This year’s Doxacon features tabletop gaming sessions, a Writer’s Workshop led by Dn. Nicholas Kotar, and (of course) our speakers! If you would like to speak, please visit our website at doxacon.org to read the full Call for Papers and submission details. Paper proposals are due April 15, 2024.
Here’s an excerpt from our call for papers:
Theme: Echoes of the Incarnation
This year at Doxacon, we are inviting you to explore the echoes of Christ’s incarnation in speculative fiction.
Throughout human history, there have been echoes of Christ’s incarnation in pagan stories, which pointed forward toward Christ, and, on this side of the incarnation, point back to, and have the depths of their meaning revealed in the incarnation. Christ is the center to which everything past and future points. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. Regardless of when stories were written or who wrote them, if there is a sacrificial or redemptive element, they echo Christ’s incarnation.
Furthermore, St. Maximus the Confessor tells us that the revelation of the incarnation will always be manifest, first in Christ and then in each of us. “The Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them, he is born as an infant as he fashions himself in them by means of their virtues. He reveals himself to the extent that he knows someone is capable of receiving him. He diminishes the revelation of his glory not out of selfishness but because he recognizes the capacity and resources of those who desire to see him. Yet, in the transcendence of mystery, he always remains invisible to all.”
How is the Word of God, born spiritually in us, revealed to us in fiction? How is Christ’s incarnation echoed through the sacrificial love of a hero? Or in the renunciation of worldly power or things? Or maybe the incarnation is revealed in more abstract terms. Does the catharsis experienced through a tragic hero produce a redemptive element for the reader? Or is there some other way that fiction has captured the way Christ’s becoming man has reinterpreted human history and transformed the world from the banality of the familiar? Or maybe a fictional character's exploration reveals Christ’s incarnation to us another way?
We invite submissions exploring these and related topics in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other speculative fiction genres in literature, television, games, or film.
