In addition to the dates I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I will also be reading a selection of my short stories at The Thunderbolt in Bristol from 8pm on Wednesday 5th October, as part of the Word of Mouth series of events.

I will be involved in a number of events as part of the Bristol Festival of Literature.

1) On Thurs 20th Oct, I will be discussing genre fiction on a panel with Juliet McKenna, Cheryl Morgan and Jo Hall. Here’s the blurb:

“Ever planned a story asking: What If? then you are writing speculative fiction. Fantasy and Sci-Fi shift the rules of realism, to push the question of what might be. Come and get great advice on style and structure from a highly impressive panel that includes at least four Hugo Awards.”

The hour-long discussion kicks off at 6pm, at St Mark’s in the Easton area of the city. Tickets are £5.

2) The following day, Friday 21st Oct, I will be one of several authors doing a lunchtime book signing at Forbidden Planet in Clifton.

“A stellar clutch of authors releasing brilliant new work, right here right now.”

This event is free to attend.

3) And finally, on Saturday 22nd Oct, I will be one of the guests at BristolCon, which is being held at the Ramada Hotel on Redcliffe Way, close to Temple Meads station.

“Guests this year include writers Juliet E McKenna and Justina Robson, artist Jim Burns, and Keith Blount, the creator of the popular ‘Scrivener’ writing software. Also attending will be authors Alastair Reynolds, John Meaney, Gareth L. Powell, Stephanie Burgis, and Paul Cornell

You can book tickets for the BristolCon science fiction and fantasy convention here.

You can book tickets for the Bristol Festival of Literature here.

BristolCon 2011 will take place on 22 October at the Ramada Hotel in Bristol.

Guests of honour include Juliet McKenna, Justina Robxon, Keith Blount (of Scrivener fame) and artist Jim Burns.

Also appearing will be Stephanie Burgis, Paul Cornell, Colin Harvey, John Meaney, Alastair Reynolds and Gareth L. Powell.

This is the convention’s third year, and if the previous two are anything to go by, it will be a lot of fun.

Tickets are available now priced £15.

Click here to book online.

The second annual BristolCon event took place on Saturday, and it was a roaring success with an attendance of over 150 people.

As well as the main programme room, the con included an impressive art show and a dealers’ room. The main programme kicked off at 10am with a discussion of publishing, followed by a reading by Juliet McKenna and a Q&A session with Guest of Honour Joe Abercrombie.

Personally, I took part in two panel discussions, both of which I ended up chairing, and both of which were a lot of fun. The first was in the morning, and it was a discussion of special effects, both audio and visual, and the part they play in movies.

Following that, I read part of the first chapter of The Recollection, which was the first public outing for the material. Afterwards, a number of people came up to me and said they couldn’t wait for the book to be published, as they were desperate to find out what happened next.

At lunchtime, Wizard’s Tower Press launched their new anthology, Dark Spires. I have a story included in the book, so I joined the other authors for a mass signing session.

Unfortunately, I missed Eugene Byrne’s lecture on the strange corners of Bristol, as I was taking a turn manning the membership desk – but I hear that it was a fascinating look at urban myths, and streets which appear on maps but not in reality.

My second panel of the day was especially enjoyable, as I joined Paul Cornell, Alastair Reynolds, John Turney and Nick Walters in a wide-ranging discussion about the future direction of science and technology.

Then I took some time out to record a reading of one of my short stories for the next issue of Dark Fiction magazine, and to venture out of the hotel to get some dinner. By the time I returned, the pub quiz was in full swing, and the evening ended with much drinking and much laughter, as befits all good cons.

Throughout the day, the atmosphere remained relaxed and friendly, and everything appeared to be organised extremely professionally. In fact, it was one of the most enjoyable conventions I’ve attended, and I was particularly pleased to meet up with some old friends and to make some new ones.

Particular shout-outs go to: Joanne Hall; Neil Beynon; Kim and Del Lakin-Smith; Danie Ware and the team from Forbidden Planet; MEG; Paul Cornell; John Turney; Colin Harvey; Cheryl Morgan; Gareth D Jones; Stephanie Burgis; Andy Bigwood; Nick Walters; Alastair Reynolds; Adam Colston; Terry Martin; and everyone else I spoke to during the day.

If you missed it, you can now use this link to view an online recording of Wednesday night’s talk by William Gibson at the Watershed in Bristol.

www.dshed.net/william-gibson

Last night, I was fortunate enough to see William Gibson speak at the Watershed in Bristol. He read a chapter from his latest novel, Zero History, and then answered questions for about an hour. His replies were entertaining, thorough, and frequently self-depreciating. At one point he liked his most famous novel Neuromancer (1984) to a Chinese dragon costume, saying it was all shiny and dancing on the outside, but the man inside (him) saw only the Chinese newspaper and balsa wood from which it was made.

Continue reading “William Gibson at the Watershed”

On 6 October William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and Zero History, will be appearing at the Watershed in Bristol, as part of the city’s Festival of Ideas, and I have tickets to see him! This is a big deal for me, as the freewheeling spirit of Gibson’s short story collection Burning Chrome was one of the inspirations for my short story The Last Reef, which helped me break into Interzone and led in turn to the publication of my first short story collection, The Last Reef and Other Stories.

For a small event organised in a short amount of time and with no budget, Bristolcon went amazingly well. The panels were interesting and the guest of honour talks fascinating. And it was great to meet up with so many friends and colleagues for a few beers and a bit of a chat.

Next on the agenda is the upcoming event How to Prosper during the Coming Bad Years to be held in a remarkable new pavillion, The Black Cloud, in Victoria Park, Bristol. The work and its accompanying programme of events has been commissioned by Situations at the University of the West of England, and emerges from a month-long residency as part of the RSA Arts and Ecology programme in Bristol in 2007.

From the blurb:

“The Black Cloud is a new temporary public sculpture designed as a shelter for the park in readiness for a hostile and inhospitable future, to screen people from an unforgiving environment and create a place that community can coalesce in difficult times. The Black Cloud is informed by vernacular architecture built to withstand extreme environmental conditions, with the Yakisugi treatment of the timbers creating a scorched protective shield, the irregular oval form closely referencing the shabono, and the triangular structuring and ethos of the building technique echoing Drop City. Its function as a communal focal point has been modelled upon The Range in Slab City, and the future landscape envisioned for the work is based on the bleak elemental extremes of J.G. Ballard’s catastrophe series.”

How to Prosper during the Coming Bad Years will be held on Saturday 10 October from 10.30 – 1pm. It is intended as a forum between people of diverse disciplines to explore the future through the differing mindsets of conservation versus preparedness; a theme that dominates the thinking behind The Black Cloud.

I will be attending as a key speaker to deliver a 10 to 15 minute talk about the use of science fiction as a means of debating and modelling the future, and to take questions.

Everyone is welcome at this event, and because of the passionate opinions it has stirred locally, it promises to be a very lively event.

I appear to have accidentally volunteered myself to be the media liaison for Bristolcon.

Bristolcon is a one-day science fiction convention being held in conjunction with the British Browncoat Ceilidh on 26 September, organised by Kumara Conventions at the Mercure Holland House Hotel & Spa in Bristol. There will be discussion panels, trade stands, book signings, live music and a bar. The guest of honour will be Alistair Reynolds and profits from both events will be donated to the charity Equality Now.

All media enquiries should be directed to me at: media “at” bristolcon.org

Tickets can be bought here: http://www.bristolcon.org

I will be appearing on a number of panels at this event.

Further information from: www.hierath.co.uk