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SFRA 2008 - 39th Annual Conference
Teaching, Reading and Creating Science Fiction
July 10-13, 2008
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas

Ritch Calvin, Conference Director,
Karen Helleckson and Craig Jacobson, Conference Coordinators.

In conjunction with the Campbell Conference

Registration Information

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/.

Special Guests

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.    Karen Joy Fowler
 
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.    Paul Kincaid
 
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).    Joan Slonczewski
 
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.    Maureen Kincaid Speller
 
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.    James Van Pelt

Final advance schedule (June 25, 2008)

The final advance schedule is available inside of this PDF.
This is the schedule of events only, not the full program.

Basic Conference Info

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 dont 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 its the site of our SFRA archives for any workaholics out there.

Important SFRA Announcement:

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