Category: events

London Meeting: Jaine Fenn

The guest at tonight’s BSFA London Meeting is Jaine Fenn, author of Principles of Angels and Consorts of Heaven; she will be interviewed by Kari Sperring (author of Living with Ghosts).

As usual, the interview will start at 7pm, though there will be people in the bar from 6-ish; the meeting is free, and open to any and all, though there will be a raffle (with sf books as prizes).

The venue is the upstairs room of The Antelope, 22 Eaton Terrace, London, SW1W 8EZ. The closest tube station is Sloane Square, and a map is here.

London Meeting: Amanda Hemingway

The guest at tonight’s BSFA London Meeting is Amanda Hemingway; she will be interviewed by Roz Kaveney.

As usual, the interview will start at 7pm, though there will be people in the bar from 6-ish; the meeting is free, and open to any and all, though there will be a raffle (with sf books as prizes).

The venue is the upstairs room of The Antelope, 22 Eaton Terrace, London, SW1W 8EZ. The closest tube station is Sloane Square, and a map is here.

Eastercon LX

The full programme for Eastercon LX is now available, both as a PDF, and as a Google calendar for those living in the future (available as HTML, or use the XML to subscribe to it on your phone/RSS reader.)

For those of you who will be there, you can find me on the following panels:
Making the most of your Eastercon, Friday 15:30
New SF for Old, Saturday 20:00
BSFA Focus: Jo Walton, Saturday 21:00
Hugos for Fans, Monday 12:30

I’ll also be at the BSFA Awards (Saturday 18:00), and generally around all weekend in programming and in the bar. Come up and say hi.

For those of you who are not attending, there are a few ways to follow the con online. It looks like wireless at the hotel will be expensive, but inevitably there will be Twittering – try following the Eastercon twitter, or watching the #eastercon tag. (I will be twittering away as usual.) Look for photos on Flickr tagged with “eastercon” or “LX2009”, I’ll try and upload a few if I can find internet access. Following the success of the live streaming at Corflu, there are also plans afoot to stream some of the panels and events live from LX – check out the Virtual Tucker Hotel site for more details as they finalise the schedule.

London Meeting: BSFA Awards Discussion

A Very Special Meeting, tonight: instead of an interview, a panel discussion about this year’s BSFA Awards, featuring Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Alastair Reynolds, and Adam Roberts.

The time and place stay the same, though: turn up from 6pm for discussion from 7pm, in the upstairs room of The Antelope (22 Eaton Terrace, London, SW1W 8EZ. The closest tube station is Sloane Square, and a map is here). The meeting is free, and open to any and all; and there will be a raffle with books as prizes.

Call for Papers: HG Wells: From Kent to Cosmopolis

Andrew M. Butler asks me to draw attention to this conference, and who am I to refuse an ex-Vector editor?

H.G. Wells: From Kent to Cosmopolis
An international conference to be held at the Darwin Conference Suite, University of Kent at Canterbury, England
July 9-11, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The conference marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the H. G. Wells Society in 1960 together with the centenary of Wells’s comic masterpiece The History of Mr Polly. It will take place in what Mr Polly found to be the ‘congenial situation’ of Canterbury, the Kentish cathedral city within easy reach of Folkestone and Sandgate where Wells lived in the early twentieth century and wrote some of his best-known works.

We shall examine Wells both as a novelist formed by local circumstances of his time and place, and as a thinker and social prophet who remains intensely relevant today. We aim to discuss Wells’s links to modern science fiction in all media, his imagining of worlds to come, his political, social and ecological expectations for the 21st century, and his success as an artist and controversialist both then and now.

We invite proposals for papers on all aspects of Wells’s life and writings: his science fiction, his novels and short stories, his political, sociological and autobiographical works, and his contributions to education, journalism and the cinema. In keeping with the conference title ‘From Kent to Cosmopolis’ we hope to attract contributions which relate the local to the universal in his writings and/or look at Wells’s achievements in relation to wider cultural, historical, temporal and spatial perspectives.

250 word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent by 1 March 2010 to Andrew M. Butler and Patrick Parrinder at 2010wellsconference@gmail.com

Priority booking for the conference at bargain rates is available up to 30 June 2009. Contact the Hon. Treasurer, Paul Allen, at PaulMalcolmAllen@aol.com

London Meeting: Nick Lowe

The guest at tonight’s BSFA London Meeting is Nick Lowe, film reviewer for Interzone. He will be interviewed by Graham Sleight.

As usual, interview will start at 7pm, though there will be people in the bar from 6-ish; the meeting is free, though there will be a raffle (with sf books as prizes), and it is open to any and all.

The venue is the upstairs room of The Antelope, 22 Eaton Terrace, London, SW1W 8EZ. The closest tube station is Sloane Square, and a map is here.

London Meeting: Michael Swanwick

The guest at tonight’s BSFA London Meeting is Michael Swanwick, who will be interviewed by Roz Kaveney.

As usual, the venue is the upstairs room of The Antelope, 22 Eaton Terrace, London, SW1W 8EZ. The closest tube station is Sloane Square, and a map is here.

The meeting is free (although there will be a raffle, with sf books as prizes), and any and all are welcome. The interview will start at 7pm, although there’ll be people in the bar from 6 onwards.

Call for papers, applications, and nominations

Firstly, a reminder that the Third Annual Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass is still open for applications until the end of the month.

Secondly, the Science Fiction Foundation has issued a Call for Papers for their latest book, The Unsilent Library: Adventures in new Doctor Who:

Published by the Science Fiction Foundation
edited by Simon Bradshaw, Antony Keen, and Graham Sleight

The Science Fiction Foundation, which has published a number of books on sf (including The Parliament of Dreams: Conferring on Babylon 5 and Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature) is now seeking contributions for a new book, proposed for publication in 2010, on Doctor Who. This book will focus on the series’ revival since 2005. Contributions are invited on all aspects of the new series, including its scripting, production, and reception, as well as links to the “classic” series. A variety of critical approaches/viewpoints will be encouraged.

Potential authors are asked to submit brief proposals (max. 250 words) for chapters by 1st March 2009. Final chapters (max. 6,000 words) will be due by 1st August 2009. Please send proposals to sjbradshaw@mac.com.

Finally, another reminder that if you have not yet nominated anything for the BSFA Awards, you can do so until Friday 16th; here’s the list of current nominations if you need some inspiration.