Nova Mob meeting 4 June 2025 – Dr Andrew Milner on the near-future visions of Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson and his near-futures

As well as being a renowned author and scientist, Stan Robinson is one of the nicest people in science fiction.

“Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American science fiction writer best known for his Mars trilogy. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The Atlantic has called Robinson’s work “the gold standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing.” According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is “generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers.” [Wikipedia]

💥 💥 💥

Prof Milner!

“Andrew Milner (born 9 September 1950) is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Monash University. From 2014 until 2019 he was also Honorary Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. In 2013 he was Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at the Institut für Englische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin.

“Locating Science Fiction is arguably Milner’s most important, potentially paradigm-shifting, book. Academic literary criticism had tended to locate science fiction primarily in relation to the older genre of utopia; fan criticism primarily in relation to fantasy and science fiction in other media, especially film and television; popular fiction studies primarily in relation to such contemporary genres as the romance novel and the thriller. Milner’s book relocates science fiction in relation not only to these other genres and media, but also to the historical and geographic contexts of its emergence and development.

“Locating Science Fiction sought to move science fiction theory and criticism away from the prescriptively abstract dialectics of cognition and estrangement associated with Fredric Jameson and Darko Suvin, and towards an empirically grounded understanding of what is actually a messy amalgam of texts, practices and artefacts. Inspired by Williams, Bourdieu and Franco Moretti’s application of world systems theory to literary studies, it drew on the disciplinary competences of comparative literature, cultural studies, critical theory and sociology to produce a powerfully distinctive mode of analysis, engagement and argument. The concluding chapter is preoccupied with environmentalist thematics occasioned by Milner’s growing interest in Green politics.” [Wikipedia]

You are invited to a Nova Mob meeting gathered around a big TV screen at the Kensington Town Hall, for Dr Andrew Milner by Zoom:

Wednesday 4 June 2025 8.00pm – 9.00 Melbourne (7:30-8:30 Adelaide) (formal close), first floor Creative Hub.
Lift access. Stairs access. Both available.

Zoom meeting closes about 9.20pm or so.

Kensington Town Hall. 30 – 34 Bellair St
Kensington Melbourne VIC 3031

By Zoom – simulcast

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Please join us on-line!

Wednesday 4 June 2025

8.00pm – 9.30 pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time

7.30pm – 9.00pm Adelaide time

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Passcode: nova
Meeting ID: 417 758 3193

Critical Mass, Oct 16th: Speculative Insight with Alexandra Pierce

Snippets

“I believe in the importance of science fiction and fantasy to inform, explore and challenge society: where it is now,where it has been, and where it might go.”
Alexandra Pierce

Alexandra Pierce has been reading science fiction and fantasy since childhood. She did time as a book reviewer for ASiF! (Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus) and Strange Horizons, and currently reviews for Locus Magazine as well as on her own blog.
For a decade she was one third of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Galactic Suburbia. Alex co-edited two award-winning books, both with Australian indie publisher Twelfth Planet Press: Letters to Tiptree and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E Butler.

In January 2024 Alexandra launched Speculative Insight, publishing two essays a month about issues and themes in science fiction and fantasy. Born in Adelaide, Alex grew up in Darwin, moved to Melbourne for uni, and now lives in Ballarat.

In person: we are meeting once more at Kappy’s, 1/22 Compton St, Adelaide.
Turn up at 6:15 for a 6:30pm start on Wednesday, October 16th.

Zoom details for Critical Mass
Oct 16, 2024 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne/Sydney

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87224309964?pwd=pTIhAuiceNiJRIEKbikVJSAKmNQa1j.1

Meeting ID: 872 2430 9964
Passcode: 356300

Tim Winton has the Juice

Critical Mass News

“Juice … is a work of dystopian fiction, which is a sub-genre of science fiction. You heard that right: Tim Winton has written a science fiction novel. Moreover, he has embraced many of the genre’s conventions. It is exciting to see a writer of Winton’s longevity doing something new. His attempt to break new ground will be reason enough for many readers to pick up this book.

Climate change and the future

The novel is set hundreds of years in the future. Climate change has rendered large parts of the globe uninhabitable. The narrator lives with his mother in a remote outpost halfway up Australia’s west coast, where it is too hot to go outside during the day, so most activities are conducted during the night or early morning. In the summer, they must live underground for months at a time.

Much of what we would regard as modern technology has been erased by the collapse of civilisation, for reasons now mostly forgotten. However, the narrator learns that some of the powerful families from the 21st century have retained this technology and used it to retreat into hidden fortresses. He joins a resistance movement with the mission to wipe these families from the earth.”

— from Per Henningsgaard Tim Winton goes cli-fi – his dystopian novel Juice breaks new ground to face the climate emergency