International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Deadline for Applications: Friday, February 28, 2014

No work of literature has done more to shape the way humans imagine science and its consequences than _Frankenstein_, Mary Shelley’s enduring tale of creation and responsibility. In _Frankenstein_, Shelley established the creature and creator tropes that continue to resonate with contemporary audiences and influence the way we confront emerging technologies, conceptualize scientific research, imagine the motivations and ethical struggles of scientists and weigh the benefits of research with its unforeseen pitfalls.

The Frankenstein Bicentennial Project – a global, interdisciplinary network of people and institutions headquartered at Arizona State University – will celebrate the bicentennial of the writing and publication of Frankenstein from 2016-2018 with exhibits, performances, scientific demonstrations, writing contests, film screenings, installations, public conversations and educational experiences that use the Frankenstein myth as a touchstone for science education, ethics and artistry.

From April 28-30, 2014, ASU will host a National Science Foundation-funded workshop to build a community of scholars across a wide variety of fields to collaborate on the project, to begin designing and planning public programs, intellectual endeavors and tangible outcomes like journal issues, books or performances as part of the Bicentennial celebration. We will accept at least 5 applicants to participate in the workshop, along with approximately sixty ASU faculty and invited guests. We will give preference to early-career researchers in relevant fields, but senior scholars should not be dissuaded from applying. All allowable, workshop-related travel expenses (e.g., economy round-trip airfare, 2-3 nights at the workshop hotel, transfers and meals).

If you are interested in participating in the workshop, we invite you to submit an application at http://frankenstein.asu.edu/apply. You will be asked to submit a 1-2 page CV and a cover letter discussing your interest in Frankenstein and what you could contribute to the workshop. You will also be asked to select which of our eight working groups you are most interested in:·

– Exhibits and Installations:Frankenstein and the Creation of Life·

– Frankenstein: A Critical Edition for Scientists and Engineers·

– “It’s Alive!” Frankenstein on Film·

– Monsters on Stage: Frankenstein in Theater and Performance·

– “MOOCenstein” – Frankenstein Goes Global·

– Engineering Life: Distributed Demonstrations·

– Reinventing the Dare: Frankenstein, Science Fiction and the Culture of Science·

– Bringing Nonfiction to Life: Frankenstein and Science Writing

Keynote: Professor Rob Latham (UC, Riverside): Senior Editor, Science Fiction Studies; editorial board member, The Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

University of East Anglia 31 May—1 June, 2014

Conference Organisers: Dr Mark P. Williams | Dr Jacob Huntley | Dr Matthew Taunton

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In May 1964 New Worlds #142 hits the newsstands. It is the first edition edited by Michael Moorcock and ushers in a creative, and much debated, reinterpretation of the aesthetics of Science Fiction. The “New Wave” has begun. This period of aesthetic innovation connected a great many of the pressing concerns of the day, from the apocalyptic threat of the Cold War to the potential of the Space Age, but it also preceded the concerns of subsequent generations including postmodernism, questions of identity and subjectivity, and the nature of history.

Fifty years after that landmark issue the ripples continue to be felt, washing through various modes of fantastic literature from slipstream to the New Weird, from cyberpunk to steampunk.

As a way of celebrating and acknowledging the influence of Moorcock’s tenure as editor of New Worlds starting with that seminal May/June issue, the University of East Anglia will be hosting a conference, The Science Fiction New Wave at Fifty over the weekend of 31st May – 1st June 2014.

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Professor Rob Latham is a senior editor of Science Fiction Studies and member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.  He is currently completing a book on New Wave Science Fiction focusing on its connections to counterculture movements and debates of the 1960s and ’70s.

Submissions Extended

Submissions by Monday 10th March 2014

Papers are invited on any aspect of “New Wave” Science Fiction related to New Worlds, from key writers such as J G Ballard, Hilary Baily and M. John Harrison, to Moorcock himself, or comparisons between the British and American versions of “New Wave” and their relationships with Science Fiction as a mode.  We also welcome panel proposals of up to four papers with a unifying theme.

This conference emphasises the international and culturally dialogic qualities of “New Wave” SF and is particularly interested in papers exploring how the themes and concepts which drive the ‘movement’ have been transformed in the intervening decades, and how they manifest in contemporary fiction today.

Topics for discussion might include but are not limited to:

·       Inner Space versus Outer Space

·       The “New Wave” and the “New Weird”

·       New Worlds as inspiration for Steampunk and/or Cyberpunk

·       Time Travel and Subjectivity

·       Synthesis of the avant-garde and populism in the “New Wave”

·       Apocalypse and ecological catastrophe

·       “New Wave” and transgression

Writers for discussion might include

Hilary Bailey

J.G. Ballard

Samuel R. Delany

M. John Harrison

Michael Moorcock

Pamela Zoline

Alongside other writers and artists connected with or inspired by the “New Wave”

Abstracts

PAPERS

Please send abstracts of up to 500 words, together with author’s bio of 50 words.

PANELS

Full panel proposals should either have individual paper abstracts of 250 words with a brief statement of 150 words to describe the panel, or be one abstract of around 750 words.  These should be accompanied by a 50 word biographical statement for each panellist.

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Submissions to: Dr Mark P. Williams (Mark.Williams@uea.ac.uk); Dr Jacob Huntley (Jacob.huntley@uea.ac.uk); Dr Matthew Taunton (M.Taunton@uea.ac.uk).

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Conference registration will be live from Monday 17th March 2014 onwards (see below).

further Information

Further information regarding registration opening and closing dates will be posted to the UEA Events page —

Click here or copy and paste the URL from below:

<https://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/news-and-events/events/-/asset_publisher/Ka8ymwr5xxD0/blog/the-science-fiction-new-wave-at-fifty-conference>

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ORGANISER PROFILES

Dr Mark P. Williams | https://independent.academia.edu/MarkPWilliams

Dr Jacob Huntley | https://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/people/profile/jacob-huntley

Dr Matthew Taunton | http://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/people/profile/m-taunton

Whether heroes of Antiquity such as Ulysses or Achill, biblical heroes like David or Judith, medieval folk heroes like Robin Hood or Joan of Arc, heroes of national revolution such as Danton or Marat, literary heroes and anti-heroes like Don Quijote or Faust or contemporary superheroes such as Lara Croft or Batman, heroes and heroines were always used as canvas and identificatory figures for individuals, social groups or societies as a whole.

Although a “postheroic age” is often postulated today, one can perceive a new boom of the heroic not only but especially within popular culture nowadays. Thereby, traditions are challenged by new types of heroes and hybrid forms and processes of trivialisation and diffusion stand alongside scepticism and taboos. helden.heroes.héros. e-journal on cultures of the heroic, an open-access journal published by the collaborative research center “Heroes – Heroization – Heroisms” at Freiburg University is exploring this tension between exceptionality of heroic figures and the social groups which they both stabilize and question.

Since the heroic can only ever be visible through representation and groups of followers can only be constituted through the medial dissemination of hero narratives, the second issue of the journal (summer 2014) will be concerned with the issue of “Popular Culture”. The issue will focus on figures, modes of presentation, media-specific phenomena and functions of popular representations of the heroic. What are characteristics of popular heroes? In which media are heroes and their heroic acts presented and who is selecting them? Are there connections between today’s heroes and the folk heroes of earlier times? These and similar questions should be discussed in the submitted contributions.

The Call for Papers is directed at researchers from all humanities and social sciences who are dealing with the representation of the heroic in popular media – not only of the 20^th and 21^st century, but of all ages. Contributions will be selected based on peer review and abstracts of 2000 characters (including spacing) as well as a short CV should be submitted until 31^st January 2014 to:

e-journal@sfb948.uni-freiburg.de

Fifth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung e.V.

[Association for Research in the Fantastic]

at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

September 11 – 14, 2014

In Homo Ludens (1938), his essential and seminal study that is frequently seen as the beginning of Game Studies as we understand them today, Johan Huizinga claimed an ontological connection between culture, as the quintessentially human endeavour, and play. Refuting the constantly raised accusations that play is a futile and escapist activity, Huizinga in contrast attributed it a significant function, both in its metaphorical (i.e. “it is important”), as well as its literal (i.e. “it signifies”) meaning (1971: 1). By its very nature, play opens up spaces and worlds beyond primary, everyday reality, new frameworks of meaning that are, however, not devoid of meaningful interactions with it. Culture, Huizinga argues, needs the free space of play to come into existence in the first place, to change and to adapt.

This intricate and complex web of interconnections between ludic otherworlds and the everyday life of individuals and groups is the core interest of the fifth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung e.V. [Association for Research in the Fantastic]. We have deliberately chosen the very open and inclusive phrasing “ludic imaginary spaces” for the objects of the papers, so that the range of media fitting the description is as wide as it can be: hypertext and other ludic forms of text, board- and card games, pen&paper role-playing games, live-action role-playing games (LARPs), video and computer games, alternate reality games, and gamified activities of all kinds are possible, but this list must in no way be seen as exhaustive. No matter the medium chosen, what is essential is that there is this “free space of movement within a more rigid structure” that exists “because of and also despite the more rigid structures of a system ” that Eric Zimmerman has identified as essential to any definition of play (2004: 159). The organisers of this conference also would like to send a strong message that the conflicts over interpretive authority between Ludologists and Narratologists in playable media that have hindered Game Studies since the late 1990s are a thing of the past, so papers suggesting ways to bridge this gap will be especially welcome.

As the second focus of the conference, according to its title, is on the social and cultural exchanges between the secondary, or even tertiary realities created and the primary reality in which they are in turn created, played, and observed, possible approaches to these media reach from the implicit and explicit social and cultural politics of games and playable media on both the content and the structural level, to the regimes of representation and configuration present, the psycho-social phenomena surrounding the experiences created, to the political and social regulation of playful behaviour, and beyond. Game Studies are necessarily “a multidisciplinary field of study and learning with games and related phenomena as its subject matter” according to Frans Mäyrä (2010: 6), so theoretical perspectives from the whole range of academic disciplines and contributions from those working practically in the design and creation of ludic spaces would ideally come together to provide this fifth annual conference of the GFF with a kaleidoscopic overview of the full range of possibilities, problems, and the future potential of games and playable media in negotiating between the realms of the fantastic and everyday life.

As usual for GFF conferences, there will be an additional Open Track for all papers not directly related to the conference topic to safeguard a pluralism of perspectives in our research in the Fantastic. We thus invite papers of all aspects of the fantastic for this open track.

In the same vein, the GFF is happy to announce the availability of two student grants of €250 each as support of travel arrangements to the conference for the two most interesting student projects handed in. Apply for the student grant with abstract and bionote at the address below.

If you would like to contribute your voice to such a discussion of ludic imaginary spaces, we cordially invite you to send us a 350-word abstract to gff2014@aau.at detailing your projected 20-min paper in either German or English. Please do not forget to include your contact details, as well as a short bionote. The deadline for abstracts is December 31st, 2013.

Contact:

René Schallegger

Department for English and American Studies

Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

Universitätsstraße 65 – 67

9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee / Austria

SF/F Now and Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison conferences

Warwick University (UK)

21-23 August 2014

SF/F Now (22-23 August) is a 2-day international, interdisciplinary conference exploring 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.

It will consist 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 include Gerry Canavan (Marquette), Caroline Edwards (Birkbeck), Steve Fuller (Warwick), Joan Haran (Cardiff), Veronica Hollinger (Trent), Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck), Graeme MacDonald (Warwick), David McNally (York), Charles Sheppard (Warwick), Stephen Shapiro (Warwick), Imre Szeman (Alberta), and Sherryl Vint (UC Riverside).

We invite proposals (300-500 words) for 20-minute papers or pre-constituted panels (3×20 minute papers on a related theme) on topics relating to the current state of the fantastic, contemporary research into the fantastic, or the relation of the fantastic to social and political issues, including but not restricted to those covered by the workshop titles. Please include detail of institutional affiliation and any AV requirements.

Deadline for proposals 31 March 2014. For further information, join our FB event page SF/F Now (http://on.fb.me/1ce1dfn)

SF/F Now will be preceded by a one-day conference, Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison (21 August 2014), on one of Britain’s leading sf and fantasy writers and critics. Deadline for proposals 31March 2014. Selected papers will appear in a collection co-edited by Mark Bould and Rhys Williams. Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison, in collaboration with Gylphi. For further information, join our FB event page Irradiating the Object (http://on.fb.me/1dSlKmV).

A small number of travel and accommodations bursaries will be available for students attending all three days of the conference(s). For those wishing to apply, please include a CV with you proposal.

Please address any queries and submit proposals to Rhys Williams (A.Rhys.Williams@warwick.ac.uk) and/or Mark Bould (mark.bould@gmail.com).

CALL FOR PAPERS 2/2014

Fafnir – Nordic Journal for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research invites authors to submit papers for the upcoming edition 2/2014.

Fafnir – Nordic Journal for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research is a new, peer-reviewed academic journal which is published in electronic format four times a year. The purpose of Fafnir is to join up the Nordic field of science fiction and fantasy research and to provide a forum for discussion on current issues on the field. Fafnir is published by FINFAR Society (Suomen science fiction- ja fantasiatutkimuksen seura ry).

Now Fafnir invites authors to submit papers for its next edition, 2/2014. Fafnir publishes various texts ranging from peer-reviewed research articles to short overviews and book reviews in the field of science fiction and fantasy research.

The submissions must be original work, and written in English (or in Finnish or in Scandinavian languages). Manuscripts of research articles should be between 20,000 and 40,000 characters in length. The journal uses the most recent edition of the MLA Style Manual. The manuscripts of research articles will be peer-reviewed. Please note that as Fafnir is designed to be of interest to readers with varying backgrounds, essays and other texts should be as accessibly written as possible.

The deadline for submissions is 28 February 2014.

In addition to research articles, Fafnir constantly welcomes text proposals such as essays, interviews, overviews and book reviews on any subject suited to the paper.

Please send your electronic submission (saved as RTF-file) to all three editors at the following addresses: jyrki.korpua@oulu.fi,hanna.roine@uta.fi and paivi.vaatanen@helsinki.fi. For further information, please contact the editors.

This edition is scheduled for June 2014. The deadlines for the submissions for the next two editions are scheduled at 31 May (3/2014) and 31 August (4/2014).

Science Fiction Film and Television is looking for film and TV reviewers for recent DVD/Blu-ray releases. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide copies of the films/series, but every published reviewer who works from their own copy does receive a free copy of the issue in which his or her review appears.

Our film and television reviews (1000-2000 words) are intended to fill the gap that exists between popular/journalistic reviews and the fuller critical treatment only some films/programmes will receive, often much later, in academic venues. Ideally, each review will situate the film or television show within a broader critical and/or historical framework and sketch out a critical analysis which will prove useful to students and researchers. They are reviews of the films/programmes themselves, not of the DVD/Blu-ray edition (unless there is something particularly noteworthy to which you wish to draw attention).

We are interested in reviews of the titles listed below, but if you would like to propose something else please do so – we are especially keen to cover non-Anglophone and otherwise marginalised films and television series. Check with us (mark.bould@gmail.com and sherryl.vint@gmail.com) first to ensure we have not already commissioned a review, and if you have not written for us before, please include a cv.

After Earth

Antiviral

Branded

Cloud Atlas

The Cosmonaut

Ikarie XB 1

Elysium

Pacific Rim

Space Battleship Yamato

This is the End

Upside Down

Upstream Color

The Wolverine

World War Z

Contributions are sought for an edited collection of essays on Dark Fantasy novels.

Dark Fantasy emerged in the 1960s as a direct attack on high fantasy conventions, aims, and archetypes. Dark Fantasy narratives typically subvert, challenge, or abandon crucial fantasy elements, such as utopian landscapes, the experience of wonder, the virtuous hero, the moment of “eucatastrophe”, and the satisfying resolution to plot. Dark Fantasy has recently experienced a surge in popularity, yet has received little critical attention.

We invite Dark Fantasy scholars to submit essays to an edited collection. Essays should be between 4000 and 5000 words. The aims of the volume are, firstly, to bring scholars in the field to one place—given Dark Fantasy’s diffuseness—and secondly, to offer a collection that demonstrates the ways that Dark Fantasy texts can be analysed through various critical lenses. Finally, the volume would stake a place for Dark Fantasy within studies of popular culture.

Possible topics include

• Contested definitions of Dark Fantasy (for instance, Clute and Grant’s Encyclopaedia of Fantasy [1999, 249] definition relies on what Dark Fantasy is not as much as what Dark Fantasy is)
• Dark Fantasy’s relationship to other fantasy genres
• Specific Dark Fantasy texts, such as Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone series, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, Stephen Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, Stephen King’s the Dark Tower series, as well as urban Dark Fantasy texts such as the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series by Stacia Kane, and the Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris.
• Heroes and villains in Dark Fantasy

• Appropriations of Dark Fantasy in fan fiction

Abstracts of 500 words plus a brief biography should be sent to Glen Thomas (gj.thomas@qut.edu.au) & Tyler Bartlett (tg.bartlett@qut.edu.au).

Abstracts should be received by 28 February, 2014, with final essays due by 30 September, 2014.

CFP: “Digital Science Fiction” 

Science Fiction Studies special issue 

(Guest Editor: Paweł Frelik) 

In the last few decades, digital technologies have dramatically reconfigured not only the circumstances of media production and dissemination, but also cultural genres and conventions expressed in them. Science fiction has not been immune to these changes, but their impact extends far beyond mere enhancement of sound or vision. In older media, such as science fiction film and television, special effects and non-linear editing have affected aesthetics as well as story-telling strategies and stories themselves. New sf media have emerged, too, most readily exemplified by video games.

While similar technologies have long been a thematic staple of sf, the actual arrival of digitality has proven somewhat problematic. Science fiction emerged as a predominantly narrative discourse and much of its cultural relevance has so far been ascribed to its capacity to address contemporary issues and anxieties through stories— but stories that are, ideally, plot- and psychology-driven, formally sophisticated, and conceptually complex. However, the centrality of traditionally-understood narrative in science fiction stands in direct opposition to the character of digital technology, which, as Andrew Darley noted, “endorses form over content, the ephemeral and superficial over permanence and depth, and the image itself over the image as referent.” This incompatibility has resulted in frequent denunciations of sf media forms that de-privilege narrative in favor of visuality or simulation.

Science Fiction Studies seeks articles for a special issue devoted to “Digital Science Fiction.” Both in-depth analyses of individual authors or texts and more general, theoretical discussions are invited. We are specifically interested in submissions focused on videogames and virtual environments; digital art, graphics, and illustration; electronic music; music videos; and apps, software, and cybertexts.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

• critical and theoretical tools and approaches to digital science fiction;
• digital technologies and their impact on definitions of science fiction;
• digitality and sf’s thematic preoccupations – limitation, extension, revision?
• visuality and simulation as new modes of meaning-creation;
• the politics of digital science fiction;
• digitality and the transformation of sf narrative;
• materiality of digital technologies in science fiction;
• digital transmedia texts.

Abstracts of 500 words should be submitted by 15 February 2014 to Paweł Frelik (<pawel.frelik@umcs.edu.pl>). Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by 1 March 2014. Full drafts (5,000 to 7,000 words) will be due by 31 August 2014. The issue is provisionally scheduled for November 2015.

Invitation for submissions:

Issue Number 2 – Scheduled for publication in August 2014

Deadline: February 28, 2014

Please, submit through Alambique´s submission web page.

Note:  To submit you must first create or log-in with your bepress account.  If you need assistance with this please contact the Scholar Commons Administrator.

Alambique (ISSN 2167-6577) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to scholarly research and criticism in the fields of science fiction and fantasy originally composed in Spanish or Portuguese. Alambique will accept scholarly articles written in English, however, as long as the main focus of the study concentrates on one of the Spanish or Portuguese cultural regions of the world. It will also accept scholarly articles written in Spanish, Portuguese and English that focus on relevant cultural contact areas, i.e. Catalan, Guarani, Nahuatl, etc. In addition, Alambique intends to publish old and/or largely forgotten literary works that helped forge the Spanish and Portuguese tradition in science fiction and fantasy. These texts, whenever possible, will have accompanying English translation.

Alambique currently does not include a review of books section.

Best

Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado and Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo

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Convocatoria:

Número 2 – publicación prevista para agosto del 2014

Fecha límite: 28 de febrero del 2014

Por favor, envíe artículos a través de la página web de entregas de Alambique.

Nota: Para entregar en primer lugar debe crear o iniciar una sesión con su cuenta de bepress. Si necesita ayuda, por favor póngase en contacto con el administrador de Scholar Commons.

Alambique (ISSN 2167-6577) es una revista revisada por pares, de libre acceso, dedicada a la investigación académica y la crítica en los campos de la ciencia-ficción y fantasía compuesta originalmente en español y portugués. Alambique también acepta artículos académicos escritos en inglés, siempre y cuando el enfoque principal del estudio se centre en una de las regiones culturales del español y portugués en el mundo. Alambique también acepta artículos académicos escritos en español, portugués e inglés que se enfoquen en áreas culturales de contacto como el catalán, guaraní, náhuatl, etc.  Además, Alambique tiene la intención de publicar obras literarias antiguas y/o en gran medida olvidadas que ayudaron a forjar la tradición de la ciencia-ficción y la fantasía en español y portugués. Estos textos, siempre que sea posible, tendrán una traducción acompañante en inglés.

Alambique actualmente no incluye una sección de reseñas de libros.

Saludos cordiales de

Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado y Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo