If you missed this year’s BristolCon event, don’t worry; the convention will be running again next year.

The convention will take place on November 6th, 2010 at the Ramada Hotel in Bristo, a two minute walk from Bristol Temple Meads railway station.

Following the success of this year’s event, the convention is being expanded from an afternoon to a whole day’s worth of programme events. Guests and rates have yet to be finalised, but will be announced in due course.

Click here to read my review of BristolCon 2009.

My BristolCon review is now live on the BSFA website, with accompanying photographs by Gemma Morgan.

There are some excellent pictures of Bristolcon on Gemma Morgan’s website, featuring myself, Alastair Reynolds, Cheryl Morgan, Paul Cornell, Roz Clarke, Huw Powell, Colin Harvey, Nick Walters, and many others…

See the pictures here: www.gmorgan-photography.co.uk/portfolio72059p2.html

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.

Tomorrow sees the launch of a brand new science fiction and fantasy convention: BristolCon.

I will be there during the afternoon, selling and signing copies of my book (free badge with each copy sold) and appearing on a discussion panel about the differences between science fiction from the UK and USA.

There will also be:

• Special guests
• A book launch
• Live music
• A quiz
• Dancing
• Drunkeness

Personally, I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends; mixing with editors, publishers and fellow writers; and having a drink and a boogie later in the evening.

See you there?

As part of my efforts to promote Bristolcon, I managed to get a story about the Future Bristol anthology into the city’s local paper, The Evening Post.

Read the article here: Link to Evening Post article

Alternatively, please contact me if y0u’d like a copy of the original press release.

Update 04/08/09: Press releases now available to download here.

It’s exactly twelve months since Elastic Press published my collection The Last Reef And Other Stories in hardback and paperback – and so I’m launching a little competition to mark its first birthday.

I have a copy of the book sitting on my desk next to the keyboard as I type, and I’m still incredibly proud of it. Seeing it in print for the first time was the realisation of a lifelong ambition, and the fifteen stories it contains represent the highlights of my journey from unknown writer to Interzone regular, and include some of the best writing I’ve ever done.

I’ll be autographing copies of The Last Reef And Other Stories at Bristolcon in September.  If you haven’t already got a copy, this could be one of your last chances to buy one, as it’s almost sold out.

There are a few copies of the paperback in the distributor’s warehouse, so it will be still be available on Amazon for a while – but once those last few copies are gone, that’s it. Elastic Press is closing down, so there won’t be a reprint.

The book will still be available as an eBook from Fictionwise and as an audio book from www.audible.co.uk – but if you want to buy a paper copy, you’d better be quick!

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