From the SFRA Executive Committee
From the President
Hugh O’Connell
Last week (July 30th–August 2nd), science fiction scholars from around the world gathered virtually and in-person for the 2025 SFRA conference “Trans People Are (In) the Future,” hosted by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester in New York. Remarkably, it was our first continental North American conference since 2018 (with 2019 taking place in Hawai’i). Every conference is an exercise in teamwork and immense coordination, and as this was my final conference as President, I want to make sure to thank everyone involved in making it such a success. First, my sincere thanks to the University of Rochester administration for their support and for welcoming us and making us feel at home. I especially need to thank the rest of the SFRA executive committee for all of the behind the scenes conference work that they do: our Immediate Past President, the unflappable Gerry Canavan, who continues to offer important guidance to the organization; Vice President Chris Pak, who stepped into his role halfway through the planning of the conference and dove headfirst into organizing the SFRA-sponsored panels for envisioning the future of the field and our organization; Secretary Sarah Lohmann who, among other things, organized the Travel Grants that helped members attend the conference; Treasurer Joshua Pearson who, like Chris, only came on at the start of the new year and has been working overtime to resolve multiple frustrating issues with our various payment systems; At-Large Officers Helane Androne and Kania Greer who organized the early career panels; and the SFRA’s new Web Director, David Shipko, who had to contend with a site that has for far too long been held together with the coding equivalent of duct tape and bubble gum.
And, of course, I need to give a huge thank you to conference host Stefanie Dunning. After a series of false starts, Stefanie stepped in at the 11th hour to make sure that there would in fact be an SFRA conference this year when I was beginning to fear that it wouldn’t happen. Not only did Stefanie just begin a new job last fall as Director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute, but she managed to organize a conference in less than half the time that it usually takes—all while learning to navigate a new institution. I can’t imagine what a trial by fire it has been. I also need to thank Jane Bryant, the Program Manager for the Institute, for all of the extraordinary organizational work that they’ve done. Finally, I would be severely remiss if I didn’t extend my sincere gratitude to all of the tech, facilities, catering, and custodial staff for all of their labor. So much of their work goes unseen; however, it’s directly responsible for allowing all of us to experience the fantastic facilities, to do our work, and to enjoy ourselves and each other’s company.
This year’s conference theme was necessarily multivalent in its aims. On one hand, it served as a critical lens for and intervention into sf studies. Many presentations delved into texts and subgenres that center those who are all too often marginalized within sf production. Similarly, other scholars peered under the hood of sf studies itself, noting its exclusionary tendencies, as well as its possibilities and proclivities for liberation. In these ways, many of the presenters looked at the way that sf provides a means for speculating and imagining about our collective future, opening up radical new possibilities over and against the narrowly humanist and heteronormative fetters that shackle the imagination. This important work of ruthless critique opens up new perspectives and alter-futures that empower our present and assess our failings. As our keynote speakers, Ryka Aoki and Rivers Solomon attested, these interventions are vital especially at a time when so many of our seemingly ready-made futures have been revealed as not only bankrupt, but truly inimical.
Indeed, while a powerful critical lens for our scholarly work, over and over again we were reminded that this theme continuously slips out of the speculative register and functions more importantly as a non-speculative statement of fact: despite our current administration’s efforts, trans people will be in the future, just as they were in the past, and are in the present. This is not to dismiss the increasing precarity and danger their lives are in, but instead to continue to insist on their rights for equity and equality, both socially and politically. And in this sense, as far too many obvious statements of fact seem to be these days, the conference theme served as a provocation: a stand against erasure and oppression, against the transphobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny, and ceaseless exploitation that define our system and that make it so physically and materially difficult—yet therefore imperative—to hold this conference here, now. So finally, the SFRA would like to thank everyone who joined us in-person and virtually to share their work on this important conference theme, who continue to push sf studies beyond its limits and towards better, more inclusive and critically-informed horizons, thus culturally and materially attesting to the multiple ways that Trans People Are (In) the Future.
SFRA Review 