Dublin 2019 News


File 770 missed covering these 2019 Worldcon news releases when they first came out.

Dublin takes over as host of next World Science Fiction Convention  

Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon will be the next World Science Fiction Convention, to be held August 15-19, 2019.

Activities at the Dublin Worldcon will include the 2019 Hugo Awards, the world’s leading awards for excellence in science fiction and fantasy, as well as the spectacular Masquerade costume display.

There are typically 650 to 800 separate programme items, including author readings and autograph sessions, films and videos, academic presentations, and panel discussions on speculative literature and other media, many involving fans and audience.

The World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is a five-day event that has been held annually since 1939, apart from a four-year break during the Second World War. Dublin 2019 is the 77th Worldcon, the first to be held in Ireland and the eleventh in Europe.

Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon will be based at the Convention Centre Dublin, known to locals as “the tube in the cube.” Approximately 6000 people attended the 75th Worldcon in Helsinki in 2017, and 7000 attended the 72nd Worldcon in London in 2014.

“It will be a pleasure to welcome fans from around the globe to this beautiful country that is steeped in storytelling,” said Dublin 2019 Chair James Bacon, who accepted the gavel from Worldcon 76 Kevin Roche at the closing ceremonies in San Jose. “We’re looking forward to the diverse discussions and celebrations of imagination that Worldcon will bring.”

The Dublin convention will host the first-ever Worldcon Fringe programme. The Fringe programme will enable additional events to be organised “outside the box” of convention centre spaces, including special performances that showcase Irish legends, art, music and landmarks.

More than 2500 people have already signed up as members of Dublin 2019. The Dublin 2019 organisers are working to enlarge participation through the con’s own FANtastic Dublin fund as well as the Con or Bust scheme.

Guests of Honour for Dublin 2019 include YA author Diane Duane, and screenwriter and Hugo winner Ian McDonald, as well as game designer Steve Jackson (Melee, Chaos Machine, Munchkin) and editor Ginjer Buchanan. Science Guest of Honour will be Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered radio pulsars in 1967 as a postgraduate student. Bill and Mary Burns will be fan Guests of Honour.

More information and membership registration for Dublin 2019 are available at https://dublin2019.com. Follow us on Twitter at @dublin2019.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins welcomes Worldcon to Dublin

Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon has received a message of welcome from Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland (Uachtarán na hÉireann).

“Ireland is a land which celebrates stories and imagination, and our Irish heritage has always been imaginatively interwoven with new cultures and new traditions,” President Higgins said in a letter to fans and the Dublin 2019 committee. “This is aptly reflected in our deep appreciation and appetite for speculative fiction.”

The Irish President also highlighted Ireland’s successes in science and technology, including contributions to measuring wind speed, splitting the atom, and connecting continents with fibre optic cable.

“Speculative fiction plays a seminal role in helping us to question received versions of the contemporary world, and to dream of new worlds and new ways of thinking. It affords us a licence to look beyond the immediate and utilitarian, to engage in a long form of thinking which places no limits on our curiosity,” Higgins said. “You are all most welcome to share with us in this unique Irish event.”

His remarks are included in the presentation by Dublin 2019 Chair James Bacon at the closing ceremony of Worldcon 2018 in San Jose, California. The full text of the letter from President Higgins can be read on the convention website and social media.

This will be the 77th annual World Science Fiction Convention, the first to be held in Ireland and the eleventh in Europe.

4 thoughts on “Dublin 2019 News

  1. right — going with all the other Dublinisms. When will somebody be turning them into a setpiece to match “the flagon with the dragon”?

  2. Recent reading of note: Bryan Camp, The City of Lost Fortunes.
    Setup: six years after Katrina, Jude Dubuisson, trained mage and offspring of an unknown non-white deity, is lying low, doing finding tricks (much more detailed than in Bull’s novel) for tourists in Jackson Square, when he’s ordered by someone he owes to attend a meeting; the meeting turns out to be a poker game with a handful of entities of whom the vampire may be the least dangerous, but the bigger problem is that a few hours later somebody finds the dealer’s corpse on the table, leaving Jude as both a suspect and the person charged by his debtee with finding the murderer.
    Assessment: as shown by stacks of mass-market paperbacks, the above could go in a number of cheap directions, although we’re clued it may not by the intro paragraph that lists creation myths suggesting they all have some truth. (There are a handful of summaries-of-myths scattered through the book, less infodump than a warning that Jude doesn’t know enough.) Instead, Camp gives us something like a Tim Powers novel, although it’s anchored entirely to stories rather than to bizarre shreds of fact, and makes it work. There are unexpected twists (including a power contest Jude doesn’t know he’s in) and heavy prices for power; there are parts I can’t judge (such as how hard it is in NO being too dark to pass(*)), and the ending may seem a bit derivative, but overall I found this a very good book — as a novel, not just the first novel it is. (If I do nominations next year, Camp will be an obvious choice for the Campbell.) I picked this up due to a Locus review by Katherine Coldiron, a name I hadn’t noticed but will be watching for as her appreciation of this was spot-on.
    Note: As noted above, I’m not a horror fan; to me this seemed dark without being not grimdark, splatter, straight horror, etc., but it may be too dark for some readers.
    (*) Camp looks pure-white in his jacket photograph; some people may have a problem with him writing a non-white lead character. AFAICT the character is plausible rather than showing any of the common mistakes of a white author, but I’m not an expert in these errors.

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