Taral Wayne, a Best Fan Artist Hugo nominee, recommends that SF fans looking for his art online visit http://taralwayne.deviantart.com/. There’s no registration required, just click on the “Gallery” button.
He’s also had Denvention 3 link to this selection of his artwork.
Mary Kay Kare, Denvention 3 Hugo Administrator, has activated the online Hugo ballot.
To vote, you must be a member of the 2008 Worldcon. You also will need your PIN – and can get a reminder, if needed, by e-mailing [email protected]
All ballots (electronic or paper) must be received by midnight (2400hrs) Pacific Daylight Time at the end of Monday, July 7, 2008.
Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno will be released on September 2 by Orb Books, an arm of Tor that specializes in trade paperback reprints. The 1976 novel earned both Hugo and Nebula nominations. The original edition of the book sold quite well, going through about 18 printings in paperback.
And a sequel is on the way: the authors have already delivered the manuscript to Tor. It will be a second trek through hell, rather than a take on Purgatorio. When I asked Jerry Pournelle whether he and Niven considered advancing to the territory described by Dante in the second part of his poetic trilogy, Jerry explained, “We considered going on to Purgatorio, but I wanted it nailed down: that is, we have taken Lewis’ Great Divorce and married it to Dante and Blake. And I didn’t think we were through with that.”
Right now, Inferno is available for pre-order on Amazon, whose numerous marketing gimmicks never fail to fascinate me. At the hour I accessed the site, Inferno was the #1 best-selling book by Jerry Pournelle, but only the #9 best-selling book by Larry Niven. Go figure.
Even though fans are supposed to be timebinders, I found it mildly disconcerting that two of the three publicity blurbs are by famous authors who are late (as Alexander McCall Smith would gently put it.) Perhaps additional comments by contemporary writers will be added while the book is in production?
Everyone who’s watched classic Star Trek knows the red-shirted crew members have an invisible target painted on their backs. Now the “red-shirt death phenomenon” has been studied with scientific precision by Matt Bailey, in his article “Analytics According to Captain Kirk.”
In the first year of the series, red-shirt casualties were lower than other color-shirted crewmembers. The second and especially the third seasons were especially brutal. In the third season, only red-shirted crewmembers died; maybe because the other colors enacted better safety protocols, or maybe because they avoided the bridge when a new planet came into view, for fear of beaming down with Cpt. Kirk.
“I love it when someone can do this with a favorite theme,” says Bjo Trimble, who pointed me to site. “Gene Roddenberry would have roared with laughter.”
R2-D2 Translator is Cécile Cohen’s website that translates words into the chirps, bleeps and squeals that is the language of R2-D2. It’s a fun way to spend a few noisy minutes.
Another site using related technology, Aliensonic, plays all kinds of original sounds and musical phrases that would fit right into a science fiction movie. They are available for free download, as MP3 to your computer, or as ringtones on your mobile phone.
Each sound has been given a witty stfnal description, like: “The Zeldair community has a very rich spiritual culture. Their main god is named the Unknown Predictible Event.”
Michael Swanwick will be the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society’s guest speaker on Friday, April 11. “He has received a Hugo Award for fiction five out of six years” adds the PSFS News, reminding us about Swanwick’s extraordinary run of award-winning stories between 1999 and 2004.
I was curious how many other Hugo winners came close to matching his record, remembering any number of sf writers who began their careers with a string of great stories that earned a lot of award nominations.
On a percentage basis, Swanwick’s wins in 5 out of 6 years equals 83%. Harlan Ellison comes nearest with 75%. He won 3 fiction Hugos in 4 years (1966-1969) for some of his greatest short stories: “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” and “Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.” During the same 3-year stretch Ellison also won a Best Dramatic Hugo for his “City on the Edge of Forever” Star Trek script (1968). And he turned down a Best Fan Writer nomination (also 1968; hard to imagine him losing that Hugo if he’d accepted.)
Three writers have claimed 4 fiction Hugos in a 6-year period, 67%: Lois McMaster Bujold (1990-1995), Ursula K. LeGuin (1970-1975) and Larry Niven (1971-1976).
Connie Willis enjoyed a run of 5 fiction Hugos in 8 years, 63%, beginning in 1993 with Doomsday Book and ending in 2000 with “The Winds of Marble Arch.”
Harlan Ellison enjoyed another run of 3 out of 5 years (1974-1978), 60%. Poul Anderson did the same, 3 out of 5 (1969-1973), one of those Hugos awarded to his great novella “Queen of Air and Darkness” in 1972.
Eastercon.org is up and running again, and so is its UK counterpart. Chris O’Shea’s two domains were for some time reported by www.whois.is as “pending delete restorable, hold” and, according to Kevin Standlee, Chris had to figure out how to get back into his provider’s system to re-point the DNS.
Chris Garcia is back in the country, hard at work laying out his TAFF Report. He thinks it will run 75 pages, and you can lock in your right to read it online by sending a donation to [email protected]. A foretaste of things to come appears in the latest issue of The Drink Tank. Peter Sullivan also weighs in about his favorite panels at the British Eastercon.
I was finally able to resume trading fanzines with the Melbourne Science Fiction Club and get them to send me Ethel the Aardvark. I have been looking forward to receiving this paperzine, foremost because there is no alternative – the club doesn’t post it on the MSFC website.
Opening my first copy, the April/May issue, I searched for important Australian news stories I could break and steal a beat on my blogospheric competitors. There was nothing too earth-shaking, though I’m sure members are happy that that Shaun Tan will be the guest of honor at the club’s mini-con on Saturday, May 17.
Don’t assume from what I’ve just written that MSFC doesn’t do its share of interesting things online. I highly recommend the MSFC LiveJournal, where they discuss fascinating pasttimes like the game fans played at the March meeting:
The Man Who Melted Jack Dann is the name of a word game inspired by Jack Dann’s book The Man Who Melted (1984). The aim of the game is to place the writer’s name in front or behind the title of one of the writer’s book and see if you get a funny sentence. Extra credit is given for shifting a word’s part of speech entirely, or appropriating part of the name as part of the sentence or phrase.
For example Two Sisters Gore Vidal, The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer, Captain Blood Returns Raphael Sabatini, Flush Virginia Woolf, Paradise Lost John Milton, Clans of the Alphane Moon Philip K. Dick and Contact Carl Sagan.
Or indeed, Jack Dann’s Dreaming Again.
Australian SF Bullsheet editor Edwina Harvey goes in for cataract surgery on April 14, and I wish her the best.
Her zine, always impresive, just celebrated its sixth anniversary.