Home from WorldCon

[eldritchhobbit]

Hello, everyone! I'm back from Montreal and slowly recuperating from WorldCon. I'm currently catching up with emails and posts, and I hope to be in touch with everyone to whom I owe responses very soon.


* I came home to some shiny news: the abstract for my essay "Crowded in My Sky": Liberty and the Frontier in Firefly and Serenity" has been accepted for the forthcoming anthology The Philosophy of Joss Whedon, edited by Dean A. Kowalski and S. Evan Kreider. My article grew out of the lecture I gave at UCLA a couple of years ago, following Firefly's Tim Minear, about frontier literature and positive and negative concepts of liberty.

* In other news, I am very excited about the forthcoming two-book set from Library of America, American Fantastic Tales.

* The website is now up for ReConStruction: The 10th Occasional North American Science Fiction Convention to be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA from August 5-8, 2010.

* Now for one more memory from WorldCon: here's the video of Neil Gaiman reading Cory Doctorow's "The Right Book."

Watch on YouTube

“We should grant power over affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance.”
– Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

Comments

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, Raleigh?

I have clients in Raleigh!

: tries to structure life so there is a reason to be there, then

Congrats on your essay, and thanks for sharing the reports from Worldcon this year!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your kind words! I appreciate your reading my con reports.

It would be lovely to have you here for NASFiC! Raleigh is a very, very easy drive from my neck of the woods (or mountains, rather).

[dfable.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

My pleasure!

[cookiefleck.livejournal.com]

Glad you're back! I haven't had a chance to read through all of your Con posts but am looking forward to getting caught up soon.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I'm anxious to catch up with your posts, too - I know you had several fun and fascinating things planned.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Firefly was an interesting series. A lot of science fiction is set in shiny, polished, rational, superscientific, technologically advanced futures where everything works better, as in Hugo Gernsback's vision or the default space opera setting. And then there's science fiction that shows humanity going back to the frontier and getting along without advanced tech or social complexity. But it's unusual to have a series set in both futures, as Firefly is, and to show them colliding. In a sense, I think you could say that the whole series is about competing sfnal futures.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

In a sense, I think you could say that the whole series is about competing sfnal futures.

Well said!

[gamgeefest.livejournal.com]

The Philosophy of Joss Whedon? Now that sounds interesting!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :) I'm very pleased at the prospect of being part of it.

[sittingduck1313.livejournal.com]

The Herbert quote is so true (it echos sentiments expressed in Prince Caspian and The Hitchhkier's Guide to the Galaxy). Though there have been instances where a reluctant ruler did not work out too well (George III comes to mind).