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31 August: Reading List — Imagining Disaster: Contemporary Art X Science Fiction by Mike Pinnington

1 September: Imagining Disaster: Science Fiction X Contemporary Art by Mike Pinnington

2 September: The SFnal by Roger Luckhurst

3 September: Science x Fiction: The Scientific Imagination and Science Fiction by Glyn Morgan

4 September: Invitation to Space: On Sun Ra’s Arkestral Mission by Stephanie Bailey

Find out more about each text in the series below.

Reading List — Imagining Disaster: Contemporary Art X Science Fiction

By Mike Pinnington

A selection of science fiction novels, anthologies, short stories and non-fiction. Suggested by the producer, contributors and audience of the Imagining Disaster events programme at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 30 August-5 September 2021, this reading list operates as a starting point for thinking and for conversations around its themes.

Imagining Disaster: Science Fiction X Contemporary Art

By Mike Pinnington

‘Science Fiction was always about more than cheap special effects and pulpy storylines.’ Mike Pinnington on why contemporary artists increasingly turn to the genre as a space to mobilise, and rethink the here and now.

Mike Pinnington is a writer and editor based in Liverpool. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of visual arts and cultural commentary publication, The Double Negative. His writing has appeared in international publications, including The Art Newspaper, Art Quarterly, ArtReview, Ocula and byNWR, amongst others. He is currently writing a book about Science Fiction and Contemporary Art.  

The SFnal

By Roger Luckhurst

‘It is a habit of mind, a kind of apprehension of the world that estranges what we know by tipping it into the future.’  In this essay, Roger Luckhurst explores the meaning, mood and porous borders of the science-fictional.

Prof. Roger Luckhurst has written cultural histories of telepathy, corridors and science fiction. He lives and works in London, where he teaches at Birkbeck College.

Science x Fiction: The Scientific Imagination and Science Fiction

By Glyn Morgan

From H. G. Wells and Jules Verne to Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin – debates about what science fiction is and isn’t have raged since its inception. Here, Glyn Morgan takes a closer look at the genre’s relationship with science.

Dr. Glyn Morgan is an honorary researcher at the University of Liverpool where he completed his PhD thesis on speculative fiction and the Holocaust. He is now a curator at the Science Museum in London. He is the author Imagining the Unimaginable: Speculative Fiction and the Holocaust (Bloomsbury, 2020) and co-editor of Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2019).

Invitation to Space: On Sun Ra’s Arkestral Mission 

By Stephanie Bailey

‘That night in 2015, I understood Sun Ra as a spacemaker.’ Stephanie Bailey revisits the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra and why, with tech billionaires striking out into space, it’s crucial that we heed the message.

Stephanie Bailey is a writer and editor from Hong Kong.