Thrilling Wonder Stories II

One week from today, at the Architectural Association in London, Liam Young and I will be hosting Thrilling Wonder Stories II, eight hours of architectural futurism featuring an unbelievable line-up of novelists, game designers, animators, scientists, comic book artists, architects, and more.

[Image: Thrilling Wonder Stories II at the Architectural Association; view larger].

Some of you might remember last year's inaugural installment of Thrilling Wonder Stories, featuring Peter Cook, Warren Ellis, François Roche, Squint Opera, Nic Clear, Ian MacLeod, Viktor Antonov, and Jim Rossignol; this year we've nearly tripled the list of participants, who we've grouped into five thematic clusters (see below).

Things kick off at noon with music and live Kinect gameplay (including a pre-release demonstration of ubisoft’s Children of Eden), a pop-up bookstore of spatio-speculative literature, and much more; the speakers themselves will take the stage a little bit before 1pm. You can follow the proceedings live at aaschool.co.uk as well as through the Thrilling Wonder Stories Twitter feed, @wonderstories, to be maintained by Jack Self of Millennium People.

Here is the line-up:

12:00 Bookshop, coffee, music and gaming

12:30 Introductions by Brett Steele and Liam Young

12:40—14:00 COUNTERFEIT ARCHAEOLOGIES
Geoff Manaugh + Nicola Twilley
[Founders of Future Plural, authors of BLDGBLOG and Edible Geography]
Dunne and Raby
[Design provocateurs]

14:00–15:20 CAUTIONARY TALES
Jeff VanderMeer
[Author of City of Saints and Madmen and Finch]
Will Self
[Author of The Book of Dave, Psychogeography and Walking Through Hollywood]
Paul Duffield
[Artist and Author of Freakangels and Signal comics]


15:20–15:40 Break/Overspill


15:40–17:00 NEAR FUTURES
BERG London
[Technologists, futurists and RFID magicians]
Alex Rutterford
[Motion graphics filmmaker, director and designer for Ridley Scott Associates and Warp Records]
Gavin Rothery
[Concept artist for the film Moon]
Ubisoft
[Transmedia and game designers]

17:00–18:20 APOCALYPTIC VISIONS
Antony Johnston
[Author of Wasteland and Daredevil comics]
Splash Damage
[Designers of the Ark, the war-stricken floating refugee city from the game Brink]
Rachel Armstrong
[Biotechnology and scifi squishiness]


18:20–18:40 Break/Overspill


18:40-20:00 ALTERNATIVE PRESENTS
Ant Farm
[Architectural supergroup and countercultural heroes]
Joep Van Lieshout
[Founder of Atelier Van Lieshout and the speculative free state of AVL Ville]


Entrance is free and first-come, first-serve; here is a map. Hope to see you there!

(Watch for the grand finale, Thrilling Wonder Stories III, in late 2011. If you missed it, meanwhile, consider reading this slightly loopy conversation between François Roche, Warren Ellis, and myself, originally published in Icon, recorded immediately following Thrilling Wonder Stories last May).