can_con_news

As some of you who read or “watch” this group know, we will be holding a Workshop next Wednesday (27 July) in the evening to come up with ideas for the Discussion Panels, Workshops and other such events at CAN-CON. Anybody is welcome to come and provide suggestions and feedback on all sorts of Discussion Panel — and Workshop — ideas.

We need Crazy Brainstorms, the crazier the better! :-)

The event will take place at the University of Ottawa’s Arts Building (70 Laurier Av. East, near the Laurier Transitway Station) starting at 7 PM. We should be in Room 509 of that building, though that may change. Look for the signs inside the door and near the elevator(s).

If you are interested in volunteering to organize or moderate the discussion, we also need Panelists. These are the people at the front who help keep the discussion on topic and discourage flame wars, squabbles and the like. If you are REALLY interested in and familiar with a topic that is SF, Fantasy, or Horror-related, you would definitely be appreciated as a Panelist! A Panelist usually will have to pay for a regular Membership (currently $40) or a student/youth Membership (half of that) in advance, but a partial refund may be available for Panelists who serve on multiple Panels. [As the link implies, we do support online registration, with payments, including credit card payments, processed by Paypal.]

Please note that we will be having four tracks of events going on during the day at the conference. Three of these will be in hotel “board-rooms” and the fourth will occur in a very large conference room. We will do our best to accommodate as many popular discussions, ranging from “Alpha Flight” to “World War Z”, as we can.

We hope to see you there!

Just to clarify that we do have some ideas, here are a few that we have come up to discuss at the conference – so far. We always are looking for more.

• Recent speculative fiction (e.g. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson) – how do they differ from their predecessors?
• When systems break down or otherwise stop, what happens or goes wrong?
• The future of cities, towns, suburbs – will sprawl continue or be reversed?
• Gender roles in society, changes to them and the impact/effect of speculative fiction upon society.
• How different cultures view graphic novels (English “comics” vs. French bande dessinée): how does that affect what stories can be written for them?
• Copyright, Fair Use & Ownership – where can a middle ground, acceptable to all the groups involved, be found?
• Constructed or artificial maps in speculative fiction [cartography of other planets, fantastic worlds, mapping mental “terrains”] ...
• Constructed (artificial) languages (e.g. Klingon, Quenya) and writing systems or “scripts” (e.g. Tengwar, Tenctonese) ...
• Encouraging innovation – how is it best done?
• Resolved: Fantasy is easier to write than SF.
• Global warming vs Peak Oil – which is the bigger threat? Depending on which one is more dangerous, what should we do to face that problem?
• De-constructing the Twilight series [back due to popular demand :-)].
• SF and Fantasy on the Radio: Did Video and the Net kill that star for good?
• After the coming apocalypse, what will be remembered? If we can't use a computer, will anything electronic be retained?

What do others think? As always, this inquiring person would like to know.