Upcoming Events *Eastercon Update*

As my winter hibernation comes to end I’m stumbling like an angry bear from my cave for a few events over the next few weeks. (Actually I’m quite a chirpy bear currently, so no fear for any of the events organisers involved!)

• Saturday 10th March : I am the Science Fiction Book Doctor at Derby Central Library as part of National Science and Engineering week.

• Saturday 29th March :  Talking at the Afterfutures event in London.

• 6th – 9th April : EASTERCON! I’m on a couple of panels at this year’s British Science Fiction Association convention, including one on literary sci-fi and another on the nature of conscious (I’m the token non-materialist.) I sense intense debate in the near future…

***EASTERCON UPDATE***I’ll be on the two panels ‘What is I?’ and ‘Mainstream published SF&F”. I’m in friendly disagreement with the premise of both, so they should be lively discussions!

What is I? – Friday, 6pm
We all think we know who and what we are, but the more science delves into the nature of ‘I’ the more ‘I’ seems to disappear. Is consciousness just a figment of our brains, and if so, where does that leave us?

Mainstream published SF&F – Saturday, 1pm
It seems that more and more sf and fantasy is being published outside the genre. Is this an accurate perception, or has it always been there and we just notice it more today? What is the relationship between mainstream and genre – is mainstream science fiction and fantasy really categorically different to that published by genre imprints? What factors influence whether a title is published as mainstream or genre, and what affects whether a mainstream book is picked up by the genre community? If mainstream-published SF&F are on the increase, what does this mean for our perception of the field? Are more diverse authors published outside the genre imprints?