Future Voices of Scottish Science Fiction and Fantasy

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The Future Voices of Scottish Science Fiction and Fantasy Network will privilege under-represented Scottish voices of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) working across different media (literature, gaming, film, art), with an emphasis on BAME and LGBTQ+ communities as well as practitioners with disabilities. In these dramatic times, we ask how creative practitioners imagine future worlds and respond to rapidly-changing global circumstances (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic), concerns and anxieties (e.g. as expressed in the Me Too or Black Lives Matter movements) through SFF writing/art/creativity. The Network will be the first step towards building a strong collaboration between academics, creative practitioners, fans, and stakeholders, with a view to contributing to the agenda and conversations leading up to Worldcon 2024 (the annual international gathering of SFF fans and creative practitioners since 1939) in Glasgow. The Network will analyse the ways in which contemporary SFF practitioners visualize the future, build worlds, and bring their diverse voices to momentous global changes through the lens of SFF creativity. Concurrently, the Network will examine how the work and voices of these practitioners and their fans can shape and be shaped by current theoretical debates on intersectionality, inclusivity, and diversity.The Network will organise:1. a series of 4 activities: 2 online panels and 2 roundtable discussions over one year, each followed by 2. curated theory-informed written responses from emerging SFF academics, published online, open access, and 3. follow-up asynchronous discussions by practitioners, fans, and academics using the Discord server of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic (CFF).These activities will be hosted by the CFF at the University of Glasgow, the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon, and Staffordshire University.The themes of the activities, each featuring 4-5 SFF practitioners moderated by an academic, will be:- Panel 1: Inclusive worldbuilding in SFF across different media- Roundtable 1: Representation of change and the future in SFF worlds and narratives- Panel 2: Representation of social issues in SFF worlds and narratives- Roundtable 2: Challenging the past (canon and history) in SFF narrativesPanels will include short presentations followed by a Q&A with attendees; round-tables will begin with short statements and will facilitate a more dialogic approach to the theme between speakers, before inviting questions from attendees. These two formats will facilitate both presenting and debating new ideas among creative practitioners, academics, and fans. Each activity will be presented via webinar, live-streamed and captioned in order to allow accessible engagement from a larger international audience, and recorded so that it can be serve as a resource in the future.After each activity an academic will respond with a written piece bringing together practitioners' perspectives and current critical/theoretical frameworks. This response will be: 1) attempting to nuance the issues raised by each preceding activity; 2) aiming to push the boundaries of critical/theoretical intersectional SFF research via learning from practitioners' and fans' own artistic choices, concerns, and preferences. These pieces will be published on the network website as an open access resource, inviting further responses, tapping into the existing pool of academics, SFF practitioners and fans invested and actively participating in CFF and Glasgow Worldcon activities (both have large mailing lists, very active social media, and highly engaged online communities via Discord). After all activities are completed, the Network will publish written outcomes online, outlining core guidelines surrounding SFF and diversity compiling the core arguments and debates from each panel. The Glasgow Worldcon is committed to considering these recommendations as they plan their programming and protocols.