EasterCon is coming this weekend. I'm on two panels.
Mental Health: Fiction vs. Reality
Sunday April 21: 16:30 - 17:30 (1 hour)
Have you ever read a book and thought “is it really possible to have 25 completely different personalities”? Well if you have then this is the panel for you. Whether you’re living with mental health issues, just interested or simply walked into the wrong room.
Join us as we discuss the difference between how mental health is portrayed in stories and what it’s like to live with a mental illness and consider the challenges of writing about mental health. We will be exploring what it’s like to live in a world where mental health is a priority but where our entertainment industry considers it a commodity.
Military SF: Good, Bad, and Ugly
Mon, Apr 22: 12:45 - 13.45 (1 hour)
We are used to thinking of military SF as gung-ho jingoism, as the last bastion of the glories of space opera, as the one place where we can destroy aliens without moral qualm. But there have always been analytical and critical voices from both left and right: authors such as Ursula LeGuin and Joe Haldeman challenged the motivation for military adventure, David Drake and Karen Traviss asked us to consider how we treat the troops.
Military SF has often reflected the polarisation and anguish about the latest overseas adventures as newer authors seek to construct a moral high ground in a politically ambivalent and complex world. This panel considers what authors we think rise to the challenge of writing complex, believable military SF while avoiding the traps of jingoism and imperialism... or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment