While the New Wavers never achieved the thorough disruption of genre conventions they were aiming for, they helped make it possible for post-New-Wave SF writers to tackle previously taboo subjects and to more often use techniques such as stream-of-consciousness narration and unreliable narrators.

Anime's first notable appearance at SF or comic book conventions was in the form of video showings of popular anime, untranslated and often low quality VHS bootlegs.

Since the late 1930s, SF fans have organized conventions, non-profit gatherings where the fans ( some of whom are also professionals in the field ) meet to discuss SF and generally enjoy themselves.

SF writer Cory Doctorow calls science fiction " perhaps the most social of all literary genres ", and states, " Science fiction is driven by organized fandom, volunteers who put on hundreds of literary conventions in every corner of the globe, every weekend of the year.

SF conventions can vary from minimalist " relaxacons " with a hundred or so attendees to heavily programmed events with four to six or more simultaneous tracks of programming, such as WisCon and Worldcons.

Commercial shows dealing with SF-related fields are sometimes billed as ' science fiction conventions ,' but are operated as for-profit ventures, with an orientation towards passive spectators, rather than actively involved fans, and a tendency to neglect or ignore written SF in favor of television, film, comics, video games, etc.

They are often associated with an SF convention or group of conventions, but maintain a separate existence as cultural institutions within specific geographic regions.

Sue K. Hurwitz said in her review for the School Library Journal that it is " a catalog of Heinlein's sins as an author ; it is sophomoric, sexist, militantly right wing, and excessively verbose ", and comments that the book's ending was " a devastating parody of SF conventions — will have genre addicts rolling on the floor.

Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes standard SF conventions like alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel, or futuristic technology.

In addition, he is the author of the monthly " SF Convention Calendar " in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and his flyer racks (" Filthy boards ") are seen at conventions all over the East Coast.

He is a frequent Guest of Honor at SF conventions, including Arisia, Boskone and Albacon.

Haldeman became a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1971, and went on to chair eight SF conventions.

Reading The Eye of Argon aloud has been made into a game, as described by SF critic Dave Langford in SFX magazine: " The challenge of death, at SF conventions, is to read The Eye of Argon aloud, straight-faced, without choking and falling over.

The later-produced and more famous version of the list was compiled in 1994 by Peter Anspach ( hence it is occasionally titled " Peter's Evil Overlord List ") based on informal discussions at conventions and on online bulletin boards in the early 1990s, and has subsequently become one of the best-known parodies of bad SF / F writing, frequently referenced online.

He was active in the Scandinavian fandom community, organising and participating in SF / F conventions over a period of more than twenty five years.

The presence of gay members was noted by attendees of early conventions, but generally not discussed — the idea that gay or lesbian members would seek recognition within the SF community was " unthinkable ," and an accusation in the 1940s by a fanzine editor that the Los Angeles Science Fiction Association was " full of gay members " caused a scandal in fan circles.

Finncon is the largest science fiction convention in Finland and, with up to 15, 000 participants, one of the largest SF conventions in Europe.

Finncon is unique among SF conventions because it has no participation / membership fee, and is funded primarily on various cultural grants as well as income from traders.

The European SF Awards are given in most of the conventions giving recognition to the best works and achievements in science fiction.

As well as being the first one outside the two capitals, it was also the first to be residential ( previously, people from outside the host city had either booked accommodation privately or stayed with local attendees: ' crash space ') and to use the name ' BiCon ', in part because of the organisers ' and venue's experience with SF Cons ( Science Fiction conventions ).

This may include sponsoring items at other conventions, buying equipment for use by other conventions, donating to the RNIB to get works of SF literature converted to talking books for the blind, donating to the Science Fiction Foundation to fund a variety of educational projects relating to science fiction, and funding international fannish visits ( often through The League of Fan Funds ).

Helium is the least water soluble monatomic gas, and one of the least water soluble of any gas ( CF < sub > 4 </ sub >, SF < sub > 6 </ sub >, and C < sub > 4 </ sub > F < sub > 8 </ sub > have lower mole fraction solubilities: 0. 3802, 0. 4394, and 0. 2372 x < sub > 2 </ sub >/ 10 < sup >− 5 </ sup >, respectively, versus helium's 0. 70797 x < sub > 2 </ sub >/ 10 < sup >− 5 </ sup >), and helium's index of refraction is closer to unity than that of any other gas.

Works that have received the award are identified on their covers as Best Original SF Paperback.

In a review of it, John Clute wrote: “ I ’ m not about to suggest that if Heinlein had been able to publish works openly in the pages of Astounding in 1939, SF would have gotten the future right ; I would suggest, however, that if Heinlein, and his colleagues, had been able to publish adult SF in Astounding and its fellow journals, then SF might not have done such a grotesquely poor job of prefiguring something of the flavor of actually living here at the onset of 2004 .”

Some hard SF authors have distinguished themselves as working scientists, including Gregory Benford, Geoffrey A. Landis and David Brin, while mathematician authors include Rudy Rucker and Vernor Vinge.

Modernist works from writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Stanisław Lem have focused on speculative or existential perspectives on contemporary reality and are on the borderline between SF and the mainstream.

Veteran science fiction writer Jack Williamson ( 1908 – 2006 ) when asked in 1991: " Did the Wave's emphasis on experimentalizm and its conscious efforts to make SF more ' literary ' have any kind of permanent effects on the field?

The New Wave's demise may have been hastened by conscious reaction against it in the SF mainstream.

Several have purchased property and maintain ongoing collections of SF literature available for research, as in the case of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, the New England Science Fiction Association, and the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

Companies like TalkingSigns and TextSpeak Systems have pioneered solutions such as TTS for Digital Signage for the Blind, that work via standard speakers and also radio receivers ( ex: BART in the SF Bay area ).

You have no idea how difficult some of these authors are to deal with, and it seems a special thing among SF writers to hedge themselves behind almost impossible copyright barriers, even when they have got a story that is possible to do on television.

Sex is often linked to disgust in SF and horror, and plots based on sexual relationships have mainly been avoided in genre fantasy narratives.

" Speculative fiction " is sometimes abbreviated " spec-fic ", " specfic ", " S-F ", " SF ", or " sf " but these last three abbreviations are ambiguous as they have long been used to refer to science fiction, which lies within this general range of literature, and in several other abbreviations.

In 1929, Siegel published what might have been the first SF fanzine, Cosmic Stories, which he produced with a manual typewriter and advertised in the classified section of Science Wonder Stories.

Because speculative genres explore variants of reproduction, as well as possible futures, SF writers have often explored the social, political, technological, and biological consequences of pregnancy and reproduction.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, British and American SF television, the Dark Fantasy track, the Dragon * Con Independent Short Film Festival, and general programming which specific Guests of Honor attend ( e. g., Clive Barker's Lost Souls and Storm Constantine's Grissecon ).

It doesn't have its own dedicated channel ; instead SF 1, La 2 and SF info air TvR programming for a few hours a day.

Finnish dog tags are also designed to be broken in two ; however, the only text on it is the personal identification number and the letters SF, which stands for Suomi Finland, within a tower stamped atop of the upper half.

; Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril: A 1930s pulp SF setting based on the stories of Stanley Weinbaum, sent to registered users on November 20, 2010, on line from December 20, 2010.

* Kathryn Cramer's chapter on hard science fiction in The Cambridge Companion to SF, ed.

* " Sheldon was simply one of the best short-story writers of our day .... She has already had an enormous impact on upcoming generations of SF writers.

* " Her stories and novels are humanistic, while her deep concern for male-female ( even human-alien ) harmony ran counter to the developing segregate-the-sexes drive amongst feminist writers ; What her work brought to the genre was a blend of lyricism and inventiveness, as if some lyric poet had rewritten a number of clever SF standards and then passed them on to a psychoanalyst for final polish.

The C < sub > 4 </ sub > F < sub > 8 </ sub > creates a polymer on the surface of the substrate, and the second gas composition ( SF < sub > 6 </ sub > and O < sub > 2 </ sub >) etches the substrate.

Red Dust, set on a far-future Mars colonized by the Chinese, is a planetary romance filled with all the latest SF ideas: nanotechnology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, personality downloads, virtual reality.

Heinlein was always aware of the editorial limitations put in place by the editors of his novels and stories, and while he observed those restrictions on the surface, was often successful in introducing ideas not often seen in other authors ' juvenile SF.

This is an " SF satire on the Middle East crisis and the War on Terrorism, and concerns what happens when the liberal Western Galactic Empire relocates the oppressed Minervan sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington, in the midst of a US ruled by Christian fundamentalist fanatics .".

Hard science fiction, or " hard SF ", is characterized by rigorous attention to accurate detail in quantitative sciences, especially physics, astrophysics, and chemistry, or on accurately depicting worlds that more advanced technology may make possible.

Gary K. Wolfe, professor of humanities and English at Roosevelt University, identifies the introduction of the term New Wave to SF as occurring in 1966 in an essay for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction written by Judith Merril, who was indirectly yet it seems unambiguously referring to that term in order to comment on the experimental fiction that had begun to appear in the English magazine New Worlds, after Michael Moorcock assumed editorship in 1964.

James Gunn described Gold's focus as being " not on the adventurer, the inventor, the engineer, or the scientist, but on the average citizen ," and according to SF historian David Kyle, Gold's work was to lead inevitably to the New Wave.

The New Wave writers believed that the tropes of the pulp and Golden Age periods had become worn out, and should be abandonded: J. G. Ballard stated in 1962 that " science fiction should turn its back on space, on interstellar travel, extra-terrestrial life forms, ( and ) galactic wars ", and Brian Aldiss said in Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction that " the props of SF are few: rocket ships, telepathy, robots, time travel ... like coins, they become debased by over-circulation.

Her " incredible controversy " is characterized by David Hartwell in the opening sentence of a book chapter entitled " New Wave: The Great War of the 1960s ": " Conflict and argument are an enduring presence in the SF world, but literary politics has yielded to open warfare on the largest scale only once.

David Hartwell commenting on Algis J. Budrys writing in the review column of Galaxy magazine notes the " ringing scorn and righteous indignation " with which Budry's discussion vibrates in " one of the classic diatribes against Ballard and the new mode of SF then emergent ":