Indian Association for Science Fiction Studies - 23rd Annual/8th International Science Fiction Online Conference

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The Indian Association for Science Fiction Studies (IASFS) successfully organized its 23rd Annual/8th International Science Fiction Online Conference on the 21st July 2024. It was an online conference and theme of the conference was "Spotlight on Professor. Jayant V. Narlikar's works".

The IASFS has been organizing its annual conference for many years now, both in-person and virtual. This was the first one I could attend in spite of being a life member for many years - something or the other, usually work related - would come up. Attending this edition of the conference was easier because it was completely online.

The conference included a pre-recorded video by Dr. Narlikar himself. It was a privilege to listen to him. Mr. George Dimitriu, a renowned Romanian SF write, delivered a special guest lecture. The keynote was delivered by Dr. Ashish Mahabal, an Astronomer and Data Scientist at Caltech. 

The conference consisted of interesting papers analyzing various works of Dr. Narlikar. I was honoured to have been able to present a paper on his novel "The Return of Vaman". I first read this book decades ago.

The 23rd conference proceedings are available at https://iasfs.in/conferences-2/

My paper presentation can also be viewed online at https://drive.google.com/file/ d/1JgTvoY3_bgmljiQz4Zg84MWwFwSXNBVU/view (03:00 onwards).

To know more about the IASFS and become a member, you can visit its official website https://iasfs.in/

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