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100YSS
100YSS 2014 Public Symposium
18 – 21 September
Science Fiction Stories Night
Friday is Science Fiction Stories Night at 100 Year Starship 2014 Public Symposium featuring award-winning authors—Yoon Ha Lee, Les Johnson, Nisi Shawl, and Edward M. Lerner—book signings and a special screening of the original The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Explore how science fiction helps researchers, engineers and society imagine radical leaps in technology and work through social crises. Noted authors, scientists and the audience discuss the importance of telling a compelling story as we create humanity's future. The authors' books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of River Oaks Bookstore of Houston.
Then grab some popcorn (or choose from the many hors d'oeuvres available) and enjoy a special screening of the original The Day the Earth Stood Still that tells the haunting story of humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial life when a visitor from the stars comes to Earth with a warning. The film is listed in many top films lists and the American Film Institute has placed it in the top ten films of all time.
Yoon Ha Lee's short story collection Conservation of Shadows was published by Prime Books in 2013. Lee's short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other venues. Her stories "Ghostweight" and "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" were Theodore Sturgeon Award finalists.
Lee was born in Houston, Texas and has also lived in South Korea, Missouri, upstate New York, Boston, Washington state, and Southern California. Currently she lives in Louisiana with her family and has not yet been eaten by gators.
Edward M. Lerner, by training a physicist and computer engineer, worked in high tech and aerospace for thirty years as everything from engineer to senior vice president. Since 2004 Lerner has written full-time. His meticulously researched solo novels include near-future technothrillers like Fools' Experiments (artificial life and artificial intelligence), Small Miracles (medical nanotech), and Energized (solar power satellites and near-Earth space exploitation), as well as traditional science fiction like the "hard" science fiction InterstellarNet series (SETI, First Contact, and interstellar communications networks). He also wrote, in collaboration with New York Times best-selling author Larry Niven, the acclaimed grand space epic Fleet of Worlds series of Ringworld companion novels.
Lerner's short fiction has appeared in anthologies, collections, and many of the usual SF magazines—including, in particular, that haven of hard science fiction: Analog. He also writes nonfiction science and technology articles, including the 2012 award-winning "Faster than a Speeding Photon: The Why, Where, and (Perhaps the) How of Faster-Than-Light Technology."
Nisi Shawl
Nisi Shawl's story collection Filter House was a James Tiptree, Jr., Award winner. She co-authored Writing the Other: A Practical Approach , and co-edited the 2014 Locus Award finalist Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler.
Shawl was the 2011 Guest of Honor for the feminist SF convention WisCon and a 2014 Guest of Honor for the Science Fiction Research Association. She has spoken at Stanford and Duke Universities and Smith College, and is a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit supporting the presence of minorities in the fantastic genres. Her website is www.nisishawl.com.
Les Johnson is a scientist, an author, and a NASA technologist. He is an author of several popular science books about space exploration, including "Living Off the Land in Space," "Sky Alert: When Satellites Fail," and "Harvesting Space for a Greener Earth;" and three science fiction books "Back to the Moon," "Going Interstellar," and "Rescue Mode." You might have seen him on NatGeo or The Science Channel where he has appeared in numerous programs about space and science.
In his day job, he serves as the Senior Technical Advisor for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Les is a frequent contributor to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and a member of the National Space Society, the World Future Society, and MENSA. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the British Interplanetary Society and is Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop. Les was the featured "interstellar explorer" in the January 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine and a technical consultant for the movie, "Europa Report."
The Day The Earth Stood Still depicts the arrival of an alien dignitary, Klaatu (Michael Rennie), who has come to earth with his deadly robot, Gort (Lock Martin), to deliver the message that earthlings must stop warring among themselves–or else. After being shot at by military guards, Klaatu is brought to a Washington, D.C. hospital, where he begs a sympathetic but frank Major White (Robert Osterloh) to gather all the world's leaders so he can tell them more specifically what he has come to warn them about. Losing patience, Klaatu slips into the human world, adapting a false identity and living at a boarding house where he meets a smart woman with a conscience and her inquisitive son. Both mother and son soon find themselves embroiled in the complex mystery of Klaatu, his message and the government's witch hunt for the alien.
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George R. Brown Convention Center
1001 Avenida De Las Americas Houston, TX 77010
18 - 21 SEPTEMBER, 2014