When you put together an event like a symposium or conference, you need a keynote speaker who can anchor it, pull together its various threads, and share their reputation to elevate the event for the benefit of the audience and participants. Mike Flynn, the author of Eifelheim and “The Forest of Time,” graciously agreed to be all that by closing out the Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium in 2019 that celebrated Astounding/Analog‘s 90th anniversary. He passed away at the end of September. Locus remembers him here, and his family started this thread of memories on Facebook. You can watch his touching keynote address below.
When I first read Warrick’s The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction, I thought to myself that I want to write a book like that. Her writing and thinking have been and continue to be a guide for me. The book project that I am currently working on is very much modeled on her work. When it is done, she will certainly be a part of it.
Photo of SFRA Executive Committee by Elizabeth Anne Hull from Locus, Sept 1985. Pictured second from left, Patricia Warrick was the immediate past president.
Two years earlier, Y and I had presented papers at the 2010 Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Conference in Carefree, Arizona on Avatar (2009). She approached the film through a critical postcolonial perspective and questioned the film’s white savior trope. I used Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden as a lens for exploring how the film was made–technology used to create an Edenic world (you can read my paper here).
We enjoyed watching the first Avatar film a few times in the theaters. It was an immersive experience. With Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), we saw it at home, which was a different experience. It was enjoyable but altogether different than the first time we had imaginatively been to Pandora. A lot of years had passed and the world had changed due to COVID.
My favorite Doctor Who is the Fourth Doctor, portrayed by Tom Baker, but the Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi Doctors aren’t too bad. Regardless of the era, the TARDIS is always bigger on the inside. Here’s some renditions of the TARDIS and recent Doctors and villians–LEGO 21304 Doctor Who and 71204 and 71238 Dimensions sets.
Taking a break from the 2012 Modern Languages Association Conference, Y and I went sightseeing in Seattle. One of our stops was the Experience Music Project/Museum of Science Fiction (now, the Museum of Pop Culture) to see the Battlestar Galactica and Avatar exhibits. In this post, I’ll share some photos from the BSG exhibit. I’ll share photos from the Avatar exhibit in a post next week.
The BSG exhibition was impressive to walk through. Much like the Star Wars Exhibition that I visited in London in 2007, and Star Wars and the Power of Costume Exhibition in New York City in 2016 (which reminds me that I need to post those photos), it was exciting to be next to the vehicles and see the costumes up-close.
