(1) COVID-19 VACCINATION. First responder and noted fanzine fan Curt Phillips posted a photo on Facebook of him receiving the injection —
First Covid 19 vaccination accomplished this morning. Fast, simple, easy. No adverse reactions at all. *Everybody* should get one!
Soon as we can, Curt! He’s followed up in the intervening hours with a couple of posts to say there were no complications and there was no more arm soreness than there is with his annual flu shot.
(2) IN OVERTIME. “An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang, and can still be observed today, says Nobel winner”, quoted in Yahoo! News.
…The timescale for the complete evaporation of a black hole is huge, possibly longer than the age of our current universe, making them impossible to detect.
However, Sir Roger believes that ‘dead’ black holes from earlier universes or ‘aeons’ are observable now. If true, it would prove Hawking’s theories were correct.
Sir Roger shared the World Prize in physics with Prof Hawking in 1988 for their work on black holes.
Speaking from his home in Oxford, Sir Roger said: “I claim that there is observation of Hawking radiation.
“The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future.
“We have a universe that expands and expands, and all mass decays away, and in this crazy theory of mine, that remote future becomes the Big Bang of another aeon.
“So our Big Bang began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon and there would have been similar black holes evaporating away, via Hawking evaporation, and they would produce these points in the sky, that I call Hawking Points.
“We are seeing them. These points are about eight times the diameter of the Moon and are slightly warmed up regions. There is pretty good evidence for at least six of these points.”
(3) MULTIPLE CHOICES. The Guardian’s “Can you crack it? The bumper books quiz of 2020” includes a question about Iain Banks which I missed, so to heck with it anyway. (It’s a wide-ranging quiz. There are several more sff-themed entries. I missed almost every one of them, too, so double to heck with it.)
What day job did the Booker winner have while writing his novel? Who was rejected by Mills & Boon before becoming a bestselling author? Test your wits with questions from Bernardine Evaristo, Jonathan Coe, David Nicholls and more
(4) FAN SERVICE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is from Isaac Asimov’s In Memory Yet Green.
In The Early Asimov, I included “Big Game” among the list of those stories of mine that disappeared. Not so. I had it all these years and, without knowing it, had included the manuscript with papers of mine that I had donated to the Boston University library. A young science-fiction enthusiast, Matthew Bruce Tepper, who had prepared an accurate and exhaustive bibliography of my science fiction, went through my papers at BU, uncovered the manuscript, and sent me a Xerox copy. I had the story published in Before The Golden Age (Doubleday, 1974).
(5) IN MEMORY YET BROWN. Scott Edelman asks for help in tracing the history of this DC in 1974 Worldcon bid promotional shopping bag.
I found this among my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s collection of science fictional memorabilia — an item I’d never seen before, promoting both Disclave and the 1974 D.C. Worldcon. You, who know all and see all, surely know when and where this might have been handed out — right?
And if not you, perhaps one of your readers.
(6) SOUNDS HAPPY. In “Christopher Eccleston opens up on returning to Doctor Who”, Radio Times interviews the actor about his audio roles for Big Finish.
…Eccleston went on to praise the scripts, which he described as “beautiful” – adding that the care and knowledge that had gone into them had played a huge part in easing him back into the role after such a long time away.
“That’s what made it feel seamless,” he said. “I felt that you [Briggs] understood what he was all those years ago – and so it was like putting on a pair of old shoes. Running shoes!
“Doing the scripts, you do get the sense of somebody who’s completely immersed in the lore of the show. I think what I realised, with all my writers, when I did the 13 episodes – and with this – is basically you’re playing the writer.
“You’re playing Steven Moffat, you’re playing Russell T Davies, you’re playing you [or] Rob Shearman… you’re playing them, their projected self, as the Doctor – and that’s what’s nice, because he has a slightly different voice from episode-to-episode while having continuity, of course. You all wanna be the Doctor!”
(7) GEISER OBIT. Artist David Geiser died in October. The East Hampton Star traced his career.
David Geiser, an artist whose career ranged from the underground comics he created in San Francisco in the late 1960s and 1970s to heavily textured mixed-media works he focused on after moving to New York in 1979, died unexpectedly of heart disease in his sleep at home in Springs on Oct. 14. He was 73.
A prolific artist, his work from the underground comics early in his career to recent drawings such as “Snail Ridin’ the Mouse” and “Dog Boy (a Young Cynic)” reflect his not only his wit and the eccentricity of his vision but also his remarkable draftsmanship….
“David left behind scores of underground comics from his early years in San Francisco, and hundreds of drawings and paintings,” as well as sculptures ranging in size from five inches square to 10 feet by 10 feet, according to Mercedes Ruehl, his partner since 1999. “In his spare time he was an avid reader of contemporary fiction from a wide array of cultures and nationalities,” she added….
(8) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
- 1995 – Twenty five years ago, Elizabeth Hand won the Otherwise Award for Waking the Moon. It would go on to win the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature the next year. And Terri Windling would in her fantasy summation in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighth Annual Collection select it as of her best books of the year. The American first edition cuts one hundred pages out of the British first edition.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
- Born December 20, 1897 – Susanne Langer, Ph.D. First woman popularly and professionally recognized as an American philosopher. Fellow of the Amer. Acad. Arts & Sciences. Cellist. Five short stories for us, in The Cruise of “The Little Dipper”. (Died 1985) [JH]
- Born December 20, 1930 – Tom Boardman, Jr. Son of the founder of UK’s Boardman Books, managing director after it left the family, SF advisor to Gollancz, Four Square, Macdonald, New English Lib’y. Edited five reprint anthologies 1964-1979. An ABC of SF got Aldiss to Zelazny if we allow its pseudonymous B.T.H. Xerxes. (Died 2017) [JH]
- Born December 20, 1943 — Jacqueline Pearce. She’s best remembered as the villain Servalan on Blake’s 7. She appeared in “The Two Doctors”, a Second and Sixth Doctor story as Chessene, and she’d voice Admiral Mettna in “Death Comes to Time”, a Seventh Doctor story. I’d be remiss not to note her one-offs in Danger Man, The Avengers, The Chronicles of Young Indiana Jones and The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. (Died 2018.) (CE)
- Born December 20, 1952 — Kate Atkinson, 68. A strong case can be made that her Jackson Brodie detective novels are at least genre adjacent with their level of Universe assisting metanarrative. (The Jason Isaacs fronted series is superb.) The Life After Life duology is definitely SF and pretty good reading. She’s well stocked on all of the digital book vendors. (CE)
- Born December 20, 1952 — Jenny Agutter, 66. Her first SF role was Jessica 6, the female lead in Logan’s Run. Later genre roles include Nurse Alex Price in An American Werewolf in London (fantastic film), Carolyn Page in Dark Tower which is not a Stephen King based film, an uncredited cameo as a burn doctor in one of my all-time fav films which is Darkman, and finally she was Councilwoman Hawley in The Avengers and The Winter Soldier. (CE)
- Born December 20, 1957 – Angela Hunt, Ph.D., age 63. Two novels, five shorter stories for us; a hundred fifty books, children’s, middle-graders’, adults’; some nonfiction; five million copies sold. Romantic Times Book Club Lifetime Achievement Award. A Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year. Also Angela Hunt Photography. One of her dogs was on Live With Regis and Kelly as second largest in America. [JH]
- Born December 20, 1960 — Nalo Hopkinson, 60. Named a SFWA Grand Master this year. First novel I ever read by her was Brown Girl in The Ring, a truly amazing novel. Like most of her work, it draws on Afro-Caribbean history and language, and its intertwined traditions of oral and written storytelling. I’d also single out Mojo: Conjure Stories and Falling in Love With Hominids collections as they are both wonderful and challenging reading. Worth seeking out is her edited Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction. She was a Guest of Honor at Wiscon thrice. Is that unusual? (CE)
- Born December 20, 1967 – Jukka Halme, age 53. Chaired three Finncons. Guest of Honor at Eurocon 33 (Stockholm) and 37 (St. Petersburg). GUFF (Going Under Fan Fund when southbound, Get Up-and-over Fan Fund northbound) delegate, attended the 55th Australian national convention (“natcon”) in Brisbane. Chaired the 75th Worldcon (called simply “Worldcon 75”; opinions expectably differ on naming these things). Seen in fanzines e.g. Chunga, Twink, The White Notebooks. Served on the 2020 Tähtifantasia (“star fantasy”) Award jury. [JH]
- Born December 20, 1970 — Nicole de Boer, 50. Best remembered for playing the trill Ezri Dax on the final season of Deep Space Nine (1998–1999), and as Sarah Bannerman on The Dead Zone. She’s done a number of genre films including Deepwater Black, Cube, Iron Invader, and Metal Tornado, and has one-offs in Beyond Reality, Forever Knight, TekWar, Outer Limits, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Psi Factor and Stargate Atlantis. Did I mention she’s Canadian? (CE)
- Born December 20, 1981 – Nick Deligaris, age 39. Digital artist. Two dozen covers, and much else. Here is Bypass Gemini. Here is Skykeep. Here is Nova Igniter. He did the cover and is interviewed in this issue of Deep Magic. He has an interior on p. 5 of this issue of Tightbeam (PDF). [JH]
- Born December 20, 1990 – Ashley Dioses, age 30. Five short stories; a hundred forty poems in The Audient Void, The Literary Hatchet, Ravenwood Quarterly, Spectral Realms, Weirdbook; collection Diary of a Sorceress. Inspired by Poe. [JH]
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- The Order of the Stick defies a rule of good writing. Maybe.
(11) SEASON’S READINGS. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar suggest “The perfect science fiction, fantasy and genre-bending tales for the chilly days ahead” in their column for the Washington Post.
.. Lavie: Let me throw the first snowball here: I’m going with Tove Jannson’s “Moominland Midwinter” (translated from the Swedish by Thomas Warburton), one of the true greats and my favorite moomin book. Moomintroll wakes up alone from hibernation to find the world transformed, and everyone he knows is gone or sleeping (apart from Little My, who’ll never miss the fun). If you don’t cry over “The Squirrel With the Marvelous Tail,” you’re a monster. I reread it a few weeks ago and it’s just as wonderful as ever.
(12) NIVEN’S GENESIS. Fanac.org adds constantly to its online fannish collection. Among the latest gems are the programs from the series of LASFS Fanquets the club used to hold to honor members’ first pro sales. Larry Niven is now a Grand Master, but once upon his time he made his first sale to If. Read about his early career and what Fred Pohl liked about his work in Fanquet 13 edited by Bruce Pelz.
(13) ANOTHER ONE OF THE GREATS. Also deserving of praise is Fanac.org’s success in filling out its online collection of John Bangsund’s zines Australian Science Fiction Review and Scythrop.
Australian Science Fiction Review was nominated for Best Fanzine in 1967 and 1968. In 1968 (in the first year the Ditmars were presented), it won the award for best Australian fanzine. We now have a complete run under that name. The zine changed its name to Scythrop in 1969, and we added 5 issues of Scythrop: #21-24 and #28. We just lost John Bangsund to Covid-19 this year.
(14) PARIS, BUT NOT IN THE SPRINGTIME. Could be news to you, too – J. G. Ballard’s interview in The Paris Review, Winter 1984: “The Art of Fiction No. 85”
BALLARD
I take for granted that for the imaginative writer, the exercise of the imagination is part of the basic process of coping with reality, just as actors need to act all the time to make up for some deficiency in their sense of themselves. Years ago, sitting at the café outside the American Express building in Athens, I watched the British actor Michael Redgrave (father of Vanessa) cross the street in the lunchtime crowd, buy Time at a magazine kiosk, indulge in brief banter with the owner, sit down, order a drink, then get up and walk away—every moment of which, every gesture, was clearly acted, that is, stressed and exaggerated in a self-conscious way, although he obviously thought that no one was aware who he was, and he didn’t think that anyone was watching him. I take it that the same process works for the writer, except that the writer is assigning himself his own roles. I have a sense of certain gathering obsessions and roles, certain corners of the field where the next stage of the hunt will be carried on. I know that if I don’t write, say on holiday, I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.
(15) GAMING CASUALTY. The curse of 2020 continues.Mashable reports “’Cyberpunk 2077′ has been removed from the PlayStation Store, and Sony is offering refunds”.
Cyberpunk 2077‘s launch has been the kind of disaster we now expect from 2020. Released on Dec. 10, the ridiculously hyped roleplaying game was swiftly and widely derided for having more bugs than the Montreal Insectarium, with flying cars and glitchy penises dominating the discourse. Now, Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that not only will it offer refunds to anyone who bought the game from its PlayStation Store, it will also stop selling Cyberpunk 2077 altogether….
(16) YOUR COMEDY MILEAGE MAY VARY. From last night’s Saturday Night Live.
- “The Grinch” explains all the fun the Grinch had in Whoville the day after he carved roast beast at the feast.
- “Middle Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles: Episode 2” says the turtles aren’t having as much fun now that they’re middle-aged and full of aches and pains.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, John Hertz, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, Dann, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
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(12) Cool! Will share with some Niven fans I know.
“Keyser Söze is the name of his sled”
8) Waking The Moon is probably my favorite Elizabeth Hand novel. I love how much of it is set in a magical version of Washington DC. You can tell that Hand has obviously done her homework (like mentioning the club that was around before the 9:30 Club).
11) Wasn’t Nalo Hopkinson just made SFWA Grand Master?
Rob Thornton: That SFWA Grand Master should be the first thing we mention. Now it is!
6) He wrote a bit about his season in his memoir and noted that he was very deep in the middle of having an eating disorder while filming and it complicated his interactions with it, so I’m glad he seems to be having actual fun with his return.
10) I’m pretty firmly going with “Something else is up”.
Yay, another title credit! Thanks, Mike!
Almost functional!
I too, like Lis, am almost functional. My headache was very, very bad yesterday and it just retreated back to its usual just annoying state of being today. I’ve got a new med for it that I’ll be starting on Thursday when I pick it up at Martins Point when I’m there for other reasons.
(I take enough meds that Jenner is very cautious at adding to what I take.)
16) Both the Middle Aged Mutant Turtles episodes so far have been hilarious. I didn’t love the Grinch sketch. Having the kids in it–even played by adults–made it a little harder to watch than it should have been. Kristen Wiig was great in it, though. She underplayed her role–not her usual tactic–and made it very funny. The “kids” were great, too.
I am not a huge Kristen Wiig fan. When she’s on, there’s no one better, but so much of her material isn’t to my taste that a lot of it misses me. That’s on me and not her. I still liked this show and her performance. She had two other almost-genre sketches I liked a lot. This alternate ending to Home Alone 2 does involve the somewhat magical Pigeon Lady, and surely this U.S.O. performance is from an alternate history. But the monologue is the best. Surely an amazing performance of a song from Mary Poppins is of interest!
John A Arkansawyer: Surely an amazing performance of a song from Mary Poppins is of interest!
Surely it’s a song from The Sound of Music?
[/pedantry]
The dog on the ceiling lyric was my absolute favorite…thing.
Meredith moment: N K Jemisin’s The City We Became is at 99p on the Amazon UK Kindle store. I wasn’t a fan of the original story, but I’ll probably pick it up.
Andrew (not Werdna) on December 20, 2020 at 6:12 pm said:
I am totally stealing that!
(8) Why didn’t Elizabeth Moon ever write a book called Stealing the Hand? 😀
Just asking, when is the 2021 recommended SF page going to be up? There is a novel I want to recommend.
1) COVID vaccination: I certainly plan to get one as soon as reasonably possible!
3) 26/55, although most of my right answers were more or less lucky guesses. I did know the Iain Banks question, having heard that exact fact about him somewhere recently. I can’t quite recall where: maybe it was the Wired videogame email newsletter? (Which I subscribed to because Learned League occasionally has questions about recent videogames.)
3) Also 26/55 – and a lot of guessing (I have a knack for connecting book covers I’ve never seen with the correct titles I’ve not heard of)
@Xtifr: Steal away!
15) “glitchy penises dominating the discourse” is a good description of 2020.
3) 21/55, most of them guesses.
@JJ: My age is showing. I clearly think if you’ve seen one Julie Andrews movie, you’ve seen ’em all. But it’s still got babies with beards and mittens with wings.
3) 26/55. I actually knew the answers to 2 of them, and for a few others I could rule some answers out as unlikely.
OGH: I’m glad to have provided some actual Christmas cheer of the actually cheerful sort.
Let’s also not forget that Jenny Agutter played Morgan Le Fay to Richard Kiley’s Lancelot on the New Twilight Zone. Adapted by George RR Martin from Roger Zelazny’s story.
@ David Shallcross – question 18 – “Name the author of the 2020 book Bringing Up Race: How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World.” – may have been the easiest to guess by a process of elimination :).
John A Arkansawyer said:
Does that include VICTOR, VICTORIA ? (either as the one seen, or ’em all)
BTW, shame she never got to be in a Bond film. (Perhaps at this point she could be M or Q?)
@Daniel Dern: I didn’t think of that one! It was S.O.B. that flashed through my mind.
@John A Arkansawyer
Interestingly, I see that Robert Preston, in addition to being in V/V (which I already knew), was also in S.O.B. (which I’m not familiar with).
@John A Arkansawyer
Wasn’t that the one where she had the topless scene? (showing my age, too).
(7) Mercedes Ruehl has a couple genre credits (thinking of Fisher King and Last Action Hero).
@Daniel Dern: Robert Preston’s role as “Centauri” in “The Last Starfighter” is so like his role as Professor Harold Hill that it’s easy to believe that old Prof. Hill was an undercover alien, preparing the way in Iowa for the development of videogames that would eventually produce the starfighters that the Rylan Star League need.
(9) “Nicole de Boer, 50” She may not approve of that listing. I heard her speak a few years ago at Starbase Indy, a small fan-run Star Trek convention, and she felt quite strongly that it had hurt her career when IMDB published her birthdate so that her actual age was now publicly known.
Dennis Howard: You remind me of the time a well-known author asked that we remove his birthdate because he was concerned about identity theft. Which we did. And told him where we had gotten it — the Wikipedia.
Mike: Yes! I’m just reporting what she said. Although I think that even without IMDB anyone could look at her acting history and make a good guess about her age. But also, she does have a point about Hollywood and women in their 40s/50s.
(9) Jacqueline Pearce also played a double role in the BBC adaptation of ‘Moondial’.
Victor, Victoria! My folks took me to see that movie when I was 18. It was a terrible struggle; I didn’t know if I was allowed to laugh or not… . Never see a risque comedy with your very straightlaced parents when you’re a teenager.
Cassy
Dennis Howard says “Nicole de Boer, 50” She may not approve of that listing. I heard her speak a few years ago at Starbase Indy, a small fan-run Star Trek convention, and she felt quite strongly that it had hurt her career when IMDB published her birthdate so that her actual age was now publicly known.
I found her birthdate listed on at least three sites including ISFDB, IMDB and Wikipedia. So I don’t really give a damn if she approves of being listing and having her Birthdate noted here. I don’t do Birthdays where I can’t find a Birthday date for an individual as Mike knows as we’ve discussed this before, but if a date is up, they’re fair game,
I personally think that people who want to futz their ages for whatever reason and want us to play along owe us the courtesy of a credible, consistent lie we can all agree upon.
Just call me a modernist and bless my heart, but a boy has his dignity. I’d rather not lie for someone, but if I’m going to, I’d prefer not to look stupid on the side.
@jayn: It is the movie with the flashing, which I’ve never seen. I don’t know why. The plot is right up my alley…a little Producers here, a little Blue Movie there, a big old heap of cynicism on top of it. I think I was put off by “Julie Andrews topless”. It’s one thing as art and another as a gimmick, and this being Hollywood, I expected the worst.
I mean, my roommate has fallen asleep in front of the tube turned to Comet TV. I walked through a few minutes ago and saw a cool musical number followed by furry aliens looking at Earth. “That one looks like the Grinch,” I thought, and looked up his name: Wiploc. “Dang. That’s Jim Carrey. I think I’ll watch a little of this.”
If I’d known I was watching Earth Girls Are Easy, I don’t think I’d’ve started. Now I’ve had to pull myself away. After ten minutes, it’s funny and not great but maybe pretty good?
But I expected total trash…and I don’t mean the Sonic Youth song. I love that song.
@John —
Heh. This reminds me of my own birthday futzing.
I give a fake birthdate online whenever I can get away with it — sites like Facebook or liquor websites or whatever often want my birthday, but there’s no reason they need the real one. So I use 1/1/70 as my birthdate, because it’s easy to remember. And yes, it shaves a few years off my real birthdate, but that’s beside the point.
The only time it has ever mattered is when I get happy birthday wishes on Facebook every New Years. 😉
(12) Interestingly, there’s a discrepancy between what the Fanquet 13 says about the histories of Fanquets and what the Fancyclopedia says https://fancyclopedia.org/Fanquet (for example, the Fanquet 13 history says that Al Hernhuter was honored but the Fancyclopedia doesn’t list him)
(9) Nicole de Boer was in 13 episodes of Beyond Reality (one of the main characters in second season, I think), which is where I saw her before she apppeared in Deep Space Nine.
Tom Becker: Just asking, when is the 2021 recommended SF page going to be up? There is a novel I want to recommend.
You mean for a novel which will be published next year? We post that after Hugo nominations have closed (March-April), to avoid people getting confused between the two years’ lists.
John A Arkansawyer: “That one looks like the Grinch,” I thought, and looked up his name: Wiploc. “Dang. That’s Jim Carrey.”
My favorite whoa, that’s Jim Carrey moment is at the beginning of The Dead Pool, when he plays a rock star lip-synching to Guns ‘n Roses while filming a music video — directed by whoa, that’s Liam Neeson. 😀
(9) Jenny Agutter also appeared as Morgan le Fay in the ‘Last Defender of Camelot’ story in the revived “Twilight Zone”, of course based on the short story by Roger Zelazny.
9) If the barn has already burned down, don’t ask me to pretend the emperor is wearing Versace.
@JJ: For a novel that was published in 2019 in New Zealand*. I’m pretty sure it will have eligibility in 2021 when it is published in North America.
*New Zealand is 19 hours and 15 months ahead of California.
Tom Becker: For a novel that was published in 2019 in New Zealand*. I’m pretty sure it will have eligibility in 2021 when it is published in North America.
Why don’t you go ahead and plug it right here, right now? That way Filers can keep an eye out for it, and hopefully you, or someone*, will remember to post it when the 2021 Recommended SF/F post goes up.
* sometimes my memory is so good it scares me, other times I fear I’m well down the road into dementia — so I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything 😛
@Cat Eldridge
Seems kind of harsh. Even if you don’t feel any obligation to help put that genii back into the bottle, you could at least be sympathetic to the problems that she faces as an aging actress.
bill says Seems kind of harsh. Even if you don’t feel any obligation to help put that genii back into the bottle, you could at least be sympathetic to the problems that she faces as an aging actress.
I’ve no sympathy because I’ve no proof that her career has suffer because of her age. It appears to be going along as that of a third tier performer does. She’s not really even a second tier performer so I wouldn’t expect her to be that busy and looking at IMDb she isn’t. There’s thousands of performers, of all genders, precisely like her.
Usually, it seems that you give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they’ve been hurt by someone else’s conduct.
bill says Usually, it seems that you give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they’ve been hurt by someone else’s conduct.
Not everything’s a conspiracy. Like the Puppies kvetching that the Great Houses are biased against them when they aren’t, I don’t see anything unusual here. There are myriad performers like her, and I’m betting any of us can name several of them regardless of gender or age, whose careers came to abrupt endings earlier than expected. She’s a decent enough performer but hardly an exceptional one. I’m hard pressed to remember her work in Deep Space Nine let alone in Beyond Reality which I did watch.
The Absolute Book is a contemporary fantasy by Elizabeth Knox. Published in 2019 by Victoria University Press, NZ. North American publication is scheduled for February 2021 by Viking. Australian and UK publication will be by Penguin in February and March, respectively. It probably will have award eligibility in 2021, but regardless, I’m hoping a lot of people will read it and we can discuss it.
If you aren’t familiar with Elizabeth Knox’s work, The Absolute Book is a standalone and a good place to start. Her fantasies are imaginative, complex and unorthodox, with intelligent, fascinating characters. Comparisons would be apt to Neil Gaiman, Martha Wells, and Jo Walton, among others.
Tom Becker: The Absolute Book is a contemporary fantasy by Elizabeth Knox.
Ah, yes, Camestros did a review of that last March. I am curious to read it once it becomes available to me; there’s always a question when a book is massively-hyped as to whether it will live up to the hype for me.