A long time ago in a place far far away called Before the Lockdown (aka Manchester, January 2020), I was invited to be a guest on the award-winning Comma Press Podcast for the opening episode of series two to help introduce the central theme for this series: FUTURES.
Listen on ITunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, or Soundcloud (embedded below).
Continue reading “PODCAST: Comma Press Podcast The History of the Future (S2:E1)”
I felt like I was gonna make this female action picture and we were going to kick through the glass ceiling and that was going to be that. We all know how naive I was.
– Rachel Talalay, director of Tank Girl (1995)
Women-made cinema is often pulled together and compared as if it is a genre – distinctive because of its creator’s gender identity rather than its content. Women directors should not just be the subject of special screenings and seasons to highlight their place in an industry that is still dominated by men. Continue reading “Women Make Science Fiction: Gender is not a genre”
This article contains spoilers for the short film The Fall (Glazer, 2019, BBC Films).
Something very strange – and more than a little scary – happened at around 10pm on Sunday, October 27. Out of the blue, viewers of BBC2 found themselves watching the latest film by British director Jonathan Glazer, perhaps best-known for the unsettling Scottish-set science fiction horror Under the Skin. Continue reading “The Fall: unsettling short film captures our fears about Brexit, Trump and an uncertain future”
Virtual assistants are increasingly popular and present in our everyday lives: literally with Alexa, Cortana, Holly, and Siri, and fictionally in films Samantha (Her), Joi (Blade Runner 2049) and Marvel’s AIs, FRIDAY (Avengers: Infinity War), and Karen (Spider-Man: Homecoming). These names demonstrate the assumption that virtual assistants, from SatNav to Siri, will be voiced by a woman. This reinforces gender stereotypes, expectations, and assumptions about the future of artificial intelligence. Continue reading “There’s a reason Siri, Alexa and AI are imagined as female: sexism”
Last week I participated in an Into Film (North) organised screening of Hidden Figures with a women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) post-screening panel discussion at the historic and beautiful Manchester Central Library. I chaired a post-screening discussion of the movie with two phenomenal women engineers – electrical engineer Dr Ozak Esu and software engineer Jessica Wong – and a room full of teenagers. It was great to see the positivity, enthusiasm, and honesty of the speakers responding to questions about workplace inequality, institutionalised discrimination, and pathways for young women into STEM.
Continue reading “Travel Back In Time and Into Film: Women scientists in Hidden Figures and Timeless”
Originally posted: June 2017
This year [2017] the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) ran screenings across the country to celebrate and highlight the history of science film Hidden Figures. I worked with Jessica van Horssen (Leeds Beckett University) to bring together interested people to view the film and discuss how the history of science, race, and gender are presented on screen. I helped to organise #HiddenFiguresParty events in the North East and gave talks and facilitated post-screening discussions in Newcastle, and in Leeds alongside Jessica – fulfilling a teenage dream of working at the glorious Hyde Park Picture House. Continue reading “Hidden Figures: Screening Hidden Histories”
Originally published: November 2017
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a virus.
In Planet of the Apes (1968) Charlton Heston faced a future of intelligent apes in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust but in the 2011 re-launch of the franchise – Rise of the Planet of the Apes – the fall of humanity follows a global pandemic that kills 1 in 10 humans whilst heightening ape intelligence. Although Rise of the Planet of the Apes falters in accurately representing the processes of science it does have a striking visualisation of the spread of the ‘Simian Flu’ – an unintended side effect of an attempt to cure Alzheimer’s disease. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an example of recent film and TV that shows that lab-engineered outbreaks have replaced the nuclear holocaust on screens as the imagined and expected end of humanity (see mid-credit sequence video below). Science and scientists are central to causing and perhaps saving humanity from extinction. Continue reading “Movies and Scientific Accuracy (Microbiology Today)”
Originally posted: September 2017
At the end of summer 2017 I was in Brighton for the annual British Science Festival having organised an event for the History of Science Section of the British Science Festival. I sang at the science festival, because of course I did, and The Conversation featured us on their podcast. They described our contribution like this: Continue reading “PODCAST: The Anthill Podcast: Science by the seaside (British Science Festival 2017)”
Originally posted: May 2016
When I started as a postdoc on the Unsettling Scientific Stories project in 2016 I was asked to produce a ‘top ten’ list of SF texts that were favourites, inspiration, and the types of works that I hoped to look at as part of the project.
This is mine: Continue reading “SF Suggestions (2016 edition)”
Originally posted: July 2015
Caryl Churchill’s postmodern play The Skriker is just about to begin its final week of a sold-out run at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre and its environmentalist message is as worryingly relevant today as when it premièred at the National Theatre twenty-one years ago. This has been a summer of headlines about record-breaking temperatures; according to scientists the Earth as a whole has experienced its hottest June and the hottest first half of the year since records began. The current climate crisis is entwined with a lengthy history of industrialisation, reckless ecological practices, and the environmental movement has been blighted by financial crisis, austerity, and a political and corporate denial of this global catastrophe. Global warming and climate change are unavoidable issues that permeate news media and increasingly fictional media. Continue reading “The Skriker: Global Warming, Eco-fairytales, and Science on the Stage”
Dr Amy C. Chambers 