CFP - Race, Gender and Technology in Science-Fiction

A conference to be held at the Maison Française, Oxford, 25-27 April 2019

The Maison Française conference committee invites proposals that examine the themes of race, gender and technology in science-fiction from the classical period to the present, in all media (print, film, television…) and from any continent.

Race and Gender
Aliens, journeys into space, time travel, wormholes, parallel universes, dark matter, artificial intelligence, robots, cyborgs, self-replicating androids, super computers becoming self-aware, memory implants, optograms, secret weapons, autonomous objects, connected objects, enhanced reality, mass surveillance and the global panopticon, robocops, utopias, terraforming, galactic empires, future cities, technosociety, mutants, degeneration, dystopias… Whilst the focus in science-fiction studies has often been on the ethical dilemmas that accompany (real or anticipated) scientific innovations, this conference wishes instead to concentrate on the illuminations that science-fiction stories can bring to critical race theory and gender studies. Writers of science-fiction extrapolate from the realms of scientific knowledge or theory, or from technology, techniques, machines or instruments, and thus envisage the possibilities of new social organisations, the appearance of new social facts, or new social norms. This conference aims primarily to explore the intersections between fictional science and the dynamics of race and gender. How has anticipatory literature (including short stories, graphic novels, films, TV series…) interacted with the life sciences to question the biologisation of race and gender? How have its utopias/dystopias engaged with questions of gender, sexuality and empowerment? How have its scenarios addressed the African-American, Chicano/a, Asian-American, Native American experience, double-consciousness, colourblindness, whiteness or white privilege? How does science-fiction engage with history, the colonial past, Jim Crow or slavery? How has Afrofuturism changed in the digital age? Papers that investigate any of these topics are particularly welcome. Whilst the examples above, for the purposes of exposition, refer primarily to North America, we invite papers on science-fiction emanating from any geographical territory.

Technology and the societal paradigm
On the subject of technology, how have writers linked science, experimentation or techniques with self-identity, sexuality, social organisation, nationhood, or economic models, from socialist utopias to post-scarcity or reputation-based economies? What might be the material history of science-fiction artefacts? Papers that address these issues without explicitly engaging in critical race theory or gender studies are also very welcome. Papers may be disciplinary or multidisciplinary. Science-fiction narratives typically imagine the enhanced performance of machines or bodies, including superpowers, by extrapolating from existing technological innovations over the progress of the centuries, such as communication over distance and manned flight in the nineteenth century, to cybernetics and space flight in the twentieth. In a word, science-fiction is anchored in history. Furthermore, it is common in science-fiction stories to discover that scientific and/or technological discoveries stem from societal and political changes, or at least that they are symmetrical. The texts and visual explorations of science-fiction posit technology as a powerful force driving the socio-political order, transforming bodies and the natural world, hybridizing the organic and the inorganic, blurring the boundaries between the individual and the collective, and so on. In so doing, science-fiction gives material form to theories of progress and modernity born of industrial and post-industrial societies — as exemplified by the early Soviet science-fiction — through dystopian scenarios, and by questioning our social use of technology today (for example, in the TV series Black Mirror). Papers are invited that address the historical context that produced specific narratives, such as the post-war periods, the cold war, the war on terror, the digital age, Brexit, etc. and their potential self-fulfilling outcomes, to the extent that fictional models can have a real impact on contemporary scientific research. They may also examine the influence of national traditions (such as Franco-British exchanges in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), and the growing importance of transmediality across national frontiers, such as the film adaptations of comics, mangas or graphic novels, for example.

Themes and studies

• The dynamics of race, gender and sexuality
• Masculinity in sci-fi culture
• Ethnographies of sci-fi audiences
• The use of ancient civilisations as (political) models
• The engagement with history and the colonial past
• Science-fiction as propaganda
• The engagement with forward-looking political science or economic models
• The transformation of everyday life
• The transformation of the body
• Technology as totalitarian or libertarian
• The history and theory of academic interest in sci-fi as a popular subculture

Papers shall be given in English.

Proposals are due by 1 December 2018.

Send 300-word abstracts (as an email attachment in Microsoft Word format, RTF, or PDF) along with a one-page CV to mfosf2019@gmail.com

Roundtable sessions of 60 to 90 minutes may be proposed. They should be pre-organised, and include 3 to 5 panellists. To propose a roundtable, the discussion moderator will send a single 300-word abstract describing the chosen topic, as well as supplying the full details of each panellist, namely their contact information (email and phone number), affiliation and a one-page CV for each. Please be sure to confirm the participation of all panellists before submitting an abstract. Roundtable proposals are due by 1 December 2018.

Proposals are accepted on the principle that they represent original research that has not been published elsewhere, and on the understanding that the conference organisers will have priority in taking the papers to publication. Confirmation of acceptance will be sent by the end of January 2019. One-page/500-word abstracts must be sent by the end of February 2019. The proceedings are intended for publication, and the final texts are to be sent by the end of May 2019.

Conference venue : Maison Française d’Oxford 2-10 Norham Road Oxford OX2 6SE Oxfordshire England

Organisers: Paul Edwards (MFO, CNRS/LARCA, Université Paris Diderot) Marie Thébaud-Sorger (MFO, CNRS) Vivien Prigent (MFO, CNRS) Elodie Grossi (MFO, UVSQ)

Should you have any questions please contact Paul Edwards : paul.edwards@cnrs.fr or Marie Thébaud-Sorger : marie-aline.thebaud-sorger@history.ox.ac.uk

Monsters and Me - Frankenstein and AI

CamPoS seminar - 'What’s the Point of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World? Travel, Science, and Thought Experiments'

6 December, 1 p.m., HPS department, seminar room 2 in the basement.

Emily Thomas of Durham will talk on 'What’s the Point of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World? Travel, Science, and Thought Experiments'.

Abstract: 'Travel has a long and intimate history with philosophy. Travel also has a long and intimate relationship with fiction. Sometimes travel fiction acts as ‘thought experiments’, experiments that we can run through in our heads. This talk explores a 1666 fiction travelogue, Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World. In the novel, a virtuous young lady is kidnapped and travels by boat through the North Pole into a new world. I argue this is no mere piece of science fiction. Instead, this travelogue acts as a distinctly philosophical thought experiment, exploring the pros and cons of Baconian philosophy of science, utopias, and what it means to be real.'

CFP - J.G. Ballard & the Sciences

CALL FOR PAPERS: J. G. Ballard & the Sciences
Key Note Speaker: Christopher Priest

Hosted by the Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy (CSFF)

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, 25th November 2017.

“Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.”  -- J. G. Ballard

From The Drowned World’s early meditations on ecology, to the provocative prosthetics of Crash, through to the psychopathologies at work (or rather play) in Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Kingdom Come, the writings of J.G. Ballard are in constant dialogue with the discourses of science and technology. As a result, his novels and short stories function as vast indexes of scientific innovation and enquiry, immersing the reader in the complex yet often beautiful languages of biology, chemistry, zoology, medicine, botany, neuroscience, bioethics, anatomy, biotechnology and psychology, to name just a few.

Papers are invited for a one-day cross-disciplinary conference on all aspects of the intersections between J.G. Ballard and science. Proposals are welcomed from researchers at all stages of their career, including postgraduate students, independent scholars and creative writers.

Please send proposals or abstracts of up to 300 words along with a short biography to Jeannette Baxter: Jeannette.Baxter@anglia.ac.uk by: August 31st, 2017.

Recap - Rain

On what was one of the sunniest and warmest days of the year so far, we met to discuss Ray Bradbury's 'Death-By-Rain', or 'The Long Rain'. Liz gave a fantastic introduction, which introduced not only Bradbury's own life and ambitions (to 'prevent' not just to 'predict' the future), and the film version of the set text (see above), but also set 'The Long Rain' in a context of 1920s-1960s Venus stories. Based on observations of the planet's cloud cover, these tales often depicted Venus as a water-world: a tropical jungle, humid, warm, and uniform, akin to a prehistoric Earth. Bradbury's story - Liz showed - used this setting for a extreme adventure narrative, looking at the psychological and sensory experiences of people trying to navigate such an unforgiving landscape.

Our discussion followed on from these themes, to explore how Bradbury focused on the reactions of his militaristic men to the situation they were in (with, perhaps, slight inconsistencies or unanswered questions of plot or detail), rather than providing an omniscient overview. We looked at his ways of describing the rain - whether through the repetition of the word 'rain', to place the reader, like his characters, under its ceaseless or even torturing presence; or through passages where the rain took on more of a character or agency, posing for photographs, turning into monstrous forms and storms. We considered how the protagonists became unmoored in time and space, with fast-growing vegetation and aimless wandering, bleached- and leached-out bodies and hopeless futures; and wondered what on earth (or on Venus) they were doing there. Finally, we considered the story's ambiguous ending: was the heavenly-sounding Sun Dome just too good to be true?

Our next meeting - continuing to be seasonally inappropriate, and to think about extreme adventures - will be a discussion of The Frozen Deep.

22nd May - Rain

Our second meeting of term will take place at Darwin College from 7.30-9pm in 1 Newnham Terrace. We will be reading a short story by Ray Bradbury, first published as 'Death-By-Rain' in Planet Stories (1950), and then as 'The Long Rain' in several collections of his short stories, including The Illustrated Man (1951). Editions of The Illustrated Man are available in the University Library, or contact MK for a copy of the story.

All welcome!

Article - "The science fiction that came before science"

The Atlantic discusses Cavendish, Godwin, et al.

CFP - 2017: A Clarke Odyssey

A Conference Marking the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK
Saturday 9 December 2017
Keynote Speakers: Stephen Baxter
Dr Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most important British sf writers of the twentieth century - novelist, short-story writer, scriptwriter, science populariser, fan, presenter of documentaries on the paranormal, proposer of the uses of the geosynchronous orbit and philanthropist.

We want to celebrate his life, work and influence on science fiction, science and beyond.

We are looking for twenty-minute papers on topics such as:
*       any of Clarke's publications
*       influences on Clarke
*       Clarke's influence on others
*       the Second World War
*       Sri Lanka/Ceylon
*       the Cold War
*       adaptations to film, television, radio and comic books - 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Rendezvous with Rama, Trapped in Space, etc.
*       collaborations
*       A.I. and computers
*       alien encounters and first contact
*       astronomy, space and space travel
*       Big Dumb Objects
*       the destiny of life and mind in the universe
*       the far future
*       futurology
*       politics
*       religion, the transcendent and the paranormal
*       science and scientists
*       world government
*       Young Adult fiction
*       the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for achievements in space and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation awards

Please submit four-hundred-word abstracts and a hundred-word biography to AndrewMButler42@gmail.com and P.A.March-Russell@kent.ac.uk by 30 July 2017.
The conference will be co-organised by Dr Andrew M. Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Dr Paul March-Russell (University of Kent). Further details will be available from https://2017aclarkeodyssey.wordpress.com/

Talk - The Strange Spaces of Chinese Science Fiction

Dr Sarah Dodd (University of Leeds)
5pm, October 26, 2016 (Wednesday) FAMES Rooms 8 & 9 

The history of science fiction in China reaches back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when utopian narratives of an idealised future played their part in calls for a revolution in fiction, and it has remained deeply entangled with the ideas and politics of a changing China. This talk will provide a whistle-stop tour of key movements in the history of Chinese SF, before considering the recent 'new wave' of writers, whose work is gaining awards and recognition not only in China but also in English translation. Looking at the work of Liu Cixin, whose Three Body trilogy is the first Chinese SF novel to be translated into English, and a number of other writers who are finding success in short stories, I will discuss the ways in which these works explore themes of hybridity, haunting and boundary-crossing – all tied in with ideas of contested space, whether of the body, society or the universe itself. Finally, to add another dimension to the discussion, I will look at the space of the SF field, considering the role of magazines, awards and fandom, as well as the key figure of author and translator Ken Liu, who has played an important role in bringing Chinese SF to English-speaking audiences, paving the way for recent ventures such as the collaboration between Clarkesworld magazine and Storycom International Culture – the first time an English-language genre magazine has made translation a regular part of every issue.

Speaker Dr Sarah Dodd is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. She teaches courses on Chinese literature, history and cinema, and her research focuses on representations of the monstrous in classical and contemporary Chinese fiction. She is co-organiser of the projects Writing Chinese: Authors, Authorship and Authority (http://writingchinese.leeds.ac.uk/) – which aims to create a network of authors, translators, academics and others working in the field of contemporary Chinese fiction – and Reading the Fantastic (http://reading-the-fantastic.tumblr.com/), which brings together early career researchers looking at various aspects of the intercultural fantastic.

Wells at the Whipple

Festival of Ideas: Space Oddities

5pm - 8pm, Friday 21st October. Drop in, 15+.

Before Virgin Galactic, before the Space Race, even before the Wright Brothers' first flight, the human imagination was sending astronauts to the Moon. Explore early manifestations of space travel in film, radio, fiction and popular culture. Robert Lloyd Parry will be reading from Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and H G Wells' The First Men in the Moon, we'll be showing George Melies' Le Voyage dans la Lune, playing Buck Rogers radio shows and demonstrating objects that depict early theme park ride 'A Trip to the Moon'.

H.G. Wells readings

12pm - 1pm, Fridays in November. Ticketed, ages 16+, free.

Robert Lloyd Parry specialises in retelling the classic tales of the late 19th century, works by the likes of M R James, Arthur Conan Doyle, and - in this the 150th anniversary of his birth - H G Wells. Four of his best short 'scientific romances' will be read in the eminently atmospheric surrounding of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science.

Friday 4th November - The Crystal Egg

Friday 11th November - The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes

Friday 18th November - The New Accelerator

Friday 25th November - The Sea Raiders

Attendance is free but must be booked by emailing hps-events@lists.cam.ac.uk

Article - Bodies electric

Post by Iwan Rhys Morus up at Aeon here.

Online Exhibition - Fred Hoyle

St John's College has launched an online exhibition about Fred Hoyle: Science and Literature Reading Group members might particularly be interested in the 'Hoyle the Writer' page.

Job - Research Associate, ‘Unsettling Scientific Stories'

‘Unsettling Scientific Stories: expertise, narrative and future histories’ is an AHRC funded project which investigates how the history of the future was written over the course of the 20^th century. It examines the different ways in which the sciences were used by novelists, commentators, politicians and academics to envision the future history of western society, and how the public both informed and responded to these conceptualisations.

Working under the supervision of the project’s PI, you will take a lead role in developing one of the project’s key outcomes: an interactive imaginative participant ethnography, housed within the project’s website. This innovative methodology combines data generation with public engagement, building on the popular appetite for speculative fiction to encourage a two-way dialogue between the project and wider expert and lay publics. Additionally, you will cooperate closely with other project members (based in Newcastle and Aberystwyth) in order to develop the other project components, including other elements of the project website, be lead author on at least one peer-reviewed article arising out of the project’s work and assist in the organisation of conferences and meetings linked to the project.

You will need a PhD in the history/sociology of science, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience and you will need to find reading (or writing) SF an absorbing, fascinating and exciting pastime.

The salary will be £30,434 per year and the position is available for a period of up to 30 months.

Closing date: Midnight on Monday 23 November 2015

Further details here.

CFP - Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities

As part of the Wellcome Trust funded project 'Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities', the BMJ Group journal Medical Humanities will be publishing a special issue guest edited by Dr Gavin Miller, University of Glasgow. We invite papers of broad interest to an international readership of medical humanities scholars and practising clinicians on the topic ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.

Science fiction is a fertile ground for the imagining of biomedical advances. Technologies such as cloning, prosthetics, and rejuvenation are frequently encountered in science-fiction stories. Science fiction also offers alternative ideals of health and wellbeing, and imagines new forms of disease and suffering. The special issue seeks papers that explore issues of health, illness, and medicine in science-fiction narratives within a variety of media (written word, graphic novel, theatre, dance, film and television, etc.).

We are also particularly interested in articles that explore the biomedical ‘technoscientific imaginary’: the culturally-embedded imagining of futures enabled by technoscientific innovation. We especially welcome papers that explore science-fiction tropes, motifs, and narratives within medical and health-related discourses, practices, and institutions. The question – how does the biomedical technoscientific imaginary permeate the everyday and expert worlds of modern medicine and healthcare? – may be a useful prompt for potential authors.

For further details on call and project: http://scifimedhums.glasgow.ac.uk/journal-issue/
Twitter: @scifimedhums
Email: arts-scifimedhums@glasgow.ac.uk

Call for suggestions - novels, politics and technology

Georgina Voss has a post on the Guardian website today asking for suggestions of 'the best fiction books with something to say about the politics of science and technology'. Read it (and contribute) here.

Stories about science: exploring science communication and entertainment media

A research symposium at the University of Manchester
Thursday 4 and Friday 5 June 2015
We are now in a golden age for science in entertainment. Academy Award winning films such as Gravity and The Theory of Everything, and television ratings titans like The Big Bang Theory, have proved that science–based entertainment products can be both critically acclaimed and financially successful. In fact, many high profile scientific organizations including the US National Academy of Sciences and the Wellcome Trust in the UK now believe that science communication can, and perhaps should, be both informative and entertaining.

These groups have embraced movies and television as legitimate vehicles for science communication by developing initiatives to facilitate scientific involvement in the production of films and television programs. Science communication scholarship on entertainment media has been slow to catch up with the enthusiasm shown by these scientific organizations, as science communication studies of science in mass media still predominantly focus on news media and factual documentaries.

This Wellcome Trust-funded two-day symposium brings together scholars from across disciplines to explore the communication of science through entertainment media in order to uncover new ways of approaching, understanding, and theorizing about this topic. Our exciting range of speakers will explore science communication and entertainment media from a variety of disciplinary and global perspectives as it is practised and experienced by a diverse array of publics.

The event will run from Thursday 4 to Friday 5 June 2015 and is organized by the Science and Entertainment Lab research group within CHSTM, comprised of David A. Kirby, William R. Macauley, and Amy C. Chambers. There is no cost for attending the symposium, but spaces are limited.

Please contact the organizers if you are interested in attending, or if you would like further details: storiesaboutscience@manchester.ac.uk

Ninth Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass in Science Fiction Criticism 2015

Friday 17 July to Sunday 19 July 2015

**Applications remain open, on a first come first served basis**

 

 

The SFF Masterclass involves three days studying texts supplied by three class leaders. It is a great way to broaden your critical perspectives, sharpen some critical tools, and to make contacts with other people writing on SF and Fantasy. The class leaders are drawn from professional writers, academics and fans, and this is a great opportunity to learn from people experienced in their craft.

 

Anyone interested in writing seriously about science fiction and/or fantasy, at whatever level they are in their careers, is welcome to attend. This includes not just critics and reviewers, but historians and other scholars. Those who have attended past Masterclasses are also welcome to apply (though we will prioritise applications from those who have not been previous students).

 

Price: £200; £150 for registered postgraduate students. 

 

The Class Leaders for 2015 will be: 

 

Pat Cadigan, multiple Clarke and Hugo Award-winning author of Synners and Fools, and Official Queen of Cyberpunk.

Nick Lowe, BSFA Award-winning critic and writer of Interzone's 'Mutant Popcorn' column.

Graham Sleight, Hugo Award-winning Managing Editor of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia.

 

Further details here.

 

CFP - International Conference on Science and Fiction

Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, September 2-4, 2015.
Vilanova i la Geltrú, Biblioteca-Museu Víctor Balaguer, September 5th, 2015.

'Science and Fiction: A Creative Exploration of Real and Fantastic Worlds', is an International conference hosted by the Catalan Society for History of Science and Technology and the Catalan Society for SF and Fantasy. The main goal of the conference is to analyze and discuss the relations between science and fiction (literature, theatre, cinema, arts…), introducing them in the topics of the Catalan academic environment.

Topics proposed
Science & Fiction. 2. SF in university academics. 3. SF and genre writing. 4. SF in the international scene. 5. SF outside the books.

Proposals should include an abstract of 200 words, the author’s name, a short CV, and a tentative title. Please submit abstracts via e-mail to inscripcions.CienciaiFiccio@gmail.com by March 31st, 2015.

The official languages of the Conference are English and Romance languages.


Further details here.

Report - Histories of the Future workshop

Very interesting write-up here of a recent workshop on Histories of the Future.

Reproduction on Film - Outlaws

This term sees the fourth 'Reproduction on Film' series, 'Outlaws', organised by the 'Generation to Reproduction' group in the HPS department. Full details here.