Another Loving

Virtual Futures presents Near-Future Fictions on the theme of ‘Another Loving.’

Reproduction is the only constant in human history – from our beginnings as single cell organisms to the sexual practices we see today.
Many of our social behaviours have been built and altered by our attitudes towards reproduction and the methods of passing our genes on to the next generation. Technologies frequently manipulate this most basic of human instincts to produce new ways to sexually interact with one another.
Our authors consider the future of courtship, contraceptives, conception, childbirth, and some of the things in between.

Join us for an evening that incorporates original reading, performance and live art as Virtual Futures continues its mission to reassert the significance of science fiction as a tool for navigating the increasing technologization of society and culture.

Curated by Britta Schulte and Stephen Oram

Opening Keynote

Dr. Christine Aicardi on ‘Transforming Tomorrow with Today’s Fiction’
Over the past couple of years Dr Christine Aicardi has been researching science fiction as a force to help shape the science of the future and will be talking about her findings and considering questions such as: whose views get to be represented in the decisions that are shaping our collective tomorrow?

Christine is a Senior Research Fellow in the Foresight Lab of the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King’s College London. She originally trained as an engineer in France and worked for many years in the tech industry before returning to higher education to pursue PhD in Science and Technology Studies at University College London.

Special Guest Author

Anne Charnock, winner of 2018 Arthur C Clarke award will read an extract from her winning novel, “Dreams Before the Start of Time” from the chapter “The Adoption”

Authors & Contributors

Andrew Wallace: “The Gene Auction”
Britta Schulte: “Couple 3000”
EA Solaris: “What Really Happened at Panic Moon Station at the Turn of the First Season”
Fanny Aboulker: “What if we had a baby?”
Gary Budgen: “Ultra Love”
Jane Norris: “My Marriage at the Chapel of Material Awakening”
Mark Huntley-James: “Life Choices”
Stephen Oram: “Modified Manhood”

Curators

Britta Schulte is a PhD student at a school of computer science where she is surrounded by dreams of what technology will achieve. She is looking forward to many of these dreams coming true. But she also likes to throw a spanner in the works from time to time, hoping to get people to stop and think about what could possibly go wrong. She started writing design fiction about her PhD topic on dementia and technology, but now writes regularly on wattpad and in zines.

Stephen Oram writes science fiction and is lead curator for near-future fiction at Virtual Futures. He enjoys working collaboratively with scientists and future-tech people; currently, he’s the cultural partner in a collaborative project with scientists at King’s College, London – they do the science he does the fiction. He’s been a hippie-punk, religious-squatter and an anarchist-bureaucrat; he thrives on contradictions. He is published in several anthologies and has two published novels, Quantum Confessions and Fluence. His recent collection of sci-fi shorts, Eating Robots and Other Stories, was described by the Morning Star as one of the top radical works of fiction in 2017.