Picocon 21 - 2004
Date and Location
Picocon 21 will be on Saturday 7th February 2004, at Imperial College Students Union on Prince Consort Road in South Kensington, London.
Events will take place roughly between 11am and 7pm. The film will start at about 8pm.
Guests of Honour
PLEASE NOTE: Jon Courtenay Grimwood will not be able to come to Picocon, on account of being in San Francisco at the time. We apologise profusely for this. He has helpfully arranged for Paul McAuley to take his place.
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Peter F. Hamilton is the well-known author of the Night's Dawn trilogy, as well as more recently Fallen Dragon and Misspent Youth. His next book, Pandora's Star, will be published shortly after Picocon. There's a short story by him from 1996 available online, Softlight Sins. |
Before becoming a full-time writer, Paul McAuley worked as a researcher in biology for various universities, including Oxford and UCLA. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and his fifth, Fairyland, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and John W. Campbell Awards. His new novel, White Devils, will be published just before Picocon. |
In addition to writing science fiction, Adam Roberts is a Reader in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has an MA from Aberdeen and a PhD in English and Classics from Cambridge. He is the author of Salt, On, Stone, Polystom, as well as most recently The Soddit. His next book, Snow, won't come out until later this year. |
Other Events
Paycheck - The day concludes with a showing of the movie Paycheck [ IMDb ] in the iCU cinema.
daVinci's Bar - Downstairs from the convention, there is a fully licenced bar run by the Imperial College Union that'll be open throughout the day.
Traders - Fantasy Centre, Porcupine Books, and Playin' Games will be selling their wares at Picocon.
Silly games - Many silly games. Of many sorts. Our capture-the-hat subcommittee is currently busy devising even more of them.
Destruction of Dodgy Merchandise - This now annual event consists of an auction for pieces of offensively tacky, cheap or cute merchandise. All proceeds from the auction go to iCU RAG and the winner of each lot gets to destroy it using the tools available, including large hammers and liquid nitrogen. Please feel free to bring along your own contributions.
Games - Various board and card games will be organised with the help of the IC Wargames society; Magic the Gathering Darksteel drafts will probably take place as the expansion is released the day before Picocon.
LAN Gaming - We will have a network of various PCs running deathmatch games, such as Unreal Tournament 2003. Come along and blow up your friends with high power weaponry.
More silly games - When we say that we'll have many silly games, we do mean it.
Prices
Membership for the whole day including the film is:
£5 concessions (with valid ID) - students/DHSS/OAP/children
£7 full price
Entry for just the film is £3.
Directions to Picocon
Here's a general map of the area.
The easiest way to get to Picocon is by tube; both Gloucester Road Station and South Kensington Station are within easy reach. The following TfL maps are accurate enough, as long as you ignore the place names: from Gloucester Road Station and from South Kensington Station.
The buses 9, 10, 52, 70, and 360 all stop nearby. Please look here for further information from TfL.
For more information, please contact Eemeli Aro, the Picocon Sofa (as opposed to chair), at picocon@icsf.org.uk.
We also have a record of the Picocons of years gone by.