I’ll be in Manchester this weekend at Eastercon (aka the British National Science Fiction Convention), enjoying all the sciffy related goodness, and being on some panels, which are:
Little-Known British SF TV Shows of the 1950s to 1970s
Saturday 17:30 – 18:30, Room 6 (Hilton Deansgate)
You might think you really know your early TV, but every week seems to bring up something new. Did you know for example that the first ever SF TV was from the BBC in 1938 – an adaptation of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R.? They probably won’t go back that far, but this erudite audience will hopefully unearth some gems.
The Definition of an Editor
Monday 11:30 – 12:30, Room 6 (Hilton Deansgate)
“An editor, without respect to genre, publication medium, market potential or previous training, is an individual who can establish a monopoly position within the minds of a sufficiently large body of contributors so that this position becomes the standard of excellence for that genre.” So wrote Algis Budrys in December 1976. Certainly SF has had a tradition of editors in that mould, from John W. Campbell onwards, but is that tradition alive today, and should it be? To what extent do we want our editors to define the field on their terms, and to what extent do we want them to recognise and bring to their fullest potential the terms being set by writers (or readers)? Is there a difference between our expectations of editors of short fiction, non fiction, and novels?
The whole programme is online and available for your perusal over here.
Lizbeth Myles 