Thrilling Wonder Stories

Geoff Manaugh:

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.

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 with Julian Gerighty and Jörg Tittel), a pop-up bookstore of spatio-speculative literature, and much more; the speakers themselves will take the stage at 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:

COUNTERFEIT ARCHAEOLOGIES
—Dunne & Raby (Design provocateurs)
—Gavin Rothery (Concept artist for the film Moon and Rockstar Game’s Grand Theft Auto)
—Paul Duffield (Artist and author of Freakangels and Signal comics)

APOCALYPTIC VISIONS
—Antony Johnston (Author of the post-apocalyptic graphic novel series Wasteland and Daredevil comics)
—Splash Damage (Designers of the Ark, the war-stricken floating refugee city from the game Brink)
—Johnny Hardstaff (Filmmaker and designer for Ridley Scott Associates)

CAUTIONARY TALES
—Will Self (Author of The Book of Dave, Psychogeography and Walking Through Hollywood)
—Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley (founders of Future Plural, authors of BLDGBLOG and Edible Geography)
—Joep van Lieshout (founder of Atelier van Lieshout and the speculative free state of AVL-Ville)

NEAR FUTURES
—BERG London (Technologists, futurists and RFID magicians)
—Rachel Armstrong (Designer and biotechnologist)
—The WHY Factory (Urban futures think tank)

ALTERNATIVE PRESENTS
—Ant Farm (Architectural supergroup and countercultural heroes)
—Jeff VanderMeer (Author of City of Saints and Madmen and Finch)
—Alex Rutterford (Motion graphics filmmaker for Warp Records)

(I think I've linked or posted the hypnotic Child of Eden trailer before. The song is by Genji Rockets and can be streamed here.)

*Buy Pulp Attack 2011 Wall Calendar at Amazon.