The SF/F Now & Irradiating the Object Conferences, organized by the Humanities Research Centre took place from 22nd August to the 23rd August 2014 at the University of Warwick in Warwick, United Kingdom. The conference covered areas like Animal Studies, Crisis and Protest, Energy and Petrofiction, Environmental Studies, Humanity 2.0, Utopia and the City; Science Studies, World Systems and World SF.
Some prominent speakers include Roger Luckhurst, Sara Wasson, Fred Botting, M. John Harrison.
The SF/F Now Conference (22nd August to the 23rd August 2014) was a 2-day international, interdisciplinary conference exploring SF, fantasy and weird, and the way they grapple with and illuminate the crucial political and social issues of the moment, the current research into the fantastic (in any medium) and the ways in which sf, fantasy, and the weird grapple with and illuminate the crucial political and social issues of the moment. The SF/F Now Conference consisted of conventional panels and a series of innovative workshops led by pairs of international specialists exploring the relation of fantastic fiction to contemporary issues: Animal Studies; Crisis & Protest; Energy & Petrofiction; Environmental Studies; Humanity 2.0; Utopia & the City; Science Studies; World Systems & World Sf. The workshops are designed to allow all participants the opportunity to benefit directly from discussion with all our attending experts.
Workshop leaders included Gerry Canavan (Marquette), Caroline Edwards (Birkbeck), Mark Fisher (Goldsmiths), Carl Freedman (LSU), Lisa Garforth (Newcastle), Joan Haran (Cardiff), Veronica Hollinger (Trent), Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck), Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin), Graeme MacDonald (Warwick), Andrew Milner (Monash), Pablo Mukherjee (Warwick), Stephen Shapiro (Warwick), Imre Szeman (Alberta), Tom Tyler (Oxford Brookes) and Sherryl Vint (UC Riverside).
Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison : 21 August 2014
A conference in collaboration with Gylphi, on one of Britain’s leading SF and fantasy writers and critics.
M. John Harrison persistently upsets distinctions between genres and between literary and popular fiction, and challenges our desire for the fantastic. His fiction – whether space opera (The Centauri Device, the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy), near-future thriller (Signs of Life), ironic post-apocalypticism (The Committed Men), weird horror (The Course of the Heart), magic realism (Climbers) or sword’n’sorcery and baroque fantasy (the Viriconium stories) – unerringly charts transformations of British social, political and physical landscapes.
The agenda-setting literary editor of Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds who thirty years later unearthed the New Weird, he is the most demanding of genre critics.
Keynote speakers: Tim Etchells (Lancaster), Fred Botting (Kingston). M. John Harrison gave a reading and participated in a Q&A session.
‘Irradiating the Object: M John Harrison’
