Call for Papers: The Ninth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on SF, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI

A browser window displaying ChatGPT 4o mini. It is being asked, "Can science fiction literature tell us about the promise and peril of Artificial Intelligence?"

Call for Papers: 
Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI: The Ninth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium

Deadline for CFP: 
Friday, November 8, 2024

Date and Time of Event: 
Tuesday, December 10, 2024, 9:00AM-5:00PM EST

Location: 
Academic Building, New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Organizers: 
Jill Belli, Wanett Clyde, Jason W. Ellis, Leigh Gold, Kel Karpinski, and Vivian Papp

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“Motive,” the construct said. “Real motive problem, with an AI. Not human, see?”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“Nope. I mean, it’s not human. And you can’t get a handle on it. Me, I’m not human either, but I respond like one. See?”

“Wait a sec,” Case said. “Are you sentient, or not?”

“Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. It’s one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess …” The ugly laughter sensation rattled down 

Case’s spine. “But I ain’t likely to write you no poem, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain’t no way human.”

–McCoy “Dixie Flatline” Pauley conversing with Case in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)

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William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) captures some of the anxiety today regarding AI. Less like Skynet and its cybernetic soldiers in Terminator (1984), the passage above gets the heart of the subtleties of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we are now confronting with Generative AI (much like McCoy Pauley’s ROM or read only memory construct) and the pursuit of AGI or Artificial General Intelligence (akin to the novel’s Wintermute and Neuromancer). Various forms and degrees of AI are transforming human culture and relationships in ways both obvious (e.g., ChatGPT) and obscure (e.g., facial recognition, credit scoring, policing, and carceral sentencing). And like Gibson’s imagined future, the megarich of today are developing and deploying AI for their own capitalistic and ideological ends. While their motives are challenging enough to decipher, those of the eventual AGI systems they create will be even more so.

It is with these concerns in mind that we convene this year’s Ninth City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the topic of Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI. Science Fiction offers a spectrum of AI perspectives from hopeful to warning. On the one hand there is Murray Leinster’s helpful if mischievous “A Logic Named Joe” (1946), but on the other, there is AM in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967). Together, we will examine the many connections between SF and AI: anticipation, caution, education, inspiration, prediction, representation, and more.

We invite proposals for 10-20 minute scholarly paper presentations or 40-60 minute panel discussions related to the topic of Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI. Please send a 250-word abstract with title, brief 100-150-word professional bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu) by Friday, November 8, 2024

Topics with a connection to Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI might include but certainly are not limited to:

  • How is AI represented in SF? 
  • What is the history of AI in SF?
  • Does AI differ in SF across media (e.g., print, film, television, video games, etc.)?
  • How does AI affect individuals and society in SF?
  • How does SF approach AI Ethics including and beyond Asimov’s Laws of Robotics?
  • What are some of the unintended consequences of AI explored in SF, and what might we learn from those?
  • What are the utopian and dystopian possibilities of AI in SF?
  • What examples exist of teaching with AI in SF? Are there lessons for pedagogy today?
  • How does AI’s energy consumption figure into SF and Climate Fiction?
  • Are there mundane examples of AI in SF?
  • What can SF teach AI developers and users?
  • How is Generative AI depicted in SF?
  • How is Generative AI disrupting SF work practices (e.g., cover and interior art, writing, production workflows, etc.)?
  • Can AI make SF?
  • AI? What, me worry?

The event will be held in person at City Tech in downtown Brooklyn, New York. 

Analog Science Fiction and Fact will also announce the winner of their second Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices at this year’s symposium (https://www.analogsf.com/about-analog/analog-emerging-black-voices-award/).

This event is free and open to the public as space permits: an RSVP will be included with the program when announced on the Science Fiction at City Tech website (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/). Free registration will be required for participation.

The event is sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

The Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction is held in celebration of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, an archival holding of over 600-linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, and scholarship. It is in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library (Library Building, L543C, New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201). More information about the collection and how to access it is available here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/librarycollection/.

Fall 2024 Scholarly Publishing Workshops, Save the Dates

Academic Works logoAcademic Works Demystified
Nov. 6, 11 AM-12 PM
What is Academic Works and how does it benefit you as a scholar? You will learn more about how and why publishers allow you to contribute to Academic Works and the many benefits to sharing your scholarship openly to you, your students, and the public.
Registration


Zotero logo Get Organized! Zotero Basics
Dec. 4, 4-5 PM
Attendees will learn the capabilities of this powerful, free open-source reference management software program. The session covers the functionalities of the Zotero client, adding the Zotero plugin to your browser, and importing citations to generate a bibliography. To maximize our workshop time, please download Zotero from https://www.zotero.org and create your username and password in the Zotero client software by going to EDIT > PREFERENCES > >SYNC
Registration

Publishing Success Tidbits: The Article Submission Cover Letter Email

Authors may need to send a cover letter when submitting an article to a journal.  There is an art to preparing an article submission cover letter. Reimagining the Covering Letter: Why, When, and How to Communicate with Journal Editors before Manuscript Submission by Steven Gump in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing is a helpful guide. Log in with your CUNY email/password to access the article.

National Hispanic Heritage Month Exhibit: Trajes Típicos

To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, Professor Inés Corujo Martín of the Humanities department and City Tech’s Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Committee, mounted an exhibit in the library’s display cases.

Trajes Típicos honors the diversity of tradiional dress from Mexico, Spain, Spanish Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala (and its regions Nejab and Santa Catarina Palopó), Perú, Chile, and Argentina. In addition to the riot of color on display, information about the origin and importance of the garments featured communicate just a small part of the vibrancy and distinctiveness of Hispanic cultural textiles.

Some pieces have been generously borrowed from the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) Metro NY. This display connects with the course LATS/ARTH 2204 Latin American Fashion and Culture, which is part of the Academic Minor in Hispanic Studies.

“City Tech is a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).  As an HSI that is “committed to providing broad access to high quality technological and professional education for a diverse urban population,”[2] and in anticipation of the expected growth in its Hispanic* population, City Tech must reflect on its current policies and the culture of the institution to ensure an atmosphere of inclusion and respect, and meet the needs of Hispanic students.”
NYCCT HSI Committee via OpenLab

Here at City Tech, 35% of the student population identifies as Hispanic or Latinx/o/a. In accordance with Hispanic Heritage Month, this display seeks to celebrate and give visibility to this community while reflecting on the importance of Hispanic/Latinx cultural roots and traditions.*

A selection of textile related titles from our collection:

*Thank you to Professor Inés Corujo Martín for her contributions to this post.

It’s Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week Logo: Book with a ribbon tied around it

It’s banned books week, which some people think of as a celebration of our freedom to read and others as an awareness campaign about the dangers of restricting access to information and infringing free speech. Book bans, impacting libraries and schools and other state funded educational spaces, have gained more media attention in a time of political polarization. There has been some contradictory reporting about whether more books are being banned in 2024 than in previous years, but book banning has become more prevalent since the pandemic and is still limiting people’s freedom to read and access information, impacting budgets and school curricula, and in some extreme cases, getting librarians fired (and fired up). A few librarians who have opposed banned books or defied banned books laws, have been harassed  or received violent threats.

Who bans books and why? Books are banned by politicians, typically through local legislation at the state level. Conservative groups have frequently been cited as mobilizing legislators to ban books they they deem controversial, especially for younger audiences. The motivation for banning books is arguably political and most commonly banned books are those about “race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health.” 

Where are books banned? Book bans are uneven and primarily effect school libraries and school curricula. Texas and Florida are usually cited as the states with the most banned books but even in places where books aren’t formally banned there might be “challenged” books or changes to school and library budgets that work to effectively make certain reading material inaccessible to the public and especially to youth.

What books are banned? In some states hundreds of books are banned or “challenged.” The top banned books last year, according to the American Library Association, were:

  1. “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe
  2. “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson
  3. “This Book Is Gay” by Juno Dawson
  4. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
  5. “Flamer” by Mike Curato
  6. “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
  7. “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins
  8.  “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews
  9. “Let’s Talk About It” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
  10. “Sold” by Patricia McCormick

How are people standing up against book bans? The American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom has reported a slight dip in book bans this year. They think that legal success, community advocacy, and “young heroes” are responsible for making a difference.

At the City Tech Library we believe in the freedom to read and try to raise awareness about censorship. We’ve got plenty of banned and challenged books in our collection (here are just a few that we wanted to highlight, which were all written by Black authors, who are more frequently targeted by book bans). So check them out!

Literally, you can borrow books from the library for 16 weeks. And want a banned (or really any) book we don’t have? You can request one from any CUNY or SUNY library or use our Interlibrary Loan service. If we don’t have it, we’ll try to get it for you!

 

 

Faculty Workshop, September 30, Introduction to Social Annotation

Introduction to Social Annotation
Monday, September 30th, 3pm-4pm
with Jenna Spevack, Professor of Communication Design at City Tech

Social annotation (or collaborative annotation) allows readers to interact with a text as well as with other readers through highlighting, commenting, and sharing ideas in the margins. Learn more about digital tools that can allow you and your students to engage with open texts in your classes, asking and answering questions, defining difficult words, adding reference images and links, and practicing the essential skill of close reading.

Register in advance for this meeting on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Participants are encouraged to bring questions to the sessions; no level of familiarity with the topic is required. Workshops will be conducted remotely over Zoom. Part-time faculty who participate will be compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate for attending.

If you have any questions about this workshop, please contact Joshua Peach, OER Librarian.

New book chapter: “The News Is History: Building News Literacy Skills with Historic Primary Sources”

Prof. Jen Hoyer, Assistant Professor and Eresources/Technical Services Librarian recently published a book chapter entitled “The News Is History: Building News Literacy Skills with Historic Primary Sources,” in News Literacy Across the Undergraduate Curriculum, Amy Damico and Melissa Yang, eds. Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited, 2024, https://doi.org/10.33137/cjal-rcbu.v9.40962. + CUNY Academic Works.

Describe your scholarship or creative work to someone unfamiliar with the field.
This book chapter explores how we can teach skills for news literacy by looking at historic primary sources. Instead of trying to constantly adapt lesson plans to new media forms, I suggest that we use historical news sources as a sandbox for practicing news literacy skills, and then allow students to apply those skills in the spaces where they interact with news today. This chapter examines some of the needs faced by news literacy in the twenty-first century alongside the possibilities offered by teaching with primary source material and includes activities to teach transferable skills for news literacy.

 

 

Banned Books September 22-28, 2024

This week starts Banned Books Week, a week long event celebrating the right to read, and access to free and open information for all. This year’s theme is “Freed Between the Lines,” in which the American Libraries Association(ALA) highlights the “freedom to explore new ideas and different perspectives is under threat, and book bans don’t just restrict access to stories—they undermine our rights.”

Continue reading “Banned Books September 22-28, 2024”

Why Is My Book So Expensive? The Cost of a Scholarly Monograph

Why Is My Book So Expensive? The Cost of a Scholarly Monograph

Catherine Cocks

a repost from A Five Year First Friday Feature from Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.


Post by Catherine Cocks, director, Syracuse University Press.

Authors often ask publishers, “Why is my book so expensive?” The short answer: it really isn’t that expensive. The long answer: your scholarly book might cost more than commercially published nonacademic books because academic presses are spreading the cost of producing a title across a smaller number of print units. Each unit therefore has to be priced higher to enable the press to recoup the cost of production.

The longer answer: In the past, say the halcyon 1980s, academic presses could count on selling about 1,500 copies of the average scholarly monograph. Most of the buyers were college and university libraries. An initial, small cloth edition priced relatively high and aimed primarily at those libraries would ideally earn enough revenue to offset a significant proportion of the production costs. If it did and the cloth copies sold out, then the press would print a paperback edition that could be priced in the $20 to $30 range. Or, the publisher might issue the cloth and paper editions simultaneously, trying to cover its costs by catering to both library and individual buyers.

Then the digital revolution happened. Libraries needed to invest heavily in hardware and software to make the new electronic resources available to their campuses. At the same time, library budgets were flat or falling (largely because of the widespread reduction in public funding for higher education, which is the essential context for this whole post). The money for these new and rapidly changing resources had to come from somewhere, and it generally came from the budget for monographs in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. STEM journal subscriptions in particular became increasingly expensive and took up a growing proportion of library budgets. In short, libraries bought more databases and journals and fewer books.

This change in library priorities meant that the market for scholarly monographs shrank, and it continues to shrink. Academic presses responded by printing fewer copies of each title, to avoid piling up unsold copies for which they might have to pay warehousing and eventually pulping fees. Meanwhile, although the digital revolution transformed publishers’ production processes, it didn’t significantly reduce costs. Nor did the advent of the e-book in the early 2000s. Printing accounts for only about a third of total book production costs on average, while electronic scholarly monographs are generally sold via databases provided by aggregators. Presses earn pennies on the dollar on such sales, compared with sales of individual print copies. Libraries’ turn to patron-driven acquisitions (essentially, waiting until someone clicks on a title to purchase it) further reduces publishers’ revenue and makes it less predictable.


Although short-run digital printing and print-on-demand have made it more affordable to print fewer copies without sacrificing too much in quality, these new options reduce up-front costs without necessarily making the overall publishing program sustainable.


So prices are going up (and have been going up for decades) because publishers now can expect to sell fewer⏤sometimes many fewer⏤than 500 copies in all formats of the average scholarly monograph. They have to spread similar costs over a third of the units. Although short-run digital printing and print-on-demand have made it more affordable to print fewer copies without sacrificing too much in quality, these new options reduce up-front costs without necessarily making the overall publishing program sustainable. Prices have to rise if presses are to have any hope of recouping their costs. Though university presses are nonprofits, just recovering production costs doesn’t cover all of their expenses, nor does it give them the leeway to innovate⏤for example, by taking advantage of new digital technologies or building new platforms for multimedia scholarship.

What are those production costs? Direct costs are those paid specifically to create a title. Typically they include copy editing, design of the cover and the interior of the book, typesetting, e-book conversion if needed, printing, binding, and shipping. (Proofreading and indexing are by necessity now mostly left to authors.) The longer the book, the more illustrations that have to be cleaned up and placed in the typeset pages, the more complex the apparatus, the more it will cost to edit, design, typeset, print, and ship. Color inks cost more, and color pages usually have to be run on higher quality, more expensive paper on separate machines, then reintegrated with pages run in grayscale. A book produced entirely in color is even more expensive. All of these elements contribute to the cost, and therefore the price, of the book.

Indirect costs are a proportion of the press’s overhead assigned to a book project. Overhead includes salaries and benefits for the acquisitions editor who worked with the author from proposal through peer review and editorial board approval, the project editor who shepherded the book through production, and the marketer who got the word out in various ways from entering metadata to sending email blasts and arranging book signings. Like many American workers, people in publishing have seen their salaries remain the same or barely creep up even as the cost of living has increased substantially, particularly in big cities and many college towns. Overhead also includes the press’s rent, royalty administration, title management database fees, and much more of the unglamorous and essential back-end processes. (For more on this topic, see “The Costs of Publishing Monographs: Toward a Transparent Methodology.”)

Presses use a variety of pricing strategies to try to ensure that each title breaks even or at least that the overall publishing program is sustainable. Some continue to use the time-tested strategies mentioned above⏤cloth, then paper or simultaneous cloth and paper editions at different prices. Others have dispensed with the cloth edition (whose price may discourage sales) and go straight to paper, but at a higher price to offset the absence of cloth sales. Those very high prices you see from some publishers⏤say $80 to $120 for a slim monograph⏤reflect both very short print runs (perhaps 100 to 250 units) and the fact that libraries, which are less price-sensitive than individuals, are the only customers likely to buy significant numbers. (Yes, publishers have tried lowering prices in the hope of attracting more buyers. It doesn’t usually pencil out.) Presses often use a variety of approaches to account for different purchasing patterns by individuals and libraries across disciplines. Another strategy is to keep book prices artificially low, losing money on them while balancing the press’s books with a profitable journal program or distribution services.

The other thing to understand about pricing is that publishers rarely earn the full list price of a book because they don’t sell most of their titles directly to consumers. Far more often, they are selling to wholesalers and retailers who then sell to libraries and individuals. Wholesalers and retailers buy at a discount (typically 20% to 50% or more) off list price so that they can recoup their own costs and hopefully earn a profit selling the books to the end user. When publishers set list prices, they are taking into account the fact that the actual sale price will most often be significantly lower. On top of that, publishing is highly unusual in that wholesalers and retailers can return unsold stock any time⏤sometimes years after the initial sale.

This is a simplified sketch of what goes into determining a scholarly monograph’s cost and therefore its price. I hope it underscores the point that right now, scholarly book publishing faces many challenges in fulfilling its mission to circulate the fruits of academic research. Many people are trying to rethink its business model to be more sustainable for the long run. In the Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem and Knowledge Unlatched initiatives, universities or university libraries collectively invest in presses up front, and presses then make the books available to readers for free. The US National Endowment for the Humanities has also offered publication grants aimed at fostering open access scholarly publishing through the Open Book and the Fellowship Open Book programs. Taking a different approach, the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot consolidates production work and produces an e-first edition with a print-on-demand option to member presses. Individual presses have also adapted the author-pays model from journals to book publishing, and some universities are providing such funding to their tenure-track faculty. The Elephant’s interview with the University of Michigan Press’s Charles Watkinson on open access explores some of the possibilities and hurdles involved in transforming the business model. Have something to add? We’d love to hear from you.

Catherine Cocks is the director of Syracuse University Press. She has worked in scholarly publishing since 2002 beginning as a managing editor at SAR Press, an acquisitions editor at the University of Iowa Press and the University of Washington Press, then editor-in-chief and interim director at Michigan State University Press. As a member of AUPresses committees, she is a proud contributor to the Best Practices in Peer Review and the Ask UP website. As a member of the Publishing and the Public Humanities Working Group, she helped to write “Public Humanities and Publication” and co-authored the Open Educational Resource “Publishing Values-Based Scholarly Communications” with Bonnie Russell and Kath Burton. In her former side-gig as a historian, she wrote two scholarly books, Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism in the United States, 1850-1915 (University of California Press, 2001), and Tropical Whites: The Rise of the Tourist South in the Americas (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).