Conference Recap ConFusion Detroit 2020
Introduction
I attended the SF conference named ConFusion Detroit 2020 at 21111 Haggerty Road Novi, Michigan at the Sheraton Detroit Novi from January 16 to 19, 2020. The Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association sponsors ConFusion Detroit 2020. I attended four panels, two readings, and one interview. The theme of the conference was How to Train Your Confusion. It was a play on words promoting the movie How to Train Your Dragon. They showed the movie in the boardroom, but I did not watch it then.
This is a link to the ConFusion website.
The Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association sponsors Detroit ConFusion.
Outside the Sheraton in snowy Michigan at the ConFusion Detroit 2020 Science Fiction Conference.
The 2020 Logo for ConFusion Detroit 2020.
ConFusion Detroit 2020 Program Guide Cover
This is my badge for ConFusion Detroit 2020.
Summary
Saturday, January 18th at 10 AM
The Future of Space Travel panel with Jeff Beeler, Elly Bangs, Shannon Eichhorn, and Tobias Buckell:
What do the future of space travel hold for us in the near term and the far future? They talked about playing the game Kerbal Space Program. It is a space flight simulation game where the player manages a space program using green-skinned Kerbals. https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ For the current state of the space program they talked about the 2020 Mars Lander and BFR Plus spaceship designed by SpaceX. Recommended books and websites followed. The Case for Mars by Robert Zubin. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56713.The_Case_for_Mars The Elon Musk Blog Series, Wait but Why by Tim Urban. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29437730-the-elon-musk-blog-series The SpaceX feed at https://twitter.com/SpaceX They suggest following Gwynne Shotwell, who is the President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. She is the one who makes Elon Musk’s ideas become reality.
They held the panel in the Interlochen room with 28 attendees. There weren’t enough chairs in the room, so six people were standing, including me.
Saturday, January 18th at 11 AM
Interstellar Nations and Warfare: Space Opera Worldbuilding panel with Karen Burnham, Marquel Jacob, Jenn Lyons, and Glynn Stewart:
The first point is why write space opera if the physics tells us it is not likely that we will communicate instantly through space and there is no faster than light space travel? We write space opera because it is fun to extrapolate on current technology. If the writer keeps the rules consistent internally, then it is okay to write space opera.
If civilization is interstellar, then there should not be a scarcity of resources. So, where does the conflict come from? The conflict could come with ideas and the scarcity of specific resources. The primal motivations are land, money, and lies. Examples used with FTL travel as conflicts are an unstable FTL travel method in The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi and the scarcity of the spice used for FTL travel in Dune by Frank Hebert. The panel talked about pet peeves where authors get Worldbuilding wrong. Not following the rules of artificial gravity, there is no FTL travel in the story, but there is a fast trip to Jupiter, a one ecosystem planet, and no normal people left.
They held the panel in the Manitou room with 22 attendees.
Saturday, January 18th at 4 PM
Reading by John Scalzi:
John Scalzi read from his soon to be released novel named the Last Emperox, a story from his book A Very Scalzi Christmas, a post from his blog, and he ended the hour with a question-and-answer session.
He read Chapter Two of The Last Emperox. It is the third and final book of the Interdependency Trilogy and will be released on April 14, 2020. The Chapter was from Kiva Lagos’s perspective and concerns the events that occurred at the end of the previous novel in the series.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38322550-the-last-emperox
A Very Scalzi Christmas collects 15 short tales about the holiday season. He read one tale named Resolutions for the New Year–A Bullet Point List. It was brief and was hilarious.
He read from his Blog called Whatever. It was a piece from his answers to reader requests. This one was on civility, question #5 from 2019. See the article through the link. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/11/20/reader-request-week-2019-5-civility/
A short Q and A followed. Scalzi had a question about using the first person in his novel named Lock In. He remarked that seven years ago there was no narrative about binary gender identification. Now, only seven years later, it’s not even an issue anymore. Someone asked Scalzi about how he got the military culture correct in the Old Man’s War series. He said his father and brother were in the service and he did a lot of research to make the story work. Someone asked Scalzi about TV and movie projects. He confirmed that the Redshirts project is dead… twice dead. Scalzi confirmed that he has delivered 4 of the 13 novels contacted by Tor. The trilogy is a trilogy and no more, though his original proposal included a book set 5000 years in the Interdependency’s future.
The whole hour was fun and perfect. It was my best hour of the conference.
They held the reading in Ballroom C & D with 33 attendees.
Saturday, January 18th at 5 PM
Science Guest of Honor Reading of Edible Insects and Human Evolution by Dr. Julie Lesnik:
She read from her book Edible Insects and Human Evolution. Images projected on a screen accompanied the reading. Most of the images were humorous.
First, we must understand our aversion to eating insects. Humans display fear and disgust for the concept of eating bugs. Fear goes with spiders and disgust goes with an aversion to disease. By taste, humans associate sweet and salty to good and bitter to bad. Uncooked insects are bitter; thus, people consider them bad to eat.
Insects in the human diet have gone for absent to adverse through time. Romans consumed insects. Something happened where insects have become absent in Western Civilization’s diet, and this absence has transformed into an aversion to eating insects. In modern times, people in Equatorial regions consume insects. Why is this behavior observed?
Will humans overcome the aversion to eating insects? Insects are a great source of protein. They use Black Soldier fly larva in pet food and they use mealworms in bioconversion. The most likely source for insect consumption is crickets. They are not economical now, but the price point is coming closer to feasibility. She brought edible crickets for those audience members who wanted to try them.
They held the reading in the Keweenaw room with 31 attendees. There weren’t enough chairs in the room, so four people stood.
Saturday, January 18th at 6 PM
Short Fiction Submission: Advice from the Editor panel with Jeff Chapman, Jennie Ivins, Scott Andrews, Mur Lafferty, and Alvin Mullin:
The editors in the panel answered about the dos and don’ts when submitting for magazines and anthologies. The panelists have a varied background as editors.
Jeff Chapman reaches writing and is an editor for a literary magazine.
Jennie Ivins is the editor for http://fantasy-faction.com/
Scott Andrews is the editor for http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
Mur Lafferty is the editor for https://escapepod.org/
Alvin Mullin is an anthology editor.
Advice for successfully submitting short fiction includes use no special formatting, learn about special requirements for each market where you are submitting, and read an issue of the magazine to understand the stories the magazine accepts. Read the submission guidelines and know your market. Note that the submission grinder gives example turnaround times for each magazine. https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/
Keep your cover letters short. Try to emotionally detach yourself from rejection. Form rejections are part of the process. A mistake is a moment to learn. If they reject you, then you are a working writer.
Here are other links to websites detailing magazines looking for stories in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. Ralan https://www.ralan.com/, Duotrope https://duotrope.com/, and Locus magazine https://locusmag.com/
Don’t follow the trends. Good stories create trends. Write the story from your heart. Don’t reply to rejection with anger.
They held the panel in the Isle Royale room with 22 attendees.
Sunday, January 19th, at 10 AM
Black Gate Interview with Author Guest of Honor Kameron Hurley by Brandon Crilly:
They recorded this interview for Black Gate Publishing at https://www.blackgate.com/
She talked about the great time she had on her Spanish tour in 2019. She talked about pushing for getting a breakout book which caused her to burnout. It took her four years to write book three of a series when she lost her agent and wondered if she could make a living as a writer. She persevered, got a new agent, and wrote three books in a year. Keep doing the work because you don’t know what book will break out. Continue your journey on how to take feedback. Turn off your critic’s brain when you are reading as an author. Create a realistic success metric for yourself. Write the book of your heart.
They held the panel in the Charlevoix room with 12 attendees.
Sunday, January 19th at 11 AM
Plan Your Outbreak! lecture with Keren Landsman:
Keren Landsman is an Israeli writer and doctor specializing in Epidemiology and Public Health. Her science lecture was about from influenza to the black death, discussing what made the largest biological disasters happen and how to use that knowledge in Worldbuilding an outbreak.
Worldbuilding is a character on its own. It needs a significant role in the story’s plot. A pathogen causes disease. She talked about various diseases including Tuberculosis, syphilis, the black plague, rabies, cholera, and Ebola. An example was the Broad Street Pump. Dr. John Snow figures out the cause for a cholera outbreak by interviewing patients to determine they all used a single contaminated water pump.
One thing to remember is that doctors and nurses always get the disease they are treating. The family members are the next to get the disease. Rabies is not a good disease to build an outbreak story from since it is only transmitted from animal to human by biting. Traveling Italian merchants brought The Black Death to Europe. It is normal to have quarantine for 40 days.
They held the panel in the Leelanaw room with 10 attendees.
Recommendation – Conclusion
As I drove up I-75 into Michigan, I drove into a snowstorm. I drove slowly and got there safely. The ConFusion Detroit 2020 conference was held in this location previously. In 2019, I attended the con in another location, so it took me a while to figure out how to get to the conference center from inside the hotel. Once I got to the conference center, the locations were easy to navigate. There was more room at this location and it had more activities than in 2019. I enjoyed the variety. My star of the con was John Scalzi. He gave an excellent reading of Chapter Two of his upcoming book named The Last Emperox. My other highlights were Kameron Hurley’s interview and the lecture on Edible Insects and Human Evolution. I’m planning to return next year.
Links
I attended the SF conference ConFusion in Detroit, Michigan from January 18 to 20, 2019. The theme of the con was Storming the ConFusion, so they designated the areas with names related to the movie, The Princess Bride. I had a great drive to Detroit just before the snowstorm came. 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’ll be back next year.
