The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic is excited to announce the call for papers for Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) 2026, to be held online on 13-15 May, with the theme of ‘The Technologies of the Fantastic’.

Many addendums have been made over the years to Arthur C. Clarke’s famous third law: ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ (‘Technology and the Future’), from Professor Barry Gehm’s corollary, ‘any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced’ (Analog) to Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen’s explanatory statement in The Science of Discworld that ‘Technology works because whoever built it in the first place figured out enough of the rules of the universe to make the technology do what was required of it … With magic, in contrast, things work because people want them to’. Such discourse leaves us asking what, if anything, fundamentally separates the technological from the magical?

Though scholars have attempted to clarify the division between science fiction and fantasy by suggesting that the latter is solely concerned with the impossible whilst the former is concerned only with fact, such binaries disregard the foundations of the fantastic prevalent in science fiction, in which ‘the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible’ (Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the Future). Similarly, the fantastic is filled with the technological. We can find technology in carefully constructed runes and magical glyphs that operate as locks and keys; in the textile metaphors of spell weaving; in the taxonomy of the naming of the wind and waves; and in the engineering of biomechanical monsters piloted by traumatized teens to fight angelic horrors.

This year, GIFCon invites the consideration of the technologies of fantasy, emphasizing those things that are too often overlooked both in the real world and in fantasy, whether through hierarchical practices that limit the definition of the scientific or because ‘technology’ has become so ubiquitous in everyday life.

GIFCon is a three-day virtual conference welcoming proposals from researchers and practitioners working in the fields of fantasy and cognate genres/subgenres across all media, whether from within academia or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and warmly welcome proposals from researchers whose work focuses on marginalized communities and subjects.

Topics for papers may include, but are not limited to:

The rules of magic and magic systems.
The Science-Fantasy genre.
Who are these fantasy worlds made for? What does their magic and technology account for, and who do they overlook?
Nonwestern technologies and colonialist constructions of science in Fantasy.
Exploring Fantastic infrastructures: how cities, buildings, modes of transportation, paths, and worlds are shaped by fantastic interventions/inventions.
How the body (whether human, non-human, posthuman, or something in between) is shaped by technology.
Disability and impairment in fantasy literature.
The relationship between technology, time, and fantasy.
Fantasy as escapism from notions of advancement.
The response to technological growth in fantasy.
Echoes of the real world in technological fantasies: responses, adaptations and critique.
Fantasies created by science practitioners: how real-world science and scientists influence the genre.
Technological dystopias and/or utopias.
The relationship between Ecology and Technology in Fantasy.
Punk Practices: Rethinking technological and social practices through subgenres like cyberpunk, steampunk, or solarpunk.
Queer and Trans Theory approaches: how may queer and trans theory offer insights to the concatenation of the magical and technological?
What is left out in normative narratives of the scientific and technological? How does fantasy disrupt these narratives?

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, which should be submitted using the proposal form listed. This form includes a 250-word abstract supplemented by a list of 5 keywords describing your paper and a 100-word biographical note.

We also welcome proposals for roundtables and workshops, consisting of 75-minute interactive online sessions which can be run on any aspect of our conference theme by either an individual or group. Generally, workshops have limited capacities and do not set preliminary reading, but participants sign up in advance and flexibility is possible. We encourage creative responses to the workshop call; please select ‘Workshop/Roundtable’ on the proposal form if you intend to lead a workshop or roundtable session.

The call for papers and workshops closes on Sunday, 18th January 2026 (11:59pm GMT). Please submit your proposal by this time to be considered for participation in GIFCon 2026.

(Please see linked CFP for links to the proposal form)