Dr Paul March-Russell, Specialist Associate Lecturer in Comparative Literature, is co-organising a conference entitled ‘2017: A Clarke Odyssey’ with Dr Andrew M Butler from Canterbury Christ Church University to be held on Saturday 9 December 2017.
The conference will mark the centenary of Arthur C Clarke, who was one of the most important British science-fiction writers of the 20th century, and whose credentials included novelist, short-story writer, scriptwriter, science populariser, fan, presenter of documentaries on the paranormal, proposer of the uses of the geosynchronous orbit and philanthropist.
The keynote speakers will be science-fiction author Stephen Baxter and Dr Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge).
The conference organisers are currently seeking abstracts for 20-minute papers. Topics may include:
- any of Clarke’s publications
- influences on Clarke
- Clarke’s influence on others
- the Second World War
- Sri Lanka/Ceylon
- the Cold War
- adaptations to film, television, radio and comic books 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Rendezvous with Rama, Trapped in Space, etc.
- collaborations
- I. and computers
- alien encounters and first contact
- astronomy, space and space travel
- Big Dumb Objects
- the destiny of life and mind in the universe
- the far future
- futurology
- politics
- religion, the transcendent and the paranormal
- science and scientists
- world government
- Young Adult fiction
- the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for achievements in space and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation awards.
Please submit 400-word abstracts and a 100-word biography to Dr March-Russell and Dr Butler by 30 July 2017.
Further details will be available from https://2017aclarkeodyssey.wordpress.com/