CFP: H. G. Wells: From Kent to Cosmopolis

An international conference to be held at the Darwin Conference Suite, University of Kent at Canterbury, England

July 9-11, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The conference marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the H. G. Wells Society in 1960 together with the centenary of Wells’s comic masterpiece The History of Mr Polly. It will take place in what Mr Polly found to be the ‘congenial situation’ of Canterbury, the Kentish cathedral city within easy reach of Folkestone and Sandgate where Wells lived in the early twentieth century and wrote some of his best-known works.

We shall examine Wells both as a novelist formed by local circumstances of his time and place, and as a thinker and social prophet who remains intensely relevant today. We aim to discuss Wells’s links to modern science fiction in all media, his imagining of worlds to come, his political, social and ecological expectations for the 21st century, and his success as an artist and controversialist both then and now.

We invite proposals for papers on all aspects of Wells’s life and writings: his science fiction, his novels and short stories, his political, sociological and autobiographical works, and his contributions to education, journalism and the cinema. In keeping with the conference title ‘From Kent to Cosmopolis’ we hope to attract contributions which relate the local to the universal in his writings and/or look at Wells’s achievements in relation to wider cultural, historical, temporal and spatial perspectives.

250 word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent by 1 March 2010 to Andrew M. Butler and Patrick Parrinder at 2010wellsconference@gmail.com

Priority booking for the conference at bargain rates is available up to 30 June 2009. Contact the Hon. Treasurer, Paul Allen, at PaulMalcolmAllen [remove and replace with at sign] aol.com

“Thoughts are the shadows of our felines - always darker, emptier and simpler

So today was the day - Marlowe and Tilda have officially been indoors for a month [well, may be not Marlowe], and it's time to start risking the big outdoors.

Toward teatime I got home and uncovered the cat flap, before taking two bags of used litter outside. I pause in the garden. Marlowe edges towards the threshold, and sniffs the world, jumps down. Is free. Behind her, Tilda, bigger but more nervous, and then there is a sprint outside. They pause on the lawn. They must have seen grass.

I dump the cat litter, and then figure I should be documenting this. The light is fading. I'm just too late.

I go to get the camera, and when I'm back - where are they? There's Marlowe, blending in with the bush, whilst Tilda investigates the fence and then behind the shed. She's gone from sight. Scary. I reach for Marlowe and pick her up, place her on the shed roof, just as Tilda appears. Marlowe leaps into the unknown.

I don't know about them - I've had enough. I get the cat food from the fridge, and put it down. Marlowe is there straight away - Tilda takes a little longer. They eat, I lock the back door. I go and watch Red Riding. I hear some scratching, and Tilda shits in the dining room. On a pile of newspapers. Thanks.

Marlowe sits at the back door, waiting for it to be gone again. Tomorrow. Before breakfast.


Pavlov's cats.

2009 Films XX-XII

( XX: Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980) )

( XXI: The Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang, 1953) )

XXII: Sarah Silverman - Jesus is Magic (Liam Lynch, 2005)

Recorded version of a couple of night of Silverman's show, with some songs as well. Recommended only if you think you might find ( "Oh God please let them find semen in my dead grandmother's vagina" funny. )

Totals: 22 - Cinema: 5; DVD: 17; Television: 0