DAY | START | END | LOCATION | TITLE | DESCRIPTION | PANELISTS | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Saturday | 2:30am | Kensington | Aoharu x Machinegun | Hotaru Tachibana is the righteous student council president. He has a poor impression of his new neighbor, Matsuoka Masamune. | Film | ||
Saturday | 7:30am | Kensington | Knight’s & Magic | A genius programmer and hardcore robot otaku is reborn into a world of knights and magic, where huge robots called Silhouette Knights roar across the land! Now reborn as Ernesti Echevalier, he uses his vast knowledge of machines and programming talents to begin to make his ultimate robot. | Film | ||
Saturday | 8:00 AM | 9:00 AM | Atrium | The Third annual Frosty Fun Run/Walk/Crawl/Roll/Gasp/Flail | One mile of chilly awesomeness! (And, probably, frozen goose poop.) Run, walk, crawl, or roll–it doesn’t matter how you make it around the (slightly more than) one mile mostly-sidewalk course, you’ll still get a cool badge ribbon! (Sign up at OPs) | Diana Rowland | |
Saturday | 9:00 AM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | Fallout: The Lost Vault | You’ve been kidnapped and left for dead in some weird underground facility. With danger around every corner can you and your friends make it out alive? Or will you be just another victim of The Lost Vault | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 9:00 AM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | Canis Mysterium | Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)- You have been chosen by the prestigious Miskatonic University to go and assess someone who has apparently gone mad thinking that he was a dog, and while in his crazed state, may have killed someone. | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 9:00 AM | 1:00 PM | The Chessboard | Dreamchaser | If you could live out any story, any moment—what would you experience? Lead a Rebellion • Befriend a Dragon • Become a New York Times Best Seller • Race to the Stars • Find Dad’s Pants…Let Dreamchaser adapt to you! What are you destined to achieve? Join in on a collaborative story game experience where every player has a say on who and what our story involves. Chase your dreams—your goals! | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Charlevoix | Pacifism in Speculative Fiction | Representations of pacifism in speculative fiction is often unsympathetic and/or unrealistic. It seems that the only way a character can be a pacifist and a hero is if they’re not a pacifist at all. Shephard Book’s pacifism in Firefly dissolves into kneecapping bad guys as soon as the plot requires it, and Charles Xavier gets called a pacifist when he funds and trains a private army. Who are our favorite real pacifists in speculative fiction, and how can speculative fiction contend with the conflict of being a pacifist in a violent world without running for the easy conclusion that pacifism is naive, selfish, and unsustainable? | David John Baker, Marissa Lingen, Matthew Bin, Max Gladstone, Annalee Flower Horne | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Club Lounge | Kaffeeklatsch with Guest of Honor Kate Elliott | Join our Guest of Honor for coffee, tea, and conversation. Limited to 10 participants. Sign up at OPS. | Kate Elliott | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | ConSuite | Geek Parent Meet Up | Meet other parents in the fandom community. Talk about the triumphs and hazards of geeky parenting. We’ll provide the caffeine. | ||
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Isle Royale | Reading: Lucy A. Snyder, Ken Schrader, Sunny Moraine | Ken Schrader, Lucy A. Snyder, Sunny Moraine | ||
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Manitou | Immigration and Refuge in Science Fiction | Travel stories are classics in any genre, but in science fiction stories of travelling to a new home are often about colonization, or about intrepid explorers amongst the (primitive) aliens. Let’s talk about the science fiction stories that better reflect the experiences of immigrants and refugees in the real world. | Alexandra Manglis, Amal El-Mohtar, David Anthony Durham, John Chu | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | Saugatuck | Parenting in the 21st Century | Parenting has always been a challenge, but is it more challenging these days? Are “the kids” no longer sufficiently respectful of one’s lawn? And what is it with the YouTubes and the Twitters? Are these new problems, or just the same problems other generations of parents faced, dressed in new clothes? | James Breakwell, Mur Lafferty, Sarah Hans, David Klecha | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | St. Clair | So This Is Your First ConFusion | Welcome to your first ConFusion! To keep your actual confusion to a minimum, let us tell you what we’re about and what we have to offer you this weekend! | Amy Sexsmith, Anna Carey, Cylithria Dubois | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 10:50 AM | KidFusion | Wake Up Yoga | Learn some yoga poses to get your day started | KidFusion Staff | |
Saturday | 10:00 AM | TeenFusion | Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast | Come and discuss Alice in Wonderland and the crazy physics that exist in it as we construct our own time piece cookies. Discussion will include Lewis Carroll as a mathematician and how he works it into his stories | |||
Saturday | 10:00 AM | 11:00 AM | The Chessboard | Wizard | Players compete over multiple rounds based on the number of players, and whoever ends with the highest score wins. In each round, players are dealt a hand of cards — one card in the first round, two cards in the second, three in the third, etc. — then trump is determined by flipping the top card of the undealt deck; if a suit is revealed, that suit is trump, while if a Wizard or Jester (or no card in the final round) is revealed, then the round has no trump. Players then state how many tricks they expect to win in the round. | Ska | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Atrium | Solar Observations | Why didn’t the sun go back to college? It has 27 million degrees! Come see the sun , talk about the eclipse and meet other heliophiles | Bob Trembley | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Big Top | Black Gate Interview Jim Butcher | Brandon Crilly of Black Gate Magazine sits down for a 30 minute interview with SubPress Guest Jim Butcher. | Brandon Crilly, Jim Butcher | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Charlevoix | Using Real Scientific History To Enhance Fantasy World-Building | Secondary-world fantasies often draw on an ahistoric view of the past, intermingling technological, scientific, and social advancements that span thousands of years in the real world. The effect is quasi-medieval societies that are in some ways anachronistically modern, but in many ways far less advanced than the real-world cultures on which they’re based. Let’s talk about the real science and technology of the world’s post-classical eras and how we can use the real history of science and technology to build deeper and more interesting worlds. | A. T. Greenblatt, Dyrk Ashton, Elizabeth Shack, Jon Skovron, Lucy A. Snyder, Kate Elliott | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Club Lounge | Kaffeeklatsch with Science GOH Annalee Newitz | Join our Pro Guest of Honor for coffee, tea, and conversation. Limited to 10 participants. Sign up at OPS. | Annalee Newitz | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Isle Royale | Reading: Benjamin C. Kinney, Angus Watson, Marie Bilodeau | Angus Watson, Benjamin C. Kinney, Marie Bilodeau | ||
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Leelanaw | That’s Not My Star Wars! | At one point, it appeared most of the world agreed on the canon-destroying awfulness of the Star Wars prequel films, and their unholy avatar Jar Jar Binks. But a new generation of Star Wars is taking hold, and not everyone is pleased with the direction that’s going, either. Where do we draw our mental lines, and why? | James Breakwell, Ferrett Steinmetz, Jason Sanford, Mur Lafferty, Sarah Hans, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Manitou | Clip Studio for Web Comics | Lar deSousa of “The Least I Could Do” gives a guided touor of using this software to create webcomics. | Lar deSouza | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Marquette | Workshop: Celtic Guitar | Phil Cooper, Susan Urban | ||
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Petoskey | Last Exit Before The Worst Timeline | Alternate histories that explore what the world would look like if a particular horror had been averted can be a way of resisting the narrative that slavery, genocide, colonialism, sexism, and other social evils are inevitable steps on the road to human progress. What are our favorite alternate histories (and alternate presents) that look at better worlds, and how can we use the format to inspire people to hope–and action–in uncertain times? | BluRaven C. Houvener, David D. Levine, Jackie (Literary Escapism), Michael W Lucas, Mark Oshiro | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | Saugatuck | Animal Sidekicks In Science Fiction and Fantasy | From Cinderella’s birds to Poe Dameron’s faithful droid, adorable animal(ish) sidekicks have a long history in genre fiction. From a writing perspective, what do cute animals bring to a story? How do they help us reveal character and worldbuilding? How do we balance their utility in generating empathy and lightening the tone against their potential to annoy the living heck out of the audience? | Addie J. King, Cassandra Morgan, Izzy Wasserstein, Jon David, Nisi Shawl | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 12:50 PM | St. Clair | Iron Costuming (2 Hours) | Join us for a fun-filled session of build your own costume! This year’s theme will be the Borg and other cybernetic organisms, but you’re free to use the materials we have on hand to make whatever you want! Enter your new costume in the Masquerade and we’ll have a special prize for the best one! | Wyn Jones | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 11:50 AM | KidFusion | Let’s Make Some Noise | Make your own percussion instrument | Joe Silas | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | TeenFusion | Lunch Break | ||||
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 12:00 PM | The Chessboard | Codenames | Two teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin. | Ska | |
Saturday | 11:00 AM | 3:00 PM | The Chessboard | Kingdom Death: Monster | Set in a world devoid of most resources, you control a settlement at the dawn of its existence. Fight monsters, craft equipment, and develop your settlement to ensure the survival of your people. | Jason S | |
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Atrium | Iron Artist | Drawing/sculpture isn’t usually a performance art, but Iron Artists show how they work while creating a piece of art (or craft) on the assigned topic. | Crystal Mielcarek, John Benson, Lar deSouza , Matt Feazell, Melanie Brooks, Michael Kucharski, Lana Krolikowski, PocketDemon, Rachel Quinlan | |
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Big Top | Guest of Honor Interview: Nisi Shawl | Join us for an interview of Guest of Honor Nisi Shawl, conducted by Jim Hines. | Jim C. Hines, Nisi Shawl | |
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Interlochen | Game Boards in Stories | From Through the Looking Glass to The Hunger Games to Karuna Riazi’s The Gauntlet, genre fiction has long been intrigued with the concept of game boards as settings for stories. Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass contains multiple references to how the characters would move in in chess–the game that forms the world’s setting. What are our favorite stories centered around games? What real world board games (aside from RPGs) would make for interesting story settings? | Andrea J, Amy Sundberg, Andrea Phillips, K. Lynne O’Connor, Monica Valentinelli | |
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Isle Royale | The Ancient 1980s | When most people think historical fiction, they think of the 16th through 19th centuries. But genre fiction is increasingly taking on the recent past. What’s the draw (beyond nostalgia) of the 1980s and 90s as fictional settings? What unique research challenges do they present, and how do writers balance providing familiarity for those who remember the era with background information for those who need context? What are our favorite modern works set in the recent past? | Alexandra Manglis, David Anthony Durham, Michael W Lucas, Stephanie Morris | |
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Keweenaw | Reading: Merrie Haskell, Michael R. Underwood, Mishell Baker | Merrie Haskell, Michael R. Underwood, Mishell Baker | ||
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | Leelanaw | Writing about Forensics | Whether you’re writing a thrilling crime drama or a cozy whodunit , here are some useful tips for including forensics in your story. | Adam Shannon, Addie J. King, Bryon Quertermous, Jen Haeger | |
Saturday | 12:00 PM | KidFusion | AFTERNOON BREAK | KidFusion is closed for one hour in the afternoon. | |||
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 12:50 PM | TeenFusion | Makeup Your Mind | We are all mad here and our makeup should match. Come learn to do mad hatter or queen of hearts makeup with those that are equally as mad as you are | ||
Saturday | 12:00 PM | 1:45 PM | The Chessboard | Fate of the Elder Gods, | In Fate of the Elder Gods, players take on the ever-maddening role of cults trying to summon ancient evil and herald the fall of mankind! Each cult is in competition to be first to summon their god, but they all must also repel intrepid investigators working to seal off the gate to beyond with Elder signs. Gather arcane artifacts, cast powerful spells, embrace the Dark Gift of your Elder God, and be first to hasten doom…before it’s too late! | Jim S | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Big Top | Guest of Honor Interview: Kate Elliott | Join us for an interview of Guest of Honor Kate Elliott, conducted by John Scalzi. | Kate Elliott, John Scalzi | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Charlevoix | Reading: Jim C. Hines, John Chu, Annalee Flower Horne | Annalee Flower Horne, Jim C. Hines, John Chu | ||
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Interlochen | The Do’s and Don’ts of Fandom | Supporting one another is always important, especially in small communities. What is the best way to support others? How do we keep ourselves from hurting other fandoms? | Dessa Lux, Natalie Luhrs, Sarah Hans, Sunny Moraine, Vanessa Ricci-Thode | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Isle Royale | Reading: Stacey Filak, Andrea A. Phillips, Michael J. DeLuca | Andrea Phillips, Michael J. DeLuca, Stacey Filak | ||
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Manitou | Space Software | An interactive demo of Kerbal Space program , Universe Sandbox and NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System. | Bob Trembley, Connie Trembley | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Marquette | Comedy in Music | Discussion of the folks who’ve made us listen and laugh over the years, from Spike Jones and Tom Lehrer to Weird Al and Garfunkel and Oates. | Mark Bernstein, Tom Smith, Wyn Jones, Luke Ski | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Petoskey | It Was All A Dream…But Should It Have Been? | “You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream!” says Alice at the end of Through The Looking Glass. Modern authors are often warned to avoid dream sequences, because it’s difficult to get readers to invest in a story that can be wrapped up with a Deus Ex Alarm Clock. But the concept endures from Through the Looking Glass to Spirited Away and Inception. When is a dreamland the right choice for a setting, and how do successful dreamlands in fiction maintain stakes and tension? | Liz Derrington, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka, Shweta Adhyam, Teresa Nielsen Hayden | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | Saugatuck | SF and Philosophy: Exploring the Connections | SF has been called the literature of ideas, and the ideas explored in SF have become increasingly philosophical throughout the history of the genre. What are the most illuminating thought experiments in recent and classic SF? Which philosophical questions do they raise? And how are philosophers in today’s universities employing SF in their teaching and research? | Benjamin C. Kinney, Andrea J, Dyrk Ashton, Ken Schrader, Nathan Rockwood | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 1:50 PM | KidFusion | It’s Tiny Hat Time | Make a tiny hat to wear at the tea party! | Selina Firecat | |
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 2:50 PM | TeenFusion | Mad Hatters Hat Shop | It’s always tea time except for when you have to make hats. Join us for an hour of madness as we decorate our own hats in honor of the Mad Hatter | ||
Saturday | 1:00 PM | 2:00 PM | The Chessboard | Sentinels of the Multiverse | A mad scientist holds the world hostage with his terrifying inventions. An alien warlord from a far away galaxy brings his limitless army of bizarre minions to conquer the planet. A giant rampaging robot cuts a swath of destruction across the coast, destroying major population centers. And who will stand in their way? A team of heroes, all with impressive powers and abilities stand between the world and the forces of evil. Will you help them? Answer the call to protect the multiverse! | Cheryl O | |
Saturday | 1:00pm | Kensington | My Hero Academia | Izuku Midoriya desperately wants to be a hero, but he is one of the few in his generation born without a Quirk. Will meeting the number one hero, All Might, change his fate? | Film | ||
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Big Top | Any Sufficiently Detailed Magic System is Indistinguishable From Science | The influence of tabletop roleplaying games is widely felt in fantasy. Many stories make a ‘science’ out of their magic that reflects the carefully-balanced rules of a tabletop sourcebook. What are the trade-offs between creating magic systems with strict rules and leaving magic as a mysterious and unknown force? How do we balance the sense of wonder and magic against the desire to give readers a stable hook from which to suspend their disbelief? What makes a well-defined magic system work in a story, and when are we showing the reader too much of the machinery behind the curtain? | Brandon Crilly, Charlie Jane Anders, David Anthony Durham, Kate Elliott, Shweta Adhyam, Jim Butcher | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Charlevoix | Reading: James Breakwell | James Breakwell | ||
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Leelanaw | Let’s Talk: Automation | A lighthearted talk on a hard science topics with smart and funny people. Let’s Talk: Automation will chuckle through the collapse of society as we know it. With 30% of the workforce at risk of being replaced by an algorithm , what will Humans still be good at? | Curtis Potterveld, David John Baker, Daniel Dugan, Jane Ugrinovskiy | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Manitou | The Future of the Portal Fantasy | Many classic children’s books, including Through The Looking Glass, are portal fantasy stories. What do new portal fantasies need to bring to the table to stand out in a crowded field? How do reinterpretations like Every Heart A Doorway fit into the portal fantasy landscape? Do you pretty much have to be Neil Gaiman to get away with playing this trope straight, or is there room for new voices? And where do we want to see portal fantasies take us next? | Lee Harris, Mari Ness, Navah Wolfe, Sarah E. Gibbons | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Marquette | Concert: February Sky | Singers/instrumentalists Susan Urban and Phil Cooper bring us songs both traditional and original. | Phil Cooper, Susan Urban | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Petoskey | Fanfiction as Subversion and Commentary | Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass were spawning parodies and third-party sequels practically as soon as they were published, including multiple political commentaries. People write fanfiction for a lot of reasons, but fanfic as a format is particularly well-suited to commentary on popular works. What can we learn from transformative works like fanfic about the state of genre fiction, and how can we adapt techniques found in fanfic to challenge ourselves to make the most interesting choices in our original work? | Christine Knight, Stephanie Morris, Liz Derrington, Dessa Lux, Sunny Moraine | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | Saugatuck | Limitations of Space | There are still parts of the Universe that will be forever inaccessible to us , no matter the technology. Let’s talk about what we will never find there! | Bob Trembley, Connie Trembley, Karen Burnham, Annalee Newitz | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:50 PM | KidFusion | It’s a Mad Mad Tea Party | Join us for a fruit carving demonstration by our special guest, Jesse, as he prepares a masterpiece for our tea party. There may even be some other special guests in attendence! | Jesse Healy/KidFusion Staff | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 2:45 PM | The Chessboard | Frogriders, | Deep in the forests of the North lives an enchanting elf tribe called the Frogriders. Each spring, they hold a tournament in which their four major squads perform a mock battle. Whoever best manages to capture valuable units and make clever use of their special abilities will take the victory! | Jim S | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 3:00 PM | The Chessboard | Timeline | Timeline: is a card game played using cards. Each card depicts an invention or event on both sides, with the year in which that invention was created on only one side. Players take turns placing a card from their hand in a row on the table. After placing the card, the player reveals the date on it. If the card was placed correctly with the date in chronological order with all other cards on the table, the card stays in place; otherwise the card is removed from play and the player takes another card from the deck. | William K | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 6:00 PM | The Chessboard | Bootlegging Gone Bad | Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)- The Caldwell boys set up a good operation in the northern woods of Massachusetts. Your boss, Doctor Bobbin, the head of the local organized bootlegging operation thinks it’s time you pay them a visit and integrate their otherworldly brew into his supply chain. What could go wrong?” | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 6:00 PM | The Chessboard | This One Will Kill You! | Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)- A madman has escaped from Arkham Asylum! It is up to you to stop him, by any means necessary! | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 2:00 PM | 6:00 PM | The Chessboard | The Bear Essentials | Netherstorm A bear has been causing all sorts of havoc near your local village. Time for some heroes to come forth and deal with this problem! | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Charlevoix | Improv Flash Fiction | Fast paced and quick witted , authors create stories in real time , “”round robin”” style , using prompts from the audience. | Jackie (Literary Escapism), Ken Schrader, Lee Harris, Sarah Gailey, Suzanne Church | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Interlochen | Reflecting on Reboots and Reinterpretations | Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass have been adapted countless times–sometimes in ways that are faithful to the source material, and sometimes with new interpretations (such as Tad Williams’s Otherland and Micheline Hess’s Malice in Ovenland). How do writers balance familiarity with novelty when rebooting or adapting classic stories? What makes a good retelling work for readers, and what are our favorite examples? | Dominik Parisien, Jessi Cole Jackson, Julia Rios, Sarah E. Gibbons | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Isle Royale | Mad Scientist Lab | Build basic circuits for flashing lights and sounds. A hands on approach. | Reid Minnich | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Keweenaw | Reading: Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar | Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone | ||
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Manitou | SubPress Chat | Come join production manager Geralyn Lance and learn more about what makes Michigan-based Subterranean Press so special to the SFF field and to Confusion. Ever want to know what goes into producing a limited edition or selecting art for a dust jacket? Geralyn’s got you covered. Want to know about this year’s special guests sponsored by SubPress at Confusion? Ditto. She’ll also be previewing what books SubPress has coming in 2017 and giving away a few special books to lucky audience members. Don’t miss this chance to get the inside scoop on a unique publisher. | Geralyn Lance | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Marquette | Workshop: Actually, You Can Sing | Learn and practice the simple things singers do. | Mark Bernstein | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Petoskey | Forgiveness and Redemption Narratives In Genre Fiction | Stories of terrible people seeking redemption and making amends can create powerful emotional resonance–but done wrong, they risk excusing inexcusable behavior. Who are our favorite evildoers turned heroes, and what makes their redemption work for readers? How do we built satisfying character arcs that end in forgiveness? And what role do race and gender play in redemption narratives? | Angus Watson, Bryon Quertermous, Marie Bilodeau, Merrie Haskell, Tracy Townsend | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | Saugatuck | Fossils | Learn about Fossils in Michigan and Nationwide. Dive deep into the Late Devonian period , play in the Late Pleistocene period, get silly in the Silurian period, and cogitate in the Carboniferous periods. | Connie Trembley | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | St. Clair | Fan GOH Induction | The Fan Guest of Honour Introduction and Induction is a traditional ConFusion event, wherein any attending Fan GoHs of years past welcome the new Fan GoH to the club. | Nisi Shawl | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 3:50 PM | KidFusion | Crafty Time | Decorate a set of coasters or trivets to take home. Supplies included, depending on materials used, items may need time to dry | Serena Loftis | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | TeenFusion | Teen Iron Artist | An art competition for teens, judged by teens | |||
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 5:00 PM | The Chessboard | Path of Light and Shadow | The Realms lay divided, their former wonder lost and forgotten. The Tyrant Queen has seized the throne, forcing the rightful heirs deep into exile. You are the sons and daughters of the once-great houses: Foxway, Gorga, Mherzeen, and Spyre. Under the tutelage of advisors, you have gathered your followers, your conscripts. The time has come to take back what is yours. | Jim S | |
Saturday | 3:00 PM | 4:00 PM | The Chessboard | Boss Monster | Juggle two competing priorities: the need to lure Heroes at a faster rate than your opponents, and the need to kill those Heroes before they reach your Boss. | Tim S | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Charlevoix | Reading: A. T. Greenblatt, Marissa Lingen, Izzy Wasserstein | A. T. Greenblatt, Izzy Wasserstein, Marissa Lingen | ||
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Interlochen | Examining Whiteness in Speculative Fiction | When speculative fiction is so often addressing the human condition–and what it means to be human–it’s vital that we acknowledge that life on Earth isn’t the same for all of us. Many speculative works portray the experience of being white as if it is a universal human experience, without stopping to examine what whiteness means now or what it will mean in the future. How does (and how should) science fiction address whiteness as a specific, rather than universal, experience? | Mishell Baker, Natalie Luhrs, Pablo Defendini, Stephanie Morris | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Isle Royale | Nasa Spinoffs | Since 1976 , NASA has featured an average of 50 technologies each year in the annual publication. Of these 1000 , what has changed lives daily? What can we expect in the future? | Andrea Phillips, David D. Levine, David John Baker, Karen Burnham | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Keweenaw | Let’s Talk: Biology | A lighthearted talk on a hard science topics with smart and funny people. Let’s Talk: Biology features: Eating bugs , how birds help humans and what you will find in the depths of Lake Erie. | Christine Knight, Heidi Trudell, Daniel Dugan, Dr. Julie Lesnik | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Leelanaw | You Got Magic In My Science Fiction! | We’ve developed a variety of labels for works that mix fantastical elements like dragons or magic into science fiction settings like spaceships and sprawling futuristic cities. Does Star Wars’s use of The Force place it in a different part of the Science Fiction canon than Mass Effect’s use of biotics? From a storytelling and world-building perspective, what separates elements with magical trappings from those with science fictional trappings? Should fantasy vs scientific explanations be a purely aesthetic consideration, or does putting magical elements in science fiction meet a specific storytelling need that handwavy science cannot? | Dan Moren, John Chu, Lucy A. Snyder, Marie Bilodeau, Ryan Van Loan, Charlie Jane Anders | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Manitou | The Science of Beekeeping | In this age of colony collapse disorder , learn about the biology of the honey bee , bee health and the scourge of Varroa destructor , and a recent breakthrough in honey harvesting that has beekeepers buzzing. | Jen Haeger | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Marquette | Bringing the Music Home | Organizing a house concert or music circle. | Maggi Rhode, Susan Moerdyk, Tim Ryan | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Petoskey | Works We Love and What We Wish We Could Change About Them | Many stories we love contain critical plot elements that frustrate us–such as the memory wipes in The Dark is Rising and Doctor Who and the treatment of Susan in the Chronicles of Narnia. How do these stories inspire us to write and edit differently, and bring different kinds of stories to life in our own fiction and media? | Cherie M. Priest, Denise M. Beucler, Kate Elliott, Navah Wolfe, Patrick Nielsen Hayden | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | Saugatuck | Luke Ski Talks “Mighty MagiSwords”! | Comedy Guest Of Honor “the great Luke Ski” has been working the past 2.5 years on the Cartoon Network TV series “Mighty MagiSwords”! At this panel he’ll talk about what it’s like to work on the show at CN, show his storyboard drawings, behind the scenes animatics, talk about recording voices for the show, screen a full episode he wrote and storyboarded, and answer your fan questions. Anyone who shows up in full costume as a “Mighty MagiSwords” character will get a free custom made drawing from Luke Ski! | Luke Ski | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | St. Clair | Autograph Session (4 PM) | Come meet your favorite authors, artists and musicians and have them sign things! (Please limit your signing requests to 3 items per person.) | Amal El-Mohtar, Annalee Flower Horne, Annalee Newitz, Carl Engle-Laird, David D. Levine, Delilah S. Dawson, Diana Rowland, Dominik Parisien, Dyrk Ashton, Ferrett Steinmetz, James Breakwell, James L. Sutter, Jason Sanford, Jason Sizemore, Jim Butcher, Jim C. Hines, Julia Rios, Mark Oshiro, Michael J. DeLuca, Michael R. Underwood, Monica Valentinelli, Mur Lafferty, Nisi Shawl, Patrick S. Tomlinson, Sarah Gailey, Scott H. Andrews, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka, Stacey Filak, Suzanne Church, Tracy Townsend | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 4:50 PM | KidFusion | Game On! | Join our friend, Meri as she brings a selection of games kid friendly games including Dixit and Hey That’s My Fish. | Meri Orosz | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 5:50 PM | TeenFusion | Open Room | |||
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 5:00 PM | The Chessboard | Mystic Vale | Players take on the role of Druidic clans trying to cleanse the curse upon the land. Each turn, you play cards into your field to gain powerful advancements and useful vale cards. Use your power wisely, or decay will end your turn prematurely. Score the most victory points to win the game! | Tim S | |
Saturday | 4:00 PM | 7:00 PM | The Chessboard | Ora et labora | In Ora et Labora, each player is head of a monastery in the Medieval era who acquires land and constructs buildings – little enterprises that will gain resources and profit. The goal is to build a working infrastructure and manufacture prestigious items – such as books, ceramics, ornaments, and relics – to gain the most victory points at the end of the game. | Mike D | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Big Top | Concert: Tom Smith | Tom Smith | ||
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Charlevoix | Is That An Anti-Hero Just a Jerk? | Anti-heroes have an enduring place in science fiction and fantasy. They can provide explorations of the nature of heroism or hilarious counterpoints in comedic work. But some alleged anti-heroes are really just jerks. At what point does a character’s alleged heroism become an excuse for terrible behavior like misogyny and murder , rather than a complex reflection on the flawed nature of humanity? And why are anti-heroes overwhelmingly white guys? Is there space for people of all genders and races to be seen as heroic in spite of deep flaws? | Carl Engle-Laird, James L. Sutter, Kelsi Morris, Patrick S. Tomlinson | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Interlochen | Social Media for the Creative Community | So you’re an artist with 25,000 FB friends and a killer Deviant Art gallery. Is that enough? What works and what doesn’t in getting fans engaged in your creative work? What new approaches look good to you? | James Breakwell, Rachel Quinlan, Matt Feazell | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Isle Royale | Star Wars: The Last Jedi as a Cast Study in Storytelling | Our panel of writers discusses the structure, pacing, characters, themes, and world-building in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Also the swords, floaty rocks, and tiny fluffbeasts. | Amal El-Mohtar, Annalee Flower Horne, Annalee Newitz, Delilah S. Dawson, Julia Rios, Nisi Shawl | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Keweenaw | Disney Rules Genre Film | With the acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television studios, Disney has brought the X-Men, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four into the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s orbit. Between that, Pixar, and Lucasfilm, is Disney the only game in town when it comes to genre blockbusters? Can Warner Brothers, Sony, and the rest still compete? | Michael R. Underwood, Mari Ness, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka, Stacey Filak | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Leelanaw | Reading: Dyrk Ashton, Tracy Townsend, Sarah Hans | Dyrk Ashton, Sarah Hans, Tracy Townsend | ||
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Manitou | Michael Kucharski’s Shakespeare Tarot | Detroit artist Michael Kucharski gives a graphic presentation on the creative process behind his new Tarot deck featuring Shakespeare characters. | Michael Kucharski | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | Petoskey | Making Money in Fandom: Why and Why Not | We all like to express our love of fandom in different ways but not all of us like to get paid for it. Find out why our panelists do what they do for a profit or not. | Dessa Lux, Jason Sanford, Sunny Moraine, Mark Oshiro | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:50 PM | St. Clair | Autograph Session (5 PM) | Come meet your favorite authors, artists and musicians and have them sign things! (Please limit your signing requests to 3 items per person.) | A. T. Greenblatt, Addie J. King, Andrea Phillips, Angus Watson, Benjamin C. Kinney, Brandon Crilly, Charlie Jane Anders, Cherie M. Priest, Dan Moren, David D. Levine, Denise M. Beucler, Dyrk Ashton, Izzy Wasserstein, John Chu, John Scalzi, K. Lynne O’Connor, Kate Elliott, Ken Schrader, Lucy A. Snyder, Marie Bilodeau, Marissa Lingen, Max Gladstone, Mishell Baker, Navah Wolfe, Pablo Defendini, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Ryan Van Loan, Shweta Adhyam, Stephanie Morris, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Merrie Haskell, David Anthony Durham | |
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 7:00 PM | KidFusion | EVENING BREAK | KidFusion is closed for two hours in the evening. | ||
Saturday | 5:00 PM | 5:45 PM | The Chessboard | Karuba | This is a tile-laying race game with players starting with boards that are identical, and one player drawing tiles that they all will use. They race to get their explorers to temples first and earn points. Along the way they can collect additional points by collecting items off the paths they create. | Jim S | |
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Big Top | Robots vs. Fairies Reading | Join us to listen to authors from the Robots vs. Fairies anthology from Saga Press read from their work! | Dominik Parisien, Jim C. Hines, John Scalzi, Max Gladstone, Navah Wolfe, Sarah Gailey, Delilah S. Dawson, Annalee Newitz | |
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Isle Royale | Reading: Mark Oshiro | Past Fan GoH Mark Oshiro reads from some of his own work! | Mark Oshiro | |
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Manitou | Drawing on Real Rituals For Fictional Magic | A presentation on how historical cultures, particularly Hittites, have used “magic” rituals in the real world–and how we might draw on those magic systems as inspiration for fiction. | Dr. Hannah Marcuson | |
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Petoskey | Design Is Easy! (Or So Every Client Says) | Three professional designers come together to discuss all they love about the work, and all the things you never knew went into it, beyond just colors and typefaces. Or maybe they’ll just recall all the times they heard the words in the title of this panel. | Gail Cross, Pablo Defendini, Steve Buchheit | |
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | Saugatuck | Science of Death | The mechanisms and forensic aspects of death. Expect a couple references to where the worms go in and out. | Diana Rowland, Dr. Julie Lesnik, Sarah Grieve | |
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 6:50 PM | St. Clair | Masquerade Muster | Mandatory for all competitive entries in the Masquerade. Assemble to muster for the parade, be viewed by the judges, and have optional workmanship judging done. Competitors may enter as Novice, Journeyman, Master or Junior levels. Please be on time. Exhibition entries may attend the Muster or just join the parade, ending at the Masquerade. Pre-Registration for the Masquerade is STRONGLY encouraged. Sign up at OPS. | ||
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 7:50 PM | TeenFusion | Dinner Break | |||
Saturday | 6:00 PM | 7:00 PM | The Chessboard | Istanbul | There’s hustle and bustle at Istanbul’s grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies. | Jason M | |
Saturday | 6:30pm | Kensington | Alice in Wonderland | A young girl when she first visited magical Underland, Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) is now a teenager with no memory of the place — except in her dreams. Her life takes a turn for the unexpected when, at a garden party for her fiance and herself, she spots a certain white rabbit and tumbles down a hole after him | Film | ||
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 7:50 PM | Atrium | Lunar Observation | Did you hear about the great new restaurant on the moon? The food is excellent , but there’s no atmosphere. Come see it for yourself! | Bob Trembley | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 7:50 PM | Big Top | Masquerade | Come see – or show off – the best costumes of the night! Judges will scrutinize. Crowds will cheer. Audiences will swoon. Honors will be awarded. Luke Ski will entertain during the judging break! | Luke Ski | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 7:50 PM | Marquette | Concert: Bill Roper | |||
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 12:00 AM | Saugatuck | Artemis Bridge Simulator – Royal Manticore Navy, HMS Ajax and HMS Roland Hosting | A multiperson team event where you work together to fly a star ship and protect your quadrant from enemy ships. 25 minute sessions starting on the hour and half hour. Sign your team up the RMN Fan Table, after 10 AM. One reserved session per per badge number. | ||
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 12:00 AM | KidFusion | Pajama/Pizza Party | THIS IS A PAID EVENT. Come ready to party in your pajamas! We will have Pizza, pop, popcorn along with movies, games and crafts. Register for this event at Registration by 12:00 PM Saturday. (5 HOURS) | KidFusion Staff | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 8:00 PM | The Chessboard | AttrAction | Mix of skill and luck, plus the strong force of the magnets, produces exciting and unexpected twists! | Ska | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 9:00 PM | The Chessboard | Betrayal at House on the Hill | Explore the creepy old mansion, that sounds like a fun time (especially for your evil friend)! Will you defeat the monsters that dwell within and your betrayer or will you never be heard from again? | Sam O | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 11:00 PM | The Chessboard | Escape from the Forest of Lanterns | Dungeons and Dragons 3.5- A mysterious magic book has transported the heroes to the Forest of Lanterns and turned them into small children! In order to escape from this magical demiplane, they must find the Warty Witch who lives in a cottage made of candy at the heart of the forest. | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 11:00 PM | The Chessboard | Lair of the Necro Dancers | Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Valiant heroes, do you have the moves to defeat the wicked lich with sweet dancing style and his undead legion of solid necromatically changed dancers of doom? | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 7:00 PM | 9:00 PM | The Chessboard | Dreamchaser | If you could live out any story, any moment—what would you experience? Lead a Rebellion • Befriend a Dragon • Become a New York Times Best Seller • Race to the Stars • Find Dad’s Pants…Let Dreamchaser adapt to you! What are you destined to achieve? Join in on a collaborative story game experience where every player has a say on who and what our story involves. Chase your dreams—your goals! | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 8:00 PM | 8:50 PM | Big Top | Concert: Luke Ski | Stick around after the Masquerade and enjoy a concert from our Comedy Guest of Honor, Luke Ski! | Luke Ski | |
Saturday | 8:00 PM | 8:50 PM | TeenFusion | Trivia for Chocolate for Teens | Know a lot about Science Fiction? How about anime? Confident in your knowledge? Want to earn chocolate for knowing things? Then come visit us as we test how much you know and our ability to throw. | ||
Saturday | 8:00 PM | 9:00 PM | The Chessboard | Codenames | Two teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin. | Ska | |
Saturday | 8:30pm | Kensington | Alice Through the Looking Glass | After slipping through a mirror, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) finds herself back in Underland with the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. | Film | ||
Saturday | 9:00 PM | 9:50 PM | Club Lounge | Friends of Bill W | |||
Saturday | 9:00 PM | 9:50 PM | ConSuite | Pizza and PJs Party for Adults! | Grown-ups love a good pajama party, too! Wear your PJs and come enjoy some pizza! You must be an adult (18+) or accompanied by adult. | ||
Saturday | 9:00 PM | 12:50 AM | TeenFusion | Teen Movies, Munchies, and More! | Come hang with us for the evening. We have games, movies, pizza, and fun! | ||
Saturday | 9:00 PM | 10:00 PM | The Chessboard | Spyfall | Spyfall is a party game unlike any other, one in which you get to be a spy and try to understand what’s going on around you. It’s really simple! | Jason S | |
Saturday | 9:00 PM | 11:00 PM | The Chessboard | Dreamchaser | If you could live out any story, any moment—what would you experience? Lead a Rebellion • Befriend a Dragon • Become a New York Times Best Seller • Race to the Stars • Find Dad’s Pants…Let Dreamchaser adapt to you! What are you destined to achieve? Join in on a collaborative story game experience where every player has a say on who and what our story involves. Chase your dreams—your goals! | We Hate Bards | |
Saturday | 9:00 PM | 11:00 PM | The Chessboard | Arkum Horror | The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It’s a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the war to end all wars. | William K | |
Saturday | 10:00 PM | 10:50 PM | Keweenaw | Let’s Talk: Cells | A lighthearted talk on a hard science topics with smart and funny people. Let’s Talk: Cells will cover Cellular Chemistry, CRISPR and Cat Memes | Daniel Dugan, Derek Künsken, Alison Eastman, Justine Graykin | |
Saturday | 10:30pm | Kensington | Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry | Natsu and his friends travel to the island kingdom of Stella to find dark secrets, fight new enemies and save the world from destruction. | Film |