?It was Gregory Benford who used the wonderful phrase ‘the first hard science fiction convention’ to describe what happened at the 100 Year Starship Symposium. It was an apt choice of words. ‘Hard’ science fiction refers to SF that goes out of its way to get the science right, and in which the scientific and technical details play a major role in the development of the plot. Science fiction critic P. Schuyler Miller evidently coined the term in one of his reviews for Astounding Science Fiction back in the 1950s. In many ways, the Symposium operated under a science fictional meme. Science fiction at its best exists to paint possibilities for us. Some scientific speculations may be remarkable in their own right but only become vivid when portrayed by writers who can make the background science into a scenario that plays out in fictional terms. An obvious case is the classic Isaac Asimov tale “Nightfall,” published in Astounding’s September, 1941 issue. Asimov took us to a place that...