LORY PRESENTING AN ACADEMIC PAPER AT McMASTER UNIVERSITY

I have been given the honour and pleasure of presenting a paper at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario this coming September. It will at a conference on Science Fiction, being held in honour of Robert J. Sawyer donating his papers to the university.

The theme of the conference is;

“Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre”

The heart of my topic will be describing the “job” of the science fiction or speculative fiction author, while also looking at society as a tribe in need of members who work for the ultimate prosperity and survival of that tribe. That is, the sf writer plays an important part in synthesizing the ongoing developments of all the sciences, both physical and social, and puts it into a form which humans have used to impart information to the tribe’s wider group for millennia, that is – the story.

My paper will therefore explore the idea of humans as a tribe, whether it’s a group of thirty to sixty people, as it apparently was for hundreds of thousands of years, or a collection of seven billion plus, as it is now. My paper will include a discussion and examples of how nature has required that individuals appear who are necessary for the whole’s survival, science fiction writers included.

It should be a fun project, even though it will take me away from keeping my nose to the grindstone of getting the new young adult, POST-dystopian novel finished. But that’s another story.

I’ll post more on the progress of the paper and the new book.

In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying The Verona Trilogy, written by me and edited by Lou Aronica. I love to hear the thoughts readers have after reading my work, so keep those emails coming.

Cheers,

Lory