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Category Archives: Industry News

Tucson Hard-Science SF Group – Upcoming Streaming Events

UPCOMING EVENTS

TUCSON HARD-SCIENCE SF GROUP

Streamed at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHUlsmR9M8Nqco76JyZnU4w 

July 2

Tosi Abegbija–“Internet of Things and Beyond”

Tosi is an amazing Prof. of electrical engineering at the Univ. of Arizona. He is back by popular demand. Plot material for SF is found repeatedly in what Tosi brings to our meetings.

Aug. 6 

Ben Kuipers–
Ben is a Prof. of Electrical Engineering at Univ. of Michigan. A longtime reader of SF. He investigates robotic knowledge, including knowledge of space, dynamical change, objects, and actions. He is currently investigating ethics as a foundational domain of knowledge for robots and other AIs that may act as members of human society.

Sep. 3

No meeting—ChiCon in session World Con in Chicago, IL

Oct. 1

David Gunkel and Ben Kuipers—“Can and Should ‘Bots have personhood, rights, and responsibilities?”
Dr. Gunkel is an Asst. Prof. Media Studies, M. Illinois Univ., so he comes to this through the lens of legal personhood, philosophical issues, and the now vexing questions that autonomous Internet of Things poses.

Nov. 5

Shane Larsen—“Astrobiology and You” (working title)
Teaches Astronomy at Northwestern University

Dec. 3

Urvashi Kuhad—“Four Indian Women SF Writers” 

She teaches in English Dept. of Univ. of Delhi.

 

Jan.  7

Mike Jansen—Dutch SF writer. Topic TBA. 

 

Feb. 4

Jack Dann—“On Working in Cultural Intersections and Markets” 

Much-awarded SF writer, Jack Dann works and lives in Australia, these days.

 

Mar. 4th

Christina Becher—“Traveling Plants in German SF Literature”

Christina is in German Lit Studies and is finishing her Ph.D. at Cologne Univ.

 

April 1

TBA

 

May 6

Sandi Petroshius—“Virtual Views of the RBEM” by Sandi, Dir. of the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum in Waukegan, IL. Not a “Great Man” Museum but something to help us learn how Ray drew upon his creative and imaginative potential.

This content comes from Dr. Gloria Lee McMillan (gmcmilla@arizona.edu) of the Tucson Hard-Science SF Group: https://m.facebook.com/HardScience-SF-Writers-Readers-Artists-Zoom-Group-1538157323143466/

Announcing Fix’s Second Annual Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction Contest

 


No fee, $8,700 prizes and publication from Fix, Grist’s solutions lab

Fix opens submissions for Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest

 

Submissions are now being accepted for Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, the annual climate fiction contest from Fix, Grist’s solutions lab. There is no fee to enter. Submit your short story by May 5, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

 

Imagine 2200 seeks original short stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words that envision the next 180 years of clean, green, and just futures. Judges include Hugo Award-winning writer Arkady Martine, esteemed editor and author Sheree Reneé Thomas, and professor Grace L. Dillon, who coined the term “Indigenous futurism.” Imagine 2200 draws inspiration from Afrofuturism, as well as Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, disabled, feminist, and queer futures, and the genres of hopepunk and solarpunk.

 

While we’re looking for hopeful stories, we also don’t expect you to be overly optimistic or naive. One hundred and eighty years of equitable climate progress will require hard work, struggle, and adaptation, and we invite you to show those as well.

 

In addition, we’re especially interested in cultural authenticity (a deep sense of place, customs, cuisine, and more), rich characters with intersecting identities, and stories that challenge the status quo in which wealth and power are built on extraction, oppression, and violence.

 

The top three winners will be awarded $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000 respectively, and nine finalists will receive a $300 honorarium. Those 12 authors will be published in an immersive digital collection this fall. Conjure your wildest dreams for society — all the justice, resilience, and abundance you can imagine — and put those dreams on paper.

 

There’s no fee to enter, so if you’re ready to get writing, you can find our submissions portal here. If you’d like to get in touch, you can reach us at imaginefiction@grist.org.

 

About Grist

 

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Our goal is to use the power of storytelling to illuminate the way toward a better world, inspire millions of people to walk that path with us, and show that the time for action is now.

 

Fix, Grist’s solutions lab, amplifies bold, equitable ideas for our climate future, and the people working towards them, in an effort to shift the climate narrative toward possibility. Through creative storytelling, network-building, and events, Fix explores the paths to a clean, green, just future, and brings together a growing community of climate visionaries — we call them Fixers — who are leading the way to a planet that works for everyone.

Call for Reviewers for Lovecraft Country

Studies in the Fantastic, a journal produced by the University of Tampa Press, seeks potential manuscript reviewers for submitted journal articles. While we are in need of reviewers for each issue, we have a pressing need for several reviewers for our upcoming Special Issue pertaining to the HBO series Lovecraft Country. Anyone who has seen the entirety of the series and has scholarly grounding in relevant fields would be a welcome addition to our review team. If you are interested in reviewing for this issue, please send a message to Fantastic@UT.edu. In your email, please include your general areas of expertise and any review experience that you may have so that articles can be carefully paired with the scholars who will best engage the content.

~Amanda Firestone, Reviews Editor, Studies in the Fantastic

Fantasy/Animation Research Network, Call for Contributors

Following the recent publication of Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge, 2018), we are pleased to announce the arrival of the Fantasy/Animation Research Network that pursues further the relationship between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. We are hoping that the network will open out a critical conversation on the study of the rich legacy and complexity of animated fantasy media, in whatever form this might take, and provide a space for discussion and debate among like-minded academics, practitioners, special interest groups and fans of fantasy and/or animation. This will, we hope, lead to the building of a much-needed scholarly community that will continue, develop and complicate some of the ideas put forward in the anthology. The website has recently gone live, so visit https://www.fantasy-animation.org/ to read all our news/events and collection of blog posts, as well as listening to our associated Fantasy/Animation podcast.

We are also delighted to open out a call for contributors to write short pieces or posts for the website. These blog posts can take several forms, but we anticipate starting off with 500-1000 word written blog posts that might come together as either:

– a short editorial (movie analysis/critical reflection on an idea or concept)
– event/conference reports
– film reviews
– book reviews

Potential methodological/critical approaches within individual contributions are varied, and our concern is not necessarily how animation operates as fantasy or how fantasy operates through animation, but rather how both ideas can be productively considered in dialogue with one another. This methodology allows fantasy and animation to function as a dialectic that critically examines a relationship that has, to date, been assumed, pre-supposed or obfuscated within both popular and critical discourse.

If potential contributors have ideas for blogs, or want to suggest other possible formats for content (interviews/Q&As, pieces to camera, video essays), then please do send them over and let us know the type of post under which it fits, as well as 3-4 keywords that relate to your post. We would welcome any ideas submitted either to us directly (christopher.Holliday@kcl.ac.uk and asergeant@bournemouth.ac.uk) or through the ‘Contact Us’ Tab on the network’s website.

Best wishes, and many thanks,

Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant

Peter Watts Symposium

Forthcoming symposium on the fiction of Peter Watts to be held in November at the University of Toronto. All are welcome!

Click here: Watts symposium flyer

Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman at the University of Glasgow

Fantasy at Glasgow is proud to welcome
ELLEN KUSHNER AND DELIA SHERMAN
to the University of Glasgow this November.

Ellen is the author of Swordspoint. She won the World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards for her novel Thomas the Rhymer, and the Locus Award for The Privilege of the Sword. For 14 years she was host of the radio programme Sound and Spirit. Delia won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for her novel The Porcelain Dove and the Prometheus and Andre Norton Awards for The Freedom Maze. Ellen and Delia are co-founders of the Mannerpunk school of fantasy and the Interstitial Arts Foundation.

They will be talking to Meg MacDonald and Rob Maslen, 17 November, at 4.15 pm, in the Sir Charles Wilson Building, Seminar Room 101A and B.

ALL WELCOME!!!

Please reserve your free place here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fantasy-at-glasgow-welcomes-ellen-kushner-and-delia-sherman-tickets-29217037947

EVENT CO-FUNDED BY THE CHANCELLOR’S FUND AND THE SCHOOL OF CRITICAL STUDIES

NB: THIS CONVERSATION WILL BE FOLLOWED BY A SWORDSPOINT EVENT AT WATERSTONE’S ARGYLE STREET

https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-ellen-kushner-and-delia-sherman/glasgow-argyle-street

2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Symposium: A Celebration of Ursula K. Le Guin

2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Symposium: A Celebration of Ursula K. Le Guin
Symposium on feminist SF to highlight Oregon’s own Grand Master

Welcoming scholars, luminaries, and fans of speculative fiction to Eugene, the University of Oregon will host a two-day symposium dedicated to the life and work of Ursula K. Le Guin on December 2-3, 2016.

Tentative keynote speakers: Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Sue De Connick, and Brian Attebery.

Co-sponsors include the UO Libraries and Oregon Humanities Center.

For more information, please visit: https://library.uoregon.edu/tiptree-symposium-2016.

The 4th Volume of Alambique

The 4th Volume of Alambique is now available. Alambique (ISSN 2167-6577) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to scholarly research and criticism in the fields of science fiction and fantasy originally composed in Spanish or Portuguese.

Please visit http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/alambique/ to access the journal.

SFWA to Admit Game Writers

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will admit game writers as of August 1, 2016. “Games in any medium may be used for qualification so long as the game has a narrative element, is in English, and in the science fiction, fantasy, horror or related genres.” Read the full announcement, including income qualifications, here.

David G. Hartwell: 1941-2016

David G. Hartwell and Gary K. WolfeDavid G. Hartwell, who would have turned 75 this summer, attended his first ICFA in Boca Raton in 1984—only the fifth conference—and immediately earned his place in conference folklore when he and Justin Leiber (Fritz’s son; they were both guests that year) conspired to bum-rush the then-president Marshall Tymn into the hotel pool one evening.  There were good reasons for this, from David’s point of view, but there were also good reasons for David to continue attending the conference almost yearly, except for ICFA’s brief exile to Texas.  And the more he attended, the more such stories gathered around him.  He really did sing “Teen Angel” to a riverboat full of tourists, including Doris Lessing, and he really was along on what became known as the “Heart of Darkness” water taxi cruise with Philip Jose Farmer and his wife and a few of the rest of us.  And, of course, he really did own all those clothes. As he once explained to me, “You need to have good taste to do bad taste well.”

In 1995, Bob Collins and I invited him to join the conference board and take over management of the book room, which had been something of a haphazard affair before then.  For many conference members, this was their first encounter with David, whose connections in New York publishing and particularly with Tor have for years provided ICFA with many of the free books that showed up at luncheons and banquets.  The book room itself grew into one of the main attractions of the conference.

David believed in ICFA; he wrote that it had become an “umbrella for the marginalized study of the fantastic, and that it was worth supporting.”  This, I think, helps explain the apparent paradox of the two Davids.

And that paradox is this:  for many ICFA attendees, including some well-known scholars, David was the colorfully-dressed, urbane, and very knowledgeable guy who ran the book room, who had done some of those darkly outrageous things in the early history of the conference, and who was Peter and Elizabeth’s dad.

But for most of the writers attending and at least a few of us academics–the list of names is too long to even begin here–ICFA had somehow snagged one of the great legendary editors in the history of science fiction as a regular attendee and as, of all things, the book room manager.  He did this for more than twenty years, and the influence he had in bringing more and more distinguished writers to the conference is inestimable.

Academics and literary historians tend to focus on writers, for obvious reasons: they’re easier to research.  In the science fiction field, an occasional editor like Hugo Gernsback or John W. Campbell, Jr. or Michael Moorcock might show up on the radar, but anthologists and novel editors are far less visible.  But those who know the real history of science fiction (and fantasy, and horror) know that David Hartwell is a name that belongs in that pantheon.  He not only edited writers as diverse as Gene Wolfe, Gregory Benford, Michael Bishop, Robert Sawyer, and L.E.Modesitt, but he won three Hugo and two World Fantasy Awards, and one of the latter was for The Dark Descent, an anthology which did as much to define modern horror fiction as any other single book.  His equally massive science fiction anthologies, sometimes co-edited with Kathryn Cramer, more recently with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, made coherent and pointed arguments for the kind of science fiction David believed in.  He edited nine years of Best Fantasy annuals and eighteen years of Best Science Fiction annuals.  He co-founded one of the important critical magazines in the field, The New York Review of Science Fiction. He wrote a still-useful popular introduction to science fiction, Age of Wonders.

He shaped the field as much as anyone else has in the last half-century.

And he was the guy in the book room.  A couple of years ago, David told me with some glee that one of the more prominent ICFA scholars, who had read a lot of theory but only recently begun researching the details of the literary history of science fiction, had come up to him and said, with some surprise, “It seems like you’re a pretty important guy.”  She was even more surprised to learn he had a doctorate in medieval literature.

He didn’t seem to mind much, being the guy in the book room, but we all should have asked him more questions than we did. I knew David for over thirty years, and didn’t always agree with his ideas about science fiction or fantasy, but I never failed to learn something new from him just about every time we talked. We’ve lost a lot of the history of SF, as well as a congenial guy with unaccountable passions for indescribable wardrobes and teen death songs. And we have lost a huge and largely unsung part of what has helped knit ICFA together over all these years.

–Gary K. Wolfe