This document is the official Call for Papers for the 2015 Eaton Science Fiction Conference, titled "Designing the Past, Designing the Future," held October 16-17, 2015 at the Riverside Marriott Hotel in Riverside, California. The Eaton Conference is one of the premier academic conferences devoted to science fiction scholarship.
The CFP solicits paper and panel proposals examining the relationship between speculative genres and the concept of design. Topics include images of engineers and engineering in SF, design practices in SF film and television, expositions and world's fairs, SF and the built environment, streamlining in pulp-era design, architectural utopias, the look of videogames and virtual spaces, retrofuturism and steampunk, SF design in an era of media convergence, and philosophies of design as SF theory.
The Eaton Conference is associated with the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at UC Riverside, one of the world's largest collections of science fiction and fantasy materials. While not exclusively focused on Dick, the conference represents the kind of institutional academic engagement with science fiction that has elevated Dick's work to canonical status. The conference's location at UC Riverside connects it to the same institution that houses the Eric Foss Hour 25 collection and other materials relevant to Dick studies.