George Aranda

Well, quite often it's more of just a broad conversation because the discussions around the narrative provide some focus on what we do, what we have done in science communication.

And it's, you know, and quite often students are more familiar with films that

do have these tropes in them so it's really a whole class discussion on these kind of ideas that come through.

I've given lectures before on you know the science fiction films and the underlying themes and even moving into the idea of video games also explore these ideas as well and that's a really a really useful way of engaging students.

I am someone who has always been really interested in nonfiction and science fiction, so I really have to try and work to make myself read fiction.

Otherwise, I miss out on all the classics and all modern fiction Pulitzer Prize winners and all these kinds of things.

So I do do that during the year.

And I guess the books that have really sparked my interest this year have had to do with dystopias, funnily enough.

The first one probably would have been The Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, obviously inspired by the pandemic situation.

that we're in at the moment, which was a truly fascinating recount of how life changes and stays the same in these kind of tumultuous eras.

And the other one that I read, I hadn't read, I'd read a couple of Atwood novels.

So I decided to sit down and read the Mad Adam trilogy back to back, which is really enlightening kind of way of looking at how the way that we splice DNA and the end of the world and how it's represented is portrayed in fiction.

Well, as he follows this group of individuals, he sees that they bind him, that he's being dragged away, that he's resisting what they're trying to do to him.

And they eventually take him back to this small kind of rural town.

I mean, you get the sense that there's mud everywhere, there's greenery everywhere, there's chimneys, there's this

At first, when I was reading the book, I just didn't even know what era this book was set in because you just couldn't tell.

There's no technology that's referred to or anything like that.

But this really picturesque kind of village is where they're ultimately taking him.

Well, the village fair seems to be a celebration.

It's bringing the whole town together.