Crime Fiction Award Winners and Shortlists

SHAMUS AWARDS

The Private Eye Writers of America have announced winners of the 2021 Shamus Awards.

The juried award is given for private eye novels and short stories first published in the United States in 2020.

BEST PI HARDCOVER

  • Blind Vigil by Matt Coyle (Oceanview)

BEST ORIGINAL PI PAPERBACK

  • Brittle Karma by Richard Helms (Black Arch Books)

BEST PI SHORT STORY

  •  “Mustang Sally” by John M. Floyd in Black Cat Mystery Magazine

BEST FIRST  PI NOVEL 

  • The Missing American by Kwei Quartey (Soho)

THE EYE, the PWA Life Achievement Award

  • Michael Z. Lewin

DASHIELL HAMMETT AWARD

The 2019 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing winner has been named by the International Association of Crime Writers (North American Branch).

  • When These Mountains Burn by David Joy (Putnam) 

 DAVITT AWARDS

The shortlist for the 2021 Davitt Awards, given out by Sisters in Crime Australia, has also been unveiled. The awards highlight “the best crime and mystery books by Australian women.”

ADULT CRIME NOVELS 

  • B M Allsopp, Death Beyond the Limit (Fiji Islands Mysteries #3) (Coconut Press)
  • Sarah Barrie, Deadman’s Track (Calico Mountain #3) (HQ Fiction, an imprint of Harlequin Australia)
  • Candice Fox, Gathering Dark (Penguin Random House Australia)
  • Sulari Gentill, A Testament of Character (Rowland Sinclair #10) (Pantera Press)
  • Sally Hepworth, The Good Sister (Pan Macmillan Australia)
  • Karina Kilmore, Where the Truth Lies (Simon & Schuster Australia) 
  • Suzanne Leal, The Deceptions (Allen & Unwin) 
  • Mirandi Riwoe, Stone Sky Gold Mountain (University of Queensland Press)
  • Kimberley Starr, Torched (Pantera Press)

YOUNG ADULT CRIME NOVELS 

  • Davina Bell, The End of the World Is Bigger than Love (Text Publishing) 
  • Sarah Epstein, Deep Water (Allen & Unwin Children’s)
  • Ellie Marney, None Shall Sleep (Allen & Unwin Children’s)
  • Christie Nieman, Where We Begin (Pan Macmillan Australia) 
  • Lisa Walker, The Girl with the Gold Bikini (Wakefield Press) 

 CHILDREN’S CRIME NOVELS 

  • Jackie French, The Ghost of Howlers Beach (Butter O’Bryan Mysteries #1) (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
  • Amelia Mellor, The Grandest Bookshop in the World (Affirm Press) 
  • Julianne Negri, The Secret Library of Hummingbird House (Affirm Press) 
  • Pamela Rushby, The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle (Walker Books Australia)
  • Lian Tanner, A Clue for Clara (Allen & Unwin Children’s) 
  • Sue Whiting, The Book of Chance (Walker Books Australia)

 NON-FICTION CRIME BOOKS 

  • Stephanie Convery, After the Count: The death of Davey Browne (Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House Australia) 
  • Melissa Davey, The Case of George Pell: Reckoning with child sexual abuse (Scribe Publications) 
  • Louise Milligan, Witness: An investigation into the brutal cost of seeking justice (Hachette Australia)
  • Caroline Overington, Missing William Tyrrell (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
  • Angela Williams, Snakes and Ladders: A memoir (Affirm Press) 
  • Sonya Bates, Inheritance of Secrets (HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
  • Davina Bell, The End of the World Is Bigger than Love (Text Publishing)
  • Melissa Davey, The Case of George Pell: Reckoning with child sexual abuse (Scribe Publications)
  • Anna Downes, The Safe Place (Affirm Press)
  • Mary Jones, Troubled Waters (Green Olive Press)
  • Karina Kilmore, Where the Truth Lies (Simon & Schuster Australia)
  • Amelia Mellor, The Grandest Bookshop in the World (Affirm Press)
  • Kate Mildenhall, The Mother Fault (Simon & Schuster Australia)
  • Julianne Negri, The Secret Library of Hummingbird House (Affirm Press)
  • Leah Swann, Sheerwater (4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
  • Lian Tanner, A Clue for Clara (Allen & Unwin Children’s)
  • Lisa Walker, The Girl with the Gold Bikini (Wakefield Press)

Sisters in Crime Australia was set up 29 years ago and has chapters in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. The Davitts are named after Ellen Davitt, the author of Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865.

[Thanks to Cora Buhlert for the story.]

Le Guin Stamp Issued Today

The Ursula K. Le Guin commemorative Forever stamp was officially unveiled today during a ceremony at the Portland (OR) Art Museum.

“Ursula once said she wanted to see science fiction step over the old walls of convention and hit right into the next wall — and start to break it down, too,” said Joseph Corbett, U.S. Postal Service chief financial officer and executive vice president, who served as the stamp ceremony’s dedicating official. “She felt the ideas represented in her fiction could help people become more aware of other ways to do things, other ways to be and to help people wake up.”

SF author Brenda Clough attended the ceremony and wrote it up for Book View Cafe.

…  The ceremony was attended by Le Guin’s husband Charles, her son Theodore and his wife Nancy, and her granddaughter. Speakers included Linda Long, curator and archivist at the University of Oregon library, where all of Le Guin’s papers and letters are housed. Amy Wong, a book editor at the Portland Oregonian, spoke of Le Guin’s many letters to the newspaper, covering topics that ranged from protesting the cancellation of Star Trek to the nation’s democratic process. And granddaughter India Downs Le Guin spoke of living with her grandmother after graduate school….

You can watch highlights from the Ursula K. Le Guin Stamp Ceremony in this YouTube video.

The outdoor ceremony was held in the Evan H. Roberts Sculpture Mall of the Portland Art Museum.

The 33rd stamp in the Literary Arts series honors Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018), who “expanded the scope of literature through novels and short stories that increased critical and popular appreciation of science fiction and fantasy.” The stamp features a portrait of Le Guin based on a 2006 photograph. The background shows a scene from her landmark 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, in which an envoy from Earth named Genly Ai escapes from a prison camp across the wintry planet of Gethen with Estraven, a disgraced Gethenian politician. 

The artist for the stamp is Donato Giancola, a three-time Hugo winner who also was named a Spectrum Awards Grandmaster in 2019.

Information about how to order first day covers is here.

Pixel Scroll 7/27/21 Now The Years Are Scrolling By Me, They Are Rocking Pixelly

(1) 328305 JACKMCDEVITT. SF writer Jack McDevitt has been honored with an asteroid. Here’s the chart –

(2) HUMAN COST IGNORED. Will Slocombe protests that “Militaries Plunder Science Fiction for Technology Ideas, But Turn a Blind Eye to the Genre’s Social Commentary” at Activist Post.

One of the most interesting tools for thinking about future defence technology isn’t big data forecasting and the use of synthetic training environments, but narrative and imagination. And we get this from science fiction.

That might sound fanciful, but many militaries are already engaging with the genre. The US military and the French army use science fiction writers to generate future threat scenarios. The Australian Defence College advocates for the reading of science fiction and, in Germany, Project Cassandra uses novels to predict the world’s next conflict. The Sigma Forum, a science fiction think tank, has been offering forecasting services to US officials for years.

But while science fiction provides military planners with a tantalising glimpse of future weaponry, from exoskeletons to mind-machine interfaces, the genre is always about more than flashy new gadgets. It’s about anticipating the unforeseen ways in which these technologies could affect humans and society – and this extra context is often overlooked by the officials deciding which technologies to invest in for future conflicts….

(3) GET READY FOR BLUECON. [Item by Florrie Frederiksen.]  BlueCon, the 48th French national science-fiction convention, takes place August 19-22. The in-person event will be held on the international campus of the Valbonne University near Nice and the French Riviera. Ugo Bellagamba, president of this project, waxed poetical in his introduction: “Blue is the primary color of imagination, which may be painted in shades of azure, deep blue, or the morning blue which lightens and opens, the color of the skies, of the sea, which both invite to explore the realms beyond the horizon… ”

It is still possible to join the 105 attendees already committed to make this convention a success; panels and meetings and many tables are already being readied. Although the rooms in the center are already filled, the website lists other possibilities for accommodation nearby. Nice is easily reached by train and there is a good sized airport not far away.

(Warnings: this convention does not plan to have virtual elements. All attendees must make sure to have the compulsory valid “passe sanitaire” i.e. QR code proof of full vaccination or at least a negative PCR test dated after August 17. Even then, both vaccinated or non vaccinated people should be wearing masks and some measures of distance and hygiene will be necessary).

The program of the convention has been posted here.

(4) GHOSTBUSTERS AFTERLIFE TRAILER. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is coming to theaters in November.

In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, when a single mom and her two kids arrive in a small town, they begin to discover their connection to the original ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind.

(5) TERRIFICON LINEUP. Joe Stuber interviews David Gerrold for his Comic Book Central podcast: “David Gerrold on Star Trek & Land of the Lost!” Gerrold is on his way to be a guest at Terrificon.

TerrifiCon Week continues with legendary Star Trek writer and creator of Land of the Lost, David Gerrold! David drops by to talk about the origin of his fascination with sci-fi, crafting the most memorable episode of Trek, tackling tales of Tarzan and Superboy, and developing the complex mythology for the 70s Saturday morning sensation, Land of the Lost!

(6) DOOMSDAY BOOKS. James Davis Nicoll homes in on the trouble of that green and ancient land at Tor.com: “Five Speculative Visions of Britain in Chaos”.

The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod (1995)

Rescued by US/UN intervention from the perils of the United Republic’s radical democracy, Britain is home to a patchwork of micro-states under the umbrella of the restored Hanoverian monarchy. Within sensible limits, each micro-state is free to govern itself as it sees fit, with heavily armed, remotely piloted war robots providing gentle rebukes should anyone overstep the US/UN guidelines.

Although the peace process can be trying from the perspective of the common person in the street, the system provides something the US/UN treasures: stability. However, stability is a chimera. An unseen enemy has been waiting patiently to bring the US/UN regime down. Now, thanks to a mercenary, a fundamentalist teen, and a scientist, the revolution has come.

(7) HAMIT MEDICAL UPDATE. Longtime File 770 contributor Francis Hamit has had two surgeries this week to deal with spinal stenosis. His partner Leigh Strother-Vien reports:

Francis had his first surgery on Friday, the 23rd, and his second yesterday, the 26th. Everything went well; in fact, they decided Friday’s went so well that they combined the second and the planned third surgeries together yesterday, fixing his spine down to the T2. He is in the ICU for at least one more day just to be extra careful, and he’s getting plenty of pain management. He said to let you know that it’s ok to put something in File 770 if you wish.

Before the surgeries Hamit sent me a note which ended:

…So I am going to be out of action and Leigh will be taking care of me.  … I will be “just the writer” for  some time to come.  Fortunately that’s part of my therapy.  So I’m not going anywhere.  Just completed that long novel and my memoir and have other work in progress. (Also need a literary agent). 

…Thoughts, prayers, good wishes etc are welcome of course.  Buying, reading and reviewing my books and stories, (Amazon.com) or dramatic work (Stageplays.com) is also very helpful since it helps out with expenses.  No time left for a fundraiser and too much else to do….

(8) A TRIBUTE TO ANDERSSON. The death of horror writer C. Dean Andersson a.k.a. Asa Drake was reported here the other day. Here is a tribute by his friend Christopher Fulbright: “Rest in Peace Dean Andersson”.

… Looking through old pictures is a little bittersweet. We had such great times together, but you never think about having to say goodbye for the last time. You seldom know what conversation will be your last. If I had to pick a last conversation, the one we had was as close to perfect as one might get—we talked about everything from the meaning of life to God himself. We talked a lot about God. I brought him a book of Robert E. Howard’s Kull stories and a Bible, which I promised had heroes and heroines, swords and sorceresses, dragons, pagan gods, epic battles, and the living dead. He was so grateful, and it was such a good talk. I left Dean’s hospital room a week and a half ago with a promise that I would bring lunch by his house and hang out in a couple of weeks, after he’d had a chance to get settled in again at home. Well … I know I’ll see him again someday, it’s just going to be a longer wait. In the meantime, the world is a bit poorer without him. He would no doubt have some subtle quip to make at that, but I insist it’s true….

(9) LESNIAK OBIT. Jim Lesniak of Voodoo Comics died over the weekend while manning his dealers table at the Gem City Comic Con in Dayton, OH according to numerous reports. No more details are known at this writing.

(10) HENRI VERNES (1918-2021). [Item by Florrie Frederiksen:] Henri Vernes (pen-name of Belgian author Charles-Henri-Jean Dewisme, born in 1918) passed away on July 25 at the age of 102.

He is best remembered for the over 200 French language novels of action, fantasy and science-fiction revolving around the BOB MORANE character, that he published continuously since 1953. Bob Morane also appeared in a 1965 television series, a 1996 animated movie, and a number of comics albums with art by well-known French artists.

The character has been made famous by a line in the 1982 song L’Aventurier by French rock group Indochine (“Et soudain surgit face au vent le vrai héros de tous les temps, Bob Morane contre tout chacal, l’aventurier contre tout guerrier.” Tranlsation: “And suddenly, against the wind appeared the real all time hero: Bob Morane fighting any jackal, the adventurer fighting all warriors…”)

A French science-fiction award has been named for Bob Morane (see here).

(11) MEMORY LANE.

  • July 27, 2001 – Twenty years ago, the Planet of the Apes reboot premiered. Directed by Tim Burton and produced by Richard D. Zanuck, it was the sixth film in the Planet of the Apes franchise, very loosely adapted from Pierre Boulle’s novel and the 1968 film version. The screenplay was by William Broyles Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. The primary cast was Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Kris Kristofferson, Estella Warren and Paul Giamatti. The critics mostly liked it though Ebert noted the original was much better, and it did very well at the box office ranking among the top ten films of the year. Currently at Rotten Tomatoes, audience reviewers really don’t like it and give it a twenty-seven percent rating. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 27, 1874 Frank Shannon. He’s best remembered now as the scientist Dr. Alexis Zarkov in the three Flash Gordon serials starring Buster Crabbe between 1936 and 1940.  The serials themselves were Flash GordonFlash Gordon’s Trip to Mars and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. He does show in the Forties Batman serial as Dr. Hayden and The Phantom serial of the era as Professor Davidson. (Died 1959.)
  • Born July 27, 1938 Pierre Christin, 83. French comics creator and writer. In the mid Sixties, collaborated with Jean-Claude Mézières to create the science-fiction series Valérian and Laureline for PiloteTime Jam: Valerian & Laureline, a French animated series was released, and a feature film directed by Luc Besson, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, was released as well. A compilation of the Valerian & Laureline series is on YouTube here.
  • Born July 27, 1938 Gary Gygax. Game designer and author best known for co-creating  Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. In addition to the almost beyond counting gaming modules he wrote, he wrote the Greyhawk Adventure series and the Dangerous Journeys novels, none of which is currently in print. I’ll admit that I’ve not read any of the many novels listed at ISFDB, so I’ve no idea how he is as a genre writer.(Died 2008.)
  • Born July 27, 1939 Sydney J. van Scyoc, 82. Her first published story was “Shatter the Wall” in Galaxy in 1962. She continued to write short stories throughout the Sixties and Seventies, and published Saltflower, her first novel in the early Seventies. Assignment Nor’Dyren is one of her better novels. Over the next twenty years, she published a dozen novels and likewise number of short stories. 
  • Born July 27, 1940 Gary Kurtz. Producer whose genre credits include Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Crystal and Return to Oz. He did a late Eighties SF film Slipstream, which reunited him with Mark Hamill. He was the original producer on The Spirit. He was executive producer on Chandler, a PI film which isn’t genre adjacent but worth noting here. (Died 2018.)
  • Born July 27, 1949 Robert Rankin, 72. Writer of what I’d call serious comic genre fiction. Best book by him? I’d single out The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse as the best work he ever did bar none. Hell, even the name is absolutely frelling great. 
  • Born July 27, 1968 Farah Mendlesohn, 53. She’s an historian and prolific writer on genre literature, and an active fan. Best works by her? I really like her newest work on Heinlein, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, whichwon a BSFAHer Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition is also a fascinating read. And I highly recommend her Rhetorics of Fantasy as we don’t get many good theoretical looks at fantasy. Her only Hugo to date was at Interaction for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. She’s also garnered a BFA for Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction (shared with co-writer Michael Levy) which also got a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth and Fantasy, and she a Karl Edward Wagner Award winner as well. 
  • Born July 27, 1973 Cassandra Clare, 48. I read at least the first three or four volumes of her Mortal Instruments series which I see means I’ve almost completed it. Damn good series. Anyone read her Magnus Bane series? Interestingly she’s been nominated for myriad Goodreads Choice Awards and won two for City of Fallen Angels and City of Heavenly Fire.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) 30 YEARS IN THE MAKING. Here’s a teaser trailer for Mad God, a feature film directed by Phil Tippett, the world’s pre-eminent stop motion animator. Content Warning: Graphic body horror. Tippett’s career credits include Star Wars, RoboCop, and Jurassic Park.

(15) IT’S FROM AN OLD FAMILIAR SCORE. Vintage News shares some “Twisty Turny Facts About The Classic TV Series ‘The Twilight Zone’”.

Check out some mind-boggling behind-the-scenes facts, as we take you on a trip into Serling’s singularly strange universe…

It has a connection to Marty McFly

Does this building look familiar? As Screen Rant points out, the setting was part of The Twilight Zone’s first ever episode: “Where Is Everybody?”

The story concerns a man who appears to be alone in the world. Yet Courthouse Square, part of Universal Studios, has been anything but deserted over the years.

Lightning bolts and streaks of fire turned the area into an exit route for time travelers Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in Back To The Future (1985)….

(16) FIELDS OF DREAMS. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Since we just discussed Lord Dunsany, the fantasy author, here is a profile of his descendant Randal Plunkett, the current Lord Dunsany, who is an eco hippy organic farmer and film maker. His first movie The Green Sea even appears to be genre: “’There have been many death threats, but I’ll never stop’ – Randal Plunkett, Baron of Dunsany, on rewilding his family estate” in The Independent.

…  “After attempting a normal agricultural approach, I stepped back and saw a landscape bleak and exhausted from overgrazing and over-farming,” he explains. “Chemicals injected into the soil and no pause for regeneration or recovery. How does land remain healthy when the cycle of life is ignored?”

The 21st Baron of Dunsany made a radical decision. He removed all grazing animals from the property, gearing towards an overall holistic focus on crops. Pesticides were banned, fertilisers were abandoned and invasive weeds like ragwort and thistle were tackled by hand. “My mum looked at me as if I’d joined a cult.”

Steered by a passionate new advocacy for veganism, Randal — who tradition dictates should be addressed as Lord Dunsany — came upon the concept of ‘rewilding’ seven years ago, a progressive approach to conservation allowing the environment to take care of itself and return to a native natural state. Rather than an experimental litmus test in a quiet corner of the property, he sacrificed 750 acres of a highly profitable 1,700-acre pasture in an unorthodox gamble.

“I wanted to return the land to the wild, not just preserve what little natural habitat remained. So we locked up a huge part of the estate and it was militant. No footfall most of the year, no paths or interference. That’s not to say we abandoned the land, we’re guardians keeping a distant, watchful eye. And the results speak for themselves.”…

(17) FLORIDA MAN. “Florida man washes ashore after trying to ‘walk’ to New York in bubble device” reports The Guardian.

Florida man startled beachgoers when he washed ashore inside a hybrid bubble-running wheel device.

The man, identified by a local news channel as Reza Baluchi, washed ashore in Flagler county on the east coast of Florida on Saturday.

He was inside a large barrel-type device which appeared to have flotation buoys attached to each end. The Flagler county sheriff’s office posted photos of the strange vessel on Facebook.

“The occupant advised he left the St Augustine area yesterday to head to New York,” the sheriff’s office said, “but came across some complications that brought him back to shore”.

…The Sun-Sentinel reported that Baluchi was forced to turn back after he discovered that some of his safety and navigation equipment had been stolen. The equipment has been recovered, and Baluchi plans to resume his journey once the weather improves, the newspaper said.

(18) THE LATEST MEMES OF 2003. In Honest Trailers:  Space Jam:  A New Legacy, on YouTube, teh Screen Junkies say this movie turns LeBron James into “a joyless grunt who plays boring basketball” and Bugs Bunny into “off-brand Bugs Bunny.”

[Thanks to Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, N., Steve H Silver, Cora Buhlert, Florrie Frederiksen, David K.M. Klaus, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Mike Resnick Memorial Award for Short Fiction 2021 Finalists

Mike Resnick at Imaginales 2016 in France.

The finalists for the inaugural Mike Resnick Memorial Award for the best unpublished science fiction short story by a new author have been announced.

The award is sponsored by Galaxy’s Edge (published by Arc Manor) and Dragon Con, and will be presented at Dragon Con during the annual Dragon Awards ceremony.

The finalists are:

  • Lucas Carroll-Garrett: Hive at the Dead Star
  • Shirley Song: Times, Needles, and Gravity 
  • Z. T. Bright: The Measure of a Mother’s Love
  • Christopher Henckel: Echoes of Gelise
  • Torion Oey: Feel

The first place winner will get a trophy, a cash award of $250 and have their story bought (at the magazine’s prevailing rate) by Galaxy’s Edge for publication in the magazine. The second place winner will be given a prize of $100 and the third place winner a prize of $50.

The four runners-ups will have their stories displayed on the Galaxy’s Edge website for a period of two-months.

The shortlist will be judged by Nancy Kress, Sheree Renee Thomas, Jody Lynn Nye, Lois McMaster Bujold and William B. Fawcett. 

Submissions for next year’s award are now being taken. The deadline to enter is April 15, 2022.

[Via Locus Online.]

British Fantasy Awards 2021 Shortlists

The shortlists for the 2021 British Fantasy Awards have been released, along with the names of the jurors who will decide the winners, which will be announced at FantasyCon in September.

BEST NEWCOMER (THE SYDNEY J. BOUNDS AWARD)

Jurors: Mohsin Siddiqui, Rhian Bowley, Shellie Horst, Tom Lloyd, Sammy Smith

  • Tiffani Angus, for Threading the Labyrinth (Unsung Stories)
  • Dan Coxon, for Green Fingers & Only the Broken Remain (Black Shuck Books)
  • Sean Hogan, for England’s Screaming & Three Mothers, One Father (Black Shuck Books)
  • Kathleen Jennings, for Flyaway (Tordotcom)
  • Simon Jimenez, for The Vanished Birds (Titan)
  • Rym Kechacha, for Dark River (Unsung Stories)

BEST FILM / TELEVISION PRODUCTION

Jurors: Rachel Pattinson, Martyn Sullivan, Amit Khaira, Sarah Pinborough, Arabella Sophia

  • Birds of Prey
  • The Boys: What I Know (Season 2, episode 8)
  • The Haunting of Bly Manor: The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (Season 1, episode 8)
  • The Invisible Man
  • The Lighthouse
  • Saint Maud

BEST NON-FICTION

Jurors: David G Wilson, Trudy Lynn, Susan Maxwell, Jessica Lévai, Kevin McVeigh

  • The Full Lid, Alasdair Stuart, ed. Marguerite Kenner
  • It’s the End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of?, Adam Roberts (Elliot & Thompson)
  • Notes from the Borderland, Lynda E. Rucker (in “Black Static”, TTA Press)
  • Ties that Bind: Love in Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini (Luna Press Publishing)
  • The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest, Paul Kincaid (Gylphi Limited)
  • Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre, ed. Alison Peirse (Rutgers University Press)

BEST ARTIST

Jurors: Paul Yates, Kayden Weir, Alex Gushurst-Moore, Tatiana Dengo Villalobos

  • Warwick Fraser-Coombe
  • David Rix
  • Vincent Sammy
  • Daniele Serra

BEST COMIC / GRAPHIC NOVEL

Jurors: Rebecca Gault, Alicia Fitton, Edward Partridge, Michele Howe, Hannah Barton

  • The Daughters of Ys, Jo Rioux & M.T. Andersen (First Second)
  • DIE Vol. 2: Split the Party, Kieron Gillen & Stephanie Hans (Image Comics)
  • John Constantine: Hellblazer, Vol. 1: Marks of Woe, Simon Spurrier & Aaron Campbell (DC Comics)
  • The Magic Fish, Trung Le Nguyen (Random House Graphic)
  • Rivers of London: The Fey and the Furious, Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmell (Titan)
  • Venus in the Blind Spot, Junji Ito (VIZ Media LLC)

BEST MAGAZINE / PERIODICAL

Jurors: Samuel Poots, Vanessa Jae, Adri Joy, Devin Martin, Kate Coe

  • Black Static
  • The Dark
  • FIYAH
  • Ginger Nuts of Horror
  • Shoreline of Infinity
  • Strange Horizons

BEST INDEPENDENT PRESS

Jurors: Rowena Andrews, Anna Slevin, Ann Landmann, Cheyenne Heckermann, Amy Brennan

  • Black Shuck Books
  • Flame Tree Press
  • Luna Press Publishing
  • Unsung Stories

BEST AUDIO

Jurors: Jackson Eflin, Kat Kourbeti, Tam Moules, Arden Fitzroy, Pete Sutton

  • Breaking the Glass Slipper, Megan Leigh, Lucy Hounson & Charlotte Bond
  • The Magnus Archives, Rusty Quill
  • PodCastle, Escape Artists
  • PseudoPod, Escape Artists
  • The Sandman, Dirk Maggs & Neil Gaiman (Audible Originals)
  • Stellar Firma, Rusty Quill

BEST ANTHOLOGY

Jurors: Abbi Shaw, Lauren McClelland, Caroline Oakley, Emma Varney, Ginger Lee Thomason

  • After Sundown, ed. Mark Morris (Flame Tree Press)
  • Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, ed. Lee Murray & Genevieve Flynn (Omnium Gatherum Media)
  • Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, ed. Zelda Knight & Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Aurelia Leo)
  • Shadows & Tall Trees, Vol. 8, ed. Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)

BEST SHORT FICTION

Jurors: Laura Braswell, Danny Boland, Steve J Shaw, Allyson Bird, Alia McKellar

  • 8-Bit Free Will, John Wiswell (in PodCastle 654, Escape Artists)
  • Daylight Robbery, Anna Taborska (in “Bloody Britain”, Shadow Publishing)
  • Infinite Tea in the Demara Café, Ida Keogh (in “London Centric: Tales of Future London, Newcon Press)
  • We Do Like to be Beside, Pete Sutton (in “Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 2”, Alchemy Press)

BEST COLLECTION

Jurors: Raquel Alemán Cruz, Chris White, Carrianne Dillon, Aaron S. Jones, Hannah Zurcher

  • Bloody Britain, Anna Taborska (Shadow Publishing)
  • Only the Broken Remain, Dan Coxon (Black Shuck Books)
  • The Watcher in the Woods, Charlotte Bond (Black Shuck Books)
  • We All Hear Stories in the Dark, Robert Shearman (PS Publishing)

BEST NOVELLA

Jurors: Timy Takács, Phillip Irving, Ellis Saxey, Kshoni Gunputh, Alasdair Stuart

  • The Flame and the Flood, Shona Kinsella (Fox Spirit)
  • Honeybones, Georgina Bruce (TTA Press)
  • The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho (Tordotcom)
  • Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
  • A Song for the End, Kit Power (Horrific Tales Publishing)
  • Triggernometry, Stark Holborn (Rattleback Books)

BEST HORROR NOVEL (THE AUGUST DERLETH AWARD)

Jurors: Rhian Drinkwater, Judith Schofield, Fabienne Schwizer, Ben Appleby-Dean, Ai Jiang

  • Beneath the Rising, Premee Mohamed (Rebellion)
  • The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher (Titan)
  • Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Jo Fletcher Books)
  • The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones (Titan)
  • Plain Bad Heroines, Emily Danforth (The Borough Press)
  • Survivor Song, Paul Tremblay (Titan)

BEST FANTASY NOVEL (THE ROBERT HOLDSTOCK AWARD)

Jurors: Aoife Roantree, Steven Poore, Sue York, S.D. Howarth, Kate Towner

  • The Bone Shard Daughter, Andrea Stewart (Orbit)
  • By Force Alone, Lavie Tidhar (Tor Books)
  • The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
  • Dark River, Rym Kechacha (Unsung Stories)
  • The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow (Orbit)
  • Threading the Labyrinth, Tiffani Angus (Unsung Stories)

Pixel Scroll 7/26/21 I Am Just A Filer, Though My Story’s Seldom Scrolled

(1) COZY CATASTROPHES. James Davis Nicoll told me this is “A happy Monday piece.” Makes me worry about what the rest of the week is going to look like: “Five Classic SFF Novels About Environmental Disaster” at Tor.com.

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (1953)

This cozy catastrophe stands out because it’s a rare book in which humans are not to blame for deadly environmental changes. The novel begins quietly, as a meteor shower splashes down in Earth’s oceans. English Broadcasting Company reporters Mike and Phyllis Watson, who document the escalating crisis, see nothing alarming. Initially.

Unfortunately for the former rulers of Earth, the objects were spacecraft, delivering the planet’s new owners to Earth’s oceans. At first these enigmatic beings limit themselves to sampling the inhabitants of an occasional village to better understand their new home. Once they’ve settled in—and particularly once humans attempt to nuke the settlers—the aquatic aliens decide to conduct planetary improvements. Which is to say, they begin melting ice caps, providing themselves with more aquatic lebensraum. This also drowns the coastlines where atom bomb-wielding, land-dwelling pests tend to congregate.

(2) TWICE THE SPICE. Boing Boing spotted an Instagram post that edits the new Dune trailer into a comparison with David Lynch’s adaptation from the Eighties: “Watch: A spicy side-by-side of Dune (1984) and Dune (2021)”. See it at the link.

The newest sci-fi spectacular that is Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune might not include David Lynch’s battle pugs, but it does include some startling similarities with the original 1984 film.

(3) UNTRUE GRIT. A ZDnet writer says he got suspended for this: “On Facebook, quoting ‘Dune’ gets you suspended while posting COVID and vaccine misinformation gets you recommended”.

…[A] managing editor for commerce of our sister site, CNET, was beaming on Facebook about how he was able to get in to see a sneak preview of Dune, the Denis Villeneuve-directed film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi epic that is due for a late October release.

I’m sure many other people are as excited as I am about this movie. So I quoted [in reply] the duel scene in question, in which Sting, playing the charismatic and psychotic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, shouts, “I -WILL- kill you.” I even put it in quotes so that there was no question I was quoting the film.

I thought nothing of it. I went about the rest of my evening. About an hour later, I was notified by Facebook that I was suspended for three days due to violating Community Standards.

I was shocked. Suspended for quoting a film? Without even using any obscenities? This seems… extreme.

Obviously, I had no intention of killing Russell Holly, envious as I was that he got to see this film months before anyone else. I am also not in the practice of murdering my editorial colleagues with poisoned daggers, as anyone at ZDNet will tell you….

(4) LEVY HASKELL HONORED. Stinson, a nationwide legal firm, recognized employee Fred Levy Haskell, a Minneapolis fan, with an award: “Stinson Staff Honored as Unsung Legal Heroes in Missouri and Minnesota: Stinson LLP Law Firm”

Stinson LLP is proud to announce 2021 Unsung Legal Heroes award recipients for Missouri and Minnesota. 

…Levy Haskell, work product support specialist, is based in Minneapolis. He is recognized for the guidance and optimism he provided to his team, as well as the complex tools he implemented during the transition to working remotely. Fred is appreciated for his upbeat nature and willingness to help anyone at the firm.  

(5) J.K. ON THE BBC. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] J. K. Rowling seriously considered writing Harry Potter under a pseudonym and confirmed she conceived his series on a delayed, crowded rail train.  The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed is a BBC Radio 4 series in which the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, talks to poets and writers in his garden shed.  An episode this weekend had J.K. Rowling as the guest. (You can also listen to extended version.)

She revealed that she too writes in a shed-like outhouse in her garden. Like Simon’s, it too is devoid of internet access so as to rid distraction.  She revealed that she had seriously considered writing Harry Potter under a pseudonym using the name ‘Oliver’. She also said that she and her publisher decided to use the gender neutral ‘J. K.’ abbreviation.  She confirmed the story that the idea for Harry Potter came to her on a long-delayed and crowded train from Manchester to London.

She said that she always wanted to be a writer ever since she realised that the stories her mother read to her were written by someone.

With regards to writing, she says that her drafts are all hand written and outlines are in notebooks (which nobody has ever seen). The advantage, she said, of hand writing drafts is that using a word processor sees early versions deleted and once gone, are gone. The problem here is that sometimes she finds dialogue or a scene simply has not worked and that she realised that an earlier version had a better staring point for taking in a slightly different direction. Hand-written records are therefore very valuable. Simon Armitage confirmed that he too writes by hand. He said it was important for a writer to access the archaeology of the writing process.

Subsequent to the ‘Potter’ books, J. K. Rowling had been writing crime novels as Robert Galbraith. (The lawyer who outed her was fined £1,000 for breaching privacy rules.) Initially, though the Galbraith books had had critical acclaim, they had no commercial success, that came following the outing.  Simon Armitage asked Rowling as to choose her favourite of two other well-known crime writers: Ruth Rendall or P. D. James. Rowling, with difficulty went for P. D. James.

(6) SHELL GAME. Atlas Obscura ponders “Why Is the World Always on the Back of a Turtle?” Yes, Discworld gets mentioned.

ANYONE WHO’S EVER HEARD THE expression “it’s turtles all the way down” is probably familiar with the image of the world being carried on the back of a giant turtle. While that philosophical one-liner is of relatively modern vintage, the cosmic turtle mytheme has appeared in disparate cultures across the globe for millennia. In honor of everyone’s favorite intellectual quandary, let’s take a moment to celebrate the tortoises that hold up the world.

In his book Researches Into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization, the turn-of-the-20th-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor writes that the world turtle concept likely first appeared in Hindu mythology. In one Vedic story, the form of the god Vishnu’s second avatar, Kurma, is a great turtle, which provides a celestial foundation upon which a mountain is balanced….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

  • 2008 – Thirteen years ago this month, Robert Holdstock’s Avilion would be published. Set in his Ryhope Wood series, it was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. It would be the final work from this author as he died in-hospital at the age of sixty-one from an E. coli infection on the 29th of November 2009. He would be honored with The Karl Edward Wagner Award from the British Fantasy Society the following year.  And they would rename their best fantasy novel award in his honor – now called the BFS Robert Holdstock Award. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 26, 1894 Aldous Huxley. Brave New World is fascinating. I knew I had it assigned and sort of discussed in a High School class and at least one Uni class a very long time ago. So what else is genre by him and worth reading? I see his Time Must Have a Stop novel was on the long list at CoNZealand. (Died 1963.)
  • Born July 26, 1928 Stanley Kubrick. I’m reasonably sure 2001: A Space Odyssey was the first film I saw by him but Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was the one that impressed me the most. A Clockwork Orange was just too damn depressing. And I’m not a horror fan as such so I never saw The ShiningBarry Lyndon is great but it’s not genre by any means. (Died 1999.)
  • Born July 26, 1945 Helen Mirren, 76. She first graces our presence as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She next shows up in a genre role as Alice Rage in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, Peter Sellar’s last film. She’s an ever so delicious Morgana in Excalibur and then leaps into the future as Tanya Kirbuk in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. She voices the evil lead role in The Snow Queen, and likewise is Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She was recently in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms as Mother Ginger, regent of the Land of Amusements. Her next genre role is in the forthcoming Shazam! Fury of the Gods as Hespera.
  • Born July 26, 1945 M. John Harrison, 76. Winner of the Otherwise Award. TheViriconium sequence, I hesitate to call it a series, starting with The Pastel City, is some of the most elegant fantasy I’ve read. And I see he’s a SJW as he’s written the Tag, the Cat series which I need to take a look at. He’s also a major critic for the past thirty years reviewing fiction and nonfiction for The GuardianThe Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. He’s lightly stocked at the usual suspects though TheViriconium sequence is there at a very reasonable price. 
  • Born July 26, 1954 Lawrence Watt-Evans, 67. Ok I’ll admit that I’ve not read “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” which won him a short fiction Hugo at Conspiracy ’87. It also was nominated for a Nebula and won an Asimov’s Reader’s Poll that year. It’d be his only Hugo. So I’m curious what Hugo voters saw in it. Yes, I’ve read him — his War Surplus series is quite excellent.
  • Born July 26, 1957 Nana Visitor, 64. Kira Nerys on Deep Space Nine which for my money is the second best of the Trek series to date and I’m including the present series in that assessment. After DS9 ended, Visitor had a recurring role as villain Dr. Elizabeth Renfro on Dark Angel. In 1987, Visitor appeared as Ellen Dolan in a never developed series pilot for Will Eisner’s The Spirit with Sam J. Jones as The Spirit. And she had a brief role in Torchwood: Miracle Day.
  • Born July 26, 1964 Sandra Bullock, 57. First film role was in, I kid you not, Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, also Demolition Man, Practical Magic and Gravity to name but three of her other genre appearances.
  • Born July 26, 1969 Tim Lebbon, 52. For my money, his best series is The Hidden Cities one he did with Christopher Golden though his Relics series with protagonist Angela Gough is quite superb as well. He dips into the Hellboy universe with two novels, Unnatural Selection and Fire Wolves, rather capably. I’ve got his Firefly novel, Generations, in my Audible queue.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side depends on a literary reference – which I’m confident you’ll all get.

(10) WORKING TOGETHER. Literary agent Mark Gottlieb posted the interview that he conducted with Willam F. Nolan and Jason Brock shortly before Nolan’s death on July 15: “In Memory of Award-winning Author and Creator of Logan’s Run William F. Nolan”.

What is it like working together in a collaboration as two authors?

Nolan: Well, I have collaborated quite a bit in my career. I worked on the screenplay to Burnt Offerings with producer/director Dan Curtis, for example. I did most of the adaptation of Marasco’s novel, but Dan and I worked on other elements together. Of course, I co-wrote Logan’s Run with my dear friend George Clayton Johnson. That started as an idea of mine, but as the book took shape George added some fine elements. We literally typed the whole thing from notes in three weeks! We spelled one another on the typewriter in a hotel. I did the final polish later. Jason and I have worked on a lot of pieces together, also, but I’ll let him talk about that.

Brock: I come from a background in music, and having a band is quite collaborative. Also, I am a filmmaker, having completed two documentaries and working on others, and film in general is extremely collaborative. So, writing is a pretty easy way to work together as there are fewer people involved, at least in the active writing phase, as opposed to editing and preparing for publication. As long as the coauthors share roughly the same vision for the outcome, getting there can be a lot of fun, actually. It’s surprising the places a piece can go when you write something, then have the other person take your concepts and spin them, then you do that to theirs, etc. It’s a rush.

(11) A DIFFERENT TAKE ON D&D. Areo’s Christopher Ferguson restrains his enthusiasm, but what do you think? “Sensitive Masters and Wheelchair Accessible Torture Chambers: Dungeons & Dragons in the Culture War Era”.

…The collection is, indeed, progressive in tone. It has been noted that it includes a wheelchair accessible dungeon (a cause celebre for progressive members of gaming communities, though wheelchairs aren’t specifically mentioned in the book) and numerous nonplayer characters who use they/them pronouns. The collection also signals progressivism in other ways—for example, the new adventures de-emphasise the idea that good or evil motives are inherent traits of monster races. (This is a response to those who have protested that the attribution of inherent bad traits to this group is analogous to racism in real life.) And it includes a trigger warning of sorts: the accompanying book begins with a section titled “Be a Sensitive Dungeon Master,” which uses progressive buzzwords such as trigger and unsafe….

(12) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Let the BBC break it to you: “Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson may not be astronauts, US says”.

…The Commercial Astronaut Wings programme updates were announced on Tuesday – the same day that Amazon’s Mr Bezos flew aboard a Blue Origin rocket to the edge of space.

To qualify as commercial astronauts, space-goers must travel 50 miles (80km) above the Earth’s surface, which both Mr Bezos and Mr Branson accomplished.

But altitude aside, the agency says would-be astronauts must have also “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety”….

I think this reminds me of a scene in The Right Stuff where test pilots insisted the Mercury capsule needed a window and some flight control capability. Because they weren’t just the human counterparts of the monkeys that had been shot into space.

(13) HEY, I GREW UP HERE. “This quirky L.A. museum is dedicated to San Fernando Valley history” – the Washington Post has the story.

…Of the thousands of artifacts displayed here, Gelinas says, it’s the extensive collection of electric and neon signs, some with graffiti still intact, that are the museum’s biggest draw. A neon sign from the now-defunct, iconic, Palomino Club, a famed North Hollywood country music venue that hosted talent such as Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and Tanya Tucker, is a crowd favorite, he reports. Other signs in the extensive collection include one from a Jewish deli, a Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakery complete with windmill and a galloping horse that once advertised a local liquor store.

…Of the collection, Gelinas says, 25 percent is donated while the other 75 percent is “rescued,” as in Gelinas and his team get a call to come take an item that might be destroyed. These “History Watchdogs,” as he refers to them, call when beloved area signage or iconography is in danger of being torn down. When that happens, Gelinas says, he and his team of loyal museum volunteers, many of whom have been specially trained in removal techniques, take great pains to make sure things are done well.

(14) DC AT SDCC. During the DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow Comic-Con@Home panel on Sunday, the cast and showrunners unveiled a sneak peek at the remainder of the show’s sixth season — think bowling, board games, aliens, weddings, magic mushrooms, and a whole lot of dark drama involving John Constantine.

[Thanks to JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, James Davis Nicoll, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Ed Meskys (1936-2021)

Hugo-winning fanzine editor Ed Meskys, a co-founder of American Tolkien fandom, died of a heart attack on July 25 at the age of 85.

Fred Lerner, who received the news from Ed’s wife, Sandy, adds that Ed “had been in declining health for some time, but was in good spirits when I visited him and Sandy two months ago. I first met Ed 58 years ago and have treasured my friendship with him ever since.”

Meskys found fandom in 1955 and joined a local sf club. He was then 19 and living in the Bay Area of California. During the Sixties he moved to New York (where he joined the Lunarians), then to New Hampshire, his home for the rest of his life.

Ed was born in Brooklyn in 1936 of parents born in Lithuania. His father was displaced by WWI in 1917. His father later married and brought his mother from over from Lithuania in 1930. Meskys spoke Lithuanian at home and learned English as second language when started school. In 1962, Ed took a job at the Lawrence Radiation Labs in Livermore, California, where he had a “Q” (nuclear weapons) security clearance. He also held summer jobs at Fort Monmouth NJ (secret clearance) and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He has a BS (cum laude) and MS in Physics from St. John’s University in New York. He preferred teaching to research and started at Belknap College in Center Harbor, NH in 1966.

Andrew Porter remembers meeting Ed at the Open ESFA meetings in New York more than 60 years ago. “Perhaps the first fan I ever met. A good friend for all this time. So many memories of Ed, ranging from his fanzines (including Hugo Award-winning Niekas) to his enthusiasm for all things Gilbert & Sullivan, his days at Livermore Radiation Labs [in California], where he worked on designing A-bombs, his enthusiasm for the NYC subway system, his booming voice, his passion for Lithuanian food, his ability, after he became blind, to see us as we were when he was sighted, not as we’ve aged to become, his many service dogs which doubled as vacuum cleaners for any food on the floor at parties…”

Ed became fully blind in 1971 from a detached and torn retina in his remaining eye, having previously lost sight in the other one in 1953 due to juvenile diabetes. He learned to navigate with the help of a guide dog, and over the years these dogs, who allowed Ed to keep going to conventions, became fannish friends, too. They were mourned when they reached the end of their lives — the 1972 Worldcon’s daily newzine reported there would be a wake for Ed’s old guide dog “Judge” who’d previously been put down because of cancer of the spleen. Ed’s last dog, “Gyro,” died in 2016 — a dog given the public name of “Killer Dog” (to avoid having people call to him when they shouldn’t), which also recognized the dog’s reputation for destroying toy Teddy Bears.

NIEKAS. In 1962, Meskys gave his existing apazine a new name — Niekas — and a new mission: “Since there was no Tolkien fanzine being published I decided to devote Niekas to Tolkien and try to run at least one Tolkien related piece in each issue.” The name itself had nothing to do with Tolkien, but was an inside joke whose meaning Ed enjoyed explaining with a story. Peggy Rae McKnight (later Sapienza) began publishing Etwas in 1960; “We traded fanzines at the time, her Etwas (German for something) for my Niekas (Lithuanian for nothing).”

Meskys had a series of co-editors on Niekas. Anne Chatland worked on the early issues. Felice Rolfe (later Maxam) co-edited the issues that gained a Hugo nomination in 1966 and won the Best Fanzine Hugo in 1967. Two decades later the issues Ed produced with Mike Bastraw, Anne Braude, and Todd Frazier also received a Hugo nomination in 1989. Frazier continued to help with Niekas until he died in 2012.

Ed had a hand in another famous fanzine, too. He helped Charlie Brown and Dave Vanderwerf found Locus, today the trade paper of the sff field, which began life in 1968 as a zine to promote Boston’s bid for the Worldcon. (They would later host the 1971 con.) Meskys was involved through the first year’s issues ‘til his work on the 1968 Tolkien Conference commanded all his time.

TOLKIEN. Ed not only dedicated Niekas to fostering an interest in J.R.R. Tolkien, towards that end he edited such publications as The Tolkien JournalValinorian Times, and Green Dragon.

He was one of the organizers of Tolkien fandom in the U.S. He was president of the Tolkien Society of America from 1967-1972, taking over after first Thain of the Society had to give it up.

He organized the 1968 Belknap College Tolkien Conference, held at Belknap College in New Hampshire, where Ed was a professor. It was a scholarly literary conference where papers were presented, many of them by people from the sf community, such as Lester del Rey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Dainis Bisenieks, and Fred Lerner.

In 1972, at Ed’s suggestion, Tolkien Society of America merged with the Mythopoeic Society founded by Glen GoodKnight, and overnight the Mythopoeic Society grew to more than a thousand members. Ed became a guest of honor at Mythcon in 1975.

OTHER INTERESTS. Ed also was part of the group created by sf fans who love Georgette Heyer Regency roman novels, called Almack’s Society for Heyer Criticism.

He was an associate member of the modern First Fandom club.

Outside of fandom, Ed provided leadership to the National Federation of the Blind of New Hampshire, acting as president of both the NH state affiliate and the Lakes Region local chapter. He and Sandy, whom he married in 1989, lived in rural Moultonboro, NH, in the summer and in North Carolina in the winter.

Late in life he was still producing his email-only fanzine The View From Entropy with help from family and friends.

Ed is survived by his wife, Sandy, and a son from his first marriage, Stanley.

Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards 2020

The Ladies of Horror Fiction review site team has announced the winners of their 2020 Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards.

LOHF Award for Best Collection

  • All That’s Fair, S.H. Cooper

LOHF Award Best Debut

  • The Year of the Witching, Alexis Henderson

LOHF Award for Best Graphic Novel

  • The Low Low Woods, Carmen Maria Machado

LOHF Award for Best Middle Grade

  • Hide and Seeker, Daka Hermon

LOHF Award for Best Novel

  • Tender is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica

LOHF Award for Best Novella

  • The Bell Chime, Mona Kabbani

LOHF Award for Best Poetry Collection

  • A Complex Accident of Life, Jessica McHugh

LOHF Award for Best Short Fiction

  • Unkindly Girls, Hailey Piper (Worst Laid Plans)

LOHF Award for Best Young Adult

  • Blood Countess, Lana Popovi?

A Visit to Planet Word

By Martin Morse Wooster: Filers coming to DisCon III will want to know about things to do outside of the Shoreham. Well, we now have a free museum devoted to words and language, Planet Word[1] which opened in Washington, DC last October.   I went to the museum yesterday, and here is what it is like.

This museum has big money behind it (the main hall is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies) and they’ve spent a lot of money on tech.  You begin on the third floor in a room with a wall full of words in three-dimensional letters.  The audience can choose words and the narrator then explains where the words come from.  The fun fact you learn in this presentation is that the number one coiners of new words are teenage girls.

The walls on the third floor have interactive displays with little language lessons.  There is one devoted to constructed languages, with time given to Klingon, Dothraki, Esperanto, and the languages invented by Tolkien.

Speaking Willow Tree

The centerpiece of the third floor is a giant globe with booths where speakers explain their languages.  The ones I heard were the Philippine language Tagalog, Japanese, Arabic, and French.  The speakers give simple lessons (there’s a simpler way to say “good-bye” in Japanese than “sayonara”).  The French speaker assumed that her audience knew something about her language, so we learned how to roll our r’s in “crème brulee” and the secret French language variant Velran, which is the French version of pig-Latin.

Oh, and at least once per lesson the whole globe lights up and displays something like an object in the lesson (ice cream, an apple).

At this point the museum’s planners ran out of ideas.  The second floor has two exhibits.  There’s a library where you can see little animations of books displayed on the shelves.  There’s also a karaoke exhibit with the excuse that they show the rhyme schemes songwriters use.  It wasn’t for me but people were enjoying themselves singing Taylor Swift and Disney power ballads.

The second floor has the free souvenir you need to get.  It’s a photo booth, sponsored by the College Board, where you have your photo displayed next to a word high schoolers are supposed to know for their SATs.  My word was “aristocratic.’  I thought this was a cool idea.

Finally the first floor has an exhibit on how advertisers distort words in their ads.   It’s only worth seeing if you believe ads (and if you do, I have a bridge to sell you).

You should know I’m a guy who feels he has to see everything in a museum.  It took me 1-¾ hours to take in Planet Word.  If I were you, I’d spend 15 minutes more than I did at the giant globe and skip everything on the first and second floors except the photo booth.

If you’re seeing museums in Washington, your first choice is as many Smithsonian museums as you have time for.  Planet Word isn’t a bad second choice.  I’m glad I saw it.


[1] On the subway, take the Red Line south to Metro Center and then the Blue, Orange and Silver Lines one stop west to McPherson Square.  The museum is on the corner of 13th and K (in the subway station, you’re looking for “Franklin School” on the map).

Pixel Scroll 7/25/21 The Pixel Unvanquishable, Save for Scrollnope

(1) BE SEEING YOU. The trailer for the next season of Doctor Who was released at San Diego Comic-Con International today. As a YouTube commenter concluded, “The end was literally BBC saying to us: Any questions? No? See you soon.”

Radio Times adds details showrunner Chris Chibnall shared during that SDCC virtual panel: “Doctor Who series 13 to be serialised connected story”.

…However, it looks like the next series of Doctor Who will be particularly unusual for the “modern” (aka post-2005) era of the show, with showrunner Chris Chibnall revealing during a virtual panel that the upcoming season 13 (starring Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill and John Bishop, above) would be a single serialised story rather than the usual collection of self-contained episodes.

“The big thing we’re going to be doing this year is that it’s all one story – so every episode is a chapter in a bigger story,” Chibnall said during Doctor Who’s Comic-Con@Home panel. “And so we’ve changed the shape of the series for this year.

“It’s very much not a business as usual time,” he added, explaining the role that coronavirus restrictions had made on the decision.

“And I think the challenges of getting the show up and running.. […] there were two ways we could go. You could go ‘we’re just going to do lots and lots of tiny episodes in one room with no monsters. Or we can throw down the gauntlet and say we’re gonna do the biggest story we’ve ever done, and we’re going to go to all kind of different places, and have all different characters and monsters, and it’s all gonna be part of a bigger whole.

“I think it’s definitely the most ambitious thing we’ve done…it’s epic and ambitious and we do go to a lot of places.”

Notably, this serialisation ties into the casting of newly-announced series star Jacob Anderson, who is set to play a character called Vinder across a number of episodes and whose presence across the series hints at more shared elements between episodes than fans might be used to….

And here’s the full video of the panel:

(2) CHUCK TINGLE UPDATE. Chuck’s Twitter account is still out of commission. Here’s the update he gave to his Facebook readers.

(3) THE AI AFTERLIFE. “What Should Happen to Our Data When We Die?” asks the New York Times, raising the issue of posthumous privacy.  

The new Anthony Bourdain documentary, “Roadrunner,” is one of many projects dedicated to the larger-than-life chef, writer and television personality. But the film has drawn outsize attention, in part because of its subtle reliance on artificial intelligence technology.

Using several hours of Mr. Bourdain’s voice recordings, a software company created 45 seconds of new audio for the documentary. The A.I. voice sounds just like Mr. Bourdain speaking from the great beyond; at one point in the movie, it reads an email he sent before his death by suicide in 2018.

“If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Morgan Neville, the director, said in an interview with The New Yorker. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

The time for that panel may be now. The dead are being digitally resurrected with growing frequency: as 2-D projections, 3-D holograms, C.G.I. renderings and A.I. chat bots….

(4) CHUTZPAH. Miguel Esteban’s memoir “Octavia Butler and the Pimply, Pompous Publisher” in the Los Angeles Review of Books reminds me of me trying to corral material from pros for my first fanzine earlier in the same decade – excluding offering to pay for it, of course.

…In 1979, when I was 14, I was determined to publish a biweekly, 24-page magazine of and about science fiction entitled Transmission. I commissioned Octavia, who was 32, to write an essay. (I do not believe I ever told her my age.) On July 28 of that year, I had heard her speak at the Fantasy Faire convention in Pasadena, California, where she participated in a panel debating the topic “How Science Fiction Handles Social Change.” [1] Pasadena was Octavia’s hometown.

… On August 3, 1979, I spoke and then wrote to Octavia, inviting her to contribute a 3,000-word essay to the inaugural (and ultimately only) issue of Transmission Magazine….

I offered her $50, which she accepted on the condition that she retain the copyright and the right to resell the essay three months after publication. “Since I am the only black woman writing sf, I have a feeling I’ll be needing this article again,” she explained.

At the end of the month, Octavia sent me her first draft, titled “Lost Races of Science Fiction.” We spoke over the phone, following which this cocky, 14-year-old editor sent his comments to an established and revered writer….

(5) LET’S BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE. “’It’s Like a Joy Bomb!’ Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson Open Up About New Disney Jungle Cruise Movie” in Parade Magazine.

Who would fare better in a jungle, Dwayne Johnson or Emily Blunt? “I’d like to think I would be OK,” Johnson says, then points his finger at Blunt, his co-star in the new action-packed summer movie Jungle Cruise. “You would struggle.”

But the actress is not having it. “You would be lost without your lip balm!” she says. “And you wouldn’t have your soap. He’s the cleanest human being alive. He needs to shower about five times a day.” Blunt slams down her hand and looks at their interviewer. “Now, what else do you want to know?”…

(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • 1953 – Sixty- eight years ago on this date, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, a Merrie Melodies cartoon starring Daffy Duck as space hero Duck Dodgers, premiered before films playing in the United States. This cartoon was the first of many appearances of the Duck Dodgers character including the Duck Dodgers series on the Cartoon Network. Porky Pig is here as a space cadet as is Marvin the Martian who first appeared very briefly in Haredevil Hare, a 1948 cartoon. It was directed by Charles M. Jones from a story by Michael Maltese and produced by Edward Selzer though he’s uncredited in the cartoon. 

George Lucas wanted it be shown before Star Wars during its initial run in theaters  but couldn’t get the rights.  At Noreascon 4, it was nominated for a Retro Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation — Short Form though The War of the Worlds (1953; Paramount) would win. Bits of the cartoon are on YouTube but the entire cartoon is not. You can purchase it on iTunes in a twofer with another Daffy cartoon, “The Scarlet Pumpernickel” for a buck ninety nine. Yeah I bought it. (And don’t get started me on the rabbit hole of watching Warner Brothers cartoons!) 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 25, 1907 Cyril Luckham. He played the White Guardian first in the Fourth Doctor story, “The Ribos Opperation”, part one and than twice more in the two part Fifth Doctor story, “Enlightment”.  He was also Dr. Moe in the Fifties pulp film Stranger from Venus, and also showed up in The Omega FactorA Midsummer Night’s DreamRandall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and Tales of The Unexpected. (Died 1989.)
  • Born July 25, 1910 Kendell Foster Crossen. He was the creator and writer of the Green Lama stories.  He was a Buddhist crime fighter whose powers were activated upon the recitation of the Tibetan chant om mani padme hum. He also wrote Manning Draco series, an intergalactic insurance investigator, four of which are can be found in Once Upon a Star: A Novel of the Future. Kindle has a really deep catalog of his genre work, and the Green Lama stories have been made into audio works as well. (Died 1981.)
  • Born July 25, 1922 Evelyn E. Smith. She has the delightful bio of being a writer of sf and mysteries, as well as a compiler of crossword puzzles. During the 1950s, she published both short stories and novelettes in Galaxy Science FictionFantastic Universe and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her SF novels include The Perfect Planet and The Copy Shop. A look at the usual suspects shows a two story collections but none of her novels. Interestingly there are myriad stories by her offered up separately for sale. (Died 2000.)
  • Born July 25, 1948 Brian Stableford, 73. I am reasonably sure that I’ve read and enjoyed all of the Hooded Swan series a long time ago which I see has since been collected as Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan Collection. And I’ve certainly read a fair amount of his short fiction down the years. He has but one English language Award, a BSFA for Best Short Fiction for “The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires” though he has a lot of nominations. The Hooded Swan series is available as separate novels from the usual suspects for two dollars and ninety-nine cents each. 
  • Born July 25, 1969 D.B Woodside, 52. He has a recurring role as Principal Robin Wood on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, mostly in season seven.  Later he’s Amenadiel on Lucifer. He has one-offs in Prey which I’ve never heard of and Numb3rs.
  • Born July 25, 1971 Chloë Annett, 50. She played Holly Turner in the Crime Traveller series and Kristine Kochanski in the Red Dwarf series. She was in the “Klingons vs. Vulcans” episode of the Space Cadets sort of game show. 
  • Born July 25, 1973 Mur Lafferty, 48. Podcaster and writer. Co-editor of the Escape Pod podcast with Divya Breed, her second time around. She is also the host and creator of the podcast I Should Be Writing which won a Parsec Award for Best Writing Podcast.. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Escape Artists short fiction magazine Mothership Zeta. And then there’s the Ditch Diggers podcast she started with Matt Wallace which is suppose to show the brutal, honest side of writing. For that, It won the Hugo Award for Best Fancast at Worldcon 76, having been a finalist the year before.  Fiction wise, I loved both The Shambling Guide to New York City and A Ghost Train to New Orleans with I think the second being a better novel.
  • Born July 25, 1979 Bryan Cogman, 42. He wrote eleven episodes of The Game of Thrones. He also acted in it, that being a cameo in “The Lion and The Rose” episode as a Dragonstone waiter. He would share a Hugo at Chicon 7 for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form for Game of Thrones, Season One. He’s writer and producer of the forthcoming The Sword in The Stone series on Disney+. He’s also a write and consulting producer for the forthcoming The Lord of The Rings on Amazon’s streaming service.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Ziggy’s solves a problem and creates a neighborhood attraction.

(9) SLOUCHING TOWARD THE ISS. “Russian Module Headed for the ISS Is Still Having Problems”Gizmodo has the details.

Russia’s newly launched International Space Station module Nauka is still in the fight as of Friday afternoon, as early reports indicate that the module’s backup engines have fired successfully. That’s a big relief for Roscosmos, which nearly saw its long-awaited module become a tragic piece of space trivia instead of the newest piece of the International Space Station. But it’s not out of the woods yet.

The first glitch in Nauka’s journey happened yesterday, when the spacecraft didn’t complete its first orbit-raising burn. This meant that the uncrewed Nauka wasn’t on track to actually intercept the ISS, which it’s scheduled to dock with on Thursday, July 29. The problem was attributed to a software issue in a computer aboard Nauka, which prevented the spacecraft’s main engines from firing. Nauka’s team was able to manage a remote course correction, but a second bout of course corrections were deemed necessary, and scheduled for today. One early report from journalist Anatoly Zak indicated that one of the spacecraft’s engines sputtered back to life in a mission. The “backup engine seems to have fired fine,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in an email today, though he added that the status of the engines was not yet certain and it would likely be a few hours before a new dataset from Nauka verified the situation.

The thrusters are just one piece of the engineering puzzle, so the new module is hardly home free…. 

(10) CLOUDY, WITH A CHANCE OF HOMICIDE. Mashable introduces the trailer for a new animated series: “’Blade Runner: Black Lotus’ trailer: Adult Swim and Crunchyroll team up”.

A new trailer for the team-up between the Cartoon Network offshoot and anime streamer Crunchyroll serves us a first look at this CG take on the sci-fi dystopia dreamed up by filmmaker Ridley Scott. The 13-episode series stars, on the English-language side, Jessica Henwick (Netflix Marvel’s Colleen Wing) as a female replicant with a mysterious backstory and purpose.

(11) JOE DANTE RETROSPECTIVE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Joe Dante’s Battle With Hollywood,” the Royal Ocean Film Society looks at the career of Joe Dante through three films:  Looney Tunes:  Back In Action, which Dante says took up a year and a half of his life and was micromanaged to death; Explorers, which has its moments but is essentially a rough draft, and Gremlins 2:  A New Batch, which is a crazy film that has Leonard Maltin killed on screen for writing a bad review and Robert Picardo marrying a gremlin!

(12) RARITIES. YouTube’s “The Auction Professor” calls these the “Top 20 Most Valuable Vintage Paperbacks”. Editions of Richard Bachman? Check. Something published by Vargo Statten – what? I didn’t know anybody outside of fanzines had ever heard of Vargo! As for the Star Wars and nonfiction books about Dune, I’m sorry to say I’ve never owned any of them! (If I own it, it’s not rare, predictably.) Don’t miss the “bonus” commentary following the credits.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, Will R., John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]