If you're not a science fiction fan, just skip this post. If you're the con-going type, you may want to head up to Arisia in Boston this weekend. Arisia offers an eclectic mix of media, literature, gaming, live events, and filk. It's in a great new hotel, the Westin Waterfront, which promises to make it even better this year. Here's my schedule.

50th Anniversary of Stranger in a Strange Land Fri 5:00 PM
2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Heinlein's Hugo-Award-winning work Stranger in a Strange Land. Containing the inspirations for both the water bed and a real life Church of All Worlds, what other influences has the novel had on genre literature and popular culture? Often cited as a commentary on social mores of the time, what message was Heinlein trying to convey? Come discuss the novel, its origins, and influences on other works.

The Future of School Fri 11:00 PM
Science fiction writers have often written about changes that technology might make to education, from the students' "desks" in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game to R.A. Heinlein's observations and critiques of education in his juvenile fiction. What kinds of alternate education exist now? How does emerging technology affect the learners of tomorrow? Will school still get out for summer?

SF and Fantasy as the Modern Myth Sat 5:00 PM
John Campbell, Joseph Campbell, Tolkien, and George Lucas: What is the role of myth in F&SF, and F&SF in myth? Does the ubiquity of SF's tropes in society support the thesis that SF is our modern myth? And, if not, what is?

Imaginary Texts as Critical and Artistic Tools Sat 9:30 PM
Writers as diverse as H.P. Lovecraft, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Jorge Luis Borges have invented imaginary texts for a variety of literary and socially contextualized reasons, from the Necronomicon, to the Sonnets from the Portuguese, to The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim. What does engaging with invented texts allow us to do in the way of critical discourse and social commentary? How do we read and contextualize them differently from more traditional works?

Language and Linguistics in Genre Fiction Sun 12:30 PM
There's more to language than a dictionary and grammar, as these experts will tell you. Whether written, spoken, or signed, languages grow out of specific cultural settings and specific neurologies, and affect those cultures and neurologies. The ways that languages affect minds and societies, and what we can learn from a culture's language, are fertile fields for research, discussion, and cool ideas.

James Cameron Retrospective Sun 2:00 PM
Having consistently brought good genre films to the screen (Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Avatar), what's next? What themes recur in his works? What messages and narratives does he revisit? Do his films celebrate his influences or rip them off?

Metropolis: The Complete Film Sun 5:00 PM
Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece of cinema has finally been restored to completion. How does seeing the full version change our understanding of this landmark SF movie? In what ways does it continue to influence the genre?

SF as the Literature of Things Sun 11:00 PM
The works of Gibson, Doctorow, and Sterling, among others, posit that the future will be built bottom-up rather than top-down; that progress derives not from the implementation of ideas but rather from the accumulation of technological change. Character in these works is a product of our interaction with things, things produced as fast as we can. Is this ultimately just an interesting sub-genre, or might (or should) the field itself be morphing in this direction?