Pull Up a LogThe Edinburgh International Science Festival invited Shoreline of Infinity to team up with them and bring an Event Horizon to this year’s Festival – we were honoured, and delighted to accept.
As someone who remembers the first Edinburgh Science Festival in 1989, and who has regularly attended events throughout the last 29 years, this invite means a lot to me.
Naturally, this calls for a special issue of Shoreline of Infinity, building on the back of our special issue for last year’s Edinburgh Book Festival.
The event is titled: “Can Science Fiction Save Us?” This theme is dear to Shoreline of Infinity, and is one of the reasons we started the magazine. As we say on our website:
Why the Shoreline of Infinity?
Because that’s where we are. Humankind has trampled our way across the lands, and now we are mooching about on the sands, squinting out across the Ocean of Infinity before us. And we don’t know what to do.
Help is at hand.
Science Fiction has always asked the big questions, more so than in any other form of literature. Where have we come from? Where are we going? Where do we want to be? What’s going to happen? How will we cope? What’s the story?
This special issue looks at some of those questions. We have contributions from Anne Charnock and Paul McAuley who participated in the Science Festival event. We looked through the Shoreline of Infinity back catalogue and selected stories by Leigh Harlen, Ian Hunter, Megan Neumann, Michael F Russell, Guy Stewart, Davyne DeSye and Victoria Zelvin – alas we don’t have the room for others we could have chosen. We put out a call and invites for stories, and were presented with tales of wonder from Jane Alexander, Charlie Jane Anders, Eric Brown, David L Clements, Tim Major, Jennifer R Povey, Juliana Rew, Holly Schofield, Adrian Tchaikovsky – thanks folks!
Our poets joined in with pieces from Ken MacLeod, Colin McGuire, Peter Roberts, Marge Simon, JS Watts – take a bow, people.
Jane Yolen receives special thanks for responding to our call, and by return of email sent us a freshly crafted poem, ‘Can SciFi Save Us?’ which we present to open proceedings.
And the short answer to the question “Can Science Fiction Save Us?” is, of course, “Yes.” But we have to get those with the power to lift their sights beyond the next vote, and those with the levers to look beyond the source for their next million dollars, and act. The tools are available now—science and science fiction. As we also say on our site:
And there’s no doubt scientists have been influenced by SF, as much as science is a source of inspiration for SF writers.
Our last word goes to one of the greatest visionaries in science fiction, Arthur C Clarke who wrote back in 1970:
“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”
Noel Chidwick
Editor-in-Chief
Shoreline of Infinity
April 2018