Saturday, April 12, 2008

If you were going to a Con...

...what kind of panels would you like to see?

Every year, MileHiCon asks its participants to suggest ideas for panels. This is one of the reasons why I love this Con, the participants get a lot of input into what's going on.

So, like I did last year, I thought I'd open it up to fans of speculative fiction and ask them what kind of panels they'd like to see.

So, how about it?

5 comments:

Keith said...

I thought I'd respond here to your recent comment on my blog. I really wish that I could go to Denver. I told my Mom about it, and she offered to pay, but she doesn't have the money to spend that much.

It is complicated by two things. First, as a consultant, I don't get vacation days. My gross is $400 a day so to miss a day or two of work adds significantly to the cost.

Second, my 35th wedding anniversary is August 11th. Erica will be sure that I am off having a good time with sexy spec-fic girls (probably an oxymoron). I don't want to come back finding her angry. If I take any days off it really should be to spend time with her.

I've commented before on con panels. My interests are in variety of POD and ePub options available and you would be one person very qualified to give such a talk.

Here's an interesting topic - what do musical instruments sound like in space? Do electric guitars work in a vacuum? Do harmonicas sound the same in a low pressure helium oxygen mix? If you played a violin on the surface of Mars, how would the physics of the low pressure change the tone?

Well, interesting to me, mostly.

I could give a talk on Eando Binder and his (their) impact on mid 20th century Science Fiction, but no one would come, at least not until they learned that the Brothers Binder wrote Captain Marvel and a story called Iron Man.

Jim Shannon said...

Last convention I was at was with
ESFCAS=Edmonton Science Fiction Comic Arts Society. Later to become Non-Con and then TextCon. I attended I think the 2nd Non-con convention in 1979 and it was at the Edmonton Inn, now the Ramada Inn. I recall having such a good time there, expecially the costume ball.

I don't recall any special guests or anything that year. I was more interested in my girlfriend at the time then anything else ;-)

but for panels, I'd like to see more topics on religion in SF. Another topic would be philosophy and another one of my pet peeves is pollution (not to be confused with "global-warming") but what kinds of pollution humanity might face in the Future. How would humanity dispose of toxix wastes that type of thing from colinization on other planets?

Jim

Anonymous said...

How about panels on the role or potential role of SF in real-world science education, human rights and environmental issues? What can SF contribute to society -- or does it deserve its reputation (widely held outside the ghetto) for irrelevance and escapism?

Also: how much clout do Scientology, Mormonism, and other cults have in SF publishing? Has it always been this way? Are SF fans more likely to believe in UFOs, Big Foot, and the Loch Ness monster? Are SF fans, ironically, _less_ progressive than those of other genres?

Robert Porter

Jim Shannon said...

How about Cults like Amway? How would they and other MLM cults thrive in a world like The Federation for example?

Jim

J Alan Erwine said...

Thanks everyone. I'll definitely keep these in mind.

Unfortunately, most cons tend to avoid the more controversial ideas because they don't want things to "deteriorate." Plus a lot of authors will avoid those panels because it's a way to offend potential readers...