From fantasy to dystopian fiction, magical realism to sci-fi, speculative fiction can hold up a mirror to society or provide an escape into alternative worlds.

With fantasy and romantasy dominating the bestseller lists, join us for a discussion of the past, present and future of speculative fiction. How does the rising popularity of the genre speak to our present times?

Our panel includes Northern Irish sci-fi author RB Kelly, Belfast-based romantasy author Kalie Reid and academic Caroline Sumpter, whose specialisms include the history of fantasy, sci-fi and dystopian fiction. 

Meet the panelists

RB Kelly's debut novel, Edge of Heaven, was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award. The sequel, On The Brink, followed in 2022, and her first short-story collection will be published in 2026. Her work can be found in publications from around the world, including The Best of British Science Fiction, ParSec, Factor Four, and Lamplight Magazine. She lives just outside Belfast with her husband, two children and a very lazy cat.

Kalie Reid grew up just outside Portland, Oregon, a place best known for the rain and incredible coffee. She moved to Belfast over a decade ago and has called the city home ever since, enjoying the Guinness, her cat Dorothy, husband Gregg, and even more rain. Her debut romantic fantasy novel, The Sacred Space Between, was published last year by Harper Voyager. 

Dr Caroline Sumpter is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research specialisms include fairy tales, the history of speculative, utopian and dystopian fiction, and the history of reading. Her book The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award. She has published on William Morris’s future socialist utopia News from Nowhere (1890), Richard Jefferies eco-dystopia After London (1885) and H. G. Wells’s scientific romance The War of the Worlds (1897), as well as widely on the Victorian press and the politics of popular reading. At Queen’s she teaches courses on the continuing relevance of nineteenth- and twentieth-century speculative fiction, on popular fiction of the 1890s, and on literature and science.