Audrey Niffenger, H.G Wells Lecture, ExCel Centre

Best-selling author Audrey Niffenegger gives the inaugural lecture in honour of visionary science fiction writer H.G Wells.

Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling debut book The Time Traveler's Wife, which won a string of accolades and was later adapted into a hit film starring Rachel Macadams, created an enduring love story from the tropes of science fiction. She went on to explore the scope of the graphic novel and then returned to similarly surreal themes of soul-switching in her much-anticpated second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. 

Such innovation within the science fiction genre makes Niffenegeer an ideal speaker on the rich subject of H.G wells. This will be the first in an annual series of lectures to commemorate the legendary writer, campaigner and visionary. Along with his contribution to the Science Fiction canon, with iconic novels such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, Wells also campaigned against book burning in Nazi Germany and -- extraordinarily -- envisaged a prototype of the internet in 1938. In The World Brain Wells describes how the availability of universal information sources in a 'World Encyclopaedia' would support world peace.

This lecture, held in Wells's honour, will reflect his free thinking and contribution to literature and also showcase a new generation of science fiction talent.