#BFIVoyager
Announcing the winner of the BFI Voyager short story competition
Drum roll please – we have a winner for the BFI Voyager Short Story Competition! We’re extremely excited to be able to let you know that the winner is Les Wood’s A DISTANT FEELING. This is a beautiful and poignant story about two souls who find each other… Read More
Margaret Atwood Twitter Q&A with Francesca Haig and fans
For those of you who were unfortunately living under a rock (or away from social media) this weekend, we’re delighted to tell you that our virtual festival #BFIVoyager was out of this world. We had some fantastic events across Twitter, Facebook and here on the blog, all of which… Read More
Rewriting the Script: Laura Liddell Nolen (@LauraLLNolen) gives 3 Reasons YA Sci-Fi Creates Spectacular Female Characters – #BFIVoyager
Ray Bradbury wrote that Science Fiction is the art of the possible. What are the limits of mankind’s abilities, and what would happen if we reached them? Or, better yet, removed some of those limits? Or, to draw from Mr. Bradbury’s imagination, what if we made them worse? Sci-fi reimagines,… Read More
Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe in Infographics Part 4 – #BFIVoyager
To explore the science behind science fiction, we have collected together some of the most illuminating infographics from Prof Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen’s brilliant WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE, published by William Collins. Click on the image to see it in more detail. Sub-Atomic Particles Our understanding of the structure… Read More
Female Characters in YA Science Fiction, Christi J. Whitney (@ChristiWhitney) – #BFIVoyager
Males have traditionally dominated science fiction literature, but strong female protagonists are flourishing these days, especially in the realm of YA. Dystopian settings allow for more heightened moments of character building—a female embracing her weaknesses and strengths in order to decide her own fate and become an agent in changing… Read More
The soundtrack to James Smythe’s The Explorer (@jpsmythe) – #BFIVoyager
James Smythe’s The Explorer has been compared to literary sci-fi greats like Kazuo Ishiguro and JM Coetzee, as well as incredible films like Gravity and Duncan Jones’ Moon. Here he shares the soundtrack behind this tense, claustrophobic and completely gripping book. Listen along with him here… Read More
Ingrid Seymour (@Ingrid_Seymour) on why the YA genre needs to keep pushing gender boundaries – #BFIVoyager
Compared to the not-so-distant past, commercial Sci-Fi now incorporates a significant number of female protagonists between its pages – a very notable fact in the young adult category. As a female YA author, I couldn’t be more pleased. Dystopia, with characters like Katniss and Tris, has enjoyed the most benefits. Read More
In memory of ‘Crash’, by Beatrice and Fay Ballard – #BFIVoyager
To celebrate the re-publication of J.G. Ballard’s ‘Crash‘ with a new introduction from Zadie Smith, 4th Estate asked Beatrice and Fay, the author’s daughters, to collect their memories of their father at the time he was writing the novel. They replied with two equally touching pieces. Thank you, Beatrice… Read More
Peter Newman (@runpetewrite) on Contact! – #BFIVoyager
For me, science fiction is all about contact, where human beings interact with new technology or new species and how each then changes the other. Growing up, science fiction shaped me in many ways, small and large. Star Wars altered the way I thought about Lego long before… Read More
My view of ‘Tomorrow’s World’, Jason W. LaPier (@JasonWLaPier) – #BFIVoyager
One of the themes of the #BFIVoyager festival is ‘Tomorrow’s World’, so I’d like to tell you about the novel I have coming out next summer. Unexpected Rain takes place several centuries into the future. Near-light-speed travel has enabled humans to colonize a few nearby star systems, which turns out… Read More
Letters from Ray Bradbury – #BFIVoyager
We asked Dawn Sinclair, HarperCollins’s archivist, to rummage through our Glasgow vaults for any SF-related treasures they might be hiding. She surfaced with these fantastic letters from the dearly departed Ray Bradbury, which we now share with you for the #BFIVoyager Festival. The first letter, concerning the publication of Bradbury’s 1969 short story… Read More
Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe in Infographics Part 3 – #BFIVoyager
To explore the science behind science fiction, we have collected together some of the most illuminating infographics from Prof Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen’s brilliant WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE, published by William Collins. Click on the images to see them in more detail, and look out for more WONDERS… Read More
An interview with writer and director David Cronenberg (Part II) – #BFIVoyager
The long-awaited publishing of Consumed gave Candice Carty-Williams a chance to talk to its writer, the director and king of venereal horror, David Cronenberg. In this wonderfully in-depth yet satisfyingly broad three-part interview, they speak about the book, Cronenberg’s processes, how similar writing prose is to directing, film, existentialism, the advancement of technology, and nausea. Read More