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The Centenary of Arthur C. Clarke

16 December 2017 sees the centenary of the birth of science-fiction writer and science populariser Arthur C. Clarke. Last weekend, scholars and critics came from around the world to reflect upon his work at a conference organised by Dr Andrew M. Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Dr Paul March-Russell (University of Kent).

Blade Runner Rebooted

Philip K. Dick scholar Andrew M. Butler keeps his expectations low and braves the new Blade Runner film.

2017: A Clarke Odyssey – A Conference Marking the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Canterbury Christ Church University is hosting a conference to mark the centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke

2017: A Clarke Odyssey
A Conference Marking the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK
Saturday 9 December 2017

Keynote Speakers:
Stephen Baxter
Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most important British sf writers of the twentieth century – novelist, short-story writer, scriptwriter, science populariser, fan, presenter of documentaries on the paranormal, proposer of the uses of the geosynchronous orbit and philanthropist.

We want to celebrate his life, work and influence on science fiction, science and beyond.

Professor Charlotte Sleigh will open proceedings by looking at Clarke as an sf fan in the interwar years in London and how this intersected with his interest in science and its communication. Award-winning author Stephen Baxter will round out the event with an examination of Clarke’s non-fiction and how this positioned him as a significant public figure.

Our international conference speakers will address novels such as Childhood’s End, 2001: A Space Odyssey (book and film) and Imperial Earth, looking as issues such as transhumanism, Buddhism, terraforming and sexual politics. They will make connections to sf writers including Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Olaf Stapledon and Liu Cixin, plus Star Trek. We will also discuss the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Cost: Waged: £65
Unwaged and students £50
(Including lunch and refreshments)

To register please click here.

Conference organisers: Dr Andrew M. Butler (andrewmbutler42@gmail.com) and Dr Paul March-Russell (P.A.March-Russell@kent.ac.uk).

We would like to acknowledge the support of Serendip (https://www.clarkeaward.com/).

For more details see our blog at https://2017aclarkeodyssey.wordpress.com/

Doctor Who?

Senior lecturer Andrew M. Butler considers the reaction to the casting of the first woman to be the star of Doctor Who.

On Sunday afternoon, the BBC tried to break the internet.

Research Seminar: 18 January 2017: Andrew M. Butler on Star Wars and Kevin Smith

Senior lecturer Dr Andrew M. Butler has been invited to contribute a chapter to a book on transmedial Star Wars and is presenting the work in progress.

Canterbury Christ Church University
School of Media Art and Design
Research Seminars 2016-2017

18 January 2017
4.15pm-5.30pm

Invoking the Holy Trilogy: Star Wars in the Askewniverse
Speaker: Dr Andrew M. Butler, Canterbury Christ Church University

 

Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) were among the first of many blockbusters that (in Stephen Paul Miller’s words) attempted to eat their audiences and created the tentpole film phenomenon that dominates mainstream cinema to this day. They were a huge influence upon the taste and habits of Generation X and the directors who emerged in the 1990s.
 
Star Wars-fan Kevin Smith was one such director and he both inserts references to such films in the dialogue of characters in his films and makes allusions to the tropes of the films. The eponymous Clerks and Mallrats of his early features are clearly fans of the original trilogy, Episodes IV-VI, and argue about the minutiae of the films. By the time of Clerks: The Animated Series (2000-1) and Clerks II (2006), the prequel trilogy of Episodes I-III was being released and the characters have a more ambivalent reaction to the franchise. In addition, by the time of Clerks II, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (2001-3) challenged the centrality of the trilogy to the geek psyche. In this paper I want to examine the impact of Lucas’s studio auteurist franchise on Smith’s quasi-independent auteurship and the developing critique of film viewer as worker in relation to the commercial property of Star Wars.
 
 
 
Andrew M. Butler is author of Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s (2011), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2014), as well as books on Philip K. Dick, Cyberpunk, Terry Pratchett, Postmodernism and Film Studies. He is coeditor of Extrapolation. He is the non-voting chair of judges for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. In his spare time, he investigates real ale and collects shiny trousers.
 

Powell Building – Pf06
North Holmes Road Campus
Email Dr Andrew Butler – Andrew.Butler@canterbury.ac.uk – for further details

— All welcome —

Research Seminar: 1.00pm-2.15pm, 23 November 2016 – Refereeing and Peer Review: A Roundtable Discussion

A session discussing the intricacies of peer review and refereeing — the gatekeeping of academic publication.

 

Canterbury Christ Church University
School of Media Art and Design
Research Seminars 2016-2017

23 November 2016
1.00pm-2.15pm

Refereeing and Peer Review: A Roundtable Discussion
Speakers: Professor Shane Blackman, Dr Andrew M. Butler and Dr Agnes Gulyas (Canterbury Christ Church University)

One of the key things that underlies academic publication is the process of peer review – your fabulous manuscript is sent off to other probably overworked academics who will read your work for no money and help decide whether it will be published, will need to be revised or will end up somewhere else for to gain your intellectual glory.

How does this process work? How should you deal with it? And more to the point, how do you become a gatekeeper too? Come along to find out and share your own experiences.
Professor Shane Blackman is an associate editor of Journal of Youth Studies and is on the editorial board of Sociology, among many others. Dr Andrew M. Butler is an editor of Extrapolation, has peer reviewed for several journals and is still smarting from the report on his last book. Dr Agnes Gulyas is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and of the Executive Committee of the Media, Communication and Cultural Association (MeCCSA).

Powell Building – Pf06
North Holmes Road Campus, Canterbury
Email Dr Andrew Butler – Andrew.Butler@canterbury.ac.uk – for further details
— All welcome —
Feel free to bring your lunch!

Chevalier Q + A

Dr Andrew M. Butler will be taking part in a post-film discussion of Chavalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2015) at Trinity, Tunbridge Wells, on 27 September 2016 at 8.00pm.

A Greek film about six competitive men on a fishing trip aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of the Aegean Sea, Chavalier is a dark comedy about masculinity. Butler will be joining Sam Marlow to discuss the history, influence and relevance of dark comedic films and their importance to our society in the bar after the screening.

Sam Marlow is a writer, director and producer who works on feature films, shorts, web series, stage and page. He owns and runs a number of small production companies and is the Artistic Director of the Electric Lantern Festival, a week-long film and video festival that takes place in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Andrew M. Butler, senior lecturer in the School of Media Art and Design at Canterbury Christ Church University, is author of Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s (2011), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2014), “Human Subjects/Alien Objects? Abjection and the Constructions of Race and Racism in District 9” in Alien Imaginations (2015), “Sleeping/Waking: Politicizing the Sublime in Science Fiction Film Special Effects” in Endangering Science Fiction Film (2015), as well as books on Philip K. Dick, Cyberpunk, Terry Pratchett, Postmodernism and Film Studies. He is coeditor of Extrapolation. He is the non-voting chair of judges for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. In his spare time, he investigates real ale and collects shiny trousers.

Tickets for the screening are available here.

 

Andrew M Butler to Deliver Pratchett Keynote

Dr Andrew M. Butler, one of the first academics to write about Terry Pratchett, is to deliver one of three keynote addresses at a Dublin symposium devoted to the works of the popular comic fantasy authors.

To be held at Business School Building (First Floor), Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin on 28 May 2016, “Reading and Writing in a Participative Culture: A Symposium on the Life and Work of Terry Pratchett” is an event that will include papers on Pratchett’s adult, young adult and children’s fiction. Joining him in delivering keynotes will be Professor (Emeritus) Edward James (University College Dublin) and Professor Farah Mendlesohn (Anglia Ruskin University), with whom he coedited the Hugo-Award nominated essay collection Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature in 2000 and a second, revised and expanded, edition in 2004. He also wrote the Pocket Essential Terry Pratchett (2001) and edited An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett (2007).

“Terry Pratchett wasn’t taken seriously by the literary establishment in the mid-1990s when I first had an article published on him,” Dr Butler recalls. “He wrote fantasy, he was funny and — perhaps worst of all — he was popular. I think that’s precisely why he should be taken seriously. I was at a conference about the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival and death and it suddenly struck me that they should really be talking about Pratchett. Death was one of his most popular recurring characters.”

Dr Butler’s keynote, “The Buckinghamshire Shaman”, revisits some of the ideas he explored in his first article. “I was trying to find out what made him funny and why that’s important,” Andrew explains. “Reading Pratchett led me to Bakhtin’s ideas on comedy, and that still feeds into my teaching today.”

When Sir Terry Pratchett died on 12 March 12 2015, from a chest infection caused by early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Andrew was asked to write an obituary for the Los Angeles Review of Books. “It was still a shock, even though we’d known he’d die too soon. But I’m grateful for scores of titles he left us with.”

The symposium is organised by Dr Áine McGillicuddy (Dublin City University) and Jane O’Hanlon (Poetry Ireland) with funding from Poetry Ireland, Dublin: UNESCO City of Literature, Dublin City University, the ISSCL and CYCLOPS.

For more details see here and to attend see here