The 9th City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on SF, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI was a resounding success! It was well attended and the discussions followed after it despite it being our first event back in person since the beginning of COVID. Below, you will find videos of each session and a selection of photographs by Andrew Porter, the Hugo-winning editor and publisher.
Videos
9:00AM Opening Remarks Jason Ellis and Justin F. Vázquez-Poritz
9:20AM Paper Session 1 Moderator: Wanett Clyde Jason Ellis, “A History of Generative AI in SF” Jacob Adler, “The End Zone: A.I. as a Commentary on the Human Condition in 17776” Martijn J. Loos, “A Plea for Theory: The Relationship Between Real-World AI and its Representation in Science Fiction”
10:50AM Paper Session 2 Moderator: Kel Karpinski Virginia L. Conn, “The Tyranny of Neutrality in AI 2041” Nathan Lamarche, “Monotheistic Ethics in Caprica: The Consequences of AI Development on Queer Futurity” Adam McLain, “Computational Poetics: Franny Choi’s Soft Science and the Dialogues to Come”
1:10PM Student Panel Moderators: Jill Belli and Vivian Zuluaga Papp Lucas Felipe Journey Ford Malik Joseph Christine Retirado Ronald Hinds
2:10PM Asimov’s/Analog Writers’ Panel Moderator: Emily Hockaday Sarah Pinsker Mercurio D. Rivera Sakinah Hoefler Matthew Kressel
4:00PM Keynote Address Speaker: Marleen S. Barr, “Science Fiction/AI/Feminism: A Temporal Progression” Moderator: Leigh Gold
Photos by Andrew Porter
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
Above: Emily Hockaday
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
Above: Sakinah Hoefler
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
Above L to R: Matthew Kressel, Mercurio D. Rivera, Sakinah Hoefler, Sarah Pinsker, and Emily Hockaday
The event is free and open to the public. Pre-registration for this in-person event is not required. Participants and attendees who are not affiliated with the college will need to sign-in at the security desk before entering and walking down the hallway to the right to room A-105.
Program
9:00AM Opening Remarks
Jason Ellis and Justin F. Vázquez-Poritz
9:15AMBreak
9:20AMPaper Session 1
Moderator: Wanett Clyde
Jason Ellis, “A History of Generative AI in SF”
Jacob Adler, “The End Zone: A.I. as a Commentary on the Human Condition in 17776”
Martijn J. Loos, “A Plea for Theory: The Relationship Between Real-World AI and its Representation in Science Fiction”
10:40AMBreak
10:50AM Paper Session 2
Moderator: Kel Karpinski
Virginia L. Conn, “The Tyranny of Neutrality in AI 2041”
Nathan Lamarche, “Monotheistic Ethics in Caprica: The Consequences of AI Development on Queer Futurity”
Adam McLain, “Computational Poetics: Franny Choi’s Soft Science and the Dialogues to Come”
12:10PM Lunch
1:10PMStudent Panel
Moderators: Jill Belli and Vivian Zuluaga Papp
Lucas Felipe
Journey Ford
Malik Joseph
Christine Retirado
Ronald Hinds
2:00PMBreak
2:10PMAsimov’s/Analog Writers’ Panel
Moderator: Emily Hockaday
Sarah Pinsker
Mercurio D. Rivera
Sakinah Hoefler
Matthew Kressel
3:50PMBreak
4:00PMKeynote Address
Moderator: Leigh Gold
Speaker:
Marleen S. Barr
“Science Fiction/AI/Feminism: A Temporal Progression”
Participants
Jacob Adler has been part of the CUNY system for a number of years now, most recently as the Cataloging and Metadata Librarian for the Lloyd Sealy Library at the John Jay College for Criminal Justice. In September 2024, he contributed to Space, the Feminist Frontier, a scholarly book publication about feminist topics related to the Star Trek franchise. Since 2022 he has been involved with providing educational material about artificial intelligence, including creating academic research guides and delivering presentations in CUNY and throughout the Westchester Library System. Other than AI, his interests include media history, fiction writing, and tabletop role-playing games.
Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction scholarship and has recently retired from teaching English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Award for Lifetime Contribution to Science Fiction Scholarship. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many science fiction critical anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir. Her When Trump Changed: The Feminist Science Fiction Justice League Quashes the Orange Outrage Pussy Grabber is the first single authored Trump short story collection. It is followed by This Former President: Science Fiction as Retrospective Retrorocket Jettisons Trumpism. Her latest critical anthology is Jewish Women Writers Create Science Fiction: Gender, Temporality–and Yentas.
Jill Belli is Associate Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where she happily teaches science fiction and utopian studies often. She’s working on long-standing projects on well-being & happiness in education and writing & revising in speculative fiction. Newer interests include nature writing, healing & illness, tarot & astrology as storytelling / intuitive literacy, and grief. Learn more about Jill and her interdisciplinary research and teaching: jillbelli.org.
Wanett Clyde is the Collections Management Librarian at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology, where in addition to managing the library’s collection she oversees the university archives. Her research seeks to explore the intersection of Black history and fashion history, drawing out under credited African-American contributors, their critical innovations and accomplishments, and other meaningful connections in the overlapping research spheres.
Virginia L. Conn is a Teaching Assistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. She researches depictions of the “new socialist human” in socialist science fiction and how those depictions guided policy decisions in Mao-era China, Soviet Russia, and East Germany. She is currently working on her book manuscript, which offers a literary-material account of the relationship between socialist literary policies and the concurrent sociopolitical and technological drive to create the “new human” in daily life. She is also the managing editor of the Science Fiction Research Association Review.
Lucas Felipe is a student at City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology.
Journey Ford is an Entertainment Technology student at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.
Leigh Dara Gold is a Doctoral Lecturer in the English Department at City Tech. She currently teaches composition, fiction, poetry, women’s literature, and several other literature classes. Her doctoral work, completed at NYU in 2011, explored mourning in the work of Else Lasker-Schüler using several theoretical approaches, among them feminist, trauma, and poetic theories. Since then, she has deepened her focus on interdisciplinary work such as writing about Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Shelley, Eastern philosophies and ethics, trauma in women writers of science fiction, including Octavia Butler, and the role of the body in poetry. Leigh contributed an essay to an anthology edited by Marleen S Barr about Jewish women science fiction authors which was just published. She is currently also writing fiction and poetry about women, writing, and philosophy. She is thrilled to be a part of this wonderful Symposium and that some of her amazing students are a part of it this year!
Ronald Hinds is a Professional and Technical Writing student at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.
Emily Hockaday is the senior managing editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. She coedited the horror anthology Terror at the Crossroads with Jackie Sherbow and is the editor of the speculative poetry anthology Heartbeat of the Universe. Hockaday is the author of Naming the Ghost, Blood Music, and In a Body. She has received grants from the De Groot Foundation, Café Royal Cultural Foundation, NYFA City Artist Corps, and Queens Council on the Arts. You can find her at www.emilyhockaday.com.
Sakinah Hoefler is a fiction writer, poet, and playwright. She’s a proud recipient of the 2023 Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices. Her work has been published both domestically and internationally, and her plays have been produced by places such as Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. A former chemical engineer for the United States Department of Defense, she currently teaches writing at Princeton University. She resides in Newark, NJ with her wonderful husband and adorable son.
Malik Joseph is a student at City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology.
Kel R. Karpinski (they/he) is the IT/ILL Librarian and Associate Professor at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Their research focuses on mid-century queer films and novels as they relate to sailors and hustlers in Times Square and how these texts map queer desire onto the city. Kel is also a zine maker and a NY Queer Zine Fair organizer.
Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated author and coder. His many works of short fiction have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Tor.com/Reactor, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many other publications and anthologies, including multiple Year’s Bests. Eighteen of his stories will be included in his debut collection, Histories Within Us, coming from Senses Five Press in February. His far-future novel Space Trucker Jess is coming in 2025 from Fairwood Press. And his Mars-based novella The Rainseekers is forthcoming from Tordotcom in early 2026. Alongside Ellen Datlow, he runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in Manhattan. And he is the creator of the Moksha submissions system, used by many of the largest fiction publishers today.
Nathan Lamarche is a Master of Arts in English student at the University of Alberta. Their current studies focus on writing centres and composition theory, Indigenous and queer fiction storytelling, and the relational impacts of technology on our perspectives of the self, with a keen interest on the development of AI technology through the anthropomorphisation of social-oriented technologies and services and their impacts on society, the parallel between Generative AI and monotheistics ethics, and AI’s disproportionate impact on cultural and queer marginalisation. They have received several awards and scholarships, including the Sarah Nettie Christie Scholarship, the Belcourt Brosseau Métis Awards, and The Kerry Wood Memorial Award in Arts.
Vivian Li designed this year’s event poster. She is a graphic designer specializing in branding and visual storytelling, but more than anything she’s just another human who wants to make the world a brighter and more connected place through thoughtful design. She believes that in a world increasingly driven by technology and AI, design has the power to bring a vital human touch to the exciting digital landscape. Her mission is to craft visuals that resonate emotionally, adding warmth and personality to fast-paced modern experiences. Connect with her at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivian-l-8a177b19b/.
Martijn J. Loos is a Dutch PhD candidate at New York University’s department Comparative Literature. He has a RMA in Comparative Literary Studies from Utrecht University and has taught at University College Tilburg. He works at the intersection of science fiction and philosophy, with a special emphasis on the relationship between the (political) real and the science-fictional. He has published on, amongst others, H. P. Lovecraft, Octavia E. Butler, Ray Bradbury, and Ted Chiang. He enjoys Belgian beers and anything involving laser guns.
Adam McLain is a graduate student in the English department and law student at the School of Law at the University of Connecticut. He studies dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. They received bachelor’s in English from Brigham Young University, a master’s of theological studies from Harvard University, and a master’s in English from University of Connecticut.
Vivian Zuluaga Papp is a Doctoral Lecturer in the English Department here at City Tech. She has a BA in English from Columbia University, an MA in British and American Literature from Hunter College, and her Ph.D. is in Eighteenth-Century British Literature from Fordham University. Previously, she taught classes in Satire, Women in Science Fiction, Afrofuturism, and Imaginary Travel Narratives while a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Fordham University. Her research interest is in the field of visual epistemology in seventeenth-century scientific texts and early forms of the novel. She is the author of a short science fiction story “Catbot’s in the Cradle,” which was published in Behind the Yellow Wallpaper: New Tales of Madness, and has a chapter coming out in a Science Studies anthology on real and imagined visual manifestations of the “unseeable” in Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and Robert Boyle’s New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects.
Sarah Pinkser is the author of over sixty works of short fiction, one novella, two novels, and two collections. Her work has won four Nebula Awards (Best Novel, A Song For A New Day; Best Novelette, “Our Lady of the Open Road,” Best Novelette, “Two Truths And A Lie,” Best Short Story, “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather,”), two Hugo Awards (“Two Truths And a Lie” and “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”), the Philip K Dick Award, the Locus Award, the Eugie Foster Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and been nominated for numerous Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Her fiction has been translated into almost a dozen languages and published in magazines including Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny and in many anthologies and year’s bests. Sarah’s first collection, the Philip K Dick Award winning Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories, was published by Small Beer Press in 2019, and her first novel, A Song For A New Day, was published by Penguin/Random House/Berkley in 2019. Her latest book is We Are Satellites, published in 2021. Her second collection, Lost Places, was published by Small Beer Press in 2023 and was followed by the Tordotcom novella Haunt Sweet Home in September 2024. She is also a singer/songwriter with four albums on various independent labels (the third with her rock band, the Stalking Horses). She lives in Baltimore, Maryland and can be found online at sarahpinsker.com and x.com/sarahpinsker.
Christine Retirado is a Communication Design student at New York City College of Technology, CUNY.
Mercurio D. Rivera is a writer whose short fiction has won readers’ awards for Asimov’s and Interzone magazines and has appeared in markets such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, i09, Nature, Black Static, and various anthologies, podcasts, and “best of” collections. His novel Wergen: The Alien Love War (published by NewCon Press), which was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, tells stories of unrequited love set against the backdrop of humanity’s complicated relationship with an enigmatic alien species. And his Asimov’s story “Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars,” was podcast by Dust Studios, and features Gillian Jacobs (of Community) and Justin Kirk (of Weeds), and is available anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Justin F. Vázquez-Poritz is the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at New York College of Technology, CUNY.
Symposium Co-Organizers
This year’s symposium was co-organized by Jill Belli, Wanett Clyde, Jason W. Ellis, Leigh Gold, Kel Karpinski, and Vivian Zuluaga Papp.
Science Fiction Collection
The New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City Tech) holds an extensive collection of genre literature and scholarship focusing primarily on Science Fiction, and secondarily on Mystery and Horror. Inaugurated in 2016 as the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, it contains over 600 linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, monographs, and scholarly journals. Thanks to its founding anonymous donor, it features near-complete runs of the major SF magazines. The collection has continued to grow thanks to donations from David Mead, Aaron Barlow, and Charlie Seelig.
The City Tech Science Fiction Collection is held in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library. In addition to the collection serving as a locus for an annual symposium on Science Fiction and supplementing student research in City Tech’s ENG2420 Science Fiction course, it is a public collection, so scholars are invited to visit and make use of the collection’s holdings in their research.
Notably, the collection includes a library of texts that contains more than 4,000 science fiction magazine issues from complete or near-complete titles, including Amazing Stories, Astounding/Analog, Fantastic, Future, Galaxy, Galileo, If, Imagination, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, Spaceway, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vertex, and Worlds of Tomorrow. An inventory is available at https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/librarycollection/.
To inquire about the collection’s holdings or arrange a visit, contact Collections Management Librarian Wanett Clyde (wclyde@citytech.cuny.edu) and Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu).
The annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium is held each year in celebration of the collection, which in turn provides the foundation for exploring different themes and issues through interdisciplinary conversations. We have been honored by symposia keynote addresses by Samuel R. Delany, Mike Flynn, Jonathan W. Gray, Ximena Gallardo C. and Ann Matsuuchi, Jeremy Brett, Ytasha L. Womack, and this year, Marleen S. Barr.
Call for Papers: Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI: The Ninth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium
EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR CFP: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2024
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 Zuluaga 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.
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/.
I learned from Emily Hockaday today that Mike Flynn, the renowned science fiction writer and keynote speaker for the Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium, has passed away. We were honored to have him join us and share his stories at that year’s symposium celebrating 90 years of Astounding/Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Locus Magazine has an obituary here, and his family’s announcement on Facebook is here.
On June 14, 2023, City Tech Foundation Executive Director Beth Farryn Levine and Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center Director and English Professor Richard Hanley visited the City Tech Science Fiction Collection while Jason Ellis and Wanett Clyde were moving eight new boxes of donated material from Charlie Seelig into the Archives and Special Collections.
On Monday, May 8, Prof. Jason Ellis brought his ENG3790 Information Architecture students in the Professional and Technical Writing Program to the City Tech Science Fiction Collection to learn about how IA principles were employed to quickly make it accessible using DIY strategies. Also, the students gathered metadata from recently donated and shelved material for the collection’s finding aid. Many thanks to the students who were able to contribute to this invaluable City Tech research and teaching resource: Khaled Akam, Tiana Beatty, Kahini Chauhan, Jaida Clouden, Sphear Forde, Sandy Fougeres, Ronald Hinds, Khemraj Persaud, and Nikka Rosenstein.
In the previous post, we finally were able to relocate all of the materials donated to the City Tech Science Fiction Collection during the pandemic into the Library’s Archives space. On Thursday, April 20, 2023, Prof. Jason Ellis was able to shelve the material thanks to the efforts of Prof. Wanett Clyde and the librarian staff to open 30 shelves for the additional material.
The first step involved cleaning each shelf of accumulated dust and letting it dry before shelving any material.
Then, each box was opened in turn and its contents shelved in the stacks. The primary objective was to get the materials out of the boxes and onto the shelves, because some of the boxes had been damaged during shipping and the materials were exposed and/or smashed together. With limited time and uncertainty about how much material there was of each type, a strategy was adopted to put like materials together: hard cover fiction, paperback fiction, and periodicals/fanzines/ephemera. Later, a photographic inventory will be made of each shelf and each item will be entered into the finding aid.
Thank you again to Charlie Seelig, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, City Tech Professor Lucas Bernard and his father Kenneth Bernard, the experimental playwright and English professor whose materials were donated, and Emeritus Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and former president of the Science Fiction Research Association David Mead!
During the pandemic, we received a lot of new material for the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, including magazines, novels, collections, academic journals, and monographs. These materials were donated by Charlie Seelig (~20 boxes of EVERYTHING), Analog Science Fiction and Fact(~4 boxes of magazines from their old office space), City Tech Professor Lucas Bernard (2 boxes of material that belonged to his father Kenneth Bernard, the experimental playwright and English professor), and Emeritus Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and former president of the Science Fiction Research Association David Mead (1 box of Jack Vance materials), The Special Collections and Archives in the City Tech Library unfortunately were unable to open enough shelf space for these materials, so Wanett and Jason stored everything in their offices–with most of it being in Jason’s office (see below).
This semester, however, Wanett was able to work with library staff to open up additional shelf space in the archives for the donated materials (in the photo below, the background stacks are the City Tech Science Fiction Collection).
On Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, Jason coordinated with Wanett to begin moving the materials one cart load at a time into the archives.
It took about two-and-a-half-hours to move 22 boxes of material into the archives. The first few cart loads were successful–an elevator ride from the fifth floor of Namm to the fourth floor, and then walk to the fourth floor of the Library Building to take the service elevator up to the fifth floor of the Library Building and a short walk to the archives room. Unfortunately, the service elevator died before the last load was delivered, so Jason toted those 40 pound boxes one at a time on the last leg of the journey. Now, all of the material has been relocated to the archives room.
The next phase of integrating the materials will involve unboxing and shelving like materials on the available shelf space, which will be followed by a photographic inventory of each shelf and inventorying the items into the finding aid, which as we know from past experience, will take the most time and energy. However, Jason has plans to bring his Professional and Technical Writing students in his Spring 2023 Information Architecture class to the archives to perform some of the inventorying work as part of a discussion of database construction, categorization, and metadata.
Poster designed by Or Szyflingier, https://www.orszyflingier.com/.
The Seventh Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the Archive and SF was held on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022 as a Zoom Webinar. You can read the full program here.
Included below are videos of each session.
Many thanks again to everyone who participated and contributed to this year’s event!
Opening Jason W. Ellis Justin Vazquez-Poritz
Paper Session 1: Archival Research Jill Belli – Moderator Jessica Aaron – “Preventing Planetary Patriarchy: Subversions of the White Man’s Ideal World in Early SF Pulps” Chris Leslie – “The Republic of (Interstellar) Letters: From the Archives of Asimov and Merril” Gillian Polack – “Story as Archive: How Speculative Fiction Novels Both Preserve and Interpret Cultural Material”
Panel Discussion: A Tale of Two Archives Jason Ellis (City Tech) Matthew Frizzell (Georgia Tech) Kel Karpinski (City Tech) Alison Reynolds (Georgia Tech) Lisa Yaszek (Georgia Tech)
Panel Discussion: Georgia Tech’s Sci Fi Lab: Archival Research, Octavia’s Ancestor’s Project, and Radio Play Lisa Yaszek – Moderator Panelists: Val Barnhart Laurence Copeland Killian Vetter Edeliz Zuleta
Analog Writers Panel and the Analog Emerging Black Voices Award Emily Hockaday – Moderator Kedrick Brown Meghan Hyland Kelsey Hutton Douglas Dluzen Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday – Award Presentation
Paper Session 2: Archives in SF Lucas Kwong – Moderator Jacob Adler – “Summit of Knowledge: Archiving the Fantastical” Rhonda Knight – “A Data Thief in the Archive: Reading Sofia Samatar’s ‘An Account of the Land of Witches’” Adam McLain – “‘Only an Echo’: The Memory of the Archive and the Archive of Memory in Lois Lowry’s The Giver“ Kenrick H. Kamiya Yoshida and Ida Yoshinaga – “An Okinawan Speculative Arts Archive”
Paper Session 3: Latinx SF in the Archive Leigh Gold – Moderator Matthew David Goodwin – “The Latinx Multiverse and the Fictional Recovery of Latinx Science Fiction” Dolores González Ortega and Valeria Seminario – “Inside the Latin American Science Fiction Archive: Challenges and Contributions to a Growing Academic Field”
Keynote Jeremy Brett – “Making Space: Science Fiction Archives and the Archival Citizen” Jason Ellis – Introduction and Moderator
The Seventh Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the Archive and Science Fiction will be held on Tuesday, December 6, 2022 from 9:00am-5:00pm EST (GMT/UTC -5 hours) online via Zoom Webinar.
To participate in this free event, attendees will need to do these two things: (1) Signup for a free Zoom account here (if you don’t already have one), and (2) Register here to receive access instructions to the Zoom Webinar. Participants may register any time before or during the event!
In addition to the Zoom Webinar Chat and YouTube Live Chat, join the event conversation with the event hashtag #CityTechSF and #SFArchive and follow us on Twitter @CityTechSF.
As indicated below in the program, some symposium content is pre-recorded to offer more time for discussion on the day of the event. Pre-recorded content includes author readings and full paper presentations. Some of this content is in production and will be posted soon.
Program
9:00am-9:15am Opening Jason W. Ellis Justin Vazquez-Poritz
9:15am-10:05am Paper Session 1: Archival Research Jill Belli – Moderator Jessica Aaron – “Preventing Planetary Patriarchy: Subversions of the White Man’s Ideal World in Early SF Pulps” Chris Leslie – “The Republic of (Interstellar) Letters: From the Archives of Asimov and Merril” Gillian Polack – “Story as Archive: How Speculative Fiction Novels Both Preserve and Interpret Cultural Material”
10:05am-10:10am Break
10:10am-11:00am Panel Discussion: A Tale of Two Archives Jason Ellis (City Tech) Matthew Frizzell (Georgia Tech) Kel Karpinski (City Tech) Alison Reynolds (Georgia Tech) Lisa Yaszek (Georgia Tech)
11:00am-11:05am Break
11:05am-11:55am Panel Discussion: Georgia Tech’s Sci Fi Lab: Archival Research, Octavia’s Ancestor’s Project, and Radio Play Lisa Yaszek – Moderator Panelists: Val Barnhart Laurence Copeland Killian Vetter Edeliz Zuleta
11:55am-12:00pm Break
12:00pm-1:55pm Analog Writers Panel and the Analog Emerging Black Voices Award Emily Hockaday – Moderator Kedrick Brown Meghan Hyland Kelsey Hutton Douglas Dluzen Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday – Award Presentation
1:55pm-2:00pm Break
2:00pm-3:20pm Paper Session 2: Archives in SF Lucas Kwong – Moderator Jacob Adler – “Summit of Knowledge: Archiving the Fantastical” Rhonda Knight – “A Data Thief in the Archive: Reading Sofia Samatar’s ‘An Account of the Land of Witches'” Adam McLain – “‘Only an Echo’: The Memory of the Archive and the Archive of Memory in Lois Lowry’s The Giver“ Kenrick H. Kamiya Yoshida and Ida Yoshinaga – “An Okinawan Speculative Arts Archive”
3:20pm-3:25pm Break
3:25pm-4:10pm Paper Session 3: Latinx SF in the Archive Leigh Gold – Moderator Matthew David Goodwin – “The Latinx Multiverse and the Fictional Recovery of Latinx Science Fiction” Dolores González Ortega and Valeria Seminario – “Inside the Latin American Science Fiction Archive: Challenges and Contributions to a Growing Academic Field”
4:10pm-4:15pm Break
4:15pm-5:00pm Keynote Jeremy Brett – “Making Space: Science Fiction Archives and the Archival Citizen” Jason Ellis – Introduction and Moderator
Participants
Jacob Adler has worked as the Metadata/Cataloging Librarian at Bronx Community College Library since 2017. Before that he worked in a variety of cataloging positions, including in the library department of The Paley Center for Media in New York from 2010 to 2016. His interests include early television history, game design, and creative writing. He participated in the 2018 National Novel Writing Month, and hopes to turn the resultant work into a published novel in the future. He has also presented at the 2018 CUNY Games Conference, and has given presentations at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium in 2020 and 2021.
Jessica Aaron is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the intersection between ethics and science fiction. She received funding to conduct intensive archival research on “Planetary Epistemology in the Science Fiction Pulps” from the University of Chicago’s College Summer Institute and Quad Scholars program.
Val Barnhart is a second year Literature, Media, and Communications student in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. She works on the production team in Dr. Lisa Yaszek’s Sci-Fi Lab. Her inspiration for her work stems from a mix of real-world observations and fake-world TTRPG campaigns.
Jill Belli is Associate Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where she happily teaches science fiction and utopian studies often. She’s working on long-standing projects on well-being & happiness in education and writing & revising in speculative fiction. Newer interests include nature writing, healing & illness, tarot & astrology as storytelling / intuitive literacy, and grief. Learn more about Jill and her interdisciplinary research and teaching: jillbelli.org.
Jeremy Brett is an Associate Librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University, where he is both Processing Archivist and the Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection. He has also worked at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. He received his MLS and his MA in History from the University of Maryland – College Park in 1999. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.
Kedrick Brown, now residing in Cambridge, MA, is a trader and inventor who believes in the power of stories to inspire amazing forms of human cooperation. His first introduction to science fiction was watching episodes of Star Trek in Liberia, which later helped inspire him to major in physics at Rutgers as an undergraduate. Kedrick has been most inspired in his writing by science fiction works that suggest that the universe may be far more wondrous than commonly believed. He also has an MBA from Wharton and is pursuing a Masters in Design Engineering at Harvard.
Laurence Copeland is an undergraduate researcher in the Sci Fi Lab@Georgia Tech.
Douglas Dluzen, PhD, is the Director of the Professional Development and Career Office at Johns Hopkins University. He’s previously been a senior science writer and editor at the NIH and a geneticist studying the genetic contributors to aging, cancer, hypertension, and other age-related diseases. He loves to write science and science fiction while sitting on the couch with his wife Julia (who has immeasurably helped him fact-check and edit his work), son Parker, and daughter Cedar. You can find him on Twitter (for now) at @ripplesintime24!
Jason W. Ellis is an Associate Professor of English at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where he coordinates the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and directs the B.S. in Professional and Technical Writing Program. He coedited The Postnational Fantasy: Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction (McFarland, 2011) and a special issue on Star Wars: The Force Awakens of New American Notes Online, and talked with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson about the relationship between SF and society on StarTalk Radio. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Kent State University, M.A. in Science Fiction Studies from the University of Liverpool, and B.S. in Science, Technology, and Culture from Georgia Tech.
Matt Frizzell is the Assessment Librarian and Subject Specialist for Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech. He has a master’s in library and information science from Florida State University and a bachelor’s in anthropology from Emory University. In his role as a Subject Specialist for Science Fiction studies he develops and curates GT’s circulating Sci-Fi collection as well as collaborating and assisting with sci-ficentric activities on campus. As the Assessment Librarian Matt Provides assessment leadership and support for pilot projects, services, and spaces to facilitate evidence-based decision making. He has presented at numerous professional conferences and published articles in library journals. His most recent article describes using program evaluation in a library context.
Leigh Gold is a Doctoral Lecturer in the English Department at City Tech. She currently teaches composition, fiction, drama, and poetry. Her doctoral work explored mourning in the work of Else Lasker-Schüler. Since then she has deepened her focus on interdisciplinary work such as writing about Ursula K Le Guin, Mary Shelley and Le Guin’s intersections, Eastern philosophies and ethics in Le Guin’s work, trauma in women writers of science fiction including Octavia Butler, and the role of the body and movement in poetry; Leigh is currently working on an essay about Judith Merril for an upcoming anthology.
Matthew David Goodwin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at the The University of New Mexico and Assistant Director of Publications at the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute. He maintains the latinxarchive.com.
Emily Hockaday is the managing editor and poetry editor for Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Her first full-length poetry collection, Naming the Ghost, will be out in November 2022 with Cornerstone Press. You can find her online at www.emilyhockaday.com or @E_Hockaday.
Kelsey Hutton is a Métis author of speculative fiction from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation (Winnipeg, Canada). She particularly loves writing space opera, fantasy, and historical fiction. Kelsey was born in an even snowier city than she lives in now (“up north,” as they say in Winnipeg). She also used to live in Brazil as a kid. She tries to appreciate the clean, cold winters, but mostly misses the beautiful wide-open lakes of summertime. Connect with her at KelseyHutton.com, on Instagram at @KelseyHuttonAuthor, or on Twitter at @KelHuttonAuthor.
Meghan Hyland started writing to distract herself from graduate school. Since then, she’s completed her Ph.D. in computer science, served as a college professor, and worked for multiple well-known technology companies. Nowadays she lives with her two cats in the Pacific Northwest, where she still manages to distract herself, and hopefully others, with her writing.
Kel R. Karpinski is a Librarian and Assistant Professor at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Their research focuses on mid-century queer films and novels as they relate to sailors and hustlers in Times Square and how these texts map queer desire onto the city. They have a forthcoming article in The Journal of American Culture. Kel is also a zine maker and a NY Queer Zine Fair organizer.
Rhonda Knight is a Professor of English, Director of the Honors Program, and the James Wayne Lemke Endowed Chair in College Service and Leadership at Coker University in Hartsville, South Carolina. Rhonda was Coker’s 2018 recipient of the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities’ Excellence in Teaching Award. She has published articles on subjects from Sir Gawain to Doctor Who. She has co-edited two collections, Stage Matters: Props, Bodies and Space on the Shakespearean Stage (2018) and Who Makes the Franchise?: Essays in Fandom and Wilderness Texts in Popular Media (2022). She serves on the Board of Advisors for Kallion Leadership, Inc., which promotes leadership through study of the humanities.
Lucas Kwong is a writer, musician, and associate professor of English at New York City College of Technology. He’s written at eschatontwist.substack.com, Institute for Christian Socialism’s Bias Magazine, Public Books, Journal of Narrative Theory, and Victorian Literature and Culture. His podcast series, Monster In The Mirror, is a spinoff of Straight White American Jesus. His music can be found at brotherkmusic.com.
Chris Leslie (he/him) is a visiting professor in the School of Foreign Languages at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, a creative consultant for Zhejiang Hexin Toy Group in Yunhe, and the chair of the International Federation of Information Processing’s working group on the history of computing. His research focuses on the intersections among science, technology, and society. A two-time recipient of a Fulbright award, he has also taught at John Jay College, Hunter College, the University of Potsdam (Germany), and New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Dr. Leslie is finalizing a book project, From Hyperspace to Hypertext: Masculinity, Globalization, and Their Discontents, which will be published by Palgrave next year.
Adam McLain is a MA/PhD student and first-year writing instructor in the department of English at the University of Connecticut. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English, editing, and women’s studies from Brigham Young University, where he was managing editor at Leading Edge for three years, and a master of theological studies in women, gender, sexuality, and religion from Harvard University, after which he fulfilled a Frank Knox Traveling Fellowship to study George Orwell and sexual violence in the UK. He studies dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. Most recently, he edited two symposia for SFRA Review, one on Mormonism and science fiction and the other on sexual violence and science fiction.
Dolores González Ortega is a PhD candidate from Mendoza, Argentina. She holds a bachelor degree in Literature and Spanish Language Teaching from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and an MA in Literatures Languages and Cultures from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests focus on the interactions of gender, sexuality and politics in contemporary Latin American science fiction. She co-organizes the interdisciplinary science fiction critical theory study group Alien Readings at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Gillian Polack is a Jewish Australian speculative fiction writer based in Canberra, Australia. She was the 2020 recipient of the Ditmar (best novel, for her 2019 novel The Year of the Fruit Cake) and the Bertram A. Chandler (lifetime achievement in science fiction) awards. She is an ethnohistorian with a special interest in how story transmits culture, both Medieval and modern. Her current research examines how contemporary speculative fiction novels serve as vectors for cultural transmission. Her book on this, Story Matrices: Cultural Encoding and Cultural Baggage in the Worlds of Science Fiction and Fantasy, was released in April 2022.Her research at Deakin University furthers this work. Dr. Polack’s publications include ten novels, short stories, a monograph (History and Fiction, shortlisted for the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review) and various works of non-fiction. A list of her books can be found at https://gillianpolack.com/my-books/.
Trevor Quachri, who took the reins of Analog Science Fiction and Fact as editor in 2012, started off as an editorial assistant in 1999 and worked his way up the ladder at Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction, under Stanley Schmidt, Sheila Williams, and Gardner Dozois, respectively. On top of that, he’s also been a Broadway stagehand, collected data for museums, and executive produced a science fiction pilot for a basic cable channel. He lives in New Jersey with his fiancée, daughter, and way, way too many comic books.
Alison Reynolds is the Research Services and Instruction Archivist at the Georgia Tech Library. She holds an MLS from Indiana University Bloomington with a specialization in Archives and Records Management, an MA in English from the University of Connecticut, and BA degrees in English and history from Denison University. She manages the Archives Reading Room and archival instruction programs and serves as the curator for the special collections science fiction and rare book collections. Her interests include teaching with primary sources and working to make archival collections more easily accessible to users.
Valeria Seminario’s research explores the encounter between literature, science, and technology in Latin American modernities and is increasingly becoming interested in the aesthetics of infrastructure and logistics. She is the author of “Un pasado inevitable: La Corriente del Golfo y la reescritura de los orígenes de la República cubana” in the edited volume Ficción y Ciencia (2022). Valeria is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hispanic and Portuguese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from NYU. Her M.A. thesis —which recovers from obscurity the first Cuban science fiction novel—, was prized with the Hirschhorn Master’s Project Award by the Center for Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at NYU.
Or Szyflingier is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on graphic design, advertising, motion, and video – manifesting that love for design, creativity, and a natural ability to communicate visually. She has worked for organizations such as Symphony Space, CUNY, and NYPIRG, while being featured at the AIGA’s SHIFT summit, and Carnegie Hall. She directed an award-winning documentary entitled The SoHo Memory Project, which has garnered praise and recognition at international and national film festivals such as the Telly Awards and DOCNYC – the largest documentary film festival in the country. She designed the poster for this year’s symposium. Learn more about her work at orszyflingier.com.
Justin Vazquez-Poritz is the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at New York College of Technology, CUNY.
Killian Vetter is an undergraduate researcher in the Sci Fi Lab@Georgia Tech.
Lisa Yaszek is Regents’ Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech, where she explores science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures. Her most recent books include Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (2016); Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-FirstCentury (2020, co-edited with Isiah Lavender III) and The Future is Female! Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women series (2018-present). Professor Yaszek’s ideas about science fiction as a window to cultural history have been featured in venues including The Washington Post, Food and Wine Magazine, and USA Today, and she has been an expert commentator for CBS Sunday Morning, the BBC4, Turner Classic Movies, and the AMC miniseries James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. A past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, Professor Yaszek currently serves as a juror for the Eugie Foster Speculative Fiction Award and as Georgia Tech’s ambassador to the AtlantaFuturism movement.
Kenrick H. Kamiya Yoshida is a Okinawan speculative fiction writer and independent scholar. His article on post-war Okinawan SF film and TV will be published in The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms (upcoming). He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two spectral cats.
Ida Yoshinaga is an Assistant Professor of science-fiction film at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her collection of thinkpieces, co-edited by Gerry Canavan and Sean Guynes, Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction, is being published by MIT Press this winter.
Edeliz Zuleta is a Biomechanical Engineering Major and Science Fiction Minor at Georgia Tech. She works in Professor Lisa Yaszek’s Sci Fi Lab, with funding from Georgia Tech’s Center for Women, Science, and Technology and the Ivan Allen College for the Liberal Arts.
Organizers
The 7th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium was organized by Jill Belli, Wanett Clyde, Leigh Gold, Lucas Kwong, and Kel Karpinski. The event is supported by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City Tech).
