Yeah, I know, I have been away from the keyboard. I have been in Bristol at literary events. There’s a Festival on, don’t you know?

Last night I was at Foyles to listen to philosopher Steve Fuller who has written a book called Humanity 2.0. We got a great crowd — Foyles said 90 had booked — and an interesting evening. Fuller was in conversation with Darian Meacham and Julian Baggini, also philosophers, and the conversation ranged through a bunch of SFnal scenarios. David Roden in the audience raised the prospect that post-humans might not be nice people. (I mentioned Daleks in my tweet, but David said he was thinking of Cylons.) It is fascinating to know that lots of academic philosophers are putting serious thought into the question of how we define “human”.

I raised the point that we don’t need androids or aliens as we have a long history as a species of deciding that some amongst us are not worthy of being included in the truly human. Meacham made the very interesting point that the media and the general public tends to treat Oscar Pretorious as more “human” than Caster Semenya. That’s rather scary.

This evening I was in Stokes Croft for a performance of bits of the Kalevala by Nick Hennessy. I can’t speak for the quality of his Finnish pronunciation, but the performance was excellent.

I was also pleased to note that the venue was absolutely hopping on a Friday night. Justina Robson and I are on panel in the same venue next week. I’m looking forward to it.