Following the success of our conference in 2022, the SFF will be organising a further two-day online event in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University on 7-8 December 2024.

The theme of the conference will be Women in the Black Fantastic and will mark the 40th anniversary of Octavia E. Butler winning both the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette.

Keynote Speakers: Nyasha Mugavazi and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

We are pleased to announce our next essay-writing competition. The award is open to all post-graduate research students and to all early career researchers (up to five years after the completion of your PhD) who have yet to find a full-time or tenured position. The prize is guaranteed publication in Foundation in 2025.

Metal and Change: Metal’s Role in an Ever-Changing World

Since its inception Metal music has been in constant flux, whether in the development of new genres and subgenres to the way that it has been perceived in society over time. Metal music and culture, to survive, need to adapt to a world constantly in upheaval, whether through changing attitudes toward the music, changes in society’s structure, or even changes in what Metal music is and how it addresses issues in the world, like COVID.  But to stay Metal it must still maintain its own identity.

Modern (Western) civilization has always assumed that there are no problems for which solutions cannot be found. Today there is no shortage of technical solutions on offer for the climate crisis, from carbon capture and storage under the North Sea through to giant high altitude aerosols which deflect the sun’s rays back into outer space. These kind of solutions require what Iain McGilchrist terms a left hemisphere worldview.