The Nova Awards celebrate achievement in British and Irish science fiction fanzines. The 2013 winners were announced this weekend at Novacon 43 in Nottingham, UK.
Best Fanzine
Banana Wings
Best Fanwriter
Mike Meara
Best Fan Artist
D. West
This is Meara’s first win.
Banana Wings has won 8 Nova Awards, its first in 1996.
D. West has won 11 Nova Awards going back to 1984 – including one as Best Fanwriter.
Fred Patten
Fred Patten co-founded the first American anime fan club, the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, in 1977, won Comic-Con’s Inkpot Award in 1980 for introducing anime to American fandom, and for several decades has been one of the animation field’s most prolific reviewers and researchers. Despite the lasting effects of a stroke suffered in 2005, Patten continues to write at a pace few fans can equal.
Fred contributes a weekly column, “Funny Animals and More” to Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research site. A recent installment was devoted to “Debunking the Myths” about Crusader Rabbit’s first air date, and Walt Disney’s racism and anti-Semitism.
He’s also a critic for Animation World Network, where he complemented the Disney article with a review of two books about Song of the South —
Although very similar in subject matter, they are very different in theme. Disney’s Most Notorious Film, from the University of Texas Press and filled with scholarly footnotes, starts out with the preconception that Disney’s combination live-action/animation feature Song of the South, made in 1946 when Walt Disney was very much in charge of his studio, was a blatantly condescending racist film, an embarrassment that the studio has been trying to cover up while continuing to cash in on as much as possible. In other words, the book is an academic exposé. Who’s Afraid of the Song of the South?, by a longtime Disney studio employee and fan, argues that it is not racist, and that the Disney company should stop suppressing it today and release it on home video.
And Fred’s news and reviews are available on Flayrah: furry food for thought.
Sometimes Fred himself is the newsmaker. He’s been an active editor, with two anthologies out last year — Already Among Us: An Anthropomorphic Anthology (Legion Printing, June 2012); and The Ursa Major Awards Anthology: A Tenth Anniversary Celebration (FurPlanet Productions, June 2012) – and another anthology coming from FurPlanet this July.
Fred remains a favorite interview subject of anime historians. Otaku in a Bottle talked to Fred about the early popularity of anime in America in a March 2012 post.
Allyn Cadogan. Photo by Gary S. Mattingly.
Part of the faannish trio who founded Corflu, Allyn Cadogan died of liver cancer on April 16 in Tucson, AZ.
The fanzine fans’ convention was the margarita-inspired idea of Cadogan, Lucy Huntzinger and Shay Barsabe during an evening in 1983 spent lamenting the marginalization of fanzine fandom at the big conventions. They held the first Corflu the following year in Berkeley.
Prior to moving to the Bay Area, Cadogan was an integral part of Vancouver’s vibrant fan community — editor of the local club’s BCFSAzine (August 1976-September 1977), and treasurer of Westercon 30, held at the University of British Columbia in 1977.
In 1977, Allyn Cadogan, Susan Wood, William Gibson and John Park also released the first two issues of Genre Plat, which Cadogan continued to publish solo once she set down in San Francisco.
What seemed a supremely important piece of esoterica in those days was the source of the title, a reference to a box of Kaybee toothpicks with a bilingual label saying “Flat style” in English, and in French, “Genre Plat.” Those of us who knew no French at all felt it added to the zine’s Canadian mystique.
Genre Plat was that rare fanzine able to maintain a faanish atmosphere while paying a great deal of attention to science fiction. The 1978 issue featured Cadogan’s interview of Kate Wilhelm at Westercon 30. Gibson had just sold his first short story in 1977, but was a few years away from hitting the big time, meanwhile wrote sercon for Locus and SF Review. Susan Wood, then a professor at the University of British Columbia, was actually the best known of the editorial quartet, winning the second of her three Best Fan Writer Hugos the year the zine began.
Cadogan would be associated with a more distinctly faanish zine when she co-edited Convention Girls’ Digest with Sharee Carton and Lucy Huntzinger in the 1980s. And along the way she also produced several issues of Bunnies, Zucchinis, & Sweet Basil.
The Cadogan-Huntzinger-Barsabe trio, before founding Corflu, produced the Emperor Norton Science Fiction Hour, a public-access television program in San Francisco during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In the mid-1980s she was married to Karl Mosgofian for awhile and the couple had their own company, Asta Computer Services.
Lucy Huntzinger paid this final tribute to Cadogan:
She was wickedly funny, generous, enthusiastic, artistic, smart as hell. She was a very good friend.
But Thog does have a website — Thog.org.
“Thog’s Masterclass” started running in Ansible in August 1994 — will the LonCon 3 Worldcon committee celebrate the 20th anniversary?
While Dave Langford has been publishing selected quotes from wretched sf/fantasy since 1979, Thog’s name was put on the marquee after Dave worked with the character’s creator, Paul Barnett, on the Eastercon newzine.
Who is Thog?
Thog the Mighty, a not terribly bright barbarian hero, is the creation of John Grant (Paul Barnett) in his “Lone Wolf” fantasy novels loosely based on Joe Dever’s gamebooks. Thog first appeared in The Claws of Helgedad (1991), and attained front-cover stardom in The Book of the Magnakai (1992)…
Everything’s up-to-date at Thog.org. Find material using the “Search, Loot & Pillage Engine” or just hit the “I Feel Unlucky” button and let the “Thog-o-Matic Random Selector” choose for you…
By John Hertz: Fans of our Publius and fans of WOOF might like to see what he almost got into No. 37 at Chicon VII, reprinted by permission from Always Going Home 10:
I started a contribution for the World Order Of Faneditors collation, but proved unable to finish it in the time available. Herewith is presented the opening paragraph, in Latin as seemed fitting. I am not satisfied with the quality of the language, but it should be clear enough, I think.
Vero felix est congredere septimo in hanc Chicago, urbem alabastron carminae. Felix est autem amor philosofabularum atque amicitia communa, quia annuale a partibus remotis mundi conveniamus. Nonne est hoc congressum nostrum rei publicae litterarum pars plusquam benedicta? Et quis plus benedictus quam nos amateditores, cordes & venae illius corresponsus quae circulatio sanguis huius corporis est? Quapropter, donec rationem melioram habeamus, gaudiamus & iubiliamus.
It may be seen that I forebore to decline “Chicago”. I thought to render “World Science Fiction Convention” by Congressum Universale Philosofabularium, & “World Order Of Faneditors” by Ordo Amateditorium Mundi, which I hope will prove at least not terribly displeasing. For aught I know, there may be standard equivalents, as I suspect there are in Esperanto, given the well-known association of that language with fandom.
At the moment that’s the extent of my permission, though I believe I may say you can get “The Airship, a Summary for Writers” (12 pp. including glossary & a note on “lifting gas”), adapted from the standing-room-only panel he moderated “Airships, the Reality” with Howard Davidson, Lisa Hayes, David Malki, Joseph P. Martino – in case you were attending the Nielsen Haydens’ Kaffeeklatsch, or the Murray Leinster panel, or “The Secret History of Science Fiction”, or Mary Robinette Kowal’s reading, or “Fans and Academics” with Betty Hull, or my Art Show tour – it was a Worldcon, right? – from him at P.O. Box 1035, Fort Worth, TX 76101 U.S.A., or [email protected].
File 770 landed on the fortunate side of another close count but must be using up its nine lives awfully fast. I’m afraid to check how many times in recent years the zine has reached the finals by a single vote.
The 2012 Hugo statistics show that Argentus, the fanzine edited by Chicago-area fan Steven H. Silver, also could have made the ballot with one more vote. I know how much he’d have enjoyed being in the race.
However, there was nothing close about the final vote in the Best Fanzine category. SF Signal, the popular blog, started with a 137 vote lead over 2011 winner The Drink Tank and still led by 97 votes when all the traditional fanzines had been eliminated. In the last round SF Signal and The Drink Tank essentially split File 770’s remaining votes with a preference.
The runoff in the Best Fan Artist category, on the other hand, made all the difference and illuminated a dramatic schism among voters.
A Hugo winner needs a majority. Voters rank the finalists in order of preference, then in each round the low vote-getter is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed to the next highest preference still in the race.
Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd) started with a 74 vote lead over winner Maurine Starkey. Munroe picked up only 26 votes in the following four rounds; Starkey collected 92, but still trailed. Then at the very end she got the lion’s share of Steve Stiles’ support which put her over the top. So you had two truly irreconcilable communities voting in this category, the Munroe fans, and the anybody-but-Munroe fans.
Lastly, I wanted to see the response to George R.R. Martin’s endorsements in the fan categories. They didn’t make the final ballot, but where did they end up? Here’s what Martin wrote on his Livejournal in January:
Some of my own favorites include PAT’S FANTASY HOTLIST, THE WERTZONE, MAKING LIGHT, THE BLOG OF THE FALLEN (okay, he doesn’t like my stuff, but it’s still a good read), STOMPING ON YETI, CHEESE MAGNETS, HATHOR LEGACY, and PUNKADIDDLE. And for Best Fan Writer, I’d suggest you consider some of the folks who write for these blogs and e-zines, including Patrick St. Denis, Adam Whitehead, Adam Roberts, and John J. Miller.
Patrick St. Denis and Adam Whitehead and their blogs did reach the top 15. (I’ve added links beside their names.) None of the others got over the event horizon.
Best Fanzine (329 ballots cast)
83 The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon (25.23%)
42 Banana Wings, edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer (12.77%)
39 Journey Planet, edited by James Bacon, Christopher J Garcia, et al. (11.85%)
38 SF Signal, edited by John DeNardo (11.55%)
37 File 770, edited by Mike Glyer (11.24%)
——————————————————————–
36 Argentus (10.94%)
30 Challenger, edited by Guy H. Lillian III (9.12%)
29 Yipe! (8.81%)
26 The Wertzone (7.90%)
17 Chunga (5.17%)
17 Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist (5.17%)
15 StarShipSofa (4.56%)
13 A Dribble of Ink (3.95%)
13 eI (3.95%)
12 The Coode Street Podcast (3.65%)
12 SF Commentary (3.65%)
12 SF in SF (3.65%)
Best Fan Writer (363 ballots cast)
63 Christopher J Garcia (21.67%)
56 Jim C. Hines (15.43%)
51 Steven H Silver (14.05%)
43 Claire Brialey (11.85%)
41 James Bacon (11.29%)
——————————————————————–
37 James Nicoll (10.19%)
30 Cheryl Morgan (8.26%)
25 Adam Whitehead (6.88%) [The Wertzone]
23 Mark Plummer (6.34%)
20 Abigail Nussbaum (5.51%)
20 Mike Glyer (5.51%)
15 David Langford (4.13%)
13 Patrick St. Denis (3.58%) [Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist]
13 Guy H. Lillian III (3.58%)
13 Mette Hedin (3.58%)
Best Fan Artist (217 ballots cast)
49 Steve Stiles (22.58%)
41 Maurine Starkey (18.89%)
25 Spring Schoenhuth (11.52%)
25 Taral Wayne (11.52%)
20 Brad W. Foster (9.21%)
20 Randall Munroe (9.21%)
——————————————————————–
14 Frank Wu (5.11%)
14 Sue Mason (6.45%)
10 Alan F. Beck (4.61%)
10 Dan Steffan (4.61%)
9 Kurt Erichsen (4.15%)
9 Dave Hicks (4.15%)
9 Dick Jenssen (Ditmar) (4.15%)
9 D West (4.15%)
9 Delphyne Woods (4.15%)
File 770 typically needs a couple of years to catch up with an internet meme. Not in this case. Isn’t it easy to imagine Mark Plummer wearing McKayla Maroney’s silver-medalist scowl while drafting his column about Chris Garcia for Strange Horizons? The first paragraph derides Chris’ overuse of the word awesome. The second paragraph frowns upon his addiction to exclamation points and liking for extra capital letters (remember “ChiCon”?) Not impressed, okay — but what made this worth a column?
Just before my fuel gauge hit the point-of-no-return I found Mark’s lede in the third paragraph, crash-landed on a lonely desert island beside Amelia Earhart’s Electra: Mark disagrees with some points Chris made comparing blogs with fanzines in an article for Apex Magazine, “What It Is We Miss When We Don’t Read Fanzines”.
Mark has circled the blog v. fanzine topic before in his Strange Horizons column and I am as willing to listen to his views as Chris Garcia’s. If only Mark would state them affirmatively! Then it would be easier to tell who’s talking because it’s not as if Chris and Mark are any farther apart than “Tastes great!” “Less filling!” or “It’s a breath mint!” “It’s a candy mint!” For example, Mark writes —
And that, I think, is the key thing about Chris’s article: that it tries to identify differences between fanzines and blogs when it seems to me that there are really far more points of commonality.
And —
Bloggers, though, may be more firmly embedded in the broader fandom as it’s played out here in 2012 and so when Chris says, “Many bloggers have become that ranting commentator who never actually participates in the events they react to; a claim held often against many zine writers of earlier days” I suspect that’s true of some fanzine writers of the present day too.
Now that Chris has cracked open the door, if Mark is willing to step through and analyze the issues of power and privilege among fanwriters in all media, I’m ready to be part of his audience.
So many capsule histories of fan fiction are appearing under the influence of Fifty Shades of Grey that one occasionally defies Sturgeon’s odds.
The Guardian’s Ewan Morrison presents an exceptionally coherent history of fan-fic, “In the beginning, there was fan fiction: from the four gospels to Fifty Shades”, noteworthy for its gloss of this faanish classic:
The Enchanted Duplicator by Walt Willis and Bob Shaw was a metafiction based on Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, but which described a world populated with sci-fi fans. It chronicles the adventures of hero Jophan in “the land of Mundane”. All of the characters in the book are renamed versions of real fans from the London SF circle of the 50s and the book was created entirely for their pleasure.
(Note: This post cried out to be named “50 Shades of Purple” — in America the word “duplicator” triggers images of volatile-smelling copies fresh from the school’s spirit duplicator. However, as anyone likely to care already knows full well, The Enchanted Duplicator is a mimeograph. The technology A.B. Dick trademarked in America as the mimeograph was often called in Britain by its generic name, stencil duplicator, otherwise shortened to duplicator.)
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]
I came across my P.L.E.R.G.B. Commission certificate from 1974 and a dittoed copy of the Constitution and Bylaws, both on blazing goldenrod paper.
Tom Digby, the author, has posted a more easily read transcript here.
John Hertz described the deeply mystic fanhistoric context of it all in What Do You Mean, Plergb?
There’s a fascinating interview of Bruce Gillespie, one of Australia’s most admired fans, on Rowena Cory Daniells’ site. Gillespie opens up about himself and also offers a lot of insights into fannish culture and history:
Q: Your work had received three Hugo Nominations before you were 30. You have received total of 45 Ditmar Nominations and 19 wins, and The A Bertram Chandler Award in 2007, plus you were fan guest of honour at AussieCon 3, the World SF Convention in 1999, is there anything left that you would like to achieve?
A: Like any other fanzine editor or writer, I would actually like to win the Hugo Award for either Best Fanzine or Best Fan Writer! …However, in 2009 I was awarded the Best Fan Writer in the annual FAAN Awards, given by my peers, the fanzine writers and editors who attend the Corflu convention in America. I count that as a great honour…
The post is richly illustrated with many rare fannish photos.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
Bruce Gillespie and Brian Aldiss at Stonehenge in 1974.