Category: From the VP

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 53 no. 4

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga

As we head into the holidays, planning our first Estonia-set international meeting for May 2024, let’s take stock. From two successful European conferences—Oslo, 2022, and Dresden, 2023, both well-attended—and now helping to organize Tartu, 2024, we on the Executive Committee are evolving the 21st-century conference format to reflect “post”-COVID era changes in the world and in academia.

How can our in-person/hybrid meetings improve towards becoming more international as well as inclusive? For 2022 in Norway, we began offering a DEI workshop in addition to the other EC-sponsored activities (such as our annual Early-Career Researchers’ professional-development session, focused on tenure-track position searches or on scholarly publishing). During that Q&A session, Ph.D. students, postdocs, and adjuncts told us they had simply desired a gathering of various non-tenure track researchers who were on the job market, to talk amongst themselves. As a result, we scheduled such a session in the 2023 German conference this past August.

We also heard 2022 Oslo attendees respond that there was much theorizing about colonialism and Indigeneity at that meeting but much fewer actual Indigenous voices. So for the 2023 Dresden meeting, our DEI session featured a Native Aymara scholar from Bolivia, Ruben Darío Chambi, who’s doing doctoral work at LMU Munich. Chambi shared his research on Aymara in his home city, including both Aymara speculative-architectural expression, and settler literary utopias of Bolivia. Graciously, Leo Cornum’s superlative keynote on moon landings referenced this Ph.D. student’s presentation, so it was a (relatively) rare exchange, at an SFRA conference, between ideas of Native intellectuals from different parts of the globe—something we hope for more and more in the future.

For 2024 Estonia, we hope that among other goals/topics, to bring to the spotlight queer/trans speculative arts (the topic of our ECR DEI workshop). We are thrilled to feature among our three keynotes noted poet-writer-translator Bogi Takács, a hybrid scholar-artist whose multiple talents and knowledge sets we expect will enrich conference conversations.

The question of how to best support our LGBTQIA2S+ community members in this dystopian time of draconian governmental laws that threaten these members’ safety and very lives, has arisen many times in EC discussions about where to hold both upcoming conferences (Estonia being one of the first former Soviet countries to pass relatively progressive LGBTQIA2S+ legislation) and future meetings (we’ve had many talks about whether SFRA should be held at all in US states with strongly anti-Critical-Race-Theory and misogynist, in addition to anti-trans, laws).

We hope you can present in Estonia, too, and while attending—if you choose to participate in person—also enjoy the Tartu Literary Festival Prima Vista (https://tartu2024.ee/kirjandusfestival) held at about the same time, themed “Better or Worse Futures.” Many thanks to Jaak Tomberg and his team for putting together our Tartu meeting and coordinating it with the festival for an optimal sf-arts and sf-scholarship experience! They’re working in the spirit of utopia: may we all look forward to better futures indeed.

Don’t forget to submit your own conference abstract or proposal by November 24 (https://sfra.org/sfra-2023-conference)! And provide feedback to the hybrid Dresden meeting in our soon-to-be-emailed survey or directly to me (ida@hawaii.edu) or to Hugh (hugh.oconnell@umb.edu).

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 53 no. 3

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga

Dear fellow Science Fiction Research Association members:

With your hearty responses to our call for papers and our registration deadline—adding up to 300+ participants!—“Disruptive Imaginations” looks to be one of the largest academic meetings of our organization ever [thanks also to our co-sponsor, German fantasy-studies research group GFF (https://fantastikforschung.de/en) , which agreed to share our two conferences’ venues and content].

In addition to the current themes covered by conference paper sessions as well as by the splendid German cultural studies events put together by dedicated TU Dresden organizers Julia Gatermann and Moritz Ingwersen (and team), several Executive Committee-sponsored events on speculative-fiction studies, can be attended by registrants virtually or in person (the following is all in Central European Time):

Wed. 8/16, 9:30-11 a.m. (Panel 7, ABS/E11 Auditorium & online): “Early Career Scholar Event: Diffrakt on Nourishing Imaginative SF/F Thought-Making, Artistry, Community” featuring members of thr German speculative-arts collective “diffrakt: centre for theoretical periphery” (http://diffrakt.space/en) Moritz Gansen and Hannah Wallenfels share how Diffrakt combines inventive pedagogy with sf theory and other intellectual discourses, to create a community-engaged arts practice. Thanks to SFU’s Ali Sperling for helping make the contact with this group and for suggesting their session in the first place!

Wed. 8/16, 16:30-18:00 (p.m.) (ABS/E11 Auditorium & online): “SFRA Business Meeting.”

Thur. 8/17, 15:30-17:00 (p.m.) (Panel 44, ABS/E08 & online): “SFRA: Equity/Diversity/ Inclusion Event: Indigenous Futurism in Latin America—The Case Study of the Aymara in El Alto, Bolivia” featuring Aymara Ph.D. student Ruben Darío Chambi Mayta of LMU Munich’s Indigeneities in the 21st Century Project, who’ll share his research on how a Native Bolivian group has responded to settler colonialism including the state’s “Buen Vivir” (“Living Well”) campaign which extracts culture from Aymara protest history and struggles (https://www.indigen.eu/projects/core-projects/indigeneity-beyond-buen-vivir-the-aymara-case-in-bolivia). Thanks to UFL’s Libby Ginway for serving as discussant!

Fri. 8/18, 09:30-11:00 a.m. (Panel 46, ABS/E11 Auditorium & online): “[SFRA Early Career Scholars Roundtable] SF on the Market: Advice from Early Career Researchers in Pursuing an SF Studies Career” will feature global Ph.D. students and postdocs participating in a vibrant conversation & audience Q&A about concerns, strategies, and issues about being on the academic job market, including Patrick Brock Nora Castle, Reem Mansour, Yilun Fan, Candice Thornton, Andrew Erickson, Rose Moreno, and Uchechi Anomachi. Their expertise collectively spans the breadth of today’s sf/fantasy studies, from Afrofuturism, to film and visual studies, to translation and literary studies, to ethnic and cultural speculative works (and so on!). Thanks to SFRA Secretary Sarah Lohmann for chairing and organizing!

These events evolved from feedback received from participants during last year’s Oslo (2022) EC-sponsored Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion session. We’ll similarly survey those who attend this year’s EC sessions; please provide feedback then to that instrument, or directly to Hugh (hugh.oconnell@umb.edu) or me (ida@hawaii.edu), on what you’d like to see in the future as well as how the sessions went.

Questions about the TU Dresden conference?: Please contact Moritz and Julia at disruptiveimaginations@tu-dresden.de.

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 53, no. 4

From the Vice President

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga

The committee to select our Support a New Scholar Award for 2023-2024, including past winner Guangzhao Lyu, former SFRA President Keren Omry, and myself, was delighted by the quality of submissions received for the Track A (graduate student) category by the November 1, 2022, deadline.

Compared to earlier in the award’s history, we believe that recent efforts we’ve made to internationalize and diversify the Science Fiction Research Association are showing in the remarkable quality, range, and multifaceted nature of the applicants. Immaterial labor in our field is also transforming, as the academic job market grows more competitive and casualized…thus generating new breeds of scholars marked by versatility, heightened inter-disciplinarity, and multiple skill sets ranging from creative (print-literary) writing to translation to digital and interactive arts.

Thus we chose to award not one, but three, new scholars this time around—and the SFRA Executive Committee agreed. While the whole cohort of applicants were extremely exciting, we found the following selectees especially impressive.

First, we were floored by the application of University of Warwick Ph.D. student Nora Castle, whose leadership in the urgent, pandemic-era-salient field of food futures, whose strong publication record as author/co-author and editor/co-editor of several upcoming food-and-environmental-humanities collections, which are evolving this growing discourse forward, and whose recent service to the SFRA, as well as sustained participation in networks of interesting new SFF scholars, showcased Castle as what we’d consider a promising “traditional,” albeit clearly interdisciplinary and visionary, scholar.

Second, representing the increasingly popular, multiple-career pathway–especially among BIPOC, female, non-Western, and/or LGBTQIA+ researchers–we were amazed by the substantial global-SF contributions of University of California, Riverside, Ph.D. student Yilun Fan, who in addition to presenting at many scholarly meetings and producing numerous academic articles and essays on Chinese and comparative (i.e., Latinx and Chinese) speculative fiction, also has published several of her own award-winning creative works and her English-to-Chinese translations of leading SFF scholars’ articles so as to bring Western genre theory (such as Mark Bould’s analysis of Afrofuturism) to global reading audiences.

Finally, as a futuristic signal of where SF studies may be heading in terms of its application to digital-media platforms and Suvinian theory-in-practice, we were moved by the innovative hybrid scholarship-blended-with-creative work of Georgia Institute of Technology Ph.D. student Terra Mae Gasque, whose digital gaming research and design/coding practice explores the intersection of queerness, cognition, and player failure. Gasque has written for SFRA Review and attended our annual meeting, as well as published in SF scholarly collections; her dissertation develops, discusses, and

creates a virtual-reality game aimed at rethinking the very foundations of digital ludic design through embedding queer failure into its ethical inquiries.

The selectees represent the next generation of SF thinkers who embrace–to adapt a phrase from one applicant–SF as a mode. They’ve moved us away from mid-twentieth-century escapist notions of the genre as a U.S. pulp-literary hobby and towards global, multidimensional, active SF expression through practice and production.

Congratulations, Nora, Yilun, and Terra!

Ida Yoshinaga, VP

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 52, no. 4

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga


Aloha, SFRA members,

As we, the networks of Earth, flow towards mid-twenty-first century singularity from a wide spacetime perspective and we enter yet another holiday season from the smaller sense of human affective momentum, I find myself thinking about my own, small-f “futurisms.” Perhaps for the first time ever—very odd for a lifetime learner in science-fiction studies.

The collective that taught me how to think will turn into a “majority-minority” society in another 22 years, so I envision myself in Future Georgia, watching my students from this semester evolve into full persons, enchanting what’s been red and purple into a deep indigo-like blue in another 10.

The collective of my ancestors will spin its centuries of modernist love for artificiality, commerce, and form into a line of pleasingly mannered, sentient and multi-gendered, service workers. They’ll be facing that classical Nipponese dilemma—order and pleasure, or discomforting revolution—in another 80 (crossing into the twenty-second’s threshhold).

And I will labor at my present factory, the STEMmy mothership, tirelessly, relentlessly, until my favorite organ crepes into spotted curtains draped from my elbows and tailbone. I’ll drain my spirit turning human storytelling into one of those new monsters, a growling electrical beast who can generate fables and novels and screenplays autonomously. Like the scientist in the story, I will be shocked when the creature turns on me, on humanity. In another 30.

But mostly, a week before we take out the costumes and for the first time since the virus, join in on the parades…Before our souls homecome to family and community with three rounds of seasonal fantasy make-pretend (ghosts, unpredatory colonial settlers, Klaus)…I’m looking back. As part of my small-f futurism; otherwise, how can one grasp the meaning, the impact, of the flow towards all these someday-presents?

So: Thank you, Jessica Fitzpatrick, for your attention to detail, conscientious and necessary financial work, positive demeanor and imaginative orientation, and for doing what’s probably the second-hardest job (next to Gerry’s) in our Executive Committee.

Thank you, Sean Guynes, whose egoless service to SFRA of course eclipses the minute and diligent secretarial duties you’ve offered up these past years. I see you: your systematic and long-term questions, fixes, quiet administrative contributions.

Mahalo, Keren Omry, who along with Sean and Gerry, ushered me into this association. Global feminist leadership modeled; now the IAFA is fortunate to benefit from your hefty organizational smarts.

Crushingest of kaiju-sized hugs to Gerry Canavan, whose stewardship has honestly felt a little like that of the mythical space captain in that syndicated live-action series I’d watched as a child on Maui in the ‘70s. Intuitive, action-oriented when needs be, thinking always of crew and community. Funny on occasion (albeit not in a Shatneresque way). I know you hate the term praxis, so let’s simply ignore that you’re the embodiment of the best of this. Very glad you’re still on board. I’m here for another few.

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 52, no. 3

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga


Dear colleagues,

Thanks to all participants in our “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging” (DEIB) hybrid session, held on June 29 during our Oslo summer conference. We on the Executive Committee appreciate Simran, Sabiha, Athira, Founder, Aishwarya, Manuel, Ingvill, SC, Larisa, Tânia, Flip, Jaak, Kara, Steve, Candice, Sara, Andrew, Sarah, Priteegandha, Chris, and others who attended, including those who shared these critiques and suggestions:

  • This conference expanded the areas of representation compared to previous ones.
  • The yet-unbalanced dynamic between whiteness/white scholars (often speaking for/about other cultures) and marginalized/regional groups (Indigenous peoples, etc.) remains the “elephant in the room.” Power still tends to flow in 1 direction.
  • Accept conference papers/panels based in part on their DEIB balance issues; rethink paper-acceptance policy or conference-site proposal selection, by being more conscious of such issues.
  • Fund projects with hands-on approaches to sf in regional communities (e.g., those working with child readers in India).
  • Greater visual accessibility for presentations, with prepared subtitles or transcripts; or use the hybrid format to display papers’ words onscreen.
  • The antiracism workshops should not only deal with U.S.-based racism but also European and other forms; we could also focus on methodology such as addressing ethics of researchers’ positionality/intersectionality; or such as ethics of Indigenous literary research in Europe (etc.).
  • Appoint a careers-research officer and an equality/diversity/ inclusion officer. [Note: the EC decided to approach DEIB from many angles among various responsible charges, rather than hold 1 person responsible.]
  • Support networks of emerging scholars from around the world, especially the Global South (being done in Germany and in Canadian studies); also, networks of early-career scholars in Europe and the Americas.
  • Conference format marginalizes online participants. Facilitators should engage all participants including virtual ones. Greater inclusion in webinars may help online attendees feel less lonely, more engaged. [Note: In Europe, there are privacy issues with some online formats; signed author forms, however, might aid in this, and help address the question of why not distribute emails of all presenters?]
  • Address larger question, “What is science fiction?,” from the perspective of different global populations.
  • The sheer power of one keynote (Laura Ponce) unapologetically giving her talk in Spanish was appreciated.
  • Consider providing child care (accessibility). [Note: Other conferences have found this issue tricky.]
  • Give attendees the choice of 10- or 20-min. papers.
  • Volunteer positions include conference committees and awards committees; however, compensation is an issue many.
  • More formal mentorship is desired esp. for BIPOC folk.
  • Better time zones needed for the bulk of the sessions.
  • A roundtable, not of regular SFRA committee members, but of others, to discuss careers research and/or DEIB issues, might be a good idea.
  • A Counter Space and a Keynote panel would be helpful, too.
  • Join in on a global-sf translation publication project which includes fandom-generated works, put together by Larisa Mikhaylova (larmih@gmail.com) towards facilitating diversity in the field.

Keep sharing your ideas,
Ida Yoshinaga, VP

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 52, no. 2

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga


As we head to our first truly hybrid conference, in Oslo and online this summer, it is my pleasure to facilitate a follow-up discussion on diversity and inclusion for the global SF studies community that is the Science Fiction Research Association. Last year’s organizers—in response to critical, helpful feedback on the conference program by our membership—started this conversation on how our association can perform social justice in its institutional practice in addition to appreciating it in textual analyses. We hope to become the sort of organization that puts the “Co” in “CoFuturisms,” in other words.

Such conversations have been transpiring in traditional academic disciplines as well as our modest field of speculative/fantastic studies. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) issues are not exclusive of other, related discussions we have been holding among the SFRA Executive Committee—for instance, how to widen our scope of country representatives so as to include more participants who are not from the Global North. How to conduct better outreach to members of non-traditional class-, gender-, sexuality-, age-, ability-, and other thriving communities of intellectuals, educators, and artists who love our family of genres. How to support our rich breadth of scholars through more extensive networking and mentorship activities as well as improved travel and research funds. And so on.

At SFRA 2022 this summer, there will be a DEIB panel that invites you to share suggestions and proposals for widening the reach of our organization, for making it more safe and encouraging to join for diverse thinkers and creatives in SF studies, and for reflecting conscientiously on the outcomes of such efforts as we move together into the future. I take my lead from observing other academic associations—for instance, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, which in the mid-2010s advanced a free trial 2-year membership for Indigenous scholars as a way to signal a welcoming space for Native, Aboriginal, First Nations, and similar researchers. For many, an SFRA membership might come secondarily after signing up to belong to a key association in one’s discipline (e.g., the MLA or ASA)—or inter-discipline (e.g., in the field of Native studies, NAISA; or of film/media studies, SCMS), as the case may be. For “alt-ac” researchers and adjuncts; for BIPOC and first-generation college-graduate scholars; for LGBTQIA faculty and storytellers working under varied social conditions, how do we facilitate membership in a vibrant, nourishing organization, so as to be competitive with other associations?

Come with your concrete suggestions for practice, policy, evaluation, finance, organizing. Come with your experiences with, and knowledge of, other associations’ (or programs’/ institutions’) imaginative, effective DEIB changes. If you can, reduce it to ONE page—outline, paragraph summary, bulleted list—to share online onscreen and in our Oslo meeting room with fellow attendees. And come with your curiosity for the future.

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 52, no. 1

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Ida Yoshinaga

Greetings, SFRA–Hoping that your health and personal journeys thrive in the Year of the Tiger.
As vice president, I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge about the speculative and fantastical genres, as I meet with you in 2022. I hope to hear about your scholarship and artistry–so do not hesitate to be in touch, especially should I run into you (virtually or in person) at March’s ICFA or our annual summer meeting in Oslo! 

We just held SFRA’s first-of-2022 gathering of country representatives over Zoom, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out how intellectually persistent and curious SFRA members have been (thus far!) during this third year of the global pandemic. Reps from Estonia (which will host a national SFRA conference in the next few years) and South Korea testified as to how the field is growing in their regions, while others from Europe, the U.S., and Latin America spoke of intriguing hybrid and online conferences on posthumanism, AI, materialism, weird narratives, spoiler studies (!), critical futures research, and affect theory. Many have been publishing on a slew of old-reliable SF subgenres (cyberpunk, utopian studies, cinematic/televisual spec fic, area/language studies) in all kinds of fresh, necessary, fascinating collections.

Everyone has been astonishingly generative amidst the spread of corona’s variants! And calls for a hopeful speculative arts, for comforting genre stories that inspire optimism and celebrate utopian communalism, have bloomed…though these have never quite been my jam. But what public-health historians are calling a mass-disabling event are giving at least some people pause to rethink anti-science ideologies. In the U.S. south (where I now reside), we are finally seeing people queue in long car lines for free COVID-19 testing. The hardcore dystopian inside me who has waited a whole life to experience the apocalypse—that films and pop culture of a 1970s childhood had once promised—is now giving way to a fresh variant. She does not bake sourdough, but she does dig into her family recipe file to re-make ancestral meals anew. If the world is ending soon, this is not what the post-apocalyptic playbook had laid out as the first step towards humanity’s inevitable return to its own decisive mistakes.

We will try to freshen SFRA with mindful, engaged conversations about how to diversify our membership ranks, to (further) globalize our conversations and research, and to live lives  vibrant and rich with community-centered imaginative arts. Why not share your ideas with us in this growling wildcat of a year!

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 51, no. 4

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Sonja Fritzsche
Michigan State University

The SFRA Support a New Scholar Grant deadline will have closed when this goes to press on November 1, 2021 for the independent and non-tenure track scholar competition. For those interested in the graduate student competition look for that call in the early fall of 2022.

We are excited to be discussing plans for a hybrid conference in 2022 hosted by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay of the CoFutures initiative at the University of Oslo in Norway. Dates are Monday, June 27, 2022 through Friday, July 1, 2022. This will no doubt be one of our most compelling and international conferences yet!

The SFRA Country Representatives have continued their quarterly meetings and brainstormed ways to support/mentor graduate students and early career scholars in the respective cultural and geographical contexts at the last meeting. The next meeting will be in January 2022. We continue to look for new representatives so please e-mail me if you are interested (fritzsc9@msu.edu) and share your global events on Facebook, Twitter, and the SFRA list. The current rep list is: http://www.sfra.org/Country-Reps. Look for the contributions of the country reps in each SFRA News to learn more about what is going on in various places in the world in the study of SF.

And finally, I bid you farewell with sadness as the outgoing Vice President since I will finish my three year term at the end of December 2021. The past three years have been a joy as I have worked with such dedicated colleagues on the executive committee who have put in so much work on conferences and in other organizational matters during a time of significant upheaval. Some important bylaws changes were recently passed that should help to make the society more inclusive in a variety of ways. We are all responsible for ensuring that happens in the way that it was imagined, so consider putting yourself forward or nominating deserving others for some of the new openings as excellent stewardship opportunities. Congratulations to incoming VP Ida Yoshinaga who will bring much creative energy to the position. You all are in excellent hands! Thank you to the other candidates who ran as well. We hope you will run again in the future and/or help out with other various SFRA functions, as there is always the need for service from people dedicated to the furthering the study of science fiction. Ciao for now!

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 51, no. 3

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Sonja Fritzsche
Michigan State University

Our first virtual conference was a success and attracted a greater number of participants than usual including more international representation!! Many thanks to the virtual conference host Graham Murphy and his institution Seneca College in Toronto, Canada!! Thank you too to Keren Omry who put the program together as well as Gerry Canavan, Sean Guynes, Hugh O’Connell who helped to run the conference and Carma Spence for the program art. The keynote speakers, many high-quality presentations, discussions, and hang-outs prompted by the conference theme—“The Future As/In Inequality”—made it especially memorable. Thank you to everyone who patiently navigated the technology as the conference progressed. Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2020 and the 2021 Awards!! We were finally able to congratulate both years. We especially want to thank the guests and participants who engaged with intentionality and candor in the special events surrounding race, bias, equity, and belonging both in the organization and in the broader academy. The Executive Committee has already engaged in meetings to follow-up on some of the resulting ideas from these sessions. More information will be forthcoming soon.  The next conference in summer 2022 will be hosted by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay of the Blindern Campus at the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway. This will most likely also be a virtual conference given the continued challenges across the globe as a result of the pandemic. It should be a very compelling event, so look for more information as it comes available.

The SFRA Country Representatives have met twice this year and are planning the next virtual meeting in early September. This initiative was organized in an effort to encourage support for the study of science fiction globally and also to help these scholars network with each other. Responsibilities include acting as an informational liaison between the SFRA and the country’s science fiction scholarly community through the promotion of events, new membership outreach, and otherwise helping to connect in the spirit of international communication and collaboration. It is possible for a country to have more than one liaison. All country representatives must be current members of the SFRA. If you would like to contact your representative with ideas or for more information, you can find their name on the website at http://www.sfra.org/Country-Reps. They represent seventeen different countries. Country reps are also contributing to each issue of the SFRA News, so look for that essay in these pages. If you are interested in being a country representative, you can contact me at fritzsc9@msu.edu.

Please also continue to pass on your announcements and any cfps that you would like to have posted on the SFRA Facebook or Twitter pages.

From the Vice President

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 51, no. 2

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the Vice President

Sonja Fritzsche
Michigan State University

The draft program for the annual conference SFRA 21 will be coming soon; its title “The Future of/as Inequality.” The conference host Graham Murphy at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada has been working hard on organizing the virtual conference and is looking forward to greeting you from Friday, June 18 to Monday, June 21, 2021. Keynotes speakers include Madeline Ashby (author of Company Town, How to Future: Leading and Sensemaking in an Age of Hyperchange, and the Machine Dynasty series), Dr. Joy Sanchez-Taylor (Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Color), and Dr. Lars Schmeink (Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction; The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, Cyberpunk and Visual Culture). Special guest Aisha Matthews (The MOSF Journal of Science Fiction and Director of Literary Programming for the Museum of Science Fiction’s annual Escape Velocity Conference) will speak as well. The virtual conference is expanding opportunities to present more globally and SFRA is no exception! We missed you last year, so we are looking forward to great conversations as we catch up on the most recent debates in science fiction studies. Don’t forget to renew your membership. Conference registration is open now and a low virtual rate!

Look soon too for more information on SFRA 2022, which will be hosted by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay at the University of Oslo, and also for the location of SFRA 2023. Consider attending the business meeting at the conference to find out ways you can get more involved in the organization or e-mail me if you have questions or an interest for the future. Make sure to check the SFRA Facebook and Twitter pages and the website for recent cfps, events, and other announcements of interest to those who do research on science fiction. If you have a call or an event that you would like to circulate, please send me an e-mail or feel free to post it yourself. If you are looking for a resource, consider contacting the relevant SFRA Country Representative for help.