The Future...next exit!

by JULIE BERTAGNA

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is an exciting place. I’ve been travelling back and forth, meeting friends and celeb-spotting in the Authors’ Yurt (a kind of tented Tardis, much bigger on the inside, crammed full of authors bursting with stories they’re about to let loose on the world). But the best thing about a book festival is that authors and readers meet to share stories and ideas.

So if you’re coming to our schools event (see page 15) or our evening event on Wed 21st August, here’s a taster of what we’ll be discussing in our dystopian debates... join in!

Books and films imagining the future are hugely popular just now. Think of the Hunger Games, Inception, Halo - and our books! 

Why do people enjoy them? Do YOU? Because we like to be thrilled, challenged, scared, inspired? Or are dark and dangerous stories an escape from reality? 

We imagine three very different versions of the future. But how do you imagine it? Could science save us? Destroy us? Take us across the universe to new worlds? Will the climate, new inventions or politics change the way we live? (Why not use some of these ideas to help you write a futuristic story of your own?)

But how far should writers go in imagining the future - especially for young readers? Should there be limits? The new dystopian fiction is marketed towards girls, though they are exciting stories with lots of boy appeal - are ‘labels’ and covers aimed at boys or girls helpful for readers? Or should you be free to make your own discoveries?

There's much more about us and our books elsewhere on Demention, and here...

Claire Merle’s The Glimpse was welcomed as a grippingly readable and deeply unsettling British dystopian thriller. Her new book The Fall will be out in June. Claire’s website

Julie Bertagna’s award-winning Exodus trilogy is a brilliantly imagined story of love and survival in a climate-changed world. Zenith and Aurora complete this highly-acclaimed, classic dystopian story of the future.’ Julie’s website

Teri Terry’s Slated, a dark psychological thriller, was published to great acclaim last year and has now been followed by the engrossing, fast paced Fractured. Teri’s website