FutureCon is a global Speculative Fiction conference organized primarily by folks from Brazil – Ana Rüsche, Cristina Jurado (Spain/UAE), Fábio Fernandes, Francesco Verso (Italy), Jana Bianchi, and Renan Bernardo, with help from other people from all around the world.
This year it was held from 17 to 20 September, 2020. Speakers from over 20 different countries participated, including Ann Vandermeer, Aliette de Bodard, Chen Qiufan, Ian McDonald, Lavie Tidhar and Nisi Shawl, as well as other guests from Argentina, Croatia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Uganda, just to name a few.
Because of the Covod-19 pandemic, this year’s conference was completely virtual. It was the very first time I ever participated in a writing event that was recorded via Zoom and broadcast on YouTube (free to view by the general public).
I had the privilege of moderating the first panel of the conference: “Future South & East Asia: What Future is Taking Shape in India, Pakistan, Philippines?” which happened last Thursday 17 September at 8pm in Beijing, Manila and Singapore (Moscow: 3pm | Rome: 2pm | Lagos: 1pm | Brasilia: 9am | New York: 8am | Los Angeles: 5am. My panelists were a virtual whos-who of amazing writers from South Asia which included:
(Moderator) Victor Fernando R. Ocampo (Singapore/Philippines)
Anil Menon (India)
Indrapramit Das (India)
Lavanya Lakshminarayan (India)
Usman Malik (Pakistan)
Note: Special thank you to S.B. Divya for allowing us to use the questions she had originally developed for this panel.
You can watch our panel in it’s entirety on YouTube (you will need to clink through to the link that goes to YouTube as the moderators have disabled it from playing outside their site).
By the way, I will be participating in a follow-up Futurecon event this coming November, so watch this space.
The Infinite Library and Other Stories 