Eaton Collection - Eaton SF Conference

Eaton SF Conference

As part of its scholarly mission, the Eaton Collection hosts a J. Lloyd Eaton Science Fiction Conference, launched in 1979. Over the years, twenty one conferences have been held at UC Riverside, while others have taken place at international venues, co-sponsored by UCR and various host institutions: London Polytechnic University,1984; the Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1986; University of Leeds, 1989; Texas A&M University, 1990; the Maison d'Ailleurs, Yverdon-les-bains, and the Université de Neuchâtel, 1991; Imperial College, London, 1995; the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000, and the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle in 2005. The conference has attracted a number of famous writers, including Brian Aldiss, Ray Bradbury, David Brin, Samuel R. Delany, Larry Niven, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon and Roger Zelazny and an equally distinguished group of critics and scientists, including Harold Bloom, Leslie Fiedler, Harry Levin, Marvin Minsky and Robert Scholes. The Conference has produced more than twenty volumes of critical essays, published by various university presses. Most of these volumes are still in print today, and continue to shape the field.

After a three-year gap, the conference resumed at UCR with the theme "Chronicling Mars", May 16–18, 2008. The 2009 conference, "Extraordinary Voyages: Jules Verne and Beyond" was held April 30–May 3, 2009. The last conference on "Global Science Fiction" was held February 11–13, 2011 at Riverside's historic Mission Inn Hotel & Spa.

The next conference will be April 11–14, 2013, on the subject "Science Fiction Media".