My WorldCon Schedule: Dublin 2019

At the Dublin 2019 Worldcon I'll be presenting a short paper about some of the issues and questions we're asking in the upcoming Science Fiction exhibition at the Science Museum:

"Rethinking Science Fiction in a Museum Setting"
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 15:30 - 16:20, Odeon 6 (Academic) (Point Square Dublin)

I'll also be appearing on the following panels:

Educating Children in How to Avoid a Dystopia
16 Aug 2019, Friday 16:00 - 16:50, Wicklow Room-2 (CCD) 
Dystopian and utopian societies are popular in YA novels likeThe Hunger Games. However, serious ethical concerns about technology, sustainable resources as well as complicated political structures are often glossed over. What should children know about the dangers associated with these societies? What environmental and human costs are in fictional worlds and how do they relate to the real world?
Amy Sundberg, Dr Glyn Morgan (The Science Museum, London), Dr Wanda Kurtçu (California State University, Hayward) (Moderator), Nicole Givens Kurtz (Mocha Memoirs Press)

Luddites of SF
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 17:00 - 17:50, Liffey Room-1 (CCD)
Not all SF evangelises about technology; many genre works actively critique it. But SF that protests or criticises tech is labelled anti-tech or Luddite, even though the original Luddites protested only tech they saw as anti-humanist. Can SF reclaim the original meaning and change the narrative?
Renee Sieber (McGill University) (Moderator), Dr Glyn Morgan (The Science Museum, London), Auston Habershaw (MCPHS University), Avner Shahar-Kashtan.

Portrayals of mental health in genre
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 12:00 - 12:50, Wicklow Hall 2A (Dances) (CCD)
Content warning: may include discussions of suicide and self-harm, mental illness and ableism, eating disorders.
Mental health used well can drive a story, create believable motives for characters and even greater awareness amongst the audience. However, these issues are not always treated sensitively or realistically. This panel will explore examples of mental health issues in genre fiction and consider their implications and accuracy.
Alasdair Stuart (Escape Artists) (Moderator), Penny Jones, Dr Glyn Morgan (The Science Museum, London), Devin Madson

A really interesting selection of stuff, I'm excited to be taking part. Come and say hello if you see me at any point!

SF Interviews Mar-Jun '18

Sci-Fi Sessions continues apace with a wide range of events schedules over the comings months. As ever, these events will be held in the art gallery space in the basement of Waterstones Gower Street. Tickets will appear on Waterstones.com soon but in the meantime place these dates in your diaries.

March 19th: #SciFiSessions no. 6 - Zoe Gilbert and James Brogden.

April 16th: #SciFiSessions no. 7 - Golden Age Science Fiction panel (in association with the British Library) with Mike Ashley, Pat Cadigan, John Clute, and Roger Luckhurst.

May 14th: #SciFiSessions no. 8 - Claire North, Megan Hunter, and Anne Corlett.

June 13th: #SciFiSessions no. 9 - Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Hope to see you there!

SF Interviews Jan-Feb '18

A new year brings new SF interviews. I'll be talking to five authors in January and February and as ever it would be great to see you there.

Mon 15th Jan - #SciFiSessions no. 4 with Lucy Hounsom, Vic James, and Anna Smith Spark in Waterstones, Gower Street [tickets]

Mon 15th Feb - #SciFiSessions no. 5 with Gareth Powell and E. J. Swift in Waterstones, Gower Street [tickets coming soon]

SF Interviews Oct-Nov '17

I may post about these in more detail later, but for now here's a schedule.

I've got a busy few weeks ahead of me interviewing a real variety of excellent writers of SF, if you're around then central London then some of these talks might be of interest to you:

Mon 30th Oct: #SciFiSessions no. 2 with Alison Littlewood and M.R. Carey in Waterstones, Gower Street [Tickets]
Weds 8th Nov: Cory Doctorow and Ada Palmer in Waterstones, Gower Street [Tickets]
Thurs 9th Nov: Gary Budden and M. John Harrison in Waterstones, Gower Street [Tickets]
Weds 22nd Nov: Anne Charnock for the BSFA monthly meet, upstairs in The Artillery Arms [FREE]
Thurs 23rd Nov: #SciFiSessions no. 3 with Nick Harkaway and Paul McAuley in Waterstones, Gower Street [Tickets]

I've given myself a hell of a lot of reading to prepare for all these, but it's going to be worth it to meet and chat to so many excellent writers about so many marvellous books. Please do join us if you're able.

#SciFiSessions 1: Adam Roberts

I'm really excited to be able to announce a new series of monthly events at Waterstones on Gower Street in Bloomsbury. Each month I'll be talking to some science fiction, fantasy, or horror writers about their work. The aim is to showcase some of the most mind-expanding, exciting, innovative, and fun fiction in our genre today and we're calling these events Sci-Fi Sessions!

Our first session will be held on September 25th at 6.30pm and I'm delighted to be welcoming Adam Roberts, three times-nominee for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, professor of 19th Century literature at Royal Holloway University, and a leading scholar of science fiction. Adam will be discussing his latest novel The Real-Town Murders: a murder mystery thriller in the style of Alfred Hitchcock, set in near-future England. Adam has been a keynote speaker for me for both CRSF and Sideways in Time, and I wrote a chapter for the collection of essays based on his work edited by Anna McFarlane and Christos Callow and published by Gylphi in 2016. I've known Adam for a number of years now, and been a fan of his fiction for even longer, so I can be sure this will be an entertaining and insightful conversation.

As a bonus, he'll also be joined by another exciting writer who will be announcing in the coming days. Watch this space!

Tickets for the event are £6 (£4 for students), you get a glass of wine on arrival, and if you buy a book on the night you can claim your ticket price as a discount. You can buy them in store or online, here: https://www.waterstones.com/events/sci-fi-sessions-adam-roberts/london-gower-street

Madness is Better than Defeat

On Wednesday 13th September I'll be conducting my first interview as a resident of London: talking to Granta Best Young Novelist (2013) Ned Beauman about his fourth and latest novel Madness is Better than Defeat for Waterstones Gower Street.

Ned Beauman is the author of Boxer, Beetle, The Teleportation Accident, and Glow. His books have been nominated for numerous awards and are filled with a love and appreciation for science fiction, narrative trickery, and darkly wicked humour. It should be a good evening.

Tickets are £6 (£4 with a student card), you get a glass of wine on arrival, and if you buy a book on the night you can claim your ticket price as a discount. You can buy them in store or online, here: https://www.waterstones.com/events/madness-is-better-than-defeat-an-evening-with-ned-beauman/london-gower-street

King's College London Speculations - 23rd March, 6pm

On the 23rd March I'll be a giving a talk as part of King's College London's new series of talks "Speculations". To be held at 6pm at K6.63 King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College London

My talk is entitled Blurred Lines: Interplay between Biography and the Fantastic in the Graphic Memoir

Comic books represent a narrative medium which fuses visual information with text in a manner very likely unique, certainly amongst commercial markets in the West. Perhaps because of their pulpish origins, and their recent history of writing themselves into literary respectability, comics and graphic novels have an unquestioned ease of association with speculative fiction and the fantastic. This presentation will examine a subset of texts which exploit this association by blending elements of the fantastic with the non-fiction of graphic memoir. These fictive breaks within otherwise realist narratives challenge traditional notions of biography and memoir and their necessary adherence to mimetic representation.

As such, these blurred narratives become especially useful when discussing experiences which challenge the limits of communicative narrative: trauma and ill mental health, as such this examination of fictive incursions will use examples from Steven Seagle’s It’s A Bird, Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow and Paul Dini’s Dark Night, amongst others.

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The talk is free to attend so if you're in the area please do come along.

I was invited to present my paper by the series organiser Sinéad Murphy.

The facebook event for the talk is here.

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'Speculations' engages in current research in speculative and science fiction, but with a particular interest in intersections across a spectrum of disciplines which engage in varieties of speculative thought.

'Speculations' is supported by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King's College London.