Angela YT Chan 
I moderated the LSFRC Conference Beyond Border’s Creator Roundtable with the speakers sf writer Chen Qiufan, filmmaker Larissa Sansour and writer Linda Stupart. Introducing each practitioner’s methods and practices that involve science fiction, I shaped the collective conversation around creative disciplines as each speaker has worked between literature and film; how SF becomes a necessary mode of critical communication for storytelling their urgent themes; how they see justice in sf worldbuilding and into reality, and finally, what it means to them to work ‘beyond borders’.
“The aim of this year’s LSFRC reading group theme, Beyond Borders, has been to amplify those voices in science-fiction who seek to make borders alien and strange. Borders are one of SF’s most consistent preoccupations, from alien encounters, to narratives of outer space colonisation and on to the construction of walls between worlds. Moreover, the many barriers to entry in the publishing industry mean that borders also shape the conditions under which we read SF and determine whose SF we read. Borders are not always codified or officially policed.
Too often, they are invisible, insidious, and supported by supposedly benign institutions. However, while SF has perpetuated the violence of borders, it has also revelled in their transgression. Queer creators, disabled creators, and creators of colour have shown us the decolonial and non-binary possibilities opened up by the genre. SF is filled with cyborgs, hybrids, and monsters who challenge binary divisions of self/other, animal/human, technological/organic, and material/immaterial. The body in SF is frequently broken down, expanded, or pushed to its limits, as authors imagine new ways of being and strange erotic couplings. Science-fiction must be decolonised and must recognise its power to shape the imagination of the future and what is possible.”
This conference gave a platform to a diverse range of academics, activists, artists and creators from around the world. To help achieve this, we are very grateful for the support and collaboration of both SF Beyond the West and the London Chinese Science Fiction Group. Held over three days, the conference included a lively mix of workshops, roundtables, keynotes and papers. We very much hoped that this conference will create connections and inspire conversations between disciplines and fields. As Homi Bhabha has argued, ‘to dwell ‘in a beyond’ is […] to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to describe our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future on its hither side.’ We move beyond in order to touch and change what is happening now – we envision borderless futures in order to transform the borders which so cruelly police our present.
Held across 10-12 September 2020, our Keynote Speakers were Dr. Nadine El-Enany and Florence Okoye. Our Special Guests on The SF and Translation panel, included Sawad Hussain, Emily Jin, Guangzhao Lyu, Sinéad Murphy, Tasnim Qutait, while on The Creator Roundtable they were Chen Qiufan, Larissa Sansour and Linda Stupart, and Angela YT Chan”
Find out more here
Image: Sinjin Li