Update on Arisia Panels

Now that we are a bit closer to the kick-off for Arisia 2017, I thought I'd firm up the times and locations for panels that I'm participating in.

Arisia is an annual science fiction and fantasy convention, held in Boston in the Westin Hotel drawing bit more than 4,000 fans each every year. This will be my seventh year at the convention and the fifth on panels. So, yeah, I really like the community that turns out for this thing and it's pretty much the high point of each winter.

I like how welcoming and supportive the community at Arisia is. No matter what your interest, there is a track where like-minded individuals can gather, discuss, and participate in that fandom. There are certainly larger conventions that offer that sort of "big tent" ethos, but few that have the cozier, more casual feel of Arisia.

So, anyway, if you are interested in hearing me talk about literature and media from the past year, I'm attending the following panels (Descriptions and panelists taken directly from the Arisia program schedule):

The Alien in the Alien Location: Burroughs

Fri (1/13) 7:00 PM

Description: Many recent sci-fi books have included very alien aliens: creatures whose bodies and thought processes differ dramatically from those of humans - for instance, the Trisolarans in Liu Cixin's *Three Body* trilogy and the Presger in Ann Leckie's *Imperial Radch* trilogy. How do authors convey this feeling of difference? What is gained and lost in the story by having aliens that are so far away from humanity? Panelists: Steve E Popkes (moderator), Dennis McCunney, Sonya Taaffe, Morgan Crooks, Corbin Covault

Preacher: Gone to Texas (and TV)

Location: Burroughs

Sunday (1/15) 5:30 PM

"Preacher" is a marvelously twisted TV show that's not only a hit, but which seems to be toeing the line between faithfulness to the source material and an awareness of the need to shift content when working in a different medium like TV. We'll talk about the wonderful (and thankfully slightly more diverse than in the comics) cast, the wicked sense of humor, our favorite scenes (the motel fight, anyone?), and where we hope the show goes (and doesn't go) in season 2. Panelists: Hildy Silverman (moderator), Antonia Pugliese, Dr. James Prego, Randee Dawn, Morgan Crooks

The Uncomfortable GenreLocation: Burroughs

Monday (1/16) 10:00 AM

The power of SFF to comfort is well explored. Let's take a look at the other side. SFF has an equal power to discomfit and bedevil readers. It can be what the story speculates, such as A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass, how it speculates, such as Mark Danielewski's work, or the characters and situations, such as Helen Oyoyemi or Yoko Ogawa's stories. What speculations keep you up at night? What might we gain from reading the uncomfortable genre? Panelists: Sarah Smith (moderator), Meredith Schwartz, Dennis McCunney, Morgan Crooks

Short Sharp ShocksLocation: Hale

Monday (1/16) 1:00 PM

Simply put, you can do things in short fiction that you can't do anywhere else. Experiments that only hold up for a few thousand words, twists that would fall flat at greater length, intense playfulness with form and function, unrelenting emotional intensity, and more. Let's talk about the best short fiction of today and what makes it great. Panelists: Gillian Daniels (moderator), Keffy R.M. Kehril, Andrea Corbin, Morgan Crooks, MJ Cunniff

I'm very excited for these panels and in the days ahead intend to write down a few thoughts on Ancient Logic for each.

With the title World War Z

Early on in the mostly disappointing zombie epidemic thriller World War Z, UN Investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) hides out in a Newark apartment, trying to convince a family living there to flee with him from the hordes of sprinting, chomping maniacs infesting the city. The phrase he uses, drawing from years of experience in the world's troubled war-zones is "movement is life." Ultimately he's unsuccessful, the family barricades their door behind him and they join the ever-swelling ranks of the undead. As far as a guiding philosophy goes for a pop-action thriller like World War Z, 'movement is life,' isn't bad. And for the first half of the movie or so, it follows its own advice. Similar to other recent zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) the warning signs of what the rest of the movie will bring are subtle and buried until all hell is ready to break through. The television mentions 'martial law,' Philadelphia traffic snarl

I’m going to take a slightly abbreviated approach to this year’s best-of lists and mostly focus on movies. It’s not that I didn’t read or listen to music but for whatever reason I feel uninspired to talk about either topic. C’est la vie! So in no particular order are five movies I greatly enjoyed watching this year. Firstly, Avengers: Endgame. Well, I guess there is some order to this list because literally the first thing I thought of in terms of movies I’ve seen is this movie. It is inevitable! This is the one MCU flick it’s hard for me to remember as simply a super-hero film. Although I found its predecessor a bit more more compulsively watchable, I really enjoyed this film. First of all it’s tone, which veered from despair, heist hijinx, parental reconciliation, to epic mega-brawl was never boring. Even the gorgeous mess which is that final fight has its own interior logic and sports some of the best looking cinematography this side of Black Panther. With Endgame MCU found a

Reading Response to "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

Reader Response to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Morgan Crooks I once heard Flannery O’Connor’s work introduced as a project to describe a world denied God’s grace. This critic of O’Connor’s work meant the Christian idea that a person’s misdeeds, mistakes, and sins could be sponged away by the power of Jesus’ sacrifice at Crucifixion. The setting of her stories often seem to be monstrous distortions of the real world. These are stories where con men steal prosthetic limbs, hired labor abandons mute brides in rest stops, and bizarre, often disastrous advice is imparted. O’Connor herself said of this reputation for writing ‘grotesque’ stories that ‘anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.’ This is both a witty observation and a piece of advice while reading O’Connor’s work. These are stories about pain and lies and ugliness. The brutality that happen

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