[Sfts-students] Fwd: To SFRA Members: Notice of Hard-Science SF Zoom group

Tue Dec 28 10:43:08 PST 2021

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gloria <00006f794a8fbc6a-dmarc-request at jiscmail.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2021 at 10:40
Subject: To SFRA Members: Notice of Hard-Science SF Zoom group
To: <SFRA at jiscmail.ac.uk>

Dec. 27th 2021

Dear SFRA Membership,

Happier New Year!
Hugh O'Connell, your SFRA Treasurer, kindly directed me to this link.

The Hard-Science Science Fiction Zoom Group (and YouTube Channel)

We are pleased to announce a stellar list of guest presenters and a new
YouTube Channel
for your New Year.  Our group started in Tucson, AZ, linked loosely with
the University of
Arizona's Book Festival.  But we have blossomed out and spurred on by the
pandemic, we
have gone LIVE STREAMING.  You can attend our Zoom sessions live.

Then we upload the speaker's talk to our YouTube channel (but live is more
fun).

*Just email me, Gloria McMillan, at: glomc at dakotacom.net
<glomc at dakotacom.net> to join our group. Say that you are interested in
joining the Hard-Science Science Fiction Group. Latest news and speaker
list below. The login to this meeting is enclosed as a guest visit. LINK to
our new YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHUlsmR9M8Nqco76JyZnU4w
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHUlsmR9M8Nqco76JyZnU4w> *

*  Coming to us from a galaxy near you, Tucson Hard-Science SF Group
proudly presents*

*SAT. Jan 8, 2022 9 AM/ Arizona/ Mtn. St Time, -7 hrs GMT*

*Sam J. Miller**,*

*Winner John W. Campbell and Andre Norton Awards*

*"**Science Fiction and Social Commentary**”*

Sam poses some starting points for us before his talk:

Sci-fi stories might be set in the far future, or a galaxy far far away,
but they're always about the here and now. How does contemporary SF engage
with geopolitical reality, climate angst, social movements, current
science, and more? What classics of the genre have done this well?

[GM NOTE: The new SF satire film *Don't Look Up!* is a wonderful example of
what Sam will be talking about because the astronomical basis is correct
and advised by Amy Mainzer, one of the top asteroid hunters.]

===

US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Haunting Your
House" in *The Red Volume: An Anthology of Stories by the Awkward Robots*
(anth *2008* ebook) edited by The Awkward Robots, most of his early work
being fantasy or horror, though his first novel, the Young Adult
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/young_adult> *The Art of Starving* (
*2017*), Equipoisally <http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/equipoise>
offers hints as well of an sf explanation for the mysterious Superpowers
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/superpowers> acquired by the young
protagonist, who has gone on a prolonged fast. This novel won the Andre
Norton Award (see Nebula <http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/nebula>) for
young-adult fiction.

Miller's second novel, *Blackfish City* (*2018*), is set in Quaanaaq, a
highly urban Keep <http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/keep> floating
in a Near
Future <http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/near_future> Arctic Circle
awash with free water due to Climate Change
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/climate_change>; the tale takes place
a little later than "Calved" (September 2015 Asimov's
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/asimovs>), where its creation is
depicted. The world now kept at bay by the inhabitants of this City
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cities> is Dystopian
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dystopias> on familiar though Infodump
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/infodump>-heavy lines; but not
unexpectedly a visitor, in this case a woman "nanobonded" to an orca and a
polar bear, exposes flaws and stresses threatening the inherently
precarious refuge from planetary consequence. *Blackfish City* won the John
W Campbell Memorial Award
<http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/john_w_campbell_memorial_award>. [JC]

*ZOOM ID number for SAT Jan 8,  2022 @ **9 AM** (Arizona)*

*Meeting ID: *

*466 593 1019 Click and give ID on drop down:*

*https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82315365013
<https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82315365013> *

*No password*

Dear Fan Friends!

All meetings are on Zoom and schedule (unless noted otherwise) at 9 AM
Arizona time...

EMAIL Gloria at glomc at dakotacom.net to be added to our group's e-list.

This is a group for writers and readers of science fiction to share
research, writing help, and other kinds of inspiring stuff.

Here are the speakers we have lined up:

Feb. 5
*Grace Dillon*--"Writing Science Fiction while Indigenous"

Grace is Prof. of Indigenous Studies at Portland State Univ. is the editor
of the first Indigenous people's SF short story collection (*Walking the
Clouds*, Univ. of Arizona Press) on writing while Indigenous.

Mar. 5

*Wolf Forrest*—“’Are We not WEIRD?’ Weird Science in Films”

. . . famed local SF film expert will give us a hair-raising tour of the
weird science on display in classic SF films.  The THRILL of the mad
scientist brewing self-replicating robots? New species of men—“Are we not
men?” – not to mention other wonderfully deranged plots for global
power—Whahhhhahhhhahha!

Apr. 2

*Adnadin Jasarevic*--"What’s so Bosnian about Science Fiction? Wait and
see!" “Adi” is the curator of the Zenica, Bosnia, city museum.
He is an award-winning writer, artist, and graphic science fiction/horror
illustrator.

He regularly writes poems, creates comic art, and translates (currently
Edgar Alan Poe.)

May 7

*Hua Li*--"Chinese Science Fiction"

Hua Li teaches at the Univ. of Wyoming. Her text on Chinese science fiction
C*hinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw* is forthcoming.

June 4

*Paul Mocombe*—“Haiti between Two Worlds of Tradition and (Sci)Tech: Where
Science Fiction may Lead Us”

Paul Mocombe is an Ass’t. Prof. of Philosophy and Sociology, West Virginia
State University.  He work is in the contact zone between western science
and the local knowledge of his people in Haiti.

July 2

*Tosi Abegbija*--"Internet of Things and Beyond"

Tosi is an amazing Prof. of electrical engineering at the U. 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

*Sandy Petroshius—“Walk through the new Ray Bradbury Museum in ‘Green
Town’”*

Sandi is the director of the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum in Waukegan, IL.
Far from being the usual “great man” celebration, this museum seeks to
light that spark that Ray felt throughout his life and help us to use all
our own untapped potential. He was a child of the Depression and used
libraries!

Oct. 1

*David Gunkel and Ben Kuipers—“Can and Should ‘Bots have person-hood,
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.

------------------------------

To unsubscribe from the SFRA list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=SFRA&A=1

-- 
Sherryl Vint (she/her)
Professor, UC Riverside
Editor, *Science Fiction Studies *
Editor, Palgrave *Science and Popular Culture *series

"Insisting on the value of what or whom you love is an ongoing act of
revolutionary refusal and creation."--Max Haven, *Revenge Capitalism*
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