A Dream of a Low Carbon Future: New Graphic Novel for 2016

View of York's streets in 2150

In 2013, I wrote a post about the graphic novel project 'Dreams of a Low Carbon Future', coordinated by James McKay, a comic artist and manager of the doctoral training centre for low carbon technologies at the University of Leeds. The launch of the novel was accompanied by an exhibition at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, featuring selected items from Leeds University Library's Science Fiction Collection in Special Collections. Following the success of the first novel, James is now working on a second novel, to be launched at the Thought Bubble Comic Art Festival on the 5-6 November 2016.

Rather than multiple visions, this second novel focuses on one dream of a low carbon future, viewed through the eyes of a young girl in the year 2150. The story unfolds in the form of a history lesson, which goes through the changes to the environment that have taken place in the last 100 or so years, particularly in the northern region of England. For example, the caption for one frame (see above) reads:

Lazing in the sun, the port of York straddles the estuary of the River Ouse where it opens out into the saltmarshes of the Bay of York. Once Caer Ebrauc to the Celts, Eboracum to the Romans, Eoforwik to the Saxons, Jorvik to the Vikings, and finally York, its days are numbered, with scientists predicting it will be fully under water within a century. Already, although a thriving port with floating leisure complexes, large numbers of residents have had to evacuate, to be replaced by Da Hai You Min (Sea King) settlers in kychys (floating communities), gaining a living in the ocean of reeds that line the bay.

The inevitable submersion of York under water (by 2250) is not portrayed negatively here. James's thinking is that our current challenge is to attempt to imagine environmental change positively, in contrast to the dystopian tropes that pervade disaster movies.

While coming up with solutions to the environmental problems humanity faces is no easy task, the novel explores such possibilities, drawing from the contributions of school children, students, sustainability researchers and professional artists. The emphasis is primarily on low-carbon technologies but also on changes to the way people live, and is less a plan or roadmap to the future than an imaginative response to future eventualities. Difficult as it is to think of ourselves living and being otherwise, the project shows how stories and SF narratives can help us to try. 

Landscapes of Tomorrow: J.G. Ballard - University of Leeds Event

Date and Time: Saturday 3 May 2014, 10am-4.30pm

Venue: Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds



This workshop-conference, 'Landscapes of Tomorrow: J.G. Ballard in Space and Time', which took place earlier in the month, was co-organised by myself and colleagues Dr Richard Brown and Chris Duffy (University of Leeds). Here, I'll try and give an overview of what was a thoroughly interesting day of research sharing and lively discussion. The theme - space and time - was deliberately broad to allow for the inclusion of papers exploring diverse aspects of Ballard's writing, including physical and psychological zones of transit, modern consumerism and post-cultural spaces. Being in the Gallery, Ballard's visual art influences were also a central focus of the conference. Papers covered topics including:

* Non-places of Modernity
* Collective Memory
* Space and Mediation
* Romanticism
* Modernism and the History of the Future
* Desire, Class and Consumer Millenarianism
* Invisible Literatures
* Inner Space and Geometries of the Imagination

The keynote speaker, Dr. Jeanette Baxter (Anglia Ruskin University), started off the day with her paper, ‘Fascisms and the Politics of Nowhere in Kingdom Come’. After presenting Giorgio De Chirico’s little-known, interwar novel Hebdomeros (1929) as a narrative of 'nowhere' that resists all sense of orientation, she spoke about how in the novel, Kingdom Come (2006), Ballard takes up, and re-conceives, the 'nowhere' motif as part of his surrealist analysis of contemporary history, politics and culture. Within the surrealist imagination, an imagination rendered artistically and politically out-of-place in an emerging Fascist Europe, 'nowhere' repeats as a resonant motif for interrogating narratives of geo-political displacement, homelessness and exile. Baxter argued that fascism returns in modified forms in Ballard’s contemporary 'nowhere', from the 'soft-totalitarianism' forged by the illusion of consumerist choice, to the neo-fascist communities that commit racially-motivated acts of violence against displaced, immigrant workers.

The morning sessions 'Zones of Transit' and  '(In)visible Literatures' followed. In the afternoon, the sessions were themed around 'Consuming Futures' and 'Post-cultural Spaces', which featured a paper from PhD candidate Catherine McKenna (King's College, London), who catalogued 565 items from the Ballard estate. These will be the subject of a new book by Chris Beckett (forthcoming, 2015). An evening panel discussion, 'Ballard’s Shanghai Orientation', introduced special guest Fay Ballard, who shared recollections of her father, and spoke a bit about related influences in her exhibition 'House Clearance' (2 May-27 June 2014), at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery.

My own paper, entitled 'Ballard's Invisible Literatures', was included in the morning session and discussed the collection of ephemera known as invisible literatures, compiled during Ballard's lifetime and kept in his coal-shed:- he would describe them, aptly, as 'the most potent compost for the imagination'. They included material such as market research reports, pharmaceutical company house magazines, promotional copy, technical journals and scientific manuals. I explored the significance of these texts further and traced their influence, focusing on Ballard's time as prose editor at the journal Ambit and his own modification of Surrealist collage in The Atrocity Exhibition novel. I also raised the tentative question of if and to what extent it might be possible to reconstruct Ballard’s invisible library as an object of study.

Thanks again to the speakers, delegates and to everyone that helped to make the conference possible.

In Focus: Science Fiction - University of Leeds Event

Date: Saturday 29 March 2014

Time: 11am - 12pm

Venue: Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

To coincide with a current display, 'Dreams of a Low Carbon Future' (10 February - 31 March 2014), this discussion will highlight works from the Science Fiction Collection, held in the University of Leeds Library's Special Collections.

There will be the opportunity to see early pulp magazines, illustrated volumes and rare editions of highly influential works of SF literature. Come along to learn more about these futures past and the history of the collections. A short presentation will be followed by questions and discussion.

For directions to the Gallery, please visit: http://library.leeds.ac.uk/art-gallery-visit

The Bridges Between the Worlds

‘The Bridges between the Worlds’ by J.J. Grandville

Un Autre Monde, or Another World, is perhaps one of the most famous works by the 19th century French illustrator and caricaturist J.J. Grandville. The ‘other’ world, created by the central characters of Dr. Krackq, Dr. Puff and Dr. Hahblle, is a satirical depiction of 19th century Parisian society, full of parody and political allusions.

Later acknowledged as an influence on the Surrealists, Grandville’s illustrations could also be regarded as early representations of science fiction:- visions of the future that drew from the contemporary interest in popular astronomy. ‘The Bridges between the Worlds’ (see above), also known as ‘The Bridge over the Stars’ and ‘The Footbridge between Worlds’, is one such example. A strange fusion of industrial innovation and intergalactic exploration, there’s something instantly appealing and memorable about this image, probably accounting for why it is one of the more commonly reproduced prints from Un Autre Monde. Fortunately, an entire copy of the book has been digitised and uploaded onto Flickr, which makes for easy viewing of Grandville’s beautiful illustrations.

A copy of Un Autre Monde is held in Special Collections, University of Leeds Library, and was featured in the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery’s exhibition ‘Visions of the Future’ (4 April - 11 June 2011).

Dreams of a Low Carbon Future - New Graphic Novel Project

Artwork by James Mckay

Scientists based in the Energy Building at the University of Leeds have won £25k funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering to produce a graphic novel entitled Dreams of a Low Carbon Future. The novel will be a collaboration between scientists, artists, and school children, and will examine the issues of climate change and how we adapt our society to achieve a low carbon sustainable future.

The project is currently seeking artists and designers from the University's UGs, PGs, academics and support staff who are interested in participating in this project.

5,000 copies of the graphic novel will be printed. It will be launched at Thought Bubble Comics Festival in Leeds (23-24 November 2013), and exhibitions of artwork will be held at the Cartoon Museum London and the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery on campus in early 2014.

High profile contributors include the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Prof. David Mackay, Futurologist and author of You, Tomorrow, Dr Ian Pearson, and US environmental activist and author of Endgame, Derrick Jensen.

The project is managed by James Mckay, a professional comics artist working for 2000AD magazine and manager of the Doctoral Training Centre for Low Carbon Technologies.

Participants are invited to contribute:   

* Comic strip art   
* Single images e.g. sketches/paintings
* Text e.g. poems, stories that could be illustrated by other artists   
* Design – help design, format the book and promotional material (e.g. posters, flyers etc.)   
* Concepts – what do you think the future will look like?

Anyone with Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Futurist/comics/graphic novels interests, or with interests in the environment, technology or science in general will hopefully find this a fascinating, unusual project to be involved in.

ANY contribution, no matter how small, will be valuable. Please contact James at j.mckay@leeds.ac.uk for further information.

Brontës Forerunners of SF Fan Fiction?

In honour of the Stanley & Audrey Burton's current Brontë exhibition, 'Visions of Angria' (7 January - 23 February 2013) and the recent conference, 'Re-Visioning the Brontës', I thought I'd attempt to explore the (admittedly tenuous) link between the Brontës and science fiction. The possibility first suggested itself to me after a visit to the British Library's 2011 exhibition, 'Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it'. The show featured Brontë juvenalia, including Emily's Gondal Poems, Charlotte's The Foundling and Branwell's map of Glass Town. Of the decision to include these items in the exhibition, curator Andy Sawyer wrote:

The Brontës are well known authors with no apparent association with science fiction but their tiny manuscript books, held at the British Library, are one of the first examples of fan fiction, using favourite characters and settings in the same way as science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary 'universes' of Star Trek or Harry Potter [...] I hope the exhibition at the British Library will challenge what people think of as science fiction and show that it is not a narrow genre.

The idea that the Brontës' early writing could be viewed as a form of fan fiction is an interesting one. Many of the stories did feature their childhood heroes, including the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon (Bony), later reincarnated by Branwell as Rogue or Northangerland. The present of a box of toy soldiers to Branwell in 1826 is often cited as the initial source of inspiration for the Angrian sagas. Each sibling selected a soldier and named him after someone featured in Blackwood’s Magazine, an early literary influence on the children. The fact that these characters and environments featured so prominently in the imaginative worlds of the Brontës could be equated with a form of fandom, and perhaps also with a sort of escapism, usually more associated with fantasy than science fiction.

Autograph manuscript, 1835
by Patrick Branwell Brontë
Special Collections (Uni of Leeds) 

In the context of the exhibition, a strong connection was made between science fiction and other literary genres, indicative of a desire to make broader claims for a form that has historically fallen prey to marginalisation. Therefore, the decision to include well known literary figures such as the Brontës presents a challenge to common preconceptions about science fiction. The link to fan fiction is an acknowledgement that the genre has always had a symbiotic relationship with its readers, both shaping and being shaped by popular culture. Moreover, in the case of the Brontës, there is a cyclical aspect to the the fan fiction phenomenon, since the sisters' novels have gone on to influence many popular fan stories and re-writes, the most famous recent example being the Twilight trilogy.

However, questions remain about the potential dilution of the science fiction genre in an attempt to broaden its scope; there are unique characteristics in SF which, contrary to the escapist drive latent in some fantasy fictions, can bring societal and political issues into sharper focus. As Fredric Jameson writes: 'SF (thus) enacts and enables a structurally unique "method" for apprehending the present as history', offering us a glimpse of how our current situation arises from a particular set of cultural or historical circumstances.

The 'Visions of Angria' exhibition highlights rarely seen manuscript material written by Branwell Brontë from the Brotherton Library Special Collections. The rich and complex world of landscapes, characters and events written whilst Branwell was still a teenager, has been ‘brought to life’ by illustration students from Leeds College of Art’s Visual Communications course.

Brave New World…

A suitable opening, since this is entirely new territory for me. So first things first, welcome to the SF Forward blog, a forum for thoughts that find form through broadly science fictional themes.

The idea for the blog developed out of conversations with a friend and colleague of mine after we were involved in organising a science fiction exhibition at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery (University of Leeds). Drawing from material in the Library’s Science Fiction collection, the ‘Visions of the Future’ (4 April - 11 June 2011) exhibition explored the history of science fiction artwork, and when it finished we started thinking about ways to promote and provide access to the collection (more on this to follow). While not the largest or rarest in the country, the collection at Leeds is nevertheless an incredibly interesting resource. To give you a quick overview, it comprises over one thousand works, published from the nineteenth century onwards, representing the history and development of the SF genre.

I hope this blog will be a starting point for thinking about works in the collection but will ultimately develop beyond the collection too. So there you have it, my SF Foreword; roll on brave new worlds!