By Diana Pavlac Glyer: I found out today that my book Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings is listed on http://hugonoms2015.wikia.com/ as a possible nominee for a 2015 Hugo Award. I am deeply touched that people have noticed the book and commended it. There’s been a lot of controversy swirling around the Hugos in recent years, but my roots in fandom go way back, and this award means the world to me.
The problem is that I don’t think that Bandersnatch is eligible until next year. The book has a 2016 copyright date. The beautiful illustrations by James Artimus Owen are also copyright 2016. Kent State University Press considers Bandersnatch to be part of its Winter Catalog, which means the book was not released to their distributors until mid-January 2016. Copies did not become generally available until that time.
The complicating factor is that Amazon lists December 2015 as the official release date. But Amazon didn’t actually ship books until January 2016.
I know that these things aren’t as straightforward as they appear. Like a lot of things, it’s complicated. But here’s my take on it: the book has a 2016 copyright and WorldCat identifies it as a 2016 title. I hope it will be a contender in the next voting cycle.
(1) THEMES. For the next 29 days, BBC has the concert celebrating the music of Barry Gray available for free listening — “The Music of Barry Gray”
Stuart presents the iconic music of TV composer Barry Gray performed by Charles Hazelwood’s All Star Collective at St George’s Bristol. Barry Gray created some of the most memorable music on British television and film from the 1960s onwards including Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet and Stingray. His style combines big band swagger, sci-fi strangeness and soaring theme tunes. Conductor Charles Hazelwood is joined on stage by a stella cast of musicians including Jarvis Cocker and members of the British Paraorchestra.
Being creative to a deadline is actually good for you because it prevents your mind wandering from what is essentially a lot of hard work. As the deadline approaches, your brain becomes extremely focused on getting things done correctly. I’ve seen myself go into super-drive doing it and at the same time, knowing that giving myself a little distance from the work as well, actually helps as well. The early drafts often look slightly out of focus and polishing them just sharpens them up to what you want to achieve.
(3) JIM ANSWERS. Raymond Bolton interviewed Jim C. Hines about his novel Revisionary and life as a writer.
Most writers will envy your new situation. Why do you write and when did you first realize you were a writer?
I write because I enjoy it. I love inventing stories and sharing them with people. There are days when it’s frustrating or painful trying to get the story in your head onto the screen, and it’s just not coming out right. But then there are the moments when it comes together, or when you come up with a clever twist or idea, or you hit on something powerful. Those moments are amazing.
Plus I like fantasizing about swords and magic and robots and all that other cool, shiny stuff.
When did I realize I was a writer? That’s hard to say. I toyed with writing a bit as a kid. Started doing it more seriously toward the end of my undergraduate degree. To some extent, I started to really feel like a writer after my first fantasy novel Goblin Quest came out.
And then there are the days when I still don’t entirely feel like A Real Writer. Like I’ve been playing a trick on the world for 20+ years and having a blast with it, but sooner or later someone’s going to catch on.
(ESO) Observations made at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile have revealed unexpected changes in the bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres. Very careful study of its light shows not only the changes expected as Ceres rotates, but also that the spots brighten during the day and also show other variations. These observations suggest that the material of the spots is volatile and evaporates in the warm glow of sunlight.
This book has a dated prose style that requires some plowing, but it’s worth the work for the incredibly compelling and well researched account of the genesis of Rome’s “Social War” that spelled the end of the Republic.
McCullough’s book is so respected that it’s often cited as a source in secondary scholarship. It’s particularly valuable for those seeking to understand daily life in ancient Rome, from the vaulted heights of the Capitoline Hill to the filth of the Subura, McCullough covers it all.
As with Graves, there’s more if you want it. The First man in Rome is the flagship offering in McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, a seven volume sweeping epic that will take you all the way from Marius and Sulla in 110 B.C. to Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 27 B.C.
(6) SURPRISING A LIFETIME ACHIEVER. Rowena Cory Daniells calls winning the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award “Another Lovely Surprise”.
It would be honest to say that I was stunned.
When I went up to accept the award and had to stand there while Sean read out my list of achievements. It was excruciating.
In my acceptance speech I told the story of my meeting with Robert Silverberg at the Australian World Con in 1999. We’d been wedged in a corner at an industry party where, being the socially awkward creature that I am, I’d said, ‘How does it feel to be the Grand Old Man of Speculative Fiction.’ To which he said, ‘Pretty strange considering that I used to be the Bright Young Thing.’
And there I was, giving an acceptance speech for a Lifetime Achievement Award when I used to be one of the vanguard of new faces.
The Hugo Award nomination period closes in just a few days. You’ve seen my recs, and over the weekend the #hugoeligible hashtag showcased so many more. But I know some of you are still thinking that you aren’t qualified to nominate because:
You haven’t read/watched/listened widely enough (according to you).
You don’t have enough nominations in every category to fill ever slot you’re allotted.
You don’t have time to read all the cool stuff recommended here and elsewhere and on the tag.
You’re “just a fan” and not anyone fancy.
I’m here to tell you that none of those things disqualifies you from nominating for the Hugos. None. Zip. Let’s break it down.
There are three whole days left before the Hugo nominating deadline, but I’m traveling starting tomorrow, so the final post in the series listing my Hugo nominees goes up today. As tends to be the case, the best novel category is the one I put the least effort into. I don’t tend to read most books in the year of their publication, so I’m only rarely sufficiently up to date that I have a full slate of nominees in this category. There are, in fact, more books that I would have liked to get to before the nominating deadline than there are on my ballot–books like Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings (which I may yet finish before the deadline), Ian McDonald’s Luna: New Moon, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora. Meanwhile, the always-interesting Campbell award is one that I tend to dedicate to short story writers–usually those who have impressed me over the year even if their stories didn’t quite cross the bar to make it onto my ballot.
Okay, now that might sound like a harsh judgement to pass, and perhaps I could voice it differently (also, that could be taken way out of context, so aggregate sites, you donot have permission to use that line without context). When I say market, for the most part, I’m not referring to the books themselves, or what the authors are producing, though in a way, we share part of the blame.
No, what I’m referring to here is the actual market and the way ebooks are being handled. That iswhat is failing the readers.
I went though all those comments again this morning, this time armed with a pen and paper, and I wrote down each concern as I encountered them. When multiple concerns presented the same topic, I made check-marks next to each one. And at the end, almost all of them fit neatly into one of three areas:
Misconceptions about ebooks that are not being properly explained to the readers, often overlapped with 2 and 3.
Mishandling of ebooks by publishers.
A general failure of the “User Interface” of ebook stores.
With these, maybe now you can see why I say the market is failing the readers. Granted, there’s a little bit of equal blame there. After all, it doesn’t help the market when readers go around spreading misinformation rather than learning about the topic, but at the same time, if the market is deliberately making this information difficult to glean, and in some cases actively working to obfuscate things from the reader’s eyes, well, then I would say it’s definitely failed.
So, I want to take a look at some of these concerns that were given, heading them under these three points, and see if we can’t cast a bit more light on things.
“Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings” is the newly published adaptation of her 2007 book, re-written for a wider audience. “The Company they Keep” was meant for academic use. However, although the earlier book has been described as “easy and enjoyable to read” with “plenty to enjoy” for new fans and scholars alike, Glyer realized the “fundamentally academic” work should be updated. Besides being of interest to fans of Tolkien, Lewis, and the other Inklings, “Bandersnatch” also is also helpful to aspiring writers, artists, and inventors, providing suggestions on how to interact with others in the same kind of creative collaboration the Inklings did.
The title of the book comes from an often quoted line from a letter Lewis wrote to Charles Mooreman in 1959. Mooreman was researching a book about “the Oxford Christians,” which came out in 1966. After admitting the influence Charles Williams and he had over each other, Lewis writes, “No one ever influenced Tolkien—you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.” (A “bandersnatch” is a creature created by Lewis Carol. Lewis was undoubtedly borrowing from a quote from “Through the Looking-Glass” where the White King describes his Queen: “She runs so fearfully quick. You might as well try to catch a Bandersnatch!”)
I’m going to start with my estimates from the end of the 2015 Hugo season using the final vote statistics. Here’s what I estimated back then:
Core Rabid Puppies: 550-525 Core Sad Puppies: 500-400 Sad Puppy leaning Neutrals: 800-400 (capable of voting a Puppy pick #1) True Neutrals: 1000-600 (may have voted one or two Puppies; didn’t vote in all categories; No Awarded all picks, Puppy and Non-Alike) Primarily No Awarders But Considered a Puppy Pick above No Award: 1000 Absolute No Awarders: 2500
I think those numbers are at least in the ballpark and give us a place to start modelling. Since you can’t vote against a pick in the nomination stage, we don’t need to know the difference between “No Awarders” and other more traditional Hugo voters. I’m going to combine all the non-Puppy voters into one big group, called the “Typical Voters.” I’ll initially assume that they’ll vote in similar patterns to past Hugo seasons before the Puppies. I’ll have more to say about that assumption later on.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]
Three decades later Bradbury, by then a seasoned author with dozens of publications to his credit, became a highly valued writer at the Knopf firm. During the 1970s he worked closely with editors Robert Gottlieb and Nancy Nicholas, who published his Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns, Dandelion Wine, and When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, among others. In a letter to Nicholas (shown in the slideshow above), Bradbury, who often wrote nostalgically of childhood, included a picture of himself at the age of three. He jocularly describes the photograph as “beautifully serious, as if the young writer had just been disturbed in the midst of some creative activity.”
(3) KANSAS CITY BIG READ. The Mid-Continent Public Library’sBig Read of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 consists of a whole constellation of Bradbury-themed activities.
(4) MUSICAL MARTIAN CHRONICLES. You may have read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, but now’s your chance to hear it.
The newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, featuring jazz saxophonist Mark Southerland, will perform The Martian Chronicles at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 2, 2016, at the Woodneath Library Center, 8900 NE Flintlock Road, Kansas City, MO….
The newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble performs a Bradbury-inspired piece called The Martian Chronicles, an original composition written by UMKC professor Paul Rudy. Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles in 1950. A collection of interconnected short stories about human colonization of Mars, the book is widely regarded as an iconic work of science fiction. This performance blends intricate notated music (including pre-recorded electronics) with jazz-style free improvisation in an effort to capture the spirit of one of Bradbury’s most popular and captivating books.
“This is my attempt at mapping some ideas from Bradbury’s book onto a socio-political statement of contemporary culture – our world of conformity,” says Rudy. He adds that the improvisational saxophone riffs express the importance of freedom of ideas – a thematic element that Bradbury carried through Fahrenheit 451, as well. It is this blend of controlled expression and unrestrained creativity that makes any performance of The Martian Chronicles a one-of-a-kind experience.
As part of our Big Read celebration, MCPL’s Story Center will sponsor a writing contest to showcase – and reward! – Bradbury-esque writers in our community. The twist?
All short story submissions must be no more than 451 words long. All contest entries must be original creative works submitted via email to [email protected] between March 15 and April 30, 2016.
In the book Zen in the Art of Writing, Bradbury described a prompt he employed early in his writing career.
He made lists of nouns as triggers for potential stories. The lists were something like this: The lake. The night. The crickets. The ravine. The attic. The basement. The trapdoor. The baby. The crowd. The night train. The fog horn. The scythe. The carnival. The carousel. The mirror maze. The skeleton.
This method kept him unblocked, writing and would someday churn out the storyline for Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Your original work could begin with one of the nouns from Bradbury’s list, or you can create your own list.
If you’re on Twitter, reply to the Twitter handle @YouAreCarrying with the word “inventory” and you’ll receive a list of nouns in reply. Whatever your inspiration, the story should be inventive, transporting and vivid. All entries will be considered for an anthology collection of contest submissions, which will be published by the Woodneath Press.
Event Location: Mid-Continent Public Library, 15616 East US Hwy 24, Independence, Missouri 64050-2057
(6) ART CONTEST. There’s also an art component to the Big Read.
In recognition of Ray Bradbury’s powerful belief in the importance of creativity and imagination, MCPL is hosting a contest for teen artists to share their own vision of a powerful and imaginative invention from the pages of Fahrenheit 451: the Mechanical Hound, which plays a pivotal role in the story and gives it a stronger sci-fi feel.
Submissions should be single images no larger than a standard sheet of paper, which shows the artist’s depiction of the Mechanical Hound; any medium and style (including line art, black-and-white, acrylics, digital art – anything!) is acceptable.
Submissions must be accompanied by a completed MCPL Big Read Big Art Contest entry form, available at any branch location or online beginning March 15.
The contest officially kicks off on April 16, coinciding with MCPL’s annual Access Art event and will conclude on April 30. An announcement of the winning artist will soon follow.
The winning artist will be selected by visiting artist Tim Hamilton and will receive a signed copy of Hamilton’s graphic novel adaptation of Fahrenheit 451.
Rules: This contest is open to students in 6th through 12th grade. All contest entries must be original creative works submitted with the Big Read Big Art Contest form to an MCPL branch between March 16-April 30, 2016. Entrants agree to allow MCPL the right to post submissions to its website and to reproduce it for promotional purposes.
MCPL will also host an ongoing online discussion on Fahrenheit 451 on the MCPL Goodreads page moderated by Mariah Hone, Assistant Manager of the Information and Reader Services Department at MCPL. This Goodreads group is lively and active, and the discussion is available for readers to jump in at any time while MCPL celebrates The Big Read.
(8) KEYNOTE SPEAKER. Critic Michael Dirda will present “The Future as Nightmare: Dystopian Visions Before and Since Fahrenheit 451” on April 7. (Register)
Thursday, April 7 | 7 p.m. Woodneath Library Center8900 NE Flintlock Rd. Kansas City, MO 64157
Fahrenheit 451 weaves together so many important issues and compelling themes that some readers may not recognize this seminal novel as dystopian science fiction – the same literary vein that has attracted readers to The Hunger Games and Divergent series as well as others.
Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic Michael Dirda discusses the dystopian vision of Fahrenheit 451 (which is at times eerily prescient) and places it within the broader context of its entire genre, which has its roots in 19th Century England. An engaging conversationalist with a wealth of literary knowledge at his fingertips, Dirda will also trace the influence Bradbury has had on contemporary authors in this presentation developed specifically for Mid-Continent Public Library.
Dirda earned a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his book reviews published by The Washington Post. He is the author of several books about great writing and the reading life, including: Bound to Please; Classics for Pleasure; On Conan Doyle (which earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America); and most recently, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books. The Paris Review calls Dirda “the best-read person in America.”
(9) ART PRESENTATION. Artist Tim Hamilton will talk about “Incendiary Illustrations” on March 29. (Register)
Tuesday, March 29 | 7 p.m. Lee’s Summit Branch 150 NW Oldham Pkwy.Lee’s Summit, MO 64081
Award-winning artist Tim Hamilton discusses the challenges and rewards of adapting Fahrenheit 451 into a graphic novel, a project endorsed by Ray Bradbury. Hamilton will discuss his artistic process as well as what it is about this classic sci-fi story that made him want to update it for contemporary readers.
Hamilton’s 2010 graphic novel adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Adaptation.
Hamilton’s work includes a graphic novel adaptation of Treasure Island for Puffin Graphics. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Mad Magazine while other clients include Marvel, DC Comics, and Dark Horse. He lives in Brooklyn and was once a clue on the quiz show Jeopardy.
[Thanks to Europa SF and John King Tarpinian for these stories.]
Two future sites for the British National Science Fiction Convention, Eastercon, were chosen this weekend at Mancunicon.
2017
The 2017 British Eastercon, Innominate, will be held in Birmingham reports Steve Cooper. The Guests of Honour are Pat Cadigan, Judith Clute and Colin Harris.
Now the 2017 Eastercon will be held April 14-17 in the Hilton Metropole at the NEC, Birmingham. The hotel room rates are £89 single occupancy and £100 double occupancy. Rates for family room and suites are still to be negotiated.
The membership rates are currently £55 Adult, £40 YA and unwaged, £20 child and £1 infants. These go up to £60 Adult and £45 YA and unwaged on May 1.
The committee is not yet listed online.
Steve Cooper adds:
We hope to have a basic website up by next weekend where you will be able to download PDF and mail it in with a cheque to get the best rate. We will in the future have an online payment and registration system on the site.
2018
Follycon will be held March 30-April 2, 2018 at The Majestic Hotel, Harrogate.
The guests of honor are Kieron Gillen (Phonogram, The Wicked + the Divine, Darth Vader, Young Avengers, Journey into Mystery), Christina Lake (Head, Balloons over Bristol, Never Quite Arriving, TAFF winner and conrunner), Nnedi Okorafor (Lagoon, Who Fears Death, Binti), and Kim Stanley Robinson (The Mars Trilogy, 2312, The Years of Rice and Salt).
The committee members are Michael Abbott, Liz Batty, Steve Davies, Kari, Alice Lawson, Caroline Mullan, Phil Nanson, Alison Scott and Paul Taylor.
TV and movie props that included a robot reportedly from TV’s “Lost in Space” were saved from destruction late Wednesday in Valley Village due to the efforts of Los Angeles firefighters.
The LAFD responded about 11:30 p.m. to a garage fire in the 5100 block of Whitsett Avenue. Firefighters attacked the blaze, which was electrical in nature, a fire department spokesman told a photographer at the scene.
The home belongs to a prop designer and special effects artist who was out of town at the time, according to a caretaker who woke to the smell of smoke.
(2) JOCULARITY. Two Easter hams are heard from.
Congrats @MidAmeriCon2 for being the first Worldcon in YEARS not to release a Hugo nominee list on Easter Saturday, ie Publicity Dead Zone.
(3) HEARSAY. Mark Evanier’s friend has convinced him this weekend’s blockbuster is “Not the World’s Finest” – as he explains at News From ME.
I don’t have a whole lot of interest in seeing the new Batman Vs. Superman movie, a film which has achieved something I didn’t think was possible. It actually caused my dear friend Leonard Maltin to use the word “sucks” in his review. Even Rob Schneider never managed that and lord, how he tried.
(4) PARAGRAPH FROM A FUTURE TRIP REPORT. GUFF delegate Jukka Halme outlined how he spent the day.
Sunday at Contact 2016 has been a small whirlwind. Moderated my first panel (Through New Eyes), which went really well. Chatted way too long at the Fan Fund table with the Usual Suspects. Bought books. Just a few. Waited ages for my Pad Thai at the hotel restaurant, that was brimming with people and not too many employees, Presented a Ditmar, with a little bit of Bob Silverberg routine (VERY little) to Galactic Suburbia. Held an auction for fan funds, which went smashingly well. And missed the bar, since this is a dry state and while it is apparently OK to sell alcohol during Easter Sunday, places either close up really early, or everybody had left the bar.
After serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, Robison Wells, who lives in Holladay, fell in love with both the area and the people he served. When he wrote his newest book, “Dark Energy” (HarperTeen, $17.99, ages 13 and up), which features several Native American characters and is scheduled to be released March 29, he worried about portraying them in the correct way.
“I wanted to show respect for the culture,” he said. “I didn’t want to appropriate their culture or their traditions.”
He sent his manuscript out to a lot of Navajo readers to get their reactions and tried to adjust his book accordingly. He knew writing a story centering on Native American characters and history would be a difficult and controversial thing to do, but he felt that it was such a compelling story that he had to tell it.
(6) ADDRESS FOR HAMNER CONDOLENCES. Anyone wishing to send a letter or card to the family may do so at the address below.
If any particular Worldcon wants to give out Retro Hugos, then e-book and/or online anthologies of eligible authors and stories must be made available to those nominating for the awards. And that must include works which are not in the public domain. Yes, it would take time to do this but I imagine most publishers and/or author estates would be willing to make the stories available for members at no cost.
But even if voters have access to stories from decades ago, it’s still unlikely that as many people will take part in the Retro Hugo nominating process as takes part in nominating for the regular Hugos. This, unfortunately, leaves the Retro Hugos open to missing important works and to being gamed.
To fix this here’s my next suggestion: Use a combination of juries and regular Worldcon members to nominate works for the Retro Hugos.
I know juries seem like the ultimate insider power play, but when you’re dealing with stories published 75 or 100 years ago it can be useful to have experts in that genre time period also nominating stories. Perhaps the jury could nominate two of the five works in each category, and Worldcon members could nominate three of five. This also seems like a sensible way to make sure the nominated stories are truly the best that year has to offer.
In less than 10 years from now, SpaceX may or may not beat NASA in the race to Mars. Astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, and host of the National Geographic Channel’s StarTalk Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is placing his bet on “not.”
“The delusion is thinking that SpaceX is going to lead the space frontier. That’s just not going to happen…” Tyson said in an interview with The Verge. Tyson laid out his arguments for why fans of a solo SpaceX trip to Mars suffer from a “delusion.” According to Tyson, there are three main reasons SpaceX cannot go to Mars on its own.
Reason 1: Cost
“So if you’re going to bring in investors or venture capitalists and say, ‘Hey, I have an idea, I want to put the first humans on Mars.’ They’ll ask, ‘How much will it cost?’ You say, ‘A lot,'” Tyson said in the interview.
Tyson says it’s “very expensive” to go to Mars. How expensive? Some estimate $30 billion, but a bill of $160 billion isn’t out of the question, and critics in Congress charge that the total cost could reach $500 billion….
(10) CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE? Camestros Felapton is away traveling for a month. During their absence, Timothy the Talking Cat has taken over the blog, and has been busy posting such literary gems as “Timothy retells Dune”.
…Now there was this posh elitist liberal progressive family called the Artyfarties. They like super sucked at making money. The dad was a real wimp and the mum was in some sort of feminist cult. The son looked like the crazy guy in Agents of Shield but younger and more wimpy. The kid Artyfarties thought he was so much smarter than everybody but was a big wimp.
Now Boss Harkonen took pity on the Artyfarties. Big mistake! But he had a kind heart and he hated to see the Artyfarties suck so badly at businessing. So Boss Harkonen says to Dad Artyfarties: “You can run this planet for me. It is the only place you get Old Spice Magic which makes people young and makes spaceships run. It’s a classic monopoly, you can’t go wrong. Just don’t screw it up!” ….
So what the hell is wrong with Lynch’s Dune? Before the collective “everything” echoes through the internet, it’s important to understand that the phrase itself “Lynch’s Dune” should already throw up the kind of red flags usually reserved for impending, air-raid level danger. Four years removed from his time behind the chair as director for the spirit-lifting biopic The Elephant Man and its eight Academy Award nominations, Lynch received the go-ahead from producer Raffaella De Laurentiis to direct the film adaption of Dune. This after 20 years, no less than 10 directors, producers, screenwriters, scripts, and general filmmaking anxiety that included the likes of Ridley Scott, Rudy Wurlitzer, Robert Greenhut, and of course the brilliantly documented attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
(12) FIRST SEASON FLINTSONES COSPLAY? The Traveler from Galactic Journey amusingly interprets cosplay at this weekend’s WonderCon in terms of what fans knew in 1961 — “[March 27, 1961] What A Wonder! (WonderCon)”.
These are generally smallish affairs compared to their business-oriented cousins, with attendance running into the hundreds. But for the fan who normally has a local community of just a half-dozen fellows (and perhaps many more as pen pals), going to a convention is like a pilgrimage to Mecca. One meets people with completely different experiences, different perspectives. There is the opportunity to get news from far and wide on exciting new projects, both fan and professional. And the carousing is second to none, both in the heights of enthusiasm and creativity.
Take a look at my newly developed roll of shots from “WonderCon”, a sizeable affair held last weekend in Los Angeles. These are some dedicated fans, some fabulous costumes, and some terrific times!
First off, a few attendees who came in street clothes: …
In the timeline (which for all its beauty will entirely monopolize your CPU usage) you navigate the history of space as a young cosmonaut. The timeline begins with the October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik and takes the user through all the major space milestones: first spacecraft, journeys to other planets, landings on celestial bodies.
Each milestone is accompanied by a series of stunning animations, a brief description of the event and a link to a Wikipedia page on the topic in case you want to read more. Your journey is orchestrated with an ethereal soundtrack that is overlaid with sounds from space like cosmonauts on a radio or rocket engines igniting.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The winners of the Ditmar Awards were announced March 27 at Contact 2016, the Australian National SF Convention, in Brisbane.
Best Novel
Lament for the Afterlife, Lisa L. Hannett (ChiZine Publications)
Best Novella or Novelette
“Of Sorrow and Such”, Angela Slatter (Tor.com)
Best Short Story
“A Hedge of Yellow Roses”, Kathleen Jennings, in Hear Me Roar (Ticonderoga Publications)
Best Collected Work
Cranky Ladies of History, edited by Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)
Best Artwork
Cover and internal artwork, Kathleen Jennings, for Cranky Ladies of History (FableCroft Publishing)
Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts
Best Fan Writer
Grant Watson, for body of work
Best Fan Artist
Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including Illustration Friday series
Best New Talent
Rivqa Rafael
William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
Other awards presented at the Ditmar Awards Ceremony
Peter McNamara Achievement Award
The Peter McNamara Achievement Award (aka. “The Mac”) is a lifetime achievement award presented in honour of the late Peter NcNamara at the NatCon awards ceremony. This award is administrated by the McNamara family in Peter’s honour.
Rowena Cory Daniells
Norma K. Hemming Award
The Norma K. Hemming Award marks excellence in the exploration of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability, and is awarded by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation (ASFF).
Louise Katz for The Orchid Nursery
Honourable Mentions were awarded to Catherine Jinks for her novel Theophilus Grey and the Demon Thief published by Allen & Unwin, and to Jane Rawson for her novella Formaldehyde published by Seizure Books.
A. Bertram Chandler Award
Australia’s top fan award, the Chandler is awarded by the ASFF for outstanding achievement in science fiction. Unlike the Ditmars, this award is decided upon by a jury appointed by the Foundation.
James “Jocko” Allen
Update 03/27/2016: Added honorable mentions to Norma K. Hemming Award, based on press release. // Update 03/29/2016: Corrected winner of Best Artwork and Best Fan Publication categories.
More than 200,000 people have tuned in to watch the deer via a video stream on the Twitch site.
Best version
The project uses a modified version of GTA V that let Mr Watanabe change the player to look like a deer. The animal wanders around the virtual 100 square miles of the San Andreas world in which the game is set.
“The most difficult thing during the creation of the project was simply teaching myself to modify GTA V,” Mr Watanabe told the BBC. “There is an incredibly active modding community and I figured out how to programme the mod through a lot of forum searches and trial and error.
“The biggest difficulty was getting it stable enough to run for 12-14 hours at a time without crashing,” he said.
He made the deer impervious to harm so it can keep on wandering despite being regularly shot at, beaten up, run over by cars and trucks, shelled by tanks and falling off buildings.
The trouble it has caused on military bases, beaches and on city streets led, at one point, to it having a four star wanted rating.
The deer regularly teleports to a new position on the game map so it does not get stuck in one part and to make sure it samples the games’s many different environments and meets lots of its artificial inhabitants.
(2) JEDI EVANGELISM. Darren Garrison wanted to be sure I knew about “Jedism in the Wisconsin State Capitol”. I enjoy running Jedi religious stories more when the concept hasn’t been appropriated for the culture wars.
Around Easter every year, the Capitol rotunda becomes cluttered with numerous religious displays, mostly of a Christian nature. This year’s the rotunda features a large wooden cross, several Christian posters promoting Jesus’ death, and pro-life displays, among many others. This time, the Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (AHA) have added a Jedism poster to the mix.
The poster, designed by AHA, is based on a modern, newer religion called Jedism. Its followers worship Jedis such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, from the Star Wars movies. Their poster reads “One Man Died for All”, referring to the Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The poster displays a portrait of Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Jedi, but is oftentimes confused as a portrait of Jesus. Their poster asks the following questions with respective answers: “Who is this man?” “Obi-Wan Kenobi”, “Why is it important that we remember him?” “To escape the death star”, and “How does his death help us?” “Because he comes back as a ghost at times and it can be quite surprising”.
Baen returned to Ace Books in 1977, where he began working with publisher Tom Doherty. Doherty had grown up reading Galaxy, and “I had kept reading both of those magazines,” He recalled, “I thought [Baen] was doing an exceptional job, and brought in him to head up our science fiction [program].”
At Ace, Baen continued his streak of discovering new and interesting authors. “He brought in a number of strong authors,” Doherty recalled. His time at Ace was short-lived, however: Doherty decided to venture out into the publishing world on his own, setting up Tor Books. Baen, along with Harriet McDougal, joined Tor Books, where he continued his work under Doherty editing science fiction
Baen followed “the same pattern that had revived Ace,” Drake wrote in his remembrance, “a focus on story and a mix of established authors with first-timers whom Jim thought just might have what it took. It worked again.”
In 1983, rival publisher Simon & Schuster began having some problems with their paperback division, Pocket Books. Their own SF imprint, Timescape Books, run by David G. Hartwell, wasn’t doing well, and was being closed down. They reached out to Baen, asking him if he’d like to run the imprint.
Doherty remembered that Baen wasn’t keen on joining Simon & Schuster: “Look, Jim doesn’t want to join a big corporation,” he told Ron Busch, Simon & Schuster’s president of mass-market publishing. “But he’s always dreamed of having his own company. How about we create a company which you will distribute. We’ll take the risk and make what we can as a small publisher, and you’ll make a full distribution profit on our books?” Busch agreed to the deal: he would get his science fiction line.
Baen formed his own publishing house, Baen Books, with Doherty as a partner, and began to publish his particular brand of science fiction.
You play with a lot of myths. Good Hunting and The Litigation Master and the Monkey King pull in Chinese myth. The Waves weaves the creation myths of different cultures into the narrative. State Change creates its own mythology of souls and famous people. What are your favorite myths? When writers use myth, do they only borrow that cultural and thematic gravitas, or do you think that writers today can bring to the table a new way of looking at older myths?
All cultures are founded on myths, and modern life hasn’t changed that at all. It’s important to remember that living myths are not static, but evolving, living tales we craft.
Our sense of what it means to be American, for example, depends on contesting and re-interpreting the foundational myths of America—our “Founding Fathers,” our original sins of slavery and conquest, our exceptionalism, our self-image as the city on the hill, the crucibles of the wars that gave us birth, the gods and heroes who laid down our republican institutions and democratic ideals like the bones and sinew of a giant upon whose body we make our home.
Or look at the myths that animate Silicon Valley: the idea that a single person, armed with a keyboard (and perhaps a soldiering iron), can transform the world with code; the belief that all problems can be reduced down to a matter of optimization, disintermediation, and “disruption”; the heroes and gods who founded the tech colossi that bestride the land while we scurry between their feet — some of us yearning to join them in a giant battle mecha of our own and others wishing to bring them down like the rebels on Hoth.
Listhertel:There’s an adage not to judge a book by its cover, but we all know people do. I know authors get little to no say in the cover art, but do you have any preferences? Painting versus digital, people versus objects, a consistent look versus variety? Are there any of your covers you particularly love or hate (including foreign editions)?
The book cover of mine I like least is the one on The Book of the Dumb, but inasmuch as BotD sold over 150,000 copies, meaning that the cover art worked for the book, this might tell you why authors are not generally given refusal rights on their covers. Cover art is advertising, both to booksellers and to readers, and that has to be understood. I’m at a point where if I really hate a cover, I’ll be listened to, but I also know what I don’t know, so I rarely complain. But it also helps that, particularly with Tor, the art director knows her gig, and they do great covers. I would probably complain about oversexualized covers, or characters not looking on the cover they way they’re described in the book, but in neither case has this happened to me.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY
March 26, 1969 — Rod Steiger stars as Carl, The Illustrated Man.
(7) TWO SPACEMEN. From George Takei:
Crossed paths Thursday with Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, at Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience, where I am appearing Friday and Saturday. Buzz walked on the moon 47 years ago, back in 1969. Isn’t it time someone set foot on Mars?
Actors from “Doctor Who,” including Alex Kingston, left, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy and Matt Smith fielded fan questions and discussed the popular show among the Salt Lake Comic Con’s FanX 2016 at the Salt Palace Convention Center on Friday….
Even a fleeting moment is going to follow Smith for the rest of his life. A fan in Friday’s audience asked Smith if he would do the Drunk Giraffe. The Drunk Giraffe is a dance move Smith’s iteration of The Doctor does, during which he throws his arms over his head and waves them around like noodles of spaghetti.
Fans count the moment — which takes up just 3 seconds of screen time — as a favorite of Smith’s run. Smith, to uproarious cheering, obliged.
“For the rest of my life, I’m going to have to do that,” Smith said. Kingston joked that McCoy and Davison should join him; alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
(9) NEEDS MORE KATSU. BBC Magazine remembers “The octopus that ruled London” at the Crystal Palace in 1871. Several stfnal references.
“It would have been a bit like a freak show for the Victorians,” says Carey Duckhouse, curator of the Brighton Sea Life Centre, as the aquarium is known today. “They would have featured models of ships in the cases for the octopus to grab hold of. They would probably have loved that, as they enjoy playing.”
One possible visitor to Crystal Palace aquarium was the writer HG Wells, who was just five years old when it opened and lived in Bromley, four miles away. Several octopus-like creatures appear in his stories.
In his 1894 essay The Extinction of Man, Wells pondered a “new and larger variety” that might “acquire a preferential taste for human nutriment”. Could it, he asked, start “picking the sailors off a stranded ship” and eventually “batten on” visitors to the seaside?
More famously, the invading Martians in Wells’s War of the Worlds have tentacle-like arms.
(10) UPSIDE DOWN IS UPRIGHT FINANCIALLY. The Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling Kickstarter appeal has successfully funded. A total of $23,206 was raised from 1,399 backers.
The anthology, edited by Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates, is an anthology of short stories and poems that highlights the long-standing tradition of writers who identify tropes and cliches in science fiction, fantasy, and horror and twist them into something new and interesting.
During this year’s WonderCon, there was a preview screening of the first episode of the new Fox show Houdini & Doyle, “The Maggie’s Redress”, followed by a short Q&A with Michael Weston, who plays Harry Houdini, and executive producers David Shore, David Ticher, and David Hoselton.
The series follows the two men in 1901 as they go about investigating cases that involve supposed paranormal events. Houdini, riding high on his celebrity as a magician, is the doubter, wanting to bring reason and expose those who would take advantage of people who are looking for comfort from the great beyond. Doyle, on the other hand, has just killed off Holmes and is trying to get out of that shadow, and is the believer, wanting proof that there is something more to this life beyond death. We will be recapping the series when it premieres.
….Moore returns to the reinvention game with Crossed + One Hundred, a new graphic novel set in Garth Ennis’ awful Crossed universe. Crossed was Ennis’ attempt to make the zombie genre more disturbing and violent: the premise is that most of humanity population gets infected with a mysterious disease that turns them into torturing, murdering, rape-happy idiots. In many ways Crossed is the comics equivalent of the Saw movies; cheap, gratuitous, and compelling…..
As Netflix expands its suite of original programming it’s going to the nostalgia well once again. The good news here is that instead of another sitcom spinoff like Fuller House, we’re getting Voltron: Legendary Defender. Today at Wondercon 2016 its partner Dreamworks Animation showed off a teaser trailer and some artwork that confirm everything at least looks right to children of the 80s.
(14) BACK TO BASIC. The video “How to Send an ‘E mail’–Database–1984” is an excerpt from a 1984 episode of the ITV series Database where viewers learned how to send emails. Major retro future action is obtained where they get onto the net through a phone modem with a dial on the telephone… (Yes, I’ve done that, and I have the white beard to prove it…)
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Darren Garrison, JJ, and Barry Deutsch for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
The winner of this year’s James White Award is “Rock, Paper, Incisors” by David Cleden.
The winner was announced during the BSFA Awards ceremony on March 26.
The James White Award Short Story Competition was established in 2000 and offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading and longest established science fiction magazine.
The 2016 Philip K. Dick Award winner is Apex by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot Books). And a special citation was given to Archangel by Marguerite Reed (Arche Press).
The award is given for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form for the first time during 2015 in the United States.
The winner was announced March 25 at Norwescon 39 in SeaTac, WA.
The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.
The 2015 judges were Eric James Fullilove, James C. Glass, David M. Higgins, Lisa Mason (chair), and Jack Skillingstead.
This year’s judges are Michael Armstrong, Brenda Clough, Meg Elison, Lee Konstantinou, and Ben Winters.
The problem is that I don’t think that Bandersnatch is eligible until next year. The book has a 2016 copyright date. The beautiful illustrations by James Artimus Owen are also copyright 2016. Kent State University Press considers Bandersnatch to be part of its Winter Catalog, which means the book was not released to their distributors until mid-January 2016. Copies did not become generally available until that time.
