Babel Clash

I’m confirming our very first live Babel Clash debate, scheduled to coincide with the San Diego Comic Con festivities.   The event will feature a panel discussion and then a book signing.

When:  Saturday July 25 @ 8:00

Place:  Borders @ 668 6th Avenue in San Diego, in the Gaslamp District and only a very short walk away from the convention hall.

Guests:  Patrick Rothfuss, Rob Thurman, Thomas Sniegoski, Amber Benson, Seanan McGuire, Jeanne Stein and Kat Richardson.

We here at Babel Clash and Borders are very excited for this event.  Please come and enjoy the show, and spread the word.  We’re honored to have so many talented guests, and we want to deliver a great turnout for them.

Hey Rob,

Thank you for joining us at Babel Clash!  It’s been good talking with you about cutting edge science fiction.  Would you like to take your last few posts and speak to FlashForward and / or WWW Wake?

Will those of us excited for the new show benefit from reading the book first?  How excited are you for the show?  Any hints on what to expect next from you?

If anyone here is heading out to Comic Con in San Diego, tune into the blog over the next couple of days and we’ll have an announcement to share about our very first Babel Clash live event.

Any tips for surviving and enjoying the Con from veteran convention-attendees?  Is Comic Con the undisputed champ of fan conventions, or does another rival stand out?  What does it take to be a really great show?

Hey Rob, that Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop sounds intriguing.  Can you share with us in what ways attending the event helps as a writer?  Is it about stimulating ideas, the debates or is it more about the research and exposure to NASA?

Regarding bad astronomy, does Journey to the Center of the Earth count?  Is it unfair to pick on a classic?

My friend and inspiration Phyllis Gotlieb, the only Canadian to be in SFWA at its founding, the mother of Canadian science fiction, passed away yesterday at the age of 83 from complications related to a ruptured appendix.

Phyllis was proof of concept that you could live in Toronto and still be a science-fiction writer for major American publishing houses; if I hadn’t had her as a role model, I’m not sure I ever would have embarked on the career path I took.

We’d been friends for 30 years — I met her in 1979 when my high-school science-fiction club had her as guest of honour at a little convention we put on at Northview Heights Secondary School. She was feisty and opinionated and passionate then, and she was still all those things the last time I saw her, not that long ago. One of my greatest professional thrills was getting to publish her final novel, Birthstones, in 2007, under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint for Markham’s Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

From a profile of Phyllis by Brian Bethune in Maclean’s in 2002:

“That’s when she became the grandmother of us all,” says Robert Sawyer, the most prominent author in a now-flourishing national scene. “She was the one — till the ’80s, the only one — who proved you could sit in Toronto and write major science fiction and sell it to major American publishers.” Sunburst, which has given its name to an award for the best Canadian sci-fi book of the year, marked a final change of course for Gotlieb, who eventually no longer had “poem-shaped ideas.” (Since then, she says, “my aliens write poetry.”)

What are the dramatic implications of consciousness exploration?  Am I understanding you that the issue is largely one of perception, how a change in our perception of reality or our place in reality alters how we interact with the world?  Does it relate more to intelligence?  Is it more than that?

From a writer’s point of view, is it more challenging to inject drama and action into stories built around consciousness?  On the surface, it doesn’t seem to pack the dramatic punch of alien invasion or giant space battles, but I’m certain that appearances are deceiving.

On a side note, we’ve made some changes to the Borders Science Fiction landing page so it is easier for browsers to f ind the link to our page.  Check out the link here to see the new look…

SF Landing Page

If near-future science fiction is the cutting edge, what are the hot topics leading the charge?  Is the list below a good one?  What am I missing?

1) Life created by men (A. I. , cloning, gene splicing).  2) nanotech or organic technology.  3) artificial reality.  4) environmental degradation and restoration.  5) mapping outer space with satellites.  6) “super” tech in war and covert intelligence.  7) alternative realities & timelines.  Vulnerability to digital attacks. 9) Advanced networking potential - global unification / New World Order

Rob, regarding your post on evolution in SF, have you checked our Warren Fahy’s new book Fragment?  He’s taken an interesting spin on an alternative path for evolution.  The story reminds me of Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

Fragment

Readercon — one of the very best, and one of the most literate science-fiction conventions — takes place near Boston this coming weekend. I’m on the panel described below, which is certainly a provocative topic. I’ll be citing my own Calculating God and Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia, both of which were Hugo Award finalists, during the discussion; what other books bear mentioning on this theme?

Is Darwinism Too Good For SF?
Jeff Hecht (Leader), Caitlin R. Kiernan, Anil Menon, James Morrow, Steven Popkes, Robert J. Sawyer:

This year marks the sesquicentennial of the publication of The Origin of Species and the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth. Considering the importance of the scientific idea, there has been surprisingly little great sf inspired by it. We wonder whether, in fact, if the theory has been too good, too unassailable and too full of explanatory power, to leave the wiggle room where speculative minds can play in. After all, physics not only has FTL and time travel, but mechanisms like wormholes that might conceivably make them possible. What are their equivalents in evolutionary theory, if any?

I feel like my geek cred is slipping because I’ve only seen Star Trek twice.  C’mon there’s got to be somebody out there who can top Rob.  How many times have you seen the new Trek?

Near-future SF is the cutting edge!  Forecasting 21,000 AD is more fantasy than realistic SF exploration.  Sure, you can set a space opera then, but it lacks the punch that comes with grounding the speculative in the famliar (ala the Matrix or Blade Runner).   I’m enchanted by the wild divergence in technical and cultural possibilities  in the next 50 years.  The range of variance in 10,000 years is staggering.

The science doesn’t matter.  Sorry, Rob.  Story trumps science.  All that research has been in vain.  Think of all those hours wasted in the library.  OK, somebody tell me why I’m wrong, please!  I want to believe in science.