On Sept. 22, the gracious people at Polyplexus are hosting me for a 90 minute discussion about our planetary crisis and potential solutions to it that involve systems thinking--and, potentially, a turning-away from the linear, mechanistic industrial culture we currently have.

Go register on Eventbrite or Polyplexus.com to join the session. The session will be moderated by Laura Anne Edwards, NASA Datanaut and TED Resident.

Here's what I'll be up to--a particularly fun set of panels this year!

Reading: Karl Schroeder

Format: Reading

 14 Feb 2020, Friday 20:30 - 20:55

 Your Generation Ship Has Landed! Now What?

 14 Feb 2020, Friday 21:00 - 21:50

Our behemoth of a spaceship has been in transit since the days of our many-times-great grandparents. We've finally reached an Earth-like planet and are ready to go. What will our panel (of appointed/anointed/hereditary/elected?) leaders suggest doing first? Have they forgotten something important? Watch the panel map out our future and that of the human race on this, our new home. Then suggest your own ideas.

 100 Years From Now…

 15 Feb 2020, Saturday 12:00 - 12:50

 The world as we know it has changed dramatically in the last 100 years. How about the next 100? What might everyday life be like a century from now? What technological marvels will the near future bring? What social changes will take place? How about natural and human-made disasters? Overall — where will we be, and how will we get there? Is the Singularity coming? "Day Million"? Or will our grandchildren herd sheep and shiver in the dark?

Futuristic Societies in Science Fiction

 15 Feb 2020, Saturday 14:00 - 14:50

 Creatures that are part human and part machine. Sentient alien species. People living on ships and across time itself. The future is full of people. So what does it mean to be a person in the future? How might futuristic societies evolve based upon their surroundings and histories? How can we escape the perils and pitfalls of contemporary social norms in order to create societies that feel completely fresh and new?

Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder

 15 Feb 2020, Saturday 16:00 - 16:50

 Autographing

 15 Feb 2020, Saturday 17:00 - 17:50

• ·        Digital Dystopia, a talk with Cory Doctorow, at Toronto’s Word on the Street festival, Sept. 22.
• ·        Seeding Utopias and Resisting Dystopias, at Toronto Public Libraries starting Sept. 23.
• ·        I’ll be interviewed in the VR space Sansar by Draxtor on Friday, Sept. 27th 2:00 p.m. EST. Get a Sansar account and join us!
• Scintillation, October 11-13. I’ll be attending this small but intense literary SF convention, in Montreal.

I'll be in Vienna in early April, speaking at the European Digital Media Awards ceremony. To get a sense of the flavour of the upcoming talk, I was interviewed by journalist Chris Sutcliffe.  You can read the interview here.

An excerpt:

“It’s funny: I’ve included augmented reality in my stories for 20 years now. As it finally becomes a viable technology, I find myself doubting it more and more. At first it seemed natural and convenient that we should want to explode the images and interfaces currently inside our screens out onto the physical world. But that may be a terrible idea for a number of reasons...

Boskone is held at the Boston Weston Waterfront, close to all the best action in downtown Boston.  I'm flying in Thursday night so I'll be available to chat, sign and read from Friday afternoon onwards. 

Here's my final schedule. What's on here matches closes my current obsessions, and a lot of these topics are front and center in Stealing Worlds.  So expect me to be vocal, opinionated, and engaged!

The Most Alien Aliens

15 Feb 2019, Friday 16:00 - 16:50, Burroughs (Westin)

How can you design a really GOOD alien? How can writers/artists imbue their creations with a genuine sense of otherness? What do our depictions of aliens tell us about ourselves?

James Cambias, Dr. Stephen P. Kelner Jr. (Ascent Leadership Networks) (M), Jeffrey A. Carver, Laurence Raphael Brothers (Freelance), Karl Schroeder

Near-Future SF

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 12:00 - 12:50, Harbor II (Westin)

1984 was published in 1949. 2001: A Space Odyssey was published in 1968. Neither was predictive ... at least for the year they were putatively about. Should science fiction set in the near future try to be prophetic? Can it avoid becoming dated? Does it always have to be dystopic? There’s a lot of it out there these days, but what makes a near-future story successful?

Fran Wilde, Michael Swanwick, Karl Schroeder, Paul Di Filippo (M), Brett James

Economics in SF/F Worlds

Format: Panel

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 14:00 - 14:50, Burroughs (Westin)

Whether you deal in coin, platinum, electronic credits, or chickens, all societies rest upon an agreed-upon economic foundation. However, fantastic fiction rarely features a reference to any body that establishes and monitors a financial system. How important is it to see a working (or failing) economy in an SF/F world? Can you realistically have a cashless society (Star Trek) or a civilization run by orcs (LOTR)? What are the economic drivers that keep these worlds turning? Fellowships that cross multiple borders to throw away precious metal objects so rarely pay well. How do our heroes and villains survive without visible incomes of any kind?

MR Richardson (Room 10 Publishing) (M), Fonda Lee, Karl Schroeder , Steve Miller (Liaden Universe), Mr. Walter H. Hunt (Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts)

Reading by Karl Schroeder

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 15:00 - 15:25, Griffin (Westin)

Autographing: James Cambias, Daniel M. Kimmel, Bracken MacLeod, Karl Schroeder

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 16:00 - 16:50, Galleria - Autographing (Westin)

Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 17:00 - 17:50, Galleria - Kaffeeklatsch 1 (Westin)

If Only It Were Real

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 20:00 - 20:50, Griffin (Westin)

What science fiction concept, other than space travel, would you most like to see realized? Flying cars? Matter replicators? Time travel? Why? What would be the impact on civilization of this wish fulfillment? Flying cars crashing into buildings, replicators putting manufacturers out of business, time travelers running wild, oh my!

Alan Brown (M), Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Mary Anne Mohanraj (Speculative Literature Foundation), Karl Schroeder

The Limits of Automation

17 Feb 2019, Sunday 10:00 - 10:50, Burroughs (Westin)

When, how, why, what? Following up on last year's "The Future of Work" ... How far can we reasonably project that automation of jobs will advance in the real world in the next 10 years? Why? What limits to automation are presently visible? What plausible limits have we not yet encountered? What about the longer term? What jobs can we reasonably expect will be completely automatable in years to come? We'll focus on technical aspects, not so much on societal acceptance, and not at all on societal impact.

Mark Olson (M), Jeff Hecht, Karl Schroeder, Laurence Raphael Brothers (Freelance), Brianna Wu

When Robots Take Over (Our Jobs)

17 Feb 2019, Sunday 11:00 - 11:50, Burroughs (Westin)

Twentieth-century history shows that automation can increase productivity and stimulate new employment. More recent developments, however, haven't always been so productive or stimulating (e.g., grocery store self-checkouts). Are we nearing a point of no return — when technological advances chiefly function to replace human labor? What happens to society once work gets scarce, and stays that way? And what might the transition to that brave new (jobless) world entail?

Mark Olson (M), Karl Schroeder, B. Diane Martin, John P. Murphy, Brianna Wu

I was recently invited out to the University of Waterloo to talk about an idea I've been working on for almost twenty years now.  This is the idea I've variously called actants or, more recently, deodands.  Deodands are an alternative vision of artificial intelligence, and of what AI can do for and with humanity.  I started talking about these ideas in my first novel, Ventus, and have carried through with various short stories over the years, including "Deodand" and "The Desire Lines."

A deodand is an artificial intelligence that thinks it is some specific natural system--and by natural system, I mean what you think I mean:  rivers, lakes, watersheds, forests, flocks of geese, packs of wolves.  The conceit is that these AIs are "rational actors" in the classic (though now discounted) economic sense:  they try to maximize their own advantage.  What this means is that these AIs try to protect and advance the interests of the systems that they think they are. 

You can watch the video here.  I'm a little embarrassed by my middle-aged pot-belly, and you'll find I use a lot of "ums" and "uhs," in the first few minutes of the talk.  I my defense it was 9:30 at night, and I'd driven two hours in pounding rain to get there after working a full day.  Still, it was lots of fun, and you can see the energy in the room was high even at that late hour.  Thanks to Ian Pilon, the meetup organizers and the University of Waterloo for inviting me out.  I had a great time!