For some time now, I've been seriously lamenting the lack of a major convention in my home state. So I am positively thrilled beyond belief to discover that plans are underway to launch one. OmegaCon, set to premiere March 14 to 16, 2008 in Birmingham, AL, bills itself as "the newest and greatest science fiction convention on the scene. Being a dedicated Science Fiction/Fantasy convention organized by convention veterans, the planners for OmegaCon have some truly great events planned for your enjoyment."And despite this being a media con with the usual gaming and tv/film tracks, they are apparently very interested in having a well-developed literary side, with such notables as Alan Dean Foster, David Drake, Ben Bova, Steven Brust, David Weber, Eric Flint, and Sherrilyn Kenyon already on the guest list. Furthermore, in a post in their forum, Convention President Shaun Knopf states "All authors are welcome with us; we plan on this track truly being HUGE."
Even more impressive, they even have a hard science track, with topics like "The Future of antimatter" and "is the future science fiction?"
Now, I've had no contact with the OmegaCon staff, don't know anything about them yet, and only just learned about their existence from a post on Tobias Buckell's blog, so I'm only being partially self-serving when I say this looks like a marvelous opportunity to get in on the ground floor and ensure that OmegaCon has a strong literary track from day one. Because god knows the South needs such a convention! So if you are an SF&F writer in the South East, here is their contact page.
5 comments:
I have to say that it is about time the Birmingham area did something like this. I hope they are able to pull it off and make it an event that grows year after year.
Oh, this is exciting...I'm a TN girl, and I get tired of hearing about all the great conventions farther north and west that I can't afford to go to. This one might be doable...
Yeah, I'm surprised that they think Birmingham can support something on the scale they are planning. That being said, DragonCon pulls in, what, about 30k - 40k people? And that's just 2 hours away. So if they can beef up their media guests section (no offense to Richard Hatch, who is great, but he needs to be joined by a few other names), then they ought to be able to pull from the same demographic that attends DragonCon, especially since they're in the opposite side of the year. Shara - would be great to see you here. I hope this happens.
The timing of it is good too. I'll be done with my grad school program *knocks on wood* and will have some freedom to travel. I hope. :)
I'm following the forum on their website with interest.
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