2011 Orkney International Science Festival gets under way

The 2011 Orkney International Science Festival is now under way, after being opened by one of Britain’s top science fiction writers this afternoon.

Ken MacLeod opened the Festival and followed it with a talk entitled The Sky Road – Islands on the Horizon. In it, he looked at what the future might hold for us. Will there be new technologies and opportunities, or a gradual slide into war and chaos? And what do such scenarios mean for islands at the edge?

The festival, which runs until Wednesday, features topics ranging from astronomy to archaeology, the Arctic to the Alhambra, recycling to renewables, and lighthouses to the Loch Ness Monster.