Dr. Jason W. Ellis' Blog on Science Fiction, Research, Pedagogy, Computers, and LEGO
Over at the Official Blog of the Western Literature Association, Karen Hellekson wrote a wonderful review and commentary of the Immigration and Science Fiction Panel that Y and I participated in at the Science Fiction Research Association meeting in Carefree, Arizona this past Summer. You can read her response to the panel here.
I wrote about the panel on dynamicsubspace.net here, and you can read my full coverage of the conference on this link gathering post here.
You may find links to all of my separate reports on SFRA 2010 below. Unfortunately, my reporting is limited to Saturday and Sunday, because Yufang and I were delayed in arriving on time (details here). If you blogged SFRA 2010, please email me or post a link to your blog in the comments.
SFRA 2010, Carefree, AZ or Bust!
SFRA 2010, Saturday, Avatar and Empire
SFRA 2010, Saturday, Roundtable on Immigration, Alienation, and Arizona SB 1070
SFRA 2010, More Wrap-Up Reporting Tomorrow
SFRA 2010, Saturday, SF and Colonialism Panel
SFRA 2010, Saturday, Awards Banquet
SFRA 2010, Saturday, Closing Reception
SFRA 2010, Sunday, Business Meeting
UPDATE: Jason and Yufang’s SFRA 2010 Photo Collection on Flickr is available here.
The last meeting of SFRA 2010 in Carefree, Arizona was the Sunday morning business meeting. Above, the Executive Committee from left to right: Mack Hassler, Treasurer, Lisa Yaszek, President, Ritch Calvin, Vice President, Patrick Sharp, Secretary, and Adam Frisch, Immediate Past President.
At the meeting, the main points of discussion involved conferences, membership, and joining the Consortium of Professional and Academic Associations.
For conferences, Craig Jacobsen reported that the Carefree conference was on target financially, and we had 88 regular attendees and a handful of additional banquet tickets. The only complaint came from Ed Carmien: “The resort is too nice, and I don’t want to leave!”
Pawel Frelik reported on the 2011 conference in Lublin, Poland. Since the key to low rates for flights is early purchases, he said that there would be rolling acceptances for proposals. Also, the official conference website should be up by the end of July. Adam Frisch added that he is working on a post conference tour of Poland and possibly some of Europe for interested members.
Steve Berman said that the 2012 in Detroit conference is proceeding well. They have a location staked out, and they are figuring out the space requirements at the hotel.
Patrick Sharp reported that the Los Angeles in 2013 conference is going to be tentatively held in downtown LA, and it is being coordinated by Patrick, Kate Sullivan, and Sharon Sharp.
And, Alfredo Suppia proposed Brazil for 2014–World Cup tickets anyone?
The membership discussion concerned work for the organization and the SFRA Review. It was decided by vote that to have a paper accepted for a conference you must be a member of SFRA (this puts us in line with the majority of other professional academic organizations), and if you work for the SFRA you must be a member.
And finally, Craig proposed that we join the Consortium of Professional and Academic Associations. With the SFRA EC’s approval, Craig added the SFRA as a signatory to their statement against Arizona’s SB 1070 and HB 2281. This next step would make a part of the consortium, and we would be able to opt in to future statements. It was agreed that Craig would create an anonymous poll announced in the next SFRA Review.
Most SFRAers had already left or left after the meeting. That evening, Yufang and I met up with Lisa Yaszek, Doug Davis, their son Case, Ritch Calvin, and Mariposa Guillermo for dinner at the Red Horse Saloon:
Afterwards, Yufang and I walked around in the evening looking for jack rabbits among the cacti:
Then, we had to say sayonara to Carefree for our 4:40am shuttle pickup to take us back to the Phoenix airport. It was too short for us, but I hope that everyone had as good a time as we did (sans migraines) in Carefree. Craig did a terrific job with organizing and executing this year’s conference!
See y’all in Lublin, Poland for SFRA 2011!
SFRA members wrapped up the conference with hobnobbing and merrymaking at the closing reception.
The kitchen was the hot spot of intense conversations.
Art Evans and Jari Kakela share a conversation.
Craig Jacobsen, SFRA 2010 in Carefree, Arizona Host, and Pawel Frelik, SFRA 2011 in Lublin, Poland Host.
All that remained for SFRA 2010 was the Sunday morning business meeting.
On Saturday evening as the temperature descended from 114 degrees, everyone converged on the Carefree Opera House pictured above for the prebanquet reception and awards banquet.
The reception inside the western themed (and air conditioned) opera house was a pleasant beginning to the evening. SFRA members mingled and chatted over drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
Then, we all sat down for the banquet and awards presentation conducted by SFRA President Lisa Yaszek.
Dave Mead began the award presentations with the Graduate Student Paper Award (our last–hereafter known as the Best Student Paper Award), which Alfredo Suppia accepted on behalf of Andrew Ferguson, who is currently studying at the University of Liverpool.
Patrick Sharp awarded the Mary Kay Bray Award for best review or essay in the SFRA Review to Ritch Calvin (next year, I will be the chair of this committee) for his very informative article, “Mundane SF 101.”
Doug Davis presented the Clareson Award for Distinguished Service to Dave Mead (I was on Dave’s panel at my first SFRA conference in 2006–I quickly learned how friendly and helpful a guy he is).
Craig Jacobsen awarded the Pioneer Award to Allison de Fren for her Science Fiction Studies essay, “The Anatomical Gaze in Tomorrow’s Eve.” de Fren’s acceptance speech demonstrated how serendipity and hard work can lead to professional success.
And finally, Lisa Yaszek presented Eric Rabkin with this year’s Pilgrim Award, which honors lifetime contributions to the fields of science fiction and fantasy studies. Professor Rabkin’s acceptance speech demonstrated his gift as a writer and public speaker. He told us the story about his father’s desire to give his son a better chance in life through making a distinction between pulp science fiction and ‘classic science fiction.’ After surviving Robinson Crusoe, his father asked him at age 12 why he was reading something else: ‘that crap,’ meaning the hand-me-down SF pulps that his father had already read. Eric’s father told him that he should read classic science fiction, such as A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan (1946). It was at this point that he began to formulate the differences between literature and science fiction, but also the distinctions between different kinds of science fiction. Unfortunately, I cannot replicate Professor Rabkin’s moving speech here, but this standing ovation should help indicate how well it was received and how well respected Professor Rabkin is by scholars:
And here is a picture of the award winners in attendance at SFRA 2010. From left to right: Dave Mead, Eric Rabkin, Ritch Calvin, and Allison de Fren.
After the banquet, we walked out into a now very comfortable desert night to seek out the Conference Headquarters villa for the closing reception.
My last official duty of SFRA 2010 was to moderate the SF and Colonialism panel. Gerry Canavan couldn’t make it to the conference, so the panel was made up of by friend Jason Embry (pictured above in center) and first time SFRAer Joshua Ramsey (pictured above on right). With fewer panelists and hearing the panelists talk about having to cut a lot of material, I told them to take a little longer with each of their papers. I made sure to prompt the audience about this as well so no one would send thought daggers or tap watches for long presentations.
Jason Embry presented another Dan Simmons related essay–a part of a larger project that he is developing on Simmons’ oeuvre–titled “Going Native: Stepping Out of Our Comfort Zones in Dam Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos.” His presentation was an interesting analysis of the Ousters as a welcoming group of humanity who have progressed through change and adaptation (not having read Simmons, they sound like the Lobsters of Bruce Sterling’s Shaper/Mechanist stories).
Joshua Ramsey, part of the large contingent from University of Texas, Pan American, presented the paper titled, “They Were Men: H. P. Lovecraft on the Frontier of Slave Race Narratives.” He presented an opposing view to what Jason talked about in Simmon’s novels. Instead of technology leading to progress and development of humanity, Ramsey argued that in Lovecraft and Caprica that technological advancement leads to decadence and decline.
Following the presentation, there was a delightful discussion of the presentations. Andrew Hageman, Ritch Calvin, and others contributed to the discussion.
With the panel successfully moderated, there was time enough for rest before going to the awards banquet.
I had hoped to finish my writeup of the conference today, but the remainder will have to wait until tomorrow. It is now time for sleep.
I will also post a link to the photos that I took of the conference on Flickr in full resolution glory and send it out to the email list, too.
The second session for Yufang and I was the roundtable on Immigration, Alienation, and Arizona SB 1070. We volunteered to be a part of the roundtable, because we had strong opinions about Arizona’s recent immigration and anti-ethnic studies legislations. Also as the SFRA Publicity Director, I had drafted the organization’s statement, in consultation and approval by the Executive Committee, in response to SB 1070 and our holding the conference in Arizona. You can read that statement on the official website here.
The Immigration Roundtable was initiated by SFRA President Lisa Yaszek and her husband Doug Davis as a way to discuss the effects of SB 1070, think about it as a science fictional text, and to talk about other works in SF that deal with immigration. The roundtable was moderated by Doug and included in order of initial statements: Patrick Sharp, Rob Latham, me, Yufang, and Mack Hassler.
Patrick expanded on his earlier work on the ‘Yellow Peril’ and Science Fiction and the irrational fear of immigration as a form of warfare. Rob talked about the root influences of alien and alienation from immigration law into science fiction, and the problems with 1) the ambiguity of immigration law (seen also in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) and 2) bad faith is essential to the enforcement of the law (thinking of the V-K test in Do Androids). I talked about how the law was like the drug that Alys Buckman takes in Dick’s Flow My Tears the Policeman Said that also alters Jason Taverner’s reality–the drug someone else takes alters his reality. Yufang spoke about her own experiences as an immigrant to the United States and the unwelcoming aspects of what she calls the ‘shadow of racism’. Mack took a different stance in thinking about irony and tone in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers, borders and citizenship, and how self-conscious comic tone can be useful and sinister/protects against the horror while reinforcing it. Doug tied the roundtable together by talking about immigration films and the tension between immigration and invasion (a reinscription of the earlier narratives that Patrick talked about), and in particular, he focused on Alien Nation, District 9, and Brother from Another Planet.
Some other films/television shows that got discussed in this context included Coneheads, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Sleep Dealer, Independence Day (Will Smith’s welcoming punch in the face for the crash landed alien), Solaris, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Men in Black (essentially an immigration service for extraterrestrials on Earth). Other issues discussed included the relationship between economic contraction and expansion and immigration, the racial and economic dimensions of immigration, illegal immigrant informants in the war on drugs, and Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild.
I believe that the roundtable did generate a lot of positive discussion, but there was not enough time to turn the conversation to the issue of holding the conference in Arizona. It could be that the audience and panel members accepted the pragmatics of the situation, and they may also have been glad that we did not turn away from meeting in such a beautiful place with many good people. The engagement of the issues of immigration and alienation through science fiction was wonderfully informative and engaging for many members of the audience.
After the roundtable, I prepared for moderating the next panel in the same room on SF and Colonialism with Jason Embry and Joshua Ramsey.
Saturday, June 26, was Yufang’s and my big day at SFRA 2010. We missed the first part of the conference, because we were called to the Cleveland branch of USCIS for Yufang’s green card interview. Luckily, we arrived in time for the last full day of the conference and Craig was nice to arrange the panels so that we were able to participate.
Our day began with the 11:00am paper session: Avatar and Empire. Mack Hassler expertly moderated the panel, which included presentations by me (“James Cameron’s Avatar and the Machine in the Garden: Reading Movie Narratives and Practices of Production”), Yufang (“A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema Concerning White Males, the Military, and the Alien Other: A Reading of Avatar Against Apocalypse Now”), and Jari Kakela (“Robots, Rationalism, and Endless Growth: The Role of Frontier Expansionism in Asimov’s Work”).
In terms of the theme of the conference, Jari’s presentation was right on the money. I enjoyed hearing his reading of Asimov with Turnerian manifest destiny. Before I made the switch to more contemporary science fictions, I cut my teeth with Asimov at Georgia Tech and in my first SFRA paper. Jari demonstrated that Asimov’s robot and Foundation stories still have much to offer us in thinking about the continuing American project of frontier expansion.
Yufang and I each had terrific responses to our essays. Janice Bogstad, Andrew Hageman, Richard Erlich, and this year’s Pilgrim Award winner Eric Rabkin, among others, provided some insightful comments and tough questions. In particular, Eric’s observations on the positive aspects of Avatar are important to keep in mind–even for us who made critical analyses of the film, but Janice was quick to point out the difference between our works, particularly Yufang’s, as analysis and readings versus attacks. We had a fantastic discussion during the panel, which carried over into the hallway afterwards.
I should also say that this was Yufang’s first SFRA, and it was the first time that we presented together at the same conference (though we have presented together before at the AGES Symposium before at Kent State).
After the panel, we went to lunch with Mack and Sue Hassler, Adam Frisch, William Sun, and Jari. Then, it was off to the 2:00pm roundtable on Immigration, Alienation, and Arizona SB 1070.
Yufang and I made it to Arizona last night after a long flight, sick inducing turbulence, and incredibly crazy dry heat. We’re suiting up now for our long Saturday. At 11am, we give our papers on Avatar, then at 2pm, we participate on an immigration roundtable, and finally at 4pm, I’m moderating a panel that my buddy Jason Embry is on. Tonight is the awards banquet and closing reception. I need to find some coffee.
It looks like Craig Jacobsen has put together a nice conference. I’m glad that I can be a part of it now. I will report more on the conference later today with WordPress on my iPhone.
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