If the lower floors of a hotel turned up in an archaeological site, the identification of the building would be an easy one -- after all, monumental architecture, high status materials, massive halls, and so on have been linked to palaces since time immemorial. What other conclusions could be reached about the culture of the coca-cola bottle people, from the remains of their material culture? What, for instance, would alien archaeologists assume about Christianity, if all they had to work from was churches?
(This could also be phrased in terms of what conclusions alien archaeolgists would conclude about humanity throughout; that might give a timeframe as well, and would make the panel more suited to people who are interested in aliens. Trying to phrase it the way I was trying would, hopefully, engage people who are more interested in our current material culture. Thoughts?)
In the world of Dune, the spice must flow. In Firefly, herds of cows get taken from planetoid to planetoid. What assumptions have to be made for tramp freighters in space to make sense? What cargoes might be carried, if we had FTL; who gets that sort of thing right, and who gets it wrong?
If David Friedman is going to be at the con, he'd be good on this one. I think it's the sort of thing that Charlie Stross thinks about, as well. Other than that, I'm not sufficiently aware of what's been going on in SF lately to know who'd be good.
There are an awful lot of alternate histories built around the American Civil War, but relatively few about the English Civil War. Just about everyone who reads in the field has seen endless stories in which Hitler is triumphant, but relatively few where Kaiser Wilhem II imposes his will upon a prostrate globe. What is it about some events that inspires people to ask "what if", and why is it lacking elsewhere? What historical hinges are there that would provide appropriate grist for the alternate history mill that haven't been much used yet?
Some alternate history writers, and some historians should make a decent panel.
Before the mid-twentieth century people shared bedrooms. Before the late nineteenth century most people shared beds. Courting took place on the streets, and your business was done in the full glare of the world. Many of us now worry about the erosion of our privacy through surveillance, but is this an anachronistic concern? Does a younger generation, with their facebook and myspace pages, their text messaging that their loud mobile use even care about privacy in the same way? Was the notion of privacy merely a late twentieth century fetish?
We've all seen mad physicists with their death rays, mad biologists with their blasphemous un-natural life, and so on, but what horrors might a musicologist gone wrong inflict on an unwitting world?
It seems like an easy enough panel to put together -- get a few social scientists who can be amusing about their professions, and let them go.
At a convention I was at last weekend, Tamora Pierce was talking about her process in creating cultures. One of the things she talked mentioned was what they ate. It started me thinking about foods and how they affect their cultures. It seems like it might be a fertile source of panels for the Human Culture track in Montreal. One place to start is a book called Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Vissing. I think I have a copy somewhere.
But think about how history, politics, and culture have been affected by the search for spices. What the implications are for a society in what grain is its staple.
Visser has also written a book called Rituals of Dinner which is about table manners and how they came to be which is a somewhat different intersection of food and culture.
Does anyone else have any other ideas or books to suggest around this topic?\
