{"id":13118,"date":"2026-04-13T13:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/?p=13118"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:28:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:28:30","slug":"gifcon-2026-technologies-of-the-fantastic-paper-speaker-bios-abstracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/13\/gifcon-2026-technologies-of-the-fantastic-paper-speaker-bios-abstracts\/","title":{"rendered":"GIFCon 2026: Technologies of the Fantastic \u2013 Paper Speaker Bios &amp; Abstracts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"#Adrian-Arana-Armesto\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Adrian-Arana-Armesto\">Adrian Arana-Armesto<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Cl\u00e1udio-Augusto-Carvalho-Moura-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Cl\u00e1udio-Augusto-Carvalho-Moura-\">Cl\u00e1udio Augusto Carvalho Moura<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Prakriti-Basu-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Prakriti-Basu\">Prakriti Basu<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Caleb-Berk-\">Caleb Berk<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Dr-Francesca-Bihet-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Dr-Francesca-Bihet\">Dr Francesca Bihet<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Dr.-Pritam-Panda,-Dr.-Panchali-Bhattacharya-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#dr.-pritam-panda-dr.-panchali-bhattacharya\">Dr. Panchali Bhattacharya<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Danielle-Blee-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Danielle-Blee\">Danielle Blee<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Zuleyha-Cetiner-Oktem-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Zuleyha-Cetiner-Oktem\">Zuleyha Cetiner-Oktem<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Amelia-Chen-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Amelia-Chen\">Amelia Chen<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Michelle-Chen-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Michelle-Chen\">Michelle Chen<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Laura-Ciriza-Martin\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Laura-Ciriza-Martin\">Laura Ciriza Martin<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Alexandra-Davies-Franco-Lucio-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Alexandra-Davies-Franco-Lucio\">Alexandra Davies Franco Lucio<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Ana-Di\u00e9guez-Algaba-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Ana-Di\u00e9guez-Algaba\">Ana Di\u00e9guez-Algaba<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Michelle-Esrig-Munguia-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Michelle-Esrig-Munguia\">Michelle Esrig-Munguia<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Mar\u00eda-Ferr\u00e1ndez-Sanmiguel-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Mar\u00eda-Ferr\u00e1ndez-Sanmiguel\">Mar\u00eda Ferr\u00e1ndez-Sanmiguel<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Sophie-Fink-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Sophie-Fink\">Sophie Fink<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Erin-Finley-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Erin-Finley\">Erin Finley<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Patricia-Garc\u00eda-Santos-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Patricia-Garc\u00eda-Santos\">Patricia Garc\u00eda-Santos<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Martine-Gjermundsen-R\u00e6stad\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Martine-Gjermundsen-R\u00e6stad\">Martine Gjermundsen R\u00e6stad<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Stephen-Goldfinch\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Stephen-Goldfinch\">Stephen Goldfinch<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Timothy-R.-Granger\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Timothy-R.-Granger\">Timothy R. Granger<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Mark-Hines\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Mark-Hines\">Mark Hines<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Maliha-Iqbal\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Maliha-Iqbal\">Maliha Iqbal<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Julia-Jin-Wang\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Julia-Jin-Wang\">Julia Jin Wang<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Sara-Kabir-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Sara-Kabir\">Sara Kabir<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#\u00d6zcan-Kahraman-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#\u00d6zcan-Kahraman\">\u00d6zcan Kahraman<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Brian-Keeley-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Brian-Keeley\">Brian Keeley<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Siravich-Khurat-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Siravich-Khurat\">Siravich Khurat<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"#Ishita-Lahiri-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Ishita-Lahiri-\">Ishita Lahiri<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Nicole-Love-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Nicole-Love\">Nicole Love<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#amit-mandal-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#amit-mandal\">Amit Mandal<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Oana-Marin-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Oana-Marin\">Oana Marin<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#mimi-markham-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#mimi-markham\">Mimi Markham<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Kyna-McClenaghan-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Kyna-McClenaghan\">Kyna McClenaghan<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#anna-milon-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#anna-milon\">Anna Milon<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Alexander-Morgan-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Alexander-Morgan\">Alexander Morgan<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Mars-Nicoli-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Mars-Nicoli\">Mars Nicoli<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Dr.-Pritam-Panda,-Dr.-Panchali-Bhattacharya-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Dr.-Pritam-Panda-dr.-panchali-battacharya\">Dr. Pritam Panda<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/Punyashree-Panda,-Rrtwika-Roychowdhury-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Punyashree-Panda-rirtwika-roychowdhury\">Punyashree Panda<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Elisa-Pesce-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Elisa-Pesce\">Elisa Pesce<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Zvonimir-Prtenja\u010da-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Zvonimir-Prtenja\u010da\">Zvonimir Prtenja\u010da<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Lorna-Ross-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Lorna-Ross\">Lorna Ross<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Punyashree-Panda,-Rrtwika-Roychowdhury-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Rirtwika-Roychowdhury\">Rirtwika Roychowdhury<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Mario-Scorzelli-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Mario-Scorzelli\">Mario Scorzelli<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Saige-Severin-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Saige-Severin\">Saige Severin<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Jaya-Singh-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Jaya-Singh\">Jaya Singh<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Caighlan-Smith-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Caighlan-Smith\">Caighlan Smith<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Clarice-de-Souza-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Clarice-de-Souza\">Clarice de Souza<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Cenk-Tan-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Cenk-Tan\">Cenk Tan<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Lara-Toppel-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Lara-Toppel\">Lara Toppel<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Percy-Truong-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Percy-Truong\">Percy Truong<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#\u00d6zlem-Uslu-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#\u00d6zlem-Uslu\">\u00d6zlem Uslu<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Amanda-Weiss-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Amanda-Weiss\">Amanda Weiss<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Makayla-Wigder-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Makayla-Wigder\">Makayla Wigder<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#Dr.-Grace-A.T.-Worm-\" data-type=\"internal\" data-id=\"#Dr.-Grace-A.T.-Worm\">Dr. Grace A.T. Worm<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Adrian-Arana-Armesto\"><strong>Adrian Arana-Armesto<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:<em>&nbsp;Invisibility Is Not Freedom: Transparency, Surveillance, and Fantasy Technology in Tolkien<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper reconsiders the&nbsp;<em>One Ring<\/em>&nbsp;in J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings as a technology of transparency rather than a symbol of evil.&nbsp;&nbsp;For this purpose, this analysis draws on critical transparency studies, which challenge the assumption that visibility is inherently empowering or ethical. Thus, the paper argues that the Ring functions as a transparency device that promises enhanced&nbsp;perception&nbsp;and agency while in fact enabling asymmetrical surveillance and control. To this end, this article applies Clare Birchall\u2019s concept of&nbsp;shareveillance&nbsp;and the right to opacity, Michel Foucault\u2019s panopticon, and Byung-Chul Han\u2019s notion of transparency. The Ring&nbsp;renders&nbsp;its bearer invisible within the immediate physical world, and it simultaneously makes them hyper-visible within Sauron\u2019s perceptual and political network. Thus, this technological device contributes to oppression by exposing the wearer to a centralized power without reciprocal insight. In addition, this paper shows how the ring serves as an analogy for contemporary issues, aligning with modern critiques of datafication, surveillance infrastructures, and the false promise of transparent systems. However, paradoxically, in this work, invisibility works as a mechanism that intensifies control by obscuring the structures of power. Finally, the paper argues that Tolkien\u2019s ethical response to transparency technologies is refusal and destruction. By situating Tolkien within contemporary debates around surveillance, visibility, and power, I aim to&nbsp;demonstrate&nbsp;how fantasy articulates a sustained critique of technological transparency that&nbsp;remains&nbsp;urgently relevant.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Adrian Arana-Armesto is a predoctoral researcher and assistant lecturer at the University of the Basque Country (UPV\/EHU). The author holds a background in English Studies and a&nbsp;master&#8217;s degree in Comparative Literature from the University of the Basque Country (UPV\/EHU). He was awarded the predoctoral fellowship of the Basque Government to research American Western literature. He examines the work of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry from the perspectives of cultural studies, postcolonialism, and&nbsp;decolonialism. Finally, one of his most important publications that has been accepted for publication, forthcoming in 2026, is his chapter \u201cKnight of the Plains&nbsp;The&nbsp;Don Quixote\u2013Sancho Panza Dynamic in Larry McMurtry\u2019s Lonesome Dove\u201d for the volume Critical Insights: Sidekicks in Literature published by Salem Press.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Cl\u00e1udio-Augusto-Carvalho-Moura-\"><strong>Cl\u00e1udio Augusto Carvalho Moura<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Science-Folk and the Fantastic in &#8216;O Auto da Maga Josefa&#8217;:&nbsp;Folklorized&nbsp;Technologies and Northeastern Brazilian Folklore<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper proposes the concept of science-folk as a provisional analytical category to examine how science-fictional motifs are absorbed and re-signified within living folk imaginaries. The concept dialogues directly with Arthur C. Clarke\u2019s third law (1962), but inverts it: within science-folk, technology does not become magic; it becomes folklore. Rather than&nbsp;operating&nbsp;as rational speculation or futurist projection, elements such as extraterrestrial beings, anomalous technologies, and temporal displacement function as vernacular belief embedded in oral tradition. To explore this process, the study develops a comparative analysis of science-fictional features present in the 2018 Brazilian YA fantasy novel&nbsp;<em>O Auto da Maga Josefa (The Penance of Josefa the Hag)<\/em>&nbsp;and Northeastern Brazilian folklore, focusing on figures such as the chupacabras, flying saucers, and narratives of time travel. While theoretical models such as Darko Suvin\u2019s concept of cognitive estrangement (1979), Farah&nbsp;Mendlesohn\u2019s&nbsp;taxonomy of fantastic systems (2008), and Mark J. P. Wolf\u2019s work on imaginary worlds (2012; 2014) offer valuable insights, they do not fully account for narrative formations in which science-fictional imagery is&nbsp;folklorized&nbsp;rather than rationalized. Departing from decolonial and epistemological perspectives advanced by An\u00edbal Quijano (2000), Walter&nbsp;Mignolo&nbsp;(2011), and Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014), the analysis argues that, in Northeastern Brazilian folklore and O Auto da Maga Josefa, science-folk emerges where scientific discourse circulates fragmentarily and is retranslated through local epistemologies. More broadly, the concept&nbsp;remains&nbsp;applicable beyond colonial contexts. In this sense, science-folk is advanced as a portable analytical lens for examining how technological imaginaries are assimilated.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Cl\u00e1udio Moura is an Associate Professor of Literary Theory and Anglophone Literatures at the Federal University of Piau\u00ed (UFPI), Brazil. He coordinates the&nbsp;Center&nbsp;for Research and Extension on Fantastic Literatures,&nbsp;Interarts, and Translation Studies (NUPLIFIT) and collaborates closely with UFPI\u2019s Office for International Affairs. His academic activities encompass teaching, research, extension, and academic administration at both undergraduate and graduate levels. His research interests include fantasy (especially J.R.R. Tolkien&#8217;s legendarium) and the fantastic, speculative fiction, mythopoeia,&nbsp;intermediality, and translation studies. His work combines creative writing, literary theory, comparative literature, and pop culture, and he regularly publishes, teaches, and supervises research at undergraduate and graduate levels.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Prakriti-Basu-\"><strong>Prakriti Basu<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>From Laboratory to Lore: A Study of&nbsp;<\/em>Stranger Things<em>&nbsp;as Science Fantasy and an&nbsp;Escape&nbsp;From&nbsp;Capitalist&nbsp;Anxieties<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With its immense impact on global culture spanning a decade,&nbsp;<em>Stranger Things<\/em>&nbsp;is the most-watched series on Netflix as of January 2026. The show draws in audiences with striking portrayals of retrofuturism and vibrant depictions of the 1980s through fashion and music. The&nbsp;Starcourt&nbsp;Mall exemplifies the spectacle of capitalistic endeavour amidst rising tensions of the Cold War and creates a bittersweet longing for a time long gone\u2014a phenomenon that is described by Svetlana&nbsp;Boym&nbsp;as \u2018reflective nostalgia.\u2019 The show is an intricate illustration of the science fantasy genre, constructing the dark, untrodden realm of the Upside Down which mirrors the real world but is&nbsp;actually a&nbsp;wormhole frozen in time. The game of Dungeons and Dragons not only forms the taxonomical basis for the characters to situate the otherworldly creatures within the&nbsp;familiar, but&nbsp;also depicts the fantastic archetypes that the main characters embody. While&nbsp;Eleven&nbsp;is the \u2018chosen one,\u2019 the Mage who is endowed with superpowers, Dustin is the Bard who boosts the morale of the others in the group and harnesses the power of knowledge. The Mind Flayer, a formidable opponent,&nbsp;represents&nbsp;capitalist totality, erasing individualities and thriving through ceaseless consumption and contamination. The purpose of this study is to analyse&nbsp;<em>Stranger Things<\/em>&nbsp;as science fantasy and to illustrate how it uses both fantastic and nostalgic elements to become the viewer\u2019s escape from contemporary capitalism.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Prakriti Basu is a former student of B.A.&nbsp;English (Honours) from Loreto College, Kolkata, India. She had served as the Vice President of the Literary Society throughout the course of her third year. As an avid reader, she has always harboured a keen interest in literature. With a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai, she blends her skills in research with literary analysis and studies of social sciences as well as media.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Caleb-Berk-\"><strong>Caleb Berk<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>\u201cWe Finish this Together\u201d: Queering Utopian Imagination&nbsp;Through Magic and Technology in Netflix\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Arcane&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My paper examines \u201cHex-Tech,\u201d an amalgamation of magic and technology, in the television series&nbsp;<em>Arcane<\/em>, as a force of queer utopian imagination that disrupts the status-quo and&nbsp;facilitates&nbsp;change. The world of&nbsp;<em>Arcane<\/em>&nbsp;is drastically changed by an industrial revolution brought on by technology that harnesses and controls magic, catapulting the lead characters from socially diverse backgrounds into a new life defined by the strained relations between the wealthy, ruling class of&nbsp;Piltover, and the impoverished, working class of Zaun. I read&nbsp;<em>Arcane<\/em>&nbsp;alongside notable utopian\/dystopian theorists such as Bloch and Mu\u00f1oz.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s theoretical interpretation of queer utopia is presented as a \u201crejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world\u201d (Mu\u00f1oz 1). Similarly, Hex-Tech functions as a queer hybrid of possibility by&nbsp;facilitating&nbsp;a \u201cventuring beyond\u201d (Bloch 5) of the industrial technological status-quo. Building from this, I&nbsp;demonstrate&nbsp;how, within&nbsp;<em>Arcane<\/em>, Hex-Tech encompasses all&nbsp;facets&nbsp;of the queer utopian imagination, embodying Bloch\u2019s concept of \u201castonishment,\u201d and highlighting the real potentiality of \u201cbad utopia\u201d.&nbsp;Finally, I will show how Hex-Tech functions as a catalyst, forcing the various characters to \u201cdo something as well as say something\u201d (Mu\u00f1oz 9), portraying the potential power of queer utopian imagination and creating a new world full of unknown possibilities.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Caleb Berk (he\/him) is a scholar, world-builder, storyteller, and artist who graduated from the University of Glasgow with a&nbsp;MLitt&nbsp;in Fantasy literature in 2025. His research focuses on interpreting fantasy through interdisciplinary perspectives that critically&nbsp;analyse&nbsp;utopian\/dystopian theory, queer theory, religious studies, and community building within&nbsp;fantasy literature. His most notable work on Utopia in Fantasy was accepted to the Society for Utopian Studies 2025 Conference. Through exploring utopia and dystopia in fantasy, Caleb hopes to explore and reimagine how fantasy text reflects and can&nbsp;initiate&nbsp;real-world change.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Dr-Francesca-Bihet-\"><strong>Dr Francesca&nbsp;Bihet<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Electronic Parasites: The Programming of Fairy Belief in Steven Spielberg\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>A.I.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Steven Spielberg\u2019s&nbsp;<em>A.I. Artificial Intelligence&nbsp;<\/em>(2001) begins by inverting the traditional \u201conce upon a time\u201d fairy-tale formula, preparing viewers for an unsettling genre-merging science-fiction fairy tale of the future. The film poses questions about the nature of humanity and its relationship to both the natural and the supernatural. It is a twisted fairy tale, a skewed rendition of Pinocchio. The robotic boy David is programmed to experience human emotions and, like Pinocchio, holds a quasi-religious faith in the Blue Fairy\u2019s ability to make him human.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Blue Fairy, modelled on a kindly mother, becomes linked to the divine feminine figure of Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart. Gigolo Joe asks: \u201cWhat if the Blue Fairy&nbsp;isn\u2019t&nbsp;real at all David? What if she is magic? The supernatural is the hidden web that unites the universe. Only Orga [humans] believe what cannot be seen or measured. It is that oddness that separates our species.\u201d Her symbolism is diffused throughout the film, ever present yet never fully manifest, but nevertheless providing hope. Richard Sugg notes that fairies are \u201cvery like you, and yet, not quite like you.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp; This ambiguity mirrors the ontological status of both fairies and AI as non-human Others. This paper examines the Blue Fairy\u2019s symbolism throughout the film, arguing that AI\u2019s belief in the supernatural and fairy tale marks a threshold whereby it truly simulates human emotion and consciousness. The Blue Fairy acts as a 21st-century \u2018Turing Test\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Francesca&nbsp;Bihet&nbsp;is an independent scholar based in the Channel Islands. She completed her PhD thesis \u2018Folklore and Fairies: The History of Fairies in the Folklore Society from 1878 to 1945\u2019 at Chichester University in 2020. She has published chapters in&nbsp;<em>Magical Folk<\/em>&nbsp;(2018),&nbsp;<em>Uncanny&nbsp;Ecogothic&nbsp;Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century<\/em>&nbsp;(2020), and&nbsp;<em>Fairies: A Companion<\/em>&nbsp;(2025), as well as articles in&nbsp;<em>Gramarye, Revenant Journal<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>Preternature<\/em>. Her main research interests are fairies, Channel Island folklore, and nineteenth-century folklore scholarship.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Danielle-Blee-\"><strong>Danielle Blee<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>The Archduke\u2019s Arsenal:&nbsp;Necropolitics, Warfare, and the Industrialisation of Magic in&nbsp;<\/em>Baldur\u2019s Gate 3&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Larian Studios\u2019&nbsp;<em>Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>&nbsp;(2023) subverts the traditional boundaries of high fantasy by reflecting modern sociopolitical anxieties in its magical industrialisation. While Clarke posited that \u2018advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic\u2019,&nbsp;<em>Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>&nbsp;complicates this trajectory by effectively disenchanting the Forgotten Realms, transforming the Gate into a burgeoning military-industrial complex. This paper examines the transition of the titular city into a surveillance state under the technocratic rise of Enver&nbsp;Gortash&nbsp;and his \u2018Steel Watch\u2019,&nbsp;a network of biomechanical automatons that function as a critique of contemporary militarised security.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By Act 3, the player&nbsp;encounters&nbsp;a city defined by censorship, refugee displacement, and the pervasive presence of \u2018the Watch\u2019. Gameplay is routinely interrupted by the Watch, forcing the player into stealth or combat. Drawing on Foucault\u2019s expansion of the Panopticon, I argue that the Watch replaces individual magical agency with state-sanctioned repression. Furthermore, by uncovering the Watch\u2019s biomechanical origins (a network piloted by&nbsp;illithid-infected brains), I utilise Mbembe\u2019s theory of&nbsp;Necropolitics&nbsp;to analyse the game\u2019s magical \u2018death technology\u2019 within the military-complex. Whilst the Steel Watch Foundry is interrogated as a site of alienated labour, where magical mass production is predicated on the exploitation of marginalised Gnomes.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ultimately, this&nbsp;paper argues that&nbsp;<em>Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em>&nbsp;uses magic not as an escape, but to mirror modern debates&nbsp;regarding&nbsp;AI, data-driven surveillance, and the human cost of \u2018security\u2019. It positions the Watch as a haunting demonstration that even magic, when industrialised, can become a tool of systemic hegemony.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Danielle Blee (she\/her) is a first-year PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow, where she researches grotesque intertextualities in the fiction of Alasdair Gray. She holds an MA in Literary Studies from Queen\u2019s University Belfast. Her research interests include grotesque bodies\/states, postcolonialism, and capitalism. Currently, she is working in collaboration with the Alasdair Gray Archive to develop a table-top role-playing game inspired by Gray\u2019s fictional imagination. In her spare time, she likes thinking about her 6-foot-tall Tiefling alter ego, Fiadh, playing video games, and reading.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Zuleyha-Cetiner-Oktem-\"><strong>Zuleyha&nbsp;Cetiner-Oktem<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Mapping the Magical: Atlases, Footnotes, and the Archives of Authority<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fantasy often treats technology as spectacle, where various weapons or devices have the power to transform worlds. This paper argues instead that some of fantasy\u2019s most consequential technologies are epistemic. Not gadgets per se, but atlases, footnotes, and archives&nbsp;emerge&nbsp;as technologies of the fantastic.&nbsp;&nbsp;Through a comparative reading of Susanna Clarke\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Jonathan Strange &amp; Mr. Norrell<\/em>&nbsp;and Ihsan Oktay Anar\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The&nbsp;Atlas of Misty Continents<\/em>, this paper argues that fantasy exposes colonial and scientific fantasies embedded in archival knowledge. In Clarke\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Jonathan Strange &amp; Mr Norrell<\/em>, magic is a scholarly discipline. Footnotes create the illusion of continuity and objectivity. English magic becomes credible through documentation, closely tied to imperial power. Anar\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Atlas of Misty Continents&nbsp;<\/em>dismantles this logic. Its false maps, apocryphal histories, and chronicles reveal the archive as an unreliable instrument. Mapping in Anar&#8217;s novel manufactures empires and legitimises domination, erasing alternative ways of knowing. The atlas parodies colonial science\u2019s promise of absolute knowledge. Read together, these novels show that fantasy can destabilise the authority of archives. By pairing&nbsp;a canonical&nbsp;British fantasy with a non-Western counter-archive, this paper argues that fantasy not only reflects technological systems of knowledge but also interrogates the power structures that sustain them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Zuleyha&nbsp;Cetiner-Oktem&nbsp;is an associate professor in the field of English Literature at Ege University. Her research and teaching portfolio includes children\u2019s fantasy literature, science fiction, graphic novels, posthuman narratives, and medieval literature and culture. Among her editorial contributions are&nbsp;<em>Mythmaking across Boundaries<\/em>&nbsp;(2014),&nbsp;<em>Languages, Cultures, and Gender<\/em>&nbsp;(2016),&nbsp;<em>Nautical Narratives<\/em>&nbsp;(2025), and&nbsp;<em>Eurasian Folk and Fairy Tales<\/em>&nbsp;(2025). She is also the author of&nbsp;<em>Memory and Men: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages<\/em>&nbsp;(2022). She is a member of the New Chaucer Society and the Science Fiction Research Association.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Amelia-Chen-\"><strong>Amelia Chen<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Dwelling in the 21st-Century West of Ireland: Sublime Infrastructures in Mike McCormack\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Solar Bones&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Irish writer Mike McCormack\u2019s highly acclaimed, award-winning 2016 novel&nbsp;<em>Solar Bones<\/em>&nbsp;has been read as paying homage to the modernist experimental tradition, a moving celebration of the everyday, and a commentary on the post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. This project&nbsp;builds on the existing body of criticism to argue that McCormack\u2019s engagement with&nbsp;all of&nbsp;those elements would be better understood in his imaginations of technology, the speculative, and the fantastical, categories that form a through line in his oeuvre. Inspired by the recent infrastructural turn in critical theories, I&nbsp;analyse&nbsp;how unfinished and retired edifices are for protagonist Marcus Conway sublime, awe-inspiring technologies through which to construe alternative modernities to trouble the idea of linear, homogeneous time that buttresses the Enlightenment and neoliberal developmentalism. In addition, public utilities such as roads and water pipes serve for Marcus\u2014a civic engineer\u2014as conduits through which he situates himself in the Irish nation as an imagined community. That is, able to function pragmatically and produce affective experience in its users, infrastructure is a channel through which the state hails and&nbsp;interpolates&nbsp;individual subjects. It therefore becomes a site in which the state-citizen relationship plays out in violence and intimacy, and in which national identity and history are spatialized. Finally, drawing from Martin Heidegger\u2019s philosophy, I show that Marcus\u2019s pursuit of living in the wake of the Tiger\u2019s property boom and&nbsp;subsequent&nbsp;housing crisis is at its heart a meditation on an ethics of building that&nbsp;attains&nbsp;to the Heideggerian ideal of dwelling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Amelia Wan-Chi Chen is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Oregon. She works at the intersection of modernist and contemporary English and Irish literature, medical humanities, and museum studies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Michelle-Chen-\"><strong>Michelle Chen<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;Babel<em>\u2019s Loose Ends: Destruction and Vengeance in Academic Settings<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Language and translation become harbingers of unexpected political and personal destruction in R.F. Kuang&#8217;s bestselling&nbsp;<em>Babel<\/em>, manifesting innovative postcolonial narratives through speculative fiction and historical fantasy augmented with literary and philosophical systems-thinking. The complicity of academia in continuing oppression of marginalized groups is deftly reflected within novelistic techniques such as multiple and alternating diverse perspectives, and unmakes, in a sense, the stability of the present day as participants within scholarly locales grapple with new intimacies developed and dismantled within transnational and cosmopolitan spaces, including the metropolises of Oxford, Canton, and the symbolic city-state of Babel Tower. The novel visualizes the legacies of colonialism through melodramatic depictions of private and public violence, as well as third person intimate point-of-view drawing upon modernist legacies of stream-of-consciousness, and postcolonial&nbsp;disillusionments illustrated through frequent ruminative interiority and intertextuality. Philosophical, historical, and literary theories inspired by Hugo&nbsp;Meltzl, Itamar Even-Zohar, Ngugi&nbsp;wa&nbsp;Thiong\u2019o, Pascale Casanova, and Lawrence Venuti inscribe climaxes which&nbsp;utilize&nbsp;fictional narrative to develop solutions for the crisis of conflicts of methods in literary scholarship, world literary theory\u2019s&nbsp;centre-periphery dynamics, and problems of untranslatability. Written in Kuang\u2019s &#8220;maximalist&#8221; style for indulgent and enigmatic descriptive paragraphs, five-act structure, and fantasy magic systems, the (un)making of postcolonial thought through decisive action, dialogue, and multicultural characterization highlights the adversities and tribulations linguistics and translation bring into empire-building and resistance \u2013 while&nbsp;harbouring&nbsp;intuitive and premonitory solutions to entrenched debates pertinent to postcolonial and literary theory.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Michelle Chen lives in New York City, though her birthplace is Singapore and she hopes to return and visit someday. Her work appears in&nbsp;<em>Prairie Schooner, Deep Wild, Kinsman Quarterly: Winds of Asia, The Evergreen Review, The Statesman<\/em>, and elsewhere. She attended Girls in Icy Fjords, the Juniper Institute for Young Writers, and the Iowa Young Writers\u2019 Studio with the support of the National Society of Arts and Letters, among others. At Stony Brook University she received the Best Masters Essay Prize, Distinguished Travel Award, and AAPI Mentorship Travel Grant, and is currently a&nbsp;Master\u2019s&nbsp;student at NYU.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Laura-Ciriza-Martin-\"><strong>Laura&nbsp;Ciriza&nbsp;Martin<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>\u201cUncertainty, struggle, choice and change\u201d: The One Power and the Scientific Structuring of Fantasy in Robert Jordan\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>The Wheel of Time&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This presentation aims to analyse the construction of magic in Robert Jordan\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The Wheel of Time<\/em>, with particular emphasis on the One Power as a system governed by internally coherent, rule-based principles. More specifically, I intend to examine how Jordan\u2019s worldbuilding reconfigures magic as a discoverable and governable force rather than a purely supernatural phenomenon. Indeed, I shall argue that Jordan frames the One Power as a quasi-scientific system by emphasising balance, limitation, and causality within a post-cataclysmic world in which magic functions as a form of lost knowledge awaiting rediscovery. Particularly, the dual structure of&nbsp;saidin&nbsp;and&nbsp;saidar&nbsp;operates by shaping how power is accessed, controlled, and managed. This division&nbsp;determines&nbsp;method and risk, reinforcing the idea that the One Power is bound by systemic rules. The corruption of&nbsp;saidin&nbsp;strengthens this&nbsp;logic, presenting magical practice as vulnerable to contamination and long-term consequences. By focusing on these elements, Jordan subverts conventional fantasy tropes that rely on unbounded or miraculous magic, instead presenting&nbsp;channeling&nbsp;as a discipline that requires knowledge, training, and regulation, with artefacts such as&nbsp;ter\u2019angreal,&nbsp;angreal, and&nbsp;sa\u2019angreal&nbsp;blurring the boundary between magic and technology, functioning as remnants of advanced systems that are no longer understood. Through this approach, Jordan\u2019s The Wheel of Time reshapes fantasy worldbuilding.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Laura&nbsp;Ciriza&nbsp;Mart\u00edn is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies at the University of the Basque Country (UPV\/EHU), which explores the Gothic conventions present in George R. R. Martin\u2019s&nbsp;<em>A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>. Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a&nbsp;Bachelor\u2019s Degree in English Studies, with a minor in English Literature (2020) and a&nbsp;Master\u2019s Degree&nbsp;in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies (2023) from the same institution. She has previously&nbsp;participated&nbsp;in different conferences, most recently, the \u201c9th. International Conference on Myth in the Arts\u201d held at the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Basque Country. In 2017, Laura was named as the winner of the VIII Concurso Internacional Universitario de&nbsp;Microrrelatos&nbsp;&#8220;F\u00e9lix&nbsp;Menchacatorre&#8221; in the English category.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Alexandra-Davies-Franco-Lucio-\"><strong>Alexandra Davies Franco Lucio<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Fans&nbsp;Policing&nbsp;Fantasy:&nbsp;The&nbsp;Role of&nbsp;Social&nbsp;Media&nbsp;Networks in&nbsp;Escalating&nbsp;Pro-Censorship&nbsp;Fan&nbsp;Rhetoric.<\/em>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper will consider the role of social media in escalating aggressive and extreme rhetoric in online fandom and fantasy spaces. These spaces are interlinked, as many fantasy fans engage with their texts through fandom activity, like creating fan-authored works. This paper argues that engagement with fantasy texts and fandoms are increasingly mediated through real world technology and platforms, particularly social media sites. Social media can be a generative space to foster fan creativity and raise a text\u2019s profile. However, social media has also become a site of conflict that rewards negative and extreme stances and encourages in-group mentality through the \u201cecho chambers\u201d of online social networks. This has contributed to escalation of hostile rhetoric and a culture of increasingly censorious attitudes within some fandom spaces that limits creativity.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper is based on ongoing social media monitoring research tracing parallels between right-wing rhetoric and pro-censorship fandom discourses on Tumblr. It will take critiques of&nbsp;Archive of Our Own (a fanfiction-sharing site) and the manga\/anime Black Butler as case studies to explore the logic of a loud minority of fans who vocally oppose the representation of dark themes and tropes in fan-authored works and seek to police the activities of other fans. Fandom discourses&nbsp;represent&nbsp;the tastes and opinions of \u2018regular\u2019 fans and can therefore be predictive of broader cultural shifts that may come to&nbsp;impact&nbsp;mainstream fantasy. It is therefore important to understand these logics and the power of online rhetoric.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Alexandra Davies (she\/her) is a second year PhD student at the University of Strathclyde where she is researching parallels between right-wing and fandom discourse and rhetoric around censorship. She has presented about her research at her university\u2019s student-led symposia and conferences, including its PGR Humanities Symposium 2025, which she co-chaired and co-organised. She completed her MSc in Gender Studies at the University of Strathclyde and&nbsp;wrote&nbsp;her thesis on heteronormativity and&nbsp;mpreg&nbsp;(male pregnancy) in Teen Wolf fanfiction, which she presented at&nbsp;GIFCon&nbsp;2025! She also has a Master\u2019s and&nbsp;Bachelor\u2019s&nbsp;degree in Classics from the University of Bristol.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Ana-Di\u00e9guez-Algaba-\"><strong>Ana&nbsp;Di\u00e9guez-Algaba<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>The Seeds of Downfall: Technology,&nbsp;Knowledge&nbsp;and Nature in \u201cAldarion&nbsp;and&nbsp;Erendis\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fantasy\u2019s imagined worlds have served as a\u202fstage\u202ffor exploring the relationship between technological ambition and\u202fecological cost. But to understand the effects of technology\u202fon the natural world, we must first understand what technology does to our understanding of nature, a question that Tolkien\u202fposes\u202fin \u201cAldarion\u202fand\u202fErendis\u201d.\u202fMany readers and Tolkien scholars\u202flocate\u202fthe fall of\u202fN\u00famenor\u202fin the corruption of\u202fAr-Pharaz\u00f4n, yet the deepest roots of the tragedy lie centuries earlier, in the story of \u201cAldarion\u202fand\u202fErendis\u201d.\u202fThis narrative portrays the tension between three different approaches to technology and its uses, each based in a distinct understanding of nature.\u202fAldarion\u2019s\u202fshipbuilding\u202frepresents\u202fthe view of nature from instrumental knowledge,\u202fMeneldur\u2019s\u202fstudy of the stars is grounded in the approach from contemplative knowledge, and\u202fErendis\u2019 love of trees stems from an aesthetic appreciation of nature.\u202f\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aldarion\u2019s\u202ftechnical rationality\u202fcreates\u202fan ontological understanding of nature\u202fas\u202fa resource\u202f\u2013 something to be\u202fpossessed\u202fand exploited \u2013\u202fthat\u202fclashes\u202fwith the\u202fapproaches of both\u202fMeneldur\u202fand\u202fErendis\u202fand displaces them.\u202fRather than a conversation between the three,&nbsp;the tension results in\u202fan\u202fimpasse culminating in\u202fMeneldur\u2019s\u202fabdication,\u202fErendis\u2019 self-imposed exile and\u202fAldarion\u2019s\u202fimperialism, which\u202fsows\u202fthe seeds of\u202fN\u00famenor\u2019s\u202fdownfall. Drawing on\u202fphilosophy of technology,\u202fenvironmental philosophy,\u202fand Tolkien\u2019s own theorisations of sub-creation and knowledge, this paper examines\u202fthe effects of technology on our understanding of nature\u202fand\u202fits\u202fconsequences.\u202fUltimately, it\u202fargues that Tolkien presents technology as inseparable from how we know the world and interact with it, and that the ontological repercussions of technology have a real impact in the world as depicted in the downfall of\u202fN\u00famenor.\u202fThis contribution aims to address a gap in Tolkien studies,\u202fas his minor and unfinished works\u202fremain\u202flargely understudied, and to complicate existing ecocritical readings by arguing that the conflict at stake is not one of technology versus nature, but\u202fan ontological one.\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Ana\u202fDi\u00e9guez-Algaba&nbsp;is&nbsp;a first-year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Professor Anna\u202fVaninskaya.&nbsp;Her&nbsp;research focuses on portrayals of technology in Tolkien\u2019s work, examined through the lens of Ortega y\u202fGasset\u2019s\u202fphilosophy of technology.\u202f&nbsp;She has&nbsp;worked as a research assistant for ARG-tech at the University of Dundee, where&nbsp;she&nbsp;completed&nbsp;her&nbsp;undergraduate degree in English in 2022.&nbsp;She&nbsp;also holds&nbsp;an MSc in Translation Studies from the University of Glasgow.\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Michelle-Esrig-Munguia-\"><strong>Michelle Esrig-Munguia<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Technologies of Genre Regulation: Romantasy and the Marginalisation of Feminised Systems<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Romantasy is an emerging genre positioned between Fantasy and Romance. Its contested legitimacy reveals the gendered mechanisms through which fantasy defines technology boundaries. Despite its rapid commercial rise, Romantasy continues to face cultural and academic devaluation. This devaluation&nbsp;operates&nbsp;as a technology of knowledge production, shaping what is recognised as \u201ctechnology,\u201d \u201cfantasy\u201d,&nbsp;and \u201cserious\u201d literature.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This pattern becomes visible when technology is understood not only as machinery but as a system of classification which dictate valuation and&nbsp;perception. In this expanded sense, the fantasy genre hierarchy functions as an epistemic technology that regulates which narrative systems are legible as technological. Romantasy&nbsp;frequently&nbsp;constructs complex, rule-based infrastructures, often utilising embodied magic as bio-modification, mating bonds as biometric systems, telepathic links as communication networks, runes as coded architectures&nbsp;and magical contracts as legal-technological frameworks. These systems&nbsp;operate&nbsp;as technologies within the narrative world, yet are routinely dismissed because they are relational,&nbsp;affective&nbsp;or embodied, and therefore coded as feminised.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This understanding builds on longstanding genre scholarship that traces how feminised forms of narrative have been systematically excluded from cultural legitimacy. Romantasy makes this exclusion visible by revealing that while its internal narrative systems function as technologies, it is the external genre hierarchy that&nbsp;operates&nbsp;as the regulatory technology&nbsp;determining&nbsp;which forms of world-building are granted epistemic authority. Through this lens, the exclusion and marginalisation of feminised systems&nbsp;emerge&nbsp;as a structural act of genre regulation that shapes value, legitimacy, and the limits of what counts as technologies that matter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Michelle is an&nbsp;MRes&nbsp;researcher in English Literature at the University of Strathclyde, with an interdisciplinary focus on gender studies. Her work examines how Romantasy narratives of stigma, embodiment, and desire expose systemic violence through corporeal and epistemic othering, while feminist standpoint epistemologies illuminate forms of resistance. She is currently analysing Rebecca&nbsp;Yarros\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Fourth Wing<\/em>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<em>Empyrean<\/em>&nbsp;series as a representative case of the genre\u2019s contemporary trajectory. With over twenty years of experience as a storyteller, writer, and editor in marketing and visual media, Michelle\u2019s interdisciplinary background informs her interest in Romantasy, embodiment, and feminist literary critique.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Mar\u00eda-Ferr\u00e1ndez-Sanmiguel-\"><strong>Mar\u00eda&nbsp;Ferr\u00e1ndez-Sanmiguel<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Transhumanism,&nbsp;Immortality&nbsp;and the Political Role of Fantasy in Brandon Sanderson\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>The Final Empire<em>&nbsp;(2006)<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From our earliest myths, through the promises of most major religions, to contemporary biotechnology, humanity has consistently sought ways to stop aging and reach eternal life. Philosophers have long&nbsp;attempted&nbsp;to explain why humans resist mortality. As finitude is a defining feature of humanity, to negate death is to effectively reject being human. Transhumanist thinkers have little trouble with this: they believe\u2014or hope\u2014that thanks to technological advancement, humans will eventually transcend our biological limitations to become immortal posthumans. In this context, there has been a recent proliferation of literary texts within the range of the speculative that imagine and warn about possible unforeseen&nbsp;consequences of the radical enhancement of the human through technology. This paper will examine Brandon Sanderson\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The Final Empire<\/em>&nbsp;(2006) from the perspective of transhumanist discourse on radical life extension. I will argue that the Lord Ruler\u2019s apparent immortality, achieved through a fantastic version of genetic and technological enhancement, dramatizes the promises and perils of transcending human limits: while his immortality embodies the transhumanist dream of overcoming aging through technoscience, it also exposes the ethical and political cost of such aspirations. As I will argue, however, by juxtaposing the Lord Ruler\u2019s ageless tyranny with&nbsp;Mistborn&nbsp;Kelsier\u2019s&nbsp;sacrificial death\u2014an event that&nbsp;catalyzes&nbsp;collective resistance\u2014and with the&nbsp;Terrismen&nbsp;Keepers\u2019 enhanced memory\u2014which extends knowledge beyond individual lifespans\u2014the novel complicates simplistic boundaries between transhumanism and&nbsp;bioconservatism. In so doing, The Final Empire criticizes the transhumanist fascination with illusions of eternal life, highlighting instead the power of responsible technicity and ancestral wisdom. My reading will suggest that the very impossibility of the fantastic is precisely what enables it to probe the pleasures and anxieties of transhumanist thought in a unique way, drawing attention to the genre\u2019s capacity to inspire political reflection and become an engine of change.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Mar\u00eda&nbsp;Ferr\u00e1ndez-Sanmiguel is Associate Professor at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). Her main research interests lie in contemporary US speculative fiction, with special attention to the representation of trauma and the posthuman. Her most recent publications include \u201cMourning the Human? Posthuman Death and Ontological Vulnerability in Jeff VanderMeer\u2019s The Southern Reach Trilogy\u201d (International Journal of English Studies, 2024) and \u201cTowards an Ethics of Affinity: Posthumanism and the Question of the Animal in Two SF Narratives of Catastrophe\u201d (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2022). She has also edited the collection&nbsp;<em>The Posthuman Condition in 21st Century Literature and Culture \u2013 Interdisciplinary Insights<\/em>&nbsp;(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Sophie-Fink-\"><strong>Sophie Fink<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Cities Born and Raised: Negotiations of Urban Selfhood in Nghi Vo\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>The City in Glass<em>&nbsp;and N. K. Jemisin\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>The&nbsp;City We Became&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What\u2014or who\u2014makes a city alive? This paper pursues this question through an examination of&nbsp;supernaturally-assisted&nbsp;urban decay and growth in Nghi Vo\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The City in Glass<\/em>&nbsp;(2024) and N. K. Jemisin\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The&nbsp;City We Became<\/em>&nbsp;(2020). Though differing in genre, style, and tone, both novels&nbsp;center&nbsp;upon cities whose fates are bound up in the desires of immortal supernatural&nbsp;beings. These beings continually negotiate the physical and ideological boundaries of their respective cities as they work as midwives and mothers to&nbsp;consolidate&nbsp;a singular living city-body from the&nbsp;multiplicitous, often contradictory people-bodies living within. This paper argues that these texts use the construction of fantasy cities to reveal the inherent fantasy within all cities\u2014the functional sociopolitical myth that a plurality of voices and desires can exist as a singular bordered entity. Beginning with Rosemary Jackson\u2019s configuration of fantasy as oxymoronic, this paper will reveal how each fictional city oxymoronically holds together the individual and the collective, affirming an \u201cimpossible unity\u201d of identity. This complex contradiction will be further illuminated through a study of each texts\u2019 use of artistic practices such as writing, dancing, rapping, and painting as the foundations for an inclusive cultivation of creative empathy, wherein the self is found to be housed within the other.&nbsp;Ultimately, this&nbsp;paper positions fantasy cities as a social and physical technology which both interrogates animacy and&nbsp;collectivity&nbsp;within these two key texts, and functions more broadly to expose the malleability in our real-world fabrications of \u201cthe city.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Sophie Fink is a postgraduate student&nbsp;of&nbsp;the University of Glasgow\u2019s MLitt in Fantasy Literature programme. Her research interests include theories of time, ecocriticism, critical futures studies, fantasy, and science fiction, with a particular interest in nonhuman and posthuman temporalities. Her speculative poetry has been published in Strange Horizons and Reckoning. Currently, she is working on a dissertation about the desires and dangers of manipulating the global past within Western science fiction projections of precarious futures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Erin-Finley-\"><strong>Erin Finley<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Conjuring Wonder: Ambi-Drawing and the Pencil as Machine<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This workshop invites participants to explore drawing as a form of conjuring, treating the pencil and other mark-making implements as magical-technological instruments capable of shaping&nbsp;perception. In a series of guided exercises, including drawing with the non-dominant hand, Ambi-Drawing (ie. mark-making with both hands simultaneously), and playful explorations of line and gesture, participants will experiment with mark-making techniques that blur boundaries between body and tool.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Framing the pencil as a \u201cdrawing machine,\u201d this workshop considers how creative technologies, whether mundane or fantastical, can transform both maker and medium. Drawing becomes a site where technique,&nbsp;perception, and imagination intersect, conjuring&nbsp;artifacts that feel simultaneously familiar and enchanted. By engaging in exercises that disrupt typical motor patterns, participants will be surprised by the unexpected creativity that takes place when we generate \u201cerrors\u201d intentionally.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This workshop emphasizes the interplay of human skill, embodied cognition, and simple technological instruments to conjure images that are imaginative and transportive. Each participant will leave with original drawings, reflecting both their personal exploration and the magical capacities of everyday mark-making tools.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Erin Finley is an award-winning Canadian artist, recognized with two OCAD University Teaching Awards and the University of Toronto OISE Award for Distinguished Service. Her research is supported by grants from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. She&nbsp;facilitates&nbsp;public art events and outreach projects for people with disabilities, neurodiversity, brain injuries, dementia, and mental health challenges. Erin teaches drawing at OCAD University and has developed intergenerational programs connecting young people with older adults through community projects.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Patricia-Garc\u00eda-Santos-\"><strong>Patricia Garc\u00eda-Santos<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>From Biblical Myth to Speculative Fantasy: R. F. Kuang\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Babel<em>&nbsp;or the Technology of Translation<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recent speculative fantasy has increasingly blurred the boundaries between magic and technology, foregrounding rule-based systems that mirror modern regimes of knowledge, power, and institutional control (Mendlesohn&nbsp;2008;&nbsp;Mi\u00e9ville&nbsp;2009). This paper reads R. F. Kuang\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Babel<\/em>, or&nbsp;<em>The Necessity of Violence<\/em>&nbsp;(2022) as speculative fantasy that exemplifies this trend by portraying a world in which translation is a highly regulated, institutionalized practice that functions simultaneously as magic and as a colonial technology, shaping both the narrative world and the trajectories of its characters.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set in 1830s Oxford,&nbsp;<em>Babel<\/em>&nbsp;portrays linguistic transparency as a political and technological ideal sustained by an academic institution that trains translators to serve the British Empire. Translation&nbsp;operates&nbsp;as an extractive system of knowledge production that&nbsp;renders&nbsp;the magical infrastructure predictable for imperial power, while systematically erasing the epistemic agency, cultural identities, and opacity of the colonial subjects who sustain it. In&nbsp;this sense, the novel exposes how technologies commonly framed as progressive become commodities and function as mechanisms of surveillance and dispossession.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through a speculative fantasy narrative,&nbsp;<em>Babel<\/em>&nbsp;critiques colonialist constructions of knowledge that privilege transparency while denying the right to opacity (Glissant&nbsp;1990) and the right to secrecy (Birchall 2011). Engaging with key concerns of the technologies of the fantastic, this paper argues that contemporary speculative fantasy offers a critical response to real-world technological imaginaries that rely on the marginalization of communities to reinforce asymmetrical structures of power.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Patricia Garc\u00eda Santos (C\u00f3rdoba, 1999) is a predoctoral researcher in the Department of&nbsp;English at the University of C\u00f3rdoba (Spain). She holds a dual degree in Translation &amp;&nbsp;Interpreting and English Studies and has completed a&nbsp;Master\u2019s in Advanced&nbsp;English Studies. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Languages and Cultures, where she is a second-year student. She holds an FPI grant linked to the state-funded project&nbsp;<em>The Poetics and Politics of Transparency in Contemporary English Literature<\/em>&nbsp;(PID2023-146346NB-100). Her research examines the tension between contemporary demands for transparency and the inherent opacity of language and linguistic systems.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Martine-Gjermundsen-R\u00e6stad-\"><strong>Martine Gjermundsen R\u00e6stad<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Prometheus Unbound: The Mystery,&nbsp;Magic&nbsp;and Miracle of the Atom in Golden Age Science Fiction<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper will examine the impact and presentation of the Atomic in American Golden Age SF (circa 1940s\/50s), particularly as a source of energy powering the future in practically magical ways \u2013 a force often facing fewer limitations than magic itself \u2013 looking at works from authors such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Clifford D Simak and Eando Binder.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the aftermath of the atomic blast, the split atom was a symbol of immense power&nbsp;containing&nbsp;a duality of extremes. Within the atomic lay apocalyptic dangers and the magical elixir for civilisation \u2013 untold energy which could power both the most dystopian and utopian outcomes. In 1953, President Eisenhower spoke to the UN about atomic power as the key to peace. In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission were marketing a future where our&nbsp;\u201cchildren will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.\u201d&nbsp;Despite the shadow of the atomic bomb, the United States momentarily faced a wave of immense optimism and&nbsp;confidence in nuclear energy which would leave a lasting footprint in the history of Science Fiction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For SF, the Atomic Age introduced a hypothetical future era where energy sources need no longer be explained. The split atom powered a utopian vision of the relationship between ecology and technology, giving authors the power to handwave the logistical implications of wide-scale technological advancement without straying from the convincingly realistic. The Atomic, like magic, enabled something that is not necessarily escapism from notions of advancement, but escapism from advancement&#8217;s costs and&nbsp;logistics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Martine Gjermundsen R\u00e6stad attained her MLitt with Distinction in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in 2020 and has since presented at&nbsp;GIFCon&nbsp;on three&nbsp;previous&nbsp;occasions (2021, 2024, 2025). Today, her work is featured in critical anthologies such as&nbsp;\u201cStar Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier\u201d&nbsp;(2023, Vernon Press),&nbsp;\u201cTheology, Religion, and Dungeons &amp; Dragons\u201d&nbsp;(2025, Lexington Fortress), and&nbsp;\u201cDisability, Illness, and the Vampire in Literature and Culture\u201d&nbsp;(2025, Routledge). She is currently in the PhD programme at NTNU with the working title \u201cAI \u2013 American Icon: The Figure of the AI in 20th Century American SF\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Stephen-Goldfinch-\"><strong>Stephen Goldfinch<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Silver,&nbsp;Empire and&nbsp;Colonialism in&nbsp;<\/em>Babel<em>&nbsp;by R.F. Kuang<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In R.F. Kuang\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Babel<\/em>&nbsp;the magical technology of silver-working manifests the process of translation as a physical object which becomes the focus for anti-colonial resistance. Using silver as a symbolic but tangible commodity reflects the \u2018violent injustices\u2019 of colonial oppression whilst creating a locus of imperial power the resistance can attack.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Silver-working involves engraving a silver bar with an English phrase on one side and its translation in another language on the reverse. What is lost in translation creates magic when the words are spoken aloud. This is the core of the British Empire\u2019s industrial power in the fictionalised 1830s of the&nbsp;novel.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through the technology of silver-working, the act of translation in&nbsp;<em>Babel<\/em>&nbsp;becomes a literal tool of the British Empire, paralleling how language can be a cultural tool of colonialism. Indigenous speakers of languages such as Mandarin are manipulated into using their linguistic talents to support the imperialism which exploits and harms their countries, such as in the opium trade with China.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This exploitation is underscored by the historical importance and symbolic resonance of silver. Historically, silver was both a tool and a product of colonialism and had both a cultural and economic role. It is malleable and&nbsp;mercurial, and&nbsp;was transmuted into many forms as it was globally traded.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In turning abstract ideas about translation into a physical technology, Kuang concretises language as a commodity which is displayed, destroyed, sold and stolen, and&nbsp;ultimately reappropriated&nbsp;as a tool of resistance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Beak,&nbsp;Feather&nbsp;and Bone:&nbsp;A Collaborative&nbsp;Map-Making&nbsp;Game&nbsp;About&nbsp;Fantastic&nbsp;Infrastructure<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beak,&nbsp;Feather&nbsp;and Bone is a \u2018map-labelling RPG\u2019 designed by Tyler Crumrine and published by Possible Worlds Games. In this workshop, up to ten participants will take on roles&nbsp;representing&nbsp;different communities within a city populated by&nbsp;ravenfolk. They will take it in turns to claim a building on a city map for their community, then define its Beak (what people say about it), Feather (how it looks) and Bone (what it is like on the inside). Participants will be encouraged to consider the role of fantastic technology in the infrastructure of the city as we create it. Through this process a narrative for the city and its people will gradually&nbsp;emerge. The game will end with one participant claiming the seat of power within the&nbsp;city, and&nbsp;deciding on its name.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Stephen Goldfinch (he\/him) is currently enrolled in the English Literature: Fantasy&nbsp;MLitt&nbsp;programme at the University of Glasgow, where he presented his first conference paper as part of&nbsp;GIFcon&nbsp;2025. He studies part-time whilst working as Curriculum Leader in Core Skills at Edinburgh College. He also&nbsp;co-founded, and&nbsp;is currently co-Editor-in-Chief of&nbsp;<em>Elsewhere<\/em>, the University of Glasgow\u2019s student-run fantasy journal. When not studying or teaching he writes fantasy literature and designs games. After completing his&nbsp;MLitt&nbsp;he hopes to undertake a DFA which will combine fantasy fiction, fantasy&nbsp;theory&nbsp;and creative non-fiction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Timothy-R.-Granger-\"><strong>Timothy R. Granger<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Bureaucratic Magic in Jack Vance\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Rhialto&nbsp;the Marvellous&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Famously, in the&nbsp;<em>Dungeon Master\u2019s Guide<\/em>&nbsp;(1979), Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the ubiquitous tabletop role-playing game, wrote, \u201cIt is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer&nbsp;to force quotations from the rule book upon you\u2026\u201d (230). While this sentiment perfectly encapsulates what has become known in modern role-playing circles as the \u201cRule of Cool,\u201d it stands in stark opposition to Dungeons &amp; Dragons\u2019 magic system. Inspired in no small part by what has become known as \u201cVancian magic,\u201d noted fantasist Jack Vance\u2019s Dying Earth series presents a bureaucratic practice of wizardry in which that magic of the deteriorating planet serves as an advanced and&nbsp;largely incomprehensible&nbsp;understanding of ancient technology. Ironically, within Vance\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Rhialto&nbsp;the Marvellous<\/em>&nbsp;(1984), we are met with a cabal of sorcerers who, though largely incapable of completely understanding the technologies of the past, wield its equations and principles\u2014often clandestinely, as a means of status and even subjugation: in a sense, the very \u201croom lawyers\u201d Gygax maligns. This paper argues that such a framework of administrative and even procedural \u201cmagic\u201d contradicts concepts of the \u201cRule of Cool\u201d and also reveals how the magic system within Vance\u2019s final Dying Earth volume features an inverse effect: how the degrading of a structured environment has pushed society into a dark age in which technology and magic are inseparable.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Tim Granger is a graduate student in English at Florida Atlantic University where he specializes in fantasy and science fiction literature. His research interests include pulp fiction, weird fiction, and the nature of storytelling. His creative fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as&nbsp;<em>New Edge Sword and Sorcery<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Cosmic Horror Monthly<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>Goblins and Galaxies<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Mark-Hines-\"><strong>Mark Hines<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Aragorn the Divider: Racebending in&nbsp;<\/em>Magic: The Gathering\u2019s<em>&nbsp;\u201cTales of Middle Earth\u201d and&nbsp;\u201cDeviant&nbsp;Excommunes\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This presentation examines community responses to the racebending of major characters in the Magic: The Gathering set Tales of Middle Earth. This set, featuring characters, locations, and mechanics inspired by Tolkien\u2019s writings and Jackson\u2019s films, is notable for its depictions of Aragorn, Eowyn, and Theoden as having dark skin. These depictions contrast with other popular representations which often feature Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits as White, with some notable exceptions.&nbsp;<em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em>&nbsp;is&nbsp;perhaps the&nbsp;most responsible text for the racial politics of fantasy and speculative media. Though fan reactions to the practice have been mixed, Tales of Middle Earth became one of MTG\u2019s most successful sets commercially.&nbsp;My presentation&nbsp;utilizes&nbsp;data scraping and linguistic analysis tools to&nbsp;analyze&nbsp;the discourse around racebending in a prominent MTG subreddit: r\/FreeMagic. Subscribers to this subreddit are often those who have been banned from more mainline subreddits and I dub this problematic, sometimes antisocial phenomenon a \u201cdeviant&nbsp;excommune,\u201d a term in great debt to Kishonna Gray\u2019s work on online&nbsp;behavior&nbsp;(2014). I use r\/FreeMagic&nbsp;as an example of a typical deviant&nbsp;excommune&nbsp;to&nbsp;analyze&nbsp;the resounding problematic discourse of many online spaces around gaming. This group\u2019s critiques of racebending practices in Tolkien\u2019s world&nbsp;demonstrate&nbsp;that racebending is interpreted as a political decision contradictory to Tolkien\u2019s vision\u2014that racebending is making political something which is not. Using Critical Race Theorists, most notably Charles W. Mills\u2019 \u201cOrkish&nbsp;Manifesto,\u201d I counter that The Lord of the Rings and&nbsp;MtG&nbsp;have always been \u201cracially-structured,\u201d and that longstanding beliefs in fantasy and gaming\u2019s&nbsp;postraciality&nbsp;account for the doubling-down of users \u201ckeeping it real\u201d as a means of engaging in gatekeeping and hate.&nbsp; Moreover, this presentation points to lingering tensions in the politics of racebending as representation, tensions pointed out by Stuart Hall in&nbsp;representing&nbsp;an \u201cessential black subject\u201d (pg. 166). Putting a Black Aragorn in place of a White one, then, is not punk; it is pure, commercial, \u201cselling out.\u201d This sort of racebending does not reckon with the racist histories and hierarchies upon which Lord of the Rings was inspired and profited.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Mark Hines is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Kentucky. He is interested in representations of race and gender in virtual and fantastic worlds. His background is in race studies, game studies, and cultural studies.&nbsp;His dissertation focuses on changing systems and logics of racial representation in fantasy games following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. His work has been published in&nbsp;<em>Games and Culture<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Analog Game Studies<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>The Journal of Games Criticism<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>The Journal of Popular Culture<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Maliha-Iqbal-\"><strong>Maliha Iqbal<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Unsettling Time: The Self-Reflexive Fantastic in&nbsp;<\/em>Om Shanti Om<em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<\/em>Last Night in Soho&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper examines cinema and routinized vision as technologies of the fantastic that&nbsp;operate&nbsp;through self-reflexivity in&nbsp;<em>Om Shanti Om&nbsp;<\/em>(2007) and&nbsp;<em>Last Night in Soho<\/em>&nbsp;(2021). Rather than treating reflexivity as an inherently demystifying or politically radical device, the&nbsp;paper argues that it functions as a historically contingent mechanism that can produce divergent fantastic effects, including temporal rupture, haunting, and repetition.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In&nbsp;<em>Om Shanti Om<\/em>, reflexivity&nbsp;operates&nbsp;explicitly through cinema itself. The film mobilizes reincarnation as an ontological rupture within the narrative, overturning linear capitalist time. The rebirth of Om Makhija as Om Kapoor restructures class position and visibility through Shah Rukh Khan\u2019s star body where myth, labour, and consumer culture converge. Within this reflexive economy, femininity is unevenly positioned: Shantipriya\u2019s return as a ghost marks the limits of cinematic renewal, confining her to spectral repetition. Bollywood reflexivity thus re-mythologizes cinema.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Last Night in Soho<\/em>&nbsp;deploys reflexivity in a modernist register in which Eloise\u2019s time-slip visions function as a thematically self-reflexive technology for the spectator, dismantling the romanticized fantasy of 1960s Soho held by both Eloise and the audience. While granting critical distance to the viewer, they deny agency to the subject: the past intrudes without disrupting capitalist time. Haunting here exposes structural exploitation rather than enabling temporal repair, as Sandy\u2019s commodified youthful body is counterposed with her aged form while the formless ghosts&nbsp;represent&nbsp;the repetitive and structural character of patriarchal violence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thus, reflexivity&nbsp;operates&nbsp;materially through these technologies, producing mythic intensification and disenchantment as fantastic effects.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Maliha Iqbal is a student of English Literature at Aligarh Muslim University, India. She has published over fifty articles, short stories and poems in magazines such as&nbsp;<em>Livewire<\/em>&nbsp;(The Wire),&nbsp;<em>Creativity Webzine, Cerebration,&nbsp;Histolit,&nbsp;Countercurrents, Times of India, Freedom Review, Counterpunch,&nbsp;ArmChair&nbsp;Journal,&nbsp;Kitaab, Counterview, Alcott Youth Magazine, Janata Weekly,&nbsp;FemAsia, Good Morning Kashmir, Writers Cafeteria, Caf\u00e9 Dissensus, The New Verse News, Borderless Journal, Writing in a Woman\u2019s Voice, The&nbsp;Afterpast&nbsp;Review, The Palestine Chronicle, The Cadre Journal, The Paris Post<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Indian Periodical<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Sara-Kabir-\"><strong>Sara Kabir<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Infrastructures of Care:&nbsp;Solarpunk, Science-Fantasy, and Ethical Technology in&nbsp;<\/em>Sultana\u2019s Dream<em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<\/em>Monk and Robot&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper examines Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Sultana\u2019s Dream<\/em>&nbsp;(1905) and Becky Chambers\u2019&nbsp;<em>A Psalm for the Wild-Built<\/em>&nbsp;(2021) as&nbsp;solarpunk&nbsp;narratives that imagine sustainable&nbsp;futures through alternative relationships between energy, infrastructure, and community. Situating Sultana\u2019s Dream as a proto-solarpunk&nbsp;text and Psalm as a semi-post-solar narrative, the paper explores how they critique colonial, capitalist, and extractive models of technological progress while envisioning ecologically embedded, care-oriented societies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Drawing on Gillam (2023) and The&nbsp;Solarpunk&nbsp;Community\u2019s (2021) manifestos, this paper argues that solar energy functions not merely as a power source but as an organizing principle shaping social relations, ethical responsibility, and everyday life. In&nbsp;<em>Sultana\u2019s Dream<\/em>, solar-powered infrastructures are presented as rational, legible, and communal systems grounded in feminist and anti-colonial values, even as the narrative acknowledges the ethical dangers of solar-powered weapons.&nbsp;<em>Psalm<\/em>, by contrast, depicts a world shaped by the aftermath of industrial collapse, where renewable energy, rewilding, and repair replace expansion and growth, and technology recedes into the background of daily maintenance and coexistence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Drawing on energy humanities scholarship, particularly Rhys Williams\u2019 work on&nbsp;solarpunk&nbsp;energy imaginaries (2018; 2019) and Andrew Dana Hudson\u2019s concept of \u201cde-abstracting\u201d material relations (2020), I argue that both texts resist linear narratives of progress and technological transcendence, framing energy as political and relational and foregrounding infrastructural care, communal responsibility, and the limits of utopian hope. By juxtaposing a colonial-era feminist utopia with a contemporary science-fantasy pastoral, the paper positions&nbsp;solarpunk&nbsp;as both an aspirational and cautionary mode for imagining sustainable futures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Sara Kabir holds an MLitt in Fantasy Literature and an MEd in Children\u2019s Literature and Literacies from the University of Glasgow. She is currently a Full-time Lecturer in the Department of English and Modern Languages at North South University, where she previously completed her BA in English Literature. Her research explores emerging&nbsp;Solarpunk&nbsp;narratives, the politics of hunger in children\u2019s and young adult literature, and the intersections of grief, ecology, and cultural memory. She is also an established cultural critic and essayist whose work appears in local and international publications, including her long-standing contributions to<em>&nbsp;The Daily Star&nbsp;<\/em>since 2016.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"\u00d6zcan-Kahraman-\"><strong>\u00d6zcan Kahraman<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Solar-Powered Fantasy: Video Game Infrastructure and Magical Systems in&nbsp;<\/em>Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand<\/em>&nbsp;is a 2003 Game Boy Advance game that offers a unique way to explore how fantasy and technology work together to create a magic system unlike any other. This is achieved through an integrated solar sensor that requires the player to be near actual sunlight to charge the game\u2019s main weapon, Gun de Sol. By converting real sunlight into a force capable of killing vampires in the game through the magical technology of Gun de Sol, sunlight goes beyond being just a magical resource. The game depicts it as an external environmental condition beyond the player\u2019s&nbsp;control, since&nbsp;it is sometimes inaccessible in various locations and at&nbsp;different times. Through infrastructure studies and ecocriticism, in&nbsp;<em>Boktai<\/em>, sunlight appears as a fantasy infrastructure because it serves as a structural support for action, defining progress and becoming visible only when the energy needed to recharge the Gun is scarce or lacking.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Boktai<\/em>&nbsp;links the technological elements of a video game with the player&#8217;s physical environment by&nbsp;utilizing&nbsp;external factors such as climate, sunlight, day and night, and geography. As it combines fantasy, technology, and environment, it provides a new perspective on how we view magic and its role&nbsp;as a way to&nbsp;escape reality, by creating a reliance on natural elements that fuel the fantasy and the game.&nbsp;Ultimately, with&nbsp;its solar-powered design,&nbsp;<em>Boktai<\/em>&nbsp;portrays a unique magic system that comments on fantasy and video game infrastructure while providing a distinct perspective on ecocriticism.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;\u00d6zcan Kahraman earned his BA in English Language and Literature from&nbsp;Hacettepe&nbsp;University and completed his MA at Ankara Social Sciences University with a thesis on bildungsroman experiences in fantasy narratives. He is currently a PhD student at Ege University and an instructor at ?zmir&nbsp;Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the mundane in fantastic universes, domestic space in fantasy narratives, and tabletop fantasy experiences. As both a scholar and a part-time Dungeon Master, he explores world-building across literature, film, video games, tabletop games, and animation, while quietly creating his own fantastic universes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Brian-Keeley-\"><strong>Brian Keeley<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Heart Transplant Technologies:&nbsp;The&nbsp;Struggle&nbsp;Against the&nbsp;Fantastic<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the preface to&nbsp;<em>Frankenstein<\/em>, Mary Shelley refers to Luigi Galvani\u2019s technique of applying an electric current to muscle tissue: \u201cPerhaps a corpse would be re-animated, galvanism had given token of such things\u2026\u201d (Shelley, 1831:x).&nbsp;Portable automated external defibrillators&nbsp;(AED), which apply an electric current to restart a heart, are now commonplace and save countless lives after sudden cardiac arrest.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other cardiology-based technologies, including blood transfusions, extra-corporeal life support (ECMO) machines, and even the \u2018heart-in-a-box\u2019 Organ Care System (OCS) have all been imagined by science-fiction.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Heart transplantation itself, however, has struggled to shake off its roots in the realm of the fantastic.&nbsp;&nbsp;Although 10,287 heart transplants were carried out worldwide in 2024 (WHO), superstitions around the heart as the centre of personality and emotion continue to&nbsp;provided&nbsp;fertile ground for fantastical transplant narratives.&nbsp;Even recent heart transplant movies portray recipients&nbsp;possessed&nbsp;by the intrusion of the donor&#8217;s homicidal past, or as obsessively seeking romantic relationships with a deceased donor\u2019s spouse.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The acquisition of donor personality characteristics by recipients following heart transplantation is the stuff of fantasy, but such ideas are deeply embedded in popular&nbsp;culture,&nbsp;and&nbsp;even continue to be the subject of academic discourse.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper traces the historical origins of some of the fantastical heart narratives dating back to Christian depictions of \u2018the scared heart\u2019&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;when Da Vinci already understood the heart as a functioning pump, and asks why, with heart transplants long since normalised, does the emotional view of the heart persist over its biological function?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Dr. Brian Keeley is a visual artist, filmmaker and researcher, based in the north of Scotland.&nbsp;&nbsp;His recent PhD thesis at the University of Aberdeen explored representations of heart transplantation across contemporary visual culture. As a heart transplant recipient since 2013, Brian takes a uniquely experiential approach to his research and creative practice.&nbsp;He is also a transplant awareness advocate and an organ donation ambassador, and gives talks to clinical professionals and medical students, offering a patient perspective on Intensive Care and heart transplantation.&nbsp;Brian has previously worked as a commercial video editor, and as a teacher of Art &amp; Design.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Siravich-Khurat-\"><strong>Siravich&nbsp;Khurat<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Hosts of Homeostasis: Digital Monster as the Balance of Parallel Convergence between Fantasy and Science<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the 1999 anime that is&nbsp;<em>Digimon Adventure<\/em>&nbsp;to the 2025 video game that is&nbsp;<em>Digimon Story: Time Stranger<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>&nbsp;(Digital Monster) has always been a media-mix series that threads the line between science fiction and fantasy. Conceptually Science-Fantasy (Digital-Monster),&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>&nbsp;will be apposite for this paper\u2019s scrutiny of the genres\u2019 conventional elements. With&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>\u2019s myriad forms of Science-Fantasy convergence, this paper will&nbsp;observe&nbsp;whether the line between sufficiently advanced technology and magic exists.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>\u2019s database-fantasy world, this paper will build on the scholarship that examines the two genres in conjunction, ranging from Geraghty\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Channeling&nbsp;the Future: Essays on Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/em>&nbsp;(2009) to Rogers and Stevens\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Once and Future Antiquities in Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/em>&nbsp;(2018), as the dual-genre framework for&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Equipped with such scholarship, this paper aims to unlock&nbsp;<em>Digimo<\/em>n\u2019s \u2018magic\u2019 rules and systems&nbsp;as a means to&nbsp;configure the possibilities of Science-Fantasy convergence. The centre of which is Homeostasis\u2019s Hosts, as depicted in&nbsp;<em>Time Stranger<\/em>, who enable the contemplation of whether genre elements can be solely fantastical or technological. As personified host computers, Hosts are high administrators: the deities who&nbsp;represent&nbsp;the common flavour of computer science within&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>. Above them, Homeostasis is the Higher Being:&nbsp;the&nbsp;Deity of deities who&nbsp;represents&nbsp;<em>Digimon<\/em>\u2019s recurring blend of biology and fantastical monsters. With their converged nature of being scientific and fantastical simultaneously, the paper will contribute one perspective on whether and how the division of fantasy and science is worth thinking beyond a matter of classification.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Siravich&nbsp;Khurat&nbsp;is pursuing his PhD at the University of Portsmouth, with affiliation to the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries\u2019 School of Film, Media, and Creative Technologies. As a Raven holder of the MLitt in Fantasy from the University of Glasgow, his critical and creative interests lie in extracting thematic inspirations across Japanese fantasy as a database. His doctoral research entails inspirational media mix\u2019s thematic motifs and reference materials such as<em>&nbsp;Digimon<\/em>\u2019s Reference Book.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Ishita-Lahiri-\"><strong>Ishita Lahiri<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Jugaad-punk: Reframing Speculative Aesthetics through South Asian SF<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper proposes jugaad futurism as a critical framework for rethinking the \u201cpunk\u201d aesthetics in speculative fiction beyond Euro-American subcultural models. Originating in South Asia, jugaad names practices of improvisational problem-solving, repair, and technological bricolage under conditions of scarcity. Rather than invention born of surplus&nbsp;capital or institutional infrastructure, jugaad foregrounds&nbsp;making-do: reusing, hacking, and repurposing available materials to negotiate everyday constraints. Reading jugaad alongside speculative fiction thus allows for a reconceptualization of \u201cpunk\u201d not as stylistic rebellion or countercultural attitude, but as an ongoing mode of survival and creativity within postcolonial modernity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My paper argues that jugaad futurism reframes steampunk\u2019s fascination with bricolage and retrofitted machines through the lens of colonial and postcolonial constraint. Where steampunk often aestheticizes abundance&nbsp;\u2013 (ornate machinery, artisanal excess, and nostalgic industrial plenitude), jugaad futurism emphasizes uneven infrastructure, underfunded science, and informal technological&nbsp;expertise. Punk, in this context,&nbsp;emerges&nbsp;not as resistance from the margins but as the everyday act of negotiation between constraint and possibility.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through close readings of Vandana Singh\u2019s short stories \u201cDelhi\u201d (2011) and \u201cIndra\u2019s Web\u201d (2011), my paper traces how speculative narratives rooted in South Asian contexts imagine futures shaped by partial knowledge, modular technologies, and&nbsp;labouring&nbsp;bodies forced to improvise within extractive systems. In doing so, I present Jugaad-tech as fragile, communal, and contingent and assembled through intuition, collaboration, and repair rather. Finally, by&nbsp;centring&nbsp;jugaad as a speculative method, I argue for a postcolonial punk aesthetic grounded in living within and navigating through modernity\u2019s broken infrastructures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Ishita is&nbsp;currently a 4th year PhD student in the department of English Literature and Language in the University of Washington.&nbsp;Their&nbsp;research interests span Feminist and Marxist theory,&nbsp;labour&nbsp;studies, speculative&nbsp;fiction&nbsp;and global south studies.&nbsp;Ishita is&nbsp;invested in questions of&nbsp;labour&nbsp;and care work and in&nbsp;their&nbsp;research,&nbsp;they&nbsp;try to investigate it through the lens of science fiction.&nbsp;Ishita&nbsp;is&nbsp;also interested in writing and reading speculative fiction itself as a kind of political and imaginative&nbsp;labour. In addition to reproductive care and gendered&nbsp;labour&nbsp;they are&nbsp;also intrigued by the urban&nbsp;spatialities&nbsp;of work. Ishita&nbsp;has&nbsp;taught several courses through these four years in UW focusing on themes of social reproduction, feminist and Marxist theory, cultural&nbsp;studies&nbsp;and literature. These pedagogical and scholarly initiatives continually shape&nbsp;their&nbsp;thinking about the cultural politics of care as well as highlight how everyday sites can enable collaboration and community.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Nicole-Love-\"><strong>Nicole Love<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Communities of Belief: Science \/ Magic as Technologies of the Fantastic in Alasdair Gray\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Poor Things<em>&nbsp;and Ahmed&nbsp;Saadwai\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Frankenstein in Baghdad&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper proposes a comparative reading&nbsp;of<em>&nbsp;Poor Things<\/em>&nbsp;by Alasdair Gray and&nbsp;<em>Frankenstein in Baghdad<\/em>&nbsp;by&nbsp;Ahmed Saadawi, and&nbsp;examines how each text reconfigures the boundary between science and magic as technologies of the fantastic through culturally specific logic systems. These technologies of the fantastic act as critical spaces to examine power,&nbsp;marginalization&nbsp;and knowledge systems. By examining two novels that both invoke the&nbsp;<em>Frankenstein<\/em>&nbsp;narrative, yet do so through radically different ontologies, they offer a site to interrogate whether science and magic are meaningfully separable, or whether they&nbsp;operate&nbsp;as culturally specific technologies of the fantastic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In&nbsp;<em>Poor Things<\/em>, Godwin (God) Baxter resurrects Bella through the authority of Enlightenment science, institutional medicine, and pseudo-Victorian documentation, exposing scientific rationalism as the technology of the fantastic: a rule-bound belief system sustained by power, patriarchy, and individual ambition.&nbsp;<em>Frankenstein in Baghdad<\/em>, by contrast, situates its monstrous creation within warfare,&nbsp;religion&nbsp;and folklore. Saadawi\u2019s creature is animated through spiritual causality and communal trauma. Magic functions as the technology of the fantastic, where the monster\u2019s continual need for replacement parts mirrors&nbsp;both the&nbsp;maintenance logic of magic as inherently communal alongside the endless reproduction of violence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Read together, these novels suggest that the difference between science and magic in the fantastic is not ontological but cultural. Both texts&nbsp;demonstrate&nbsp;that technologies\u2014scientific or magical\u2014operate&nbsp;because communities believe in the systems that authorize them, revealing the fantastic as a critical space for examining power, marginalization, and contested knowledge systems.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Nicole Love was born in 1995 and lives between Glasgow and Edinburgh, where she pursues a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde. She has seen her work anthologized by Fish,&nbsp;BffA&nbsp;and FAS. She has been longlisted for the&nbsp;Mslexia&nbsp;Short Story Competition for \u201cSullen Kinks,\u201d the&nbsp;Cymera&nbsp;Prize for Speculative Short Fiction for \u201cThe Second Amen\u201d and was invited to read at the West Cork Literary Festival in the Republic of Ireland for receiving an honorary mention in 2024 with \u201cThings That Hurt.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Amit-Mandal-\"><strong>Amit Mandal<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Alien Ancestors and the Myth of Prehistory: Reimagining Human Origins in&nbsp;<\/em>Moonfall<em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<\/em>Prometheus&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper examines the enduring human fascination with origins\u2014questions of who we are, where we come from, and why we exist\u2014through the science-fiction trope of \u201calien ancestors.\u201d Popular culture has long&nbsp;speculated&nbsp;that humanity may share extraterrestrial origins, a notion supported by the hypothesis of panspermia, which suggests that life may have originated in space and reached Earth via cosmic bodies or alien intervention. Such fantasies, far from being arbitrary,&nbsp;emerge&nbsp;from psychological, evolutionary, and existential anxieties surrounding human insignificance in an infinite universe.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through a comparative reading of&nbsp;<em>Moonfall<\/em>&nbsp;(2022) and&nbsp;<em>Prometheus<\/em>&nbsp;(2012), the paper critically explores how these films construct and exploit the myth of pre-history.&nbsp;<em>Moonfall<\/em>&nbsp;imagines the Moon as an artificial megastructure created by technologically advanced human ancestors who seeded life on Earth after being destroyed by a rogue AI. The film reconfigures panspermia by suggesting a recursive human origin, foregrounding&nbsp;uncertainty&nbsp;and cosmic vulnerability. In contrast,&nbsp;<em>Prometheus<\/em>&nbsp;presents humanoid \u201cEngineers\u201d who deliberately sacrifice themselves to seed Earth with their DNA, aligning alien ancestry with mythic creation narratives such as that of the Greek Prometheus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both films privilege humanoid alien forms, reflecting human narcissism and the desire to&nbsp;render&nbsp;the unfamiliar familiar. They also construct a fantasy of a lost pre-history marked by advanced technology and transcendence, reinforcing the belief that humanity is exceptional and cosmically significant. By situating these narratives within broader cultural and philosophical frameworks, this paper argues that the alien-ancestor myth functions as a compensatory response to existential uncertainty, revealing more about human desires than about the cosmos itself.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Amit Mandal is a doctoral researcher in English at the University of Delhi, India. His research interests include posthumanism, environmental humanities, Anthropocene studies, multispecies ethics, and eco-cinema. His publications include Scorched Earth and Precarious&nbsp;<em>Lives: A Study of the Indian Anthropocene in&nbsp;Kadvi&nbsp;Hawa and Jal<\/em>&nbsp;(Routledge, 2025) and \u201cFrom Bots to Beings: Posthuman Immortality in HBO\u2019s Westworld,\u201d published in&nbsp;<em>Ekphrasis&nbsp;<\/em>(2024). His forthcoming essays will appear with&nbsp;Taylor &amp; Francis&nbsp;on AI and posthumanism in&nbsp;<em>Westworld<\/em>, with Peter Lang on multispecies extinction in&nbsp;<em>All That Breathes<\/em>&nbsp;(2022), and with Oxford University Press on cinematic&nbsp;wastescapes&nbsp;in Indian environmental films.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Oana-Marin-\"><strong>Oana Marin<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Crip Technics and the Geopolitics of Stasis: Uneven and Combined Development in&nbsp;<\/em>Game of Thrones&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper challenges the dominant medievalist reading of George R. R. Martin\u2019s<em>&nbsp;A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>, arguing instead that its geography&nbsp;operates&nbsp;as a technologically stratified map of what Leon Trotsky termed Uneven and Combined Development. Rather than&nbsp;representing&nbsp;distinct historical stages, the series\u2019 various regions function as a simultaneous layering of different \u201cindustrial\u201d and socio-technical formations, whose coexistence serves to stabilize a global status quo. From the primitive accumulation of the Wildlings to the hyper-centralized, quasi-corporate archival infrastructure of the Citadel, \u201cmagic\u201d in this world&nbsp;operates&nbsp;not as a premodern residue but as a form of fantastic technology, one that manages temporal dissonance, regulates mobility, and prevents revolutionary transformation. I focus&nbsp;in particular on&nbsp;how these heterogeneous technological spaces intersect with what I term crip technics: the adaptive, non-normative technological practices of disabled bodies. In a world organized around martial productivity, characters such as Bran Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and Doran Martell deploy fantastic technologies&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;from advanced saddle-engineering and palanquin systems to the bio-surveillant capacities of&nbsp;warging&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;not as compensatory \u201cfixes,\u201d but as infrastructural reconfigurations that subvert compulsory able-bodiedness&nbsp;(McRuer). These practices allow disabled subjects to bypass the physical&nbsp;labor&nbsp;demands of their respective socio-technical regimes, revealing disability not as deficit but as a site of technological innovation and political possibility. Drawing on Anna Tsing\u2019s concept of friction, I examine the spaces where these technological formations collide: the Wall as a border-management apparatus, the Free Cities as proto-capitalist financial hubs, and the Dothraki Sea as a zone of mobile pastoral infrastructure. I argue that the \u201cfantastic\u201d names the systemic violence&nbsp;required&nbsp;to keep these regimes from collapsing into one another. The true horror of \u201cWinter,\u201d in this reading, is not supernatural invasion but the impending failure of this managed stasis, a world-historical glitch in the biopolitical regulation of surplus life. By reframing magic as infrastructure and disability as technopolitical practice, this paper contributes to broader discussions of how fantasy imagines bodies, power, and technology not as separate domains but as co-constitutive systems.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Oana Marin is a researcher, theatre director,&nbsp;actress, cultural manager, and educator. She is Assistant Professor at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, where she teaches courses on&nbsp;contemporary theatre, performance aesthetics, cultural project management, and research methodologies in the performing arts. Her work focuses on the intersections of performance, social justice, migration, and marginalized identities. She has forthcoming articles contracted with Bloomsbury and Routledge. Since 2019 she has collaborated with the Sibiu International Theatre Festival and, since 2022, has coordinated the Sibiu International Performing Arts Market. She also develops inclusive performance practices with marginalized communities, integrating non-professional actors into professional productions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Mimi-Markham-\"><strong>Mimi Markham<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>\u2018Adam\u2019s utopia masked a nightmare, as utopias generally do\u2019: Future Technologies and Historical War&nbsp;in Speculative Fiction<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Machines Like Me,<\/em>&nbsp;Ian McEwan\u2019s first foray into the realm of science fiction and alternative history, explores the ethical quandaries surrounding the now not-so-distant technologies of androids and artificial intelligence. The novel appears firmly in the territory of speculative futures, except for its twist setting \u2013 an alternative 1982, where the atomic bomb was never dropped on Hiroshima and Margaret Thatcher resigns after losing the Falklands War, as Alan Turing grows old with his husband.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper addresses two principal elements: first, the potential of fiction to&nbsp;assist&nbsp;history-makers and creative practitioners in navigating the moral dilemmas posed by generative AI; and second, how representations of fictional future technologies intersect with representations of the factual histories of the twentieth-century wars. Speaking about the importance of historical accuracy in fiction, Ian McEwan stresses that \u2018in writing about wartime especially, it [accuracy] seems like a form of respect for the suffering of a generation wrenched from their ordinary lives to be conscripted into a nightmare\u2019.&nbsp;To what extent do these notions about the careful handling of accuracy in historical fiction remain relevant when these same understandings of the history of war are instead used to inform conceptions of future technologies? Drawing on Katharine Harris\u2019 concept of \u2018neo-historical authenticity\u2019,&nbsp;this paper examines the wider issues surrounding fantasy\u2019s handling of dark histories, and it posits that imagined technologies and historical narratives are not as dichotomous as they may initially appear.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Mimi Markham is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, working in collaboration with the Imperial War Museums. She previously gained a BA in English and History at Royal&nbsp;Holloway, University of London, followed by an MA in Public History at the University of York where she explored the potential of contemporary speculative fiction to further public understandings of difficult histories, including war and conflict. Her current research focuses on fairy tales produced during the First and Second World Wars,&nbsp;and they were utilised for propaganda purposes or to express wartime experiences.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Kyna-McClenaghan-\"><strong>Kyna McClenaghan<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>The Fantastic in Scientology&#8217;s E-Meter\u2014A New Age Technology<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the term \u201cfantastic\u201d is most simply used as an adjective for \u201cfantasy,\u201d I mobilize the term as it is defined by Tzvetan Todorov, who theorized it as a literary genre that contends with the supernatural and a sense of uncertainty when confronting that which we cannot explain. I put the fantastic in conversation with Scientology\u2019s undeniable mystical lineage and origins in the Church leader\u2019s science fiction\/fantasy writing. Scientology was introduced in the form of Dianetics in 1952, which was largely informed by psychoanalysis, the efficacy of the E-meter (which was very similar to the lie-detector and other biofeedback machines before it), and detailed an origin story of ancient alien battles that caused the need for humans to rid themselves of \u201cthetans,\u201d or the negative remnants of alien beings.&nbsp; I will explore Scientology\u2019s e-Meter and the Church\u2019s invocation of the fantastic in their technology as&nbsp;evidenced&nbsp;by their doctrinal publications, marketing materials, and a media archaeology of the e-Meter itself. Through this case study, I argue the allyship of the fantastic and technology is culturally pervasive, especially in contemporary religious movements that incorporate technology into their teachings. More than this, I argue that Todorov\u2019s fantastic accounts for an occult encounter that troubles a disenchanted,&nbsp;wholly rationalist&nbsp;view of the world.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Kyna McClenaghan is a PhD candidate in Film in Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She&nbsp;researches occult media histories, putting religious studies and media archaeology in&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">conversation through her dissertation entitled: \u201cCalifornia Media Occulture.\u201d Since working as&nbsp;the Managing Editor of&nbsp;<em>Camera Obscura<\/em>, she has taught at both UC Santa Barbara and Santa&nbsp;Barbara City College.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Anna-Milon-\"><strong>Anna Milon<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Who Built This Nature:&nbsp;Technophilia&nbsp;in Epic Fantasy<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fantasy quests often take their protagonists into the wilderness, an environment we assume devoid of human influence. But all too often the wilderness is suffused with evidence of habitation and technology: barrows, abandoned ruins, or non-human cities. These are the&nbsp;\u2018enta&nbsp;geweorc\u2019,&nbsp;the&nbsp;\u2018work of giants\u2019&nbsp;bestowed upon much of epic fantasy through Tolkien&#8217;s love of Anglo-Saxon poetry. This paper evaluates a selection of epic fantasy texts to examine how fantasy narratives treat signs of ancient technological superiority and uses them to construct diegetic nature and wilderness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The paper focuses on Tolkien&#8217;s&nbsp;\u2018The Lord of the Rings\u2019,&nbsp;Tad Williams\u2019&nbsp;\u2018Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn\u2019,&nbsp;Robert Jordan&#8217;s&nbsp;\u2018The Wheel of Time\u2019,&nbsp;and Lev Grossman\u2019s&nbsp;\u2018Bright Sword\u2019&nbsp;as examples of secondary worlds that are underpinned by pre-existing technologically advanced societies. The paper engages with Moorcock and&nbsp;Mieville&#8217;s&nbsp;criticism of Tolkienian fantasy as limited by its bucolic setting as well as current work on fantasy and ecology, to argue that epic fantasy already allows for complex readings of the enmeshment of nature and technology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Dr Anna Milon&nbsp;wrote&nbsp;her doctoral thesis on the Horned God as Environmental Figure in Anglophone&nbsp;Fantastika&nbsp;at the University of Exeter. She was a researcher fellow on the AHRC-funded Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures project at Nottingham Trent&nbsp;University, and&nbsp;is currently a research associate on the AHRC-funded&nbsp;StoryMachine&nbsp;project at the University of London. Her work can be found in Folklore, Correspondences, and the BFS Journal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Alexander-Morgan-\"><strong>Alexander Morgan<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Machinations of Magic: Tolkien\u2019s Typing, Elvish Technology, and the Victorian Arts &amp; Craft Movement<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In&nbsp;<em>Tolkien\u2019s Modern Reading<\/em>&nbsp;(2021), Holly Ordway dispels the authorial myth of Tolkien\u2019s technophobia. Unlike C. S. Lewis, his fellow Inkling and medievalist\u2014whose technophobic views and pre-modern nostalgia have been erroneously projected upon Tolkien\u2014Ordway argues that Tolkien was often an enthusiastic adoptee of&nbsp;new technologies&nbsp;in both his academic scholarship and creative work; most notably, the typewriter (204). While many of his academic and literary peers\u2014including Lewis\u2014refused to use a typewriter themselves, opting instead to hire a (female) typist to prepare typescripts for publication, Tolkien himself&nbsp;owned multiple typewriters, and confesses in the preface to The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) that the final drafts of the novel \u201chad to be typed, and re-typed: by me\u201d (xiv).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Following media theorist Friedrich Kittler\u2019s account of the typewriter\u2019s transformative effect on the writer and their writing, my paper considers the implications of Tolkien\u2019s use of modern, twentieth-century writing technology in the production of his pre-modern secondary world of Arda. Drawing on the history of the material production of Tolkien\u2019s literary works\u2014how it was drafted, re-drafted, revised and typed, and by whom\u2014as well as the ethics of technology articulated by Tolkien\u2019s mythology in&nbsp;<em>The Silmarillion<\/em>&nbsp;(1977), I argue that Tolkien\u2019s processes and means of literary production echo the ideological values and practices of the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement, and of William Morris in particular. While Morris\u2019s stylistic influence on Tolkien\u2019s writing\u2014and the pre-Raphaelite\u2019s influence on his artistry\u2014have been well-documented (Ordway 163; Falconer, \u201cEarlier Fantasy Fiction: Morris, Dunsany, and Lindsay\u201d 304), my argument focuses instead on the relation between the writer and what is written, the maker and what is made; like Morris\u2019s entrepreneurial endeavours, Tolkien\u2019s literary production enacts an experimental fusion of antiquated and modern techniques of production, reflecting the technological ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement, giving new perspective on Tolkien\u2019s nuanced attitudes toward modern technology and its affordances.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Alexander Morgan is a PhD candidate in English literature at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. His research specializes in speculative fictions, with a particular interest in the intersections of utopian, science fiction, and fantasy literatures. His dissertation,&nbsp;<em>Dreams of Reason: Technologies of Fantasy and Fantasies of Technology<\/em>, interprets the magical practices and artefacts of fantasy literature as a series of symbolic techniques which critique our everyday understanding of technology, its relations to us, and our relations to others, thereby exposing our fantasies about technology in the real world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Mars-Nicoli-\"><strong>Mars Nicoli<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Transgender Technohorror<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his history of trans internet,&nbsp;<em>Dame-Griff<\/em>&nbsp;(2023) points to the role digital connectivity played in building community networks and support systems for trans people, being a \u201clifeline\u201d for many trans folks isolated from in-person trans communities. This phenomenon however caused an emotional overreliance on digital platforms for connection, dividing&nbsp;an&nbsp;&nbsp;isolating&nbsp;trans individuals along axes of access and discouraging them from forming in-person bonds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The underlying anxieties and isolation borne of this social overreliance on the internet has recently manifested in the production of trans-authored horror narratives which engage with the tension between needing to gather digitally and the isolation and vulnerability which comes from it \u2013 with examples across artforms such as cinema (<em>CyberGrime<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Computer Hearts<\/em>\u2026), webcomics (<em>What Happens Next<\/em>) and novels (<em>Brainwyrms, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke<\/em>\u2026). The proposed paper will explore this emerging microgenre, which I define as \u201cTransgender Technohorror\u201d,&nbsp;informed by Powell (2018) and Burke\u2019s (2024) theories of technohorror. While experiences like social alienation and loss of contact with the embodied self through the internet are not unique to trans people, I pose that trans artists hold an epistemic privilege in this genre due to the documented, crucial role of the internet in trans community-building.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I rely on the technohorror concept of \u201cparadoxes of the screen\u201d articulated in Burke, exploring how each of said paradoxes is topically experienced and expressed in trans-authored horror through the case study of&nbsp;<em>We\u2019re&nbsp;All Going to the World\u2019s Fair<\/em>&nbsp;(2022) by Jane Schoenbrun.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Mars&nbsp;Nicol\u00ed&nbsp;(he\/him, ze\/hir) is a PhD candidate at Sheffield Hallam University with the research&nbsp;<em>From Transsexual Transylvania: Transgender Perspectives on Horror&nbsp;Film<\/em>, and&nbsp;has co-run the horror conference Fear2000. He studied Film at the University of Roehampton, with a&nbsp;Master\u2019s&nbsp;thesis on a transmasculine reading on&nbsp;MPreg&nbsp;fanfiction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He balances academic research with artistic output in many forms \u2013 currently co-running a queer art zine as part of the Fairies Collective, ze has also published prose and poetry in English and Italian, and hir short film Adam and Steve premiered in 2019 at the&nbsp;Weihnachtsfilmfestival&nbsp;in Berlin.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Elisa-Pesce-\"><strong>Elisa Pesce<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>The (Un)Freedom to Live on the Threshold of Death \u2013 The Fantastic vs Capitalist Technology in Adam Silvera\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Death-Cast<em>&nbsp;Series<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set in an alternate contemporary New York, Adam Silvera\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Death-Cast<\/em>&nbsp;series follows a group of teenagers whose lives intertwine over the ten years following the founding of Death-Cast, an organization that, via a mobile app, notifies subscribers if they are to die within the&nbsp;next twenty-four hours (so-called \u201cDeckers\u201d). While, to date, the series deliberately withholds a clear explanation of the technology\u2019s mechanism, it reveals that founder Joaquin Rosa somehow receives knowledge on future Deckers from the dead. I argue that Death-Cast can therefore be read as a capitalist technology that commodifies a supernatural mode of knowledge \u2013 one rooted in Puerto Rican spiritual traditions and that would otherwise situate the narrative more firmly within the fantastic \u2013 and converts it into social, economic, and political value.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, I examine how&nbsp;<em>Death-Cast<\/em>&nbsp;exploits technology to sell an illusory \u201cfreedom from death\u201d \u2013 by partially removing its uncertainty \u2013 a promise that echoes narratives of the American Dream. I ask who is granted access to this freedom, and how Silvera\u2019s YA dystopian romance raises questions of biopolitics, fate, and free will in the contemporary United States. Second, building on Pamela&nbsp;Thurschwell\u2019s&nbsp;reading of the series as representing teenagers as \u201cout of time,\u201d I explore the entanglement of technology, fantasy, and temporality in the novels. From a queer perspective, I argue that the fantastic mechanisms potentially underlying&nbsp;<em>Death-Cast<\/em>&nbsp;offer an alternative to technological control, enabling the imagination of brighter presents and futures precisely by engaging with life through death.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Elisa Pesce holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow, where she researched gender bias and power dynamics as reflected in the category of the US maximalist novel. Her postdoctoral work further develops her interest in the cultural understanding of maximalism in twenty-first-century US literature, while also investigating the representation of US culture and oppressive power dynamics in popular genres, especially queer young adult literature. She is the recipient of the&nbsp;Teach@T\u00fcebingen&nbsp;Fellowship for the 2026 summer semester, and her research outputs have been presented at international conferences and in journals such as&nbsp;<em>EJAS, RIAS<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Atlantic Studies<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Dr.-Pritam-Panda,-Dr.-Panchali-Bhattacharya-\"><strong>Dr. Pritam Panda, Dr. Panchali Bhattacharya <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Three Hundred Patents and A Cooking Pot: Culinary Magic as Rogue Infrastructure in Saad Z. Hossain\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Bring Your Own Spoon&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the nanotech saturated future&nbsp;demonstrated&nbsp;in Bangladeshi fiction writer Saad Z. Hossain\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Bring Your Own Spoon<\/em>, the mystical and the mechanical converge seamlessly. The djinn&nbsp;Imbidor, boasts of \u201cholding three hundred patents\u201d instead of casting magic spells. Drawing on Yuk Hui\u2019s Theory of&nbsp;Cosmotechnics, this paper posits that the protagonist Hanu and the&nbsp;djinn&nbsp;Imbidor&nbsp;do not only pose social resistance before the system, they exhibit a rival&nbsp;cosmotechnics- a confluence of the mechanical and the magical that shreds through the overt universalisation imposed by the state. The short story distorts the Clarkean binary between \u201cmagic\u201d and \u201cscience\u201d,&nbsp;positioning&nbsp;Imbidor&nbsp;as a sort of \u201cunauthorized hardware\u201d holding 300 patents instead of being stereotyped as a mystic relic. The paper talks about how Hanu\u2019s \u201cillegal eatery\u201d functions as&nbsp;cosmo-technical node, where the preparation of \u201cdirty\u201d organic matter convert itself into a \u201cbio-hack\u201d against the sterile food of the corporate grid. According to Hossain, the kitchen not only functions as a dining place but as an open laboratory that bypasses the state\u2019s nanite surveillance to create an untraceable biological reality. Hossain, through the escape of the characters into an uncertain yet independent future after the eatery is demolished by the state, rejects the legitimacy of the \u201csmart city\u201d as the universally accepted future. The paper, through the lens of&nbsp;Cosmotechnics&nbsp;, argues that real resistance to modern technological imperialism lies in \u201ctechno diversity\u201d based on the&nbsp;synergy&nbsp;of indigenously developed techniques and modern science which reclaims human identity from corporate synthesis.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pritam Panda (First author): The author discusses literature and language as Assistant Professor of English, JDSG College,&nbsp;Bokakhat, Assam, India. He completed his Ph.D. from the University of&nbsp;Lucknow,&nbsp;India and the title of his doctoral research was \u201cRe-enactment of Today\u2019s Myths and the Creation of Tomorrow\u2019s Myths in Science Fiction and Cinema\u201d.&nbsp;He has presented papers in several national and international conferences and published papers in Scopus indexed journals.&nbsp;&nbsp;His areas of interests include Speculative fiction, Eco-critical studies, and Film Studies.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Panchali Bhattacharya (Second author): Panchali Bhattacharya is an Assistant Professor (Literature) in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the NIT&nbsp;Silchar, Assam, India. She completed her PhD from the School of HSS&amp;M at IIT Bhubaneswar, India. She has extensive experience in publishing research in esteemed journals and&nbsp;conferences, and&nbsp;also serves on the reviewer panel for several international journals in the field of environmental studies. Her research interests currently lie at the intersection of&nbsp;ecospirituality&nbsp;and Indigenous studies, with a particular focus on Northeast India.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Punyashree-Panda,-Rrtwika-Roychowdhury-\"><strong>Punyashree&nbsp;Panda,&nbsp;Rrtwika&nbsp;Roychowdhury<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract<em>:&nbsp;Let It Go, Let It Grow: Building the Material Self in&nbsp;<\/em>Frozen<em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<\/em>Encanto&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper explores the act of magical creation as a foundational practice in the formation of feminine identity. Focusing on the protagonists of Disney\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Frozen<\/em>&nbsp;(2013) and&nbsp;<em>Encanto<\/em>&nbsp;(2021), it posits that selfhood is architecturally forged through their act of constructing their own spatial domain. Using Bill Brown\u2019s \u201cthing theory,\u201d the paper distinguishes between a passive object and an active, agential \u201cthing\u201d to argue that these protagonists do not metaphorically find themselves; they materially create who they are. The&nbsp;methodology&nbsp;involves a close textual and visual reading of key sequences through feminist materialism, such as Elsa\u2019s construction of her ice palace and Mirabel\u2019s restoration of the Casita, to trace how physical craft becomes synonymous with self-actualization. Material creation of identities is thus magical in both films: Elsa generates magic to build her palace, while Mirabel rebuilds her Casita to restore magic. In this way these films move away from narratives where womanhood is realized through internal reflection or romantic validation to employ a storytelling paradigm that prioritizes a tangible artistry of action and material transformation. This shift repositions the feminine archetype&nbsp;from a passive source of inspiration or the classical muse,&nbsp;to an active agent: one who builds her own domain. This paper proposes that identity is an active creative project, and advocates for an artistry rooted in doing and building. Its central claim that these narratives exemplify a powerful model of creative audacity, suggests to a global viewership that the definitive expression of self-discovery is the tangible, material labour of constructing one\u2019s own reality.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Punyashree&nbsp;Panda (First author): Punyashree&nbsp;Panda (PhD) is an Associate Professor of English at Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, India. She has widely published in the fields of Postcolonial World Literature, Indigenous Literature, Ecocriticism, Memory studies in journals such as&nbsp;<em>Journal of American Studies, Studies in American&nbsp;Humor,&nbsp;ETropic, Studies in Travel Writing, NALANS<\/em>&nbsp;etc. Her book chapters have appeared in Routledge, Palgrave MacMillan, Mythopoeic Press, Peter Lang, Atlantic Publishers, among others. She can be reached at punyashreepanda@gmail.com.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ORCID&nbsp;iD: https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7027-9137&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rritwika&nbsp;Roychowdhury&nbsp;(Second author): Rritwika&nbsp;Roychowdhury is a PhD research scholar in English at the School of Humanities,&nbsp;Social Sciences and Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar. Her research focuses on the intersections of children\u2019s media, gender studies, and visual culture. She can be reached at&nbsp;&nbsp; a24en09002@iitbbs.ac.in.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ORCID ID: https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8417-6676&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Zvonimir-Prtenja\u010da-\"><strong>Zvonimir&nbsp;Prtenja\u010da<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>\u201cYou think Ida B. Wells could have done what she did from a kitchen?\u201d: An Afrofuturist Feminist Reading of&nbsp;<\/em>Bitter Root&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Afrofuturist feminism is a critical praxis which, when applied to Black speculative comic books such as David F. Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Bitter Root<\/em>&nbsp;(2018\u20132021), prompts readers to simultaneously interrogate the intersections of racial identity, gender roles, and power over technology which have historically suppressed Black women\u2019s agency, and re-envision these relations as future-oriented and liberatory through a complex interplay of images and texts. Comics scholar Damian Duffy notes that this interplay is central to Bitter Root\u2019s \u201ctechnosocial&nbsp;meanings,\u201d which privilege kindred \u201cconnections\u201d over \u201cdivisions\u201d between the&nbsp;Sangeryes, a clan of Black monster hunters who employ both non-Western and Western technologies in their mission. These range from&nbsp;rootwork&nbsp;and conjure to \u201cfantastical reconfigurations\u201d of the \u201creal\u201d World War I weaponry, deployed to \u201cforge\u201d and administer \u201cmedicine\u201d like the&nbsp;Fiif\u2019no&nbsp;serum to the&nbsp;Jinoo: grotesque incarnations of \u201cthe poisonous hates of racist tradition\u201d (Duffy) haunting Harlem Renaissance-era New York. Walker et al.\u2019s Black family saga is thus inherently Afrofuturist, drawing on the imaginative possibilities of its subgenres like Horror Noire and&nbsp;Dieselfunk. However, what&nbsp;renders&nbsp;its narrative feminist and is this paper\u2019s intervention is the authors\u2019 intentional reconceptualization of the early twentieth-century Black female experience through Belinda \u201cBlink\u201d&nbsp;Sangerye\u2019s&nbsp;character arc. As she learns to&nbsp;operate&nbsp;\u201ctechnologies both arcane and new\u201d (Nelson 12), Blink transforms from a domesticated, subservient nurturer into a self-determined conjure woman, protector, and leader. By&nbsp;ultimately repositioning&nbsp;Blink \u2013 and through her, other Black women \u2013 from heteropatriarchal \u201cvictims\u201d to \u201cagents of&nbsp;technoculture\u201d (Nelson 12), Bitter Root articulates a model of Black female futurity which reclaims the technologies of the fantastic as tools for resistance and becoming.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Zvonimir&nbsp;Prtenja\u010da&nbsp;(he\/him\/his) is a PhD candidate and a teaching assistant with the Department of English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Josip Juraj&nbsp;Strossmayer&nbsp;University of Osijek, the Republic of Croatia), where he researches theories, politics, and practices of representation and difference in American popular culture. If not teaching English in his elementary school or writing his doctoral dissertation, he is consuming excessive amounts of caffeinated beverages after working out, watching and reading the newly released or published superhero and dark fantasy film\/TV show\/comic book, or annoying his fianc\u00e9e by building yet another LEGO Marvel set.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Lorna-Ross-\"><strong>Lorna Ross<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;\u2018<em>Then build us a world\u2019: How Becky Chambers\u2019 alien world-building imagines a more inclusive future for disabled people.<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michael Saler theorises that imaginary worlds allow readers to reflect on social realities from a critical distance and experience&nbsp;different ways&nbsp;of being. As opposed to accepting reality as fixed, sub-creation for Saler reveals the actual world as an imaginary construct which can be dismantled and rebuilt like a secondary world. It is significant that the fourth instalment of Becky Chambers\u2019&nbsp;Wayfarers&nbsp;series,&nbsp;<em>The Galaxy, and the Ground Within<\/em>&nbsp;(<em>The Galaxy<\/em>) was written during the Covid-19 pandemic, which highlighted the prevalence of the social attitudes and structures that oppress and isolate disabled people on a global scale. Understanding Chambers\u2019 alien world as conversant with its contemporary moment, this paper will explore how&nbsp;<em>The Galaxy<\/em>&nbsp;imagines a more inclusive future for disabled people.&nbsp;Read through&nbsp;a posthuman lens, an inclusive notion of what constitutes as \u2018human\u2019 is embedded in Chambers\u2019 alien world-building, which allows the reader to appreciate how different people experience the same world differently. Through the social model of disability, I read Speaker, an alien protagonist in the novel, as a disabled individual living in an ableist society as the Wayfarers universe is not built for her&nbsp;Akarak&nbsp;species, just as the actual world is not built for disabled people. I understand Chambers\u2019 characters as world-building collaboratively in the text,&nbsp;demonstrating&nbsp;how the actual world can be changed through connection, community organising, and collective action. Ultimately, Chambers highlights how a more inclusive future for disabled people is possible if we can imagine it together through science-fiction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Lorna Ross (she\/her) is currently enrolled on the Fantasy MLitt programme at Glasgow University. She studies part-time and works as a Programmes Administrator at the Adam Smith Business School. She obtained a MA English Literature Honours degree from Edinburgh University where her undergraduate research specialised in understanding representations of femininity and female homosocial relationships through the Bluebeard fairy tale intertext. She was the MLitt Liaison for&nbsp;GIFCon&nbsp;2025, \u2018Queering the Fantastic\u2019. Lorna has too many hobbies, deeply aspires to a Hobbit lifestyle, and adores mooching around the Southside\u2019s green spaces with a coffee and sweet treat in hand.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Mario-Scorzelli-\"><strong><em>Mario Scorzelli<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Extrascientific&nbsp;Machines: Absolute Contingency and&nbsp;Technological&nbsp;Fantasy in Leopoldo&nbsp;Lugones\u2019s&nbsp;\u201cLa&nbsp;fuerza&nbsp;Omega\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper proposes a rereading of Leopoldo Lugones\u2019s short story \u201cLa&nbsp;fuerza&nbsp;Omega\u201d (1906), included in the collection&nbsp;<em>Las&nbsp;fuerzas&nbsp;extra\u00f1as<\/em>, as an early exploration of what Quentin&nbsp;Meillassoux&nbsp;terms extrascientific fiction. While&nbsp;<em>Las&nbsp;fuerzas&nbsp;extra\u00f1as<\/em>&nbsp;is&nbsp;frequently&nbsp;classified as a foundational text of Latin American science fiction or as an example of modern fantastic literature, this paper argues that \u201cLa&nbsp;fuerza&nbsp;Omega\u201d&nbsp;operates&nbsp;within a different speculative regime, one that neither extrapolates scientific laws nor relies on supernatural rupture. Instead, the story imagines a technological system grounded in absolute contingency: a machine whose effects are conceptually thinkable but scientifically unpredictable. Drawing on&nbsp;Meillassoux\u2019s&nbsp;theory of absolute contingency and hyper-chaos, the paper examines how Lugones constructs a technological apparatus that mimics scientific rationality while&nbsp;ultimately exceeding&nbsp;its epistemic limits. The \u201cOmega Force\u201d is presented not as a plausible future technology nor as a magical artifact governed by hidden laws, but as an extrascientific device that exposes the fragility of natural laws themselves. In this sense, Lugones\u2019s technology functions as a fantasy machine,&nbsp;operating&nbsp;beyond both scientific verifiability and traditional magical causality. By&nbsp;analyzing&nbsp;the narrative\u2019s pseudo-scientific rhetoric, testimonial voice, and laboratory setting, the paper shows how \u201cLa&nbsp;fuerza&nbsp;Omega\u201d stages a speculative experiment in which technology becomes a medium for thinking radical contingency rather than progress or mastery. This reading situates Lugones within a non-Anglophone genealogy of speculative fantasy that&nbsp;anticipates&nbsp;contemporary debates on magic, technology, and systems without stable rules.&nbsp;Ultimately, the&nbsp;paper argues that \u201cLa&nbsp;fuerza&nbsp;Omega\u201d exemplifies an early form of technological fantasy in which machines do not&nbsp;extend scientific control but dramatize the possibility of worlds where no law\u2014natural or magical\u2014is guaranteed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Mario Scorzelli is a scholar of Latin American literature and visual culture. He holds degrees in Curatorship in Art (UNA) and Image and Sound Design (UBA) and is currently completing a&nbsp;Master\u2019s&nbsp;degree in Cultural Studies (UNR). He is a PhD candidate in Art at the National University of the Arts (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Argentina). He teaches at the National University of the Arts (UNA) and at the National University of Rafaela (UNRaf). His research focuses on speculative fiction, fantasy, modernity, and the intersection between aesthetics, technology, and ideology in Latin American cultural production. He is currently developing research on early twentieth-century speculative narratives and their relevance to contemporary theories of acceleration, media, and the fantastic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Saige-Severin-\"><strong>Saige Severin<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Pondering the Orb: Artificial Intelligence and the Colonization of the Imagination<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In her 1974 essay \u201cWhy Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?\u201d Ursula K. Le Guin discusses the strong anti-fiction trend in American society, particularly among the ruling class. She argues that imagination and its spiritual riches have been systematically devalued by a wealth-driven, male-centric society. The essay introduces \u201cLe Guin\u2019s Law,\u201d the idea that \u201cThere is an inverse correlation between fantasy and money\u201d.&nbsp;I return to Le Guin\u2019s work fifty-two years later with Artificial Intelligence in mind. The same society that informed her essay has now spawned a series of mega corporations (and their billionaire CEOs) with names, products, and iconography drawn directly from the fantasy that once could \u201conly be self-indulgence or escapism\u201d.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My paper reads Le Guin\u2019s essay alongside the current economic and political trend of using the trappings of fantasy to sell technological \u201cprogress\u201d.&nbsp;Moving beyond the obvious irony of company names like Palantir and Oracle, I consider what it means that many AI companies purposefully shroud their proprietary technology in mysterious and spiritual terms, including specific colour schemes, the use of the sparkle emoji, and the insistence on future (fantastical) uses of AI that have yet to materialize. Drawing on post-colonial and feminist theory, I argue that AI technocrats use fantasy as a mechanism through which they can colonize and capitalize upon the imagination. Stripped of its magic soul and turned into a technological&nbsp;product, I read AI as a destructive continuation of Le Guin\u2019s Law, where a false fantasy concentrates money in the hands of the chosen few.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Saige Severin (any\/all) is a Starling, from the MLitt class of 2024-25. They are a co-founder of&nbsp;<em>Elsewhere<\/em>, as well as its first Editor-in-Chief. Their academic&nbsp;interests&nbsp;are deeply rooted in the connection between fantasy, history, and community-building. Outside of academia,&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;working on collecting all of Pratchett&#8217;s&nbsp;<em>Discworld<\/em>&nbsp;series&nbsp;second-hand&nbsp;and love to paint, crochet, bake, cook, read, wear sparkly things, and obsess over world politics. They hope someday to collect the Thanos gauntlet of grandma hobbies and teach the new generation about art as political resistance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Jaya-Singh-\"><strong>Jaya Singh<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Extraterrestrial Contact vs. Existential Speculation: A comparative analysis of films&nbsp;<\/em>Cargo, Koi Mil Gaya, Krish<em>&nbsp;and sequels<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The mainstream Indian cinema encompasses a wide range of genres, including romantic, action, drama, thriller, and horror films. Science fiction did not receive much attention in the early years of films, though some early films&nbsp;contain&nbsp;proto-science fiction elements, often blended with fantasy and mythology. Films like&nbsp;<em>Kalai Arasi<\/em>&nbsp;(1963) and&nbsp;<em>Mr X in Bombay<\/em>&nbsp;(1964) experimented with invisibility, futuristic science, and scientific accidents.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The paper intends to analyse the establishment of the science fiction film category in Indian Cinema with special focus on&nbsp;<em>Cargo, Koi Mila Gaya<\/em>, and the&nbsp;<em>Krrish<\/em>&nbsp;franchise. A huge breakthrough in Indian cinema in the category of science fiction was registered with the release of Rakesh Roshan\u2019s Film&nbsp;<em>Koi Mil Gaya<\/em>&nbsp;in the year 2003. The gargantuan success of&nbsp;<em>Koi Mil Gaya<\/em>&nbsp;led to the&nbsp;<em>Krrish<\/em>&nbsp;franchise (2006-2019), which blended science fiction with the superhero genre, focusing on genetic enhancement, advanced technology, extraterrestrial contact with aliens and scientific ethics. Cargo&nbsp;represents&nbsp;a later phase of unconventional science fiction film, a close Western world sci-fi film in terms of the theme of a speculative futuristic setting to explore existential questions&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The film&nbsp;<em>Cargo<\/em>, directed by Arati Kadav, is an experimental shift towards soft science fiction. Set aboard a spacecraft managing post-death transitions, the film explores mortality, memory, and human connection while blending Indian mythology with futuristic speculation. Both&nbsp;films are distinct in the science fiction category and are milestones. The purpose of the paper is also to explore similarities and contrasts with the Western world&#8217;s science fiction films.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Jaya Singh, Assistant Professor,&nbsp;Department of English Literature, SPM Govt. Degree College (A constituent college of the University of Allahabad), Prayagraj, India.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">she is pursuing her&nbsp;PhD&nbsp;in the&nbsp;department&nbsp;of English Literature and Modern European Languages,&nbsp;University of&nbsp;Allahabad. She has been awarded pre-doctoral research fellowship from the Centre for International Programmes, Osmania University. She has cleared NET-UGC&nbsp;exam. She&nbsp;has published many research&nbsp;papers in&nbsp;International&nbsp;and National Journals and presented papers.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Caighlan-Smith-\"><strong>Caighlan Smith<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Playing an Eldritch Influencer: Technologies of Magical Influence in&nbsp;<\/em>Cult of the Lamb&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Video games, by the very affordances of the medium, bring a technical aspect to magic. How that magic is&nbsp;rendered&nbsp;playable \u2013 actionable, quantifiable, upgradeable, etc. \u2013 reveals certain parallels between the genre of magic represented and real-life technologies which follow similar \u201cmechanics\u201d.&nbsp;For example, in Massive Monster\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Cult of the Lamb<\/em>, players wield the magical Eldritch powers of a cult leader, whose magical operations bear striking similarities with contemporary real-life influencer culture. Our cult leader, the lamb, is&nbsp;essentially tasked&nbsp;with becoming the top Eldritch influencer, using their dark magic to outperform influencer rivals and amass the largest following.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Uniting research on real-life influencer tactics (He?manov\u00e1), with critical review of the cult of the charismatic leader in fiction (Buchberger; see also Brown), this paper explores how&nbsp;<em>Cult of the Lamb<\/em>&nbsp;converts Eldritch magic into technologies of social influence, wherein influencers operate as competitive social capital, while followers become expendable social capital, consumed and discarded for the magical\/influential increase they provide players. I tie this magic gameplay analysis into a broad discussion of neoliberal capitalism and the concerning radicalization we are seeing today through 21st century technologies of influence, as especially connected to digital fascism (Fielitz and Marcks).&nbsp;<em>Cult of the Lamb<\/em>, in all its cuteness, acts as a warning parody of the real-life horrors that can manifest through&nbsp;technologies of influence, when their power brokers are mystified, if not deified, by the uncritical devote follower.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Caighlan Smith, PhD (she\/her), is a digital media researcher. Smith completed her doctoral work at Memorial University of Newfoundland as a Vanier Scholar, studying the hero archetype in video games. She also holds a MLitt in Fantasy from the University of Glasgow and has a background in creative writing and speculative fiction, as an internationally award-winning novelist. Smith is currently studying the intersections of feminism, neoliberal capitalism, and democratic agency in video games and gaming culture.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Clarice-de-Souza-\"><strong>Clarice de Souza<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>No One Mourns&nbsp;The&nbsp;Wicked: The Construction of a Public Enemy No. 1 for Maintaining the Status Quo<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This article proposes to&nbsp;analyze&nbsp;how the construction of the character Elphaba Thropp in &#8216;Wicked&#8217;, in its musical version, reflects the construction of an alterity under the scrutiny of spectacular technologies of power, using green skin \u2014 interpreted by the system as an aesthetic and moral flaw \u2014 to sustain the Wizard&#8217;s hegemony and strengthen his heroic image before Ozian society. The study&nbsp;demonstrates&nbsp;that Elphaba&#8217;s transformation into a villain is a process of social engineering, in which surveillance technology and political propaganda are employed to isolate the dissident body. Furthermore, it is also&nbsp;observed&nbsp;that Elphaba\u2019s villainization is not a character trait, but a political necessity of a system built upon lies that&nbsp;utilizes&nbsp;propaganda technology to&nbsp;consolidate&nbsp;public enemies and&nbsp;maintain&nbsp;the status of social functioning. The theoretical framework used for this analytical and bibliographic research is&nbsp;mainly based&nbsp;on Beauvoir, Todorov, Bakhtin, and Candido, exploring the construction of Elphaba passing through, first, a socially repressed and denied individual and,&nbsp;subsequently,&nbsp;consolidating&nbsp;herself as the greatest antagonist to the Wizard of Oz. The results&nbsp;indicate&nbsp;that technology in Oz does not serve only for progress, but to shape history based on the wills of those who command the communication machine.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:\u00a0Clarice de Souza is a Professor of Portuguese Language, specializing in Literature and Academic Writing for university entrance exams. She holds a postgraduate degree in Children&#8217;s Literature in Schools from PUC-Minas, Brazil. Currently, she serves as a teacher trainer for Portuguese language educators in the municipality of\u00a0Brejo\u00a0da Madre de Deus (PE,\u00a0Brazil), focusing on pedagogical development. As an educational entrepreneur, she runs her own preparatory writing course. Fluent in both English and Spanish, her work bridges classroom practice with educational consultancy, fostering critical thinking and literary analysis in both students and fellow educators.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Cenk-Tan-\"><strong>Cenk Tan<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Artificial Companionship, Affective Labour, and Technocratic Care in Brian Aldiss\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Super-Toys Last All Summer Long&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper examines Brian Aldiss\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Super-Toys Last All Summer Long<\/em>&nbsp;(1969) as an early critique of artificial intelligence and this critique is grounded on emotion, care, and social reproduction instead of the traditional narratives of technological autonomy or revolt. Human beings are gradually replaced by robots in a future that transforms into a new realm of material abundance, technocratic rule, and stringent biopolitical control over reproduction. The android child, David Swinton, who does not act as a human being\u2019s failed imitation but functions as an ethically vulnerable being whose lack of attachment exposes affective deficits of the society that creates him. Building on Foucault\u2019s biopolitics, the author introduces elements of population control and emotional regulation. Moreover, the model of emotional labour proposed by Arlie Hochschild provides an insightful perspective on the economic aspects of love in the sense that, in a world where no human beings are available or nobody is willing to care, the idea of care can be manufactured at the level of artificial agents. Additionally, Donna Haraway\u2019s posthuman ethics offers the reader the key to a relational interpretation of David where his exclusion from the realm of recognition marks the limits of humanist moral frames, whereas Bernard Stiegler\u2019s analysis of technological proletarianization allows an understanding of how automation destroys the workers\u2019 affective and social capacities instead of strengthening them.&nbsp;<em>Super-Toys All Summer Long<\/em>&nbsp;challenges the notion of AI being an existential threat by pointing out to the social conditions&nbsp;rendering&nbsp;artificial companionship appealing. It does so by revealing a technocratic utopia emptied of emotion, in which emotional scarcity becomes the defining condition of the society.&nbsp;Accordingly, the article argues that Aldiss\u2019s story not only marks the beginning of a debate on AI and human relationships but also lays the conceptual groundwork for&nbsp;subsequent&nbsp;discussions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Cenk Tan received his BA in American Culture and Literature from&nbsp;Hacettepe&nbsp;University (Ankara,&nbsp;Turkey). He earned his PhD from the department of English language and literature. Cenk is a trilingual speaker of English, French, and Dutch and specializes on topics such as science fiction, ecocriticism, cinema\/film&nbsp;criticism&nbsp;and continental philosophy. He works as an associate professor at&nbsp;Pamukkale&nbsp;University (Denizli,&nbsp;Turkey) and is the author of various scholarly articles. He is also the editor of many published and upcoming books. His latest books&nbsp;include,&nbsp;<em>Science Fantasy: Critical Explorations in Fiction and Film&nbsp;<\/em>and<em>&nbsp;Eco-Concepts: Critical Reflections in Emerging Ecocritical Theory and Ecological Thought&nbsp;<\/em>published by Lexington Books (Bloomsbury) in 2024. Cenk is currently co-editing the upcoming volumes,&nbsp;<em>Class Conflict in 21st Century Science Fiction Film<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Reinventing&nbsp;The&nbsp;Witch: Witchcraft and Sorcery in 21st Century Fiction and Film<\/em>&nbsp;both to be published by McFarland Books in 2026.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Lara-Toppel-\"><strong>Lara Toppel<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Alethiometer&nbsp;and Adolescence:&nbsp;Regarding&nbsp;the Matter of Consciousness in&nbsp;<\/em>His Dark Materials&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Phillip Pullman intertwines science and fantasy in the world of&nbsp;<em>His Dark Materials<\/em>&nbsp;by introducing the conscious matter of Dust, and the experimental theologians who study its connection to original sin. Central to the study of Dust is the&nbsp;alethiometer, a truth-telling device&nbsp;similar to&nbsp;a compass. Scientists of Lyra\u2019s world&nbsp;seek&nbsp;to destroy original sin, by separating children from their&nbsp;d\u00e6mons, as they are believed to be the main source attracting Dust. Lyra\u2019s unique ability to intuitively correspond with the&nbsp;alethiometer&nbsp;ultimately pertains&nbsp;to her innocence and vanishes in the awakening of her sexuality. Her maturity is reflected by her&nbsp;d\u00e6mon\u2019s&nbsp;settling as a pine marten, marking Lyra\u2019s transition into&nbsp;adulthood&nbsp;and allowing her to be surrounded by the elementary particles of consciousness.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pullman does not attribute&nbsp;<em>His Dark Materials<\/em>&nbsp;to the fantasy genre, rather describing his writing as \u2018stark realism\u2019 which concerns itself with themes such as adolescence,&nbsp;psychology&nbsp;or sexuality, whilst fantasy is only used to \u2018support and embody\u2019 these central themes (Pullman 1998). However, as I argue, Pullman uses the fantastic concept of conscious matter as primary force to illustrate that a world without sin, and thus without consciousness, is also an existence in which social awareness and original thought evaporate. The Dust controlling the&nbsp;alethiometer&nbsp;is the technological force which allows for deeper understandings of the&nbsp;universe. Yet adults blame adolescent development and justify the exploitation of children as sacrifices for a \u2018better\u2019 world.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Lara Toppel (she\/her) is a current postgraduate student of the Fantasy MLitt programme at the University of Glasgow. She recently completed her BA in American Studies and German Literature at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research interests include Arthurian Studies, Fairy-Tale Retellings, Queer Theory, and Children\u2019s Fantasy Literature. She has a lovely cat named Merlin.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Percy-Truong-\"><strong>Percy Truong<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>\u2018Horror Lurks Within\u2019: World-building through Intratextuality and Intertextuality in Magic the Gathering\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Innistrad<em>&nbsp;Expansion.<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Released on September 30th, 2011 (Magic Set Archive), the Magic the Gathering expansion \u2018Innistrad\u2019 introduces players to the titular world of&nbsp;Innistrad. Populated by humans, vampires, werewolves, angels, and spirits, the plane\u2019s aesthetic qualities pull primarily from the trappings of Gothic horror. This paper aims to contextualize Magic cards as a distinct world-building technology&nbsp;closely connected&nbsp;to, but independent of, mediums like traditional literature. While some have written on Magic cards as a novel form of literacy before, analyses of cards\u2019 function as world-building tools prove absent from wider scholarly discourse. I argue that \u2018Innistrad\u2019 world-builds both within and between cards to spawn individual elements of the world which converse with each other to build a greater sense of whole. I employ Scott McCloud\u2019s theories on the form of comic books to explore how Magic cards function to construct world-building elements through the collaboration between image and word. Additionally, these acts of intratextuality manifest as intertextuality through references to Gothic horror, tying the expansion to a pre-established canon and aesthetic system to derive legitimacy and further shortcut player understanding of the world. Situating \u2018Innistrad\u2019s&nbsp;intertextuality through Brian&nbsp;Atterbery\u2019s&nbsp;theory of mitochondrial literature further allows this paper to further contextualize \u2018Innistrad\u2019 and Magic\u2019s position within wider fantasy and its reinvention of Gothic horror tropes. Ultimately, exploring trading cards as a world-building technology opens discussion into form within fantasy, allowing us to deconstruct and broaden our collective sense of what a piece of fantasy media could look like beyond conventional storytelling mediums.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio: Percy Truong is currently completing an MLitt Fantasy Literature degree at the University of Glasgow. His research interests lie within Literary Studies, Comic Studies, and Film Studies and explores Orientalism and representations of colonialism. He is also interested in depictions of ghosts in non-western media, especially constructions of hauntings as cultural traumas in Asian art cinemas. His undergraduate thesis investigated the role of violence and trauma in the comic series Saga and queer-inflected love as an avenue out of those cycles.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"\u00d6zlem-Uslu-\"><strong>\u00d6zlem Uslu<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>The Biomechanics of Death: NDEs as Traumatic Technologies of the Body in V.E. Schwab\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>Villains&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In V.E. Schwab\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Villains<\/em>&nbsp;series, the&nbsp;man-made&nbsp;metamorphoses from human to&nbsp;\u201cExtraOrdinary\u201d&nbsp;(EO) are stripped of traditional mystical whimsy. Instead, the process is described with the industrial coldness of a technological, and therefore repeatable, procedure. The protagonists, Victor&nbsp;Vale&nbsp;and Eli Ever,&nbsp;\u201chack\u201d&nbsp;nature by treating the Near-Death Experience (NDE) not as an end, but as a mechanism to design a new form of life,&nbsp;attempting&nbsp;to upgrade the individual through deliberate trauma. This paper argues that the resulting powers function less as a&nbsp;\u201cmagical\u201d&nbsp;gift and more as a biomechanical modification that&nbsp;renders&nbsp;the subject permanently impaired.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Utilizing Robert&nbsp;McRuer\u2019s&nbsp;Crip Theory and the biopolitical frameworks of Foucault and Agamben, this presentation&nbsp;analyses&nbsp;how the EO body disrupts the binary between&nbsp;\u201cability\u201d&nbsp;and&nbsp;\u201cdisability\u201d.&nbsp;Rather than achieving a post-human ideal, the protagonists gain powers that impose eternal costs: chronic physical pain, psychological obsession, and a fundamental&nbsp;\u201cwrongness\u201d&nbsp;that&nbsp;necessitates&nbsp;constant medical or violent intervention. I will specifically examine Eli Ever as a biopolitical agent who&nbsp;attempts&nbsp;to&nbsp;\u201cnormalize\u201d&nbsp;the EO population. Through his failed medical thesis, Eli equates bodily difference with deviance, transforming the fantastic into a pathology that must be&nbsp;\u201ccured\u201d.&nbsp;Ultimately, Schwab\u2019s&nbsp;work reveals that when the fantastic is pursued as a technology of mastery, the result is not liberation, but a deepened entanglement in systems of bodily and social control.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;\u00d6zlem&nbsp;Uslu is a&nbsp;Master\u2019s&nbsp;student in English Language and Literature at Akdeniz University. Her research explores the intersection of power, institutional knowledge, and speculative fiction, with a primary focus on R.F.&nbsp;<em>Kuang\u2019s<\/em>&nbsp;Babel and M.L. Wang\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Blood Over&nbsp;Bright Haven<\/em>. Utilizing a theoretical framework grounded in Foucauldian biopolitics and the works of Hannah Arendt and Byung-Chul Han, her current thesis&nbsp;analyses&nbsp;how magic systems function as metaphors for exploitative systems of control in the form of industrialization. Her broader interests include the representation of bodily trauma and the biomechanics of the fantastic in contemporary genre fiction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Julia-Jin-Wang-\"><strong>Julia Jin Wang<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>The Affective Potentials of Writing: Fantastical Depictions of Mental Health Management in Murashige\u2019s&nbsp;<\/em>The Lost Souls of Benzaiten&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This paper applies Brian&nbsp;Massumi\u2019s&nbsp;(2002) affect theory to examine a fantastical expression of the technology of writing in Kelly Murashige\u2019s (2024) young adult novel,&nbsp;<em>The Lost Souls of Benzaiten<\/em>. Its protagonist, Machi, lives with depression and refuses to speak, communicating by writing on a whiteboard. When she prays to the Japanese goddess Benzaiten to become a robot vacuum cleaner, Benzaiten appears, with Machi\u2019s prayer written on a little board strung on her necklace. I read their fantastical adventures as expressions of the writing process, such as editing, going to unplanned places, and seeing a reflection of true feelings. I argue that this fantastical portrayal of writing explores writing\u2019s affective potential to instigate mindset changes, in this case shifting Machi\u2019s depression and enabling her to speak again.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For&nbsp;Massumi, human experience has three ontological dimensions: virtual, actual, and hinge in-between. The virtual holds all potential experiences. Affect occurs when a potential experience is \u201cselected\u201d and moves toward the actual. Affect belongs in the hinge and connects us to potentiality, enabling deep changes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the novel, Machi \u201cwriting\u201d to Benzaiten creates a state in-between the mortal and immortal worlds, where Machi can see what Benzaiten can, such as spirits in the mortal world. Thus, I read the immortal world as the virtual dimension, Benzaiten as bringing potential experiences from there, and Machi\u2019s in-between state as the hinge-dimension of affective experience. Machi\u2019s experiences in this space change her deep feelings about being alive, shifting her depression into a more manageable state.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Julia Jin Wang holds a PhD in Children\u2019s Literature and Education from the University of Cambridge, where she studied how the reader\u2019s orientation in fantasy multiverses&nbsp;implicates their feelings toward the characters and affects their real-life cognitive habits and pathways of alienation. Her research interests include fantasy, cognitive stylistics, affect and emotions, spatiality, (dis)ability, Neo-Daoism, children\u2019s literature, and diaspora studies. Her most recent publication is \u201cA Neo-Daoist Adolescence: Cultivating Selfhood in The Daily Life of the Immortal King,\u201d in The Lion and the Unicorn.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Amanda-Weiss-\"><strong>Amanda Weiss<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Technologies of Faith and Fantasy:&nbsp;Containing&nbsp;Catastrophe in Makoto Shinkai\u2019s Post-2011&nbsp;<\/em>Disaster&nbsp;<em>Trilogy<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Produced in the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima nuclear accident, Japanese director Makoto Shinkai\u2019s \u201cdisaster trilogy\u201d responds to the limits of modern technology-based disaster prevention and response. Together, the three films\u2014Your Name (2016), Weathering with You (2019), and Suzume (2022)\u2014expose the inadequacy of contemporary technological frameworks to fully prevent or meaningfully process large-scale natural destruction. Instead, they reframe disaster response through \u201ctechnologies of faith and fantasy\u201d: magical interventions that mitigate or reverse catastrophe through religious and traditional symbols, specialized roles, and ritualized practices.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the failures surrounding Fukushima made clear, contemporary disaster prevention often rests on a false assumption of human mastery over nature. Shinkai\u2019s films instead draw on Japanese mythology and Shinto cosmology, which position humans not as rulers of nature but as \u201cchildren of the kami\u201d who are embedded within larger systems of&nbsp;tsunagari&nbsp;(connections and relationships).&nbsp;Accordingly, Shinkai\u2019s characters confront catastrophic phenomena such as comets, climate change, and earthquakes not through scientific rationality, but through supernatural mechanisms grounded in Shinto belief and myth. Calamity is&nbsp;contained&nbsp;or mitigated through traditional crafts and premodern tools such as&nbsp;kumihimo&nbsp;(corded braid),&nbsp;kuchikamizake&nbsp;(\u201cmouth-chewed\u201d sake), and&nbsp;mikageishi&nbsp;(magical stones). These interventions are enacted through ritualized roles including&nbsp;miko&nbsp;(shrine maidens) and across symbolic thresholds like torii (Shinto gates). These magic systems articulate a post-2011 cultural response that acknowledges the limits of modern science and technology, imagining the restoration of balance between humanity and nature through interconnection, ritual, and belief.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Amanda Weiss is Associate Professor of Japanese at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she teaches courses on Japanese media and society. She is also editor and founder of&nbsp;<em>Hivemind: Global Speculative Fiction<\/em>, a science fiction and fantasy magazine focused on language and culture. Her book<em>, Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema<\/em>&nbsp;(Hong Kong University Press, 2023), explores contemporary East Asian remembrance of WWII.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Makayla-Wigder-\"><strong>Makayla Wigder<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Urban Romantasy: How Technology and Romance Come Together<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sarah J. Maas is lauded as one of the initiators of the Romantasy Movement. Her fantasy worlds, like many across the fantasy genre, are projected onto and inspired by a fictional medieval Europe, but the setting of series&nbsp;<em>Crescent City<\/em>,&nbsp;Lunathion, resembles a modern American city. Characters have access to cameras, cell phones, social media, and cars which changes how characters interact and navigate the secondary world. This reach into urban fantasy depicts how readers, specifically women, navigate cities, allowing Maas to ground real societal issues in a recognizable context. Portraying&nbsp;Lunathion&nbsp;and protagonist Bryce Quinlan as fitting into readers\u2019 conceptions of the primary world allows readers to recognize ourselves.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The hybridization of magic and primary world technology within&nbsp;Lunathion&nbsp;implies&nbsp;<em>Crescent City<\/em>&nbsp;is an urban fantasy. However, series like&nbsp;<em>Crescent City<\/em>&nbsp;differentiate themselves from paranormal romance, romantasy, and urban fantasy to manifest a fuzzy set loosely considered \u201curban romantasy.\u201d&nbsp;<em>Crescent City<\/em>&nbsp;uses romance to push back on the detective, monster-hunter aspects of urban fantasy and express grounded feminist social critique from the female gaze. It adds a softness that urban fantasy sometimes lacks. Integrating technology and magic into the modern worldbuilding provides a different type of representation than either romantasy or urban fantasy by showing women navigating cities be sarcastic and harsh but also as kind, heroic leaders. Though this duality exists across romantasy, urban romantasy is in the unique position to reflect the subtle differences in the modern female experience that cannot be captured by unrecognizable worlds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Makayla Wigder (she\/her) graduated from the University of Glasgow\u2019s English Fantasy Literature&nbsp;MLitt&nbsp;program in 2025 (go Starlings). She&nbsp;wrote&nbsp;her final dissertation on the female gaze and visionary fantasy within the Romantasy Movement and&nbsp;BookTok&nbsp;communities, and this dissertation is one of the first uses of the word \u201cromantasy\u201d in scholarly literature beyond the undergraduate level. Makayla also served as a founding editor for Glasgow\u2019s fantasy literary journal&nbsp;<em>Elsewhere<\/em>&nbsp;last year during her time in the cohort. Her special research interests are romantasy and romance and their impacts on the fantasy genre and contemporary literature.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"Dr.-Grace-A.T.-Worm-\"><strong>Dr. Grace A.T. Worm<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Abstract:&nbsp;<em>Contraception as Magic and Technology in Pierce and Hobb<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is one technology that, whether real or fantastical in origin, has the power to fundamentally reshape society yet is often overlooked as foundational or radical: contraception. Reliance on the Waves metaphor in Anglocentric feminist scholarship has confined the radical significance of contraception to a historical movement of the 1960s, eroding sustained attention to contraception as foundational to feminist aims. Linda Gordon argues that birth control has never been solely about technology; it has always been about power and the cultural construction of women\u2019s function and role within society. Gordon further notes that there was invariably \u201ca complex, mutual, causal relationship between birth control and women\u2019s status\u201d within societies throughout history, and that a society\u2019s valuation of women\u2019s rights is closely linked to the development of birth control technology, as societies that prioritize women tend to support the advancement of contraception, which engenders further equality through its technological benefits. The inclusion of this \u201cfeminist technology\u201d in fantasy worlds highlights its role in shaping social structures because its presence is a deliberate authorial choice. In fantasy texts, where birth control is imagined through magic rather than constrained by realism, it can take multiple symbolic forms that shape its&nbsp;perception&nbsp;in society. Using a close reading of contraception as magic and technology in Tamora Pierce\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Tortall<\/em>&nbsp;Universe and Robin Hobb\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Liveship&nbsp;Traders<\/em>&nbsp;trilogy, this paper will&nbsp;demonstrate&nbsp;how framing birth control as magic alters the fantasy societies these authors create and underscores the transformative importance of this feminist technology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bio:&nbsp;Grace Ann Thomas Worm (she\/they) will ideally be finished with her PhD on Female Fantasy in Tamora Pierce&#8217;s fantasy world of&nbsp;<em>Tortall<\/em>&nbsp;at the University of Glasgow. Grace is an English Literature International Bachelorette accredited secondary teacher who has taught&nbsp;across the U.S. This would be her 6th time&nbsp;participating&nbsp;in a&nbsp;GIFCon. She&nbsp;won\u2019t&nbsp;shut up about video games and bad TV, so take pity and talk to her about them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adrian Arana-Armesto&nbsp; Abstract:&nbsp;Invisibility Is Not Freedom: Transparency, Surveillance, and Fantasy Technology in Tolkien&nbsp; This paper reconsiders the&nbsp;One Ring&nbsp;in J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings as a technology of transparency rather than a symbol of evil.&nbsp;&nbsp;For this purpose, this analysis draws on critical transparency studies, which challenge the assumption that visibility is inherently &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/13\/gifcon-2026-technologies-of-the-fantastic-paper-speaker-bios-abstracts\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;GIFCon 2026: Technologies of the Fantastic \u2013 Paper Speaker Bios &amp; Abstracts&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":13094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,5],"tags":[9,45],"class_list":["post-13118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conferences","category-events","tag-fantasy","tag-gifcon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13118"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13164,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13118\/revisions\/13164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}