I know, I know. Readercon’s more than a week behind me in the rear-view mirror, and I’m only just now getting around to posting my final video from the event. It violates Edelman’s Rule of Convention Reporting, which requires that all write-ups, photos, and videos be shared as contemporaneously as possible, to increase the schadenfreude of those who couldn’t make it.
But you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I’m hopeful this last bit of video will allow you to do so.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to capture this 10:00 a.m. panel, since Saturday night’s dinner (which I promise I’ll tell you about next) didn’t have me getting to sleep until around 2:30 a.m. But I forced myself awake because, hey, Readercon only comes around once a year, and it would be shame to surrender a panel to fatigue. So here’s “Books That Deserve to Remain Unspoiled,” featuring Jonathan Crowe, Gavin Grant, Gayle Surrette, Kate Nepveu, and Graham Sleight. Their mandate was—
In a 2013 review of Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed, Stephen King stated, “While I consider the Internet-fueled concern with ‘spoilers’ rather infantile, the true secrets of well-made fiction deserve to be kept.” How does spoiler-acquired knowledge change our reading of fiction? Are some books more “deserving” of going unspoiled than others? If so, what criteria do we apply to determine those works?
And here’s the panel itself!
After an hour of schmoozing and signing more books (for the first time ever, an equal number of copies of my zombie and science fiction collections were sold this weekend; zombie usually win), I attended David Shaw and B. Diane Martin’s presentation on the science of ice cream, which included—samples!
Three of the samples—dark chocolate, french toast, and coconut chocolate chip—had been prepared in advance, but blood orange was made on the spot with liquid nitrogen.
After more schmoozing—much of it done in the dealers room with David Kyle and Ian Randal Strock, which as you can see above, didn’t go well—my Readercon was over.
Or not.
Because we then hitched a ride with Faye Ringel to Providence so we could have dinner with her, Paul Di Filippo (below), Deb Newton, Mike Blake, and Don and Sheila D’Ammassa before our flight home. It’s been my traditional post-Readercon denouement for at least a decade.
Now let’s start counting down to July 2015 so we can do it all over again!