My Frolicon Panels: Let Me Show You Them!

FRIDAY 4:15, Jamaica Room
Erotica & Sci-Fi, A Perfect Match?
Eugie Foster, Mike D'Ambrosio, Kate Vassar

SATURDAY 4:15, Frankfurt Room
Slash 201
Kate Vassar, Ravenna C. Tan

Erotica & Sci-Fi, A Perfect Match?
In the 1950s pulp sci-fi was one the only genre that didn't have a "spicy" component. In the 1970s gratuitous sex scene started popping up in genre books, and some edgier writers like Samuel R. Delany, Philip Jose Farmer, and Theodore Sturgeon began to experiment with sexual themes, while feminist writers like Joanna Russ, Ursula K.
LeGuin, and Marion Zimmer Bradley expanded the palette of the genre to include female empowerment, more emphasis on family than plain heroism, and other necessary components for a mature literary genre. So why did it take until the 1990s for Circlet Press to come along and specialize in erotic sf/f, and why did it take until the 2000s for the big bestsellers of erotic sf/f to finally arrive? Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series, Anne Bishop, the sexing up of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, the arrival of post-Anne Rice vampires like Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark... is it a coincidence that the writers named here are all female and that they tend toward fantasy and dark fantasy rather than "science fiction"? Are the male writers besides Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica going to catch up? Is it a coincidence that as "paranormal" romance became the top romance genre romance overall got more explicitly sexual? What's going on here, and where is it going next?

Slash 201
You already know what slash is and have read some. Come to this panel to take the next step! DO you know where to find "the good stuff?" Isthere such a thing as slash burnout? Is LJ really safe for slashers again? Or not? Do you think there are too many fests? Or not enough? Have you recruited non-slashy friends into reading slash? Are you "out" about your slash reading? Are you addicted to slash? Have you ever stayed up all night reading a WIP? (More than one night in a row?) Did reading the slash of one fandom get you more interested in a book or series than the actual series did? If you answered yes to any of these questions this panel is for you!