Guest of Honour at Eastercon 2010

[daveh]

Odyssey 2010, The 2010 Eastercon (British National Science Fiction Convention) which runs from 2-5 April at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel near Heathrow in London has announced that Iain M Banks has joined the list of Guests of Honour.
See http://www.odyssey2010.org/ and see you there.

[Deep Black]

Hmm, Alastair Reynolds & Liz Williams signed up too. Will have to keep an eye on this one

[Hilarity Unit]

Great bill - just a shame it wasn't last year (i.e. before I moved north!)

[Michael]

Hi HU

If you are in Scotland, a fan of Banksie and and like the sound of Eastercon, why not come to Satellite 2 in July. It is a 'scaled down' Eastercon (2 days instead of 4) with Iain as guest of honour, but full of all the things you would want at an SF convention.

See my thread under 'appearances' for more info or check out www.satellite2.org.uk

See you in July
Michael

[Hilarity Unit]

Looks like a definite maybe :)

[rac]

Hi HU

If you are in Scotland, a fan of Banksie and and like the sound of Eastercon, why not come to Satellite 2 in July. It is a 'scaled down' Eastercon (2 days instead of 4) with Iain as guest of honour, but full of all the things you would want at an SF convention.

See my thread under 'appearances' for more info or check out www.satellite2.org.uk

See you in July
Michael

NIce one, Michael!
Are you one of the organisers?

[Michael]

Hi rac

Indeed I am - when they were looking for a Chair I did not step back fast enough! There are 3 survivors from the Satellite 1 committee (http://www.satellite1.org.uk ), plus there are three other vict.., er volunteers.

It promises to be great, and I have posted links under another thread. Please come and join in the fun!

Cheers
Michael

[Michael]

For anyone wanting to see what we did at Satellite 1 try here - http://www.satellite1.org.uk/?page=hotel . The link in my previous post does not work so well.

Ken McLeod was our GoH for that convention and he has signed up for Satellite 2 as well (so I guess he enjoyed it!)

[FearfulSymmetry]

Got a zine from a mate the other day, which got me jonesing for getting back into going to sf conventions. Think I'm gonna try and make this one.

[D.Brada]

Matchless topic, it is very interesting to me))))

[phazedout]

hmm july is dangerously close to dwcon but i met Alistair at a con in belfast and he was a truly lovely man, very aproacble.
I hall try and make it
Phaze
on the "I think i'm p0wned bh mafia was on facebook help me fellow fans you're my ownly hope" ID

[daveh]

Less than five weeks to Eastercon now. Anybody going?

The provisional programme has me doing a talk called "Iain Banks before The Wasp Factory" on the morning of Sunday April 4.

[Deep Black]

Sadly no.

Can we have a transcript of the talk though?

[Tangendentalism]

I'm going! Excited and terrified in equal measure. It's my first con and I'm not involved in any panels or anything, but just being in the same building as the person I'm writing my thesis about is enough to have my hiding under the coffee table.
Your talk sounds great daveh; I'll look forward to it.

[daveh]

My talk is now Friday 2nd April at 13:00. I will try and record it and podcast it as transcribing it will be too much work.

[Tangendentalism]

I am also, (although how this has come to be is still a mystery to me) now going to be on a panel. It's Language and Dialect in Writing on Monday 5th from 11-12am with Gary Couzens and TMH!

[Deep Black]

Wow, 2 weeks from watching panels to being on one with The Man Himself.

Fast work Tang :)

[Tangendentalism]

I know! It's my first convention and I haven't a clue how I came to be invited to be on the panel. I spent a good ten minutes just staring at the wall in incomprehension when I got the email. They asked me to be on the panel and I accepted without knowing that TMH was going to be on it also. Then they emailed back and said could I make sure I read a couple of his books beforehand as he's on the panel. Hahahaha, not going to be a problem.

[Deep Black]

Will they make him read any of your work first too?

[Tangendentalism]

Hahaha, that would be awesome!

[Deep Black]

Post some essays to his publisher :)

[Tangendentalism]

I probably will at some point in the future actually, but I think it's best to meet him in a fannish context first. SF writers tend to be, entirely understandably, a bit suspicious of academics.

[daveh]

Eastercon starts here! Well I have a few days off before as I need to finish off my talk, which is now at 13:00 on Friday.

I should probably admit to Tangendentalism that it is my fault about the Language and Dialect in Writing panel.

Will be there from Thursday afternoon. See you there.

[Conscious Bob]

A possibility of two write-ups maybe? Not long now and have fun guys.

[daveh]

Chad Dixon interview with TMH at Eastercon http://www.mevio.com/episode/224087/odyssey-07-chad-dixon-interviews-iain-banks

[Conscious Bob]

Heh, Iphone owners club.

[daveh]

Other news from Eastercon. The first draft of Surface Detail was finished last week. He didn't read from it as it needs to settle a bit and things might change. So Ullapool does look like the first outing for it. [Not sure I will make it up there] The mainstream one after Surface Detail is going to be "short, sharp and shocking" probably aiming for 65,000 words like The Wasp Factory. Surface Detail about three times that long. In his Guest of Honour interview Iain was asked when his new book was coming out and said until he got his fanzine he thought September, but now it is apparently next February. Apparently they hadn't told him. He definitely has another Culture book in him - probably more. A couple of parties interested in The Wasp Factory as a film. Iain hopeful a deal might get done this year.

There was an extra programme item today with Iain and Ken MacLeod in a double header talking to each other about their approaches to writing. Very funny.
Met Tangendentalism after I gave my talk on Friday which seemed to go quite well. Also another student who is planning a PhD on Banks introduced himself. Someone recognised me at the bar today and said how they enjoyed it, which was nice.

Anyway, busy, busy, busy. More when I have digested my notes, and have some free time.Tangendentalism is on a panel with TMH tomorrow.

[Conscious Bob]

In his Guest of Honour interview Iain was asked when his new book was coming out and said until he got his fanzine he thought September, but now it is apparently next February.

Uh huh... Let's make sure I've got this right...

He was busy getting the book ready for September then you told him it's next February...

Look no harm done, just tell him you got it wrong and he's supposed to get the book ready for August, I'm needing something to read on the plane.

[Tangendentalism]

Just come back to life after Eastercon. daveh's talk was great and Iain was awesome. I'm more than a bit smitten actually. I now have to organise my questions into some kind of reasonable order and length to send them to him. He seemed really pleased to hear I am writing about the Culture - not suspicious at all and very generous. I did, however, forget to take my ageing copy of Player with me to get him to sign. :( I'll have to take it to the conference in Stirling in May. Hopefully, he'll be reading from Surface Detail there too!

[Deep Black]

Thanks for the updates guys, sounds like it was good.

Looking forward to both those new Banksie books

[FearfulSymmetry]

i09's picked up on your news Dave...

http://io9.com/5510972/iain-m-banks-has-finished-his-new-culture-novel-surface-detail

[daveh]

I am going to start a new thread for information about Surface Detail so people can avoid it if they want to. See http://www.iainbanksforum.net/showthread.php?t=371

[daveh]

I have finally uploaded the powerpoint of my Eastercon presentation to Slideshare and synchronised it to the recording of my talk. It is not public yet so if you want the URL send me a PM. I want to get some feedback that the breaks are in the right place and people think it is useful before I make it public.

[daveh]

Public URL at http://www.slideshare.net/<wbr>djhaddock/iain-banks-before-<wbr>the-wasp-factory (http://www.slideshare.net/djhaddock/iain-banks-before-the-wasp-factory)