In attendence writers Dan Abnett, Paul Cornell, Kieron Gillen, China Miéville, Pat Mills and Toby Whithouse will join SFX in San Diego for Comic Con.

The event runs from 22 to 25 July at the San Diego Convention Center:

Thursday 22 July at 5pm in room 5AB
“SFX presents… the British invasion”
Hosted by SFX, they’ll be discussing SF and fantasy writing with the cream of British writing talent.

Read the full report here

George Takei is the first big name guest to be announced for next-year’s SFX Weekender which takes place 4-5 February 2011.

Of his appearance at the SFX Weekender, George Takei said: “I’m boldly going where I have never gone before – to the SFX Weekender! I greatly look forward to beaming over to Camber Sands in February 2011 to see old friends… and to meet new ones.”

For more up to the minute information and to book tickets visit the official SFX Weekender site.

*SPOILERS*

SFX’s Nick Setchfield speaks to Meera Syal, who plays Dr Nasreen Chaudhry in “The Hungry Earth”.  Here are some excerpts:

SFX: Can you tell us something about your character?

Meera Syal: “My character’s a geologist, a very high-up, innovative geologist who is working for a company. And her project is to drill as far as she can towards the centre of the Earth. And, in fact, the episode opens with her reaching the target, and she gets further than anybody else has ever done. And that’s what starts off the problems!”

         And how does she encounter the Doctor?

“The Doctor happens to land where all this is going on, and there are really strange things happening in the village. And he traces all these weird happenings to what she’s doing. And then it all kicks off – that infrastructure starts collapsing, and she ends up going off with him, to find out what’s going on beneath the Earth. She’s bossy and she won’t be told what to do – he obviously tells her to stay behind, but she’s quite a tomboy, and this is her life’s work, and her one chance to see what’s below, so she takes it. They actually end up being quite good buddies. They admire each other’s passion.”

          How was the location filming?

“We had a lot of running up and down Welsh hillsides with heavy equipment! So we all got very fit. It was winter, and cold, so we earned our indoor filming! We did the hard bit first and then we went indoors.”

          Did you watch Doctor Who as a child?

“I did, yes, absolutely. Tom Baker was the one who was around in my childhood, and I was very fond of his Doctor. The Daleks and the Cybermen were the two that really scared me. And I did do the classic thing of hiding behind the sofa. And then like a lot of people I grew out of it, so I clocked off towards the end of that cycle. But since Chris Eccleston started I’ve been watching it.”

Read the entire article here