Case Study: Maths Talks at Science Fiction Conventions
Organisations involved: WorldCon, EasterCon
Case study written by: Nicholas Jackson, Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett (This case study is written based on an interview with Nicholas Jackson for this project; in the text, “I” refers to Nicholas.)
Intended audience: Pre-engaged adults and their children at science fiction conventions
Maths content: Various topics including knot theory and codebreaking
Audience group: Adults, Retired, Families (adults and children)
Audience interest level: Engaged, Expert
Topics: General maths
Origins of the Project
I’m based in the maths department at the University of Warwick, where we have some coordinated outreach activities, including Maths Masterclasses and events run by the AMSP. There are also some coordinated outreach events I’ve been involved with organised by the university’s central Public Engagement team. In my spare time, I’m also a STEM Ambassador and helped to run my local Code Club. But one form of engagement I’ve become involved with is delivering maths talks at science fiction conventions.
This started through my involvement with SF conventions as a hobby - the main one I go to is EasterCon, which happens every year somewhere in the UK, and has been running every year (except 2020) since the late 1940s. I’ve also occasionally been to WorldCon, which moves around the world. It was in London in 2014, and in Dublin in 2019, but generally it’s a bit far away and expensive to get to. A common theme with these conventions is they’re volunteer-run and tend to be nonprofit.
Although the audience at these events are primarily science fiction fans, the remit for content is not just SF and fantasy - it also includes stuff that science fiction fans are interested in, which is actually quite a broad range of stuff. They often have talks and panel discussions on relevant science and technology topics, given by people who in their day job have some other expertise or knowledge. For example, I remember a panel I moderated a few years ago on exoplanets, made up of various physicists along with a psychologist - primarily SF fans who were attending the convention anyway - to talk about the psychology of actually maybe going to visit these planets on generation ships. While mostly the guests of honour are writers or artists, at the WorldCon last year, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the science guest of honour, and she was really interesting.
I did my first maths talk at a science fiction event about ten years ago. I’d never really volunteered to speak before, but I thought ‘Maybe I could talk about knot theory?’ and I thought there might be five people there. But in a sort of big room, about 40 people turned up to hear me waffle rather incoherently about knot theory. But it was well received, and people throughout the rest of the weekend were bumping into me in the corridor and saying ‘I found that really interesting, can I ask you about this bit as well?’ - I was pleasantly surprised.
As well as doing my own talks, and occasionally moderating a panel - in the ‘tame mathematician’ role, with a list of things to address but largely just guiding the conversation in an interesting direction - I’ve also been involved in organising visits from other speakers about maths.
I was on the programming committee helping with the science programming stream, and during the initial introductory meeting I suddenly thought of Tom Briggs, who’s been the educational outreach manager at Bletchley Park, and I said ‘Well, if we’re looking for invited speakers, my friend Tom goes into schools with an Enigma machine’ - and I got about that far, and everyone was nodding. It was tremendously popular - he stayed around after the talk for the rest of the afternoon, outside the room with his Enigma machine, and there was a massive queue for the next three hours. We had to put it in quite a decent size room!
Practicalities
There are different tiers of conventions within the world of SF - the ones I’ve spoken at tend to be the smaller ones, which are more likely to accept talks like the ones I’ve done. Around six months before the convention happens, there’ll be some topics the programme committee have in mind for panels, and they’ll get together and start sketching out an idea, and put out a call for talks and panels.
Almost everyone on the programme is someone who’s coming to the convention anyway, so it’s effectively a call for volunteers, and they can then choose who would fit on which panel and which talks to put on. Some of the conventions do have funds to pay invited speakers - certainly their travel expenses and accommodation are covered, and a fee if they need one, but this may not be universal.
The talks I’ve done have usually been about 50 minutes to an hour, with the usual setup - a projector and screen. It’s the standard you’d expect from a volunteer-organised convention - they make sure the venue is accessible with wheelchair access and ramps, and for the larger rooms there’s an enthusiastic tech crew with microphones. There’s also been a lot of thought and discussion about ensuring diversity in an appropriate way - some conventions aim for as close as possible to 50% gender parity across the programme.
While to convention is attended by a mix of adults and families and has plenty of event provision for children, the subset of that who come to my talks is largely adults (although some people do bring kids along, but they’re not expecting the content to be aimed at them). They’re on average pretty well-educated, engaged, interested and also quite forgiving. They’re a lovely audience to talk to - it’s a friendly atmosphere, and there’s this general unspoken rule that nothing isn’t objectively interesting.
The level tends to range from people who quite liked maths for a while at school, but haven’t really done much about it since, up to people who have a PhD in maths, and there will often be people who have master’s degres, or PhDs in other subjects. It’s quite a broad range and can be a challenge to pitch. I tend to aim for everyone to be able to get something out of the talk - everyone to have understood broadly what I’m talking about on some level, but if I get to a point where I have to say ‘This bit is going to get a bit technical, don’t worry about it but I’m going to spend a couple of minutes looking at it, but broadly what it means is this’, then anyone not following can pick up again later on.
This feels like a big difference from a public talk, or something in a school - I’d probably cut out the more technical stuff. But in this context I’m more confident to push the audience - I’ve had some great feedback from audience members. You’ve already cut down from the general public to science-ish people, and then from there to people who within a SF convention, given other options, choose to go to the maths talk.
I went to an event a few years ago where Sydney Padua was speaking - she’s an animator and artist who’s done books about Lovelace and Babbage, and she talked about how as part of writing that book, she had to figure out what the Analytical Engine would look like. And she really went into the details, and even managed to look at some of the original drawings. About halfway through this talk, she said ‘Actually, I don’t usually bother with this bit, but on my laptop here I’ve got some animations of how the gears in the logic bit of the engine worked’ - and she got about that far, and everyone in the room was nodding - fascinated. She said ‘I can go into a bit more detail about this if you like?’ and someone said, ‘We are your audience - you are in exactly the right room to give this talk: tell us everything’.