Latest news and updates

The World Fantasy Awards are presented at the World Fantasy Convention. In 2025 this will be after the lunch time banquet on Sunday 2nd November. The current World Fantasy Award statue was produced by award-winning sculptor and artist Vincent Villafranca (www.villafrancasculpture.com) and first awarded at the 2017 WFC in San Antonio, Texas. The Process A…

Patrice Hawkes-Reed, 15th September 1953 – 14th November 2024 Our saddest moment of 2024 was the loss of Pat. Pat was a longstanding Redcloak volunteer for Fantasycon and no doubt would have been involved with WFC 2025, even if she could not have attended. She was also a regular at Bristolcon. She was usually on…

Brian M. Stableford (January 25, 1948 – February 24, 2024) was a British science fiction author, academic, and critic. Stableford began publishing in 1965 with the story “Beyond Time’s Aegis,” published under the name Brian Craig and co-written with his friend Craig Mackintosh. Stableford would eventually expand the story to novel length, publishing it as Firefly: A…

British author Christopher Priest (b.1943) died on February 2. Priest began publishing short stories in fanzines in 1963 with “Going Native” and made his first professional sale, “The Run” to Impulse in 1966. Many of his earliest stories were reprinted in 2008 in his collected Ersatz Wines—Instructive Short Stories. His first novel, Indoctrinaire was published…

There are lots of Writing and genre related events in the UK and we plan to be at some of then to promote World Fantasy Convention 2025. We hope to see some of you at them, do come and say Hi! There is a list of dates and links at the bottom of the post,…

In 2019, prior to the global pandemic, Karen went out to Los Angeles to attend World Fantasy Convention (WFC). Having run the British Fantasy Society’s Fantasycon in 2017 and 2018, she and I were considering the viability of a World Fantasy Convention in United Kingdom. The trip in 2019 was to investigate the possibility further…

World Fantasy Award winner David Drake (b.1945) died on December 10. He had announced his retirement from writing in 2021, citing cognitive health issues. Drake is perhaps best known for his Hammers Slammers series. Beginning with the story “Under the Hammer,” in 1974, the series ran to several novels and short stories and established Drake…

It’s been a long road to Brighton, with a few detours on the way. Brighton was not our first choice of venue; you may have seen earlier announcements saying the event was going to be near Birmingham. Sadly, despite having had a provisional booking with them for some time, we were somehow double booked on…