Worldcon 2015 - Friday

Friday at Worldcon 2015 started off slow. Our breakfast at Sante took a while because they did not expect the mass of people they did from Worldcon. After breakfast we wandered the dealers room until our first panel.

Kaffee Klatche with Brother Guy Consolmagno. Myself and my wife signed up to have an hour long talk with this fellow with five others. He has been conducting an outreach program to speak at churches about science, what the Vatican is doing in the scientific field and asking for donations. He also mentioned the benifit of what he does as there is no tenure, no great worries about funding and no time constraints. This was apparent when he conducted his ten year study of the Vatican's meteorite collection. A very thoughtful person who enjoys exploring the unknown for the knowledge it can bring. His bio is here.

Infamously Bad Book Covers; Lee Moyer and Jeff Sturgeon. A hilarious look at recent and past strange, illogical, nearly nude and just plain "what the..." book covers. Busted a gut laughing with my wife.

Climate Change: Science and Fiction; Ctien, John Joseph Adams, Bobbie Benton, Ramez Naam, Gregg Castro. A great synopsis of current and verifyable science. It also gave suggestions on how to talk to those who are emotionally biased against climate change: use optimism on conservative people and pessimism on liberal people.

Blinded by Pseudoscience; Sam Scheiner, Janet Freeman-Daily, Gregory Gadow, G David Nordley, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro. Went over the ways that the scientic process is used in order to determine truth: hypothesis, experiment, data, repeat experiment, neutral party verification and declaration. They also lamented the lack of science reporters and the limited soundbites that are given to science discoveries. Good links given were Quackwatch for medical claims and Snopes for other things as well as the Sceptical Enquirer.

Narrative Structures and Expectations; Kate Elliot. Excellent presentation that discussed the best ways to draw in the reader or viewer to become familiar with the setting and narrative by using all the senses in the shortest amount of time.

Chinese myths and Traditions in Contemporary Literature of the Fantastic; Fei Tang, Ken Liu, Setsu Uzame, Regina Kanyu Wang, Hua Li. Although many of the panelists had difficulty with speaking english, Ken Liu was able to extrapolate what they said so that the mostly Western audience could understand. I particularly liked the discussion on authentisity in that it is a moment a culture is forced not to change and that real cultures are in flux. It was also mentioned that history is written by the winners but mythmaking is written by the losers.