Science Fiction

When the world ends but life persists, what remnants of humanity, hope, and connection remain? In this futuristic sci-fi conversation, authors T. K. Rex, Chuck Tingle, and Susanna Kwan imagine the strange new worlds that follow catastrophe, confronting ecological collapse, improbable survival, and the fragile bonds that hold us together. T. K. Rex’s The Wildcraft Drones charts a near-future shaped by the intertwined evolution of machines, ecosystems, and the people who depend on both. Through stories of AIs, dolphins, and rebel biologists amid environmental decay, Rex explores what intelligence means when nature itself is learning to adapt. Chuck Tingle’s Lucky Day shifts the lens to probability run amok, where a world altered by freak chance teeters between chaos and fate. His signature blend of absurdity and heart becomes a meditation on what it means to rebuild meaning and love in the aftermath of statistical disaster. In Awake in the Floating City, Susanna Kwan renders a tender apocalypse in the drowned remains of a futuristic San Francisco, where an artist and an aging woman forge a powerful connection against the inevitable tide. Moderated by Lara Messersmith-Glavin, author of Ruiner and Spirit Things, this panel dives into the new mythologies born after disaster, where the ruins of the past give rise to glittering, uncanny futures.

Fly off into epic futures where empires tremble, loyalties fracture, and the fate of entire worlds hangs in the balance. In this sweeping space opera panel, Elaine U. Cho, Millie Abecassis, and Tim Melody Pratt explore interstellar adventure not just as spectacle, but as a lens for identity, love, memory, and resistance. In Elaine Cho’s Teo’s Durumi, the cinematic conclusion to a dazzling duology, fugitives and found family collide in a Moon city haunted by history and betrayal. As conspiracies tighten and a solar system teeters on the brink, questions of loyalty, grief, capitalism, and chosen kinship drive this high-octane tale of redemption and sacrifice. Millie Abecassis‘ The Color of Time reimagines myth across planets in a story of escape, transformation, and rebellion. When a princess flees tyranny in a suit fashioned from a legendary serpent’s skin, she finds refuge and revolution in a distant world. Blending political intrigue, queer romance, and cosmic reinvention, the novel asks what it takes to break cycles of power and claim one’s own destiny. In Tim Pratt‘s Starfinder: Era of the Eclipse, galactic mystery unfolds across centuries after a catastrophic event known as the Gap wipes memories from countless minds. As scattered heroes uncover fragments of lost knowledge, rival factions vie to control the truth itself. Adventure, divine secrets, and cosmic conspiracy intertwine in a story that probes memory, history, and who gets to shape the future. Moderated by Julia Vee, whose debut book was a 2023 Golden Poppy Finalist for the Octavia E. Butler award, this conversation journeys beyond starships and interplanetary shootouts to examine the emotional gravity at the heart of the space opera genre. From lunar cities to distant galaxies, these authors remind us that even in the vastness of space, the most powerful forces remain love, loss, and the longing to belong.

What if the future of robotics isn’t apocalypse, but community? In this imaginative and heartfelt panel, three visionary writers explore whimsical, intimate robotic futures where artificial intelligence becomes companion, collaborator, and catalyst for change. Together, they ask: What does it mean to be human in an age of machines? And what might robots teach us about care, belonging, and family? In Automatic Noodle, acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz imagines a cozy near future where a crew of decommissioned robots reopen a ghost kitchen to serve food in a recovering San Francisco. As their small business faces backlash and sabotage, these leftover machines must rely on the community and each other to survive in a world not built for them. J.P. Lacrampe‘s Valet offers a chaotic yet tender adventure about a utility-obsessed robot tasked with helping a struggling human find direction. When corporate intrigue and family tensions erupt, robots and humans alike are forced to reconsider purpose, loyalty, and what makes a family worth saving. In Mall of America, Suzanne Wang tells the story of an AI service program whose only customer becomes a recent immigrant grandfather. Through commerce, poetry, and dance, their unlikely bond explores loneliness, capitalism, immigration, and the blurred boundaries between code and consciousness. Moderated by acclaimed author Nina Schuyler, whose work often bridges personal narrative with urgent social questions, this conversation envisions robotic futures grounded not in domination, but in empathy. Join us for a lively discussion about technology, tenderness, and the possibility that in teaching machines how to serve us, we may learn how to better serve one another.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Audre Lorde), but the tools that have been used for dismantling in the past might just be the ones we use to build the future. For Octavia Butler, science fiction stories were her tools for speculating the devolution of the American empire and simultaneously offered cautionary tales about our propensity for violence and sanguine manifestations that alter our current paradigms and envision Black women at the center of the world. In her cultural biography, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, Black feminist Afrofuturist writer, scholar, and cultural critic Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story within the historical and social contexts that influenced the ideas central to her celebrated writing. Similarly, in Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, researcher Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks us to look beyond the surface of another iconic writer and symbol of Black feminism. Audre Lorde is well-known for her quotable essays, but Gumbs’ groundbreaking research into the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives reveal her deep engagement with the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. In a society that rejected her Black feminist lesbian warrior poet existence, these ecological images provided the literal guides for self-defense, for survival, and for writing the future. Moderated by Isis Asare of Sistah Scifi, the first Black-owned bookstore in the nation dedicated to science fiction, this panel will examine the environments that influenced the two visionary Black feminist writers and the wisdom their works provide for dismantling unjust realities as we create our own futures.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland