Program Schedule

loscon.shotbyabear.com is currently operating in support of Loscon 50.

for: Tad Daley

Scheduled as of 0000-00-00 00:00:00

8799. Taking the Earth's Temperature: The Impact of Climate Change
Moderator: Melora Larson

Putting specialized cameras and other sensors in Earth orbit allow us to keep an eye on the health of plants and cities around the globe. There are several currently orbiting missions (ECOSTRESS, EMIT, OCO-3 and more) and some planned follow-on missions that are keeping an eye on the surface temperatures around the globe, the carbon and methane emissions around the globe, and the movement of dust around the globe. What these missions have taught us, and what more we can learn from the planned missions will be discussed.
Tad Daley, Melora Larson, Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, Alfred Nash, Jules Rivera, Jane Shevtsov
 SAT 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm, Los Angeles A

8643. A United Earth: Science Fiction's Long Legacy Portraying the Political Unification of Humanity and the Abolition of War
Solo Panel: Tad Daley

I started devouring science fiction when I was a kid. I dug it because it offered both rollicking good yarns and fascinating speculations about the vistas of human possibility. And I discovered, too, almost in passing, that many science fiction works, both in literature and in film, contained something like a world state, a world government, a politically and constitutionally unified human race. Often this wasn't even what the story was about. It was just a background component of the fictional future universe created by the author. And almost always, it had an inherent plausibility to it. "A couple hundred years in the future? Of course we will have managed to abolish war by then. Of course we'll have a unified human race by then."


So in this presentation, I will examine a world state as a major theme in the long history of science fiction - dating as far back as H.G. Wells and continuing to contemporary authors like Ada Palmer and Becky Chambers. In some cases I will examine something larger still, such as the galactic states seen in landmark works like Star Trek, Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, and the 1951 film The Day The Earth Stood Still. And I will finally consider why, when brilliant science fiction writers can make this development seem so believable, so desirable, and so inevitable, real-world political thinkers like me are dismissed as hopelessly utopian when we assert that we might chart a course toward the political unity of the human race as an actual historical goal.
Tad Daley
 SAT 8:00 pm - 9:15 pm, Los Angeles C

8833. What Does Science Fiction Tell Us About the Geopolitics of Space Settlement?
Moderator: Tad Daley

Once human beings do start making permanent settlements off the surface of Planet Earth -- perhaps on the moon, perhaps on other celestial bodies, perhaps aboard self-sustaining space stations -- the political and social relationships with other human beings could go in any number of directions. Will these settlements have their own laws and constitutions and wholly govern themselves? Will they be subject to the laws and governance of nations back on Earth? If so, which nations? How about the present United Nations? How about a hypothetical future Federal Republic of Earth? What if some of the settlements start engaging in acts of aggression against other settlements, or even against Earth? And what does the long legacy of science fiction tell us about how these eventualities could or should unfold?
Krys Blackwood, Tad Daley, Bino Gopal, Jane Shevtsov, Gerald Nordley
 SUN 2:30 pm - 3:45 pm, La Jolla A