interviews
Aug 17, 2013
My 2013 Worldcon schedule
It's a busy one, though I'll only be there for Saturday and Sunday
Keeping in the spirit of dumping all kinds of news at once, here's my schedule for the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, Texas, which is taking place over the Labour Day weekend. It's a whirlwind visit as I need to get back to Toronto to continue futuring for my new employer, Idea Couture. Luckily, I've got lots going on. If I'm lucky, I'll even get there early enough Friday night to take over the bathtub bar at the Tor party. We'll see. Meanwhile, here's my itinerary:
Reading: Karl Schroeder
Saturday 10:00 - 11:00
Karl Schroeder
Autographing:
Ellen Datlow, Josh Rountree, Karl Schroeder, Lynne M. Thomas
Saturday 12:00 - 13:00
Ellen Datlow , Lynne M. Thomas , Josh Rountree , Karl Schroeder
Consensual
Reality: Your Relationship to the World
Saturday 15:00 - 16:00
Google Glasses, augmented reality, kinetic gaming, tactile transmission systems. These and other new technologies are on the horizon to transmogrify sense and sensation. Google glasses are the first step to putting an overlay on the reality we see. This opens the door to hiding the ugly and changing what we see. When we do this socially it leads to possible consensual reality as in the works of Vinge, Schroeder and others. What will such capability mean in reality? Has science fiction explored the societal consequences?
Edie Stern (M), Yasser Bahjatt , Walter Jon Williams , Ben Bova , Karl Schroeder
Kaffeeklatsch:
Nancy Kress, Edward M. Lerner, Karl Schroeder
Saturday 17:00 - 18:00
Edward M. Lerner , Nancy Kress , Karl Schroeder
Speed-Forecasting
Workshop
Sunday 10:00 - 13:00
We will do a quick analysis of the future, with the end product being four scenarios that highlight different possibilities. Come take your work to the future!
Karl Schroeder
Have We Lost
the Future?
Sunday 14:00 - 15:00
Where science fiction once looked to the future as the setting for speculation, nowadays the focus seems to be on alternate pasts, fantasy worlds, or consciously "retro" futures. We're no longer showing the way to what things might be like. We discuss whether this is connected to the general fear of decline and decay in the English-language world -- or has science fiction simply run out of ideas?
Karen Burnham (M), Brenda Cooper , Karl Schroeder , Willie Siros , Derek Kunsken
As You Know,
Jim...
Sunday 15:00 - 16:00
Exposition is never easy. How can writers communicate the details of a setting, magical system or incredible scientific breakthrough without losing half their audience? What makes a readers eyes glaze over and how do you avoid it?
Michelle Sagara (M) , Tanya Huff , Karl Schroeder , Jack McDevitt , Walter Jon Williams
First Contact
Without a Universal Translator
Sunday 17:00 - 18:00
How do we establish a common conceptual base to communicate with another species? Sure, we have numbers and the hydrogen atom in common, but how far would that get us in a world of beings who share none of our sensory apparatus?
Lawrence M. Schoen (M) , Paige E. Ewing , Karl Schroeder
By the way, if you want to plan your days, the entire schedule is or will shortly be online at http://www.lonestarcon3.org/guests/appearing.shtml.
That's it. See you all there!
Jan 28, 2013
New interview with me
In which I talk about some current obsessions
Over at the Speculating Canada website, Derek Newman-Stille has a new interview with me in which he asks some pretty interesting questions--such as what science fiction can do that mainstream literature can't. I've answered to the best of my ability, and I had a lot of fun doing this interview.
As a teaser, check out the following exchange:
Spec Can: What can Speculative Fiction do that “realist” fiction can’t?
Karl Schroeder: Describe the real world.
Realism, in literature, painting, and science, is just the rule of the lowest common denominator. It’s not actually a successful stance in science, for instance; strictly realist approaches to quantum mechanics fall into paradox pretty quickly. Realism achieves some stability in understanding the world by simply discarding 99% of all the available data (whether that be measurements, opinions, or political stances). That’s what the muggles do in the Harry Potter stories: it’s not actually that they lack some magical gene or other that wizards have (like the midichlorians in Star Wars); it’s that they literally can’t see the magical in the world around them. They only think about, and therefore can only see, those things they’ve decided are ‘real.’ What’s that saying? “If all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” That’s muggle thinking. (And by the way, having the Force be created by midichlorians makes the Star Wars universe a very muggle place.)
May 12, 2012
Me on Singularity Weblog
...And a surprise review on The Atlantic's website
Nikola Danaylov sat down in my living room last week and grilled me for over an hour about my thoughts on technology, the Singularity, and my alternatives to it. The whole interview can be seen here, or downloaded as a podcast; be warned, it covers a huge amount of ground and I don't get much chance to fully flesh out the ideas I'm throwing around. Hence much of it may sound like gibberish.
There is much that I told Nikola that bears extensive expansion and I would love to lay out these ideas (eg. about the Technological Maximum and the Rewilding) in a book... but only when somebody pays me to write it. I am sadly unable to take on a project like that without backing anymore; I'd starve before I finished the thing.
Meanwhile, others seem to be discovering my work. There's a new review of Lady of Mazes on The Atlantic's website! It's a pretty awesome exploration of the key themes of the novel; I have to say that, seven years after the novel came out, people finally seem to be ready for the conversation that it proposes. Should we control the technologies that influence our lives, or do we willy-nilly spin the roulette wheel of technological change and simply accept what comes out of it? This is the question Lady of Mazes asks; there could be no more relevant a question for the present, yet when the book first came out, there wasn't much said about that aspect of the story. People didn't really... get it. Now, it seems they're starting to.
Feb 13, 2012
Lawrence Schoen asks me about food
...And I answer
During the interview he did with me at SFCOntario last fall, Lawrence Schoen asked me what my favourite food was. My answer, and the quirky little conversation around it, can now be found on Lawrence's site here.
Short answer: anything Indian.
Oct 17, 2011
My tentative SFCOntario schedule
I'll be Canvention Guest of Honour this year. Here's what's up
Opening Ceremonies – Fri. 7 PM, Ballroom BC
Canvention Guest of Honour interview – Sat. 11 AM, Ballroom BC (Laurence Schoen as interviewer.)
Linguistics for Fiction
– Sat. 3 PM, Solarium
From Tolkien to Game of Thrones writers and
moviemakers have paid attention to the development of created languages. What goes into creating an authentic
language? How do biology and psychology help determine language? This panel
will introduce you to the study of languages on Earth and to what may determine
the development of language on an alien world. (Matthew Johnson(M), Alex
Pantaleev, Lawrence Schoen, Karl Schroeder)
Kaffeeklatsch – Sat. 4:00 PM, Room 207
Sun of Suns Graphic Novel Sneak Peek – Sat. 6 PM, Parkview
Aurora Award Banquet – Sun. 11 PM Shade Restaurant
Aurora Award Ceremony – Sun. 12 PM. I'll be MC'ing.
Cyberpunk: Is It Dead? Did It Ever Really Exist?- Sun. 2
PM Ballroom
A
Bruce Sterling once said that if you claim to be writing
cyberpunk, you aren’t. Others who have been linked to the cyberpunk movement
have disavowed any knowledge of its actions. What is this literary movement in
science fiction, and why do writers seem to either run towards or away from the
label? (Kathryn Allan, Simon McNeil, Ira Nayman(M), Karl Schroeder, Allan
Weiss)
Closing Ceremonies – Sun. 3 PM, Ballroom BC
Jun 05, 2009
Interview at Grinding to Valhalla
A different perspective on storytelling from the gaming crowd
I've got a new interview up at Grinding to Valhalla. This is a gaming site, and as such they asked a couple of perceptive questions that I'd never be asked by literary interviewer.
Thanks, Randolph!