Additional panel at LonCon3
I’ve been asked to step in last-minute to moderate another panel at LonCon3
Reimagining Families (Thursday 11:00)
In a 2013 column for Tor.com, Alex Dally MacFarlane called for a greater diversity in the way SF and fantasy represent families, pointing out that in the real world, “People of all sexualities and genders join together in twos, threes, or more. Family-strong friendships, auntie networks, global families… The ways we live together are endless.” Which stories centre non-normative family structures? What are the challenges of doing this in an SF context, and what are the advantages? How does representing a wider range of family types change the stories that are told?
Cherry Potts (moderator)
Jed Hartman
Laura Lam
David D Levine
Rosanne Rabinowitz
The other panels I am on are:
Liechester Square: Getting London Wrong
Thursday 19:00 – 20:00, Capital Suite 9 (ExCeL)
If there’s one thing you can guarantee about the reaction to any piece of SF set in London, it’s that British fans will delight in nit-picking the details: you can’t get there on the Piccadilly Line! So who are the worst offenders? Whose commodified Londons do we forgive for the sake of other virtues in their writing? Do we complain as much about cultural errors as geographic ones, and if not, why not? And given London’s status as a global city, is it even fair to claim ownership of its literary representation?
Alison Scott (Moderator)
Cherry Potts
Leah-Nani Alconcel
Mike Shevdon
Russell Smith
We Can Rebuild You
Sunday 10:00 – 11:00, London Suite 2 (ExCeL)
SF medicine regularly comes up with “cures” for disabled bodies — from Geordi LaForge’s visor to the transfer of Jake Sully’s consciousness in Avatar — but the implications of such interventions are not always thought through as fully as we might hope. How does a rhetoric of medical breakthroughs and scientific progress shape these stories, and shape SF’s representation of lived physical difference? In what ways can SF narratives address dis/ability without either minimising or exaggerating such difference?
Cherry Potts (Moderator)
Neil Clarke
Tore Høie
Helen McCarthy
Marieke Nijkamp
