Welcome to the Third Newsletter
Many of you will know David Stewart, a long-time fixture of Irish SF fandom. David is an ex-chair of Octocon and was on the staff of the recent Worldcon held in Glasgow, where he was in charge of promotions, as well as having over-all responsibility for memberships from Ireland.
You may not know that David is currently ill. He has Oesophageal Cancer, which was diagnosed in early January. He will start treatment for this within the next few days. This will consist of both radiation treatment and chemotherapy. The course of treatment will last for about five weeks, after which time his doctors will decide whether or not they need to operate to remove any remaining tumour.
As a result of this, the P-CON committee, with the full blessing of David himself, have decided to hold a charity auction at the con in March to benefit the Oesophageal Cancer Fund. For more information about the fund, as well as about oesophageal cancer, you can visit the Lollipop Day site here: www.lollipopday.com
Although he would like to make it to the con, and to host the auction himself, David thinks that he could still be too ill to do so. Also, one of the side effects of his treatment will be the diminution of his immune system, so he has been advised that he will need to avoid crowds. None the less, we are proud to be able to do this in his name, and especially for a charity he has personally nominated.
If you’d like to donate something to the auction, or to send cash for the Oesophageal Cancer Fund on David’s behalf, please get in touch with me at pomealoid[at]yahoo[dot]com.
In the meantime, David will continue to update his blog at Science Friction
The address for any donations to the charity, either cash or items for the auction, is as follows:
Phoenix Convention
C/O Yellow Brick Road
8 Bachelor’s Walk
Dublin 1
We are very happy for our Special Comics Guests, Leah Moore & John Reppion, who have signed an exclusive one-year contract with US comics company Dynamite Entertainment. They continue to work on their Albion project for Wildstorm, in the mean time. Expect to hear them talking about why graphic novels are cool and how to break into the US market at the con!
Congratulation to Paul Cornell, who will be writing one of the episodes of the new BBC Robin Hood TV series, which will be on Saturday nights in the Doctor Who slot.
Paul has a blog called Paul Cornell's House of Awkwardness, where he has this to say about the new series: “I’m very excited about this new version, which is all leaping through windows and swordfights, but has a passionate depth to it too. It’s a new take, appropriate for both the modern audience and the history of the material, entirely different to Robin of Sherwood, gorgeous as that was.”
We are sorry George Green can’t make it to the con, as much because we never got a chance to talk to him properly last time, as anything. His two novels to date, Hound and Hawk, are very close to the top of our To Be Read list, just as soon as the con is over…
We’ve been doing a little work on the programming. Last year’s Guest of Honour, Juliet E McKenna, will conduct the interview with this year’s Guest of Honour, Susanna Clarke. Well, they did both go to the same college in Oxford… Susanna will also do a reading, from an unpublished work. More news about con ramming soon.
As ever, you can join the con through the website, here.
And that’s my lot for now. There’s four weeks to go to the con, and *loads* left to do! By the way, it’s still not too late to enter the competition from the last newsletter
Best wishes,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid
P-CON Chairman