Picocon 30 at Imperial

The Science Fiction, Fantasy and Gothic Horror Society is preparing for its annual convention – Picocon. The convention has gone from strength tostrength since it started, with this being its thirtieth anniversary. To celebrate, Picocon 30 is going to be the first ever two day event in the history of the society – taking place over the weekend of February 16-17.

Given that we are all still here despite last year’s apocalyptic predictions it seems fitting that the theme for this year’s convention is “Resurrection”. Upon arrival guests will be sorted into three teams, each to do with life and death – zombies, reapers and phoenixes. A scavenger hunt for items such as “a non-Euclidean triangle” and “happiness of greater than or equal to 0.1M concentration” will allow people to earn points for their team.

Other planned activities include a quiz, silly games, tabletop role-playing games and the ‘Destruction of Dodgy Merchandise’. The latter is a long held tradition Picocon and often involves liquid nitrogen and large sledgehammers. Guests are encouraged to bring their own contributions to destroy. In addition, there will be stalls selling books and official Picocon T-shirt as well as all day LAN gaming featuring Unreal Tournament 2003 and DEFCON, a game produced by Introversion – a company set up by former Imperial students.

The highlight of the day looks set to be the four guests of honour, who will be giving individual talks as well as participating in a group panel. Peter Hamilton is a bestselling author whose works, often described as Space Opera, include elements of hard SF, fantasy, and classic horror writing to weave the complex intertwining stories of his characters. His books have been described by The Guardian as combining ‘mind-expanding ideas, deft plotting and convincing depiction of political intrigue” and he has been nominated for the Clarke, Campbell and BSFA awards.

Kate Griffin is a pen name used by the twice Carnegie-nominated fantasy author Catherine Webb for her adult fiction. A lifelong Londoner she is best known for her urban fantasy Matthew Swift series of novels which reimagine the city as a centre of hidden magical power. SFX magazine has called it “one of the best fantasy sagas in years”.

Richard Morgan first made his name with the Takeshi Kovacs series of cyberpunk novels — the first of which, Altered Carbon, was recently voted the fifth best SF novel of the 21st century (so far) by readers of Locus magazine — but has also shown himself skilled in working with other formats. He is credited as the writer for the videogames Crysis 2 and the 2012 remake of Syndicate. He has also worked for Marvel comics, writing two Black Widow mini-series. He has won both the Clarke and Campbell awards, and his latest work is the A Land Fit for Hope fantasy novel series.

Steph Swainston is the author of the highly acclaimed Castle fantasy series, described as “unique and challenging” by Clarkesworld magazine. Heavily influenced by William Burroughs and M. John Harrison her work also draws on her experience of academic life.

The Write Fantastic collective; including Juliet McKenna, Kari Sperring, Ian Whates and others; will also be in attendance, providing two panels on the Saturday – “Overcoming Death Through Science” and “Life after Death in SF”. On Sunday afternoon they will be running a series of drop in Writers Workshop sessions.

All are welcome to attend with weekend entry £15 for students, £10 for society members and £20 for others. Doors open at 10am on both days for whatpromises to be an exciting event, and not just for fans of fantasy and science fiction.

More information can be found at[ www.icsf.org/picocon](http:// www.icsf.org/picocon).