Worldcon Bound: I’ll Be at LACon V in Anaheim
I’m heading to Worldcon.
From August 27–31, 2026, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention—LACon V—will take over the Anaheim Convention Center, Hilton Anaheim, and Anaheim Marriott in Anaheim, California. It will be the first Worldcon held in the Los Angeles area in twenty years, and I’m very pleased to be attending as both an author and a program participant.
I’ll also be there with Brick Cave Media, which will be vending at the convention. So, in between panels, there will be opportunities to find me around the Brick Cave table, talk books and science fiction, and take a look at the books Brick Cave is bringing to Anaheim. The Dealers Room will be located in the Exhibit Hall in the Anaheim Convention Center’s North Hall; Brick Cave’s specific table location is still to be announced.
A Little Medicine With Your Science Fiction
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about science fiction is the opportunity to take what we know about the real world and ask what happens when we push it somewhere new.
As both a writer and a trauma surgeon, I get to approach some of those questions from a slightly unusual perspective. This year, LACon V has given me plenty of opportunities to bring those two worlds together.
My Worldcon schedule currently includes six program appearances, covering everything from pandemics and orbital medicine to writing convincing fictional injuries.
Thursday, August 27
12:00 PM — Contagion and COVID
256A, Anaheim Convention Center North
The COVID pandemic changed the way almost everyone thinks about contagion, public health, preparedness, and the consequences of rapidly spreading disease. This panel will be an opportunity to look at those subjects through the lens of science, experience, and speculative fiction.
6:00 PM — SOS on the ISS: Medical Emergencies in Orbit
263A, Anaheim Convention Center North
Getting sick or injured is complicated enough on Earth. What happens when the patient is in orbit?
Space medicine presents a fascinating collection of problems for science fiction writers because so many of the assumptions we make about emergency medicine change once gravity, distance, limited supplies, evacuation time, and the environment of space enter the equation.
Friday, August 28
10:30 AM — Best Whump Options: Injuries for Fiction
Palos Verdes, Hilton Anaheim
Writers are remarkably inventive when it comes to finding ways to injure their characters.
The harder part is figuring out what happens afterward.
We’ll be talking about injuries in fiction, how the body actually responds to trauma, and how writers can use medical reality to make a story more convincing rather than allowing it to get in the way.
Saturday, August 29
Saturday is going to be a particularly busy day.
9:00 AM — Murder and Mayhem: Writing Realistic Injuries for Authors
258, Anaheim Convention Center North
If your story contains fights, accidents, gunshots, stab wounds, explosions, or other assorted mayhem, this one is for you.
Realistic injuries can raise the stakes of a scene and create consequences that continue long after the action ends. We’ll look at what writers frequently get right, what they get wrong, and where reality may actually give you better storytelling possibilities.
10:30 AM — Nineteenth Century Medicine
261B, Anaheim Convention Center North
Modern medicine is easy to take for granted.
Step backward into the nineteenth century and familiar illnesses and injuries become very different problems. For anyone writing historical fiction, alternate history, steampunk, or fantasy inspired by the period, understanding what physicians could—and could not—do can dramatically affect a story.
6:00 PM — Cell Therapy 101: Treating Diseases with Living Medications
256B, Anaheim Convention Center North
And then we jump from medicine’s past to something that sounds remarkably like science fiction: treating disease using living cells as medicine.
This session will explore cell therapy, what it means, where the science is today, and where it might lead us tomorrow.
Why Worldcon?
Worldcon has been bringing together the science fiction and fantasy community since 1939. LACon V will be the seventh Worldcon held in the greater Los Angeles area and the fifth to carry the LACon name.
For five days, writers, readers, scientists, artists, publishers, filmmakers, fans, and creators from around the world will be in one place talking about speculative fiction in nearly every form imaginable.
The convention will include an enormous range of programming and events, including its film festival, performances, Masquerade, and the 2026 Hugo Awards Ceremony on Sunday evening.
That combination of ideas is one of the reasons conventions like Worldcon continue to interest me. Science fiction has always been a conversation between what we know, what we imagine, and what might happen next.
Sometimes that means spaceships.
Sometimes it means magic.
And sometimes it means explaining exactly how badly injured your protagonist would really be after being thrown through that plate-glass window.
Come Say Hello
If you’re attending LACon V in Anaheim, I hope you’ll stop by one of my panels and say hello.
You can also look for Brick Cave Media in the Dealers Room. I’ll be attending Worldcon along with other Brick Cave authors, and we’ll have Brick Cave books available throughout the convention.
LACon V runs Thursday, August 27 through Monday, August 31, 2026, in Anaheim, California.
I’m looking forward to five days of science fiction, fantasy, medicine, writing, books, and probably more than a few conversations I couldn’t possibly predict in advance.
Which, when you think about it, is a pretty appropriate reason to go to Worldcon.
