Tomorrow from 5:30 to 6:30 I shall be chairing a panel at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. It will feature Ken MacLeod, Chris Priest and Jane Rogers, and the title is: What is the Lure of Dystopia. Here’s the blurb:

Welcome to the world of the dystopia: of government and society gone nightmarishly wrong. From 1984 to The Handmaid’s Tale, this image has been a gripping cautionary force. Ken MacLeod (Descent), author Chris Priest (Adjacent) and Jane Rogers (The Testament of Jessie Lamb) join chair Cheryl Morgan to explore fiction’s greatest nightmare visions and their enduring appeal.

I know that not many of you are likely to be at Cheltenham, but if there’s any chance of you being there please do come along. It isn’t often that such a major festival has clear SF&F programming and we need to support them when they do.

Hopefully there will be some back channel action for those of you who can’t attend. The hastags are #cheltlitfest for the Festival, and #dystopias for the panel. I’ll be tagging everything with both.

If you want to suggest questions for me to ask the panel, please do so below (or tweet me tomorrow). Here are a few themes we’ll try to cover:

• What is dystopian fiction? How is it different from post-Apocalyptic fiction?
• Are certain types of dystopian themes popular in certain time periods?
• Are modern dystopias anti-left, anti-right or something else?
• Are dystopias written by straight-white folks different from those by non-straight-white folks?
• If we enjoy reading/writing dystopias, what does this say about us?
• Does dystopian fiction do harm or good?
• Why do publishers appear to use “dystopia” rather than “science fiction”?

And if you can’t make it there tomorrow but can do Friday 10th, you could go along and see A Celebration of Sci Fi and Fantasy, featuring Ben Aaronovitch, Joe Abercrombie, Mitch Benn, Sarah Pinborough and journalist David Barnett.