Probably not – but who will have the guts to actually stand up and say so? Who dares canute the creeping sciencefictionalisation of everything?

Will Adam Roberts, three-times Clarke Award nominee, finally bite the hand that never quite feeds him?

Will Tom Hunter rub ash in his hair, drag his fingernails through his cheeks, and recant his works as Director (some would say, saviour) of the Arthur C Clarke Award?

Will John Sutherland, Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at UCL, treat this jargon-besotted genre with the derision and contempt it so richly deserves?

Or will it be left to Muggins here to generate conflict and controversy in a room full of people who think science fiction is, well, quite good really…?

Find out when I chair the snappily titled “Is Science Fiction the only truly relevant literary genre today?” at 7:00PM on Monday, 7 November 2011.

Come along to the Darwin Lecture Theatre, UCL, Darwin Building, Malet Place, WC1E 7JG.

The event is presented by New Scientist and Gower Street Waterstones, who are hoping this bun-fight will promote Roberts’s new novel By Light Alone. Annoy them by bringing copies of Dead Water for me to sign.

Also, I will be making a Special Announcement that will change the face of British science fiction overnight.

No.

Really.

Tickets £8 / £6 New Scientist Subscribers/ £5 students http://waterstoneslectureseries.eventbrite.com

All details here:
http://bit.ly/iS2oSq