Hot on the heels of WFC, here’s a favorite local convention. It was the first to feature me as an author, after WorldCon, though Seattle’s NorwesCon followed as soon as the calendar would allow. Portland has been my sometime home, and among my foremost friendship cities.
Due to the pandemic, this will be available to everyone everywhere this year! I’m looking forward to sharing a virtual table with some panelists who I’ve attended for a while. Also, I’m finally on the Space Opera panel, and the Genre Hybrid panel, plus a Worldbuilding panel, with a reading – this is the dream panel schedule I’d been wanting since the very beginning, and better. My OryCon / OR-eCon schedule is as follows (I find this pasted block formatting to be novel, so I’m leaving it this way):
| Building Your World in Science Fiction | |
| Zoom 2 – Writing | |
| Fri Nov 13 1:00pm – 1:50pm | |
| Where we will discuss how to research, plot, and develop the setting in science fiction literature. | |
| Eva L. Elasigue, Lee French, David D. Levine | |
| Losing Track of Reality | |
| Zoom 3 – Science | |
| Fri Nov 13 2:00pm – 2:50pm | |
| Whether from belief in magic exploited by hucksters, false news stories created and exploited by politicians, disinformation promulgated for profit, flat Earth and young Earth dogmas, and entertainment fantasy taken too seriously, reality in history and science seem under attack. Is this actually getting worse? Could the inability of a faux-news fed public to deal realistically with the scientific issues of diseases, overpopulation, and climate change pose an existential threat to humanity? What, as writers and readers, should we do about it? | |
| April Aasheim, Eva L. Elasigue, Joyce Reynolds-Ward | |
| Genre Hybrids | |
| Zoom 2 – Writing | |
| Sat Nov 14 12:00pm – 12:50pm | |
| Stories that incorporate core concepts and elements of more than one traditional genre offer something particularly satisfying for those drawn to them. A discussion on these with writers who create them. | |
| April Aasheim, K.G. (Karen) Anderson, Eva L. Elasigue, David D. Levine | |
| Space Opera | |
| Zoom 6 – General | |
| Sat Nov 14 1:00pm – 1:50pm | |
| What is space opera, and what draws people to the macroscopic, multivaried saga? Scope, scale, narrative, and humanity in expansive storytelling. | |
| Eva L. Elasigue, Rhiannon Held, David D. Levine | |
| The Reality of Gender in Space-Themed Science Fiction | |
| Zoom 3 – Science | |
| Sat Nov 14 2:00pm – 2:50pm | |
| When encountering new species on distant worlds, science fiction writers can think up the most brilliant of cultures and colors and tech, but too often resort to ‘male’ and ‘female’ genders. Chat with a PhD in mycology (the study of fungi) on how uncommon binary genders are even on earth, and how to broaden your worldview, both as readers and writers, into the potential richness of different evolutionary tracks.rnrn(TLDR: how to make better aliens using science) | |
| Eva L. Elasigue, Joyce Reynolds-Ward | |
| All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again | |
| Zoom 6 – General | |
| Sat Nov 14 5:00pm – 5:50pm | |
| In the aftermath of 9/11, Battlestar Galactica was reimagined as a means of helping us understand how we had arrived at and how we might cope with a radically changed world. This discussion focuses on the road narrative in BSG and other SF and how ancient archetypes, hero’s journeys, and more can help us learn from the past and create a different future. | |
| Eva L. Elasigue, Jake Jackson, Jennifer Willis | |
| Eva Elasigue Reading | |
| Zoom 4 – Readings | |
| Sun Nov 15 11:00am – 11:25am | |
| Eva Elasigue reads from her works. | |
| Eva L. Elasigue |
Bones of Starlight 3 : Greater Beyond 