’t know) is just around the corner, and I’ve just the list of panels I’ll be on. Mike and Beth Zipster, running programming for the con, have correctly deduced that I’ll never grow up, and have me on two panels about YA titles, as well as one about the future of the book, which will probably may stuck on whether we’re talking about reading printed material or just plain reading.I expect the post-apocalypse issue to come up early and often. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the panels and seeing friends at the con.

My panels:

• Friday 10/14 10:00 PM: Heinlein Juvies – Discussion of the impact of Heinlein’s juveniles on the field, the themes in the works, and, possibly, why they haven’t been made into films.  Are they still readable?  Can you still use them as an entrance drug into SF?
• Saturday 10/15 10:00 AM: But I Read It – Why is it that so many adults read YA?
• Saturday 10/15 3:00 PM: Will Books Survive – and in what form? – How are Kindles and Nooks changing the shape of the book?  Do people read them differently?

Programming for the con looks terrific, by the way, and there are lots of panels I wish I could be on, including:

• Welcoming our Robot Overlords? –  What does Watson’s win on Jeopardy mean for the future of AI?
• The Genre Poetry Panel – Why do you write it? Why do you read it? Where do we find it?
• New and Good – Recommendations for new writers for us to read and new places to find good stories.
• Picking an e-Book  –  If you can’t pick it up and look at the cover and blurbs, and thumb through it, what tempts you to purchase e-Books?
• E-book Readers – Discuss the various pros and cons of e-Book readers. Can the panel come to any consensus on why to get one and what to get?
• The SF Year in Review – It’s getting towards the end of the year; let’s take a look at what has been going on in the genre.  What were the best books so far?  Stories?  Magazines? What deserves your Hugo/Nebula/Tiptree/etc. nomination?  What won’t be nominated and deserves to be, and why won’t it make it?
• Very Short Fiction –  What skills or styles are needed to write ‘flash fiction’? How do you keep it so short and still tell the story? What kinds of stories lend themselves to this length?
• Comfort Food for the Mind – What books/stories do you read that just make you feel good? When the chips are down and you want to crawl into a comforting nest, what books do you take along with you and why? What makes them so comforting?

…and many many more.

Come join me and a few close friends at this Year’s Capclave!

Links/Resources

• Capclave 2011 October 14-16 : http://www.capclave.org/capclave/capclave11/