Welcome to the December Newsletter

Hello, and welcome to what is almost definitely the last newsletter of 2002! (Except for our subscriber in Australia, for whom it is already 2003...)

I’m hoping to write up an overview of the various things that were going on in 2002 sometime soon, and I’ll probably post it on the website, rather than send it out over the web. More on that when I finally get it done…

So, what delights does 2003 hold for us all?

Conventions

Well now, firstly we have, so far, about six conventions next year, mostly SF cons, but with a few notable exceptions. These are, in loose chronological order:

28 February-2 March: ConFusion, UCC, Cork
confusion.ucc.ie

7-9 March: MeCon, Queens University, Belfast
www.mecon.org

7-10 March: K2, Killarney Country Club, Co. Kerry
freespace.virgin.net/omentide.omentide/

28-30 March: Dominicon, NUI Maynooth
www.dominicon.ie

27-28 September: P-CON, Ashling Hotel, Dublin
www.slovobooks.com/phoenix/

24 ­26 October: They Came & Shaved Us, Dundalk, Co. Louth
www.theycameandshavedus.com

24 ­26 October: Gaelcon
www.gaelcon.com

I’m also going to mention Craftfest, which is more or less an Irish version of the hugely successful Witchfest event, described at the time as "The largest Witchcraft festival held in Europe within recorded history", which was held in Britain recently. This is being held in the Red Cow Conference Centre just outside Dublin, on the 17 of May from 10AM to 6PM. More information from www.witchfest.net

Of the various events listed above, ConFusion, MeCon, Dominicon and the Phoenix Convention can be described as SF cons, although Dominicon also features a gaming con; Gaelcon and K2 are gaming events; and They Came and Shaved Us is something completely different...

P-Con

And, because this is my newsletter, I’m going to take this opportunity to plug P-CON, which I’m involved in running!

The con finally has a website, which can be seen at www.slovobooks.com/phoenix, where you can also sign up for the con newsletter.

Not only that, but I should bring to your attention the fact that the price rises on the 7th of January. (This date is chosen to coincide with the January SciFiClub meeting, where I will be hoping some of you will want to pay me. It is a long-standing tradition, not just here but in con-running circles in general, to time the price increases of cons to coincide with various fan gatherings whether they be monthly meetings or other cons, such as Eastercon, which is the date of one of the other price increases for P-CON. The reason for this aside is that someone queried what would otherwise appear to be peculiar choices of dates to change the prices. Now you know!) So, if you want to pay at the old rate of €20, rather than the slightly higher rate of €25 (or the equivalent in Sterling, which are £13 and £16 respectively), you can pay there. However, if you’re not going to be able to make it to the meeting, fear not, as I’m not going to hold you to it *that* closely.

If want to pay, relevant part of the con website, or drop a note to the con address, phoenixconvention@yahoo.co.uk, or just write back to me here and we’ll work something out.

We also have agents in Britain and Northern Ireland, in the guises of Dave Lally and Angie McKeown, respectively, who will be more than happy to relieve you of your membership fee, if you so choose. Here endeth the plug…

Breaking News: P-Con has announced that the Guest of Honour at the convention will be Ken MacLeod. More details on the Phoenix Convention website.

Aeon Press

Aeon Press is more or less the publishing arm of the people who produce Albedo 1, Ireland’s long running and award winning SF short story magazine. I mentioned recently that they had published their first collection of short stories This Way Up, a two-hander written by Nigel Quinlan and Dermot Ryan.

Since then, they have also published The Hand That Takes, a novel by Dutch author Paul Harland. You can find out more about both books at the Albedo 1 website, which you can find by clicking here, and can read reviews of both of them on The Alien Online, with the This Way Up review here and the The Hand That Takes review here respectively.

I’ve taken on the job of trying to get these books into the bookshops of Dublin, and hope you will all join me in helping to support this, out first homegrown SF publishing house.

Babies!

I’m delighted to take this opportunity to congratulate various friends of mine on the recent births of their new babies.

Nicholas Whyte, who runs the wonderful Science Fiction and Fantasy Set in Ireland: A Checklist which you can find by clicking here, wrote to me to tell me that himself and his wife Anne had a daughter, Ursula Mary Whyte, on the 22nd of December in Leuven in Belgium.

I also got a mail from Ralph Drayton-Harald, husband of Cuddles, to let me know that she gave birth to twins, Xavier Tarot and Xanthe Tegan, on the 1st of December, presumably in Scotland, where they live. All of them are safe and well, and happy. Just in case you’re curious, Xavier is a boy and Xanthe is a girl. Cuddles is much involved with Electrical Eggs, who attempt to make SF convention more accessible to people with mobility, hearing or visual difficulties.

Well done to you all!!

DMZ One-day Event

The next DMZ one-day event is to be held in Wynn’s Hotel on Sunday the 26th of January. It runs from 10AM to 8PM, and they will be showing episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Smallville, all in advance of their being shown on any TV stations this side of the Atlantic. The cost is €11 for the day, and well worth it!

This event is to replace the previously advertised event that was to be held on the 6th of January, and the organisers are dedicating it to the late Glenn Quinn, the Dublin born actor who had appeared in Angel, and who died tragically young a little earlier this year.

SciFiClub

The Dublin-based SciFiClub has reorganised their next two meetings. The Freemasonry meeting, which was to be the January, has been moved to February, and the January meeting will now be on the subject of One Hit Wonders, by which they mean those shows that never made it past their first season. Vengeance Unlimited anybody?

As ever, the SciFiClub meets on the first Tuesday of the month in Bowe’s Pub in Fleet Street, and there is no cover charge, although they run a raffle to raise funds. More information from the SciFiClub website.

Other Realms

I see from the forums on LostCarPark, that there is a new SF shop opened in Cork City. I quote from the 26th of November posting by shelly:

Sounds well worth a visit, and I’m hoping to be in Cork some time next year, so I’ll be dropping in.

Before I go

Before I go, I want to publicly thank Ian Sheppard for all the fabulous work he’s done on the website for this newsletter, as well as on the site for P-CON. You can see the P-CON site by clicking here. Thanks for all the work, Ian! Lots more to come, you’ll be glad to know…

Happy New Year to you all. Make this the year you go to a convention, if you’ve not gone before. You’ll love it!! The quiz will return in the New Year, as soon as I finally get around to sending out all the prizes I owe people, some of them for months. Soon, I promise!

If you know of anything I should have here but don’t, let me know.

Yours,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid