This evening I will be flitting off to Boston for Readercon, an annual gathering of science fiction writers and readers (I am one of the latter). Mathematician Rudy Rucker is one of the guests of honour this year. His White Light gets a great big thumbs-up: it's the only novel I know of that makes any use of the Banach-Tarski Paradox. (Basically, under standard ZFC set theory, it's possible to take a sphere in three-dimensional space, disassemble it into some really weird subsets, and reassemble the subsets into two identical copies of the original sphere.) James Morrow will be there; he's a sort of satirist, who doesn't like God. I don't blame him. Samuel R. Delaney will be there; there's an outside chance I might be able to ask him to explain Dhalgren. The Nielsen Haydens, editors for Tor Books and bloggers extraordinaire, will also be there. And Michael Swanwick, and Gene Wolfe, too, author of more amazing novels than I could shake a decently-sized stick at. Perhaps I should ask Wolfe about the possible religious significance of Severian, protagonist of The Book of the New Sun. There are schedules here and here. Panels I'm particularly looking forward to: Wolfe and Swanwick on Catholicism and science fiction; Graham Sleight on portrayals of superhuman intelligence; a panel by Rucker and Wolfe called 'Offbeat!'; 'Psychology, Myth, and Fantasy' sounds nice; and I'm torn between one on homosexual readings of Tolkien, and one on other dimensions involving Rucker.

Hopefully between now and then, I'll figure out exactly what to say to famous people...