My LonCon 3 and Nine Worlds Convention Panels

It’s a busy August ahead! I’m delighted to be taking part on panels at two science fiction conventions in London:

LonCon 3—The 72nd World SF Convention—is being held at ExCel.

Nine Worlds GeekFest, in its second year, takes place at Heathrow.

So here are my panels and events. Please come along and say “Hello!’ It’s always great to meet readers of A Calculated Life.

Nine Worlds Geek Fest 2014

8th-10th August 2014 at The Radisson Blu Edwardian, Heathrow.

Cyberpunk: exploring society in the corporate machine age (.net)
Saturday 9th August, 10.00am – 11.15am Room: County C&D
Anne Charnock (moderator), Fabio Fernandes, Laurie Penny, Paul McAuley

New Voices: fun and fast-paced readings from the very best new writers
Saturday 9th August, 10.15pm – 11.30pm Room: Royal B
Tade Thompson, Stephen Aryan,  Stark Holburn, Anne Charnock, KT Davies, Tiffani Angus, Taran Matharu, Peter Newman, Rhiannon Thomas

LonCon 3—The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention

14-18 August, 2014 at ExCeL, London Dockland

Kaffeeklatsch
Thursday 19:00 – 20:00, London Suite 5 (ExCeL)
Join authors Freda Warrington and Anne Charnock for an informal chat and coffee!

Autographing 1
Saturday 12:00 – 13:30, Autographing Space (ExCeL)

Bridging the Gap
Saturday 16:30 – 18:00, London Suite 2 (ExCeL)
Iain Banks’ work was famously divided into ‘mainstream’ and science fiction, but this division wasn’t always applied consistently. For example, Transition was published in the UK as mainstream fiction, while in the US it was classed as science fiction, and Banks himself declared that it was ’51% mainstream’. This sort of boundary blurring can be seen in both ‘slipstream’ texts and in mainstream works that engage with science fiction. In this panel we will discuss writing that crosses boundaries – real or imagined – between science fiction and the mainstream. How has the divide been understood and characterised? How has this changed over time? Who is currently writing across this divide and to what effect?
Preston Grassman (M), Anne Charnock, David Hebblethwaite, E. J. Swift

London and Other Futures
Sunday 19:00 – 20:00, Capital Suite 8+11 (ExCeL)
Contemporary London is a world city: a vast metropolis accounting for over 10% of the UK’s population, with 300 languages spoken on its streets. How has the future imagined for London changed over time? Do the apocalypses of Richard Jeffries and John Wyndham still resonate, compared to the political paranoia of writers such as Ken MacLeod and Stephanie Saulter? Have the images we see in film and TV kept up with London’s lived diversity? What does a “London story” imply in the twenty-first century?
Nick Hubble (M), Dev Agarwal, Anne Charnock, Simon Ings, Helen Pennington

All the Traps of Earth
Monday 10:00 – 11:00, Capital Suite 8 (ExCeL)
Thinking about the long-term existence of humanity requires us to examine the relationship between our culture(s) and the physical world we inhabit. How have SF and fantasy explored this relationship — not just in terms of technology and stewardship, but by looking at the grain of daily life and work? What is the place of the “natural” world in SF and fantasy, and how is it linked to, or contrasted with, the human world?
Sam Scheiner (M), Anne Charnock, Glenda Larke, Amy Thomson, Patrick Nielsen Hayden