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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
It’s that time of
year again for Intergalactic Expo, one of Sacramento’s
biggest local sci fi cons. I was trying to rent table space there to
sell my books but unfortunately it didn’t work out, mostly due to
pricing and lack of space. Let alone lack of tables. I told the
facilitators of the con that I would be willing to bring my own
blanket and lay it out on the floor or lawn somewhere along with my
merchandise like they do at middle eastern and North African bazaars
but they said it would demean the con’s reputation. Good grief!
It’s a sci fi con, anything should go! Well okay, almost anything.
They can’t have real light saber duels or somebody could get hurt,
not to mention that there probably isn’t a way to make real light
sabers yet. So, Star Wars fans, you’ll have to settle for
glass and plastic ones. I just thought my suggestion of the blanket
would add to the exoticism of the con’s theme.
So you won’t see
me there. Or at least not as presenting anything. Feel free to come
up and talk sci fi/fantasy and writing if you see me walking around.
It starts Sunday 21 May at 10 A.M. and goes on til 6 in the evening in.
See the above link for more details. The author who is scheduled to
be featured there is Davidson Haworth. He’s a historical fantasy
writer said to be “the first writer to reinvent book tours byconducting his signings at pop culture conventions.”
Intergalactic Expo
started back in 2013 as May the Fourth Be With You, which was mostly
a weekend Star Wars con. But ever since the fourth of the
month moved away from the weekend, starting in May 2015, it’s been
renamed “Intergalactic Expo” and caters to all things sci fi.
However, one of the things I’ll miss this year are its speculative
genre panels. Last year they had two really great panels: one on the
history of science fiction and the other on defining steampunk. I wrote about the former in an article at Examiner.com
and the latter here at the Fantastic Site. If you missed the article
presented here then you can read it by going to the above link. If
you never got a chance to read the article presented at Examiner.com
then you’ll never get that chance again. Examiner.com was sadly
shut down only a month or so after I published that one. But don’t
despair! I have the honour of presenting it to you in its original
format right here!
Daniel
Batt talks about the horror of sci fi at Intergalactic Expo (from
20 May 2016)
Many argue that “Star Wars”
isn’t science fiction for the reason that the science isn’t
believable unlike in a movie such as “The Martian”.
Animals such as Banthas and Tauntauns on planets “in a galaxy far,
far away” just aren’t as plausible as absence of life on Mars in
our own solar system. In the same way people have argued what science
fiction is, they have argued when it began. But author J. Daniel
Batt’s (pronounced ‘bot’s’ as in robot!) showed a very open
mind to both the genre’s definition and history in his panel, “The
History of Science Fiction”, held in the City Hall Council Chambers
at the annual Intergalactic Expo in West Sacramento last Sunday. He
even said some argue that the genre goes as far back as primitive
man. The reason for this is, he explained, that, like today’s
science fiction, the stories primitive societies told speculated what
existed beyond their own surroundings. While the beyond for them may
not have been other planets or future tech but a more nearby
unexplored region such as a dark forest or valley, a primal emotion
that these stories provoked was fear. Because of this, Batt said that
science fiction and horror are very close to each other. Sci fi has
often been a mixed genre with that of horror at least since the 18th
century
Out of the ancient tales of underworld monsters and evil spirits
evolved many of today’s terrors in sci fi. Horror in sci fi goes at
least as far back as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. After all,
it was a scientist who created the monster that went on a murderous
rampage. In the 1950s, the sci fi horror mix was inspired by fear of
the atom bomb. This spawned movies and pulp fiction stories about
monsters from forbidden regions of the world such as the ocean depths
and subterranean environments where the effects of atomic energy
created over-grown creatures such as lizards, spiders and insects.
But the genre in the ‘50s did not remain earthbound. The concern
about atomic energy along with the space race also brought stories of
hostile, god-like as well as demonic-looking aliens from the dark
abysses of space. During that period, movies such as “20 Million
Miles to Earth”, “It Came From
Beneath the Sea”, and “Tarantula” terrified audiences in
theaters. In the ‘60s movies about alien vampires and other
scientifically explainable living dead creatures became popular. The
‘70s saw the rise in popularity of movies involving parasitical
monsters like the one in “Alien”.
We need to remember that much of the zombie craze in today’s films,
TV and books started with movies like 1968’s
“Night of the Living Dead”. This movie was one of the earliest
to replace magic with science as the source of zombie uprisings.
Since then, zombies have been one of the biggest icons of science
fiction-horror and have become even more so since the premier of
“The Walking Dead” TV series in 2010. “Thanks in no small part
to [the] show’s massive across-the-board popularity, zombies have
now thoroughly infected and colonized mainstream pop culture”, says
Joshua Rothkopf in a “Rolling Stone” article. They couldn’t have “infected and colonize” sci fi any less!
As robots, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality become less
science fiction and more science fact, the fears behind
scientific-horror stories of all mediums are far from being snuffed
out. If anything, they will be enhanced and create more terrifying
stories as other technological innovations and scientific discoveries
are made. Each new discovery in science and technology brings some
degree of fear, because--like with the dark forests that surrounded
primitive societies, like with the unexplored reaches of space that
we now know surrounds our solar system--there will be some degree of
the unknown. As it is human nature to fear the unknown, it’s also
human nature to question out of curiosity what lies beyond. Science
does this latter to begin with. So there will continue to be science
and new technology to make more horror in science fiction.
Project Status
Besides being behind
in book tours, I’m still behind in “Circa Sixty Years Dead”’s
[link] print edition (which I would need a copy to present at
a book tour). My day job doesn’t allow me the amount of time I’d
like to have to work on it and so I’ve only been giving it one or
two hours a week. Plus I’m writing an article about sci fi/fantasy
books and television for an online magazine. I can’t tell you the
article’s specifics at this time but I’ll definitely let you know
and link to it when its published.
I’ll have more
about Intergalactic Expo and “Circa Sixty Years” here next week.
Until then . . .
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