The second annual BristolCon convention will be held on 6th November this year.

This is a great little convention for science fiction and fantasy fans, and is especially convenient for those in central and South West England, and South Wales.

Guests for BristolCon 2010 include Paul Cornell, Joe Abercrombie, Colin Harvey, Alastair Reynolds, Juliet E McKenna, Eugene Byrne, and others.

Tickets are available at the special price of £15 until midnight tonight, after which they rise to £20.

I’ve bought mine. To book yours, click here.

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.

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

In April, Swimming Kangaroo Books release their latest anthology, Future Bristol.

The book contains nine stories imagining what the future holds for the South West’s largest city, including contributions from nine leading British authors: Liz Williams; John Hawkes-Reed; Stephanie Burgis; Joanne Hall; Nick Walters; Christina Lake; Colin Harvey; Gareth L Powell; and Jim Mortimore.

It will be released in April 2009 with a cover by award-winning artist Andy Bigwood, and its launch will be marked with two launch events:

• The first takes place at 2pm on Sunday 12 April as part of the Eastercon event at The Cedar Court Hotel in Bradford. Andy, Christina, Colin, Gareth, Liz, Stephanie will be present to read extracts of their stories and sign copies.
• The second event tales place at 1pm on Saturday 25th April at the Forbidden Planet Megastore in Bristol, and Andy, Colin, Gareth, Jim, Jo, Liz, Nick will be in attendance.

UPDATE 31/03/2009: Forbidden Planet event has been postponed by the store. I don’t know the full details but will post updated date and time when available.

Continue reading “Future Bristol Launch Event Details”

I returned home this evening from a two-day business meeting in Chepstow to find an email inviting me to participate in a panel discussion at Eastercon discussing:

“Sex and the Singularity – Will our posthuman future be a matter of living next-door to the god of love, or will the only wangs around be carpets? What will really happen to gender and identity if we upload—and who’s written about it?”

It seems that Gareth D Jones has managed to convince the organisers of next year’s Eastercon to let the FFF gang run a flash fiction workshop… I’ll relay more details as I receive them.

The Eastercon souvenir brochure arrived in the post this morning, containing photos and memories of the Easter weekend we spent in Chester. There’s even a (very small) photo of me sitting next to Liz Williams on the “gender in SF” panel.

I’ve just booked my place at ‘Orbital 2008′ – next year’s Eastercon. See http://www.orbital2008.org/ for further details.

I’m writing this at home after the long drive back from Chester. I’m tired and I haven’t slept much – but this year’s Eastercon was a great success, and I had a great time.

I got to meet and spend time with all the people I was hoping to – people who I’ve only previously communicated with via email, such as:

• Jetse de Vries
• Gareth D Jones
• Andrew Hook
• Paul Raven (aka Armchair Anarchist)
• Neil Williamson
• Liz Williams
• Martin McGrath
• Roy Grey
• Ian Hocking
• Niall Harrison
• Shaun C Green
• And many more…

Paul’s already posting reports and photos on his Velcro City Tourist Board site. I was intending to have some pictures of my own to put up, but my camera was misbehaving and all I’ve got are some uninspiring shots of the hotel’s exterior…

The highlights of the weekend for me were:

1) Seeing one of the manga-style illustrations SMS has done to accompany my story ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’ when it appears in Interzone.

2) Debating the future of British science fiction with Jetse over a late night dinner in a local restaurant.

3) Hanging out in the hotel bar having freewheeling, lager-fuelled conversations with the people listed above.

4) Sitting next to Charles Stross at the BSFA Awards ceremony – especially interesting for me, as my short story ‘The Last Reef’ was nominated in the Best Short Fiction category but didn’t make the final short list.

5) Participating in a discussion panel this morning – and managing to get though it without saying anything inflammatory or stupid.

6) Hearing from Focus editor Martin McGrath that he’s going to publish three of my poems in the next issue of the magazine.