Libraries Sheffield: 2020-07-26

In our final Library Spotlight, we're looking to the future.

Alongside our new Order and Collect service, we'll be featuring plenty of family activities throughout the summer and lots of things to discover during our Year of Reading, like our Big City Read and our brand new Sheffield Libraries podcast.

Sounds of the future

One of our favourite finds this week is this fantastic sci-fi-focused episode of the RNIB books podcast Read On.

This episode features a discussion of the novel that inspired the film Blade Runner and an interview with Jeff Wayne, creator of the classic War of the Worlds musical.

Listen here

High tech characters, low tech crafts

These brilliant tutorials from Cardboard Superheroes show how to transform cardboard boxes into impressive models of classic sci-fi characters like Wall-E and R2D2, iconic spaceships, and superhero props. A perfect holiday craft for older children (and for the young-at-heart too!)

Futures past

One of the most impressive (and sometimes, most unsettling) things about science fiction is how accurately some stories have predicted the future.

One short story that has been singled out lately for its eerie foreshadowing of not only recent events but also the role that social media plays in modern life was first published back in 1909, and created by someone rarely thought of as a science fiction writer - E.M. Forster.

This BBC article explores the uncanny parallels between Forster's The Machine Stops and current events.

The story is also available in the public domain, and can be read in full here.

A time traveller's guide to Sheffield

We can't talk about sci-fi without a nod to Sheffield's most famous extra-terrestrial visitor of recent years: the Thirteenth Doctor. (She even crops up in the Book of Sheffield: the collection of short stories we're sharing for our Big City Read!)

In this video, the University of Sheffield looks at Sheffield's past, present and future through another kind of time machine: film and TV.

Planning a post-lockdown future

Moving on to a less fantastical kind of future, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, author of bestsellers like The 4 Pillar Plan, regularly discusses making realistic and self-compassionate lifestyle changes in his Feel Better, Live More podcast.

In this episode, he discusses planning for a post-lockdown future.

All of Rangan Chatterjee's books are available as both eBooks and audiobooks in our eLibrary

Now in the eLibrary

There's lots of science fiction to enjoy in our eLibrary, from classic series like Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels to recent bestsellers like The End of the World Running Club.

Not a member yet? To access our eLibrary for free, and to join Sheffield Libraries ahead of the introduction of our Order and Collect service, click here.

Isaac Asimov
[eBooks] [audio]

Ray Bradbury
[eBooks]

Jeff VanderMeer
[eBooks] [audio]

Doctor Who
[eBook]

Agency
[eBook]

The Giver
[eBook]

Adrian J Walker's End of
the World series [eBooks]

In the first of this week's Library Spotlights, we're focusing on film. The usual summer blockbuster season may have been postponed, but thanks to our local cinemas and archives, there are plenty of cinematic curiosities and film-themed treats to explore.

Summer at the Showroom

The Showroom Cinema has brought its popular Film Studies series online with a set of talks on international and local cinema, delivered by lecturers from Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield.

You can find details of the upcoming weekly talks, all hosted on Zoom, on the Showroom website. We've been tuning into a few of the talks so far, and even if you're not familiar with the films under discussion, it's a great way to discover something new and interesting to add to your watchlist!

Picture Sheffield (c03295)

For movie buffs looking for something a little different, the BBC's Inside Cinema is a great off-kilter series of shorts that examines how cinema has presented everything from cats and drag to horror movie homes and ... men wearing woolly jumpers. The series is available on iPlayer.

Is the book always better?

Whether or not you agree with the old saying that the book is always better than the film, 2020 has seen a number of acclaimed adaptations hit both the big screen and (more frequently) the small screen, as covered in this recent Penguin article.

The Book Vs Movie podcast weighs in on the adaptation debate with fun, informative discussions of film adaptations ranging from IT and The Help to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Die Hard. Browse the latest episodes here.

You can also hear from Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman and Wonder author R. J. Palacio about their experiences of having their novels adapted for the screen in this Waterstones podcast on Adaptation.

Explore the best of Britain's film archives

The Yorkshire Film Archive has over 1,800 films in their free online archive. Some of their recent Archive Picks are well worth a look, like this documentary on Jack Charlton and Middlesbrough Football Club from 1974.

For a true blast from the past, here's "Books in Hand", a 1956 promotional film about Sheffield's libraries. Less has changed than you might think - although we might have a slightly tougher time these days tracking down a copy of "Steal Not My Heart"...

There's also a host of free short films to discover on the BFI Player website, including early Victorian cinema, classic (that is to say, rather terrifying) public information films, and even some surreal Sheffield-based science fiction.

Out of this world

Friday's Library Spotlight will be devoted to sci-fi, both on the screen and the page. In this week's poetry and creative writing Zoom, Claire from Central Library will be inviting you to share your favourite visions of the future and other worlds.

The next writing workshop takes place this Friday, 31 July, at 11am. Tickets are free and available from our Eventbrite page.

Everything's a moving picture

The National Theatre of Scotland has recently created a series of free video-making workshops for young people aged 10+.

"Everything's a Moving Picture" teaches young film-makers how to use stock and archive videos, film their own footage, and experiment with captions to create their own stories.

Check out the workshops here.

Adventure on demand

Our Adventure Book Festival wrapped up last week - but if you missed out, don't worry!

Recordings of the festival's talks are available to watch for free this week on Zoom, until the end of July. All videos feature closed captions. You can find all our recent author talks here.

Now in the eLibrary

Visit our eLibrary to check out the books that inspired several recent popular and award-winning films, along with movie spin-offs like the acclaimed Aliens graphic novels.

As part of our Year of Reading, we've got three £100 book tokens up for grabs for Sheffield Libraries members aged 11+.

To enter, just read any three books of your choice over July, August and September, and send us your thoughts about each of your summer reads on our website (check out the adult Summer Reading Challenge section for all the details).

Our e-magazines library also features the latest issues of film magazines including Empire and Total Film, all immediately available for free.