Introduction
I attended the SF conference named ConFusion at 5801 Southfield Freeway Dearborn, Michigan at the DoubleTree Hotel from January 18 to 20, 2019. ConFusion is sponsored by the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association. I attended 4 panels, one reading, one interview, and watched the movie The Princess Bride. The theme of the con was Storming the ConFusion, so the areas were designated with names related to the movie like Miracle Max’s Film Room, The Fire Swamp Artists Alley, The Cliffs of Insanity Consuite, Pit of Despair Gaming, and the Thieves Forest Music Room. I stayed at the Hawthorn Hotel by Wyndham which was next to the Double Tree.
ConFusion 2019 Program Guide Cover
This is a link to the ConFusion website.
Summary
Saturday, January 19th at 12 PM
Writers Talk about Anything But Writing panel with Mark Oshiro, John Scalzi, and Delilah Dawson:
Mark was the moderator and he came up with the topic. His point was that panelists get questions about writing, publishing, and touring, but get few questions about their other interests. This panel forced them to talk about something else. John Scalzi talked about being almost 50, his exercise program, and taking modern dance in high school. Mark talked about who he was cast as the lead in the play Music Man, Harold Hill, in high school while being Mexican and gay. John talked about working at Del Taco and learning about life. He was in an air band in high school and won a contest drumming to Round and Round by Ratt. Mark didn’t understand the concept of an air band since he is from another generation. John finished up the panel by talking about his wife’s family’s salsa recipe and how he was glad he married into the family to taste it, The panel was fun and I’m glad Mark came up with the topic. I learned about the panelists and I liked that.
Link to another air band video of John Scalzi at the Webb school:
Saturday, January 19th at 1 PM
Mars in Fact and Fiction panel with industrial scientist Bill Higgins, SF writer specializing in Mars fiction Martin L. Shoemaker, and professor from Connecticut State University Dr. Jennifer Piatek:
Two slide presentations were presented in this panel.
Dr. Piatek’s presentation was called Mars – A Short Tour, which covered the history of scientific fact about Mars. The incorrectly proposed canals of Mars were refuted in the ’60s with the Mariner mission. The Viking mission extended our knowledge of the surface of Mars. Mars has a rough southern highland and a smooth northern plain. Most Mars missions land in the north. The next mission to Mars is scheduled to be the Mars Rover 2020 mission, scheduled to be launched in 2020.
Bill Higgins presentation was called Mars in Our Stories, which covered SF writing about Mars. He highlighted a picture printed in the September 1956 Life magazine that imagined the aliens of Mars as told from many stories including War of the Worlds by H. G. Welles, Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis, and A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum. He next mentioned the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds adapted by Orson Welles that caused a panic in New Jersey. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and the John Carter series by Edgar Rice Burroughs were also mentioned. The panel ran out of time to continue to more modern examples of Mars fiction.
I thought that both presentations were well done, and the information was interesting.
A copy of a drawing by Boris Artzybasheff from the September 24, 1956 issue of Life magazine.
Saturday, January 19th at 3 PM
Reading by John Scalzi:
John Scalzi’s current work in progress is his sequel to his novella called The Dispatcher. The tentative title for the work is Dispatcher 2 –the dispationing (probably not the final title). He read Chapter 1 of his new work. In the world of the novel, people who are murdered will return alive to a place they found comfort in the past. They appear naked, healthy and well. Suicide does not work in this world so there is a call for Dispatchers, who murder terminal patients or for other reasons if their clients want a fresh start. This work is about a Dispatcher debating if he will accept Mr. Pang as a client. The chapter comes to a satisfying conclusion. Scalzi is an engaging reader of his work. Well done.
This is the Goodreads link to The Dispatcher.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34819813-the-dispatcher
Scalzi had more time to read, so he read two posts from his blog named Whatever. The first post he read was titled “Automated Customer Service”. It was a funny short story about a computerized phone customer service call about a malfunctioning Vacuubot.
The last story was named “Four Views of the Same Short Story”.
A short Q and A followed. The whole hour was fun and perfect. It was my best hour of the con.
Saturday, January 19th at 6:30 PM (Err, I should have been there at 6:10 PM)
I watched the movie The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride was the theme of this con, Storming the ConFusion. I’ve seen the movie many times but I thought that it would be fun to see it here with an audience. In the Henry Ford boardroom (renamed Miracle Max’s Film Room for the Con) there is a large screen TV at one end of the room and a large table with comfortable chairs surrounding it. The movie played on the screen and all the dozen chairs were filled.
On the sheet posted on the door, it said the movie would start at 6:30 PM but I think it started at 6:10 PM. Then I arrived at 6:25 PM the scene playing was the one where the Man in Black (Dread Pirate Roberts, but secretly Westley) was sword fighting with Inigo Montoya and it was almost over. The movie ended at 7:40 PM and the movie is 90 minutes long so I figure about a 6:10 PM start. I watched the rest of the movie. The cool thing is that the five scenes at the beginning of the movie that I missed are all available on Youtube. I watched them all after the con. It turned out to be a great idea to watch the movie with others and I am glad that I did.
Youtube link to a playlist with 12 clips from the movie:
Sign on the door to the boardroom where the movie played.
Sunday, January 20th at 10 AM
I attended an interview with Ada Palmer, the Author Guest of Honor for ConFusion 2019. Ada Palmer was interviewed by Black Gate columnist Brandon Crilly. She is an associate professor of early modern European History at the University of Chicago. Ada Palmer first talked about her current project on censorship. She is co-writing a book called Censorship and Information Control in Information Revolutions with Cory Doctorow and Adrian Johns. Her project is funded through Kickstarter Their idea is that censorship has always been a part of society and always will. There are two kinds of censorship. The Catholic model where works are sent to a censer and edited before they are published and the English model where works are censored after they have been printed and deemed censorable.
Censorship relates to her current fiction novel series, Terra Ignota. She extrapolated certain trends from the past into the future to develop her series. Some of those trends are religiosity, the changing family unit, and gender relations. She recommended the short story The Autopsy by Michael Shae, link below. She identifies herself as a writer and not a professor. Her writing suggestion is to take an old story and edit it to half-length to get to the essence of the story. It will help the writer to be concise and make sure that every line and word is doing some work. Brandon conducted an interesting interview with Ada Palmer and I plan to read Too Like the Lightning this year. It’s on my Goodreads list.
This is Brandon Crilly’s announcement of the interview: https://brandoncrilly.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/this-weekend-confusion/
This is the Black Gate magazine webpage: https://www.blackgate.com/
This is Ada Palmer’s faculty page: https://history.uchicago.edu/directory/ada-palmer
Ada Palmer’s project is funded through Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/648994832/censorship-and-information-control-in-information
This is a link to the Goodreads page of Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota Book #1)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26114545-too-like-the-lightning
This is a link to the Goodreads page for the book The Weird, where The Autopsy by Michael Shae is published: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12344319-the-weird?ac=1&from_search=true
Sunday, January 20th at 12 PM
State of the Solar System panel with industrial scientist Bill Higgins, SF writer specializing in Mars fiction Martin L. Shoemaker, and professor from Connecticut State University Dr. Jennifer Piatek:
The same panel members from the Mars panel on Saturday continued their discussion about space exploration beyond Mars. They talked about the International Space Station first and then spent most of the rest of the panel talking about probes to the asteroids. The TV show Salvage 1 from 1979 starring Andy Griffith was mentioned about commercial space exploration. The show was about a man who built a spaceship intending to go to the moon and salvage the Apollo mission’s equipment and sell it on the Earth. It was an interesting panel and the room was packed, standing room only.
Sunday, January 20th at 1 PM
Supply Lines and Economics in Fantasy Worldbuilding panel with K. A. Doore, Ferrett Steinmetz, Jennifer Mace, Scott H. Andrews, Jon Skovron, and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
They authors talked about how economics affected the story they write. The best part of the panel was their recommendations of resource books to read. They are 1491 by Charles Man, Debt by David Graeber, Great Cities in History by John Julius Norwich., and Food by Dorothy Hartley. There were two examples of novels using the topic illustrated, the Dagger and the Coin series by Daniel Abraham and War of Light and Shadow by Jenny Wurts. I wondered if six panelists were too many for them to get each of their points across, but the panel went smoothly, and each panelist had interesting comments. I put all the books mentions on my Goodreads to read list and look forward too many hours of good reading.
Recommendation – Conclusion
I had a great drive to Detroit just before the snowstorm. The con was set up well making it easy to find the locations. My star of the con was John Scalzi. He gave an excellent reading and was engaging in the panel I attended. My other highlights were Ada Palmer’s interview and watching The Princess Bride at the con. I’m planning to return next year.
Links
This is a link to John Scalzi’s post about attending ConFusion 2019.
The next most recent conference that I attended was Cleveland Inkubator which was held on August 4, 2018, at the Louis Stokes Wing of the Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44115. The event was sponsored by Literary Cleveland. This is a link to my conference recap.
