So I'm at the Meet the Pros(e) party holding a sheet of stickers that all read "Ugh, do we have to have gravity?" and I meet a guy named R. Scott Bakker, who has a new book out called Neuropath about, here's a surprise, an evil scientist. Which pushes the hottest of my hot buttons. And he mentions the work of some researcher who measured the length of time betweeen when you've made a decision and when you're aware you've made a decision. Which reminds me of a story by Daryl Gregory, ("Second Person, Present Tense," one of my all time favorites) and Daryl happens to be standing just a few feet away. Scott's position, which he defended to the last man, is that study of the human brain should just stop now before we figure out there is no such thing as free will, and there are some things man was not meant to know. So I asked, "What's the downside to finding out we have no free will?" And then I remembered a story by Ted Chiang about a device that lights up just before you press a button, and it destroys human society. And there's Ted Chiang just a few feet away, so we drag him into the conversation, and then Michael Swanwick walks by and jumps in and ideas are flying around like monkeys in Oz, and that's Readercon for you in a nutshell.

The reading went pretty well, as you can judge by this picture of the audience.



I count six people, unless the thing on the right is a disembodied arm. By the way, one of those blobs is Todd Wheeler and another is David Louis Edleman, both residents of my blogroll. I know for a fact there were at least two more off camera, not including myself. Which makes it my most successful reading yet. Whoo-hoo!

Most pertinent thing I learned at Readercon: the value of a nation's currency is a measure of how confident the citizens of other countries are that the nation can maintain a stable business environment.

Most adoring fan: Leah Bobet. "I just loved the shit out of your book." Someone please tell me she says that to everyone. My ego was never designed to handle that kind of praise.

Funniest thing I heard anyone say: something about Dave Edelman chopping off Rober Staneck's legs. I don't know exactly what it was, and I might have said it myself, but I laughed so hard I just about hurt myself. You had to be there.

(By the way, I'm forgoing links because my MacBook doesn't feel like doing them tonight. The web is too full of links anyway. I mean, what is it with the links all the time? Can't you just stay with one page for five minutes? Just put down the mouse and relax for a change. Sheesh.)