That is to say, we think of myths as departing from certain canons of truthfulness, verisimilitude, historical accuracy and so on, but nonetheless as articulating other kinds of truth.

I suppose most people have a sense of myths as bodies of stories, of legendary fables-as it might be, the Greek Myths, the myths of King Arthur, perhaps (although Biblical literalists might object to this) the myths of the Old and New Testaments -sets of stories distinct from, though not necessarily entirely alien to, ‘actual’ history. So, let's start with: what do we mean by ‘myth’? Well, that’s a large question, much debated. I’m chairing the panel and don’t want to hog discussion, so I’ll note a few things here, and then will look to sit back and listen to what my excellent, expert fellow panellists have to say. How do the forms of mythology relate to those of science fiction, and how are they received by their audiences?’ I’m looking forward to it. The brief for our panel is: ‘Mythology seeks to explain the unknown past science fiction to explore the unknowable future.

So here we are.Ĭoming up, this Thursday: ‘The Mythology of the Future’-a panel with myself, Beth Singler, Yen Ooi and Jennifer Woodward, part of the Science Fiction Squared Symposium, exploring the future of science fiction. Where we currently live is a few miles from that great father river, but that's not say I don't continue to feel its influence. In a post on my Medium blog I meditated (in, surprisingly enough, given the topic, a rather NSFW manner) on the continuity of the Thames to my life.

But here I am again, in the middle of these arbitary crosshairs. For portions of my life I have left this zone: as an undergraduate in Aberdeen and a graduate student at Cambridge, and after that for some years living in Southampton. I presently live, as it happens, exactly where the folds in this map make a cross, north-west of Sunninghill and south-east of Wokingham.

So: in 1965 I was born, in Mayday Hospital, now called Croydon Hospital: in the bottom right hand portion of this image. I looked-up this 1850 map (for something Victorian-set I'm presently writing, in order to check the exact path of the Great Western Railway) and was struck by the compass of this small section of it.

The this by adam roberts