First Helion International Conference
Utopia, Science Fiction, and Their Significant Others in the 21st Century
Timișoara, Romania, 8-9 May 2015
Conveners: Sorin Antohi, Mariano Martín Rodríguez, Cornel Secu
Helion, one of Romania’s oldest and most prestigious science fiction clubs, established on 18 March 1980, has a rich record of conferences, conventions (including EUROCON 1994), workshops, and periodicals (a fanzine since 1981, now online at www.helionsf.eu; a quarterly since 1986, devoted to the scholarly study of science fiction, utopia, and related areas). In 2015, to celebrate its 35th anniversary, Helion inaugurates its international conference series.
The themes of the conference series are meant to accommodate a diversity of approaches and topics, and allow for an interdisciplinary, intercultural dialogue. The next two themes are: “Utopia and Modernity: What Next?” (2016, 500 years More’s Utopia), and “Beyond Humanity as We Know It: Utopia, Science Fiction, and Biopolitics” (2017).
Indeed, what are the forms, tropes, (sub)genres, discourses one could identify starting from the 2015 conference theme? Is Utopia still alive? If not, why? If yes, how, and why? How about science fiction? How about their next of kin (fantasy, fantastic literature, any other form of speculative literature, visual arts, forecasting, etc.)? How do they function, how do they relate to the present, the future, the past, their own past? What are their regimes of historicity? These questions and others ought to be asked at this juncture, fifteen years into the 21st century. On the basis of the proceedings, we plan to publish a book in English.
