Readercon 33 Report
Readercon was just as awesome as I remembered it being. So many smart people to talk to and make friends with, so many friends to see, and panels to opine upon. And I had the joy of introducing a friend to Readercon. It was a sheer and utter delight.
Unfortunately, I had a series of experiences with one individual that made it only 99% as awesome as it could have been.
Thursday evening, I was on the “Hugo Exclusions” panel with a gentleman by the name of Mark Painter. He wasn’t someone I’d heard of and we hadn’t discussed the panel in advance. Since there were only two of us, my assumption was that it was going to be a conversation between equals. I was wrong.
He kept speaking over me and did not want to accept that I might have just a little bit of experience with the Hugo Awards from both the inside and the outside. At one point he held up a chart showing the numbers cliff and I asked him which report that was from, the Jason Sanford/Chris Barkley one or the Camestros Felapton/Heather Rose Jones one–he interrupted me partially through my question, as I was saying Heather Rose’s name. He never did say which report it was from; I have looked at both and it appears that he made his own chart based on the numbers from the Felapton/Jones report. Which he just could have said but he chose not to. I did note that his chart omitted a couple of years, I believe 2021 and 2022–for dramatic effect, maybe? The chart is not online and I do not have a copy of it.
It was an incredibly frustrating panel for me because as I said before, I was treating it as a conversation and it only dawned on me several days after the fact that Painter believed himself to be both the expert and moderator of the panel and there was an unspoken expectation that I would know my place.
I felt vaguely uncomfortable in his presence, but it wasn’t until Meet the Pros(e) that I started to feel slimy. Readercon has changed the format of Meet the Pros(e) to a kind of musical chairs speed dating arrangement which I found a lot more fun than the previous format. The first two tables were great and a lot of fun. The third table included Mark Painter. Again: this was completely random.
Initially I thought that this would be a better chance to get to know him. He introduced himself as a podcaster about the history of the 20th century and explained that this was his first Readercon. As I turned to speak to the gentleman on my left, one of the other participants asked Painter if he’d heard of Hope Lepore, and while I did not hear the response, I trust the person who did hear it. Painter’s quiet response to the question was essentially, “I never heard of that bitch.” I did see what happened next: he abruptly got up and left the table.
The participant who heard what Painter said told the rest of the table and the general response was that it was gross and unwelcome, which was good. However, I started to feel slimy at this point. I spoke with the programming chair immediately afterwards to let him know, even though I did not feel like I was in a position to report as I had not actually heard the offensive dismissal of a well-known female historian as “that bitch.”
Then I went to my room and told my roommate about it and then had a small panic attack in the bathroom because he was also on the “Romantasy” panel the next day. I had to take a Xanax to get to sleep–which is not unusual for me these days–but I don’t normally take one right before bed because some less than mediocre white man has been awful and made me feel slimy.
I spoke to the moderator of the “Paranormal Romance, Romantasy, or ‘Just’ Fantasy?” panel briefly before to let her know that Painter was rude and made me feel slimy and I did not want to sit next to him, so I got to sit between C.S.E. Cooney and Cecilia Tan, both of whom are awesome. At the beginning of the panel, Painter mentioned that he’d published some short fiction and was being mentored by a romance writer. He did not sound very enthusiastic. Throughout the course of the panel, it became clear that he didn’t know anything about romance and the long history of publisher appropriation of terms that originated in fandom. When asked the name of his mentor, none of us on the panel could place her–but he may have been using her wallet name and not her writing one.
This made me curious. It turns out that in addition to the two panels and Meet the Pros(e), he was on another two panels, “What Separates Adult and YA SFF?” and “Iconic Characters and Works in the Public Domain.” I didn’t attend these panels, so can’t speak to his behavior.
But it got me thinking. How does someone with this bio get on to programming at their first Readercon?
Mark Painter has worked as an electrical engineer and has practiced law in the field of disability rights. He served in elected office for 17 years, culminating in a stint in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
After retiring from politics, he returned to his first love, writing fantasy and science fiction, and sometimes nonfiction. His short fantasy fiction has appeared in varios (sic) magazines and anthologies. He also produces and hosts The History of the Twentieth Century podcast, which has been downloaded more than three million times.
I looked him up on Wikipedia and learned that he was a one-term state rep, serving from 2013 to 2015, which coincides with the beginning of his writing career, as documented on his original blog, The Sorceror’s Apprentice. His post about the Anglo-Saxons made me cry in Nicola Griffith, for what that’s worth.
Some friends and I started digging. We first found his website at markpainter.us and it hasn’t been updated in two years, but it does have a post about his attendance at Chicon in 2022–where he was on four panels and moderated two, despite it being his first Worldcon–I was on panels at my first Worldcon, but I was a Hugo finalist and a known quantity (i.e., I am awesome on panels). He is an associate member of SFWA, but does not participate in their forums. He has perhaps been an attendee at Philcon, which I have not attended in at least a decade for reasons. He hasn’t attended Balticon or Capclave, the two local-ish conventions I go to regularly. Maybe he mostly goes to Midwest cons or Arisia and Boskone in Boston. It is a mystery.
And what about his published fiction? There’s a free story on his site, “The Secret Life of Matthew Smythe,” self-published in 2016 and it is not good and I cannot recommend that anyone read it, as it features the phrase “nubile blonde.” We were able to find a 99-cent ebook version of “The Boy Who Didn’t Know How to Recognize a King,” which I purchased and read. The story was okay, it didn’t do anything really original and was based on a similar Khmer folktale, “The King and the Poor Boy.” (you have to scroll down a bit to get to the story), but with magic and a more angry sorceror-king. It was fine, but nothing earth-shattering. It was, as it says on the box, a “traditional fantasy,” whatever that is.
The biography in the ebook said he’d been published by Weird Tales, so off to ISFDB I went. I looked at all the issues of Weird Tales since 2019 and couldn’t find anything by Painter, but his page on ISFDB showed another short story, “The Gilded Sting,” published in Artifice & Craft anthology. The anthology is available as an ebook, but I’m not willing to pay $6.99 to see how good the story is. My expectation would be that it’s a perfectly okay story but nothing special. It does seem to be based on Cambodian culture, per a public post on his Patreon.
His podcast, The History of the 20th Century, seems to be his main endeavor. He has covered a variety of topics, including Cambodia, but right now the primary focus of the podcast is World War 2.
Anyhow. Mark Painter has an extremely thin publishing history, seems to be a little bit of a sexist, and I wish I hadn’t had to deal with him.
The end.
Postscript
Just two more things.
One: Feel Cayman needs to learn to keep all parts of his body to himself unless there is enthusiastic consent from the other party. Minding the age gap would also be useful.
Two: Georg, no. Just get one of your assistants to fill out the form. That’s why you have assistants.