Because it’s a FAQ: I won’t be at the San Diego Comic Con this year, but I will be at Dragon*Con.

For the past few years, Discover Magazine has hosted an increasingly popular and extremely fun panel on Science and Science Fiction at Comic Con, which I’ve been honored to moderate. Unfortunately, this year we won’t be doing the panel, so I won’t be attending. I’m sad, but we’ll be there next year for sure. I hate to miss such a huge geekapalooza, but we’ll have to figure out some way to make the 2012 panel extra-awesome. I’m thinking the panelists will skydive in. Or we’ll fight with bat’leths. Something.

In better news, I’ll be at Dragon*Con on September 1-5. In fact, I’ll be at the becoming-an-annual-event star party on Thursday night, September 1, where we raise money for cancer research. D*C has a very strong skeptic track, and I’ll be there as well as doing other talks and fun things (like having a two-person panel with my friend Kevin Grazier, where we rip on science in movies and TV). There are also tons of other things going on there, like the parties, the costumes, the dealer rooms, the general madness.

Read the links below in the Related Posts to get the idea. I’ll post my schedule when I get it, and if you’re a reader here, find me at one of my events!

… and I still want to bring a costume. I have an idea, but we’ll see if I can figure out how to pull it off.

Last week was Comic Con, and for the third year in a row, the Hive Overmind Discover Magazine sent me along to be on a panel. Every year we do a variation on discussing the science of science fiction, and this year we focused on its abuse. We asked our panelists (Jaime Paglia [Eureka], Kevin Grazier [science advisor for Eureka and Battlestar Galactica], Zack Stentz [Fringe, Thor], and Sean Carroll [cosmologist and DM blogger]) to pick examples of good and bad science in the movies.

The results? Well, watch for yourself:

A couple of notes:
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I have no real news here, except that one of my missions at Comic Con was to meet up once again with Zach Weiner, who writes and draws my favorite web comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. My wife and I went over to his booth, and there he was! As this picture shows, I was overjoyed to see him:

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At Comic Con, I moderated a wonderful panel about how science sometimes gets screwed up by science fiction. Sponsored by Discover Magazine and The NAS Science and Entertainment Exchange, it’s the third time we’ve done this panel, and it’s been really fun every year. I already talked a bit about this — we had Jaime Paglia from Eureka, Kevin Grazier from BSG and "Eureka", Zack Stentz from "Thor" and "Fringe", and Sean Carroll who is a cosmologist and blogs for Discover as well.

We showed our picks for representative good and bad science in shows and movies, and I have to commend Sean for his pick of "Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure" for good science (the consistency of the time travel in that movie is wonderful) and "Big Bang Theory" for the philosophy of science — they discuss the physics of Superman, making the assumption that a man actually can fly.

We were short on time, and had to cut the Q&A off short, but as usual we got great questions from the audience and a lot of fun back-and-forth with the panelists. We’ll have the video up at some point, and I think you’ll like it when we do.

So far, I’ve seen two reviews: one from ScriptPhD, and the other from our own Science Not Fiction. You can check out my Comic Con 2010 pix at Flickr, too.

[Update: Eric Wolff wrote an interesting piece on the discussion of when to break the rules of science. I may write more on this later, but I don't think Zack Stentz's contention that science must bend to the story would faze any of us on the panel; we know we're talking about fiction here. Science won't bend when you're publishing in the Astrophysical Journal, but it must when put under the constraints of telling an engaging fictional story.]

I’m in San Diego, at Comic Con! W00t!

I’ve already been able to hang a bit with Craig Engler from SyFy, and a few other friends. Today, though, is a big day. I have my Hive Overmind Discover Magazine panel (Abusing the Sci of SciFi, with Jaime Paglia from "Eureka", Kevin Grazier (science advisor to Eureka), Discover co-blogger Sean Carroll, and "Fringe" producer Zack Stentz) and then I have to run as fast as my fleet feet will carry me to w00tstock! After that, I’m thinking coma.

But there’s no time for forced unconsciousness! I have to do stuff Friday, and Saturday (including — OMFSM — the SyFy/Entertainment Weekly party, where I will hobnob and squee over many people), and Sunday… and this time, things are a little different: my wife is with me. That will not stop me from squeeing, or from dancing with Felicia Day if given the chance.

I will try to post updates and pictures as the Intertubez allow. This is geekapalooza, folks, and I’m at its very core. Woohoo!

The wonderfulicious Brea Grant is this week’s Geek a Week.

Brea’s an actress who played Daphne, "The Speedster" on "Heroes", and I was tickled a while back to find out she reads my blog. I had a lot of fun hanging out with her at Comic Con last year (and hope to see her again while I’m there in a couple of weeks), and even did a short interview with her when I was there.

Brea is smart, funny, generous with her time, and a complete and total comic book geek. When Len Peralta, who does the Geek a Week podcast and art, interviewed me for the series, he asked if I knew anyone else I would recommend. That was an easy one! I’m glad it worked out.. and she wasn’t the only person I suggested. Stay tuned.

Len’s got quite a few more very cool folks on his list, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does with them. The trading cards are killer funny and it’s always nice to hear what’s going on inside other people’s nerdy heads.

I extremely nerded out and pleased and squeeified to announce that I’ll be at w00tstock! At Comic Con. On stage.

I know.

w00tstock, for those helplessly normal of you out there, is the premier nerd event in the Orion arm of the Milky Way. Hosted by singers Paul and Storm, Mythbuster and My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™, and my long-standing and partially-requited nerdcrush Wil Wheaton, w00tstock is billed as "Three hours of geeks and music", which is apt enough. Everyone I know who has gone has raved about it.
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