"From Imagination to Reality" - Escape Velocity 2019

May 24-26, 2019, Conference website.

As Albert Einstein put it, "imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions." This is also the motto of the Museum of Science Fiction, which each year hosts the Escape Velocity conference, linking the imaginative visions of the future we see in media and literature with the technological advances and perspectives of the natural sciences. This year, Escape Velocity features a rich mix of writers (David Brin; Morgan Gendel); astrophysicists (C. Alex Young); astrobiologists (David Grinspoon); actors (Dominique Tipper from The Expanse; Gigi Edgly and Anwan Glover); NASA astronauts (Michael Lopez-Alegria) and aerospace engineers (Mason Peck), and many others.

ISF is organizing a panel on Sunday, May 26, at 10:00 am, entitled "Biotechnology, Human Evolution and Sustainability in Fiction," featuring Leigha McReynolds, who teaches English literature and writing at George Washington University; Rebecca Stone Gordon, popular culture scholar and forensic anthropologist; Rajat Chaudhuri, Calcutta-based author of the futuristic novel The Butterfly Effect; and ISF's Jeffrey Barber.