Other Guests
O2K: Guest List
| Confirmed Guests | |
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Below is the list of guests who have confirmed so far.
We are very pleased to have some new faces, as well as many popular regulars.
Watch this space - more details as we get them. |
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Michael Marshall Smith We are very pleased to have Michael Marshall Smith as our Guest of Honour for Octocon 2000. Smith, well-known and well-respected author of the novels Only Forward, Spares, One of Us and Vaccinator and of numerous award-winning short stories, is currently working on a fifth novel, The Straw Men, and has screen adaptations of Modesty Blaise and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency in the pipeline. We know he'll make an excellent Guest of Honour at Octocon 2000, and we look forward to welcoming him. |
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Eugene Byrne Eugene Byrne lives in Bristol and writes novels when he can avoid working as a freelance journalist. His most recent novel Thigmoo was published last year. He has also colaborated on a series of alternative history novels, such as Back in the USSA, with Kim Newman. They are now working on a series of novels featuring a Nazi dominated Britain. |
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Jon Courtenay Grimwood Jon Courtenay Grimwood was born in Malta and grew up in Britain, the Far East, and Scandinavia. He is an author and freelance journalist writing for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, Focus and SFX. His work has been described as "William Gibson meets Quentin Tarantino", and he specialises in a frenetically-paced hard-edged cyberpunk style. He has published four novels to date: neoAddix, Lucifer's Dragon, reMix, and his most recent offering, redRobe. JCG has been commissioned by Simon & Schuster to write three crime novels set in 21st century North Africa, so fans of his work can expect more titles from this exciting SF talent in the future. |
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Diane Duane Scriptwriting episodes of children's cartoons such as My Little Pony might not be the most rewarding work for a writer, but Diane Duane will regale you with stories of how she tried to put in a little bit of character development, and the editors ruthlessly took it out again, and of the Star Trek episode she co-wrote, in which all that remains of her original script is a scene where the turbolift doors open and Picard almost steps out into deep space. Diane has written several novels set in the Star Trek universe and the Spiderman universe, and even the X-Men universe. She has written several fantasy series of her own, one about doors and dragons, one about wizards and one about cats. |
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Roger Gregg Roger Gregg is an American playwright, musician and voice over artist based in Ireland for the past 19 years. He has written numerous plays and music scores. His one-man Science Fiction audio play, Time Out For Bill Lizard, was broadcast by RTE I and by WFAI-FM in Minneapolis/St.Paul, USA, and was recently awarded "Best Audio Science Fiction Production of 1999" by the American Society for Science Fiction Audio. He has also made appearances in films and on television, including the science fiction film Space Truckers. |
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John Higgins Perhaps "to draw bare naked ladies" is not the best reason for taking a night course
in art. Or perhaps it is. Either way, John Higgins stuck it out, even after he discovered
all the "ladies" were over forty, and found out that he loved drawing. He entered Art
College and after becoming disillusioned with trying to sell paintings for a living
became a Jack of all illustration covering advertising, animation, book illustration,
comics and magazine covers. He is well known for his work on 2000 AD's Judge Dredd and
Hellblazer and is now writing and illustrating RazorJack magazine. |
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Jock Howson Jock Howson was born in Scotland just in time to miss the sixties so he became a "Disco King" instead. Having graduated Magna-Cum-Loudly from Stirling University where he read English and Philosophy, his final dissertation being entitled - Science Fiction and the concept of Genre in 20th Century Literature, Jock joined the army and learned how to kill people. He has written two books to date, but unfortunately they are both the same book. The first one, entitled 2020:Hindsight, published in the summer of '99, is a post-holocaust comedy focused on the aftermath of the Millennium Bug. As the Millennium Bug spectacularly failed to turn up, Jock has come out with his new book, Autocrucifixion, which is a post-holocaust comedy focused on the results of the Jackpot Virus (think Super Love-Bug) which, amazingly enough, has much the same impact as the Millennium Bug didn't. Jock is currently working on his third novel, Finity Line, which has nothing at all to do with the other two.
Look out for it sometime in the next three years. |
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John Joyce Born in Britain, Dr. John Joyce is a marine biologist working for the Irish departmant of the Marine. He has written the Captain Cockle series of children's novels, about a submarine-dwelling underwater adventurer. More recently, he has been writing a series of virtual reality novels, starting with Virtually Maria and A Matter of Time. |
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Katherine Kurtz Katherine is probably best known for the Deryni cycle, which has sold well over 2 million copies. The Deryni cycle is a richly described historical fantasy series set in a medieval world of magic and intrigue. The books have, in addition to compelling storylines and well-realised characters, a convincing wealth of detail about medieval life. This is no doubt due to the fact that not only does Katherine hold a Master's Degree in history, she also is a member of several orders of chivalry. |
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Paul McAuley Although Paul McAuley has a PhD in Botany and has lectured at various universities, he has forasken his academic career for life as a full-time writer. His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. He has also won the John W Campbell award and British Fantasy award. He writes a regular column for InterZone and regularly contributes to Foundation. |
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Ian McDonald Born in Manchester, Ian McDonald spent most of his early life in Belfast, where he still lives. He has written many novels such as Desolation Road, Out on Blue Six, and his most recent Kirinya. He is now writing for a TV series, Doomwatch, based on the 1970s show of the same name. A pilot episode has been produced, and the series will hopefully air in the autumn. |
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Peter Morwood Peter Morwood was born in Co. Antrim and his fist career was as an officer in H.M. Customs and Excise. His first novel The Horse Lord, was published in 1983 and he resigned in 1986 when he relocated to Los Angeles. By this time he had published another two books, The Demon Lord and The Dragon Lord. In 1987 he married Diane Duane and they co-authored the Star Trek novel The Romulan Way togther. Since then he has written over a dozen novels. He has now returned to his other passion and is writing a cookbook. |
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Kim Newman Mr. Newman entered the world in London in 1959, but was brought up in the wilds of Somerset, escaping back to London when he left the University of Sussex. To quote from him directly: he was a "weird kid, became psycho teenager, grew up into maladjusted adult." He first worked in caberat and theatre circles in London, but deciding penury was not his style, he began working as a freelance journalist and film critic. Today, he has amassed a formidable body of work both under his own name, and that of Jack Yeovil: thus far 20 novels and story collections, and 7 non-fiction books. He's also edited a few anthologies, and been published in just about every SF/Fantasy/Horror magazine going. Not surprisingly, he's won six awards, including - appropriately - the Bram Stoker Award. His most famous series of books, however, is his Anno Dracula cycle, which describe an alternative world where Dracula never died, but returned to England to begin a reign of terror as Queen Victoria's consort. His third book in the series, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, is based in Italy in 1959 and has spies, scooters and cute vampire chicks. |
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Michael Scott An ex-Octocon committee member, Michael has published over eighty books in a variety of genres.
The Tales of the Bard trilogy, widely regarded to be his finest work, is due to be reprinted by
US publisher White Wolf later this year. Michael is probably best remembered for his superlative
auctionering skills at Eurocon. |
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Colin Smythe Colin Smythe graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1963, and started his publishing company in 1966. Apart from its interest in publishing books by and about Irish literary figures, Colin Smythe Ltd. published Terry Pratchett's first five books, and has been his agent since 1988. He received an honorary LLD from Trinity in 1998. |
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John Vaughan After watching endless hours of crap Science Fiction television, John realised "Hey.. A monkey with a
typewriter can do better than this!" and so, has since then has pursued a career in filmmaking.
His first film Phone, filmed at the NYFA received its official world-premiere at Octocon last year.
John is currently working on his next short film; a comedy-horror called The Boogieman.
John's proudest moment last year was to make a high-ranking official of SETI look like a cretin in
font of a large public audience, a story we're sure he'll tell at Octocon. |