My Panels for Arisia

The panel announcements are up for Arisia 2016 and I'm pleased to report I'll be on some awesome ones this January.

First off, I'm going to be on the "Genre Fiction in Translation" panel Friday at 7:00 pm with a whole host of talented writers. Crystal Huff will moderate and I'll be sharing the table with Ken Liu, Sarah Weintraub, and John Chu. Ken Liu has been mentioned a few times here at Ancient Logic, both for his excellent short stories (including one of my favorites from last year "The Clockwork Soldier," and his work bringing Chinese language science fiction into English, including work from Liu Cixin. John Chu is one of his collaborators so I'm very excited to take part in this conversation.

That same night (Friday 8:30 pm) I'll be taking part in The Future of Mars panel with another incredible line-up of writers and thinkers. The Guest of Honor, John Scalzi will be joining the discussion, as well as Ken Scheneyer (moderator) and Jeff Hecht. Having the opportunity to meet the Guest of Honor would be enough to warrant its own post but the idea I'm going to be on the same panel...well, I'm legitimately terrified. And humbled. But also terrified. Mars is a favorite topic of mine and I can only hope that half way through my introduction I don't just turn to Scalzi and go..."Dude, you wrote Red Shirts. That was awesome."

I should be reading my work at some point in the weekend, but my last topical panel is on Monday at 1:00 pm and it was the other offering I was really keen on joining - "The End of All Things: Sociology and Eschatology." Ever since Fury Road, I've been doing a lot of back-reading and watching on post-apocalyptic media. Ever since Veterans Day, I've been doing a little virtual research in a small game called Fallout 4. The panel is moderated by Suzanne, and includes Venetia Charles, and Sarah Smith. My pitch to join this panel was bringing up the state of the post-apocalypse at the moment, from Neal Stephenson's future-forward take on the end of the world, to Paulo Bacigalupi's hard-truth collapse thriller "Water Knife." The other panelists bring some diverse experiences to bear on this topic so it promises to be a great conversation.

One last weird note - all of my announced panels are in Marina 2. Good venue.

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