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.
  

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.