Most of our meetings are on Sundays at 8pm in Trinity College. We meet in front of Trinity College (entrance at Broad Street) and move inside together just after 8pm (usually to Teaching Room 5). If you are running late ring the plodge and ask to be let in and ask on Discord for access. The venue is wheelchair acessible.
See below for details, sign up for the ousfg-announce mailing list to receive a reminder and details for each meeting, or check on Discord for smaller updates.
Please remember that Sunday is the first day of the Oxford Week, so do check the dates below if you are unsure.
| 18 Jan | Sunday | 1st Week | Trinity | Discussion | Our first discussion of the term has an ambitious goal: create a full family tree (tree?) of SFF subgenres, complete with characterizations and definite reading recs for each of the entries. Come discuss what exactly constitutes an Epic Fantasy or a Space Opera, or maybe even Cyberpunk Cottagecore Thriller (will we find one?). Come argue your definite genre recommendations, discover new niche types and update your reading list. |
| 25 Jan | Sunday | 2nd Week | Trinity | Discussion | Last term (note: in the past), we were looking into what SFF tells us about the future. This term (future) we're going to be looking to the past! We will be discussing the intersection between historical fiction and SFF genres (including the question on whether there's such a thing as a historical sci-fi). When does the genre works and what are some examples? Do they need to be historically accurate, and can you even be historically accurate if the world really includes a fantastical elements? |
| 1 Feb | Sunday | 3rd Week | Trinity | Discussion | Tentacular Vikings (Collaborative Storytelling) – Named for a long-forgotten legend, Tentacular Vikings is our termly collaborative story-planning event. Like tentacles grafted onto a viking, we add to an initial prompt until it becomes an outline of a setting, characters and plot. Somebody then proposes actually writing it as a story, and invariably never does; until you arrive, and break the cycle… Previous examples include the environmentalist space-western Tentacular Yaks, the apocalypse of Milton Keynes, and the celebrated time-travelling saga Boom Sticks. A prompt will be provided before or at the event; anyone is free to come up with one. |
| 6 Feb | Friday | 3rd Week | Trinity | Speaker | Join the Sunday Times best-selling author of A Song of Legends Lost, M.H. Ayinde, to talk about her books, ancient artefacts and fantasy. This meeting will be at 8pm on Friday in Trinity College. See event for more details. |
| 8 Feb | Sunday | 4th Week | Corpus Christi | Quiz 7.30pm | Oxford Geek Quiz run by ORPGSoc. Come along at 7.30pm to reclaim the honour of OUSFG as the Geekiest society. If you haven't been to a geek quiz yet, in this event geeky societies compete each other in rounds such as "guess a world based on its map", "guess what fictional food is described", "guess on whom the guy from quantum leap was photoshopped". If you have an idea for a round (two people from OUSFG still can make a round!), pick a theme and make some (usually 10) questions worth 10 points. The contents of the rounds should be reasonably diverse — try to include as many media and fandoms as you can to make the round somewhat accessible to everyone (think: the goal is for everyone to have fun, not just to flex your niche trivia knowledge...)! If you're making a round, email it to Paulina and she'll forward it to the organizers! |
| 15 Feb | Sunday | 5th Week | Trinity | Discussion | Teeth, fangs and all things vampires will be the subject of this week’s discussion. Lead by Heather, our Speaker Emeritus, we will dissect the genre of vampire fiction. What are some must-include genre conventions and what stories successfully bite through them? What vampires represent, how has it changed, and why are we so fascinated with them? Come sink your teeth into these questions. |
| 22 Feb | Sunday | 6th Week | Trinity | Discussion | The Poetry Society is joining us for a movie night. We will watch Green Knight, and follow by open-ended discussion on SFF and poetry (or both in once) influence by the Arthurian Legend. |
| 1 Mar | Sunday | 7th Week | Trinity | Discussion | What aliens creep (or thrive?) in the depths of space (or even the depth of our very Earth?)? We will go beyond the stereotypical green men, and try to dig deep into the variety of alien life, from hives, to spiders and Heptapods. What roles do these different creatures play in their stories, and are any of them remotely plausible? |
| 6 Mar | Friday | 3rd Week | Trinity Garden Room | Speaker | Adrian Tchaikovsky |
| 8 Mar | Sunday | 8th Week | TBA | AGM | We are going elect a new committee (please plan your coup). Optionally followed by a game of Werewolf. |
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ousfg/misc/termcard-26ht1.html last modified 4th February 2026 by
