Monthly Archives: March 2011

Know Your TAFF Candidates

Posted on by

Four fans rode forth to save this year’s TAFF race: their names are Death, Destruction… Oops, sorry, wrong list! Though now that Jim Mowatt has immortalized Charnock, Coxon, Proven and Treadway in the latest issue of Pips (PDF file) no one will have an excuse for failing to remember their names as readily as that other foursome.

Jim’s interviews show how diverse this group truly is. On any subject you care to name you’ll find a candidate taking one side, and Graham Charnock taking the other. Consider several quotes which I have scientifically removed from context.

For example: Are they genuinely fond of science fiction?

John Coxon: I’m currently reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman inspired by – a housemate recommended it to me and also the theme for the next Eastercon is military history so I’m trying to read military history in preparation for that.

Graham Charnock: At the moment, I’m reading a lot of science fiction – NOT! What I’m reading is a lovely book by Stephen Sondheim about songwriting because I also do a bit of songwriting in my own time.

How important do they think it is for TAFF delegates to make of use the internet?

John Coxon: I want to try and use social media to a higher extent than it has previously been used. I want to try and record – and I know Steve Green did a video blog. I want to try and build on that.

Jim Mowatt: I presume you’re going to do a paper TAFF report.
Graham Charnock: Yes, of course.
Jim Mowatt: Have you got a name for it yet?
Graham Charnock: Great American Novel, I think is the closest thing I’m going to call it because it will probably be that big.

And, do they play well with others?  

Liam Proven: I’m a very genial and easygoing chap and I get on with actually everybody.

Graham Charnock: I’m terribly nice and mild but I can give someone a rabid bite if necessary.

Altogether a fine piece of journalism. Thanks to Jim Mowatt for beating the drum and generating more interest in the 2011 TAFF race.

Fans have until April 26 to cast a vote – for more information see the official TAFF website.

[Via Ansible Links.]

Literary Coincidence

Posted on by

Just this morning I finished reading Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet aloud to Sierra. At the end of the adventure the boys return from Basidium and land their spaceship on the beach near their home in Pacific Grove, California. I’ve read it before and the name of that town never stuck in memory. It will from now on.  

When I came home from work this afternoon and checked the mail there was a packet with a return address of Pacific Grove — containing my Aussiecon 4 Hugo nominee pin, ribbon and program.  

Today’s Thought Experiment

Posted on by

The Official Royal Wedding website launched last week with promises to tell an eager world the latest developments in Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s wedding plans.

I saw nothing on the website offering the faintest glimmer of hope that anyone from the sf community will attend the Royal Wedding on April 29. That’s just not right!

SF Crowsnest revealed last November that the bride-to-be is a Buffy fan. If that counts I volunteer Ben Yalow as our representative. He’s the biggest Buffy fan I know — and he does own a black tie. 

But I don’t think we should put all our eggs in one basket.

So I challenged myself: Who do I know who could get me invited to the Royal Wedding?

The most famous Englishman I know is Dave Langford. Dave is a literary lion. What’s more, Sir Terry Pratchett sends him news for Ansible and we know Sir Terry’s met the Queen at least once. Unfortunately, Dave answered that he didn’t think he could be much help:

[My] kind of extremely limited fame doesn’t translate into any kind of influence in the British establishment, but then I don’t suppose Terry’s encounter with the Queen helps either. (He’s not the only one in the UK sf community — Chris Priest has been to at least one Buckingham Palace garden party, I think as a reward for services to the Society of Authors, and I’d be surprised if Brian Aldiss hadn’t done the same at some stage.)

Probably best to blackmail a Tory of at least junior-minister rank, or a member of the Palace protocol staff. I assume that quickly marrying a close relative of bride or groom would be inconvenient since you’re already spoken for.

You’re quite right, Dave, that would be tough to arrange between now and April 29. 

I think my next inquiry will be to sf author and composer Somtow Sucharitkul, who is himself related to Thai royalty, as it says in his bio:

In 1999, he was commissioned to compose…  Madana, inspired by a fairytale-like play written by King Rama VI of Siam and dedicated to his wife, Queen Indrasaksachi, who was also the composer’s great-aunt.

If I hear back from him I’ll be surprised report further.

French Court Rules for Book Reviewer

Posted on by

A French court has dismissed a lawsuit against the publisher of a critical review:

In 2007 [Joseph H.H. Weiler] published on [the Global Law Books] Web site a short review of a book by Ms. Calvo-Goller. The reviewer was Thomas Weigend, a professor of law at the University of Cologne. (Mr. Weigend was not named in the lawsuit.)

Ms. Calvo-Goller thought the review was defamatory and asked Mr. Weiler to take it down. He said no but offered her the chance to respond to it on the Web site, an opportunity she declined. Instead she brought a criminal-libel complaint against him in France.

This wasn’t a brutal, KTF review, either:

In the ruling, the court said the review expressed a scientific opinion of the book and did not go beyond the kind of criticism to which all authors of intellectual work subject themselves when they publish.

I think if you had the time and inclination to look through sf fanzines from the past several decades you would find plenty of reviews that transgressed this limit, in fact, whole fanzines that specialized in publishing such reviews. Whenever I have wondered what saves fandom from being plagued by lawsuits of this type, the only convincing answer I’ve ever come up with is that nobody in the sf field can afford to hire an attorney.

[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the link.]

Denying the YA Mafia

Posted on by

John Scalzi cannot believe there’s a conspiracy among YA writers to crush the careers of rival authors who say bad things about their books — it would just be too much bother:

Because, I gotta tell you, after everything else I do on a daily basis, I don’t have a lot of time left over to take your dreams, lovingly cradle them in my arms and then just when they feel safe fling them into a pit filled with gasoline and napalm and laugh boisterously while they shrivel and burn.

I guess John’s gotten awfully busy since he was elected President of SFWA. Because he always had time for those things when he was a fan writer.

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the hilarious link.]

Clarke Award Shortlist

Posted on by

Here are the finalists for the 25th Arthur C. Clarke Award, the UK’s top prize for science fiction:

Zoo City – Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
The Dervish House – Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
Generosity – Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)
Declare – Tim Powers (Corvus)
Lightborn – Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)

The judging panel for this year is: Jon Courtenay Grimwood, British Science Fiction Association, Martin Lewis, British Science Fiction Association, Phil Nanson, Science Fiction Foundation, Liz Williams, Science Fiction Foundation, Paul Skevington, SF Crowsnest.com, and Paul Billinger represented the Arthur C. Clarke Award as the Chair of Judges.

The winner will be announced April 27 in London.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

To Say Something About the Dog

Posted on by

An acquaintance sent a link to Cheryl Morgan’s blog saying, “Interesting Clarke discussion going on over here, where I think dogs may have been brought into the matter unfairly.”

If so, I’m sorry to hear it. Perhaps dog-lovers would prefer St. Peter’s other analogy, “A sow that is washed goes back to wallowing in the mud”?

Hugo Nomination Campaign for Twitter Account?

Posted on by

Bill Shunn was probably making a throwaway remark, a joke, when he mentioned nominating the @MayorEmanuel Twitter feed for a Hugo:

…[It] was probably better that Dan Sinker control the revelation than that someone else out him, which no doubt would have happened sooner or later. And at least now we know whom to nominate for that Hugo next year in the Best Related Work category.

But now that Rose Fox has blogged about Shunn’s idea on Genreville at Publishers Weekly it sounds practically inevitable:

Bill Shunn is spearheading a campaign to get @MayorEmanuel–yes, a Twitter account–nominated for next year’s Hugo in the “Best Related Work” category. This would of course be particularly well-suited to the 2012 Worldcon location of Chicago.

If you’re not familiar with the @MayorEmanuel account, a succinct summary is that it was the Twitter feed from an alternate-universe Rahm Emanuel. The feed was a non-stop stream of obscenity, Chicago in-jokes, politics, and pure far-out wackiness. His companions included a pet duck (named Quaxelrod after Emanuel staffer David Axelrod) and his adventures involved sleeping in igloos, crowd-surfing up to the stage to give his mayoral acceptance speech, and being taken to the secret celery farm on top of City Hall…

It seems every year the online fan community looks around for some way to carve its initials on the Hugo ballot. Will this be the next one? Rose may think it makes a better story associating the idea with next year’s Chicago Worldcon, still, how long will it take for someone to notice @MayorEmanuel started appearing in 2010 and ask, why wait?

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster and Andrew Porter for the story.]

The Better Editor?

Posted on by

Hugo voters thought there were plenty of years in which Frederik Pohl was a better editor than John W. Campbell, a choice necessarily based on an overall appreciation of the magazines each man edited — because when would a fan see a mano-a-mano contest of two editors’ skills? Well, now you can find a great example in Pohl’s post about agenting Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity and how he overcame Campbell’s original rejection of this classic sf novel.