Ack, next time I need to make sure I click the right buttons and limit myself to one or two events a day.

Since I’m flying out on Monday — and dubious about my ability to get there by 10 am on Sunday — I asked not to be on the  two crossed-out panels. My name’s still on the program on the website, though, so the Sunday morning one is still, er, potentially happening…

Sat 1300 Rm 214: (A) 1. SF and cultural studies in the Korean classroom

(This is an academic paper about exactly what the title says.)

Sat 1500 Rm 219: Cyberpunk and the city

The city seems an integral part of the cyberpunk genre – but how necessarily is it? What are the core tropes and themes of cyberpunk, and how might they be expressed outside of the urban environment? How far can you stretch the cyberpunk setting before it snaps?

Russell Blackford, Marianne De Pierres, Charles Stross, Gord Sellar

Sat 1700 Rm 219: The Fermi Paradox

The great physicist Enrico Fermi asked “Where are the aliens? Why didn’t they get here long ago?” This is a huge puzzle since the universe is so old that it is difficult to understand why they have not already visited Earth, or at least made their presence known out in space. This is the Fermi Paradox. Have we made any progress untangling it?

James Benford, Gord Sellar, Dirk Flinthart, Alastair Reynolds

Sun 1000 Rm 207: The problems with first contact;

Sun 1300 Rm 203: Make room! Make room!

Weren’t we all supposed to be overcrowded and starving by now? (RAH, “We’ll all be getting hungry by and by.”) What

happened? The projections of the 50s and 60s and 70s were very clearly quite wrong, but does that mean that there are no 

risks for the future? A discussion about the projections we can make now, what we actually know, what we surmise, and what 

we might do to change the darker realistic projections.

Gord Sellar, Sam Scheiner, Cristina Lasaitis

Sun 1600 Rm 203: Virtual bodies: shifting realities in a cyberpunk world

Cyberpunk fiction presented readers with a 21st century world where virtual space seemed to gain parity with the physical world. A quarter-century past Neuromancer, how accurate have the predictions of the 1980s’ most significant SF genre become? From William Gibson and Neal Stephenson to World of Warcraft and social media – has science fiction become science fact?

Gord Sellar, David Cake, Jack Bell

Mon 1400 Rm 219: An everyday future: including popular culture in
science fiction