READERCON 2023
By:
July 5, 2023
On July 14th, HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn will participate in a few panels at Readercon — an imaginative-literature convention focused on the written word held each July in the Boston area. See below for panel info. You can register for Readercon here.
Readercon 32 will be held from July 13-16, at the Boston Quincy Marriott in Quincy, Mass. Guests of honor: Jeff VanderMeer and Justina Ireland. This is the first time Readercon has taken place since 2019 — i.e., since before Covid. Everyone’s excited to reconvene…
Josh will participate in his capacity as founding editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series of reissued proto-sf stories and novels from c. 1900–1935. The MIT Press Bookstore will also be on hand, in Readercon 32’s booksellers’ section. They’ll have copies of all RADIUM AGE titles.
“Readercon is my favorite convention.” — Samuel R. Delany
All of Josh’s panels are on Friday the 14th:
11 am: HOW WE SHAPE AND RESHAPE OLDER WORKS. Josh is moderating a panel with Gary Wolfe, John Clute, Nadia Bulkin, and Pat Murphy.
There are many series and works that have left a large cultural impact, and revisiting these works can help us gain a deeper understanding of the story. What can be learned from works that have aged poorly? How do our choices of which ones to showcase and what elements to change in adaptions shape our view of older works? Our panelists will discuss older works’ influence on the literary landscape, the innovations they made, and how our perception of them has changed over the years.
1 pm: SF TREASURES OF THE RADIUM AGE. Josh and Annalee Newitz will discuss the sf genre’s emergent Radium Age era.
Join independent scholar Josh Glenn as he takes us on a journey through the exciting and often overlooked era of Radium Age science fiction. Glenn will bring a selection of carefully curated first and early edition SF novels from 1900–1935, which he will showcase and share with the audience. Along with science fiction author Annalee Newitz, Glenn will delve into the interesting world of Radium Age science fiction and explore its themes, tropes, and lasting impact on the genre.
4 pm: THE PYRITE AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION. Josh will moderate a panel with Gary Wolfe, Graham Sleight, Jeff Hecht, and Robert Killheffer.
The “golden age of science fiction” is arguably the genre’s lowest point: far less culturally relevant than in the days of Bellamy or Wells, extremely exclusionary in its time, economically and critically less successful than later science fiction. What earned it the gold medal title of eras? How are such post-hoc epithets awarded, and are they up for revision?
5 pm: AUTOGRAPHS. Josh will sign copies of Radium Age titles from the MIT Press.
RADIUM AGE SERIES UPDATES: 2022 | 2023 | 1Q2024. FULL SERIES INFO.
MORE RADIUM AGE SCI FI ON HILOBROW! RADIUM AGE SERIES from THE MIT PRESS: In-depth info on each book in the series; a sneak peek at what’s coming in the months ahead; the secret identity of the series’ advisory panel; and more. | RADIUM AGE: TIMELINE: Notes on proto-sf publications and related events from 1900–1935. | RADIUM AGE POETRY: Proto-sf and science-related poetry from 1900–1935. | RADIUM AGE 100: A list (now somewhat outdated) of Josh’s 100 favorite proto-sf novels from the genre’s emergent Radium Age | SISTERS OF THE RADIUM AGE: A resource compiled by Lisa Yaszek. HILOBOOKS INTROS: Matthew Battles vs. Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Matthew De Abaitua vs. Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Joshua Glenn vs. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | James Parker vs. H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Tom Hodgkinson vs. Edward Shanks’s The People of the Ruins | Erik Davis vs. William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | Astra Taylor vs. J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | Annalee Newitz vs. E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Gary Panter vs. Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Mark Kingwell vs. Muriel Jaeger’s The Man with Six Senses | Bruce Sterling vs. Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (Afterword) | Gordon Dahlquist vs. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (Afterword). IO9.COM ESSAYS: | RADIUM AGE SUPERMEN | RADIUM AGE ROBOTS | RADIUM AGE APOCALYPSES | RADIUM AGE TELEPATHS | RADIUM AGE ECO-CATASTROPHES | RADIUM AGE COVER ART | 1912: SF’S BEST YEAR EVER. ONGOING RESEARCH: THE HIGHBROW VIRUS | BATHYBIUS | WAR AND PEACE GAMES | BEGUM ROKEYA | TWILIGHT | THOUGHT FORMS. RADIUM AGE AUTHORS: | J.D. Beresford | Algernon Blackwood | Edgar Rice Burroughs | Karel Čapek | Buster Crabbe | August Derleth | Arthur Conan Doyle | Hugo Gernsback | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Cicely Hamilton | Hermann Hesse | William Hope Hodgson | Aldous Huxley | Inez Haynes Irwin | Alfred Jarry | Murray Leinster | Gustave Le Rouge | Gaston Leroux | David Lindsay | Jack London | H.P. Lovecraft | A. Merritt | Maureen O’Sullivan | Sax Rohmer | Paul Scheerbart | Upton Sinclair | Clark Ashton Smith | E.E. “Doc” Smith | Olaf Stapledon | John Taine | H.G. Wells | Jack Williamson | Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz | S. Fowler Wright | Philip Gordon Wylie | Yevgeny Zamyatin.