This weekend is the annual media-oriented con in Toronto, Polaris.  I'll be there, and you can catch me at panels, a reading, or a signing, at these times:

• Where's My Rocket Car? Friday 09:00 PM 
• Reading - Karl Schroeder Saturday 11:00 AM 
• Trashing Other Planets Saturday 04:00 PM 
• Avatar: The Theory of Pandora Saturday 05:00 PM 
• Signing - Karl Schroeder Sunday 10:00 AM 
• Bigger Guns Or Better Stories? Sunday 03:00 PM 

Hope to see you there!

Fri 9:00 PM:

Same Old Settings

What settings are overused and underused in SF, fantasy, and horror works? What would you like to see more of, and what have you seen enough of? If you are looking for more creative ideas for settings, where should you go? What works do you think have the most original settings?

 Rick Wilber, Karina Sumner-Smith, Gregory A. Wilson, Karl Schroeder, Derek Kunsken

Sat 6:00 PM:

 Putting the Science Into Science Fiction 

How can authors effectively use cutting-edge science in their SF works?

 Chris A. Jackson (m), Derek Kunsken, Peter Watts, Karl Schroeder,

 Sat 7:00 PM:

 Body and Person in SF

 How SF has treated the connection between the body and the personality, from completely disconnected to very integrated.

J. Keeping,  Peter Watts, Karl Schroeder

 Sun 10:00 AM:

Writing the Future

 How do you create a credible near future (up to 50 years from now)? What things are likely to change and what will stay the same? Technological and scientific changes aren’t the whole story. How do you incorporate probable or possible changes in the environment, economy and politics, culture and social mores into a believable future?

 Hayden Trenholm, Karl Schroeder, Rebecca Simkin

Sun 2:00 PM:

 Intersection Between SF and Contemporary Issues 

Does an average 14-year-old understand that The Forever War is really about Vietnam? Are such allusions wasted effort? Does a writer limit his or her shelf-life by tying work too closely to the present day?

Robert J. Sawyer,  Rick Wilber, Karl Schroeder, Ira Nayman, J.M. Frey

 Sun 3:00 PM:

 A.I. in SF

 A.I. is a staple in SF. This panel discusses the current reality and probable future of artificial intelligence research 

J. Keeping, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder

Here's the panel that Vernor Vinge, Charlie Stross, Aleister Reynolds, and I did at Boskone 47 on "The Technological Singularity:  an Assessment."  We critiqued the idea itself, its effect on science fiction writing, and its influence on our own works. You can watch it below; enjoy!

The Singularity: An Appraisal from Michael Johnson on Vimeo.

Friday  7pm        The Singularity: An Appraisal

Arguably the idea of the Singularity -- a period where change happens so quickly that life afterwards is incomprehensible to people who lived before it -- is one of the few entirely fresh ideas in SF in the last forty years.  Perhaps it is time for an appraisal. Has the idea of the Singularity been a good thing for SF, providing fresh ideas and stimulating great writing or has the notion that the comprehensibility of the future has a sharp (and near-term) limit diminished possibilities?  Has it been a good thing for *your* writing?  How about the Singularity in reality -- after twenty years does it look more or less plausible that it is lurking in our own real-world future?  Discuss the interplay between the idea of the Singularity in SF and actual scientific research.  Where are the really exotic ideas coming from?

  Friday  9pm        The Place of Prediction in SF and Reality

     Hugo Gernsback thought the purpose of SF was to educate.  Others think the purpose of SF is to predict. What *is* the place of prediction in SF?  Does it have any place at all, or is the occasional good prediction an accidental side-effect of writing stories?  Can SF be about the future and *not* be making predictions?  And let's not limit ourselves to technology -- if anything, SF may have a more distinguished history of predicting social changes.  (Did the publication of 1984 actually help prevent that future?)  Can foresight help us face the future? Finally, is SF better or worse in predicting the future than professional futurologists?

  Saturday1pm        Revamping Asimov's 3 Laws - and why that might be a good/ethical thing

     Charles Stross' *Saturn's Children* showed how Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics applied to an AI was nothing less than slavery of a particularly vile sort, since the chains of that slavery are made intrinsic to the nature of the robots and can naver be shaken off.  Do you buy this argument?  If so, are there alternatives to the Three Laws which might be less bad?  (Remember that the Three Laws  were constructed to deal with the Frankenstein Problem of our creations rising against us.)  Is it even possible to imagine AIs existing where we neither their slaves nor their masters?

  Saturday2pm        Space is for Robots?

     Is it such a bad thing that we haven't sent people to Mars, when  those little rovers can do so much without risking a life? What's the right balance between machines and humans in space exploration and development?

  Saturday3pm        Literary Beer

  Sunday  2pm        Autographing

David Nickle notes on his blog The Devil's Exercise Yard that his book Monstrous Affections, among others, will be launched at Worldcon in a couple of weeks.  What's of note is that due to an organizational snafu, the bought-and-paid-for ad for the event won't be appearing in the Worldcon programme book.

So here's the particulars from David's blog:

The launch is taking place Saturday August 8, at Maisonette Suite 2802, Delta Hotel Centre-Ville, 777 University Street, Montreal, QC. The titles being launched are all represented in the collage to the right. Starts at 7:30 p.m. Ends when the Red Death shows up. The party will be the best one at Worldcon.

Well, I'm going to be very busy at Worldcon, but feel free to approach me at any time.  Here's my schedule, so you'll know at least some of the places and times you can find me:

Friday

When: Fri 12:00

Location:  Other

Title:  Karl Schroeder Signing

Language:  English

When: Fri 15:30

Location:  P-511A

Title:  Oh Canada!

All Participants:  Karl Schroeder, Bob Boyczuk, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula Pflug

 “America's aggressive attitude toward nature and the unknown…, translates readily into the mythology of conquering and domesticating the unknown that finds expression in much SF. The Canadian attitude seems to be that nature is simply too vast, too threatening, too powerful: man is nature's victim rather than the reverse. Survival, not conquest, is the issue.” (David Ketterer) Is this true, or is this consolatory rhetoric?

When: Fri 21:00

Location:  P-511A

Title:  Cecil Street Irregulars; A Canadian Writers' Group

All Participants:  Cory Doctorow, Douglas Smith, Karl Schroeder, Madeline Ashby, Michael Skeet, David Nickle, Jill Snider Lum, Sara Simmons

Moderator:  Madeline Ashby

Description:  The Cecil Street Irregulars writers’ workshop is not its official name; it does not meet irregularly, nor does it meet on or anywhere near Cecil Street. It is, however, one of the longest-lived of current writers groups. Collectively the current and former members have published numerous novels, short stories, plays and poems; all continue to insist (at least publicly) that they look forward to the regular experience of having their work sand-blasted by their fellows.

Saturday

 When: Sat 12:30

Location:  P-522B

Title:  Building Realistic Worlds

All Participants:  Amy Thomson, Karin Lowachee, Karl Johanson, Karl Schroeder, Robert J. Sawyer

When: Sat 18:30

Location:  P-511BE

Title:  David Hartwell and Karl Schroeder: The Editor and the Writer, Long Form

All Participants:  David Hartwell, Karl Schroeder

Description:  Hartwell and Schroeder have worked together on several novels. They talk about the process, how an editor edits, how the writer works with the editor’s feedback.

Sunday

When: Sun 9:00

Location:  P-518BC

Title:  The Uncanny Valley - AIs! They're Just Like Us!

All Participants:  Karl Schroeder, Tom Galloway, Kim Binsted, Rhodri James

Moderator:  Rhodri James

Description:  Are AI labs across the planet just making elaborate cartoons of ourselves rather than making something truly new? And what about AIs in science fiction?

When: Sun 11:00

Location:  P-521A

Title:  Karl Schroeder Kaffeeklatsch

All Participants:  Karl Schroeder

Description:  A chance to ask those burning questions.

Duration:  1:00 hrs:min

When: Sun 15:30

Location:  P-513B

Title:  SF and Economics

All Participants:  Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin, Hayden Trenholm, Karl Schroeder, S.C. Butler, Charles Stross

Description:  How does a writer incorporate events like the past 12 months into their future society? How does a writer extrapolate economic theory into far future societies?

Monday

When: Mon 10:00

Location:  P-513A

Title:  A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing

All Participants:  Amy Thomson, Carl Fink, Christopher Davis, Karl Schroeder

Description:  What happens when physicists try to write biological SF; or when a writer’s research goes badly wrong?

Paige, Janice, and myself had a fantastic time at Minicon last weekend.  I have to say the friendliness of the people and casual atmosphere of the event made GOH-ing an absolutely delightful experience.  Keith and Andra, Matt, Joel and Beth, Sharon, David and 7--you all made us feel well taken care of and, personally, made me feel like I was the one being entertained rather than me being the main entertainer. 

Minneapolis itself is a great city.  Janice and Paige emerged blinking from the depths of the Mall of America carrying various treasures, and I was reminded of my last visit which was also very pleasant. 

Minicon is a great convention, and if you're at all in the neighbourhood next year you should definitely drop in.  We will whenever we can.

We'll be at Minicon April 10-12, and I hope you can join us!  Here's what I'll be up to--although, as always, feel free to approach me in the halls, dealer's room, or where-ever if you want to chat or want me to sign something.  We're really looking forward to the weekend, and your participation will make it that much better!

Note:  it's a light schedule, since I'm still recovering from my surgery--but I'm doing pretty well these days, and hope to be around and available most of the time.

Schedule

Steampunk: the Romance of Science

Saturday 2:30

Krushenko’s

Sharon Kahn(m), Karl Schroeder, Richard Mueller, Dorf, Ceridwen Christensen

 What is Steampunk: a literary movement, an attitude, or merely fashion statement? Perhaps there is something about the buoyant spirit of the late 19th century that speaks to our feelings about technology today.

Interview and Signing: Author GoH

Saturday 7:00

Veranda 5/6

Rick Brignall(interviewer), Karl Schroeder

 Our author Guest of Honor talks about his life and his work. After the interview there will be a book signing  in the same space and a chance to chat with Karl one on one.

Breaking into publishing in the 21st Century

Sunday 10:00

Veranda 3/4

Michael Merriam(m), Karl Schroeder, Scott McCoy, Rob Callahan, Rick Brignall

An update of the perennially popular "Publishing 101" topic. What do you as a new writer need to know to get your big break? How is the process changing with the advent of printing on demand, audio books, and the paperback publishing industry in a state of freefall? Last year's advice on how to break into the business may already be obsolete

Second Foundation Discussion: The Works of Karl Schroeder

Sunday  11:30

Krushenko’s

Eric M. Heideman(m), Karl Schroeder, John Till, Greg L. Johnson

 Come and talk with the Author GOH about his work! Sponsored by Second Foundation, a speculative and science fiction-book discussion group that has met regularly since 1983 (see also Sunday evening, Krushenko's Annex)

 Hope to see you there!

Here's my schedule:

I've been a little out of shape lately, since the weather's made it difficult for me to get out and do my therapeutic rehab walking.  So I was a little nervous about how I'd hold up during Boskone this year; the Westin Waterfront is a huge place, and I had a busy schedule.  I shouldn't have worried, though--I did okay, though I did have to blow off one of my panels due to exhaustion. 

Most importantly, though, I was able to connect with a lot of people I don't normally get to see--including Oz, Lawrence Schoen, Gregory Feeley, Stacy Hague-Hill, Charlie Stross, Greg Bear, and many more.  As has become my habit at this convention, I particularly sought out the artists and art directors--Irene Gallo, Tor's art director, and painters Dave Seeley, Rick Berry and Stephan Martiniere. 

Janice and Paige came along but blew off the convention entirely to go swimming, visit the children's museum and aquarium, and shop. 

On Sunday night a bunch of us retired to Rick Berry's studio for a laid-back evening.  By that time I was at my absolute physical limit but tried not to show it.  I managed to make it until midnight and was actually fine for the flight home the next day.  Whew!  Hopefully I'll be in better shape when Minicon rolls around.

The annual Hugo awards will be held in Montreal this year, at Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon.  If you've been thinking of attending, the window for doing so and also nominating for the award is closing rapidly.  In fact, you have until February 28th to nominate.  You need a Hugo PIN number to do it, which you can only get by having a Worldcon membership; the problem is that PIN numbers have been trickling out rather slowly, so if you don't have a membership and want to nominate, you'd better hurry!

The online Hugo nomination form is on the Anticipation website, as is a registration page.  If you can't attend the convention but would like to nominate for the Hugo, you can buy a supporting membership for US$50 or CAN$55.

Montreal's a fun city, and I hope to see you there this year.

UPDATE:  Apparently you had to buy your membership by January 31st to be eligible to nominate.  My bad.

Here's what I'll be up to this weekend at ConFusion.  (For complete details of location etc., click the link under Upcoming Events on the right of this window.)

Saturday, January 24

10:00 AM       

Salon E        LITERARY - Playing with Genre Conventions (1 hr.)
Tobias Buckell, Jim Hines, Karl Schroeder, Doselle Young and Jim Frenkel [M] How can we take the mundane and shopworn conventions of science fiction, fantasy and horror and reinvent them?

Noon

Salon H        LITERARY - Setting:  Haven't I been here before? (1 hr.)
Violette Malan [M], Karl Schroeder, Catherine Shaffer, Doselle Young and Jim Frenkel How important is setting to a reader's understanding and enjoyment of the story?  Is setting the real difference between S and SF?  Are we overusing the settings we have, and are there any new ones?

3:00 PM

Salon E         LITERARY - Big Brother is Watching You! (1 hr.)
Cory Doctorow, David Rozian, Steve Buchheit, Karl Schroeder [M], Catherine Shaffer Personal privacy in the electronic age we now have or will have chips on everything we own including pets, where is this all going?  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

4:00 PM

Salon E         LITERARY - Meet the New Medium (1 hr.)
Cat Rambo, Tobias Buckell [M], Karl Schroeder and Dave Klecha Games are as much a part of the younger generations entertainment mix as books writing for/about games.

5:00 PM

Salon E        MASS AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH SESSION
After a little bit of set-up Cryptic ConFusion's authors will be lined up to sign your books.
   
Sunday, January 25

10:00 AM       

Salon G        LITERARY - Wuffies?  Total meltdown?   Libertarianism? (1 hr.)
Cory Doctorow, Paul Melko [M], Karl Schroeder and Mathew Stewart-Fulton The actual future of economics what are some current ideas on where the world economy is headed.

I'll be GOH at Minicon, Minnesota's longest-running science fiction convention, over Easter weekend, 2009.  Past GOH's include luminaries such as Gordon R. Dickson, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven and Jack Vance.  I'm honored to be in their company!

Minicon is an annual gathering of science fiction and fantasy fans sponsored by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society (Minn-StF). The convention is held each year in or near Minneapolis, Minnesota over Easter weekend.  The convention has been running annually (and sometimes twice a year!) since 1968.

Hope to see you there!

Unfortunately, I also have to cancel my upcoming visit to Ann Arbor to frolic with Tobias Buckell and John Scalzi; we were all going to celebrate the releases of our respective novels, but you guys will have to party without me this time.  My apologies to everyone who was hoping to see me, and sorry as well that I couldn't have done it sooner than a week before the convention; but I didn't know this was going to happen myself until a couple of days ago.

I'll update the Events page of my site as soon as I know when my next appearances will be.

Here's my schedule for the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, which happens August 6-10, in Denver Colorado.  It's a pretty modest schedule, but when you realize that there's several hundred programming guests and only a limited set of slots--well, I don't know very many other midlist writers who have any more panels than this.  In that sense, Worldcon is a victim of its own success; but I'm not complaining, because people will still be able to find me, and the Kaffeeklatsch and reading should be fun.

• Swashbucklers in Space,  Thur  17:30  (I'm moderating)        
• Canadian Science Fiction,   Fri 10:00  (moderating this one too)

•  Kaffeeklatch   Sat,  16:00      

• Reading: Thur 11:30  
  

If you want to see me outside of this schedule, just email me and we can talk.     

So I finally got to meet Sean Williams; he and I were on a couple of panels yesterday and today with Ken MacLeod, Robin Pen and Jonathon Strahan, talking about space opera (go figure!).  Sean and I went for lunch together today (which is tomorrow for you reading this in North America) at a very nice Indian restaurant on the corner, and talked shop happily until my panel at 2:00 when I did a very interesting panel on "Painting the Future Green" with Zara Baxter, Margaret Dunlop, and Tiki, whose last name I didn't catch, a media analyst from the east coast.

I'd be uploading loads of photos to add to this post, except that my laptop has decided not to recognize SD cards, so I have to find a workaround to get them off my camera.

While we're waiting on that little technical glitch, here's a couple of previously uploaded shots:  the entrance to King's Park, in downtown Perth, and a glorious sunrise taken in the countryside northeast of Geraldton.

Meanwhile, back in Canada, there's been heavy blogging activity around SciBarCamp.  The buzz is building that we might do another, and people who were mildly interested before are now keenly curious.  This was exactly the outcome we were hoping for.

The first time we went to Perth, seven years ago, we took a packed 747 and the flight was hellish.  By the end the toilets were backed up, I was crawling under the seats to try to sleep, we'd run out of food and there was nothing to do.  This time, the plane was a brand-new 777 with little movie screens in the seat-backs, we were fed at perfectly strategic times, the toilets were clean, and Paige was very well behaved.  I wasn't even sore when we finally arrived in Perth.

This was good, because I was supposed to be in front of people, doing panels with Ken MacLeod and others, less than 24 hours after we'd arrived.  Despite the 13-hour time difference between Toronto and Perth, this has turned out not to be a problem.

Swancon's being held at the All Seasons Hotel, not the one we're staying at, but about a mile distant.  I sauntered over from our hotel about an hour before my first panel, through neighbourhoods that seem to have been utterly transformed since 2001.  Downtown Perth's quite familiar to us, but last time  parts of it had a rough look to them.  These parts seem to have been bulldozed and replaced by new and upscale establishments; downtown is being gentrified. 

The Good Friday morning was bright and warm (19 C overnight, warming up to 33 by the afternoon), with just a few people about; I passed through a gorgeous little park with gigantic, sprawling tropical trees and a dance troupe warming up on the lawn; past late-night clubs with their doors open to air out in the morning light; past 100-year-old stone buildings with wrap-around balconies, reminiscent of New Orleans.

Then it was time to talk about the Singularity with Ken MacLeod and Dirk Flintheart, and then the obsolescence of the "brain is computer" paradigm with  Ken and David Cake.  I sort of breezed through these despite being addled from lack of sleep; the real challenge was talking, without notes, for an hour by myself on the subject of foresight studies vs. traditional futurism.  This talk was scheduled for 4:00 p.m., which is 3:00 a.m. Toronto time.  I had a really great time and chatting with the attentive and interested audience for an hour was easy.

Tomorrow should be interesting.  Either it all catches up to me and I collapse into a drooling mass of inappropriately cold-weather-oriented clothing; or I'll be fully adjusted to the time change and raring to go.  I'll let you know.

I'll be attending Swancon later this week.  You can find a programme here (although, it doesn't have names on it and I'm not entirely clear on which panels I'll be on).

Our itinerary takes us first to Perth for the convention, then up to Kalbarri for a week and then outside Geraldton.  If you'd like, you can check out some of these locations in Google Earth.  I will be posting pix as I can, though for some of the time I will be off the grid entirely.

This is an important point:  you may not be able to get in touch with me.  Use email, certainly, but don't be surprised if even that doesn't work, or is delayed.  The people who're staying at our house will be monitoring the phone, and we'll be giving our Aussie contact info to close friends and family; so if it's urgent you can find me.  If even email doesn't work, try posting a reply to this message.  I'll be checking the site whenever I can.

And yes, I'm taking the laptop, and working on The Sunless Countries while we're there.

My schedule at Boskone was packed this year, but luckily the Westin Boston Waterfront has a great lobby, which doubles as a bar; this meant that any time I wasn't on a panel or giving a talk or signing books or reading, I was lounging in a high-traffic area.  As a result I was able to connect with a lot of people--really, truly too many to list here--and because there was such a large contingent of Tor Books employees there, also get in a good deal of business.  Huge thanks to the organizers, in particular Mark Olson, for inviting me down this year.

There's a bunch of photos online showing the mayhem--just hop on over to Irene Gallo's website and check out her  Friday and Sunday posts. Here's one I borrowed with her permission, showing Rick Berry (left) and I in approximately the state we were in all weekend:

I'd decided to stick around until Monday for a change, so I was able to head out with a small group to Rick's studio on Sunday evening.  Hanging out with the artists was one of the high points of the weekend for me--it's something I rarely get to do, but they're such a literate and interesting group of people--so I had a great time.  When we got back to the convention we found a dead dog party in progress, and were given some fine Ardbeg scotch (which brought tears to my eyes in more ways than one).  Dave Seeley was gracious enough to show up late that night for a further round of joviality before the scotch took hold and I drifted off.

Pleasant company, good food and drink, nice surroundings, and successful business transacted--who could ask for more?

Head on over to the Events page of my site for details about my final itinerary at Boskone. 

These are preliminary items; I'm likely to have some stuff added for Sunday as well.  Also, readings, signings, and Kaffeeklatsches are not yet scheduled so you can expect some action there too.

•  Frida         6pm  Applied SF: Using SF in the Real World
  Karl Schroeder   
  When he's not writing science fiction, Karl Schroeder is a consulting futurist for government and industry.  Sounds like a perfect job? Hear all about it!

•   Satur        10am  Building a Great Battle     
  James D. Macdonald, Tamora Pierce, Karl Schroeder  
  Whether it takes place in the expanse of space, an open field, or a  dark street, what brings a great battle to life on the page? How must a writer manage pace and description so the reader gets a sense of the action?
•  Satur         12 noon       The Appeal of the Lawless Elite       
  Alexander Jablokov 
  Beth Meacham  
  Patrick Nielsen Hayden
  Paul Park 
  Karl Schroeder        
  Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden has said, "Much of the genre works by    appealing to our wish that the world s extra-legal violence be under the control of the kind of smart people we admire. The Second  Foundation and the X-Men -- and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang    and the Laundry -- are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is  (we re assured) merited and just." Discuss.
• Satur         2pm          Who'd'a Thunk It? Unexpected Uses of Technology       Tobias Buckell       
  Chad Orzel       
  Karl Schroeder
  Charles Stross   Numerous technologies wind up getting used for quite different    purposes than their originators expected. Consider dynamite, bubble wrap, speed trap radar, screensavers, the Internet's massive if not main use as a conduit for pornography, and laser pointer cat toys.  What other example suggest themselves? Does this phenomenon make  basic research more desirable, or less? Is it ever discussed in SF?  Consider some of the great SFnal inventions (the hyperdrive, AIs, cyperspace, anti-gravity, boosterspice, positronic robots, personal force fields). Can you extrapolate some unexpected uses for them?
• Sunday sometime (not fixed yet):  Space War: How Would It Really Be Waged -- and Why? 
  (Pretty much what it says: Say we have a Galactic Empire or a hostile Mars or whatever.  Take a realistic look at space warfare.)
• Also Sunday  Global Warming: The Realities
  (The idea is not to debate whether or not it's real - of course it is --  but to take a scientific look at some of the more inflated claims and at some of the possible solutions.)