October BSFA London Meeting: Nina Allan interviewed by Niall Harrison

Title: October BSFA Meeting: Nina Allan interviewed by Niall Harrison
Location: The Cellar Bar, The Argyle Public House, 1 Greville Street (off Leather Lane), London EC1N 8PQ
Description: On Wednesday 24th October 2012,** Nina Allan (author of A Thread of Truth and The Silver Wind) will be interviewed by Niall Harrison (editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons).

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (Non-members welcome)

The interview will start at 7 pm. We have the room from 6pm (and if early, fans are in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central Line).

Please note that this is now the new permanent venue of BSFA London Meetings.

FUTURE EVENTS:
28th November – Paul Cornell, interviewed by Roz Kaveney
(There is no BSFA Meeting in December).
23rd January 2013** – TBC

** Note that this is a month with five Wednesdays. The meeting will be on the fourth, not the last, Wednesday of the month.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-10-24
End Time: 21:00

July BSFA Meeting: Roz Kaveney interviewed by Pat Cadigan

On Wednesday 25th July 2012, Roz Kaveney (multi-talented writer) will be interviewed by Pat Cadigan (award-winning author and critic).

The event is the UK launch of Rhapsody of Blood 1: Rituals, Roz Kaveney’s debut novel and the first volume of her new fantasy tetralogy.

Roz is also a poet, critic, editor, political activist, and author of Reading The Vampire Slayer (2001/2003), From Alien to the Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film (2005), Teen Dreams: Reading Teen Film and Television from ‘Heathers’ to ‘Veronica Mars’ (2006), and Superheroes! Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films (2007), and others.

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (Non-members welcome.)

The interview will start at 7 pm. We have the room from 6pm (and if early, fans are in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House. 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE. Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line).

FUTURE EVENTS:
28th August* – Shaun Tan, interviewed by Judith Clute
26th September – Rob Shearman, interviewed by Simon Guerrier
24th October** – Nina Allan, interviewed by Niall Harrison

* Note the date change. This event is taking place on the fifth Tuesday, due to the availability of Shaun Tan.

** Note that this is a month with five Wednesdays. The meeting will be on the fourth, not the last, Wednesday of the month.

BSFA/SFF Mini-Convention and AGMs

Tomorrow is the BSFA/SFF Mini-Convention and AGMs with Guests of Honour Marek Kukula and Aliette de Bodard.

The venue is the Royal Astronomical Society at Burlington House on Piccadilly in Central London, halfway between Piccadilly Circus and Green Park stations. It’s the first door on the left once you’ve entered the courtyard.

Hopefully many of you will be able to be there.

Here’s the schedule:

10:00 am Welcome (SFF)
10:05 am Marek Kukula Talk
10:55 – 11:05 Break
11:05 am Aliette de Bodard interview with Edward James
12 pm – 12:45 SFF AGM
12:45 pm – 1: 45 pm Lunch
1:45 pm – 2:30 pm BSFA AGM
2:30 pm – Astronomy Q&A with Marek Kukula
3:25 – 3:35 – Break
3:35 pm – SF & Colonialism panel with Aliette de Bodard, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Lavie Tidhar, and Sophia McDougall (moderator)
4:30 Concluding Remarks (BSFA)

Food and Drink – with the exception of water – is not allowed on site. There are many nearby cafés, drink and snack shops, restaurants and pubs.

The designated pub for the day is the King’s Head, located approximately behind the Royal Astronomical Society, at 10 Stafford Street, W1S 4RX.

April BSFA London Meeting: Sharyn November interviewed by Farah Mendlesohn

On Wednesday 25th April 2012, Sharyn November (Senior Editor for Viking Children’s Books and Editorial Director of Firebird Books, visiting thanks to this last weekend’s Diana Wynne Jones memorial) will be interviewed by Professor Farah Mendlesohn (Academic, critic and editor).

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (No entry fee or tickets. Non-members welcome.)

The discussion will commence at 7.00 pm, but the room is open from 6.00 (and fans in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House. 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE . Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line)

FUTURE EVENTS:
23rd May* – CJ LINES interviewed by Tony Keen
27th June – TANITH LEE interviewed by Nadia van der Westhuizen
25th July 2012 – Roz Kaveney (interviewer TBC)

* Note that this is a month with five Wednesdays. The meeting will be on the fourth, not the last, Wednesday of the month

March BSFA London Meeting: The BSFA Awards Discussion

With the BSFA Awards imminent (Olympus, Eastercon 2012, registration closes at 6 pm TODAY/Tuesday) we have arranged for a panel at the monthly London meeting to discuss this year’s nominations. This takes place on Wednesday 28th March 2012.

Our esteemed panellists this year are Duncan Lawie (aka Hoopoes, reviewer for Strange Horizons and The Zone), and Dave Hutchinson, (aka Hutch, science fiction writer and editor, shortlisted for the 2009 BSFA Best Short Fiction Award for ‘The Push’) and Donna Scott – BSFA Award Administrator. We are hoping for some lively debate so please do come along and join in the discussion.

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (No entry fee or tickets. Non-members welcome.)
The discussion will commence at 7.00 pm, but the room is open from 6.00 (and fans in the ground floor bar from 5ish).
There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House. 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE . Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line)

All welcome! (No entry fee or tickets. Non-members welcome.)
Interview will commence at 7pm, but the room is open from 6pm (and fans will very likely be in the ground floor bar from 5pm).
There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

FUTURE EVENTS:
25th April – SHARYN NOVEMBER interviewed by Professor Farah Mendlesohn
23rd May* – CJ LINES interviewed by Tony Keen
27th June – TANITH LEE interviewed by Nadia van der Westerhuizen

* Note that this is a month with five Wednesdays. The meeting will be on the fourth, not the last, Wednesday of the month

P.S. BSFA members voting on the awards in advance of Eastercon – the deadline for submitting your votes is the 2nd of April.

Eastercon on track to sell out this week

For the first time ever, so far as anyone I’ve talked to can remember, Eastercon is due to sell out before the convention. This means there will be no memberships whatsoever, whether for the weekend or day passes, available at the convention itself, unless pre-bought. None at all.

If you’d like to attend this year’s BSFA Awards, on Sunday, 8 April at 6 pm at this year’s Eastercon, Olympus 2012, you’d better get your membership if you don’t already have it.

As a reminder, all Eastercon members can also vote for the BSFA Awards! But you don’t have to attend to do that, so long as you are a BSFA member and submit your votes by the 2nd of April.

If all goes to plan, you should even have the awards booklet by then. The printers started printing it this weekend.

Update: Eastercon memberships are selling fast enough that they are likely to be sold out before this time tomorrow/Tuesday!

SF in London Drink and Art

Bompas & Parr are a fabulous London-based jelly first.

That description doesn’t begin to do them justice. I first encountered them setting a foot-tall replica in jelly of St Paul’s cathedral on fire in memory of the Great Fire of London. They built a rowable green lake on top of Selfridges. They do cocktails of various imaginative varieties, such as the walk-in G&T the other year.

On March 21st, they’re doing a science fiction cocktail event in London:

For A Culinary Odyssey Bompas & Parr is working with KitchenAid to look at the food of the future through prototyping the dishes of science fiction. The event on the 21st March opens fresh areas for culinary speculation and food ethics by examining the physical, biological and astronomical possibilities of cocktails and canapés.

The Experimental Cocktail Club (ECC) is making science fiction cocktails including Burgess’s terrifying Milk Plus, Rhea Thierstein is designing sets that include the entire solar system in papier-mâché, Poietic Studio is building a food levitation device and tropism well and Andrew Stellitano is developing a menu that includes genetic modification, entomophagy, and nano-technology On the evening, Future Laboratory will launch a report on science fiction prototyping and food preparation in the future.

The evening celebrates the launch of the KitchenAid’s 6.9L Artisan stand mixer and is proving pretty popular. The first batch of tickets went in a flash when they eventually went on sale last Thursday. We are planning to release more on the 19th March at noon from our website.

If you can get hold of a ticket you’ll be able to experience ECC’s take on the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster described by Douglas Adams as ‘the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging’ the effects of which are like ‘having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick’.

It’s currently sold out, but a second tranche of tickets goes on sale at noon on March 19th. Be ready to pounce if this interests you.

Also in London, ongoing, is second-hand science fiction retail as art. It’s been open for at least a few weeks now, so some of you may have caught artist Heman Chong’s conversion of gallery Rossi & Rossi into a temporary retail shop selling sf novels.

The artist is an avid S&F fan and has read most of these books in research for his own Sci-Fi novel set to be released next year. Heman has a long, impressive CV featuring exhibitions at The Frieze Art Fair (2011) and representing Singapore at the Venice Biennale (2003), among other highlights (http://www.rossirossi.com/contemporary/artists/heman-chong/cv). This current work explores the relationship between objects and contexts, where the gallery space oscillates between a bookstore and an artwork depending on who comes in, why they came, and how they view and interact with it. Essentially, each visitor becomes a part of, and potentially transforms the peice. We’ve had hundreds of S&F fans come and we want to invite you and your members/fans to come and enjoy the exhibit. The bottom line: thousands of S&F classics for only £1 each.

The exhibit is open Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm; Sat, 11am-4pm. Rossi and Rossi is at 16 Clifford Street, Mayfair, W1S 3RG. Nearest station, Green Park.

Based on the gallery website, his paintings of the book covers are also for sale. The installation is on until March 30th.

See also London Calling’s interview with the artist for more information on him and his work.

Reasons to Attend the SFF Criticism Masterclass

The deadline to apply for this year’s SFF Criticism Masterclass is rapidly approaching. (February 28th)

Some of you may be wavering as to whether or not to apply. Here are some reasons why you should:

It’s a chance to spend three days immersed in discussion of books, short stories, and articles with other people interested in science fiction, who have all read the same material. This allows for the sort of in-depth discussion which doesn’t happen any where near frequently enough in other contexts.
It’s a chance to encounter alternative perspectives on work you’ve just read, while it’s fresh in your mind and you have the material to-hand for re-examining. You may not change your mind, but you’ll certainly have the chance to discuss others’ perspectives at length and use them to re-examine your own.
It’s a fantastic networking opportunity for anyone already working on any aspect of science fiction criticism in some capacity. You’ll be spending three days getting to know the tutors and the way they think much more closely, but also your fellow students.
It’s not a class intended for masters of criticism, but for those interested in improving their existing abilities, whether you review lots of books on your own blog, or are a PhD student working on science fiction, or occasionally write critical essays about science fiction. It’s also useful for writers interested in genre criticism, working on improving their analyses of why some kinds of writing does and doesn’t work for a critical audience.
Even if you’ve taken it before, the SFF Criticism Masterclass is new and different every time, with all-new tutors to learn from and with. If you’d like to study SF Criticism with M. John Harrison, Kari Sperring, and Edward James, this is the one year you have in which to do so.

Any other reasons any of you would like to add to this list?

February BSFA London Meeting

This Wednesday, the 22nd of February, is the fourth Wednesday of the month – which means it’s time for the BSFA London Meeting.

Liz Williams (author of The Ghost Sister, Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Banner of Souls, the Inspector Chen series (Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion, The Iron Khan, Morningstar), Darkland, Bloodmind, and Winterstrike, among others) http://mevennen.livejournal.com/
will be interviewed by Ian Whates (BSFA Chair)

The meeting will be at 7pm in the Cellar Bar at the Melton Mowbray Public House on Holborn, EC1N 2LE.

Please remember that, as of the beginning of this year, these meetings are no longer in Sloane Square!

BSFA and SFF Mini-Convention and AGM 2012

The Science Fiction Foundation and the British Science Fiction Association invite you to attend their Mini-Convention and Annual General Meetings

Saturday, 9 June 2012
10-4:30 pm

with Guests of Honour Aliette de Bodard and Marek Kukula

Location: The Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, on Piccadilly, in London. W1J 0BQ. Halfway between Piccadilly Circus and Green Park stations, on the north side of the street.

Cost: Free!

AGMs: The SFF AGM will take place at noon, the BSFA AGM at 1:45 pm.