24-hour bookstore people

The release of Robin Sloan's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, with its glow-in-the-dark book jacket, kicks off with a 24-hour launch party tonight at New York's Center for Fiction, featuring a long series of interviews, conversations, and guests.

Nicola Twilley and I will be some of the many people participating; we'll be talking to Robin about, in his words, "vast storage spaces" for everything from books and national gold reserves to strategic food stockpiles and nuclear waste, riffing off of the coded book-spine library patterns and semi-autonomous warehouse memory systems found in Robin's book. That particular conversation takes place tonight at midnight.

But tune in to the whole 24-hour interview marathon, as it will be livestreamed, or stop by in person to meet Robin and check it all out. Other speakers include Steven Johnson, Jace Clayton, Hilary Mason, Alexis Madrigal, Jenna Wortham, Jason Kottke, and many more. See the Center for Fiction's website for more details.