Once again I'll be attending FOGcon this year, and I'm excited to be participating in three scheduled events. FOGcon takes place in Walnut Creek from March 10 – 12, and is an all around awesome convention that takes great care to be inclusive and diverse with its programming topics. Tickets are available at the door. You can learn more info here.
Here's my personal schedule, but I will also be hanging around most of the weekend attending other panels (or at the bar), so if you're attending and see me loitering around, please say hi!
Friday 9:30 PM – 10:45 PM, Santa Rosa Room
Reading by Laura Blackwell, Garrett Calcaterra, Nancy Jane Moore, and Madeleine Robins.
Saturday 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM, Sacramento Room
My Driveway's Underwater, So Now I Swim To Work—Climate Change and the Geography of Daily Life
Moderator: Garrett Calcaterra. Karl Gustav Dandenell, Sarah Frost, Heather McDougal.
We have all seen the maps of what the earth would look like with a sea-level rise of X feet; what will this do to the places we live and work in now? Will some of us be taking boats to work, or will our offices have moved across a local mountain range? Panelists will look at the places they're coming from, and what might change for them, among other examples.
Saturday 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM, Sacramento Room
Blood and Thunder
Moderator: Garrett Calcaterra. Laura Davy, Chadwick H. Saxelid, Jason Malcolm Stewart.
Violence, the nastiest and most graphic possible, seems to have become an integral part of all entertainment these days, including F and SF movies and books. Is this really healthy? Natural? Normal? Does it say something about the society and the world we live in?
BRAVO
ReplyDeleteWhat does FOG stand for in the name of FOGcon? Can you explain? And will this panel take into account Kim Stanley Robinson's new cli fi novel NEW YORK 2140 which the WASH POST reviewer said: MAJOR MEDIA MILESTONE!!! ---------- Today the Washington Post book section's book reviewer referred to Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel NEW YORK 2140 as having
ReplyDelete"the tenacious, encyclopedic detail that Robinson is known for, the big ideas of a modern CliFi novel and the twists and turns of a heist thriller."
THIS MARKS the first time a major USA newspaper book section has used the Cli-Fi term, and it also marks the first time a major book section has referred to KSR's new novel as having the big ideas of a Cli-Fi novel..." !!!
The reporter at the Post did this completely on her own, I had never met her before, and the Post has never done this before. WOW.
I think this now paves the way for other MSM newspapers and websites to start using the Cli-Fi term in book reviews more often, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times to the Boston Globe.
See the full review here and file it away with your MAJOR MEDIA MILESTONES files: --
Ms. Everdeen Mason the POST reporter wrote:
''Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 feels eerily prescient at times. Here Robinson explores the lives of several residents of an apartment building in Manhattan after global warming has caused almost all of the world’s coastlines to go underwater. The novel follows the adventures of seven characters; each one intricately describes how society would change in a major natural disaster. Robinson covers all his bases: the science behind what caused the rise in the tides, the potential consequences to the U.S. economy, even the ins and outs of how to grow food with vastly diminished resources.
***The book is a strange hybrid. It has the tenacious, encyclopedic detail that Robinson is known for, the big ideas of a modern CliFi novel and the twists and turns of a heist movie.***
The characters are memorable, particularly the two little orphan boys and the Internet video star, Amelia. It all comes together (perhaps a little too) beautifully in the end. Anyone familiar with Robinson’s work knows that he can be tedious and heavy handed, and this novel is no exception. But like the others, the thought-provoking ideas and vivid details make the book worth reading.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/best-science-fiction-and-fantasy-books-to-read-in-march/2017/03/07/7c912458-0339-11e7-b9fa-ed727b644a0b_story.html?utm_term=.243059e3b882
FOGcon stand for "Friends of Genre" and it's a great sci-fi and fantasy convention. And yes, we did talk about Robinson's new book in the panel on cli-fi!
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