Category Archives: fantasy and science fiction

Capricon 2024

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Mia and I enjoyed Capricon 44. It was held at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, February 1-4, as it was when we attended two years ago. We were very happy to be at a con in downtown Chicago again, with an almost infinite supply of places to eat and drink in walking distance of the hotel. It is much more alive than downtown St. Paul or Minneapolis, and the people seemed friendlier. As happened in 2022, some of our Chicagoland fannish friends did not attend, but others did, and we enjoyed seeing them again.

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The Bible as Fantasy Novel

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Notes from a panel at Capricon 44, Chicago, Feb. 3, 2024. Any mistakes are mine. The panelists are not responsible for any errors here.

Janice Gelb (moderator); Jeana Jorgensen; Will Saddler, Lucy A Synk, Susan Weiner

The Bible uses fantastic elements in describing the inexplicable, prophecies, and fables. What elements of the Bible correlate to common tropes in fantasy literature? How have the fantasy elements in the Bible influence writers of fantasy?

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Wheels that are not circles

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Triangle-Wheeled Bike Gives New Meaning to ‘Tricycle’. The inventors

… went back to the drawing board to see if they could come up with a bike design featuring triangular wheels. They succeeded, and unlike the square-wheeled bike, these triangular wheels actually roll like round ones.

This is known as the Reuleaux triangle. I first ran across it in Poul Anderson’s 1963 SF story The Three Cornered Wheel, which I read sometime in high school (1964-68). A stranded spaceship crew needs to transport a heavy object over land. Unfortunately, the use of anything circular for mundane purposes is forbidden by the religion of the natives. However, the use of a curve of up to 1/3 of a circle is allowed for a sufficiently important cause. The young hero figures out that using such a “three cornered wheel” will solve the crew’s problem without offending the religious authorities.

Seeing Stars on the Moon

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Why don’t moon photos show stars?. Specifically, why can’t we see the stars in the photographs of the Apollo Astronauts on the moon? As the article clearly explains, all of the pictures were taken during lunar daylight, during which the lunar surface is well illuminated by the sun. This completely washes out the light from the stars. If you made a long enough exposure to catch the stars, the lunar surface, the astronauts and their gear, and the lunar lander would be grossly overexposed. This would defeat the purpose of documenting human activity on the moon.

In fact, this issue was anticipated by Arthur C. Clarke in his classic science fiction novel A Fall of Moondust, first published in 1961, eight years before the first Apollo expedition landed on the moon. Continue reading →

Mining Our Biblical Matriarchs

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A workshop on Friday, September 2, 2022 at Chicon 8, presented by Sally Wiener Grotta

The women of the Bible (Eve, Esther, Miriam, etc.) have been amongst the West’s most enduring female archetypes. As lush and varied as any mythology, their stories have been reinterpreted by every generation’s artists, clerics, and political leaders, according to how they expected women to be. However, these archetypes have been largely overlooked by modern spec fic authors. In this workshop, we’ll have fun challenging and toppling common preconceptions about various women of the Bible, as we mine this rich mother lode for SF&F story ideas.

The following are my notes and amplifications. I am solely responsible for their content and any mistakes.
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Chicon 8

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Thursday

On Thursday, Sept. 1, Mia McDavid and I drove to Chicago for Chicon 8: The 80th World Science Fiction Convention at the Hyatt Regency Chicago . This was our 5th Chicon. Previously we had attended:

Despite some glitches, we really enjoyed the Con, and visiting downtown Chicago again.

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Capricon Notes

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As I wrote previously , Mia (my wife) and I spent last weekend at Capricon, a Chicagoland science fiction convention. We went to most of the Capricons in the ’80’s and ’90’s, but in our first years in Minnesota the pressures of parenthood prevented us from going. Those have eased somewhat and we have been to most of the Capricons (and Windycons) since 2009. While most Capricons have been in the Chicago suburbs, this year the convention was downtown, at the Sheraton Grand Hotel.

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