Conventional wisdom in publishing today (numbers being awfully hard to argue with) is that the day of hard sf is gone, the readers now desiring mostly fantasy and vampire fiction. However, if the hard sf panels at Readercon on the last day of the convention are anything to judge by, there's still a lively and dauntingly well-informed readership for real science fiction. Carl Frederick's lecture on what's new in physics was packed, and then the two hard sf panels I was privileged to be part of were also well attended and vibrant with interest, questions, and a lot of answers. I confess, some of it goes over my head. But I loved it just the same.Especially fun was the listing of hard sciences we don't always see in sf--although there were some entertaining examples of things like mineralogy and climatology. My own offering, of course, was musicology, and there seems to be lots of science to support that addition. I was on these panels, so I couldn't take notes for the Bloglet, which is kind of a shame. The information flowed so fast I could barely keep up. I came home fired up to write what I love, and not worry too much about where the audience is!Readercon, in short, is added to the Don't Miss list for science fiction conventions, along with Potlatch, World Fantasy, and Armadillocon.
No comments:
Post a Comment