C2E2: The Future is Now

C2E2 2019 had some more prominent literary guests & paneling than usual, which is awesome, and I was able to attend a couple. Brief notes below; errors mine!

The Future is Now brought together SF/F authors to discuss various questions on how they create future worlds. Panelists:

• Alison Wilgus: writer & comic artist; recently published Chronin.
• Sue Burke: Chicago-based translator and SF author, recently of Semiosis.
• Cory Doctorow: SF writer, journalist, and activist, recently published Radicalized.
• Mary Robinette Kowal: Chicago-based SF writer, audiobook narrator, and puppeteer, recently published The Fated Sky & The Calculating Stars.
• Mirah Bolender: SFF author, recently of City of Broken Magic.
• Didn't catch the chair's name, alas.

Chair: Do you have literary heroes or events in the past that particularly affect how you create future worlds?
MRK: Yes! Cyclical nature of fashion, political issues. The issues faced by women astronauts in her fiction (set in an alternate past) are drawn from examples today.
AW: Has been working on her project so long it's like collaborating with a 12-years younger version of herself. Much more aware of queer aspects of the book, and how we've made lots of advances in queer rights but also they're under attack in a way they weren't.
CD: Super-skeptical of the whole enterprise of prediction. Tries with fiction not to project forward but to reflect back on what we're going through right now. Focused on human rights & digital technologies. When we create a terrible technology, we need to beta test it on people who can't complain, so it starts with prisoners/refugees/students before moving up to other sectors of society.

From Dreaming to Running: Putting the Android on Screen

Last week I got to attend a very nice panel from DePaul and One Book One Chicago: three scholars discussing aspects of adaptation, with Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Scott's Blade Runner as the focus.

Paul Booth (who runs the wonderful DePaul Pop Culture Conference, among other virtues) chaired the panel. These were really engaging, fast-moving talks, with lots of visual aids, so notes below are just sketches and highlights.

The Handmaid's Tale: Three Literary Perspectives

This week I got to attend another excellent talk hosted by One Book One Northwestern: a panel discussion on the history and ongoing importance of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The panelists:

• Linda Bubon: co-founder of Women & Children First, the fantastic feminism-forward bookshop in Andersonville
• Juan Martinez: fiction writer, literature & writing professor at Northwestern
• Kasey Evans: critic, English professor at Northwestern

A very nice, insightful talk. Brief notes below:

Teresa Woodruff @ Northwestern: "History, Context, and Relevance of Reproductive Dystopias"

More One Book, One Northwestern programming, inspired by Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale! Last week, I got to catch reproductive scientist Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D., exploring some contemporary themes and issues through the lens of Atwood's novel. Very brief notes below:

• Talks about being inspired by the hatching-chickens exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry, later inventing tools to measure egg thickness as part of a science fair project.
• Warns against assuming that reproductive technology tends towards dystopia.
• Woodruff was one of the discoverers of the "zinc spark" that occurs at egg fertilization, an important new tool for evaluating viability in IVF.
• Woodruff's talk framed around 3 selections from Handmaid:
• The established order can vanish overnight.
• Atwood insisted that technology in the book had to be currently available. (Part of why Atwood considered herself "not a science fiction writer", at least for a while there.)
  Quote from the novel's coda, with men mocking an educated women.
  

Nishi Shawl on Octavia Butler talk

photo by Caren Corley

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to catch Nisi Shawl giving a talk on Octavia E. Butler at the Woodson Library: a crossover event with One Book One Chicago and Black History Month.

I've been fortunate enough to catch Nisi's talks a couple times, at Wiscon and ConFusion, and it was great to hear her thoughts on Butler. Brief notes below, mistakes all mine:

• Shawl references her interview with Butler in Strange Matings by Aqueduct Press. She first met Butler in 1999.
• Butler believed in living her dreams, how does that translate? Butler's now-famous "I shall be a best-selling writer" and other notes to self. Shawl also talks about Butler's writing advice from "Furor Scribendi" in Bloodchild and Other Stories.
• Butler was the first SF author to get the MacArthur grant, used it to buy a house so she could write without worrying about rent. Butler took many "jobs that didn't make her smile" to support herself as a writer. Shawl talks about the importance Butler placed on persistence.

Maria Dhavana Headley talk @ North Western

author photo by Beowulf Sheenan,

no really that's his name, I checked

This last Wednesday, I was lucky enough to catch Maria Dhavana Headley in a talk at North Western with Dr. Barbara Newman. Part of One Book One Northwestern (they're doing Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), Headley and Newman talked about The Mere Wife, Headley's recent novel. A modern, feminist take on Beowulf, The Mere Wife was one of my favorite reads of last year. Dream-like, nightmare-like, lyrical: highly recommended.

After some introductory remarks by Juan Martinez, they jumped into a discussion of The Mere Wife, Beowulf, and Headley's forthcoming translation. Brief notes below! Possible spoilers! Good ideas theirs, errors mine:

• Barbara Newman: Gives a brief summary of Beowulf. Talks about the play on "mere" in Headley's novel, asks about what led her to write this.
• Maria Dhavana Headley: First ideas for this novel came from reading, and not being impressed with, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. Being from rural Idaho, suburban/commuter vision of America didn't click, and unimpressed with vision of women characters as wholly subservient to male interests. Had encountered Grendel's mother before encountering Beowulf--in a kid's bestiary kind of thing. When she did read Beowulf, intrigued by women's role as peaceweavers. I thought about all the times in women's lives that we're asked to "do it nicely", and thought about women supporting Trump in the 2016 election, signing up to support their own oppression. "Mere" wife as both "water wife" of Grendel's mother, and "little wife" of "unimportant" women, wanted to write about them both as important.

ConFusion Recap: The Future of Portal Fantasy

Many classic children’s books, including Through The Looking Glass, are portal fantasy stories. What do new portal fantasies need to bring to the table to stand out in a crowded field? How do reinterpretations like Every Heart A Doorway fit into the portal fantasy landscape? Do you pretty much have to be Neil Gaiman to get away with playing this trope straight, or is there room for new voices? And where do we want to see portal fantasies take us next?

Navah Wolfe

Lee Harris

Sarah Gibbons

Mari Ness

Ness: Just finishing a re-read of all the Oz books, so this is fresh in her mind.

Wolfe: Kaye's Tapestry books as an excellent example. What do portal fantasies [henceforth PF] have to do to stand out in a crowded field?

Ness: Would like to see more adults in PF.

Gibbons: Every Heart a Doorway and The Magicians as coming out of adult frustration with the world.

Harris: Not sure we need something completely new; might be enough if PF just addresses the world we live in now. New readers might not want/be able to cope with the cultural baggage of established PF.

Wolfe: Wants more of the after-effects of PF, “the grown up Pevinses”.

Harris: The idea of “Portal PTSD”.

Gibbons: This genre's been around forever, it's still alive, doesn't need revivified. But there are all these things we're frustrated with that could be addressed or improved on.

Wolfe: Imagination, but also return.

Audience comment: Thomas Covenant series.

Ness: Interested in how to keep double life of adults in two worlds.

Wolfe: Portal trope is kind of Doctor-Who-companion-like.

Audience: References actual Who episode with Sarah Jean [sic. Apologies, not a Whovian.]

Wolfe: McGuire's Wayward books explore different kinds of portals.

Harris: They're about a help-group for PF, not a PF itself.

Wolfe: Stories from the perspective of parents of a Peter-Pan-ish story; weighing that childish desire to travel to wondrous places with parental awareness of the dangers therein. Smith's Mom and Dad on the Homefront, Janni Lee Simner stories.

Gibbons: Valente's Fairy series “modern yet traditional”, what sets them apart is agency. PF subgenre has unusual percentage of female protagonists—Alice, Wendy—often very passive.

Wolfe: Pushback to PF comes when you don't really know why you're doing it. “Fanfic of my childhood self-insert” gets quickly tiresome. PF that works knows why it's PF. Brings up Kay's Tapestry again as good example.

Harris: Valente's books work because of the agency of the protagonist.

Ness: The female agency of Baum's Oz books is often overlooked, particularly cites some collective action moments.

Gibbons: On L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time: Maggie's not fucking around. Also cites Funke's Inkheart series. “The pure observer travelogues get boring;” talks about “Alice vs. Dorothy” models in terms of active adventurers.

Gibbons: Most Portal stories are also Quest fantasies, and a lot of times their problems come from "partner tropes" that go along with that—especially the dreaded chosen one overusage.

Harris: What tropes would we like to see?

Gibbons: Anti-Chosen-One, more struggle, more things earned instead of given to the protagonists.

Ness: Would like to see an update on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, lots to look at in how our perspective on future/historical mindsets and gullibility work.

Gibbons: Would like to see explorations of how that story could fail.

Audience: What about more stories looking at future travelers visiting the present?

Ness: Don't do it the way Supergirl's doing it right now.

Gibbons: Brings up Mendlesohn's taxonomy from Rhetorics of Fantasy to help delineate what counts as a portal fantasy. Parallel worlds can definitely count.

Wolfe: TV show Fringe and its ability to reinvent itself several times.

Harris: Issue of "cheaply different" parallel world, don't really fire up the sense of wondrous or strange.

Ness: In screen productions, these are often production cost issues, uses the Arrow-verses "alternate realities" as example.

Audience question on what kinds of things the panelists look for in PF.

Gibbons: Discussing the need for balance between "normal" and "portal" worlds. PF has to bring something back, there must be some kind of transformative or weirding force on the other side of the portal.

Harris: As long as you're writing it well, it works.

Wolfe: Don't write to the market, write what you love. There was that overload of dystopias recently; within that there were some great works clearly written with love, but they got swamped by people trying to write to a perceived demand.

Audience question: beyond bad writing and "chosen one" tropes, what are the big turn-offs in a PF slush pile?

Harris: A PF slush pile is the turnoff. Moderation in all things.

Wolfe: Warns of the crutch where we focus all attention on the fantastic, not the mundane. The mundane world needs built in fiction, too. Brings up example of Parks & Recreation: "they built the shit out of Pawnee". There's also a tendency in PF to make protagonists bland everyman characters, which doesn't work. Give them a reason to want to go, a reason to not want to come back.

Harris: Agrees, character needs to drive the story. All good literature is about people. Brings up example of King's Misery, where nothing really happens, but you really buy the characters.

Audience question about balancing worldbuilding in PF.

Gibbons: It's weird there, but it's also home to the people there, you need to communicate both.

Wolfe: Give them their blue milk!

Harris: References Doctor Who again: sometimes adventure is its own reward. Not enough work explores joy.

Wolfe/Gibbons: Discuss a modern millennial PF where characters stay on the fantasy side for a while just to avoid high rent.

Harris: Also, don't forget that PF works in science fiction just as much as fantasy, for instance Stargate and Sapphire and Steel.

Favorite non-nook portal fantasies?

Ness: Can say her least favorite is definitely Emerald City.

Gibbons: Thinks everything she likes was a book first.

Wolfe: Jupiter Rising, proceeds to defend this.

Harris: Monsters, Inc.

And that's it! Great panel.

Annalee Newitz @ Women & Children First

pic by CNSC member
Paul Callan (Flickr)

Back in September, Annalee Newitz did a reading at Women & Children First from her newly-launched novel, Autonomous. Brief notes below!

Newitz was joined by partner, fellow io9-cofounder, and All the Birds in the Sky author Charlie Jane Anders for the discussion. After reading  some introductory sections from Autonomous, which follows a scientist-turned-pharmacy-pirate and the robot/human pair of agents sent to stop her, Newitz took questions from the audience:

Taking a few questions about the process of writing the novel, and writing fiction instead of nonfiction:

• Autonomous started while both Newitz & Anders were still working on io9. She started working on it kind of as if it were nonfic, interviewed scientists in relevant fields. The novel is set in a definite near -future (2144), and relies on a fairly well-defined central device, the fictional concentration drug "Zacuity", so Newitz turned to a few different specialists to try to both flesh out the ideas and also avoid "smack your own face" fact errors. She also talked about her own disenchantment with the academic research world informing the novel.

DePaulPotter notes- Defending Tom Riddle

Last Saturday, I got to attend the illustrious DePaul Pop Culture Conference, this year focused on Harry Potter. I took some notes on a few sessions.

The academic keynote was delivered by Dr. Christopher Bell: "Defending Tom Riddle: The Failure of Albus Dumbledore".

We start out with a discussion of why Voldemort is such a satisfying villain, but also start thinking about how he got that way.

• In order to have a really good villain, they have to believe they're the hero.
• The wizarding world is intensely racist/classist.
• "And then, at the age of 11, he's allowed to carry a deadly weapon with him at all times."

DePaulPotter notes- The Occult Potter

 Last Saturday, I got to attend the illustrious DePaul Pop Culture Conference, this year focused on Harry Potter. I took some notes on a few sessions.

The Occult Potter: Materiality in Harry Potter
Jason Winslade
Megan Zimmerman
Nathanael Bassett

Winslade starts with some thoughts on his work on Potter & the occult:

DePaulPotter notes- The Banality of Evil

Last Saturday, I got to attend the illustrious DePaul Pop Culture Conference, this year focused on Harry Potter. I took some notes on a few sessions.

The Banality of Evil: Collaborators and Appeasement in Harry Potter
Michi Trota- Chicago Nerds | Uncanny Magazine | Raks Geek
Matt Peters- Chicago Nerds | Since Last We Spoke | Digital Dumpster Diving
Jennifer Cross- Just Write Chicago
Kate Lansky- Writer

I have to admit that I was primed for some Arendt/Potter crossover in this panel based on the title. Wound up not getting to that, but check out The Banality of Evil from Arendt's coverage of the Eichmann trial if you're interested--contains some cutting insights on how evil functions (less out of villainy, more out of pettiness) in ways that closely mirror the Potterverse and the present-day issues the panelists were addressing.

Jeff VanderMeer Volumes Talk

Last week, I got to catch Jeff VanderMeer speak again, this time hosted by Volumes Books at the illustrious Chicago Athletic Association.

This was part of the official Borne tour, with a few readings from the novel and then a quick Q&A with Chicago author Jac Jemc.

For some chunkier notes, I'd suggest checking out my scribbles from VanderMeer's talk at DePaul. However, still much of note at this event, so I wanted to record a few things:

Jeff VanderMeer @ DePaul

photo by Kyle Cassidy

This last Wednesday, I was able to catch Jeff VanderMeer's talk, "Area X: Environmental Storytelling in the Age of Trump and the Anthropocene". Hosted by DePaul's Institute for Nature and Culture, his lecture meditated on the material and experiences that went into the Southern Reach trilogy, as well as some interesting post-publication developments. Most fascinating, for me at least, was his exploration of how weird art, philosophy, ecology, and politics intertwine—what we can learn about the world, about storytelling, and about resistance in this deeply weird time we're going through. Lots of discussion of animals and thinking/writing about the non-human.

This talk was delightful and thought-provoking. Annihilation has quickly joined my inner circle of most-important books (most re-read, most recommended, most pondered-upon), and learning some of the nature experiences & philosophical/ecological thought that went into that was really cool—speculative fiction, philosophy, and nature are so central for me, this lecture had me in the clouds.

The Southern Reach has become a touchstone for most of my Chicago book-clubs (it seems Think Galactic's discussion is the only one I have recorded on Positron); his forthcoming novel Borne sounds great, and there's two more chances to hear him talk:

• Monday 4/24 in Dekalb, hosted by Anderson's Books
• Wednesday 4/26 at the Chicago Athletic Association, hosted by Volumes

Brief, incomplete, and possibly-disjointed notes from the lecture below:

Recap: Science, Science Fiction, & Imagining Nature's Future

Currier & Ives print

Yesterday, I got to catch a joint lecture—part of the SAIC's series on the anthropocene. Dr. Chuck Cannon, botanist & director of the Center for Tree Science at the Morton Arboretum, shared some views on conservation, ecosystem thinking, and some science fictional ideas on bioengineering. Writer, artist, and Sector 2337 co-director Caroline Picard then discussed some ideas about our shifting relation to the anthropocene, and shared a brief graphic novel.

Brief notes:

Worldcon Recaps- The Rest!

Whew! Last Worldcon set of recaps, for miscellaneous panels I didn't take extensive notes on. More below the jump:

Worldcon Recaps- Academic Panels

Midamericon II teamed up with the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, from the University of Kansas, for an academic track. I really wish the academic program hadn't been separated in the paper program--it was in a different section at the back--as I think we might otherwise have had a lot better attendance. Still, I really appreciate cons with at least some academic presence, and we had plenty of interested non-academic folks at most panels. I went to a good number of these talks, heard some great stuff; really brief overviews below.

---

Joyful Disruption: Narratology and the SF/F Franchise

MCU is the the supertextiest

Dr. Heather Urbanski

• Very cool lecture!
• She's looking at Hollywood franchises, big multi-media things like the Marvel/DC or Star Wars universes.
• Starts out citing some examples of anti-superhero rhetoric, lamentations over lack of originality, etc.
• She's looking at the question of "Why franchises?" from a narrative perspective, using theorists like Mieke Bal, as well as some stuff on memory work & theory.
• One of her core ideas is that the difference between text, story, and fabula is more disrupted, independent in "supertexts", because so much of any given moment relies on something elsewhere, on the viewer making those connections.
• Cites timing of Marvel Universe releases to create reinforcing effects in the audience--timing references in films and television series so that they call out to each other in ways attentive fans will notice.
• Talks a bit about memory theory, including ideas from Barry Mazur, Julia Creet, Jan Assman, & Frances Yates--the idea of cultural memory, its crystallization and cultivation. Uses moments from "The Force Awakens" to illustrate.
• Uses "Stranger Things" as example of "nostalgic bricolage".

Great talk! There's an audience question that makes me ponder, though--referencing the beginning of a superhero film that doesn't make much sense if you don't know the canon, asks: "How do do you decide what's interesting intertextuality, versus just plain bad writing?" Urbanski responds that she very deliberately avoids aesthetics; she's interested in fannish joy and how this stuff works, not telling people what they like sucks.

Worldcon Recaps- Space & Science Panels

There were a host of science-related panels at Worldcon, many focusing on spaceflight. Some notes from the few I attended. Misattributions and errors possible.

Earth. We're stuck here!

James Patrick Kelly, Jim Davidson, Henry Spencer, John Strickland, Jr, Alison Wilgus

• Opening question: what's the biggest obstacle to a future in space? Turns out to be a divisive question, without about half the panel saying "the government", weirdly--blaming lack of funding, and restrictions on private ventures.
• Wilgus has a very different take. Money, sure, but to be honest: mass. It's very expensive to even practice space stuff, much less get good at it and do it at scale, because it's just so hard to get mass into even low orbit.
• Kelly says the biggest barrier to a future in space is us: the human body is not designed to go into space. Refers to radiation primarily, as well as known and unknown problems with long exposure to micro/zero-gravity.

Worldcon Recap- Is Cyberpunk Still a Thing?

Cory Doctorow, Pat Cadigan, Matt Jacobson, James Patrick Kelly, Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
(Highlights from my notes, errors and misattributions possible.)

• Dangerously close to an all-Pat panel, we note.
• Doctorow: What is Cyperpunk, and what is a thing?
• Cadigan: That's Miss Thing to you!
• Kelly: Things are reasons to have panels.
• Nielsen Hayden: Cyberpunk as a course correction, SF noticing most SF is slightly in the past. Let's make it now, or slightly in the future.
• Doctorow asks the relation between cyberpunk authors and actual computer knowledge (famous example of Gibson writing Neuromancer on a manual typewriter). Panelists respond that there was a great variation on how much people knew the tech, including a good deal of disappointment with how 80s computer tech actually looked, felt, sounded.
• Cadigan: Cyberpunks were the first generation to grow up completely with mass media.

WC Recap: Does SF Still Affect the Way We Think about the Future?

Does SF Still Affect the Way We Think about the Future?
Adam-Troy Castro, Michael Swanwick, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Cynthia Ward

• Castro: depending on the age of fans, they've lived through SF and come out the other side.
• Is SF still shaping the future we want to see, as opposed to dystopias we want to avoid, or highlighting negative situations we're already caught up in.
• Refrain that we would be return to: where's my flying car? We return to in the sense that: flying cars are impractical, why do we focus futuristic hopes around them?
• Nielsen Hayden makes a great point about SF being not just about whizzy tech. It was and is important for a much larger group of people than scientists, engineers: activists, artists.

Worldcon!

Hello everyone! Apologies for the delay in Positron updates, as the last month or two were consumed by Worldcon-related business for me. Now, finally catching my breath back in Chicago, I give you: vague observations and hasty thoughts.

This was my first Worldcon, and I had a great time! For those of you unfamiliar: The World Science Fiction Convention is among the oldest and certainly the most influential of the cons; it moves to a different city each year. Crucially, the Worldcon members are the voting body that issues the Hugo Awards, generally the most noted of the SF honors.

Last Wiscon 40 thoughts

It's hard to believe Wiscon's already two weeks in the past. It's such an experience-rich, though-provoking event. Combined with hectic work-weeks before and after, Wiscon does strange things to my perception of time.

I already posted some recaps of the Book Reviewers and Hive Mind panels, which were a blast. I don't have time to do in-depth recaps of the other three days of that glorious event, but I wanted to share a couple highlights and notes.

Friday evening, Think Galactic hosted a delightful party. TG was formed by Chicago folks inspired by Wiscon, and a good number of the group goes every year--we usually read at least one of the guests of honors' and Tiptree Winners' works.

So this year, we wanted to host a party, and it was a treat! Our theme was "Sci-Fi Saved My Life", and we encouraged people to bring meaningful quotes from SFF works, or to share positive stories about their engagement with speculative literature and culture.

Rousing success! We covered part of the wall in quotes, we had good beer on tap, the chocolate fountain was a hit, and the room decorations and lighting made for a great space. Also, we got to introduce many Wiscon-goers to Malort (Letherbee's Besk, actually), the infamous Chicago liqueur.

For the rest of the weekend, I bounced between academic panels, Guest of Honor events, and a few panels I was speaking on.

Wiscon Recap- Hive Mind!

I had this song going in my head throughout the panel. Give it a listen, it's only 7 seconds. Bless you, TMBG.

The panel: Group, Individual, Hive Mind. The panelists:

• Annalee Newitz (@Annaleen): Founder of io9, tech culture editor at Ars Technica, writer, and contributor all over the place.
• Grá Linnaea (@gralinnaea): Weird fiction writer, editor for Shimmer Magazine.
• Benjamin Rosenbaum (@ben_rosenbaum): Writer of many great things.
• Isabel Schechter: active fan and essayist, Bible scholar.
• R. Elena Tabachnik: PhD evolutionary biologist and writer.

So this panel was a blast, and the room was packed! Super-brief notes, and then all the suggested works that I managed to scribble down:

Wiscon Recap- Book Reviewers

I'm back from Wiscon! Had an amazing weekend; this was my third year going, and the most rewarding. Will have some recaps coming, and then Positron business as usual will resume.

The first panel on my list was The Art of the Book Reviewer. Our panelists were:

• Michael Marc Levy: editor at Extrapolation, reviews SF for Publishers Weekly & New York Review of Science Fiction.
• Sarah Frost (@dovekie): has reviewed for Strange Horizons & is a serious Goodreads reviewer.
• Charles Payseur (@ClowderofTwo): reviews on his own site, Goodreads, and Nerds of a Feather.
• Brooke Wonders (@BrookeJWonders): Editor with North American Review and review contributor for Entropy and elsewhere.

 Very thoughtful panel. Some notes!

Windycon Panel notes- Species Creation

While at Windycon, I went to a pretty good panel on "Designing Species in SF &F". The panel included:

• Jonathan Sneed (astrogeologist/paleobiologist at University of Chicago; he had a nice post on Pluto on Ada Palmer's blog a little bit ago)
• Rachel Neumeier (fantasy/YA writer)
• Richard Garfinkle (SF/F writer)
• Katherine Wynter (fantasy writer)
• Susan Weiner (biologist at Roosevelt)

Pretty fun discussion, probably most interesting if you're looking for a good reading list full of non-humans. Notes below are mostly titles of works to check out and some comments:

Think Galactic Extra-Special Un-Book Meeting

This week we had a bonus Think Galactic meeting: not a book discussion, but just to hang out and discuss some possible group improvements. We met at Geek Bar, which we were delighted to learn is soon graduating from "Beta" to "Release" versions, and we were able to acquire the most conspiracy-worthy booth in the place.

I'd brought up the idea of the meeting last time, after discussions with some other members--basically wanting to see if we could build in some more socializing time somehow.

Success! Three main points being:

1. Pre-book club dinner, on a casual/drop-in/show-up basis. Location will be picked at the previous meeting and/or communicated out through Wordpress/Facebook/Goodreads/crude handbills.
2. Meetings will wrap up at 9:30pm, to allow us
3. To grab a post-meeting drink if we desire.

We're going to keep this stuff on the same night as club to make it easier for folks with busy schedules/long transit times. Also keep an eye out for the Think Galactic Hat, Sash, and Staff/Stick of Non-Hierarchical Non-Authority, signalling Our Presence.

We also talked about possibly bringing back the tradition of snacks at club, which predates me, but about which everyone got rather excited.

We discussed a number of local/less local cons that we go to or are interested in going to--Windycon, Gen Con, and ValorCon, and the DePaul one-day conferences they've been doing.  Also brought up Worldcon--in Kansas City, MO this year, and thus unusually-easy to get to. I'm planning on going and am hoping to meet up with "Traincon" (con folks who travel by train).

Think Galactic has a lot of resonance with Wiscon, having been inspired by it and with many of us attending--so we're planning to do a room party next time! And otherwise up our visibility slightly--we know that there must be Chicagoans attending Wiscon who aren't aware of Think Galactic, which is a tragedy!

Think GalactiCon came up again...I'd like to think that this is very, very slowly gathering momentum. We were all a bit dismayed by the idea of the work involved though, especially given that Think Galactic as is does a wonderful job of providing what we actually want: talking about books. Still. Hm.

Finally, two things about book club. Firstly, we discussed (without a firm resolution) occasionally having a club meet at a different location (perhaps North along the red line, perhaps something South or West) to make it easier for folks to get to a meeting--Chicago transit being oddly difficult along certain directions (particularly NE/SW diagonals).

Secondly, something we've been kicking around since reading Jo Walton's "Among Others"- an occasional "Megatext Book Club" that focuses on an author or a theme rather than one particular book. I'm pretty psyched about this, actually. Points:

• Won't replace or conflict with the usual Think Galactic book clubs.
• Probably to be held quarterly or less, at least to start.
• Each meeting will have at least one organizer/discussion leader to structure it.
• Will meet someplace centrally-accessible. Open Books and Harold Washington Library are our two main ideas right now.
• Will try to pull together new folks--from other existing book groups and beyond.

 Much excite! Look for a likely first run in February or March.

Very glad we had this discussion--Think Galactic in particular, and the Chicago SF scene more generally, have been one of the most positive things for me since moving here, and I'd really like to hang out more with these folks, do some more word-spreading (the whole point of Positron, really), and maybe set up some other activities.

Balkanization abounds! Follow this conversation on TG's site, Facebook, and Goodreads (and thanks to John for notes in that thread).

Ideas in Different Blood: Cognitive Diversity in SF/F

Two things about our world particularly stuck in their minds. One was the extraordinary degree to which problems of lifting and carrying things absorbed our energy. The other was the fact that we only had one kind of hnau: they thought this must have far-reaching effects in the narrowing of sympathies and even of thought.

'Your thought must be at the mercy of your blood,' said the old sorn. 'For you cannot compare it with thought that floats on different blood.'

-C.S. Lewis, "Out of the Silent Planet" (1938)

After considerable delay, I am very pleased to offer reading copies from "Ideas in Different Blood", the panel held at Wiscon 39:

"Silence and Bright Flashing Lights: A Brief Look at Irrationality in Earthsea and Valis" by John Lodder

"Right in Other Ways: Hierarchical vs. Radiant Intelligence Models" by Jake Casella

"Neurominorities in Science Fiction" by Jason M. Robertson

This panel was so much fun! I'm really glad that Wiscon is such a great environment for independent scholarship, and hoping to organize another panel next year.

Please note that these are presentation drafts and not necessarily final versions, and are the respective authors' intellectual property. If you'd like to use the work in any fashion, please contact Positron and we'll get you in touch with the authors.

Notes & Quotes from Neal Stephenson's Printer's Row Talk

Photo from the Printer's Row
Twitter feed.

This past weekend was my first time at the Printer's Row Lit Fest: a lovely affair downtown, lots of books & printed sundries, lots of authors, all kinda good stuff.

I was particularly excited to see Neal Stephenson; I've really dug a lot of his work and recently got a chance to read an advance copy of his new novel "Seveneves" through the good graces of City Lit Books (whose Weird & Wonderful club recently discussed Stephenson's "Snow Crash").

"Seveneves" is truly delightful, particularly for fans of Teh Hard Ess Eff: it opens with a huge bang, Earth basically doomed within a short timeframe, and humans rush to get a viable colony in space. That's the first 500 pages or so--then the narrative jumps five thousand years ahead to show how things are going. It's really gripping if you're into this kind of thing--high amounts of realism, long passages on bits of space tech & orbital maneuvers, lots of brutal/fatalistic/pragmatic bits. And ultimately pretty hopeful, with lots of pleasing weirdness and Stephenson's delightful style--sort of droll and gonzo in equal measures, with some eyeball-kicking metaphor mixed in.

Most of the questions from the audience and "conversation with"-ist Christopher Borrelli revolved around the new novel, with a few others. Just a couple paraphrased highlights:

Wiscon Highlights

Wiscon was two weeks ago already? Goodness The preparations for/attending of/recuperating from that fantastic event has thrown off my Positron updates. Apologies.

But what a wonderful conference! First off, thanks and congrats to Jason Robertson (Chi-SF) & John Lodder (Think Galactic), fellow presenters on the "Ideas in Different Blood: Cognitive Diversity in SF/F" panel that I originally proposed through this blog. The panel went really well, and we got a lot of great questions (over the course of the con, actually). We'll be posting versions of the talks here shortly.

Other things! I really enjoyed the panel programming this year, particularly how strong on science a lot of the ones I attended were--a number of practising scientist-panelists brought great real-world examples, explanations, and critiques to panels on gender, language, and climate change. I meant to grab more online handles, but see for instance concom member & climate scientist Jacquelyn Gill's blog (the Contemplative Mammoth) & twitter.

Climate change and environmental issues were a major theme throughout the Con, partly due to the influence of the guests of honor. I will keep my electronic eyes out for a transcript of Kim Stanley Robinson's speech--seriously inspiring stuff about the intersection of ecological action and social justice. Alaya Dawn Johnson's speech was pretty great, as well--seems to be a theme. Hoping both of those will be available online at some point.