Emily Everett, UCL Alumna (English Language and Literature 2008) reports on The Gower Street Lecture Series and New Scientist event at UCL.

I came to science fiction by a strange route. At first, a £2 paperback of short stories from the Oxfam shop might not seem so very strange. But when the author of those stories is a known and revered writer of realist novels, and those stories are as far from realism as a Celestial Omnibus can take you, the once tame paperback has now become a lurking threat to your respectability as a reader. If it hadn’t had EM Forster’s name printed largely across the front, I doubt I ever would have found the nerve to read it in public.

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