Registration for our SF & Extraction conference is now live! You can find the event page here. Please note that you do not need to ‘prove’ eligibility for whichever ticket type your purchase.

We are also very pleased to reveal the conference schedule! Please note that this is a provisional schedule, and that titles, chairs and even panel composition may change. All times provided are British Summer Time (GMT +1).

We are honoured to welcome this year’s keynote speaker, Kathryn Yusoff, Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, who will be delivering a keynote talk titled ‘Broken Earth: The Future of Speculative Pasts’.

Ahead of the conference, Gautam Bhatia spoke to co-directors Francis Gene-Rowe and Cristina Diamant for the Strange Horizons special issue on extractivism. Read the interview here.

As the conference also marks our last event with outgoing co-director Avery Delany, we will be soon launching a new call for directors.

Connect with us on Facebook via the event, our group or see our linktree for details on other platforms.

Saturday 8th October

10.30am Welcome

10.45am-12.00pm Panel Block 1

Panel 1A Human and Nonhuman Entanglements

Panel 1B Pathologising Extraction

12.00pm-1.00pm Lunch

1.00pm-2.00pm Panel Block 2

Panel 2A Rethinking the Technofix

Panel 2B Food Futures

2.00pm-2.30pm Break

2.30pm-3.30pm [Cancelled: Kathryn Yusoff Keynote] SF Shorts Screening

3.30pm-4.00pm Break

4.00pm-5.15pm Panel Block 3

Panel 3A Blue SFs/Oceanic/Coastal

Panel 3B Data/Markets/Surveillance

5.15pm-6pm Social

Sunday, 9th October

10.30am Welcome

10.45am-12.00pm Creators Roundtable

12.00pm-1.00pm Lunch

1.00pm-2.15pm Panel Block 4

Panel 4A Decolonial SF

Panel 4B Human (as) Capital

Panel 4C Ghosts of Extraction Past & Future (workshop)

2.15pm-2.45 pm Break

2.45pm-4.00pm Panel Block 5

Panel 5A Material Extraction & Energy

Panel 5B Creative Performances

4.00pm-4.30pm Break

4.30pm-5.30pm Panel Block 6

Panel 6A Sea Junk Jars (workshop)

Panel 6B Conference Discussion

5.30pm-5.45pm Closing remarks

Full schedule:

Saturday, 8th October

Block 1A: Human and Nonhuman Entanglements

10.45am-12.00pm BST

• Iuliia Ibragimova (she/her), Space-Faring Animals and Their Humans. CW: Animal cruelty
• Chiara Montalti (she/her), The Ecology of a Mermaid
• Malgorzata Kowalcze (she/her), How Far Is It From Anthropos to Areanthrop? New Materialist Considerations about The Man from Mars by Stanislaw Lem

Chair: Paromita Patronobish (she/her)

Block 1B: Pathologising Extraction

10.45am-12.00pm BST

• LYU Guangzhao (he/him), Digital Changelings: Data Surveillance and Necropolitics of the Immortals in Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy
• Diana Novaceanu (she/her), Visceral Extraction: Dual Pathologies of Planet and Patient. CW: Medical imagery, blood and viscera.
• Jamie Uy (she/her), Dragonfly Drones, Bounty Hunters, and Computer Viruses: Dystopian Technocratic Environments in Avatar/流放化身

Chair: Yen Ooi (she/her)

Block 2A: Rethinking the Technofix

1.00pm-2.00pm BST

• Anupom Kumar Hazarika (he/him), The nexus between the gendered other and technology in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape and Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s Generation 14
• Monali Chatterjee (she/her), Extractive Practices Depicted in Adrish Bardhan’s Science Fiction

Chair: Katerina Genidogan (she/her)

Block 2B: Food Futures

1.00pm-2.00pm BST

• Graham Head (he/him), Chunks, or a Tin-Opener View of Late Capitalism
• Gillian Polack (she/her), Fantasy and story: how food supports the creation of sub-genre

Chair: Cristina Diamant (she/her)

CANCELLED Kenote: Kathryn Yusoff (Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary, University of London) – Broken Earth: The Futurity of Speculative Pasts

Chair: Francis Gene-Rowe (he/him)

2.30pm-3.30pm

Block 3A: Blue SFs/Oceanic/Coastal

4.00pm-5.15pm BST

• Peggy Riley (she/her), Uncanny Intimacies: Writing Seasalter
• Frances Hallam (they/them), First contacts & nonhuman contact zones in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon. CW: Racism, colonialism, the slave trade, death.
• Teresa Shewry (she/her), ‘Making Things Look Bad’: Extraction, Humor and Science Fiction at Mauna a Wākea

Chair: Amy Cutler (she/they)

Block 3B: Data/Markets/Surveillance

4.00pm-5.15pm BST

• Katerina Genidogan (she/her), Prediction as fiction(ing), blackness and market dystopias in a temporal feedback loop
• Hugh C. O’Connell (he/him), Extraction as Essence: SF and the Prehistory of Surveillance Capitalism
• Daniel Davison-Vecchione (he/him), ‘Until the day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed’: Max Weber and climate fiction. CW: this presentation discusses the MaddAdam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood, which features such content as genocide, animal cruelty, child abuse, and trafficking.

Chair: Kim Clarke (she/her)

5.15pm-6.00pm Social 

Facilitated by LSFRC Co-Directors

Sunday, 9th October

Creators Roundtable

10.45am-12.00pm

Chair: Angela YT Chan (she/her)

Block 4A: Decolonial SF

1.00pm-2.15pm BST

• Amy Bouwer (she/her), Decolonising Reproductive Dystopias: Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God. CW: racism/white supremacy and bodily autonomy.
• Jasmine Sharma (she/her), Violating the Ecotopian Promise: Reading Colonial Extraction in Amitav Ghosh’s “The Living Mountain: A Fable for our Times”
• Diane Hau Yu Wong (she/her), Deep Alternative Futures – Temporal and Geological Perspective of Afrofuturism

Chair: Anupom Kumar Hazarika (he/him)

Block 4B: Human (as) Capital

1.00pm-2.15pm BST

• Paromita Patranobish (she/her), Discard as Extractive Zone in Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide
• Gemma Field (she/her), Ecological Assemblages as a response to development in Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide
• Sydney Paige Guerrero (she/her), Shifting Perspectives: Space Travel and Exploration in Philippine SF

Chair: LYU Guangzhao (he/him)

Block 4C: Ghosts of Extraction Past & Future

1.00pm-2.15pm BST

• A beginner-friendly creative workshop challenging genre boundaries and cultural assumptions around extraction, be it in a historical setting or a futuristic one.

Facilitated by Cristina Diamant (she/her) and Dr Sam Hirst (they/them) of Romancing the Gothic

Block 5A: Material Extraction & Energy

2.45-4.00pm BST

• Vítor Castelões Gama (he/him), Mining in the Amazon Region in Brazilian Science Fiction. CW: rape, child prostitution, slavery and genocide.
• Caio Dayrell Santos (he/him) & Luiza Quental (she/her), The Mining Desolation: Images of Loss and Mourning in Minas Gerais
• Maggie White (she/her), The Fracked Mind: Bethany C. Morrow’s Mem and the Energy Unconscious

Chair: Gemma Field (she/her)

Block 5B: Creative Performance Panel

2.45-4.00pm BST

• Amy Cutler (shey/they), ‘[dying words] More light…’ : Anti-Cinema and Black Hole Fishing
• Aily Chiu (she/her), Destiny is the Retrograde of Science Fiction
• Lorrie Blair (she/her), An artist’s response to living on a damaged planet: An Appalachian ghost story

Block 6A: Sea Junk Jars Workshop

4.30pm-5.30pm BST

• A ‘hands-on’ writing workshop about plastic, eco-grief, and monsters of all kinds

Facilitated by Peggy Riley (she/her)

4.30pm-5.30pm BST

5.30pm-5.45pm Closing

5.45pm-6.30pm Social 

Facilitated by LSFRC Co-Directors

Consider joining the team as we reopen our call for directors.

Connect with us on Facebook via the event, our group or see our linktree for details on other platforms.