Our July event began with our good friend, Justin Newland. He gave us excerpts from two separate works.

The first excerpt was from his published novel, The Genes of Isis. This is from a section later in the book where the Apocalypse is well in progress and our heroes have fled Egypt for sanctuary in Babylon.

Excerpt two is from the start of a work in progress, the novel set in Ming Dynasty China from which Justin read the prologue at the Open Mic.

Headlining July was a new name to most of us: Virginia Bergin. She is a Bristol-based writer of YA science fiction. Her third novel, Who Runs The World?, has recently been published by Macmillan. It is set in a world in which a virus has rendered human males all but extinct and the world is run by women. Naturally it is a far better place. Or is it?

The Q&A went on rather a lot because that’s what happens when I get to talk with someone about feminism. I certainly found the discussion with Virginia interesting, and I’m looking forward to reading her book. Hopefully she’ll be on my radio show in the autumn and we can dig into the issues a bit more deeply.

There was discussion of apocalypses and their attraction for readers, particularly teenagers. Given that the announcement that The Doctor would be regenerating as a woman had been made the previous day, we also discussed whether science fiction had been ruined forever and the world of Virginia’s novel was now inevitable. For reasons that will be obvious once you have listened to the podcasts, there was also some discussion of pornography.

In the announcements we congratulated Jo Hall, Roz Clarke and Pete Sutton for their places on the British Fantasy Awards short lists, and wished Emma & Pete Newman best of luck in the Clarke and Hugos.

We had a new voice recorder for this event. It has a better directional microphone and therefore should do a better job of eliminating background noise. Of course we do need to get used to it, which is why the sound on the first of Justin’s readings is a bit off. Hopefully we’ll be better in future.

The next Fringe meeting will be on August 21st. It will feature Lucy Hounsom and Dolly Garland.