Welcome to the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time schedule for OryCon 44! Seriously - we’re still hard at work on the schedule, but we want to give you an idea of what wonders await you in just a few more weeks. Please check back frequently for changes and additions, and see you in October!
Teaching at the Intersection of Science Fiction and Radio Astronomy This presentation will recap my experience teaching an undergraduate honors seminar about the intersection of science fiction and radio astronomy in books and films. This presentation will also invite discussion and ideas about expanding curricular opportunities on this exciting topic.
Ancient Bird Lizards WTF were the Capthraw? An elaborate work of my personal imagination; noodling over what if there were other technological civilizations that had popped up over the millions of years of this planet's history? This is a thought experiment which assesses modern science's ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilizations, millions of years ago. This will be a presentation regarding my own thoughts on this concept, as the basis of a potential future story.
Cultures of the imagination Participants will begin to design an integrated world, alien and its way of life. They will construct a world and its ecology, an intelligent native life form and its culture, basing each step on the previous one and utilizing the principles of science as a guide to imagination. They will finish this design at the Saturday session and conclude on Sunday in a live action roleplay of the meeting of two alien cultures.
Friday October 18, 2024 3:00pm - 4:50pm PDT
Mt Hood
Alien Development – PART 1 of 3 Participants will begin to design an integrated world, alien and its way of life. They will construct a world and its ecology, an intelligent native life form and its culture, basing each step on the previous one and utilizing the principles of science as a guide to imagination. They will finish this design at the Saturday session and conclude on Sunday in a live action roleplay of the meeting of two alien cultures.
A Cold War Science Fiction Case Study in Comprehensive Design “Zylerium Blindness” is a short story written during the Cold War about how nuclear explosions created an element, Zylerium, causing global congenital blindness. Authored by Thomas B. Sheridan and John E. Arnold, pioneers in “design thinking” and “human engineering,” this case study for students demonstrates the methods and challenges of “comprehensive design.” Humanity must deal with groupthink and social conformity, which inhibit personal integrity, responsibility, and imagination and thus impair creative problem solving.
Where Are We in2024? Metalaw developed about 60 years ago as a proposed legal system that would serve to mediate contacts between any and all intelligent species, whether on Earth or elsewhere in the universe. This talk with discuss the current status of Metalaw, including Haley’s Rule, within the social sciences, speculative fiction and, increasingly, SETI.
What would the operation of beam-driven interstellar propulsion systems look like to observers on other stars? If it's coming right at you, you might see the beam, as in The Mote in Gods Eye, but if we assume many starships departing in random directions, the originating star system might look like it were surrounded by a faint halo, about a light year in radius. Why, and how to look for it will be explained.
Compatibility between space systems of different countries and different contractors seems like a no-brainer of emergency planning, but Boeing astronauts can't go back in SpaceX capsules, let alone Russian, Chinese, or whatever future Indian, ESA, and others might use. We do have an international docking adaptor, but that's only a first step. Can we evolve international standards to make this better and safer?
Greg Barr, Wolf Read, and G. David Nordley In 1993 an international team, headed by Martyn Fogg and Greg Barr, embarked upon a three-year project that produced a wondrously rich and exotic extraterrestrial world, Epona. Larry Niven remarked "... I've never seen a playground this size!" Three of the participants will review this CONTACT project and some of its spin-offs.
Building a Carrying Capacity Model for the Solar Ecosystem and Examining a Technique to Encapsulate an Asteroid to Build Almost Anything in Space Imagining big, how large a population could the Solar System support? There are models, as Greg Barr will explain. One way to build a world-ship might be to encapsulate an appropriate asteroid with all the resources, and reaction mass, to sustain an interstellar journey, or settle the outer reaches of the solar system. We'll explore Dr. Bruce Damer's Secure Handling by Encapsulation of a Planetesimal (SHEP) concept.
What interplanetary and interstellar mechanisms exist that could transport microbial or other lifeforms across our Solar System or between systems, and what are the limits to survivability for organisms hitching a ride from one planetary body to another? With recent identification of interstellar objects observed passing through our system, speculations about cross-fertilization between Earth and Mars, and the prospects for ancient Earth life biosignatures to be found on the Moon, it is fruitful to take a hard look at the destructive and protective factors that such space-going organisms and their traces will face. What can we really expect to find, and how do we rigorously investigate these intriguing possibilities?
Alien Development – PART 2 of 3 Participants will begin to design an integrated world, alien and its way of life. They will construct a world and its ecology, an intelligent native life form and its culture, basing each step on the previous one and utilizing the principles of science as a guide to imagination. They will finish this design at the Saturday session and conclude on Sunday in a live action roleplay of the meeting of the two alien cultures.
Alien Development – PART 3 of 3 Participants will begin to design an integrated world, alien and its way of life. They will construct a world and its ecology, an intelligent native life form and its culture, basing each step on the previous one and utilizing the principles of science as a guide to imagination. They will finish this design at the Saturday session and conclude on Sunday in a live action roleplay of the meeting of the two alien cultures.