Dynamic Subspace

SFRA 2008 – Friday July 16, 2008

Another day, another panel!  I got up early and met Melissa downstairs in the lobby to go in search of Lucky Charms and other breakfast food.  Cereal secured, we searched for Starbucks on Hwy 59 to no avail, so I settled for a McDonalds sausage biscuit and coffee.

Back at the Holidome, I went to Lisa Yaszek, Doug Davis, and Patrick Sharp’s panel, “Writing Science Fiction Outside the Genre.”

Doug began the panel with his presentation alternately titled, “God as Science Fiction, Science Fiction as God:  Christian Fabulation for American Technoculture,” or “The Sacred and the Profane in the Short Fiction of Ted Chiang and Flannery O’Connor.”  He started his paper by referencing this painting called “The Dallas Rapture, which shows how “the machine stops” following the rapture.  This observation leads into his argument that proofs for God are impossible except in SF, and he listed a number of these types of stories including Bradbury’s “The Man,” Asimov’s “Reason,” and Jack McDevitt’s “Gus” (more examples here).  From SF, Doug maps out four types of SF proofs of God:  “1) God as computational artifact, computational universe, 2) God as engineer, divine watchmaker, 3) God as dead, apocalyptic future history, and 4) God as sense of wonder, divine world building.”  He focuses on the fourth proof in the translation between the sacred and profane in the works of Ted Chiang, such as “Hell is the Absense of God” (God is part of the physics of the universe–no more faith) and “Seventy-Two Letters” (golem engineering), and Flanner O’Conner, such as “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (the Misfit is read as a time traveler) and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” (people who fall in love with their cars).  This was an entertaining and insightful presentation, and it earned “Jason’s Favorite Paper at SFRA 2008 Award!”

Patrick followed Doug with his essay, “Questing for a Genre:  Silko’s Ceremony and the Boundaries of SF.”  This was another interesting paper, because I had read Ceremony before in Rebecca Merren’s “Introduction to Science, Technology, and Culture” course back in 1997 or thereabouts.  When I first saw the paper’s title, I thought Patrick might talk about the mestizo/hybrid Tayo.  However, he went off in an unexpected, but wonderful direction.  He historically situated the novel in regard to the beginning of the atomic age, not with Hiroshima, but the “Uranium Boom” on American Indian lands beginning in 1947.  He juxtaposed the sacred (American Indians and their culture) in opposition to science and SF.  He develops a new way of thinking about Ceremony in regards to the centrality of apocalyptic narrative focused around the pit mine and the hole in Laguna Pueblo.  Silko transposes current problems (economic bust and loss of Indian heritage) into the past in Ceremony.  Her text is responding to some of the same historical events and images of other apocalypse texts (e.g., Alas, Babylon or A Canticle for Leibowitz), and this is best understood in its relationship to SF, but not as a SF text.  Great stuff!

Lisa rounded out the panel with a presentation titled, “Science, Fiction, and American Public Policy, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the NSF.”  She reported on her interdisciplinary work on representations and manifestations of nanotechnology as part of a NSF funded project that she’s working on with other members of the Georgia Tech community including scientists and political scientists.  However, she builds the case that, “Science fiction studies teaches us to understand futurity as it has been represented in literary and cultural history.  And it can teach us to understand what’s at stake in the futures that are being built for us in American nanotech public policy today.”  Using her science fiction studies background, she uncovers three types of readings of nanotech public policy reports:  1) the postsingularity future, 2) technocratic utopia or cyberpunk dystopia?, and 3) mundane SF.  Essentially, there’s a “sciencefictionality of public policy” that public policy pundits don’t realize is there.  They are feeding into and off of the real world science and engineering going into nanotechnology as well as developing their own imaginative extrapolations of how, why, and who the nanotech winners and losers will be.  Soon, an online timeline or “xtimeline” will be made available to showcase the development of nanotech public policy as uncovered by Lisa’s group. During the Q&A, audience members interested in nanotech hijacked the remainder of the session.  Clearly, nanotech means a lot to people who are, perhaps, more aware of it than the public at large.

The next Friday morning panel that I attended was on “Science, Technology, and Science Fiction.”  The panel had a full deck with Arthur B. Evans, Rebecca Lynn Testerman, Andy Sawyer, and Thomas Michaud.

Arthur presented a paper titled, “Life on Mars:  From Science to Science Fiction to Fantasy.”  This was an interesting presentation that mapped the development of humanity’s Mars imagination from early astronomical observations to their extrapolation in the works of SF and fantasy.

Rebecca’s paper titled, “Can You Hear Me Now?  Cellular Phones from Fiction to Fact” was a genealogy of wireless telephony in SF.

Andy explored representations of powered flight in the 19th and early 20th century in his paper, “‘The Nations’ Airy Navies’:  Foretellings and Forebodings of the Utopia in the Air.”  It was interesting how there was in the early development of powered flight a link between the idea of “utopia in the air” and the chivalric real world pilots.  There was something transformation about flight itself for the future.  Some SF examples he covered include Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, H.G. Wells’ When the Sleeper Awakes and The War in the Air, and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man.  However, some earlier works revealed an almost mundaneness about balloon and air travel such as in Jane Loudon’s The Mummy!

The final presenter was Thomas, who is finishing his PhD at the Sorbonne, and he presented an essay titled, “The Use of Science Fiction at R&D Centers.”  He talked to people at Orange, Électricité de France, and the European Space Agency, as well as futurologists and SF writers to find out if and to what extent SF played a part in French research and development.  He found that “technofictions” play a big part in R&D and market capital by “motivating investors” and providing ideas deserving “exploration for potential” real world development.  Also, SF leads to “new markets” and the possible “future of an innovation.”  Thomas’ presentation was a great complement to Lisa’s earlier NSF presentation, but he also took his work in a new direction that’s summed up by one slide of his Powerpoint presentation.  Without easily rebuilding the slide, I want to reproduce it thus:

ideology of SF:  how to use SF to improve and stimulate capitalism

^

SF–schizophrenic imaginary used for innovation

^

study of collective unconscious of consumers | study of trends | SF is schizoculture

^

SF as a laboratory of the future

Great stuff!  Following the panel, Mack and Sue Hassler invited Thomas and I to join them for lunch.  Unfortunately, there was a long wait on our meals, but it gave us more time to talk.  After Mack ran off to his panel, Thomas and I rapped about the upcoming Olympics and differences in French and American politics.  I decided to skip the next panel and catch up on my sleep.

After a short nap, Melissa called me, and we decided to explore Lawrence before the evening’s award ceremony.  I picked up a copy of Kick Ass #1 from Astrokitty Comics and a pristine copy of Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder from the Dusty Bookshelf.  Melissa and I avoided the heat for awhile in Starbucks, and then it was back to the Holidome to prepare for the awards ceremony.  I wrote my Mary Kay Bray Award acceptance comments, went out to Taco Johns for dinner, and then rushed back to don my tightly fitting suit–have I really gained that much weight since I was in Liverpool?  And then the big show began…