Worldcons are such busy events that huge swathes of activity can take place within one without you being aware of them. I spent very little time in the academic track at Helsinki, and consequently I had no idea that a series of podcasts was being recorded. There are now five available. I’m not sure if there will be any more.

I have listened to two of them. The one with John Clute and Gary K Wolfe about estrangement is hardcore LitCrit. I think I probably need to listen to it again to follow it all. However, I can say that it has some very interesting points to make about the changing approach of science fiction to ecological disaster, and about the nature of weird fiction.

The one with Andrew M Butler and Aino-Kaisa Koistinen about gender in films and TV is also very interesting. It goes off the rails slightly when they try to talk about going outside of the gender binary, but there’s some great discussion of Wonder Woman and Doctor Who.

Two of the others look at other cultures. Aliette de Bodard and Emmi Itäranta talk about writing fiction in a second language, while Ken Liu and Stanley Chan talk their own work, which means Chinese S&F. There’s also Edward James & Jyrki Korpua on epic fantasy. All worth a listen, I think.