Future TAM Speakers - Sci-fi authors?

[delphi_ote]

So credibility has nothing to do with it. It's more about making you think about the obvious by making it not so obvious and then looking at it from that new angle.

A useful skill for a skeptic. Each new angle we get on what seems obvious gives us a new way to test our assumptions and inch closer to the truth. People are always commenting that we're closed minded and live in a bland world, but a skeptic gets nowhere without truckloads imagination.

 

[antihippy]

I have a recommendation.

Scottish SF author Ken Mcleod. He's got some interesting views on science, his books are good and he doesn't really go in for much in the way of silliness (unless everyone in America is still hung up on Socialism). He has his own blog online. If you google for it then it should be easy to find. Have a read.

There's also Alistair Reynolds. A good SF author AND a scientist. Again do a search for his website.

I would post links but I am too new to this board to link to them myself.

 

[BillC]

Ken Mcleod
Alistair Reynolds

 

[c4ts]

Particularly, I think Neal Stephenson and William Gibson would very much be interested in this type of event and have a lot to contribute. Perhaps Orson Scott Card. With the Ender's Game movie due in 2007, he would certainly be a "get."

Funny you should mention him. I was just reading his book on writing science fiction and fantasy.

 

[exarch]

A useful skill for a skeptic. Each new angle we get on what seems obvious gives us a new way to test our assumptions and inch closer to the truth. People are always commenting that we're closed minded and live in a bland world, but a skeptic gets nowhere without truckloads imagination.

Any good sci-fi story should also make you think. And many have open endings, just to make you wonder what happens after the story is finished.
In my opinion one of the main reasons why Stephen Spielbergh shouldn't make sci-fi movies, unless it's for kids, and the sci-fi part is just a means to make the story a bit more original. (I'm thinking A.I. and Minority Report)

 

[delphi_ote]

Any good sci-fi story should also make you think. And many have open endings, just to make you wonder what happens after the story is finished.
In my opinion one of the main reasons why Stephen Spielbergh shouldn't make sci-fi movies, unless it's for kids, and the sci-fi part is just a means to make the story a bit more original. (I'm thinking A.I. and Minority Report)

I'll second that. It's why Steven Spielberg shouldn't make ANY films for adults. His movies are always simplistic good-guy bad-guy affairs without any depth.

 

[delphi_ote]

So yea. I'm sorry I ever brought up Orson Scott Card. He's the least critical thinker on the planet.

My first exposure to Intelligent Design theory was Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. While disavowing any Creationist agenda per se, Behe pointed out serious problems in the strict Darwinian model of evolution.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-01-08-1.html