Friday, October 17

• 5:00 pm — LibraryThing (Montrose)

Saturday, October 18

• 12:00 pm — Reading from MultiReal (Twinbrook)
• 2:00 pm — Signing
• 10:00 pm — Best & Worst Ideas (Montrose)

Sunday, October 19

• 1:00 pm — Election 2208: Politics and Economics of the Future (Plaza II)
• 2:00 pm — Sequelitis (Montrose)

• Reading Tolkien in the Early Years (Wednesday, 11:30 am)
• Why Didn’t SF Predict the Internet? (Thursday, 10 am)
• Reading from Infoquake and MultiReal (Thursday, 1 pm)
• Rising Stars Reception (Thursday, 2:30pm – 5 pm)
  
• Emerging Technologies: The Top Ten Jobs of 2050 Don’t Exist Today (Friday, 4 pm)
• Pyr Books Presentation (Friday, 5:30 pm)
  
• Hugo Reception and Ceremony (Friday, 5:30 pm – 8 pm)
• Signing (Sunday, 11:30 am)

In general, if you’re looking to find me, check the hotel bars. Not because I intend to drink like a fish, but because that’s where everyone hangs out at these cons. (And that doesn’t mean that I don’t intend to drink like a fish.)

You can always email me as well. I’ll have my BlackBerry with me, and if my past experience with T-Mobile service is any guideline, there will be at least a 4′x4′ space in the Denver area that gets reception sufficient for me to pick up an email.

Here’s my schedule, for those who will be in Burlington, Massachusetts and want to catch up with me:

Friday, 2:30 PM: How I Wrote Infoquake and MultiReal.
A 30-minute talk by yours truly. I haven’t entirely figured out what I’m going to say, but at this point I’m planning to talk about how I wrote Infoquake and MultiReal.

Friday, 4:00 PM: I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe: The Influence of Blade Runner.
David Louis Edelman, Glenn Grant, Matthew Kressel (L), Geoff Ryman, Diane Weinstein.
This year saw the twenty-fifth anniversary release of the definitive version of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a film universally recognized as one of the two or three greatest achievements of sf cinema. The film’s groundbreaking (and insanely detailed) visual design has influenced everything from runway fashions to building architecture, and some would argue that the current “default” dystopian science fiction vision comes right out of the film’s dark LA streets. How pervasive has Blade Runner’s influence been on sf (both written and cinematic)? Has the film altered the way we look at ourselves and our future? Is it possible that its dark landscapes have discouraged us from envisioning a better tomorrow?

Friday, 7:00 PM: Economics as the S in SF.
David Louis Edelman, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Alexander Jablokov, Ernest Lilley (L), Brian Francis Slattery.
SF stories concerned with economics have predominantly been either satires of consumerism or arguments for libertarianism. But there are also sf stories that investigate economic principles in the way that traditional sf explores the physical sciences. Damon Knight’s A For Anything examines the impact of a new technology on our current economic system; Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom imagines an entire new system; and John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider does some of both. We’ll discuss these and other classics of the subgenre. Is today’s generation of writers more economically aware than their predecessors, and has there been an uptick in these stories as a result?

Friday, 8:00 PM: Kaffeeklatsch.

Sunday, 2:30 PM: Reading.
I’ll be reading from Infoquake and/or MultiReal and/or Hustler magazine. Yeah, it’s the last timeslot of the con. No, I don’t expect a heck of a lot of people to show up.

First up is my panel schedule for the PhilCon Conference in Philadelphia next weekend. I believe I’ll be doing a reading too, but those haven’t been scheduled yet so I’m not positive. Regardless, I’ll be hanging around most of the weekend attending panels, schmoozing in the halls, and handing out free promotional Infoquake CDs. Feel free to grab me in the hall and say hello.

Here’s the schedule. If there are any late-breaking changes — and you know these things happen — I’ll make sure to post them here and on the Events page on the Infoquake website.

• Friday, November 17:
  Writing as a Hobby Versus Writing for a Living (8:00 PM)
• Saturday, November 18:
  Navigating Amazon (10:00 AM)
  Has Science Fiction Swung to the Right? (11:00 AM)
  Teleportation Is More Than a Way of Getting Somewhere (1:00 PM)
  Pointy Headed Intellectual Fiction for the Pretentious Elite (3:00 PM)
• Sunday, November 19:
  Fifty Ways to Leave Your Reader… (2:00 PM)
  The Long Tradition of the Anti-Hero in Science Fiction (3:00 PM)

While I’m on the subject of appearances, I should also mention that I’ve accepted an invitation by the marvelous Ellen Datlow to read at the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Series in New York City in March. More details to come.

Finally, the resplendent Ian McDonald, author of River of Gods and the forthcoming Brasyl, and nominee for more SF awards than I’ve got eyelashes, had some very nice words to say about Infoquake in an interview with Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist:

Q: PYR is earning loads of acclaim and new readers in the US. How do you feel about the eclectic and expansive output, other than RIVER OF GODS, of this new publisher? Do you have any favorites from their catalog?

David Louis Edelman’s Infoquake. So fresh and good I shamelessly stole an idea from it: the whole premise of a future corporate thriller. I remember Lou Anders pitching this one at the Pyr panel at Worldcon in Glasgow and thinking, of course! It’s so bloody obvious! That’s a genius idea. It sent me back to an old novel by James Clavell called ‘Noble House’ about corporate intrigue in an old Anglo-Chinese trading company (it got made into a pretty dire TV miniseries), so that’s in the mix at the back of my head. Buy Infoquake, read it (I think The Steg already has). Give him the Philip K Dick award.

What can one do when faced with such kind words but blush?

(FYI… I did read Clavell’s Noble House, long ago — in addition to a few others in his Asian saga — but too many years have passed for me to remember many of the details of the book. Perhaps they soaked into my subconscious somehow. Anybody read any of Clavell’s works lately? Do they hold up?)