Day 1 – Day 2: Saturday, August 18, 2018 – Day 3

The must do event was the KaffeeKlatsche with @Mary Robinette Kowal and @astroKjell (Kjell Lindgren) .  MRK has written two of my favorite books ever, her Lady Astronaut series.  (Reviews coming much later when I get caught up with stuff.)

Getting to sit at a table and talk to the woman who wrote a fantastic book whose protagonist is strong, smart and an advocate for women in the space program knocked my socks off.  Oh, and a real live astronaut.  What a great way to start the day.

Mary and Kjell are some of the best people I’ve ever met.  They were kind and generous with their time, and allowed the 10 of us at their table to ask questions.  I’m grateful to for the opportunity to meet and engage with them.

Panel:
1001 Years Later – What Happened to Arabian Fiction – Shayma Alshareef and Yasser Bahjatt

1001 Nights is the first anthology ever.
“Fiction gives voice to the voiceless.”

Science fiction writing is booming in the Middle East now.  Yasser Bahjatt started a publishing house so that these voices can be heard.  One of his goals is to work with translators so that English readers get to hear the voices too.  It’s a really exciting development for world science fiction/fantasy

Recommended reading:
Frankenstein in Baghdad

Celebrity sighting:  George R R Martin in the audience

Panel:
Women Who Out Steampunked Steampunk:  Real Life Soldiers, Inventors, Travellers – Carrie Sessarego.  

I couldn’t possibly do justice to Carrie’s roll call of Regency and Victorian era women who “broke” the rules.

• Ellen Eglui – invented the clothes wringer for washing machines
• Sarah Breedlove (Madame CJ Walker) – first self-made female millionaire in the US who made her fortune by developing and marketing a line of beauty and hair products for black women
• Sarah Guppy – invented a bed which converted to a home gym
• Mary Dixon Kies – received a patent for weaving straw with silk and thread to make hats (possibly first woman to receive a patent in the US)
• Margaret Knight – invented the paper bag folding machine
• Mary Anning – Paleontologist, the rhyme “she sells sea shells by the sea shore” is about Mary Anning
• Harvard Computers aka Pickering’s Harem – Harvard was the first institution to hire women mathematicians to work in astronomy
• Henrietta Swan Leavitt – astronomer
• Williamina Fleming – astronomer
• Mary Lua Adelia Davis Treat – naturalist, corresponded with Charles Darwin
• Sophie Blanchard – hot air balloonist
• Isabella Bird – explorer
• Annie Royle Taylor – explorer, missionary in Tibet

Recommended Reading:
The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel

Panel:
Houston, We Have a Problem …Bridget Landry, Norman Sperling, Kjell Lindgren

Two thoughts:  Failure is how we learn, and make new mistakes