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NiftyGuest for Penguicons 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, and 7.0.
John Scalzi is the author of the science fiction novels *Agent To The Stars, Old Man's War* and *The Ghost Brigades*. His "The Whatever" blog gets about ten to twenty thousand unique visitors a day. One of his blog entries, “Being Poor,” was picked up by several newspapers around the country, and another one, “The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time,” was picked up by NationalLampoon.com. John is also an exceptional conversationalist. John was a panelist in 2005 and was so good at it we are having him return as a NiftyGuest. Quoth Scalzi: “I feel all shiny now.”
Friday, April 21, 2006: No events scheduled.
Saturday, April 22, 2006:
1:00 pm - Worldbuilding - SteveMiller, KarlSchroeder, NancyAtwell, JohnScalzi - Some worlds you believe in, and some interfere with the story. How to build and portray your fictional world.
4:00 pm - Warfare in SF - JeffBeeler, JohnScalzi, BarbaraTrumpinskiRoberts - Which authors, past and present, do the best job of looking at warfare in a science fiction context? What's most important: that it is convincing, that it is plausible, or something else entirely?
8:00 pm - Why Didn't Science Fiction Predict That? - FrankHayes, KarlSchroeder, JohnScalzi - SF predicted moon colonies by 2001 and computers so big they'd mostly exist in hyperspace. That wrongheadedness has something to say about predictions we're making today. And why DIDN'T SF predict Frogurt instead of yeast cigarettes, anyhow?
Sunday, April 23, 2006:
11:00 am - Blogging for Life - TheFerrett, JohnScalzi, DavidKlecha - News pages. Online journals. Web logs. A lot of people are using them. What are the tools available, and what are the best ways to use them?
12:00 pm - Best SF Books of 2005 - JeffBeeler, JohnScalzi, TobiasBuckell, KarlSchroeder - What were the outstanding works of 2005? What are the titles to look for, and who are the authors to watch?