Welcome to Edition #19

Hello, and welcome back to Irish SF News. I’ve been having an extended break over Christmas, and it’s actually two months since the last newsletter went out. This means I missed a few thinks that came and went in the intervening period. A bit more on these shortly. I usually go straight into the news, but this time I’ve a bit of an aside about various events and their venues.

If anything seems to be a recurrent theme in the various things I’ve come across in the past two months, it’s that almost everyone seems to be having trouble with their venues. I’ve been running a series of quizzes in the Exchequer Bar, a venue that was also used by the regular weekly meeting of the gaming group. After having booked the venue for a quiz on the 17th of February, I got a mail from them telling me they were closing down the bar, and it would only be open for booked events, at a cost of €300. As I’d been getting it for free up ‘til them, and only barely made €300 on any of the quizzes anyway, this was obviously out of the question. The gamers, likewise, are obviously out on their collective ear.

I’ve managed to find a new venue for the quiz, in the Broker’s Bar on Dame Street (on which more later), but the gamers are still without a permanent home. To further complicate matters, one of the other gaming groups, who already have meetings on Wednesdays nights, are now also meeting on Tuesdays, in The Mercantile Bar, which is actually attached to The Brokers. This is being jointly organised by The 4th Dimension, the gaming shop in the basement of The 3rd Place, and CCGIreland. All are welcome, and the meeting starts at 7 sharp, presumably.

Mecon, the SF convention held in Belfast’s Queen’s University, are also having trouble with the venue. Normally they have accommodation available for anyone travelling to the con in the bedrooms upstairs in the Senior Common Room. However, as the university have plans for the SCR, they still haven’t told the con committee if the rooms are going to be available or not, although the con is in less than two months. The regularly held Toy Fairs, which have only recently transferred to the Royal Marine Hotel, are having to relocate to the Clontarf Castle, as the RMH is probably going to be turned into apartments. The Dublin SciFiClub, which normally meets once a month in Bowe’s pub in Fleet Street, are having difficulties with the management following an incident at their Christmas party, when the newly upholstered seating in the upstairs bar was slashed with a knife.

Perhaps the worst case, however, is the trouble The DMZ had with the management of Chief O’Neill’s Hotel in Smithfield. After their Halloween event, ProPHecY, the management made it clear to them that they didn’t want them back. The DMZ had already booked the hotel since last May for another event, Simply Amber, in December, but the hotel did everything they could to inconvenience them, like looking for a large booking deposit, and blaming them for trouble they had with their overhead projectors, and trying to close them down at 5 PM, after previously agreeing they could run until 9 PM, which in itself was a change from what The DMZ had originally wanted, and which forced them to have to cancel their planned late night disco. All in all, it did not go well, and future DMZ events will be elsewhere, as much because The DMZ do not wish to go back there as because the management don’t wish to welcome them back, but this has to cast doubt on Chief O’Neill’s desire to act as a venue in the future for any kind of event of this nature.

Now, after that uncharacteristically long preamble, here’s the news…

Table Quiz

As mentioned above, we’re holding another table quiz. The details are as follows:
What: The 4th Irish SciFi News Table Quiz
Where: Brokers’ Bar, Dame Street
When: Tuesday 17th February at 8 PM
How Much: €24 per table of 4

Questions, as usual, will be set by myself, and there’ll be lots of prizes, as well as the well-nigh legendary raffle. Proceeds will go towards P-CON II, as well as other worthy fannish activities. The new venue, Brokers’ Bar, is very attractive, and I think this could be the start of a beautiful relationship…

You can find some of the previous questions and answers here.

Convention News

There’s various news, both good and bad, from the various conventions being held in Ireland this year.

Firstly, from Gareth Kavanagh of Dominicon, comes this:

Sinead Larkin of Mecon informs me that:

And finally, some more news about P-CON II. More guests have been added to the roster, with Katherine Kurtz and John W Sexton both coming onboard. John W Sexton was due to be at P-CON I, but an unexpected family crisis prevented him attending at the last minute. We still have his list of panels from last time, so we’ll be hoping to get him to do them this time around…

Fanfic Thesis

I think I mentioned this before, but Maken is a friend, and that’s a good enough reason for me…

Gay Trekkies

The Gay Trekkies are planning a third birthday for themselves…

In Brief

• For those of you with LiveJournals, there’s a sort of Irish SF community on LJ. It’s at www.livejournal.com/community/smoifa , and is free to anyone to join, if they’re interested. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, go to www.livejournal.com and have look.
• Myself and the lovely Deirdre have bought and paid for 2 memberships for Mecon, but are now not really in a position to attend, so we will be glad to sell them to anyone who wishes to go. Just drop me a note back here, and I’ll let you know how much they are. They’re at the earlier, lower, rate, though.
• Bobby McLaughlin wrote to me to tell me that “The good news is that I am alive. The bad news is I very nearly snuffed it on the 23rd Dec - had to get a double bypass at one hour's notice. Am recovering well now, and making some changes to my plans for 2004.”
  She originally planned to donate her Eastercon membership to anyone who wished to go, especially if they were going for the first time, but has now decided that she is well enough to go after all! Anyone wanting to send their good wishes to Bobby can do so via my good self.
• As mentioned above, the regularly held Toy Fair is moving location after their September date, as the Royal Marine Hotel is not taking any event bookings after that point. Their winter show is therefore in Clontarf Castle on Sunday the 21st of November.
• Does anyone know anyone who wrote SF in Irish, besides Cathal Ó Sándair? One of my correspondents is looking for information on this. Ó Sándair wrote prolifically in the fifties and sixties, and produced about 160 books in all, and, with sales in excess of half a million books, was the most successful writer in the Irish language. He’s largely ignored by the Irish language literati, however, as he made the cardinal error of writing things that people actually liked, like SF and Westerns, and so on. I’ve plans to put up a tribute page to him, which are a bit away from completion as yet! If anyone feels like volunteering to help with this, get in touch with me here.
• My other great project for 2004 (besides running a con and getting married) is to get to work on a site for SF Birthdays. This will hopefully be a calendar of the birthdays of as many SF writers as I can find, as well as notable and relevant dates, such as the first landing on the moon, the first issue of 2000AD, and so on. Any and all suggestions are welcome.
• For those of you who are, like myself, fans of Alan Moore, there’s an MP3 of an early single of his, March of the Sinister Ducks available at www.darkwave.org.uk/~bex/mp3s.html.
• Obviously this has nothing whatsoever to do with SF, but for those of you who know Gerry Doyle, who used to work in Phantasia, many years back now, you may be interested in the following:
  "The littlest brother of mine, Eamonn, known to some of ye, has finally come down out of the attic with a really quite excellent band, and has a bit of a website to tout his wares with. Never mind the site itself, but they have some of their music up for download and a guestbook to see what people think of it. So, if anyone has a dull moment or two, they could do worse than toddle along to www.tagtheband.com and have a listen."
• Some of you may notice some slight changes to this newsletter. I’m changing the name to ‘Irish SciFi News,’ rather than ‘Irish SF News,’ as this seems to have been causing some confusion in certain parts. Also, from this issue, I’m numbering the newsletters, as well as giving them dates. There’s no cause for alarm…

Breaking News: 2nd Dublin SciFi Awards

The indefatigable Frank Darcy is organising these awards again this year. There are awards for Best TV Show, Worst TV Show; Best Performer, Worst Performer; Best News, Worst News; 2nd Best Film, (as he suspects the first choices is obviously going to be LotR again), Worst Film; as well as awards for Most Romantic Couple, Best Book, Best Radio Performance, and for the most Over-rated Book / Film / TV Show.

The awards will be presented in May, apparently, and you can find more information, as well as a voting form, at the Dublin SciFi Awards website.

…And that’s about my lot for this time around. I’ve a lot of other news, having asked around a few writers, but it’s all going to have to wait ‘til next time, or this newsletter would be a lot longer than it already is! If anyone knows of anything that’s on that I should know about, or has any suggestions of any kind, then feel free to write to me.

Best wishes,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid
Irish SF News