Monthly Archives: September 2013

Robert Sawyer To Get Lifetime Achievement Award

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Robert Sawyer will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) on October 6. It will be the first time in 30 years that the organization has given an author this honor.

Previous lifetime achievement Aurora winners were A.E. van Vogt in 1980, Phyllis Gotlieb in 1982, and Judith Merril in 1983. At 53, Sawyer is the youngest author ever to receive a lifetime-achievement Aurora.

The award will be given at the 2013 Prix Aurora Awards breakfast banquet during the Canadian National SF Convention in Ottawa.

Sawyer is one of only eight writers, and the only Canadian, to win all three of the top awards for the year’s best SF novel, a Hugo Award in 2003 for Hominids, a Nebula Award in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment, and The John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2006 for Mindscan.

He’s also won 13 Prix Aurora Awards, given by CSFFA – 7 for best novel, 5 for best short story, and 1 for best related book.

Sawyer is being honoured not just for his writing but also his decades of support for other writers. David G. Hartwell, senior editor at Tor Books in New York, was quoted in Publishers Weekly as saying, “Sawyer is very generous to young writers.”

And in naming Sawyer one of the “thirty most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing” (one of only three authors to make the list), the publishing trade journal Quill & Quire called him “a generous mentor to other writers.”

In 2009, The Ottawa Citizen observed, “It seems like everywhere I go, people are talking about what an incredible friend Sawyer is to young SF writers, how much he gives back to the community.”

Update 09/23/2013: Clifford Samuels, Aurora Awards Administrator, writes to clarify that while Sawyer is the first author to receive a Lifetime Achievement Aurora since 1983, Dennis Mullin was given one in 2008 for “his 20-plus years of working on the Auroras.” 

Poll Envy

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James Nicoll has a gift for devising poll questions to drive participation in his blog More Words, Deeper Hole.

When they’re as high-concept as this I want to kick myself for not thinking of the idea first. He got 142 voters to answer – Which is correct – F&SF or SF&F?

(Interestingly, the most votes went to a third option — “I would like to complain about this poll.”)

Nicoll is also adept at turning a poll into an extended joke. Consider his multiple-choice answers for How many SMOFs does it take to screw in a lightbulb? And that generated hundreds of responses.

2013 Sunburst Award

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The 2013 Sunburst Award winners have been announced:

Adult Award
Maleficium by Martine Desjardins; translated by Fred A. Reed and David Homel (Talonbooks)

Young Adult Award
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Doubleday Canada)

The award celebrates the best in Canadian fantastic literature published during the previous calendar year. The winners receive a cash prize of $1,000 and a medallion bearing the Sunburst logo.

The jurors for the 2013 award were Rebecca Bradley, Tony Burgess, Shari Lapeña, Barbara Roden and Leon Rooke.

Glimpses of the Past

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After a long absence Bill Plott has returned to the Southern Fandom Press Alliance, an apa he helped found.

He’s also created a one-shot, The J. T. Oliver Photo Collection, available at eFanzines, from an assortment of photos Plott was given when he visited Oliver in Columbus, Georgia in the 1950s. 

There’s a remarkable photo of Lee Hoffman, looking quite the belle, with J.T. Oliver and Paul Cox. Belle is not a word I’d previously associated with Hoffman. They were all Georgia fans, the two men from Columbus and Hoffman from Savannah.

The album also includes pictures of Bob Tucker in a bow-tie, flashing a suave smile. Ray Bradbury appears sans glasses. And Henry Hasse poses with his dog (a note on the back saying, “The one on the left is me.”) Hasse co-authored Bradbury’s first professional sale.

Plott weaves a narrative around these photos to explain who’s in them and why they mattered to fandom.

And he includes a link to a website about Lee Hoffman maintained by her nephew, Gary Ross Hoffman. Well worth a look. Ever wonder about the spelling of her fanzine title? The answer is there —

I called my fanzine Quandry. Some time earlier, I’d come across a paperback by Robert Benchley titled My Ten Years In A Quandary. I’d had to ask my mother what “quandary” meant. She explained and I liked the idea. But I mispronounced the word. When I titled my fanzine, I spelled it the way I said it. Surprisingly few people pointed out my error but I was embarrassed by the ones who did, and considered correcting the title. However I liked the look of the word “Quandry” and I thought “Quandary” rather ugly. I stuck with what I had.

Kramer To Stay in Jail Til Trial

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Ed Kramer will remain jailed until his trial, the judge having denied his habeas corpus motion.

Kramer’s defense team argued that his bond should never have been revoked because a 2009 modification eliminated the terms he supposedly violated.

Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Karen Beyers agreed with District Attorney Danny Porter that previous stipulations were implied in the modification, which placed Kramer on a personal recognizance bond.

The decision means Kramer will not be granted bond prior to trial.

[Thanks to Nancy Collins for the story.]

Star Wars Gear For Your Pet

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“Operator, connect me with the animal cruelty authorities – I just saw a cat being forced to wear Princess Leia’s double buns! Hello? Hello?”

I suspect 911 has been getting a lot of calls like this since Petco launched its Star Wars Pets Fan Collection early this month.

yoda and chewie cat toys LARGE

The new line includes:

Dog hoodies: Whether pets prefer the company of Chewbacca or a Jedi like Yoda, or instead enjoy the dark side with Darth Vader, or play it neutral like Boba Fett, these hoodies are sure to keep dogs sporting their Star Wars spirit all year.

Dog and cat neckwear: Every Star Wars fanatic needs a nifty necktie to spice up their wardrobe and now both dogs and cats can have one too! These themed neckties and bow ties will make sure pets are more handsome than Hans Solo himself. For a more casual look, Star Wars print dog bandanas allows pets to sport their spirit in any situation.

Pet beds: Although pets may not be able to cuddle up with the Ewoks on Endor, they can still fulfill their emotional needs with a comfy Star Wars bed in either a Yoda or Darth Vader theme.

Cat toys: Cats get their fix and they don’t even have to head to the cantina on Tatooine. Catnip mouse toys dressed as Chewbacca, Yoda, Darth Vader or Stormtroopers, as well as themed ball and teaser toys will keep cats mentally alert for hours.

Are you as surprised as I am that a copywriter who was able to spell Tatooine correctly left in a howler like “Hans Solo”?

A more innocent problem is how adding a Star Wars character’s name in front of ordinary product titles renders them instantly hilarious. Consider the Chewbacca Multi-Squeaker Dog Toy…

Princess Leia buns cat headpiece

It’s the Princess Leia headpiece that’s really insidious. Never mind the claim, “This headpiece is also so comfortable your cat will never want to take it off!” Someone in the comments wants to put it on a baby –

Do you think the Princess Leia cat hat will fit a newborn’s head? My sister is having a girl in a couple of months and this would be PERFECT.

Don't know what to wear to the next dogfight?

Don’t know what to wear to the next dogfight?

Elliot Shorter Health Update

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By Andrew Porter: [Paraphrasing an e-mail by Mark Blackman.] Elliot Shorter has been experiencing some unexplained health issues that taken together show an overall decline in health. After examination at the VA Hospital, it was determined that he has cancer. It has spread to the extent that treatment is more than he can cope with. He is not in pain, but is tired. He is not on e-mail nor phone, but letters can be addressed to him at Harris Health Center, 833 Broadway, East Providence RI 02914.

The time table is uncertain. “He knows and clearly stated, he can’t beat this one. … he sees this as time to quietly enjoy what is left, reminisce about good times past and remain comfortable as long as he has quality-of-life.” Hospice staff will read correspondence to him.

“Do not gift him items; we have begun determining how he wants his current possessions bequeathed and that is taxing as is.  Photos and letters are welcome reminders of the good things he has begun talking about, highlighting what he has valued in the past. If you are concerned about items or gifts given in years past or are remembering something he promised you in the past, contact <camorissette (at) aol (dot) com> … so I may relay this information to El. This information may be shared in the effort to notify those for whom El has been a friend or more.”

Habitable Exoplanets Catalog

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Kepler 62-e is your Number One rated hit on the list of Currently Habitable Exoplanets, part of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory website maintained by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

The website is literally stuffed with scientific goodies. Here are several more examples.

Visible Paleo-Earth (VPE) — The VPE is the first collection of photorealistic visualizations of our planet from space in the last 750 million years. It uses paleogeography and paleoclimate reconstructions combined with NASA satellite imagery to generate our best interpretation of the evolution of the global visual appearance of Earth throughout time.

Scientific Exoplanets Renderer (SER) — SER is a scientific software tool to generate photorealistic visualizations of exoplanets. It uses physical properties from exoplanets and their parent stars to generate possible scenarios for their visual appearance as seem from space. It can be used to interpret and visualize results from General Circulation Models (GCM), reconstruct light-curves, albedo studies, and stellar transit simulations, including moons.

Nearby Stars Catalog (NSC) — The NSC is a database of stellar and planetary properties of the nearby stellar system within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years). The database is being used to support statistical studies about the habitability of the solar neighborhood. 

Microbial Life Database (MLD) — The Microbial Life Database (MLD) is a project to visualize the ecological, physiological and morphological diversity of microbial life. It includes data for nearly 600 well-known prokaryote genera mostly described in Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology with correction and additions from many other sources.

[Thanks to James H. Burns for the story.]

2013 Copper Cylinder Awards

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copper_cylinder_award_1Members of the Sunburst Award Society have selected the 2013 winners of the Copper Cylinder Awards.

Adult Award
The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

Young Adult Award
Starling by Lesley Livingston.

This is a popularly voted award. The Society also gives the juried Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Both awards celebrate Canadian fantastic literature published during the previous calendar year.

The award’s name is a homage to the first Canadian scientific romance, “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder,” by James De Mille (1833-1880). The winners receive — you guessed it — a handcrafted copper cylinder trophy.