Thursday 14th to Monday 18th August, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention – LonCon 3 at ExCel London Docklands.

Arachne Press founder and author Cherry Potts is on two panels,

Liechester Square: Getting London Wrong
Thursday 14th August 19:00 – 20:00, Capital Suite 9 (ExCeL)
If there’s one thing you can guarantee about the reaction to any piece of SF set in London, it’s that British fans will delight in nit-picking the details: you can’t get there on the Piccadilly Line! So who are the worst offenders? Whose commodified Londons do we forgive for the sake of other virtues in their writing? Do we complain as much about cultural errors as geographic ones, and if not, why not? And given London’s status as a global city, is it even fair to claim ownership of its literary representation?
Alison Scott (Moderator), Leah-Nani Alconcel, Cherry Potts, Mike Shevdon, Russell Smith

We Can Rebuild You
Sunday 17th August 10:00 – 11:00, London Suite 2 (ExCeL)
SF medicine regularly comes up with “cures” for disabled bodies — from Geordi LaForge’s visor to the transfer of Jake Sully’s consciousness in Avatar — but the implications of such interventions are not always thought through as fully as we might hope. How does a rhetoric of medical breakthroughs and scientific progress shape these stories, and shape SF’s representation of lived physical difference? In what ways can SF narratives address dis/ability without either minimising or exaggerating such difference?
Cherry Potts (Moderator), Neil Clarke, Tore Høie, Helen McCarthy, Marieke Nijkamp