Swancon Thirty Six | Natcon Fifty Program
Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Monday
Below is the draft Swancon Thirty Six | Natcon Fifty program for Friday. While we are making every effort to make sure all details are correct, we cannot guarantee that items won’t change. We also have plenty of space for last minute program ideas, so if the mood strikes and you want to organise something, we’ll help provide you with space to do it.
Contact us any time in the lead-up to the convention, or speak to a committee member once you arrive.
Colour codes: Entertainment | Interactive | Presentation
| Friday | ||||||||
| Freshwater Bay | Dealers Room | Ballroom | Gaming Room | Mosman Bay | Plaza 1 | Plaza 2 | Plaza 3 | |
| 9:30 | EduStream 9.30: Introductory discussion Using SF to teach English and as a tool to teach science (30mins) Sean Williams & Cathy Cupitt 10.00am Mad Scientists: Using the science in science fiction in the classroom (50mins) Peter van der Kwast & Bevan McGuinness 10.50am Morning Tea (25mins) 11.15 Using spec fic media in the classroom (books, film, tv) Alexandra Pierce 11.45 Teaching the future (Academic paper) Ian Nichols 12.15 Spec Fic in the Library Amy Hightower, Tehani Wessely, Sue Ann Barber 1pm Questions and Closing |
Not if You Were the Last Short Story on the Earth with Jonathan Strahan, Tansy Roberts, Alex Pierce and Sarah Parker | Disability and social media Presentation by Mike Kent | Academic Stream see here for details of papers and presenters | Writing in a Gaming World with Paul Kidd, Stephen Dedman, Sue Isle | |||
| 10:30 | Murdoch University SF Foundation with Van Iken, Grant Stone, Bill Wright and Chris Creagh | Science Fiction is Dead … with Robin Pen, Helen Merrick, Andrew Cameron | What TV Did to Me : A chat about growing up on a diet of SF TV did to my creative brain with Tansy Roberts, Stephen Dedman, Sean Williams, moderated by Grant Watson | |||||
| 11:30 | Ready, Steady, Genesplice!: Building a better Unicorn with Pamela Smith, Rob Masters, Colin Sharpe, Alicia Smith, Andy Phillips | Ghosts in the Machine; AI and the Human Mind with Justina Robson, Sean Williams, Dave Cake and Dirk Flinthart | Australian SF Distributed Archive with Anna Hepworth, Elaine Kemp and Chris Creagh | The ITC Years of SF TV Presentation by Damian Magee | ||||
| 12:30 – 2:00 | Lunch break |
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| 2:00 | Fan Funds Panel with Sue Ann Barber (GUFF), Damien Warman & Juliette Woods (GUFF) Emma Hawkes (DUFF), Gina Goddard (NAFF) and Rachel Holkner (NAFF) | Paper Plane Regatta | SF Bookclub: Windup Girl with Robin Pen, Helen Merrick, Andrew Cameron, David Cake | SF and the Social Network with Alan Baxter, Cathy Cupitt, PRK | Academic Stream | Walt’s Twilight Kingdom: Disney Animated Films from 1951 to 1977 Presented by Grant Watson | ||
| 3:00 | MegaPodcast: Read/View or Die with The Coode St, The Writer and the Critic, The Pangalactic Interwebs and Galactic Suburbia | Lost: The End with Tom Eitelhuber, Tina Eitelhuber and Sarah Xu | Dead Eyes: Dolls and Simulcra in Horror with Stephen Dedman, Jason Nahrung, Kaaron Warren, Robert Hood | Climbing Out of the Refrigerator: Great Women in Comics with Tansy Roberts, Kitty Hemsley, Brin McLauchlan | ||||
| 4:00 | What’s New and Notable in Children’s and YA SF/F Presentation by Gina Goddard | Darkness Beyond Borders with Kaaron Warren, Kirstyn McDermott, Ellen Datlow, Paul Haines | The New Who 2 with Michael Cogan, Aaron Creaser, Damian Magee | Justina Robson Interviewed by Jenny Blackford | ||||
| 5:00 | That Spaceship has Girl Cooties: Feminism and the Female Gaze in SF/Fantasy with Justina Robson, Glenda Larke, Tansy Roberts | Replicators for fun and profit with Shay Telfer and Peter Hillier | Simon Brown v Sean Williams | M15+ An Appreciation for the Abysmal: Hilariously Bad Movies with Tom Eitelhuber, Stephen Griffiths |
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| 6:00 – 7:30 | Dinner break | |||||||
| 7:30 | Gentlemen’s Entomological Society with Dirk Flinthart, Peter Ball, Cat Sparks, Alan Baxter | Cylons, Bajorans and the 5th Column – a discussion of the portrayals of terrorism, freedom fighters and resistance movements in sf with Stephen Griffiths | Emotion, attachment and video games with Brendan Ragan, Peter M Ball, Mikey O’Brien and Daniel Dougherty | Safe Spaces Panel with Sarah Parker, Helen Ensikat, Maia Bobrowicz, Ju Landesse, Moderated by: Elaine Kemp |
Auction with Justin Ackroyd | |||
| 8:30 | “A Positive” Screening with Kaaron Warren | Politics of Fanworks with Cathy Cupitt, Elaine Kemp | ||||||
| 9:30 | Iron Brain Hosted by Coreynn Tan | In the Dust of the Stars Screening Presented by Grant Watson | Embracing the Erotic with Nicole Murphy, Laney Cairo, Liz Grzyb and Theresa Anns | |||||
| 10:30 | ||||||||
| 11:30 | 12:00pm 12th Stroke Theatre |
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Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Monday
Questions? Comments? Send us an email.
Panel Descriptions
(This isn’t a complete list yet. If there’s something you want to know more about feel free to email us.)
Australian SF Distributed Archive
with Anna Hepworth, Elaine Kemp and Chris Creagh
There are dragon loads of historical SF materials in collections around Australia, like the one in the basement of Murdoch University, and not a great deal of it is accessible to the general SF community. So ASFDAP was born. It is still in its early stages but what we want to do is upload material and information about these hordes onto the net for everyone to access and you can help! We will be posting pictures of items (books, t-shirts, fanzines, and general stuff) on a weekly basis so that anyone who has any information about provenance or just a good background story can comment. Then we will collate the comments and post it all to the Australian SF Wiki for all to access.
Climbing out of the refrigerator: great women in comics
with Tansy Roberts, Kitty Hemsley, Brin McLauchlan
Let’s talk about the superheroines we love, the female creators we admire, and how feminist critique can make comics better.
Cylons, Bajorans and the 5th Column
with Stephen Griffiths
A discussion of the portrayals of terrorism, freedom fighters and resistance movements in SF.
Darkness beyond borders
with Kaaron Warren, Kirstyn McDermott, Ellen Datlow, Paul Haines
Horror is a well established and understood genre but it is also an effective tool in literature and other mediums that would not automatically be classified as horror. Or is horror all along really only in disguise?
Dead eyes: dolls and simulacra in horror
with Stephen Dedman, Jason Nahrung, Kaaron Warren, Robert Hood
Dolls, like clowns, have a special place in the creepy closet of horror. And people who aren’t people has a collection of iconography all its own, from reanimated corpses to beautiful gynoids, alien impostors, clones, golems, doppelgangers, and back to those scary dolls. They of the dead eyes. With the publication of Devil Dolls and Duplicates in Australian Horror (edited by Anthony Ferguson) and with so many significant contributors of this major collection in the one room, it is time to discuss what it is about dolls and the like that get under our skin.
Disability and social media
Presentation by Mike Kent
EduStream
9.30: Introductory discussion Using SF to teach English and as a tool to teach science
10.00am Mad Scientists: Using the science in science fiction in the classroom
11.15 Using spec fic media in the classroom (books, film, tv)
11.45 Teaching the future (Academic paper)
12.15 Spec Fic in the Library
Embracing the erotic
with Nicole R Murphy, Laney Cairo, Liz Grzyb and Theresa Anns
Eroticism has been a long-standing part of fantasy and science fiction. And though for a long time it was the bastion of the male perception of the arousing and the taboo in recent times, through the explosion of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, feminist SF and slash, the female mindset has given the erotic in the fantastic a broader scope. It has become a tool of politics and entertainment and something, in the right context, to embrace.
Emotion, attachment and video games
with Brendan Ragan, Peter M Ball, Mikey O’Brien and Daniel Dougherty
The history of hit computer games is a history of personal attachment, not just to the game dynamics but often to the avatar that represents you in the game, be it a pong paddle, Ms Pac-man, Link, Guybrush Threepwood, Lara Croft, Gordon Freeman or that person being lied to about the cake. And certainly the many, many self created avatars of online gaming. Personal attachment, that sense of ownership is a crucial part of gaming design. No game works unless you feel emotional attachment. But when does that attachment go too far? Why do you get angry at a monitor? And why do some people invest more time and emotion in an artificial life than their own?
Gentlemen’s Entomological Society
with Dirk Flinthart, Peter Ball, Cat Sparks, Alan Baxter
Two fantasy writers and tabletop gamers with decades of experience. Join them as they demonstrate how to apply techniques from fiction writing to enhance your gaming campaign. Learn tricks of structure, pace, and characterisation. Get tips on how to create instant plots, and slide them seamlessly into your game experience. Over an action-packed hour (or more, depending!) participants will generate a range of playable adventures, and develop one or more to the tabling-point, ready to go. Amaze your players with a revitalised gaming style that will let them live out adventures the equal of anything on the bestseller lists today.
Ghosts in the machine; AI and the human mind
with Justina Robson, Sean Williams, Dave Cake and Dirk Flinthart
We get closer and closer to creating artificial worlds and artificial intelligence, and there is the dream that we will be able to enter these worlds, perhaps live in them. It may be the only way we’ll travel to the stars. What does it mean to us to upload ourselves in these new worlds and what does it mean when artificial minds enter ours?
In the Dust of the Stars screening
Presented with a short introduction by Grant Watson
95m. 1978, East Germany. Directed by Gottfried Kolditz. Starring Jana Brejchová, Alfred Struwe, Ekkehard Schall. Stars: Jana Brejchová, Alfred Struwe and Ekkehard Schall.
When the people of the planet Cyrno receive a distress call from the distant world Tem 4, they immediately dispatch a rescue team. When the team arrives, they find Tem 4 to be an apparent paradise, with no one there having any idea of how or why a distress call could have been transmitted. Beneath this façade of civility, however, lies a horrifying truth — and the team from Cyrno may not escape with their lives.
The Bad Film Diaries and the Neutral Zone present In the Dust of the Stars (Im Staub der Sterne), one of the most unusual science fiction films ever made. Produced by East Germany’s state-owned film corporation and shot on location in the Carpathian Mountains, it presents a gaudy, eccentric and unexpectedly glam-rock vision of intergalactic adventure. Unseen in the West during the Cold War, it is only now — more than 30 years after its original release — receiving the attention and appreciation it deserves.
Iron Brain
Hosted by Coreynn Tan
It’s back, it’s worse than ever in 2011, and we love it! This notorious fannish endurance sport will make you laugh, cry or run screaming as contestants struggle to read horrible writing without cracking up or losing it completely. Come along and try for a fabulous prize, or just to laugh at/with the poor sods on stage! Heckling is not just allowed, but actively encouraged.
Due to printed naughtiness this is a strictly 18+ event – bring your ID. Wear a fez.
Lost: the end
with Tom Eitelhuber, Tina Eitelhuber and Sarah Xu
One of television’s most fascinating and divisive series has finally wrapped up. Over the past two Swancons our panellists have examined the show’s recent events and considered its unexplained mysteries and possible upcoming revelations. With no more answers left to be given, this year’s panel will take a retrospective approach, discussing the climactic final stretch and the show’s legacy as a whole.
Murdoch University SF Foundation
with Van Iken, Grant Stone, Bill Wright and Chris Creagh
Grant Stone, the patron saint of SF in WA, is no longer in the Murdoch Library. So what is to become of the SF treasure he has collected over the years that is now stored in the basement? The collection comprises of the Leigh Edmonds collection of early fanzines, t-shirts, comics, book/film tie-ins and some ephemera from the very beginnings of Swancon itself! Well money talks. The MUSFF has been set up to enable the curatorship of this material. Come and find out what is in the collection and what interesting research projects could come out of it.
Not if You Were the Last Short Story on the Earth
with Jonathan Strahan, Tansy Roberts, Alex Pierce and Sarah Parker
The crew of the Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth Project talk about what it’s like to read all the short stories published in a year, and recommend what’s worth reading for 2011.
Politics of fanworks
with Cathy Cupitt, Elaine Kemp
Fanworks are about more than Kirk/Spock kinkmeme fantasies or Harry Potter sequels. Fanworks are also used as a form of commentary on contemporary issues and culture, as a forum for debate about contested ideologies and textual readings, as a reaction against essentialist thinking (eg. racism and sexism), as thought experiments on different ways we could structure and live our lives (eg. group marriages, bisexual utopias), and as a rallying point for activism. In this panel, we’ll introduce some of these different practices, consider some examples, and then open the floor for discussion, debate and exchange of favourite political fanworks and movements.
Replicators for fun and profit
with Shay Telfer and Peter Hillier
Converting data into matter has never been easier, whether it be printing replacement plastic parts, a new kidney, or a better 3D printer. Join members of the Perth Artifactory for an update on these emerging technologies, and learn how you can become part of the revolution and build your own.
Safe spaces panel
with Sarah Parker, Helen Ensikat, Maia Bobrowicz, Ju Landesse, Elaine Kemp (moderator)
Science fiction is dead
with Robin Pen, Andrew Cameron
The term science fiction used to be, and may still be, a dirty word outside the genre, but we see the mainstream and alternative streams more and more taking up ideas once unique to science fiction and once scoffed at because of it. Post-apocalyptic fiction and paranormal thrillers are commonplace but more and more put on general fiction shelves. This isn’t new but the success of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road brings it in sharp relief. So, we ask, will the term “science fiction” be around much longer?
SF Bookclub: The Windup Girl
with Robin Pen, Helen Merrick, Andrew Cameron, David Cake
Come together and socially critique what has been selected as the “Book of the Year”. This year it is Paulo Bacigalupi’s Hugo & Nebula Awards winner The Windup Girl. This open, but moderated, discussion will consider both the literary merits as well as the details of the post-peak world depicted.
SF and the social network
with Alan Baxter, Cathy Cupitt, PRK
Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Gomiso, GetGlue; Social Media are the marketing buzzwords of the year. But has it / can it work for SF? When has it worked well, when has it fallen flat and why? Come along and live tweet with our engaging panellists.
The ITC years of SF TV
Presentation by Damian Magee
Cult TV of 60s and 70s — we explore those fan favourites for which ITC is best remembered such as Danger Man, The Prisoner, Dept. S, Jason King, The Champions and many others. (This will be a presentation with Q&A-video clips)
The New Who 2
with Michael Cogan, Aaron Creaser, Damian Magee
A look back at the first series of Matt Smith. Is a fez really that cool?
Walt’s Twilight Kingdom: Disney animated films from 1951 to 1977
Presented by Grant Watson
After several long years of poor box office returns, the Walt Disney Studio scored an enormous hit in 1950 with Cinderella. Buoyed by this crucial success, the company went on to produce a range of innovative animated features, demonstrating ever-improving animation and increasingly advanced technology. From the surreality of Alice in Wonderland to the end to an era in The Rescuers, Walt’s Twilight Kingdom tracks the development of Disney animation over three decades, including Peter Pan, 101 Dalmations, Sleeping Beauty and Walt Disney’s final animated feature The Jungle Book.
What TV did to me: a chat about what growing up on a diet of SF TV did to my creative brain
with Tansy Roberts, Stephen Dedman, Sean Williams, Grant Watson (moderator)
Everyone has their favourite TV shows. Sometimes the influence of something like Lost In Space or The Tomorrow People or Kimba The White Lion is subtle on our artistic psyche. Sometimes it forms the core of our creative life.
Writing in a gaming world
with Paul Kidd, Stephen Dedman, Sue Isle
How useful are role-playing games to novelists? How do you capture the excitement of a game in text? What opportunities do games offer to writers, and what are the potential hazards?