GGotS Con Review: P-Con – Dublin, Ireland

By Sarah Elliott

This weekend, Geek Girl on the Street went international again at Dublin’s 8th annual Phoenix Convention, or P-Con VIII. Like Octocon, this con predominantly celebrated the written word of sci-fi, fantasy and horror, as well as graphic novels. Among the guests were many of the usual suspects, with a few new faces and of course, the “Guest of Honour,” Ian McDonald. I knew in my bones that this would be a fantastic (albeit tiring) weekend.

Having missed so much of Octocon (thank you, Dublin Bus), I was delighted to make it in for the opening ceremony on Friday evening. I was even early! Organizer Peter McClean settled us all into the weekend before we were treated to a book launch, or re-launch, for Wayne Simmons’ Drop Dead Gorgeous. After a few chilling readings and a word from the author, it was time for an interesting sale: buy two books, get a random gift free. They included anything from fantasy novels to Planet Terror figurines to a copy of Frozen on DVD – which I nabbed.

Any fans of some good old fashioned spooky reading may be interested in Stefan Grabinski, often cited as ‘the Polish Poe.’ To close the night, we enjoyed a dramatic reading of one of his short stories, from The Dark Domain collection. There’s nothing like listening to a story like that before heading off into the dark to go home.

Saturday morning started bright and early at 10 am. I sincerely can’t think of a better wake-up than a discussion on whether or not humanity can survive a zombie uprising. An hour of playful arguing, wild theories and talk of zombified flies later, we came to the conclusion that we will in fact make it. A panel on the books people wish they had read before they were 18 gave me a long list of things to buy — I don’t care if I’m almost three years too late. While a talk went on about CERN in one room, I sat in front of a panel of great authors, including C.E. Murphy and Wayne Simmons, getting inspired as they shared the ins and outs of how they write a book.

Guest of Honour, Ian McDonald, was interviewed by P-Con founder Padraig Ó Méalóid, where they spoke about his novels’ world tour of settings, tricking mainstream audiences into reading sci-fi – and liking it – and even Sesame Street (yes, it was relevant!). Ian sat on a couple of panels over the weekend and was a real joy to have as GoH. He joined one of the strangest panels of the Con, One-way mission to Mars – Who do you nominate for the trip? Names varied everywhere from Jedward (for those of you lucky enough to not know them) to Duke Nukem, and Justin Beiber to a very deserving Rupert Murdock – let’s just see how he likes being left in space!

I seemed to be on a Walking Dead kick this weekend (you’ll see what I mean when you see this week’s Geek of the Week feature tomorrow!). In addition to Simmons’ apoc-shocker Drop Dead Gorgeous, I picked up Derek Gunn’s Sentinels of the Sea collection of chapbooks. Zombies, vampires, the high sea – how could I not?

When the day was over I shambled home, a little zombie-like myself, and got ready to do it all over again on Sunday, which you can read about later this week. And look out for the upcoming Geek of the Week interviews from P-Con!

Image courtesy of James Shields.