Yorkshire and the Humber's home for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres.
Thank you to everyone who came to Humber Speculative Fiction 8. If you missed our first meet up since the pandemic started, don’t worry. Our next event is on September 25th.
You can read Susan Oke’s review on Milford Writers blog.
https://milfordsfwriters.wordpress.com/2022/07/30/humber-sff-by-sue-oke/
TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW
Join us for friendly discussions around all things Speculative Fiction.
Our guests for the evening are:
Susan Oke who will be exploring aspects of editing. Carl F Northwood will be sharing insight on self publishing. Both authors will also be reading from their work.
Food and drink is available to order from the bar throughout the evening.
Please be aware there is a limited number of seating available.
Announcing the Guests for July 24th!
In the Science Fiction, YA, Short Story, and Editor corner we have Susan Oke. Representing Self Publishing, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, and Leafy East Yorkshire Villages Author Carl F Northwood.
Tickets will be available shortly via this website/facebook. We strongly recommend reserving a space as it is limited.
We’ve found a new venue & it might even become ‘Home.’ (We hope.)
We’ve bribed authors with coffee, cake, and the promise of a good review.
SAVE THE DATE
24th July 5.30pm
It’s not often you get the chance to invite authors into your house but this time, that’s exact what were doing. Stay home AND stay social.
We think it’s time to be social again, but we want to keep you safe. So…we’re attempting a virtual tour. September’s guests all hail from the north of the M62 and represent of the spectrum offered by Speculative Fiction.
For HumberSFF 7 you must register with us to attend.
So grab your favourite snack, pour yourself a drink and join us on your sofa.
Our guests for HumberSFF are:
Horror, Science Fiction Author and Editor Tim Major
Our tour starts in York, home of Tim Major. Tim has written stories published by genre giants such as Interzone, Fox Spirit, and Shoreline of Infinity, as well as in The Best of British collections from NewCon Press. Tim will be reading from his supernatural mystery novel Hope Island, recently published by Titan Books, as well as his YA novel Machineries of Mercy by Luna Press.
Genre-Spanning Author Joe Hakim
Anchoring back in Hull, Joe Hakim’s novel The Community was nominated for a British Science Fiction Award. Joe’s non-fiction and poetry work has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and at festivals around the UK. His most recent work, Extra Life, is a musical spoken word extravaganza which was part of this year’s Hull Freedom Festival.
https://joehakimwriter.weebly.com/
Steampunk and Crime Author Keith W Dickinson
Completing our scenic tour of the region’s genre talent – and stretching north east a bit – our third guest is Keith W Dickinson. Shortlisted for the Lindisfarne Prize in 2019 for crime fiction, Keith’s debut steampunk novel Dexter & Sinister: Dectecting Agents was launched as part of Lincoln’s Steampunk 2020 festival.
Shona Kinsella’s novella, Flame and the Flood, was published this summer by award winning Fox Spirit Books. The sequel to her 2018 Science Fantasy novel, Ashael Rising, will be out soon from the superb Scottish publisher Stirling Press. Shona also edits the British Fantasy Society’s fiction journal, Horizons.
Even our raffle is going socially distant. We’re working with local independent bookshops J E Books, (Hull) Portal Bookshop (York) and The Rabbit Hole (Brigg) to give away 1 copy of each author’s most recent book.
Our meet will be using Google Meet. It is simple to use and free to access (https://meet.google.com/). We will forward access details to ticket holders closer to the event, so we must ask you to register to attend.
All HumberSFF events are free, and we’ve done our best to keep it as safe as we can. If you would like to support Humbersff please use our Kofi donation page (https://ko-fi.com/humberspeculativefiction).
This International Women’s Day join us as we celebrate female authors within the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres and enjoy the tasty delights of the award winning White Rabbit Chocolatiers.
Click HERE to reserve your seat now. Space is very limited.
…is the author of the critically acclaimed grimdark epic fantasy trilogy Empires of Dust. The David Gemmell Awards shortlisted The House of Sacrifice is out now with HarperVoyager/Orbit.
http://courtofbrokenknives.org/
…is the author of numerous contemporary and erotic romances published by Harlequin Escape and Carina UK. Blue Planet, the third book in her science fiction series, Second Species Trilogy will be available in March 2020.
https://www.janeoreilly.co.uk/
Eli Allison’s vibrantly realised post-apocalyptic genre-busting debut isn’t set in 2017—or, at least, not the one we lived through—but it shows all the energy that city displayed while it was the UK city of culture. Only, turned to the bad. It may be set in the near future, or it may exist in an alternative now.
Reserve your free seat via our Eventbrite page by clicking here.
We’ve found a great looking Hull indie bookseller J. E Books…
…and another one!
We’ve found a new venue. (we hope.)
We’re bribing authors with coffee and cake(and possibly beer…)
And now we’re looking at our schedule…
Yes, we’ve been on autopilot for a while. The good news is we found another port of call. This time you’ll find us at Hull Waterstones, on November 10th 2018 from 4.30pm.
Waterstones cafe will be serving refreshments for you to enjoy.
As Waterstones will be letting us stay out late (whoo-hoo, bookshop lock in!) we must ask that you reserve a seat. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. Although our format has altered slightly the quality and talent of our guests has not. There is a limited availability due to space restrictions. Don’t miss this one. Book here.
Our guests for Humber SFF 5 are:
Our very first guest returns – we must be doing something right. Since his last visit, his time travel novel New Pompeii was nominated for a British Fantasy Award, and he’s had two further books published. AI and algorithms are responsible for keeping crime incheck in his latest tale. Frighteningly close to being fact not fiction, we think Synapse Sequence, his third novel with Titan Books may be his best yet. Crime meets Science Fiction and Thriller – there’s a reason why the critics are comparing him with Michael Crichton.
http://www.daniel-godfrey.com/
We’re really excited to be able to bring Ren Warom to Hull. Her work can be found on Tor.com as well as the novels and numerous short stories she has set loose in the world.
We understand that there is more to come from her vivid and captivating writings in 2019 as well. Ren Warom’s science fiction is supported by knowledgeable and informative blog on mental health.
https://renwaromsumwelt.wordpress.com/
Having played in a rock band before deciding he was a rubbish musician, RJ returned to his first love, fiction, to find he is rather better at that. Books in RJ Barker’s The Wounded Kingdom Series have been shortlisted for the Gemmell Awards, The Clarke Awards, The British Fantasy Awards to name a few. Featuring Girton, a club-footed assassin, we think you’ll agree the series is a fun and entertaining read.
On May 27th at 1pm the James Reckitt Reading Room at Hull Central Library will be the atmospheric surroundings for HumberSFF4.
HumberSFF is excited to be able to host Peter Crowther and Ramsey Campbell as our guests.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.
The Edwardian reading room is ideal for Ramsey Campbell’s reading of the Lovcraftian inspired novel The Searching Dead. It is the first in a trilogy published by PS Publishing.
Ramsey Campbell recently returned to the Brichester Mythos for his novella The Last Revelation of Gla’aki. His new trilogy The Three Births of Daoloth further develops the cosmic horrors he invented in his first published book, The Inhabitant of the Lake. The Searching Dead is the first volume, to be followed by Born to the Dark.
SYNOPSIS (THE SEARCHING DEAD):
Dominic Sheldrake has never forgotten his childhood in fifties Liverpool or the talk an ld boy of his grammar school gave about the First World War. When his history teacher took the class on a field trip to France it promised to be an adventure, not the first of a series of glimpses of what lay in wait for the world.
Soon Dominic would learn that a neighbour was involved in practices far older and darker than spiritualism, and stumble on a secret journal that hinted at the occult nature of the universe. How could he and his friends Roberta and Jim stop what was growing under a church in the midst of the results of the blitz? Dominic used to write tales of their exploits, but what they face now could reduce any adult to less than a child…
For Science Fiction fans, Peter Crowther will be reading from his short story 
collection: Songs of Leaving.
Peter Crowther is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, his editing and, as publisher, for the hugely successful PS Publishing (now including the Stanza Press poetry subsidiary, the Drugstore Indian Press paperback line and PS Artbooks, a specialist imprint dedicated to the comics field). As well as being widely translated, his short stories have been adapted for TV on both sides of the Atlantic and collected in The Longest Single Note, Lonesome Roads, Songs of Leaving, Cold Comforts, The Spaces Between the Lines and The Land at the End of the Working Day. He is the co-author (with James Lovegrove) of Escardy Gap and The Hand That Feeds, and author of the Forever Twilight SF/horror cycle and By Wizard Oak.
He lives and works (and still reads a lot of comicbooks!) with his wife and business partner, Nicky on the Yorkshire coast of England.
REVIEWS (SONGS OF LEAVING):
“Crowther’s collection opens with a magnificent homage to Ray Bradbury, ‘Some Burial Place, vast and Dry’ (the title is one of several references to Whitman), in which the last survivor of a lost colony remembers his home and is visited by it. Despite that tough first act, the quality of what follows remains consistent. These lovely and thoughtful stories are speculative fiction at pretty much its best, conjuring self-contained worlds that for all the stories’ brevity, teem with life.”
—Booklist
“The best of the 12 mostly SF stories in this collection from British author Crowther evoke a genuine sense of wonder and offer near miraculous restoration of hope. Like Ray Bradbury, who is intentionally invoked, Crowther enchants as he tells deceptively simple tales of eternal truths.”
—Publishers Weekly
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As always there’ll be the chance to ask questions and a free raffle. Books have been provided by TorUK, and The British Fantasy Society. There will also be an after-event at The Old English Gentleman with complimentary food, places are limited both at the pub and the library, so please book!
This will be our last HumberSFF for a while, so don’t miss out!
If you missed our Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy event on April 25th, guest Linda Acaster has summed up the afternoon nicely on her blog.
It’s the season for books, (it’s always the season for books!) and there are plenty of genre authors making themselves known in our region, our sibling social in Sheffield has a handy round up of where you can find Robyn Hobb, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ben Aaronovitch, and Anna Smith-Spark.
But if you don’t want to wander too far from home, our next meet up happens on 27th May. Hull Central Library is once again allowing us to cause genre chaos without hushing us, and there may even be free food at the after event! We’ve two genre masters Peter Crowther and Ramsey Campbell so WE STRONGLY ADVISE RESERVING A SEAT! *
We’ll have more on the next Humber SFF soon!
*The comfy seats are disappearing fast!
Humber Speculative Fiction 
![new venue](http://<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="alignnone wp-image-239 " src="https://humbersff.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/humbersfflg.png" alt="Humber Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror Social Meet " width="429" height="283" /></p> <h2 style="text-align: center;">Sorry to keep you waiting.</h2> <h2 style="text-align: center;">Your next Speculative Fiction fix is coming soon! </h2> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://kingsheadpubbeverley.com/">https://kingsheadpubbeverley.com/</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">We've found a new venue & it might even become 'Home.' (we hope.)</p> <p style="text-align: center;">We've bribed authors with coffee and cake (and possibly beer.)</p> <p style="text-align: center;">SAVE THE DATE</p> <p style="text-align: center;">24th July 5.30pm</p>){kind=link}