{"id":3018,"date":"2014-08-06T15:02:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T15:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=3018"},"modified":"2014-08-06T15:40:13","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T15:40:13","slug":"paul-march-russell-at-the-loncon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2014\/08\/06\/paul-march-russell-at-the-loncon\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul March-Russell at LonCon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Paul March-Russell<\/a>, from the Department of Comparative Literature<\/a>, is one of the active participants at LonCon, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention<\/a> to be held 14-18 August at the ExCel centre in the London docklands.<\/p>\n

The World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, is an international event for the entire science fiction community, including fans, writers, artists, editors, academics and dealers.\u00a0 The Worldcon embraces all forms of science fiction, from the written word to film, television, comics, anime and gaming. The first Worldcon was held in 1939, and it has been held annually since 1946. This is the third time London has hosted the event.<\/p>\n

Paul, who is editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0spoke about his involvement: ‘I am delighted to be involved in LonCon3 because it will be a rare opportunity to meet so many people engaged in sf and fantasy. LonCon3 promises to be one of the largest Worldcons ever – it’s a testimony to the vitality of British sf, and its place in world culture. Fittingly, the theme of this year’s academic programme is “Diversity”.’<\/p>\n

Paul will be chairing three academic panels and participating in two roundtable discussions over the weekend:<\/p>\n

\u2018Religion, Spirituality and the Occult in Literature\u2019
\nSaturday 16 August, 15:00-16:30
\nThere will be three presentations: \u2018Spirituality and Syncretism in Pierre Bordage\u2019s Novels\u2019, \u2018Phyllis Gotlieb\u2019s Sunday\u2019s Child<\/em> and the Alien Apocalypse\u2019 and \u2018Horrific Insinuations and Jose Saramago’s Dabble in Occult in his Biblical Narrative, Cain<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018The World at Worldcon: The State of British SF\u2019
\nSaturday 16 August,\u00a0 16:30-18:00
\nAt the last British Worldcon, the genre was (arguably) still in the British Boom, and the New Weird and New Space Opera were hot topics. How does the British market look today? Which writers have shaped the UK field in the last decade?<\/p>\n

\u2018Why Are Alien Languages Inherently Human? An Experiment\u2019
\nSunday 17 August, 11:00-12:00
\nThis special session will examine constructed languages (or \u2018conlangs\u2019, such as Klingon, Dothraki or Esperanto) and discuss what conlangs can tell us about how we perceive and evaluate natural languages. In the first part of the session the audeience will be able to take part in a live experiment on the perception of languages.<\/p>\n

\u2018Different Views of London\u2019
\nSunday 17 August, 13:30-15:00
\nThere will be three presentations: \u2018London Death Drives: The Destruction of London in SF Film\u2019; \u2018”Dismantling the Impossible”: London, Metafiction and Time Travel in F\u00e9lix J. Palma’s The Map of Time\u00a0and The Map of the Sky<\/em>\u2019; \u2018The Street Where You Live: Home Addresses in Fantastic London\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Darkening Garden\u2019
\nSunday 17 August, 16:30-18:00
\nJohn Clute’s The Darkening Garden <\/em>(2007) argues for horror as a core mode of twenty-first century fiction. It proposes a narrative \u2018grammar\u2019 for horror stories that progresses from \u2018sighting\u2019 through \u2018thickening\u2019 to the \u2018revel\u2019 and then \u2018aftermath\u2019. What implications does this structure have for our understanding of horror, as a commercial genre and as a literary form? What works escape its grasp, and why?<\/p>\n

LonCon can be booked for single days or all five days, with discounts for those aged 26 or under. For details how how to book, please see the webpage here:
\nhttp:\/\/www.loncon3.org\/memberships\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Paul March-Russell, from the Department of Comparative Literature, is one of the active participants at LonCon, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention to be … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":3020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18583,124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3018"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3024,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3018\/revisions\/3024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}