Bestselling writer and artist Audrey Niffenegger will deliver the inaugural PEN/H.G. Wells lecture on Friday 15 August , 6pm at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon3 to be held at ExCel London 14-18 August. The lecture will be the first in a series of annual lectures held in honour of former PEN President, the author, visionary and human rights campaigner, H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells foresaw the creation of the worldwide web, most particularly in a series of talks and essays which he first published in 1936 under the title ‘World Brain’. The PEN/H.G. Wells lecture will showcase visionary writing and new thinking that embodies the spirit of the pioneering writing and activism of H.G. Wells.
100 tickets at £9 will be available to the public to attend the lecture.
If you are a PEN member, email rebekah@englishpen.org to receive a Discount Code for £5 tickets.
The remaining places are available to attendees of Loncon3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention. Worldcon is an annual event for the international science fiction community celebrating the best in science fiction writing, film and art. Featured guests will include Malcolm Edwards, John Clute and Iain M Banks (in memoriam). Audrey Niffenegger will be signing copies of her book at Loncon3 earlier in the day on Friday 15 August.
Ticket holders for the PEN/H.G. Wells lecture can upgrade their ticket on the day to a Loncon3 Day Pass (£40) minus the price of the ticket. More information on Loncon3
H.G. Wells was a British novelist and historian and PEN’s president 1933-35. He led a campaign against the burning of books by the Nazis in Germany and was responsible for the expulsion of German PEN who had come to support the nationalistic agenda. He was also one of the most preeminent writers of science fiction whose works of fiction included The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and non-fiction treatise The World Brain where Wells envisions a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent ‘World Encyclopaedia’ that could help citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace.
Audrey Niffenegger is an exceptionally creative writer and visual artist who has achieved enormous success in both worlds. Her most recent novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, was published in 2009. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, has sold over seven million copies worldwide and has been translated into forty languages. In the Daily Telegraph’s readers’ poll of the ‘Top 50 Books of All Time’ it appeared at no. 11. Niffenegger is also the author of two ‘novels-in-pictures’, The Three Incestuous Sisters (2005) and The Adventuress (2006), and a graphic novel The Night Bookmobile(2010), all published by Cape. A Chicago native, Niffenegger received her MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Northwestern University. Her art has been widely exhibited in the United States and is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and Harvard University’s Houghton Library.