P-Con II Newsletter #4

Hello, and welcome to the much belated 4th P-CON II newsletter. There would have been at least one more newsletter during the Summer, but this kept being deferred due to Real Life intruding. In particular, the fact that Deirdre Walsh was hospitalised three times, and is now down an appendix and a gall bladder, as well as the fact that Deirdre and myself got married in August, meant that I was a little too busy to actually get around to doing all I wished. However, site manager Ian Sheppard is doing a sterling job of getting whatever news and updates there are online as fast as possible.

Now, onto the news…

New Guests

We are very happy to have two new guests for the con.

Tom Brennan hails from Liverpool, where he works in IT, but has strong Irish roots on both sides of his family. He has just published his first novel, a Celtic fantasy set in the far future, called One True Prince. More information can be found in Tom Brennan's guest profile

George Green is an Irishman living in Lancaster, although originally hailing from Dublin, via Tipperary. He teaches creative writing in the university there, and has also just published his first novel, called Hound, based on the legend of Cúchulainn. More information can be found in George Green's Guest Profile

New Committee Members

As well as having two new guests, we also have two new committee members. Poached from the committee of Dominicon: Hazard in Maynooth last March, I am very happy indeed to welcome Jenny Power and Siobhan McKenna to the committee of P-CON, where I hope they’ll enjoy their time. More information about the con committee can be found on the Committee Page

P-Con III

We have been having some thoughts on the subject of P-CON III. What it all boils down to is this: we’re going to move the con from the Autumn/Winter, into the Spring. There are a number of reasons for this, partially due to not wishing to clash with other events in the same time period. True, there are other events in the Spring also, but, as Dominicon has now reverted to being a gaming only con, rather than a gaming/SF con, and bearing in mind that the amount of fans that actually travel north from the south to attend Mecon is virtually negligible, there’s a clear gap available in the schedule. Thee other main topic under discussion was whether to have the con in the Spring of 2005 or 2006. Spring 2005 really is far too soon, we finally decided, so 2006 it is.

So, to that end, we are announcing P-CON III, the third Phoenix Convention, which is to take place in the Ashling Hotel in Dublin on the weekend of Saturday & Sunday the 11 & 12th of March 2006, which is the weekend before the weekend of St Patrick’s Festival. We are hoping to hold the con around this time every year in future. We have no guests to announce yet, but we will be pursuing people about this as soon as we can.

We will be taking memberships for P-CON III at the con in November, or you can send us the money now! The membership fee is, for the moment, €20, with a supporting membership costing €10, and can be sent to the usual address.

Book reviews and Extracts

P-CON guest Charlie Stross narrowly missed winning his third Hugo Award this month, when his debut novel, Singularity Sky, came third in the Best Novel category in the 2004 Hugo Awards, the award being won by Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of Souls.

However, you can read an extract from Stross’ Singularity Sky on The Alien Online, which you can find here .

Not only that, but there’s a review of the book, written by none other than P-CON’s Guest of Honour, Juliet E McKenna, on the site also, which you can find here.

There’s also a review of one of Juliet’s own books Southern Sky,The Alien Online, at http://www.thealienonline.net/ao_060.asp?tid=2&scid=15&iid=2449 .

Especial thanks to Ariel, site editor at The Alien Online, and also a guest at this year’s con, for letting me link to all this!

Payments by Paypal

P-CON will soon be able to take payment by PayPal. We’ll send out a separate mail about this shortly, and there’ll be full details on the con site soon.

Membership Update

The membership for the convention stands at 80, which is good for two months before the con. A number of other people have said they’ll be along, including some of you reading this! We’ll have a fan table at Octocon in October, and hope to gather a few more members there. All in all, the con is in a healthy financial state, and seems likely to end the year in credit. Which is good…

Programming

We’ve started compiling the programme for the convention. We’ve a long list of ideas which need to be sorted out, and then slotted into place. However, we’re always keen for more ideas, so if there’s anything you’d like to see addressed by our guests, let us know, and we’ll do out best to make it happen. We’ll soon be posting the beginnings of the programme on the con site, and we’ll keep you updated in the next newsletter.

In Brief

Dave Lally, a well known figure in UK SF fandom, and a Dublin lad originally, has asked me to mention that we’ll all be meeting up in the hotel bar on the Friday before the con, the 12th of November, for a few drinks in the hotel bar, and that on the Monday afternoon, he’ll be hosting a last farewell in the Porterhouse on Parliament Street in Temple Bar from about 12 noon.

Many thanks to Conor Stephens, who donated the first four seasons of Babylon 5 on video to the con, and which we translated into cash via a complicated process involving a credit note from Crow Corner Comics in Crow Street. If you’ve anything you don’t need, and feel the con could do something useful with, get in touch.

Dublin’s tram system, the Luas, is partially operational, with the Green Line, from St Stephen’s Green to Sandyford, up and running. The Red Line, which will run directly outside from the centre of Dublin City to the Ashling Hotel, is due to open on the 28th of September. This will mean direct access to the con site from O’Connell Street and Connolly Station, as there are stops at Collins’ Barracks Museum and Heuston Station, both adjacent to the Ashling Hotel. More information at the LUAS website.

Congratulation to former P-CON committee member Angie McKeown, who also got married in August! We hope she’s very happy with her shiny new husband Paul, and that that we get to see them both at this year’s con.

For anyone who really wants to know, there are photographs of the wedding of Deirdre Walsh and Pádraig Ó Méalóid to be found here and also here.

Thanks for reading this far, and see you all soon!

Best wishes,
Pádraig Ó Méalóid

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