The Scotsman reports that the Edinburgh International Book Festival has sold more than 150, 000 tickets in advance of the opening day tomorrow, a new record for the Book Festival. Unfortunately the EIBF is not terribly good at putting forward many SF&F writers (except for younger readers – perhaps they are trying to say something), normally managing to miss the genre out for the most part (despite there being so many Scottish-based top writers in the field).
However this year they do have Messrs Charlie Stross and Ken MacLeod on Friday 25th from 7.30pm to 8.45 pm discussing ‘Science and Fiction’, which is described thus:
“How and why do novelists use science in their fiction? Is fiction a way of helping the public understand some of the concepts and advances in the ever-changing scientific field? Join two leading science fiction writers of enormously inventive narratives to discuss this fascinating coming together of two different worlds.”
I imagine this will be a pretty interesting discussion (although I can’t help but notice the article claims low prices have helped sales with the dearest adult ticket now being £7, while the programme clearly has this event – and others – pegged at £8). Certainly if you are starved of SF&F sustenance during the world’s biggest arts festival then the Ken and Charlie double act looks to be a good ‘un. Ken recently finished the manuscript for his next novel, the Execution Channel, which Charlie has described as one of Ken’s best – given how highly I rate Ken’s work that means it must be superb and I can’t wait to get hold of it.
The SF writer with a mighty knowledge of single malts, Iain M Banks, will also be attending, reading from a work in progress (entitled Matter). I do like the way the EIBF programme describes Iain “whose unstoppably fertile imagination has given us some of the most startling books of recent Scottish literature, including science fiction.” Hmmmm, I do like the ‘including science fiction’ part… Am I just being too sensitive or do you detect a slight put-down for the genre there? Anyway Banksie will be appearing on Wednesday 16th at 8pm. And for those of us with a cartooning bent the great Guardian cartoonist (and one of the UK’s finest I think) Steve Bell will be talking on Politics and Satire on Sunday 13th from 6.30pm
August 15th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Literary Festival in Looking Down Nose at Science Fiction shocker!