The next BFS Open Night is on Friday 2 March 2012 at The Mug House, 1-3 Tooley Street, London Bridge, London SE1 2PF (tel. 020 7403 8343). If you are travelling by public transport to London Bridge station, look for the exit that says “Duke Street Hill” or “Tooley Street”. The evening starts at 6pm. There are two main events happening. These are: An Eibonvale Press launch and a silent charity auction run by Quercus Books.

Further details:
Eibonvale Press are launching a brand new anthology edited by Allen Ashley, entitled Where Are We Going? Several authors including Allen Ashley, Joel Lane, Douglas Thompson, Marion Pitman, Terry Grimwood, Jet McDonald, Andrew Kirby, Gary Budgen and cover artists David Rix are expected to attend and sign copies of the book. Where Are We Going? will be selling at the special low price of £7 paperback and £16 hardback on the launch evening.

At some time between 6.30pm and 7pm, Allen Ashley will be announcing a “Postcard Competition”. This is a free to enter competition with simple rules – write an interesting postcard and win an Eibonvale prize. Postcards and pens will be provided on the night. The competition will be judged by Allen Ashley and the results will be announced at approximately 9pm.

Eibonvale will also be launching Jeff Gardiner’s debut collection A Glimpse of the Numinous.

Nicola Budd from Quercus Books will be running a silent auction on a selection of desirable Quercus publications from approximately 6.30pm onwards. Nicola will announce the start of the auction and how to take part. The books will be displayed on a couple of tables and people are invited to write their bids on a sheet of paper. The winning bidders will be announced at approximately 9.30pm. The auction is in aid of the charity Have A Heart.

The night will finish at about 11pm or when the BFS has drunk the bar dry (don’t laugh – it happens quite a lot).

So, get along to The Mug House on 2nd March. Buy a book or three. Give some money to a good cause. Meet up with pals old and new. Have a great time.

Further details: email Allen Ashley on editorwherearewegoing [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

World Fantasy Convention 2013 is pleased to announce that Academy Award- and World Fantasy Award-winning illustrator Alan Lee will be its Artist Guest of Honour in Brighton. Alan Lee began his career working as a commercial artist, contributing work to dozens of paperback book covers, including reissues of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories edited by Robert Aickman and R. Chetwynd-Hayes. After moving in the mid-1970s to a small village on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, he shared a studio with Brian Froud and together they created the groundbreaking illustrated book Faeries.

The success of this picture book gave the artist the freedom to spend several years bringing the Celtic myth of The Mabinogion to life, and he went on to create the delicate watercolour illustrations for Castles by David Day, Michael Palin’s The Mirrorstone (in collaboration with Richard Seymour), The Moon’s Revenge by Joan Aiken and Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson, along with numerous book cover designs.

However, Alan Lee is best known for his association with perhaps the greatest fantasy author of all time, illustrating the 1,200-page centenary edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Artist and author soon became inextricably linked through such collaborations as Tolkien’s World: Paintings of Middle-Earth, the 1993 J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar (and many subsequent editions), Realms of Tolkien: Images of Middle-Earth, a new edition of The Hobbit, The Children of Húrin, Tales from the Perilous Realm and David Day’s non-fiction study Tolkien’s Ring.

The artist’s work for Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy received the prestigious Kate Greenaway Award in 1993 for distinguished work in the illustration of children’s books in the UK. In 1998 he won the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist.

Alan Lee has also enjoyed an equally successful career as a conceptual designer for movies, and his credits include Legend, Erik the Viking, the Jane Yolen-scripted Merlin and the Dragons, the 2005 King Kong and the 1998 TV mini-series Merlin.

Director Peter Jackson contacted the artist to work on his acclaimed cinematic trilogy of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. After being nominated for The Two Towers the year before, in 2004 Alan Lee won an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for his work on The Return of the King. The artist is currently based in New Zealand, where he is working again with Jackson on the eagerly-anticipated prequels The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

“I’m very flattered to be asked to be Artist Guest of Honour,” says Alan Lee, “and happy to accept the invitation. I’m meant to be finishing on The Hobbit movies some time this year. My work on the The Lord of the Rings films went on for six years beyond what I was originally anticipating, but even if I am still involved I can arrange my annual trip back to England to coincide with the convention. I look forward to seeing everyone in 2013!”

Alan Lee joins previously announced Author Guests of Honour Richard Matheson and Richard Christian Matheson, along with Master of Ceremonies China Mieville, in the picturesque and vibrant seaside town of Brighton, on the south coast of England, over the weekend of 31 October – 3 November 2013.

Full details and booking information on the website HERE

2012 sees the first Discover Festival taking place at Snibston Discovery Museum, Coalville, Leicestershire.  The event runs from Friday 18 – Sunday 20 May 2012 and includes access to a host of activities in the fields of science-fiction, fantasy and horror. Joining previously announced Guest of Honour Peter F. Hamilton, further Guests of Honour will be Graham Masterton and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Other attending authors include Mark Chadbourn, Adam Christopher, A.J. Dalton, Tom Fletcher, Andrew Hook, Kim Lakin-Smith, Paul Magrs, Lou Morgan, Gav Thorpe and Conrad Williams, among others.

Peter F. Hamilton began writing in 1987 and sold his first short story to Fear magazine in 1988. His novels include the Greg Mandel series and the Night’s Dawn trilogy. His most recent novels are Fallen Dragon, Misspent Youth, Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained and the Void trilogy.

Graham Masterton is a renowned horror author whose career was launched with the wildly successful The Manitou in 1976. Since then he has written over one-hundred titles, taking in not only horror but also thrillers, disaster novels and historical sagas.  Recent releases include The Pariah, Mirror and Family Portrait through Hammer Books, a leading name in the field of horror.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood is an acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novelist, and twice a winner of the prestigious BSFA Award for Best Novel. He is also an established newspaper writer, having published articles and reviews in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and The Independent. His latest series, the Assassini, continues with the release of The Outcast Blade in May.

Tickets for the festival include access to a host of activities throughout. There will be a wide range of author readings, panels, writing workshops and much more featuring some of the leading writers, editors and agents in genre fiction. Tickets cost £45 and cover all activities over the weekend – for booking and more information visit the website HERE

The first BFS London Open Night for 2012 has been booked for 2 March 2012 at The Mug House – just under London Bridge, opposite the London Dungeon.

Doors officially open Friday night from 6pm onwards. Festivities planned so far include a book launch for author/editor Allen Ashley‘s new anthology Where Are We Going from Eibonvale Press. Also, Quercus Books will be hosting a charity auction – Nicola Budd, Editorial Assitant at Quercus Books, explains:

“As part of the BFS open night on 2nd March 2012, we will be hosting a silent auction to raise money for the charity Have A Heart, supporting children’s hospices in the UK.

The auction, in conjunction with Jo Fletcher Books, will include signed first editions from across the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres, as well as some signed original artworks.

All the money contributed will be going to help build a better future for children who are vulnerable, face adversity or live with a disability or illness, so prepare to dig deep! For more information on the charity go to www.heart.co.uk/have-a-heart/ “

In keeping with its primary theme of “The Next Generation”, World FantasyCon has announced living legend Richard Matheson and his son Richard Christian Matheson as its first author Guests of Honour to World Fantasy Convention 2013,  from 31 October – 3 November 2013 in Brighton.

Richard Matheson is a master of modern science fiction, fantasy and horror, and Stephen King credits him with single-handedly regenerating a stagnant genre. His best known novels include the influential I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, The World Fantasy Award-winning Bid Time Return and What Dreams May Come, all of which have been turned into movies. His latest novel, Other Kingdoms, is about witchcraft and fairies in a rural English village.

He also scripted fourteen episodes of Rod Serling’s iconic The Twilight Zone TV series (including the classic ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’), and has produced movies including The Fall of the House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Comedy of Terrors, The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride), Duel, The Legend of Hell House, Somewhere in Time, Jaws 3-D and the two ‘Kolchak’ TV movies, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.

Richard Matheson was awarded the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the World Horror Convention’s Living Legend Award in 2000. In 2006 he was presented with The Legend Award by Ray Bradbury in Los Angeles.

Richard Christian Matheson began his career in the late 1970s. At twenty, he became the youngest writer ever signed to an overall deal with Universal Studios and he wrote scripts for a number of network TV shows. He moved into feature film writing, working with Steven Spielberg on Harry and the Hendersons and Three O’Clock High. To date, he has written, co-written and sold over twelve spec screenplays – considered a record.

He is considered a master of the short-short story and has published more than seventy stories of psychological horror in magazines and major anthologies. Thirty of his critically acclaimed stories are collected in Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks with a Foreword by Stephen King and an Introduction by Dennis Etchison. His second collection, Dystopia, gathers sixty stories with an Introduction by Richard Matheson and an Afterword by Peter Straub. The volume also includes tributes about RC’s writing from Clive Barker, Ellen Datlow, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Ray Bradbury, Stephen Jones, Ramsey Campbell and many others. Matheson’s debut novel, Created By, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee and his magic-realism novella, The Ritual of Illusion, will soon be available from PS Publishing.

Richard Matheson and Richard Christian Matheson will join previously announced Master of Ceremonies, China Mieville (author of Perdido Street Station, The City & the City, Kraken and Embassytown), in Brighton over Hallowe’en weekend 2013.

For full details and how to join visit the website HERE

For those who remember the radio show with fondness, the original cast are reunited live on stage in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Radio Show – Live!

Starring:
Simon Jones as Arthur Dent
Geoff Mcgivern as Ford Prefect
Susan Sheridan as Trillian
Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox
and the voice of Stephen Moore as Marvin The Paranoid Android

You may think it’s a long way down the street to the chemist
But that’s just peanuts to space…

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy became an instant classic on its launch as a radio series. Now Douglas Adams‘ immortal creation explodes back into life, re-born in this ground-breaking new stage production – a radio show like you never saw before – in surround sound, packed with laughter, robots, really wild sound effects and drinks with extremely silly names.

Touring the UK in 2012, stopping off at:
Friday 8 – Saturday 9 June 2012  Theatre Royal Glasgow
Tuesday 12 June 2012  New Alexandra Theatre Birmingham
Monday 18 – Tuesday 19 June 2012  Liverpool Empire
Tuesday 26 – Wednesday 27 June 2012  New Victoria TheatreWoking
Thursday 28 – Saturday 30 June 2012  The Churchill Theatre Bromley
Monday 2 – Wednesday 4 July 2012  Opera House Manchester
Thursday 5 July 2012  Grand Opera House York
Monday 9 – Tuesday 10 July 2012  Aylesbury Waterside Theatre
Thursday 12 – Saturday 14 July 2012  Theatre Royal Brighton
Saturday 21 July 2012  Edinburgh Playhouse

For information and tickets go HERE

Sussex-based independent publisher Myriad Editions’ inaugural First Graphic Novel prize will be awarded on 21 January 2012 from a shortlist of unpublished graphic novels chosen by judges including Ian Rankin, cartoonist Steve Bell, graphic novelist Bryan Talbot and Myriad creative director Corinne Pearlman. The winning title will be published by Myriad in 2013.

Myriad are also launching a series of events to champion first novels, past and present, teaming up with Sussex University to host talks and discussions featuring authors including Nicholas Royle and Ian Rankin. The First Fictions Festival will start on 20 January 2012 at the University’s Falmer campus, near Brighton. Other events will take place throughout the year around Brighton and the south-east, including debates, interviews and speed-dates for new writers to meet agents and editors.

See full details HERE

Chicon 7 – the 70th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) which is to be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA – is bringing seasonal joy to science fiction fans everywhere through “The 7 Days of Chicon.” From 20 – 26 December 2011 inclusive, Chicon will be reducing its Adult Attending Membership rates by $15, with Young Adult Attending Membership rates lowered by $10. Family rates will also be reduced. Full details of this special sale can be found on the convention’s web site HERE.

Chicon 7 is comfortably on track to be the largest and most spectacular Worldcon since 2006, when the event was held in Los Angeles. Nearly 2500 people have already registered, and some 5000 are expected to attend the five-day event which will take place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago from 30 August – 3 September 2012.

According to Chicon 7 chair Dave McCarty, “Chicago has hosted the Worldcon more often than any other city, and we’re delighted by the enthusiasm of fans who will be visiting us again next year. Over a thousand members have joined us in the last five months alone, and we expect many more to join in January when we open our hotel bookings and start accepting nominations for the 2012 Hugo awards. We have a great site, with the whole event happening under one roof. We hope many people will take advantage of this offer to sign up now and save money on their memberships.”

Chicon 7 is the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”). The first Worldcon occurred in New York City in 1939 and Worldcons have been held annually since then except for 1942-45 when there was no event due to World War II. Chicon 7′s Guests of Honor are five-time Hugo winning author Mike Resnick, artist Rowena Morrill, art agent and collector Jane Frank, science fiction fan and former Worldcon chair Peggy Rae Sapienza, and astronaut Story Musgrave. Chicon 7′s Toastmaster is John Scalzi.