Recent happenings
I managed to drop the new phone and the screen cracked and broke. This is despite it having 'Gorilla Glass' which is touted as unbreakable. Fortunately I have insurance on the contract, Orange Care delivered a new handset the next morning.
I ran a freeform/tabletop crossover event at Warwick Scifi on the last tuesday of term. The game went well, it can cope with 11-32 players, in the end there were 15 players and 5 Refs. I was surprised to be awarded a pocket watch with a chain on it during the game wrap up by the President of the society; A retirement present for services to Scifi. I was most moved and touched by this, being twice as old as everyone else there they didn't have to give me the time of day but I appear to have been recognised for my contribution.
I attended the Out of this World exhibit at the British Library with syntheticbrain for a few talks. They have an exhibition of important texts, audio and films in the basement of the Library which is worth seeing. A theme of the exhibition and some of the speakers has been to play down the notion of Science Fiction and raise up Speculative Fiction in its place. Some of the first works of SF come from Rome with 2AD being the earliest date on record. Travel writing about imaginary lands is a key element of SF and notable writers are Swift, Cyrano de Bergerac and Voltaire. During the talks China Mieville and Brian Aldiss both argued for Speculative Fiction over Science Fiction. It is character that moves us and drives us to read stories and it is the emotional connection that engages us. We may enjoy the use of Science in these stories but we have come for the Speculation, the incurable human desire to ask and find that which touches us on a personal level. Speculative Fiction has been alive and well for 2000 years while Science Fiction is a marketing term, a category for Booksellers and Film Studios.
You can listen to a couple of talks in the Podcasts section. China Mieville and others are in 'Out of this World: Why science fiction speaks to us all' while Cory Doctorow, William Gibson and others are in 'Who owns the Story of the Future?' I hope and trust that the library will allow more of the talks onto their podcast feed.
I ran a freeform/tabletop crossover event at Warwick Scifi on the last tuesday of term. The game went well, it can cope with 11-32 players, in the end there were 15 players and 5 Refs. I was surprised to be awarded a pocket watch with a chain on it during the game wrap up by the President of the society; A retirement present for services to Scifi. I was most moved and touched by this, being twice as old as everyone else there they didn't have to give me the time of day but I appear to have been recognised for my contribution.
I attended the Out of this World exhibit at the British Library with syntheticbrain for a few talks. They have an exhibition of important texts, audio and films in the basement of the Library which is worth seeing. A theme of the exhibition and some of the speakers has been to play down the notion of Science Fiction and raise up Speculative Fiction in its place. Some of the first works of SF come from Rome with 2AD being the earliest date on record. Travel writing about imaginary lands is a key element of SF and notable writers are Swift, Cyrano de Bergerac and Voltaire. During the talks China Mieville and Brian Aldiss both argued for Speculative Fiction over Science Fiction. It is character that moves us and drives us to read stories and it is the emotional connection that engages us. We may enjoy the use of Science in these stories but we have come for the Speculation, the incurable human desire to ask and find that which touches us on a personal level. Speculative Fiction has been alive and well for 2000 years while Science Fiction is a marketing term, a category for Booksellers and Film Studios.
You can listen to a couple of talks in the Podcasts section. China Mieville and others are in 'Out of this World: Why science fiction speaks to us all' while Cory Doctorow, William Gibson and others are in 'Who owns the Story of the Future?' I hope and trust that the library will allow more of the talks onto their podcast feed.