Seattle Worldcon 2025: Robots, Rights, and More!

 

Summer is almost over for me (school starts next week), but I have one more trip planned: I'm thrilled to be going to Seattle tomorrow to attend the 2025 Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention)! Worldcon will take place at the Seattle Convention Center Aug. 13-17, 2025.

I will be on one panel Wednesday evening and giving one talk on Saturday afternoon, both in part through my role as President of the Science Fiction and Philosophy Society. Both are also in honor of my late friend and colleague Anand Vaidya, especially his work on artificial intelligence and moral standing. I'm hoping to someday teach a course on AI in science fiction and philosophy, so Worldcon will be a good step into that process.

My friend and cofounder of the Science Fiction and Philosophy Society, science fiction author Manjula Menon, will be on the first panel with me. She's also on a whole bunch of other panels, including one on "Artificial Honesty," South Asian speculative fiction, and more! See the full schedule for details.

More specific information on my panels can be found below. Maybe I will see you in Seattle!

Thoughts on Our Fifth Pandemiversary

The masks I carry with me everywhere, even though I rarely wear them these days.

 

Five years ago today, the world changed with one press conference. The World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 health crisis was officially a pandemic. I was traveling at the time. I cut my trip short and rented a car to drive home instead of flying. And everything changed.

Or did it?

I've been writing these pandemiversary posts since 2021. I often use it as a chance to reflect on how this experience has changed myself and others--and whether any of us have learned anything through our collective trauma.

Thanksgiving Horror 2024: Black Friday Edition

 

In recent years (see here and here) I've made a tradition of watching Thanksgiving horror movies around US Thanksgiving. As with other holiday horror, this is a fun way to process my complex thoughts and feelings about this horrific, delicious holiday. And this year I discovered a film about that most uniquely American of holidays, Black Friday, in which we trample each other to buy stuff we don't need immediately after a holiday about giving thanks for what we already have.

I'll start and end with the movies I watched for the first time with a nice leftover sandwich of movies I've watched in the past. And for some reason, lighting in the films seems to be on my mind lately. Go figure.

I should acknowledge that today is also Native American Heritage Day, which in a peak American contrast, is always also the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Cosmic Hope or Lack Thereof: The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin (Translated by Joel Martinson)

 

I read (and loved!) Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem back in 2016. I vowed to read the sequels soon... and then I ... didn't. I'm honestly not sure why (maybe: aliens?), but I watched and mostly liked the Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, which reminded me that I really should pick up the sequel (there are actually a few things from the second book in the series as well, so that was fun).

I'm glad I finally read The Dark Forest! This feels like a different kind of book to me (maybe due to being a second book in a series, or leisurely in a more focused way, or maybe I'm a different reader now?). Still, I enjoyed it almost as much as the first one.

So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture... Again!

 

Last year I wrote a post called "So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture." I didn't set out to do so, but at some point I realized I had seen a few of the nominations and figured I might as well complete my tour. So I did! And it was mostly pretty fun. It didn't hurt that my favorite, Everything Everywhere All At Once, was the winner.

Well, dear reader, as Britney Spears once said, "Oops, I did it again." 

Pandemic of Revenge: The White Plague by Frank Herbert

 

Let's start with the obvious: The White Plague is not Dune. But it is definitely Frank Herbert: provocative, complex, dense, and oddly compelling. And yes, there are epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter.

Instead of a galactic empire 20-some thousand years in the future, we start with Ireland circa 1980. Microbiologist John Roe O'Neill loses his wife and children in a terrorist attack. And later a virus decimates humanity, or rather, half of humanity, as it only affects women. It turns out that O'Neill designed the virus as revenge, intending it to strike Ireland, England, and Libya. Of course, viruses don't respect national boundaries and it becomes a global pandemic.

Suffering and Greatness: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

 

At times the intrigue of Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun is a bit tough to follow (I needed a Dramatis Personae), but overall this is a beautifully-written exploration of gender, politics, ambition, and desire in 14th century China with some mild fantasy elements. I think there's even an interesting sort of thought experiment about Buddhist conceptions of desire and suffering to be found.

Cozy Alien Truckstop: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

 

Reading Becky Chambers is like having a nice cup of hot cocoa under a cozy blanket. As I said about one of her other books, it's not space opera, it's space chill-wave. But it also makes you think and feel new and interesting things. While this isn't the only science fiction book I've read with almost entirely non-human characters (Iain M. Banks's Look to Windward comes to mind), Chambers does really interesting things with this idea, like exploring ideas of otherness and forming relationships across lines of difference, and maybe the most amazing thing is that she does all this without giving up her patented coziness.

Random Thoughts, Part 18: Random is the New Order

 

My Random Thoughts series continues with Part 18! Still with random memes for exponential randomness! In fact, my inventory of memes is at an all-time high. These memes have to go! Enjoy!

Melancholy Utopianism: The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

The Ministry of the Future is up there with Kim Stanley Robinson's best work. Given how much I love his work, this counts as high praise from me.

If you're familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), you'll have some idea of what to expect. A lot of wonky, nerdy details delivered in what his critics would call "info dumps," a lot of cool Big Ideas, a delightful thrashing of the "show don't tell" rule that's sure to give nightmares many creative writing teachers, and oh yeah, some characters and plot and stuff, too. (Indeed, I sometimes wonder if a writer like KSR would get published today given how he cuts against the grain.)

Initial Non-Spoilery Thoughts about The Matrix Resurrections

I just finished watching The Matrix Resurrections, one my most anticipated movies of the year (after Dune, of course). The best spoiler-free review is the shortest: Whoa.

Me, watching The Matrix Resurrections

Pandemic Journal, Part 23: Yet Another Pandemic Semester, Also: Dune

 

My increasingly exhausting pandemic journal continues with Part 23 (see the most recent entry here). We had a really bad surge in the late summer and early fall with record hospitalizations and I've had yet another exhausting pandemic semester, all while many people seem to be pretending the pandemic is over. And now things are getting better, but we have the omicron variant and the winter holidays... so it's not looking great. 

But on the other hand, Villeneuve's Dune was finally released in October, ushering in a new era of Dune memes for your enjoyment. Thus, this entry will consist, not quite entirely, but mostly of Dune memes. Thanks to the dedicated members of the Dune Sietchposting Facebook group for most of these, and to various friends and other online denizens for the rest.

Spoilery Review of Dune (2021)

 

Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica in Dune (2021)

I've already written about my initial impressions the new Dune movie, and before that about why the Dune series is one of my favorites. Just to round out this little series of Dune content, at last I'm writing a full spoilery review of Dune (2021).

I've been excited for this movie for years, so it may be no surprise that I've seen it five times already: twice in the theater and three times on HBO. Obviously I loved it. I've noticed new things every time, and my love for the film has only grown.

Angry Love: Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

 

It took me awhile to get into Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, or really, to figure out what was going on. But once I did get into this novella, it was a look at life for African Americans in recent decades through the experiences of a single family, united by a sort of magic/psychic power that allows them to see scenes from the past. 

It's hard to really summarize, though, because reading it is a big part of the experience. For instance, the bits of narrative alternate between times and places in a way that feels jarring at first, but I think Onyebuchi's deeper point is that the past is never just the past. 

Grief and Creativity: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Lisey's Story is a strange Stephen King book in many ways, but I found it as engrossing as most of his other work.

I had read somewhere that King says this is his favorite of his books, and somewhere along the way toward my King fandom in recent years I vaguely decided to try to read all of King's books at some point (a major undertaking given how prolific he is!). Then with the TV adaptation coming to Apple TV, I figured it was time to read Lisey's Story.

On Being Apart from Your Family on Thanksgiving

 

I’ve spent Thanksgiving apart from my family most of my adult life. Here are some thoughts for people who find themselves apart from their families this Thanksgiving.

Pandemic Journal, Part 12: Back-to-School Doom-Anxiety Edition

 

My pandemic journal continues with Part 12, Back-to-School Doom-Anxiety Edition.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the 2020-21 school year for me, so this juncture in my life and the lives of many others seems like a good time to post a journal update. You can see my latest thoughts at the end.

In recent week's I've come to feel what I've been calling doom-anxiety about the impending school year.

And as always, there are plenty of doom-memes to make the doom-anxiety go down a little easier. 

Whether you're here for the memes, my random thoughts, or you just realized you clicked on the wrong thing: good luck to us all!

Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 4: Wizard and Glass

Living the High Life on my porch with Wizard and Glass

My Dark Tower re-read continues! Much to my surprise, Stephen King's Dark Tower series has become one of my favorites in recent years. And it's definitely a series that demands re-reading. After most of the main components of the series came together in Book 3: The Waste Lands, which I read on a socially distanced beach vacation, and a break for the Hugos, it was time to move on to what might be the longest Dark Tower book, a book which might have the longest flashback I've ever read in a novel: Book 4: Wizard and Glass.

Hugo Reading 2020: Novelettes

Let's start with your first question: What is a novelette? Is that like Smurfette?

The short answer: It's a long-ish short story. Not much like Smurfette, except maybe in being short but not as short as some others. According to The Hugo Awards for purposes of their Best Novelette category, a novelette is a story between 7,500 and 17,500 words. You can see what I thought about the Novella category here (novellas are between 17,500 and 40,000 words).

Pandemic Journal, Part Eight (Memes and Melancholy)

My pandemic journal continues with part eight, covering May 10-26, 2020 (see part seven here). As I discuss in the May 26 entry, I've felt a bit more melancholy lately. But don't worry, there are still plenty of memes.