Category: EVENTS

Appearance at Freebird Books

Tonight, I’m going to be appearing at Freebird Books in Brooklyn to talk with the store’s post-apocalyptic book club. We’ll be focusing the discussion on Wastelands, and these three stories in particular:

The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi
Speech Sounds by Octavia E. Butler
The End of the World as We Know It by Dale Bailey

The event starts at 7:30 pm.  The film 28 Days Later will be shown afterwards at nearby Sugar Lounge bar and restaurant.

Freebird Books
123 Columbia Street (between Kane and Degraw streets)
Brooklyn, NY 11231
718-643-8484

If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll drop by!

Read More

Zombie Fest 2008

I’ll be attending this year’s Zombie Fest next weekend (Oct. 25-26), the annual celebration of all things zombie. It’s held in Monroeville, PA, at the actual mall where George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was filmed and takes place.

From the website:

  • A two-day zombie-themed convention at the Monroeville Mall, site of the Romero zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, featuring vendor exhibits, film screenings, author discussion panels, live bands, games and other fun activities for zombie fans.  And in 2008, it’s FREE admission!
     
  • The Zombie Masquerade Ball is the monster party of the century!  Eat, drink, dance, and rub elbows with the upper crust undead!  Prizes awarded for best overall costume and best zombie costume.  The Ball also includes live entertainment and a silent auction (last year’s auction raised $1,000 for breast cancer research!).  The Ball is a 21 and over event and there will be a separate admission fee.
     
  • On Sunday morning, zombies, young and old, will gather at the Mall, shambling and moaning for brains while bearing food donations for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.  Led by Professor Emcee Square, the horde of zombies slowly made their way from one end of the mall to the other.  In 2007, the total number of zombies who signed in was 1,028, establishing a new Guinness World Record™, and more than half a ton of food was collected.  The walk was honored with a Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Fan Event of 2007.  In 2008, the Monroeville Mall Zombie Walk will be the hub of World Zombie Day™, with walks being held in more than 40 cities worldwide benefiting local food banks. 

Read More

Readings of The Living Dead @ the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series

On October 7, 2008, come join me and special guests David Barr Kirtley and John Langan to celebrate the release of The Living Dead. I will serve as MC for the evening, and John Langan ("How the Day Runs Down") and Dave Kirtley ("The Skull-Faced Boy") will read from their stories.

For more information, have a look at the poster Dave created for the event:

zombieposter

The event will take place at the Melville Gallery of the South Street Seaport in New York, NY. Doors open at 6:30 PM, event begins at 7:00 PM. The event is part of the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series, which is curated by radio show host Jim Freund.

[NYRSF reading series] [Press Release]

Read More

Fantastic Fiction @ KGB Raffle — Support Literacy & Win Fabulous Prizes!

Loyal readers of this blog will recall my frequent mentions of the Fantastic Fiction reading series at the KGB Bar in Manhattan that I regularly attend. Well, FF@KGB moderators Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel have launched a raffle to help support the series.

A full list of prizes is available on the raffle website, but check out this partial list:

  • Story in a bottle by Michael Swanwick
  • Tuckerization by Lucius Shepard
  • Tuckerization by Elizabeth Hand
  • Tuckerization by Jeffrey Ford
  • Pen & Ink drawing of an animal-your choice- by Gahan Wilson
  • Original art for a George R. R. Martin novel by Tom Canty
  • John Picacio signed print of art for Michael Moorcock novel
  • Naomi Novik signed TEMERAIRE first edition
  • Your very own wormhole from physicist Michio Kaku
  • Peter Straub line-edited manuscript of novel in progress
  • Holly Black signed advance copy of GOOD NEIGHBORS
  • Original art by Terri Windling
  • Carol Emshwiller signed manuscript of THE ABOMINABLE CHILD’S TALE
  • Complete set of back issues and lifetime subscription to PARADOX MAGAZINE
  • Critique of a short story by Ellen Datlow
  • Critique of a short story by Gardner Dozois
  • Critique of a short story by Nancy Kress
  • Two year subscription to SYBIL’S GARAGE MAGAZINE
  • Ray Bradbury limited edition worth $900
     

Not to mention the autographed copy of Wastelands I’ve donated to the cause. So if you’ve been really wanting to read Wastelands but couldn’t afford (or were too cheap) to buy it, here’s your chance–with a little luck, you could get it for just a dollar.

The raffle begins July 14 and ends July 28.

Read More

Naked Planet

image

On Friday of last week, I attended my very first burlesque show.  As you can see from the flyer to the left, it was called "Naked Planet," and as you might guess was SF-themed. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was quite a lot of fun.

The show was setup as a Star Trek parody, with the crew of the humorously named spaceship whose actual name I cannot remember, travels to the titular Naked Planet to interact and make peace with its natives. The first problem they ran into was communication: the first emissary from the planet they encountered seemed to only be able to communicate via a series of complicated body movements which required her rather shapely (and tasseled) breasts to move in a circular motion. Fortunately, one of the female crew was up to the task of trying to speak the language.

There were more humorous bits like that, as well as parodies of other SF franchises, including a Flash Gordon number to Queen’s Flash–ahhh! theme, which involved some actual flashing, and a Doctor Who skit I didn’t get since I don’t know much about the good doctor or his exploits. Oh, and there was a Darth Vader bit too. Half-naked woman wearing a Darth Vader helmet–what’s not to like about that?

But by far the most impressive performance of the night was by a woman who was fully-clothed (albeit in a skin-tight leotard): Miss Saturn. She did this amazing routine involving numerous hula-hoops. She’d get two going around the waist, have one in each hand, have them all going around in different directions. Without missing a beat, she’d kick more hoops up from the floor and work them up her legs until they’re around her torso as well. She’d stab her hands in and out of the swirling rings like a magician practicing sleight of hand. And all of this is done with the most placid look on her face–as if this were all child’s play.

Read More

The Mill ‘n Swill

Last night, I attended the annual SFWA Authors & Editors Reception (known colloquially as the "Mill ‘n Swill"), which was held, as it has been for the last several years, at the Society of Illustrators in Manhattan. Met with a bunch of folks for dinner beforehand, at a great Indian restaurant called Agra, which is located conveniently a block or so away from the reception’s venue. At dinner were some of the usual suspects, such as Doug Cohen, Andrea Kail, Chris Cevasco, Carol Pinchefsky, as well some new folks and a guest-appearance by Tor editor David Hartwell.

One of the new folks I met was Greg Cox, who turns out to be Richard Matheson’s editor; he commented that due to the upcoming film based on Matheson’s I Am Legend, the book will finally be hitting the bestseller list, after only 50 or so years of being in print. This was a funny coincidence, as I was invited just this week to participate in a segment for NPR about I Am Legend, its film adaptations, and its relevance to post-apocalyptic fiction in general. (That’s where I come in; as an expert on post-apocalyptic fiction.) I’ll post more about that when I know more.

We showed up at the Society of Illustrators at about 8, an hour or so after the event started only to discover that there was no coat-check this year, and all of the self-serve coat racks appeared to be full. It being pretty fucking cold outside, I was well-layered, and would have liked to dispose of my trench coat, but it wasn’t all bad; carrying it around did afford me the opportunity to be chivalrous later on when I offered it to a chilly Jae Brim. (It was chilly because the top floor of the venue opens up onto a rooftop balcony, and many of us had gone there to escape the oppressive heat of the hundreds of bodies inside.)

Ran into James Cambias, one of the contributors to the The Pirate Issue (and a regular F&SF author), and chatted with him and his wife for a while. Actually, just prior to running into him, Diane Turnshek–director of the Alpha Writing Workshop for Young Writers–had just introduced me to three of her Alpha graduates and had me explaining the ever-so-fascinating tiers of the JJA rejection system. I didn’t manage to finish and ended up chatting with Jim instead. I did apologize when I found them later, but if you three are reading this, I just wanted to say again–sorry!

Saw a bunch of other people, of course, chatted, ate pretzels, etc. Fun, but nothing to write home about (then again, I just blogged about it, so maybe it’s worth writing home about after all). It’s probably more of a cool and/or important function if you don’t know a lot of people in the field and don’t live in the New York area or don’t go to conventions, but for a con-regular, tri-stater like me, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Read More

Swanwick Reading Tonight

For those of you in the New York City area, today from 5-7 PM, Michael Swanwick will be doing a reading at James Cummins Bookseller in Manhattan. The information I have lists the event as a "reading and reception," so I assume that means there will be some sort of Q&A as well as a reading. The reading is to support Swanwick’s new story collection, THE DOG SAID BOW-WOW.

Here’s where the reading is taking place:

James Cummins Bookseller
699 Madison Ave., 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10065
212-688-6441

Read More