Recent News and Announcements

Karen Joy Fowler is the best-selling author of The Jane Austen Book Club (2004), which was recently released as a film. She also is the author of Sarah Canary (1991), The Sweetheart Season (1996), Sister Noon (2001), and Wit's End (2008), as well as four short story collections.
Paul Kincaid is the author of What We do When We Read Science Fiction (2008) and the editor of The Arthur C. Clarke Award: A Critical Anthology. He was one of the founders of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and its administrator for ten years.
Joan Slonczewski, professor of biology at Kenyon College, uses science fiction as a way to teach biology. She also is a prize-winning science fiction author of novels such as A Door Into Ocean (1986), Still Forms on Foxfield (1980), The Wall Around Eden (1989), Daughters of Elysium (1993), The Children Star (1998), and Brain Plague (2000). She also is a coauthor of Microbiology: An Evolving Science (2006).
Maureen Kincaid Speller served as administrator of the British Science Fiction Association for seven years and has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and chaired the jury for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which Karen Joy Fowler helped found.
James Van Pelt writes and teaches in western Colorado. During the school year he teaches English at both Fruita Monument High School and Mesa State College. His fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales. His nonfiction work has appeared in Tangent magazine.

See conference information here.

Registration for the conference and reservations for the conference hotel (Holiday Inn), can be found at the following site:
http://www.continuinged.ku.edu/programs/campbell/.

After twenty-five years, the Science Fiction Research Association will meet in Lawrence, Kansas, again-this time in conjunction with the University of Kansas Campbell Conference. Faculty members, teachers, and librarians in the six-state region will have an unusual opportunity July 10-13 to participate in the latest scholarship about a category of fiction that has become increasingly meaningful in the last quarter century.

Primary and secondary school teachers and librarians in the region will have a Campbell Conference program on teaching science fiction prepared especially for them. The SFRA annual meeting features the presentation of scholarly papers but is enlivened more than most academic meetings not only by the nature of their subjects-which include popular films, comic books, and games-but by interactions with the writers who create what the academics are discussing.

SFRA guest writers and scholars will include Karen Joy Fowler, Maureen Kincaid Speller, and Paul Kincaid. The Campbell Conference will bring the winners of the Campbell Award for the best SF novel of the year and the Sturgeon Award for the best short SF of the year, as well as a keynote speaker for the "teaching SF" program. Other writers often attend both meetings.

SFRA and the Campbell Conference will combine their award ceremony on Friday evening, July 11, at the Lawrence Holidome. SFRA presents its awards for contributions to scholarship and the Campbell Conference recognizes the best SF novel and short SF of the year.

The Campbell Conference's teaching program will cover why SF should be taught, what might be taught, how to teach it, how to get a course approved, and what resources are available to teacher and librarians. The program will run five hours in the Kansas Union on July 12, with film excerpts, power-point examples, and panel discussions. Materials developed during this program will be recorded for use in meetings and conferences across the nation, as a part of AboutSF's mandate to further the teaching, reading, and understanding of science fiction.

Arrangements, including costs, programs, and special guests, will be announced later. Attendees will be housed at the Lawrence Holidome, with an option in University dormitories.

SFRA 2008 will be held in Lawrence, Kansas, in conjunction with the Campbell Conference on July 10-13 (Thurs. through Sun.) at the University of Kansas. Individual abstracts or panel presentations comprising three or four papers are invited on any topic, but we particularly welcome abstracts on the conference's broad theme, "Creating, Reading, and Teaching Science Fiction." SFRA also encourages panels and papers analyzing SF in nonliterary media, a recent extension of SFRA's traditional focus.

Abstracts should be sent to Karen Hellekson:
karenhellekson -AT- karenhellekson.com
either typed into the body of an e-mail or attached as a document. Moderators will be randomly chosen among the panels that are made up. Presenters who require audiovisual equipment should indicate what they will need.

In addition, a Proceedings volume is planned. Authors are encouraged to drop off their papers at the SFRA meeting to be considered for the printed volume. These papers will be treated as drafts, and papers chosen for inclusion in the volume will be revised before publication.

Proposals are due by Monday, March 31st.

Your SFRA Executive Committee has accepted the gracious invitation of the Campbell Conference to hold our 2008 annual meeting in conjunction with them on July 10-13 (Thurs. through Sun.) at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

The Campbell Conference is the concluding event of the Writers Workshop in Science Fiction, the Novel Writers Workshop in Science Fiction, and the beginning of the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction. It has been held regularly at the University of Kansas since 1973, except for the special joint event in 2007 with SFRA and the Heinlein Centennial. This year our two organizations will be working together at a common site to provide quality academic panels, paper presentations and author discussions. During the coming weeks SFRA will be posting details about our part of the conference on this listserve and on our website (www.sfra.org); also check out the Campbell Conference webpage: http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/campbell-conference.htm

SFRA's theme for this 2008 meeting is: "Teaching, Reading and Creating Science Fiction," which meshes well with both the Campbell Conference's themes of "Teaching Science Fiction" plus "Current Trends in Science Fiction" and our own previously announced Dublin theme of "Good Writing in SF." "Creating SF" also encourages panels and paper analyzes of SF in non-literary media, a recent extension of SFRA's traditional focuses that we have been encouraging.

Lawrence, Kansas, lies about 50 miles west of the Kansas City International airport. SFRA plans to work during the coming months to insure smooth and convenient transportation between Kansas City and Lawrence. Lodging promises to be very reasonable, as will be the conference registration fee at this new venue and the cost for whatever banquet / reception we hold. (And don't forget that SFRA will be offering to the extent it can some travel remuneration for graduate students reading papers, especially overseas students who had planned on attending in Dublin.) SFRA will soon announce its guest list of invited SF authors and critics, and the Campbell Conference traditionally hosts local authors, institute instructors and the winners of the John W. Campbell and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards. The eventual list of SF authors for this combined event promises to be absolutely awesome, as my students would say. Finally, the University of Kansas has always been an exciting ! college town to visit, even when its football teams were losing almost every game, and it's the site of our SFRA archives for any workaholics out there.

SFRA hosted its annual convention in Lawrence in 1982, and absolutely everyone I've talked to remembers that 1982 meeting with fondness. 2008 promises to be even better! I sure hope most of you will find a way to come. We'll lift a toast together to the Dublin conference that almost was, and celebrate the fine Lawrence conference that is happening.

The SFRA Executive Committee has decided that, due to the uncertainties caused by recent currency fluctuations, the only financially prudent course is not to hold our 2008 annual meeting in Dublin, Ireland. We sincerely regret any problems this announcement will cause our members, wherever they reside. It was not a decision the Committee reached lightly, and it is a decision that has caused all of us bitter disappointment. But whether or not we could reach sufficient prepaid registrations by preset cancellation deadlines, which given the rapid decline of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies seemed a major uncertainty, the amount of money SFRA would have to upfront for registration subsidies to attract a minimal attendance seemed almost to guarantee a significant deficit, one that could grow substantially under certain conditions. The SFRA Executive Committee agreed that we should not commit to this level of expenditure at this time.

We would like to thank the Dublin Conference Group for all the hard work they have put in over the past several years on this project. We stress that it is not the fault of any of them that these plans have not worked out, but rather the declining value of the U.S. dollar that is the major culprit here. And we stress that SFRA will continue to do all it can in the future to serve ALL of its membership, wherever they reside.

The SFRA Executive Committee will work to find a site in the United States for SFRA's 2008 Conference that is affordable and will make for a quality academic gathering. We hope to announce this new venue in the next couple of weeks. In addition, SFRA will do what it can to offer graduate students willing to present a paper at that conference, particularly non-North American students who were looking forward to the Dublin locale, travel grants to lessen the cost of attending the U.S. venue.

We hope that out of this disappointment will somehow come a shared determination to make SFRA a more vital and more dynamic group of science fiction scholars.

Adam Frisch
SFRA President

When Genres Collide: Selected Essays from the 37th Annual Meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association is now available for ordering at Amazon and other bookstores.

ISBN-10: 097477093
ISBN-13: 978-097477096

Amazon listing of the volume

SFRA 2006 guests included Norman Spinrad (Guest of Honor), Nancy Kress, Nalo Hopkinson, R. Garcia y Robertson, William Sleator, and Bruce Taylor. Their plenary session reflections on colliding genres and the current state of science fiction are featured in the volume, together with a generous selection of conference essays by noted science fiction scholars.

Table of contents

• Introduction

1. DOES SF HAVE A PEDIGREE, AND CAN IT WIN BEST IN SHOW?
   • Science Fiction and the War on Science in Contemporary Society / Bruce L. Rockwood
   • The Language of Genre: Science Fiction and Mainstream Ideology / William Lomax
   • Postcolonial Science Fiction: Towards a Theory of an Emerging Genre / Ericka Hoagland
   • The Byronic Hero in Science Fiction Film / Adam Frisch
   • When the Unreal World Meets the Surreal World in TV Land / Lou Orfanella
2. SF MEETS DETECTIVES AND THE WILD WEST
   • Noir/Alien/Detectives: Chad Taylor's Shirker / Joe Sanders
   • Deducing the Fantastic: The Detective's Search for Speculative Certainty / John Garrison
   • The Bounty Hunter and the Hired Gun: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the Post-McCarthy Era Adult Western / Robert O' Connor
   • Doing it Cowboy Style: The Possibilities of Genre and Sex in Joss Whedon's Firefly / Matthew Rowheder
3. FAIRY TALES AND SCIENCE FANTASY
   • Beauty and the Beast in Space: Tanith Lee's SF Fairy Tales / Christine Mains
   • Time Travel and the Fairy-Tale Heroine: Ecofeminism in Sheri S. Tepper's Beauty / Annette Doblix Klemp
   • Once Upon A Time There Were Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Joyce Carol Oates: Children's Literature Tropes in Mainstream American Fiction / Kelly L. Goodridge
   • Civility Amidst Savagery: Bisclavret and Remus Lupin / Brent Stypczynski
4. SF AND RELIGION
• Magic, Art, Religion, Science: Blurring the Boundaries of Science and Science Fiction in Marge Piercy's Cyborgian Narrative / Linda Wight
• The Religions of Battlestar Galactica: Making Human, Making Other / James H. Thrall
5. SNAPSHOTS OF AMERICA THROUGH SF LENSES
• Childhood Dreams: The Young, the Old, and the Alien Visitor in 1980s American Science Fiction Film / Lincoln Geraghty
• Reads Like Teen Spirit: Commodification and Generation X Sensibilities in Eileen Gunn and Leslie What's "Nirvana High" / Jen Brandt
6. APOCALYPSE THEN, NOW OR LATER? SF AND OUR SPECIES' PROSPECTS
• Apocalyptic Vision, the Mythos of the Rocket, and the Failure of the Individual in Thomas Pynchon's Alternate History, Gravity's Rainbow / JJ Sargent
• Would You Insure Humanity? Spinrad, Kress and Other SF Actuaries Weigh the Risks / Thomas J. Morrissey
7. MASTERS OF ECLECTIC SF: BRADBURY, DICK AND SPINRAD
• Cold Equations: Making sense of an SF writer's work (The Case of Philip K. Dick) / Jorge Martins Rosa
• Echoes Across a Half-Century: Ray Bradbury's Leviathan '99 / Phil Nichols
• Norman Spinrad's Mind Games, Flawed Idols, and Controlled Systems of (Dis)Order / Oscar De Los Santos
8. "WHEN GENRES COLLIDE" AUTHORS PANEL
• Participating Authors: Norman Spinrad, Nancy Kress, Nalo Hopkinson, R. Garcia y Robertson, William Sleator, Bruce Taylor

• Notes on the Authors who Participated in the "When Genres Collide" Panel
• Notes on the Essay Contributors

Those who pre-ordered a volume can expect to receive their copy in the mail in a couple of weeks (as soon as Fine Tooth Press gets its shipment).

Thanks again to everyone who attended and participated in the conference and contributed to the volume. The advance edition looks great, in my admittedly prejudiced opinion.

Take care,
Oscar De Los Santos

A while back I announced that Phil Snyder was stepping down from his position as Fiction Reviews Editor.

I'd like now to announce that Ed Carmien will be replacing Phil in this position, effective immediately. Ed's been a long time reviewer for the SFRA Review, and has already sent me ideas for revising editorial guidelines.

We'd like to welcome Ed aboard, and look forward to working with him. If you want to suggest a fiction title for review, or to remind Ed that you're available as a reviewer in the future, you can contact him at sfrafiction AT mac.com. His mailing address will be added to the masthead of the next issue.

Chrissie

I am pleased to announce to the membership that the victorious candidates in the SFRA election are:

As election organiser may I offer my personal congratulations to the new executive but also to those who ran but did not win. An association is only as strong as those willing to lead it and we were well served by all of the candidates. It is also very pleasing that 116 ballots were cast, showing a membership concerned about the organisation and its future.

Yrs.

Peter Brigg
Past President SFRA

These are the candidate statements from the slate selected by the Nominating Committee. Members should be aware that, by means of a petition signed by five voting members of the Association and received by the Secretary of the association by July 10, 2006, further nominations may occur. Anyone reading the bylaws will realise that, as Chair of the Elections Committee, I have arbitrarily extended the date in the regulations so that it occurs after the annual conference, the conference being an opportunity for the membership to informally meet and consider the nominations. The candidate statements offered below will also appear in the next issue of SFRAR.

Peter Brigg
Chair, Nominating Committee