Welcome to the October Newsletter

I’ve a fair bit of ground to cover, so I’ll get more or less straight to it. There are a number of conventions planned for next year, as well as quite a handful towards the end of this month. In less than three weeks time, as I write this, we have They Came & Shaved Us in Dundalk, and Gaelcon, one of the biggest Irish gaming conventions, in Clontarf in Dublin, both on the same weekend.

The following weekend, ProPHecY, the Buffy/Angel event, is on in Dublin’s Smithfield, and incorporates SubCon 5, which is a comics mart. Admission to the first gets you into the second, but not vice versa! Also on that weekend, as is usual, as it is the Halloween weekend, is Horrorthon, the horror film festival that is run annually in Dublin’s IFC cinema. This is essentially five distinct events in two weekends, which could perhaps be seen as crowding.

Anyway, on to the news, starting with the newly announced cons in chronological order…

Dominicon 2004

Although they are still at an early stage in the planning, the folk at the SF and gaming societies in NUI Maynooth are planning another joint event in spring next year, on the weekend of the 19th to the 21st of March. Although they have yet to announce a guest of honour, I’m saying now that you should consider going along to this. I was there last March, and enjoyed myself thoroughly, and the con runners were friendly and helpful. The con director this year is Gareth Kavanagh, in who I have a substantial amount of faith. More on this as I get it and the website is at www.dominicon.ie

Octocon 2004

After taking a break for a year, Octocon returns next October, on the weekend of 16 ­ 17 October, in Chief O’Neill’s Hotel in Smithfield, the venue currently favoured by the DMZ for their Angel days.

Although they have not officially announced a GoH as yet, I have it on good authority that this is to be Tanith Lee, with a media GoH to be announced also. Octocon seems to be moving towards becoming a media convention, and distancing itself somewhat from the literary end of the genre.

The Octocon committee, for the record, currently consists of James Brophy, Caitriona McGrath, Robert McGregor, Vince Pennell, and James Shields. Prices will be available on their website at www.octocon.com.

P-Con II

After the modest success of P-CON I, plans are well afoot for the second one, to be held in November next year. As I previously mentioned, this was originally to be on the weekend now being taken by Octocon, but they declared that they were unable to find another venue or date, so the dates for P-CON were shifted by five weeks, as we *were* in the fortunate position to have alternative dates available to us. The relevant details are:

Further guests are coming, with several of the guests at P-CON I returning. There is one addition, on his first visit to an Irish convention, which is Ariel, who is the editor and main mover behind the extremely successful online magazine site TheAlienOnline.

P-CON is going to be concentrating on the written end of the genre, and already plans are afoot to alter some of the aspects of the con that didn’t work, starting with getting rid of the video room, and perhaps holding a table quiz on Saturday night, rather than the more prosaic disco. More details are available on the con website, or should be by the time you’re reading this. The website is at www.slovobooks.com/phoenix

Irish Bid for Eurocon 2007

At the closing ceremony of P-CON, David Stewart announced that he is proposing to bid for Ireland to holds the 2007 Eurocon, which is the European-wide SF convention, held in a different country every year. This was held in Ireland in 1997 and, although not without its problems, was a wonderful event.

David started by asking if anyone wished to presupport the bid, meaning that people could pay a nominal amount, in this case E2, to indicate their support for the idea. He fairly quickly found himself with a long queue of people signing up, so he now has something in the region of 30 members on his books, with more to come, no doubt. David will be representing this even at all local conventions, so you can talk to him at one of those. More information from dstewart AT iol.ie , and a website should be online shortly. I’ll be keeping you all informed on this as it progresses.

Rumour has it.

Before I finish on the subject of conventions, rumour has it that a group of people are planning to hold a SF convention in Northern Ireland, probably in Belfast, in or around May 2005. There is already a convention in Belfast, Mecon, which is run annually by the Queen’s University SF Society, and held every March, but I’m inclined to think that a freestanding, non university convention should stand a god chance of being a success, too, and the two events could only benefit one another, and SF fandom both north and south, too. More, as usual, as I get it.

Mecon News

I have received the first progress report from Mecon 7, which is to be held in Belfast next March, and I see that the accommodation in the Common Rooms, where I’ve stayed the last two years, will not be available any longer. Plans are afoot, it seems, to eventually knock down the block in which the con has always been held, which would be a shame. None the less, I’m looking forward to what will be my forth annual excursion northwards, come the spring. I wonder if it’ll rain. It has every other year… More at www.mecon.org.uk.

Toy Fairs in 2004

Brian Kelly wrote to me with the 2004 dates for the toy fairs he has been involved in running for many years now. The dates, all of which are in the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire, are as follows:

Sunday February 15th
Sunday May 9th
Sunday September 19th

Brian adds that he has no date for November, when he would normally be holding an event, as the hotel is not taking bookings past the summer, as there is a possibility the venue may cease trading as a hotel, and become a block of apartments instead.

Any Slash Fiction fans?

From Maken, an old friend, I got this:

And you can contact her at maken_txu AT hotmail.com. Tell her I sent you!

Two Quizzes

As previously announced, I’m holding the 3rd Irish SF News Table Quiz in the Exchequer Bar in Exchequer Street on Thursday the 13th of November. Funds will go towards a small overrun in cost with P-CON I, and the balance will go forward to P-CON II. There is, however, another quiz being held before then…

Paul Cotrulia, who is working towards making a SF/horror series called Forsaken, is holding a table quiz to help him finance the pilot episode, which has had a cost overrun. All the questions will be movie questions, so if you fancy yourself a movie buff, you should go along. It’s all in a good cause, anyway, as it would be great to see some home-produced horror TV. The relevant details are:

Some footage from Forsaken will be previewed at ProPHecY, and Paul is to be a guest speaker at the October SciFiClub meeting, which is tomorrow, as I type this. I won’t be at the meeting, needing to recuperate, but wish Paul the best of luck with it, and with Forsaken.

And that’s about my lot for this month. No doubt I’ve forgotten something. Perhaps I wanted to mention the 3rd Dublin Tattoo Convention, to be held at Leopardstown Race Course on the weekend of the 21st to the 23rd of November?

Or was it to remind you all that November is NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, meaning that you can try to write a fifty thousand word novel in only thirty days? If You’re interested in that, you can go look at their website at www.nanowrimo.com , or possibly even get in touch with James Shields, who is the NaNoWriMo regional coordinator for Ireland.

What I am forgetting, of course, is the quiz from last month, which is going to have to wait ‘til next time around.

If you think I’ve forgotten something I should have mentioned, or didn’t know it in the first place, don’t be afraid to drop me a line.

Best wishes,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid
Irish SF News