Yes, I know, I’ve been a complete slacker with keeping up the blog, but in my defense, I haven’t been a slacker in other projects! Aside from diving right into managing editor duties for Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, I had the amazing opportunity to join my friends Lynne M. Thomas (co-editor for the Hugo-Award-winning anthology, Chicks Dig Time Lords and co-editor-in-chief for Uncanny) and Mary Robinette Kowal (Hugo-Award-winning author, The Glamourist Histories) at the Chicago Humanities Festival to talk about Doctor Who.
If you’d told me even a year ago that I’d be talking about Doctor Who at the CHF with two writers whose work I’ve admired for years, I’d have asked you what you were smoking and where I could get some. But here we are, and it was an absolutely fantastic experience. Plus, I got a little thrill out of the fact that I had not been back to the School of the Art Institute building where the talk was held since I was 16 and a student at the SAIC’s summer art program – and now 20 years later, I was walking into that building as a CHF speaker.
An hour is clearly not enough time to give an overview of Doctor Who and hit every single thing that we would have wanted to (I wish we’d gotten to talk more about Martha Jones and race, and the notion that the Doctor doesn’t have to regenerate into white man every single time), but it was a highly-enjoyable conversation and I hope we inspired more people to dive into the Doctor’s world.
I’d like to thank the CHF for inviting us to have this discussion as part of the festival, and thank Lynne and Mary for, as always, being engaging and enjoyable discussion partners.