This weekend, I’ll be at Capricon, a four-day science fiction convention held annually in the Chicago area since 1981. This is a fan-run convention created entirely by volunteers. Attendance might reach 1000 people — the right size for friendship and fun.

It will be held at the Sheraton Grand Chicago in downtown Chicago, 301 E. North Water Street. You can attend for the whole weekend or come for just a day. More information about registration is here: https://capricon.org/registration/

This year’s theme is The Endurance of Stars: “No matter where they’re from, what media/genre they appear in, or where their journey takes them, protagonists of our favorite stories often look up to the night sky, just as we do ourselves. The stars provide hope, guidance, and a sense of continuity, for all that they wheel and spin around us and constellations slowly creep into new configurations. Stars give an anchor to orbits, provide essential guides to navigators, and bring light and life to the universe.”

If you can come, say hi. I’ll be on some panels:

How to Moderate Panels – Bridgeport, Friday, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Great moderation can make the a difference between a mediocre panel and a fantastic one. Come learn tips from our panel of experienced moderators. Moderator: Janice Gelb; Alessandra Kelley, Jerry Gilio, Sue Burke, and Dina Krause.

When SF Goes Literary – Sheraton II, Friday, 1:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m. If you’ve ever seen a work of SF called “literary,” you might wonder what that even means. Is “literary SF” something easily described? Or is it another of those “I know it when I see it” situations? And what are the implications of defining some SF works in this way? Our panelists discuss the meaning of “literary” in the SF world and explore the impact and influence of so-called “literary SF” works. Moderator: Sue Burke; Gary K Wolfe, James Bacon, and K.V. Peck.

SLF’s Mini Deep Dish Reading – Sheraton I Salon, Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. The Speculative Literature Foundation is a Chicago-based non-profit organization dedicated to promoting literary quality in speculative fiction. In this mini-version of their Deep Dish reading series, you’ll hear from a variety of local authors giving short readings. Moderator, Angeli Primlani; Shaun Duke, Jim Cherry, Sue Burke, and Darius Vinesar.

Self-Editing for Writers – Columbus, Saturday, 4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. For many writers, editing is a daunting task. How are you supposed to sit down and make meaningful changes to your own work when you’ve spent days, weeks, months, or even a year writing it? Our panelists share their tips and tricks for self-editing to demystify the editing process. Moderator: Sue Burke; Clif Flynt, Steven H Silver, K.V. Peck, and JM Guilfoyle.

Random Panel Topic – Sheraton II, Sunday, 10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. What happens to the panel ideas that get rejected? They are reborn here as random panel topics. Our panelists will choose topics (at random, of course) and speak expertly on them for five minutes each. You’ll be rolling on the floor with laughter. Moderator: Sue Burke; Brian Sebby, Ariela Housman, and Will Saddler.

B&N.com will have a pre-order promotion from January 24 to 26 for its Rewards and Premium members. Rewards and Premium Rewards members will get 25% off pre-orders, including ebook and audio, while Premium members get an additional 10%.

During that promotion, you can pre-order the trade paperback edition of Dual Memory, coming April 16, and the hardcover edition of Usurpation, coming October 29. Usurpation is the third book in the Semiosis trilogy.

If you’re not a B&N special member, you can still pre-order those books at your favorite bookseller, although probably not at promotional prices. As I learn of any sales, I’ll announce them here.

I’ll be participating in a free, virtual panel at TBRCon2024, “How to Write Great Endings,” on Monday, January 22, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CST — but don’t worry, if you’re busy, you can watch it later on YouTube. Also on the panel are Lucy Holland, Sebastien de Castell, Mark Lawrence, and Bryan Wilson, plus a moderator from FanFiAddict, David Walters (Lord David). We’re already planning ways to make this as helpful as we can, and we’ll be answering questions from the audience. We’ll also recommend books with great endings.

TBRCon2024 is an all-virtual sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention, January 21 to 28, with 26 livestream panels, 5 live podcasts and 2 RPG sessions on genre, writing craft, publishing, marketing, and more. Watch the livestream on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, or re-watch on YouTube at your convenience. It’s all free! You can find the links, schedule, and more information here.

This is the fourth edition of TBRCon, run by FanFiAddict, and it’s won a Stabby Award for Best Virtual Convention. Panels that I want to watch include: “Why Are Dragons so Beloved in Fantasy?” “Developing Alien Races,” “Psychology of Villains in Fiction,” and “The Rise of Novellas” — but there’s a lot more for beginning and experienced writers, indie writers, gamers, and readers.

I hope there’s something for you. I always need to learn more and want to find more great books to read, although my TBR (To Be Read) pile is already a soaring tower.

(2024 is the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, so the love for dragons might not be a hypothetical question.)

Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays by Julie Nováková
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Highly recommended. What if we met life on another planet, in space, or in another ecology? Twenty-seven top-notch science fiction writers wrote short stories to explore the question, followed by essays by scientists explaining what is and isn’t possible in that particular story, such as “The Habitability of Water Worlds” or “Space Agriculture.”
Like any good anthology, the stories vary widely in style and substance. Not every one was to my taste, although they were all high quality, and you and I might have different opinions about which ones are the best. The essays explain the ideas clearly but don’t talk down to the reader.
If you’re a fan of hard science fiction (by “hard” I mean more or less anchored in reality) or if you’re a science fiction writer looking for a better understanding of what we know about space and life science, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, likely to be one of the best anthologies of 2023. There’s a lot to enjoy: the paperback version runs more than 500 pages.

View all my reviews

I see several competing themes in the 2023 Word of the Year choices.

Authentic is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. “A high-volume lookup most years,” the dictionary says at its website, “authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.”

Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice. Most of all, authentic meaning made by a human, not an AI. We want to keep it real.

Runners-up include rizz, deepfake, coronation, dystopian, EGOT, X, implode, doppelgänger, covenant, indict, elemental, kibbutz, and deadname. What a year it was.

Rizz, meaning “style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner,” has been crowned Word of the Year at Oxford University Press. Online voters chose it from a shortlist.

Oxford justifies the choice this way: “It speaks to how younger generations create spaces — online or in person — where they own and define the language they use. From activism to dating and wider culture, as Gen Z comes to have more impact on society, differences in perspectives and lifestyle play out in language, too.” No condescension here.

The word apparently comes from “charisma.” I don’t know if rizz carries the implication that the person doing the rizzing-up is displaying authentic feelings.

Also short-listed by Oxford are Swiftie, de-influencing, beige flag, heat dome, prompt, parasocial, and situationship.

Hallucinate has been chosen by Dictionary.com in the sense involving artificial intelligence: “to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual.”

“We added this sense of hallucinate to our dictionary just this year,” the dictionary’s executives explain. “If this is the first time you’re learning about it, be prepared to start encountering the word — and what it refers to — with increasing frequency. Like AI itself, the word hallucinate is on an upward trajectory.”

On the shortlist are strike, rizz, wokeism, indicted, and wildfire. The Vibe of the Year (yes, Dictionary.com has one) is eras.

AI is the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year — meaning Artificial Intelligence, of course. Collins describes its choice this way:

“The revolutionary AI-powered language model burst into the public consciousness in late 2022, wowing us with its ability to mimic natural human speech. […] And while people were understandably fascinated, they also started to get a bit anxious. If computers were suddenly experts in that most human of domains, language, what next? Cue an explosion of debate, scrutiny, and prediction.”

Runners-up include some choices that reflect Collins’ British outlook: de-influencing, nepo baby, canon event, ultra-processed, semaglutide, ULEZ, greedflation, debanking, and Bazball.

Polarización(polarization) wins palabra del año honors from the Royal Spanish Academy’s foundation in Spain, Fundéu del Español Urgente, which works with the news agency EFE. “It’s common to find examples in the media worldwide referring to many kinds of polarization: in society, politics, public opinion, social networks, etc.”

It was chosen from a dozen words that were in the news in Spain and had “linguistic interest”: amnistía (amnesty), ecosilencio (greenhushing), euríbor (euro interbank offered rate), FANI (unidentified anomalous phenomenon, formerly called UFO), fediverso (fediverse), fentanilo (fentanyl), guerra (war), humanitario (humanitarian), macroincendio (macrofire), seísmo (earthquake), and ultrafalso (deepfake).

Tourismo (tourism) is palabra del año for the Spanish Royal Academy’s foundation in the Dominican Republic, chosen because tourism kept the country’s economy afloat in 2023. Of linguistic interest, the word tourismo is originally derived from English.

***

If that isn’t enough ephemera for you, Wikipedia’s most popular article in 2023 is ChatGPT — followed by Deaths in 2023, 2023 Cricket World Cup, Indian Premier League, and Oppenheimer (film).

Time’s Person of the Year for 2023 is Taylor Swift. “To discuss her movements felt like discussing politics or the weather — a language spoken so widely it needed no context. She became the main character of the world,” the Time article says.

Finally, for this year, 2024, Pantone’s Color of the Year is Peach Fuzz: “PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It’s a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.”

The right color can do so much, and 2024 will need all the help it can get.