Welcome
Au Contraire is the New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention for 2010. Not sure what a science fiction convention is? See About. The convention will be taking place in Wellington over 27-29 August 2010 - the weekend before the WorldCon in Australia. This is to allow fen [Fen is the fannish plural of fan, or more precisely, of "member of the science fiction fandom subculture". SF fans do weird things like that sometimes. ("SF fen" would be a tautology)] travelling from overseas to attend both conventions while in Australasia.
News
Rapier Wit #1
As a special Christmas Eve treat, here's the first official Au Contraire podcast! Listen to the first installment of Rapier Wit here (mp3, 9.3MB). And remember, the deadline for the short story competition is coming up at the end of January, so get those stories finished. Stay tuned for a website update in next month, with more detail on events we have planned.
Progress Report 2
Our second progress report has been released - download the pdf (673 KB). With this report, we're pleased to announce our Guests of Honour - Sean Williams, the multiple-award-winning Australian author, and Fan GoH Paul Mannering of Brokensea Audio. We've also made some updates to this website, including a form to fill in if you're interested in volunteering to help out with the con.
In other news, no bids for the 2011 NatCon were presented at ConScription. Since Au Contraire will be taking place realtively late in the year, anyone interested in bidding for 2011 should contact SFFANZ. Go on, you know you want to! 8)
Progress Report 1
The convention's first progress report is out now - download the pdf (422 KB). The main news is that our first two competitions are open - an art competition for the Au Contraire 2010 calendar, and the short story competition. We have a very special prize for the story competition - the best entries will be included in an anthology of NZ speculative fiction to be published by Random Static Press. The deadlines for these competitions are August this year and January next year respectively, so don't put off entering too long!
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