In Ascension by Martin MacInnes is the winner of the 38th Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. The selection was revealed today at an award ceremony held in London.
The annual Arthur C. Clarke Award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.
Chair of the Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler said:
As always, the judging session was filled with emotion and intelligence and it took a while for Martin MacInnes’s In Ascension to emerge as the front runner. It shows us, in the words of one judge, “vistas between the cellular and the cosmic.” It’s an intense trip and for once it’s a winner that is in the tradition of Clarke’s own novels.
Martin MacInnes receives a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2024.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The Ten Percent Thief— Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris)
In Ascension— Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books)
The Mountain in the Sea— Ray Nayler (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)
Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh (Orbit)
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility— Isabel Waidner (Hamish Hamilton)
Award Director Tom Hunter said this year they received submissions from a record-breaking 50 eligible publishing imprints. This year’s winner will be announced on July 24.
The winner will receive a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2024.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2024 are: Dolly Garland and Stark Holborn for the British Science Fiction Association; Nic Clarke and Tom Dillon for the Science Fiction Foundation; Glyn Morgan for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival; Dr. Andrew M. Butler represented the Arthur C. Clarke Award directors in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
(1) CLARKE AWARD SUBMISSION LIST. The complete list of eligible books received by Arthur C. Clarke Award judges has been posted in “Carbon-Based Bipeds: Apr 22nd”. This year the judges received 117 eligible titles from 50 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.
PEN America has canceled its 2024 Literary Awards ceremony, which was previously scheduled to be held at the Town Hall in New York City on April 29, although some awards will still be conferred. The move follows months of steadily mounting criticism of the organization over its response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which culminated last week in 28 authors withdrawing books from consideration for the awards, including nine of the 10 authors nominated for the organization’s top prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
“We greatly respect that writers have followed their consciences, whether they chose to remain as nominees in their respective categories or not,” PEN America literary programming chief officer Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf said in a statement. “We regret that this unprecedented situation has taken away the spotlight from the extraordinary work selected by esteemed, insightful and hard-working judges across all categories. As an organization dedicated to freedom of expression and writers, our commitment to recognizing and honoring outstanding authors and the literary community is steadfast.”
The $75,000 prize accompanying the PEN/Stein award will be donated, this year, to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund at the direction of the Literary Estate of Jean Stein….
The five finalists and winning titles for each of the more than 20 awards conferred by PEN America had already been selected by judges during deliberations held before the mass withdrawals, the organization said in a statement. As a result, the organization continued, the two winners who remained under consideration for their awards will receive their cash prizes. Those include Countries of Origin by Javier Fuentes (Pantheon), which was chosen to win the $10,000 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer by the late Tomas Tranströmer, translated from the Swedish by Patty Crane (Copper Canyon Press), which was chosen to win the $3,000 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
No winners will be announced if the winning title was withdrawn from consideration for the award,…
Last summer we saw enormous success in our Indiegogo fundraising campaign, but we also missed joining in writerly solidarity with the larger Clarion community. That’s why we’re returning to our roots–but we’re also hoping to shake things up a little (more news on this soon!)
As always, this year’s Thon will run concurrently with the workshop (June 23 to Aug 3) to help Clarion raise scholarship money to support future students. The Write-a-Thon also helps participants commit to writing goals for the summer.
We’ll include more details for how to participate and contribute in our next newsletter. In the meantime, it’s time to start thinking about your writing goals for the summer. We can’t wait to hear more about them!
(4) THE X-MAN AND THE WHY-MAN. Deadline shares “’Deadpool and Wolverine’ Trailer”. Deadpool & Wolverine is set to arrive in theaters on July 26. Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool, and Hugh Jackman reprises his role of Wolverine in the Marvel film.
(5) READERS TAKE DENVER, AUTHORS GIVE IT BACK. [Item by Anne Marble.] On Threads, there are a lot of upset posts about Readers Take Denver — an event for authors and readers. If you see “RTD” trending, that’s why. This weekend, it was one of the top trending items on Threads. On Twitter, the Readers Take Denver posts were mostly positive — until later on Sunday. (On Twitter, if you search for RTD, you get mainly posts about Russell T Davies of Dr. Who, so I had a hard time finding information at first.) Here are some newer Twitter posts taking on the event:
Everything I hear about Readers Take Denver gets worse and worse… and apparently now there's MULTIPLE reports for people being sexually assaulted/harassed in the masquerade by military personnel from another conference at the hotel who snuck into RTD.
— Torrance ? here but not here (@torrancesene) April 21, 2024
On Threads, there are so many posts that “RTD” got its own tag on Threads: tag on Threads (registration required).
It’s mostly a romance event, but it included romantasy authors — including big names such as Rebecca Yarros (“Fourth Wing”). There was also a day for thriller authors, including Jason Pinter and Mark Greaney. It sounds as if the organizers got way in over their heads. They had something like 3,000 attendees. And a huge list of authors (“Attending Authors / Narrators – Readers Take Denver”). Many think they aimed too high and ended up with a logistical nightmare.
There are allegations that the registration line took 3 hours — Also, signing lines took a very long time as well — too many authors in a small space without enough time allotted for the event. Authors are alleging that items were stolen from them (such as boxes of books). I’ve read about at least one case where an author’s books were accidentally given away as “swag.”
Also, the organizers apparently ran out of lanyards (!) and swag bags. And they didn’t have enough bottled water for the authors. Many readers enjoyed the event and had no issues, but other readers felt that they were ripped off.
It sounds like they needed better security, too. Later on Sunday, sexual assault allegations emerged. Several men attending another event entered RTD (despite having no badges) and groped women at RTD.
(6) SOFANAUTS LAUNCHES. Tony Smith hosts a new podcast — Sofanauts. He says the podcast mixes science fiction and technology. Two episodes are already available.
…Each week I’ll be joined by futurist, educator, speaker and writer Bryan Alexander (Thursdays) to talk about science fiction and technology. We’ll be discussing our favourite books, movies, and TV shows, as well as the latest technological developments that are shaping the future from the the very books, films and TV shows we’ve watched and read over the years….
(7) RAY GARTON (1962-2024). [Item by Anne Marble.] Horror author Ray Garton passed away on April 21. The announcement came from Dawn Garton on his Facebook page:
On April 9, 2024, he had posted on Facebook that he was in the hospital with stage 4 lung cancer.
Garton was named a World Horror Convention Grand Master in 2006.
Among others, Stephen King posted about his death:
I’m hearing that Ray Garton, horror novelist and friend, died yesterday. This is sad news, and a loss to those who enjoyed his amusing, often surreal, posts on Twitter.
Born April 22, 1937 — Jack Nicholson, 87. My all-time must watch again performance by Jack Nicholson is that of him playing Daryl Van Horne in The Witches of Eastwick. I’ve refused to watch any of the later versions of The Witches of Eastwick simply because I can’t picture anyone else being that character.
Bill Murray had been cast in the role had dropped out before even preliminary filming began. Jack Nicholson expressed interest in playing the role of Daryl to the producers through his then-girlfriend Anjelica Huston who was then being seriously considered for a role there. (Apparently the role Susan Sarandon got according to several sites.) So thus we got The Devil in the form of him. Brilliant role.
Jack Nicholson, center, Murray Close, right.
Now his first role in the genre was in The Little Shop of Horrors, the true one of course, not the latter one, as Wilbur Force, The Dentist. Because Corman did not believe that The Little Shop of Horrors had any chance of making money at all after its first run, he did not bother to copyright it, resulting in the film entering public domain immediately, so I can show you this scene with him in that role.
His next film, another Roger Corman affair, The Raven, was better known forc who he was performing with than for him being in it, those performers being Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. He played Lorre’s son, Rexford Bedlo. Poe’s “The Raven” poem was very, very faintly the basis of this film. Think a drop of blood in a gallon of water.
He’s Andre Duvalier in The Terror. Here he’s a French officer who is seduced by a woman who is also a shapeshifting devil.
Now we come to what critics consider his best performance of all time, that of Jack Torrance in The Shining based off King’s novel which was produced and directed by Kubrick who co-wrote it with Diane Johnson. Look I can’t judge his role there as I do not do horror of that sort, so it’s up to the collective wisdom here to tell me how he was there. Go ahead, tell me.
Now I did see Batman. Several times. And yes, I like it a lot. And yes, I thought he made a most excellent Joker. And one of the best Jack Napiers as well, a role that is even harder to get right. (The animated B:TAS series did so by showing him smartly dressed and grinning evilly but not speaking after committing a cold blooded murder. They’d refer to him several times over the series and in The Mark of The Phantasm film which I highly recommend.) So it was a very good role for him.
In Wolf, he was Will Randall. A middle-aged chief editor who hits a wolf with his car who is actually a werewolf who bites him. A Very Bad Idea Indeed. He chews a lot of scenery here. A lot. And he can, as we saw in Batman, chew scenery really, really well. Actually he did so in The Witches of Eastwick brilliantly as well.
Finally there’s Tim Burton’s LoneStarCon 2 Hugo-nominated Mars Attacks! where he plays two roles, President James Dale and Art Land. I’ll be damn if I remember the latter role now nearly thirty years on after seeing it. One moment… Oh I see, he was the Galaxy Casino owner. No, that still didn’t help. The President James Dale character was fascinating if only as for being a much less in your face role than some of his other genre roles such as those of The Shining, Batman, and Wolf.
(10) TEDDY HARVIA CARTOON. Another of Teddy’s Belphegor cartoons. “I must have sold my soul to the Devil to come up with such funny stuff.”
(11) X MARKS A LOT OF SPOTS. Check out the first half of Scott Koblish’s connecting cover that run across four upcoming X-Men titles: X-Men #35 (Legacy #700), X-Men #1, Uncanny X-Men #1, and Exceptional X-Men #1. (Click for larger image – though still might not see a lot of detail.)
It’s a great time to be an X-Men fan! In addition to their animated resurgence in Marvel Studios’ X-Men ’97, the X-Men’s comic book line is closing out its’ revolutionary Krakoan age of storytelling AND gearing up for the exciting all-new From the Ashes era this summer! To celebrate this iconic franchise’s recent milestone, acclaimed artist Scott Koblish has crafted an insanely epic connecting cover that will grace some of the most highly-anticipated upcoming X-Men comic releases….
Showcasing the entirety of the X-Men’s 60-year publication history, including core X-Men series as well as spinoffs and limited series, this breathtaking group shot spotlights A-List X-Men, obscure mutants, super villains, allies, super hero guest stars, and much more. Test your knowledge of the mutant mythos by finding your favorites and identifying as many characters as you can! For more information, visit Marvel.com.
(12) ASTEROIDS QUIZ. Brick Barrientos’ “Asteroids One-Day Special” went live on April 15. He says “Rich Horton was among my playtesters.” Here is the link to the quiz: https://www.learnedleague.com/oneday.php?5701.
The first question has audio which can only be heard by Learned League members – but you can eavesdrop on the copy hosted at Brick’s Google Drive:
1. What astronomer and composer of this piece first suggested the term “asteroid”, just after the discovery of Pallas, the next body discovered after Ceres? Although at that time, the term was intended to apply also to the moons; objects with a star-like point appearance.
…For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars)….
…The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.
So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole….
Great power comes with… a painful costumes. Today, it’s about the unavoidable pain of being a superhero.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, JJ, Anne Marble, Kathy Sullivan, Brick Barrientos, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz)
Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick (Gollancz)
The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Michael Joseph)
The Coral Bones by E. J. Swift (Unsung Stories)
Metronome by Tom Watson (Bloomsbury)
Chair of Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler, said: “This year we’ve shortlisted authors that have never made the Clarke Award’s top six before. It’s always good to see new authors or authors new to science fiction standing out from so many submissions. I look forward to what I suspect will be a passionately argued decision.”
This year’s winner will be announced on August 16.
The winner will receive a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2023.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2023 were: Dave Hutchinson and Francis Gene-Rowe for the British Science Fiction Association; Kate Heffner and Nicholas Whyte for the Science Fiction Foundation; and Georgie Knight for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival. Dr Andrew M. Butler represented the Arthur C. Clarke Award directors in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
(1) 2025 WORLDCON SITE SELECTION UPDATE. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon Bid News for June reports theirs was the only bid filed, and the only one that will be on the official ballot. (If another one appears it could still be a write-in.)
Seattle filed its site selection paperwork in April which was acknowledged and approved! According to the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) Constitution, bid documents for opposing bids must be filed no later than 180 days before the opening of the administering convention. No other bids were filed, so Seattle will be the only bid on the printed ballot. We could not be more excited! Supporting memberships are still on sale through our website, and we hope to have strong voter turnout in October.
… Watch for announcements on how to vote in site selection remotely. Barring an unlikely loss to a write-in campaign, we also plan to sell upgrades to supporting members who do not participate in site selection which allow them to purchase attending memberships to the Seattle Worldcon for a similar cost. Stay tuned for more!
…Agents parting ways with agencies is not uncommon; however, it is inexcusable for an agency of New Leaf’s caliber to lack clear internal and external protocols for such situations….
…The panel was very interesting and went into what distinguished East German science fiction from West German and Western science fiction in general. One of the points made was that since East Germany has an official vision of what the future would look like, namely a Socialist utopia, the questions East German science fiction asked was not so much, “What will the future look like?”, because they already knew, but “How do we get there?” and “How do we do this?” The above-mentioned novel Andymon by Karlheinz and Angela Steinmüller is actually a good example for this, because it’s about some young people landing on a planet they’re supposed to colonise, only that the planet is not as advertised, so they have to figure out how to make it habitable anyway.
Emma Braslavsky pointed out that by the 1980s, when East Germany was visibly declining and falling apart (which tracks with what Aunt Metel told me, namely that East Germany continued improve and progress, albeit slowly, into the 1970s, then it stagnated and gradually fell apart), the Socialist Utopia was more of a promise, much like Christmas. Just sleep one more night and Christmas – Socialism is here and everything will be wonderful. Emma Braslavsky also noted that when she watched things like Star Trek on West German TV (a large part of East Germany could and did watch West German TV), someone muttered some complete nonsense like “Reverse the polarity” and it actually worked.
Even though the panelists grew up in two very different countries and systems, there were some things that united all of them. For example, it was never easy to be a budding SF fan in a small rural village or town, whether in East or West Germany, because library selections were limited and books or comics not always easily available in local shops….
(4) CATHERINE LUNDOFF Q&A. Oliver Brackenbury’s So I’m Writing a Novel… podcast devotes episode 66 to the “Queen of Swords Press”.
When most of us think about publishing we tend to think of one of the Big Five (Four? How many are we down to now?), but there is a whole world of smaller, independent publishers to explore!
Wanting to learn more about that world, Oliver spoke with Catherine Lundoff about her own experiences launching and running Queen of Swords Press.
(5) AUTHORS GUILD RECOMMENDS NEW AI CONTRACT CLAUSES. The Authors Guild is introducing four new model clauses concerning AI to its Model Trade Book Contract and Model Literary Translation Contract. “AG Introduces New Publishing Agreement Clauses Concerning AI”.
…In addition to the recent clause preventing the use of books in training generative AI without an author’s express permission, the new clauses require an author’s written consent for their publisher to use AI-generated book translations, audiobook narration, or cover art. These clauses can benefit publishers and the publishing industry at large by maintaining the high quality craftsmanship that consumers are used to.
The Authors Guild also urges publishers to identify any books that contain a significant amount of AI-generated text. This summer, the Guild will be publishing AI guidelines for authors and publishers containing each of these conditions.
The purpose of these demands is to prevent the use of AI to replace human creators. The Authors Guild strongly believes that human writing, narration, and translation are vastly superior to their AI mimics. Moreover, as an ethical matter, the Authors Guild opposes relying on these tools to replace human creators, in part because current AI content generators have largely been trained on pre-existing works without consent. The Guild stands in solidarity with human creators in other industries, who like authors, face professional threats from AI-generated content flooding the markets for their work….
We encourage publishers to adopt these clauses and authors and agents to request that they be added to their contracts.
Clause Relating to Authors’ Use of AI Author shall not be required to use generative AI or to work from AI-generated text. Authors shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [5%] AI-generated text.
Audio Book Clause (For Use With Audiobook Grants) With respect to any audiobook created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not permit or cause the Work to be narrated by artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human narrator, without Author’s prior and express written consent.
Translation Clause (For Use With Grants of Translation Rights) With respect to any translations created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not translate or permit or cause the Work to be translated into another language with artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human translator, without Author’s prior and express written consent. For purposes of clarification, a human translator may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the translation, provided that the translation substantially comprises human creation and the human translator has control over, and reviews and approves, each word in the translation.
Cover Design Clause (For Book Contracts) Publisher agrees not to use AI-generated images, artwork, design, and other visual elements for the book cover or interior artwork without Author’s prior express approval. For purposes of clarification, a human designer may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the creation of artwork for the Work, provided that the human artist has control over the final artwork and the artwork substantially comprises human creation.
Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?
Because no matter what the theme is, they will see themselves in the personal essays. That’s the beauty of these books, I think, that we all have these shared experiences and we like to see echoes of our own lives in what we read. Beyond that, if you love RPGs and began playing as a kid, you’re going to love this book.
As is now traditional, we’re publishing below the full list of eligible titles received by the Clarke Award from which our official shortlist selection is decided.
This is released as an open-source resource to showcase the breadth and diversity of UK science fiction literature as part of its ongoing commitment to self-accountability and supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across the publishing industry and science fiction community.
This year’s judging panel received 97 eligible titles submitted by 40 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2023 are:
The Vulcan known as Spock was one of the most important characters in Star Trek, and many of his family members also played key roles in the franchise. Ever since his debut in Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock has been an integral part of Star Trek lore, and so has his kin. As the series progressed, more and more of Spock’s family tree began to be fleshed out, and it was clear that Spock was one of the most connected individuals in the Alpha Quadrant. From villains to ambassadors, Spock’s family was just as important as he was in shaping the franchise….
Here’s one member you might have overlooked.
Perrin
When Sarek returned in The Next Generation, he was accompanied by a new wife who filled much the same role that Amanda did. Because of the large gap in the Star Trek timeline between TOS and TNG, it could be assumed that Amanda died of old age, and Perrin, a human woman, eventually married Sarek. Because of Sarek’s advanced age, she was a companion and caretaker to him, and she was very protective of his important image as he began to succumb to Bendii syndrome in TNG season 3, episode 23, “Sarek”. Unlike Amanda though, Perrin did not get personally involved in Sarek and Spock’s affairs.
… The forthcoming film, which opens in Japan on July 14, is easily the most anticipated movie coming to Japanese theaters in years — and exceedingly little is known about it. (U.S. and international release dates for the film have not yet been set.)
Ghibli previously described the film as “a grand fantasy” loosely inspired by Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, a coming-of-age story about the emotional and philosophical development of a young boy after the death of his father….
In the interview, [lead producer Toshio] Suzuki also contrasted Ghibli’s approach for How Do You Live? with the usual marketing methods of Hollywood.
“There’s an American movie — ah, I almost said the title out loud! — coming out this summer around the same time [as How Do You Live?],” he said. “They’ve made three trailers for it, and released them one at a time. If you watch all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do moviegoers feel about that? There must be people, who, after watching all the trailers, don’t want to actually go see the movie. So, I wanted to do the opposite of that.”…
(10) MEMORY LANE.
2007 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]
Elizabeth Bear’s “Tideline” reminds me how great the short stories are by a writer whose novels I usually am reading, such as the ever so excellent White Space series.
This story was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in their June 2007 issue. It’s been reprinted a number of times and Primes Books published it in the Shoggoths in Bloom collection they released which is available from the usual suspects at a very nice price.
It’s also in The Best of Elizabeth Bear from Subterranean Press which I need not say will set you back many a penny.
The audio series StarShipSofa in their number thirty-nine production has it as the lead piece here.
And now the Beginning to this story…
Chalcedony wasn’t built for crying. She didn’t have it in her, not unless her tears were cold tapered glass droplets annealed by the inferno heat that had crippled her.
Such tears as that might slide down her skin over melted sensors to plink unfeeling on the sand. And if they had, she would have scooped them up, with all the other battered pretties, and added them to the wealth of trash jewels that swung from the nets reinforcing her battered carapace.
They would have called her salvage, if there were anyone left to salvage her. But she was the last of the war machines, a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank, two big grabs and one fine manipulator folded like a spider’s palps beneath the turreted head that finished her pointed end, her polyceramic armor spiderwebbed like shatterproof glass. Unhelmed by her remote masters, she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb. She was nearly derelict.
The beach was where she met Belvedere.
Butterfly coquinas unearthed by retreating breakers squirmed into wet grit under Chalcedony’s trailing limb. One of the rear pair, it was less of a nuisance on packed sand. It worked all right as a pivot, and as long as she stayed off rocks, there were no obstacles to drag it over.
As she struggled along the tideline, she became aware of someone watching. She didn’t raise her head. Her chassis was equipped with targeting sensors which locked automatically on the ragged figure crouched by a weathered rock. Her optical input was needed to scan the tangle of seaweed and driftwood, Styrofoam and sea glass that marked high tide.
He watched her all down the beach, but he was unarmed, and her algorithms didn’t deem him a threat. Just as well. She liked the weird flat-topped sandstone boulder he crouched beside.
The next day, he watched again. It was a good day; she found a moonstone, some rock crystal, a bit of red-orange pottery, and some sea glass worn opalescent by the tide.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 5, 1908 — John Russell Fearn. British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp magazines. A prolific author, he also published novels as Vargo Statten and with various pseudonyms such as Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong and others. As himself, I see his first story as being The Intelligence Gigantic published in Amazing Stories in 1933. His Golden Amazon series of novels ran to over to two dozen titles, and the Clayton Drew Mars Adventure series that only ran to four novels. (Died 1960.)
Born June 5, 1928 — Robert Lansing. He was secret agent Gary Seven in the “Assignment: Earth” on StarTrek. The episode was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have starred Lansing and Teri Garr, but the series never happened. He of course appeared on other genre series such as The Twilight Zone, Journey to the Unknown, Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (Died 1994.)
Born June 5, 1931 — Barbara Paul. Writer of mysteries, some twenty or so, and a handful of genre novels. Her novels feature in-jokes such as her Full Frontal Murder mystery novel which uses names from Blake’s 7. Genre wise, she’s written five SF novels including a Original Series Trek novel, The Three-Minute Universe, which is available at the usual suspects. (Died 2022.)
Born June 5, 1946 — John Bach, 77. Einstein on Farscape, the Gondorian Ranger Madril in the second and third movies of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Also a British body guard on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. And he was the body double for shooting of Saruman in place of Christopher Lee, who was unable to fly to New Zealand for principal photography on The Hobbit film series.
Born June 5, 1953 — Kathleen Kennedy, 70. Film producer responsible for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, her first film, and later produced the Jurassic Park franchise. She’s been involved in over sixty films, I’d say of which at least half are genre, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark as an associate to Steven Spielberg. Amblin Films with her husband and Spielberg has produced many of the genre’s best loved films.
Born June 5, 1960 — Margo Lanagan, 63. Tender Morsels won a World Fantasy Award for best novel, and Sea-Hearts won the same for Best Novella. She’s an alumna of the Clarion West Writers Workshop In 1999 and returned as a teacher in 2011 and 2013.
Born June 5, 1976 — Lauren Beukes, 47. South African writer and scriptwriter. Moxyland, her first novel, is a cyberpunk novel set in a future Cape Town. Zoo City, a hardboiled thriller with fantasy elements is set in a re-imagined Johannesburg. It won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and a Kitschies Red Tentacle Award for best novel. (I love the name of the latter award!) And The Shining Girls would win her an August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. Afterland was on the long list for a NOMMO. Much of her short fiction is collected in Slipping: Stories, Essays, & Other Writing.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
Sheldonwitnesses an Uber reservation being placed for “Mister Gandalf”.
(13) IT’S CRACKERS. Although visiting Space Cowboy Books might be a better reason for driving to Joshua Tree, while you are in town you could pick up a snack: “Cheez-It Gas Station Pops Up in California Desert” at Food & Wine.
…From Monday, June 5 through Sunday, June 11, anyone who needs a road trip snack-break can visit the Cheez-It Stop to pick up several bags of orange crackers. The Cheez-It Stop has been equipped with the world’s first (and so far, its only) Cheez-It Pump which will spray bags of Cheez-Its through your open car window. And best of all, it’s completely free to take advantage of the pump and feed your Cheez-It cravings.
Regardless, you just have seven days to visit the Cheez-It Stop before it disappears into the desert’s memory. It can be found at 61943 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, California and will be open between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. PT every day between now and Sunday.
…The Delaware-based beermaker has brewed up its own homage to the film called Asteroid City Lager, and it collaborated with the director himself to design the label. According to Dogfish Head, Asteroid City Lager was brewed with a combination of regeneratively grown pilsner malt, Tuxpeno corn malt, and Michigan-grown Zuper Saazer hops. The beer was then finished with a Pennsylvania lager yeast, which the brewery says is “a nod to the 1950s era during which Asteroid City takes place.”
… The beer’s eye-catching label pays tribute to the film’s desert landscapes and to the Asteroid City billboard that shows the fictional town’s biggest tourist attraction, a giant crater left by a meteor….
The Dogfish Head collaboration will be available during screenings at select Alamo Drafthouse cinemas. https://t.co/0zs97D6cid
Baaaad news? How big is the asteroid coming toward Earth in 2023?
Asteroid 2023 HO18 is estimated by NASA to have a diameter of as much as 50 meters. In imperial measurements for American readers, that would be 164 feet or just under 55 yards.
But to use a more creative metric, consider the humble domesticated sheep (Ovis aries). These animals are widespread throughout the world and while there are a wide number of breeds, they are all still part of the same species.
Three years ago, a Chinese farmer made an unusual donation to a university museum—a giant, nearly intact human skull with strange proportions and an unusual backstory. The man’s family had been hiding the fossil since it was unearthed at a construction site in Harbin nearly 90 years ago.
After geochemical detective work to locate where the fossil was likely found, and painstaking comparison of its distinctive features with those of other early humans, some of the scientists investigating the find believe the cranium from Harbin could represent an entirely new human species—Homo longi or “Dragon Man.” If so, they further suggest it might even be the human lineage most closely related to ourselves.
“The discovery of the Harbin cranium and our analyses suggest that there is a third lineage of archaic human [that] once lived in Asia, and this lineage has [a] closer relationship with H. sapiens than the Neanderthals,” says Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University. If so, that would make the strange skull a close relative indeed since most humans today still have significant amounts of Neanderthal DNA from repeated interbreeding between our species….
Bigger brains may not equate to higher intelligence after all, according to a remarkable discovery about an early hominin.
Homo naledi, a hominin discovered in the Rising Star cave system in Africa’s Cradle of Humankind in 2013, had human-like hands and feet but a brain a third of the size of humans — a characteristic researchers previously attributed to a marker of far less intelligence than its Homo sapien relatives.
But the assertion that bigger brains make for a smarter species may have been disestablished now that scientists have made a harrowing journey into the Rising Star cave and discovered that the species — which lived about 335,000 to 236,000 years ago — buried its dead and marked the graves. It is the first non-human species in history known to do so, paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer in Residence Lee Berger told ABC News.
…The researchers began to hypothesize that Homo naledi buried its dead during continued excavations in 2018 and in July 2022, those hunches were not only proven but amplified once Berger and his team found skeletal remains of Homo naledi and then carvings on the wall above them to mark those laid to rest there.
The symbols included triangles, squares and a sort-of “hashtag” sign, as in two cross-hatching equal signs, Berger said. However, it is unclear what these carvings meant, and researchers will be delving into whether there is a “random chance” that Homo naledi used the same symbols as humans or if they were obtained from some sort of shared ancestry.
(19) REH SCHOLARSHIP. A video of the “Glenn Lord Symposium”, i.e. the academic track of the 2023 Robert E. Howard Days, is available for viewing on YouTube.
1)Dr. Dierk Gunther, Professor of English Literature at Gakushuin Women’s College, Tokyo His presentation: “Through the Eyes of an Ophirean Woman: Thoughts Concerning the Racism of Robert E. Howard’s The Vale of Lost Women.” 2) Brian Murphy, Howard Scholar His presentation: “Far Countries of the Mind: The Frontier Fantasy of Robert E. Howard.” 3) Dr. Willard Oliver, Professor of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville His presentation: “Robert E. Howard and Oil Booms: Crime, Disorder and Reality.”
…After Collider’s special screening, a member of the audience asked Dos Santos how hard it was to put the LEGO dimension together. Surprisingly, Dos Santos revealed the whole scene was created by the 14-year-old Youtuber LegoMe_TheOG, known for recreating movies and TV shows trailer and full scenes with LEGO pieces. A few months before Across the Universe hit theaters, LegoMe_TheOG made a viral recreation of the movie’s first teaser. After that, producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller brought him to the project….
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Cora Buhlert, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation has announced the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award winners. (Note: This is a different honor than the literary Arthur C. Clarke Award.)
On November 16, the Clarke Foundation in Washington, D.C., will host Unleash Imagination, including these 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Awardees.
THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
FRANCIS COLLINS
for his exceptional contributions as a Physican-Geneticist, and for his Human Genome Leadership
Dr. Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his previous leadership of the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book.
THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE IMAGINATION IN SERVICE TO SOCIETY AWARD
CORY DOCTOROW
for his imaginative Science Fiction creations, and exceptional Journalism and Technology Activism.
The awardee for Imagination in Service to Society is a science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist. Mr. Doctorow is also a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor. He is an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate and a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science.
THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE INNOVATOR AWARD
ESTHER DYSON
for her incomparable leadership and vision as an Internet Policy Pioneer and Investor, Journalist, Author, Commentator and Philanthropist.
As a member of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIIAC), chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and founding chairman of ICANN, Esther Dyson has helped mediate and inform public policy regarding privacy, encryption, trust, and the assignment of Internet domain names.
Ms. Dyson has been widely regarded as one of the most influential voices in technology policy for more than three decades. Though she is now mostly focused on human well-being and health (through the 10-year nonprofit community health and equity project she founded in 2014, Wellville), she is returning her gaze to Internet governance as the world approaches Web 3.0. She hopes to help it avoid the governance issues she saw clearly in Web 2.0.
Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles is the winner of the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year.
The winner was revealed at an award ceremony hosted by the Science Museum, London, and the prize presented by Dr Glyn Morgan, lead exhibition curator for the museum’s current exhibition Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination.
Chair of the Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler said:
This year the judges considered about a hundred novels with remarkable commitment and rigour. Every stage of zooming in on the winner was the conversation of informed readers at the top of their game. Deep Wheel Orcadia is the sort of book that makes you rethink what sf can do and makes the reading experience feel strange in a new and thrilling way. It’s as if language itself becomes the book’s hero and the genre is all the richer for it.
Harry Josephine Giles receives a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2022.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2022 were:
Phoenix Alexander and Dr Nicole Devarenne for the Science Fiction Foundation
Crispin Black and Stark Holborn for the British Science Fiction Association
Nick Hubble for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival
Dr Andrew M. Butler represents the Arthur C. Clarke Award directors in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
[Based on a press release.]
And the winner is… The 36th winner is…….. Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles!!! So many congratulations ???? pic.twitter.com/LGQ34LKofb
…In particular, Tolkien wrote about what makes a happy ending so powerful in stories. And to do so, he came up with an intriguing coinage: fairy stories, he suggested, often feature a “eucatastrophe” – this was, he suggested, a “good” catastrophe. So, what exactly did he mean? And could such events happen in real life too?
In the present day, Tolkien’s idea of the “good catastrophe” has attracted the attention of scholars who study existential risk and humanity’s future prospects. It turns out that eucatastrophes may matter beyond fairy stories – and identifying the conditions that lead to them could be necessary if we want to thrive as a species.
According to Tolkien, a eucatastrophe in a story often happens at the darkest moment. When all seems lost – when the enemy seems to have won – a sudden “joyous turn” for the better can emerge. It delivers a deep emotional reaction in readers: “a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart”, he wrote….
(2) CLOSE LOOK AT THE CLARKE FINALISTS. The winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award will be announced on Wednesday. Andrew Butler, chair of judges, discusses the finalists in detail in “The Best Science Fiction of 2022: The Clarke Award Shortlist” at Five Books.
…Let’s talk about Deep Wheel Orcadia by the Scottish writer Harry Josephine Giles. It’s a novel-in-verse, which takes a very interesting literary approach. Can you tell us more?
Novels-in-two-verses, you might argue. One in Orcadian, one in English. Orcadian is a dialect of Scots—as opposed to Gaelic—and there’s a history of Scots feeding into science fiction and horror, especially Gothic horror. In 1919, someone came up with the idea of the Caledonian antisyzygy—the Scots think in one language, but feel in another, say. There’s a sort of divided consciousness at the centre of Scottish books, poetry and art—and we can trace this division in authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Iain M. Banks and many others.
I think I can relate to that.
The action of Deep Wheel Orcadia is mostly set on or close to an isolated space station, at a crisis point in the solar system, and focuses on the working and private lives of the characters on board. You could decide to read the Orcadian version and then the English, or vice versa, or just one—but you’d miss so much if you only read half. I think you can pick up the Orcadian, as you might the Riddleyspeak in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker….
(3) SCORING SFF. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] I listened to this 2017 podcast Leonard and Jessie Maltin had with composer Michael Giacchino. You knew this would be a great interview because Giacchino begins the interview by saying that when he’s in the car, he listens to old-time radio and his favorite show is the sf show X Minus One. Leonard Maltin wrote a very good book about old time radio and he and Giacchino geek out about radio for many minutes. Most of the rest of the interview was how Giacchino got his start; he graduated from the School of Visual Arts with postgraduate work at Julliard. He ended up scoring video games and got a big break from Steven Spielberg that led to his scoring “The Lost World” video game. Another big break led to Giacchino writing the score for The Incredibles after John Barry, who originally was offered the job, declined.
I think Giacchino is the best active film composer and he also gets credit for hiring veteran musicians who have all their skills but may need help with technology or disabilities. Between 85-90 percent of Giacchino’s work is for sf or fantasy films, so this should be of interest. Maltin on Movies: “Michael Giacchino”.
I have a pretty big night stand. … and then I have Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140,” which is a really wonderful book, imagining a less dystopian future. It does have disasters and climate change, but it also has sort of human adaptability, and it’s really spectacular.
Do you have favorite genres and genres that you avoid?
I don’t like horror. I had a big science fiction thing in high school and college and I haven’t read science fiction in ages and ages. I used to read religiously Roger Zelazny and now I can’t even find his books on a bookshelf at a reputable bookstore. But everything else is kind of open. I like good writing. One writer I love is Willa Cather. People say, Was it Melville or Hemingway or Twain who wrote the great American novel, meaning “Moby-Dick” or “A Farewell to Arms” or obviously “Huckleberry Finn,” where, as Hemingway rightly said, American literature begins. But what about “O Pioneers!” or “My Ántonia”? For that matter, what about Gabriel García Márquez? We do not have a copyright on the word “American.”
(5) BUSCH COMMEMORATED. First Fandom President John L. Coker III announced a tribute to the late Justin E. A. Busch who died October 21.
Last week, after I learned about his grave condition, I had an award plaque made. It is the seldom-given First Fandom Merit Award, “Presented to Justin E. A. Busch for attaining excellence in his work.” He didn’t live long enough to see it but I would like for it to be at least a small part of his legacy.
(6) MEMORY LANE.
1984 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Ray Bradbury’s A Memory of Murder
Ray Bradbury’s A Memory of Murder is a collection of fifteen of his mystery short stories published thirty-eight years ago by Dell. They first appeared from 1944 to 1948 in pulp magazines owned by Popular Publications, Inc. that specialized in detective and crime fiction.
Bradbury wasn’t that happy with these stories as he thought he hadn’t developed yet as a writer and made that well known more than once later on. As he said in an interview with Crime Time, “When my first detective mystery stories began to appear in Dime Detective, Dime Mystery Magazine, Detective Tales, and Black Mask in the early ’40s, there was no immediate trepidation over in the Hammett-Chandler-Cain camp. The fact is, it didn’t develop later either. I was never a threat. I couldn’t, in the immortal words of Marlon Brando, have been a contender.”
The stories themselves numbered fifteen in total with titles such as “A Careful Man Dies” from New Detective Magazine in November 1946). The cover blurb was “For a hemophiliac, no object is innocent, and even a kiss can kill!” It was one of Bradbury’s stories that filmed in 2005, this time by Italian backers and producers.
Another one, “It Burns Me Up!” from Dime Mystery Magazine in November 1944 carried the wonderfully chilling first line of “I am lying here in the very centre of the room and I am not mad, I am not angry, I am not perturbed” it serves as a great reminder that some of his stories got turned comics, see Ray Bradbury Comics, Number 3, published in 1993.
I’ll let Ed Gorman have the last word as he reviewed this collection over on his blog in his column Forgotten Books. He said of his favorite story, “The most interesting story is ‘The Long Night.’ I remember the editor who bought it writing a piece years later about what a find it was. And it is. A story set in the Hispanic area of Los Angeles during the war, it deals with race and race riots, with the juvenile delinquency that was a major problem for this country in the war years (remember The Amboy Dukes?) and the paternal bonds that teenage boys need and reject at the same time. A haunting, powerful story that hints at the greatness that was only a few years away from Bradbury.”
It went of print immediately but the paperback is fairly easy to find at the usual sellers.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born October 24, 1893 — Merian Cooper. Aviator, Writer, Director and Producer. After spending WWI in the Air Force, Cooper became a writer and researcher for The New York Times and later the American Geographic Society, traveling the world, and writing stories and giving lectures about his travels. He then turned some of his writing into documentary films. He had helped David Selznick get a job at RKO Pictures, and later Selznick hired him to make movies. He developed one of his story ideas into a movie featuring a giant gorilla which is terrorizing New York City. King Kong was released in 1933, and the story has been sequeled, remade, comicbooked, and rebooted innumerable times in the last 85 years. (Died 1973.) (JJ)
Born October 24, 1915 — Bob Kane. Writer and Artist who co-created, along with Bill Finger, the DC character Batman. Multiple sources report that “Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks’ movie portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro, Leonardo da Vinci’s diagram of the ornithopter, a flying machine with huge bat-like wings; and the 1930 film The Bat Whispers, based on Mary Roberts Rinehart’s mystery novel The Circular Staircase.” He was inducted into Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. The character he created has been featured in countless comic books, stories, movies, TV series, animated features, videogames, and action figures in the last eight decades. The 1989 movie based on his creation, featuring Michael Keaton in the title role, was a finalist for both Hugo and British Science Fiction Association Awards. (Died 1998.)
Born October 24, 1948 — Margaret “Peggy” Ranson. Artist, Illustrator, and Fan, who became involved with fandom when she co-edited the program book for the 1988 Worldcon in New Orleans. She went on to provide art for many fanzines and conventions, and was a finalist for the Best Fan Artist Hugo every one of the eight years from 1991 to 1998, winning once. She was Guest of Honor at several conventions, including a DeepSouthCon. Sadly, she died of cancer in 2016; Mike Glyer’s lovely tribute to her can be read here. (Died 2016.)
Born October 24, 1952 — Jane Fancher, 70. Writer and Artist. In the early 80s, she was an art assistant on Elfquest, providing inking assistance on the black and white comics and coloring of the original graphic novel reprints. She adapted portions of C.J. Cherryh’s first Morgaine novel into a black and white comic book, which prompted her to begin writing novels herself. Her first novel, Groundties, was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award, and she has been Guest of Honor and Toastmaster at several conventions.
Born October 24, 1956 — Katie Waitman, 66. Her best known work to date was the Compton Crook Award winning The Merro Tree in which a galaxy-spanning performance artist must defy a ban imposed on him. Her second novel, The Divided, appears to be bog standard military SF but really isn’t. Highly recommended.
Born October 24, 1956 — Dr. Jordin Kare. Physicist, Filker, and Fan who was known for his scientific research on laser propulsion. A graduate of MIT and Berkeley, he said that he chose MIT because of the hero in Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. He was a regular attendee and science and filk program participant at conventions, from 1975 until his untimely death. He met his wife, Mary Kay Kare, at the 1981 Worldcon. He should be remembered and honored as being an editor of The Westerfilk Collection: Songs of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a crucial filksong collection, and later as a partner in Off Centaur Publications, the very first commercial publisher specializing in filk songbooks and recordings. Shortly after the shuttle Columbia tragedy, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, on live TV, attempted to read the lyrics to Jordin’s Pegasus Award-winning song “Fire in the Sky”, which celebrates manned space exploration. He was Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, and was named to the Filk Hall of Fame. Mike Glyer’s tribute to him can be read here. (Died 2017.) (JJ)
Born October 24, 1960 — BD Wong, 62. His first genre role was in Jurassic Park as Dr. Henry Wu (a role reprised in Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic Park Dominion). He was the voice of Captain Li Shang on Mulan, and Whiterose, head of the hacker collective Dark Army on Mr. Robot.
Born October 24, 1974 — Liesel Schwarz, 48. She’s been dubbed, by whom I know not I admit, “The High Priestess of British Steampunk”. She has written the Chronicles of Light and Shadow trilogy, a sequence set in a Steampunk version of Europe in which the three novels are Chronicles of Lightand Shadow, A Clockwork Heart and Sky Pirates.
Born October 24, 1971 — Sofia Samatar, 51. Teacher, Writer, and Poet who speaks several languages and started out as a language instructor, a job which took her to Egypt for nine years. She won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and is the author of two wonderful novels to date, both of which I highly recommend: Stranger in Olondria (which won World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards and was nominated for a Nebula) and The Winged Histories. Her short story “Selkie Stories are for Losers” was nominated for Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, and BFA Awards. She has written enough short fiction in just six years that Small Beer Press put out Tender, a collection which is a twenty-six stories strong. And she has a most splendid website. (Standback)
(8) COMICS SECTION.
Six Chixmay be a comic but these characters are not overdrawn.
Ann Nocenti, the writer, journalist and filmmaker who wrote and edited some of the most iconic Marvel comics of the late 1980s and early 1990s joins the podcast to discuss her early years in New York as “the girl who lived behind the fish tank,” quite literally, how her work in asylums influenced her stories about superheroes, creating Marvel’s first openly transgender character, the role of “fake news” in the comics she’s working on now, and much more.
Days before a Targaryen civil war erupts between Rhaenyra and Alicent on the Season 1 finale of HBO’s House of the Dragon, you’ll find series creator George R.R. Martin staying mum on fire-breathing animals and talking up his latest rotoscope animated short, Night of the Cooters, in his Santa Fe, NM stomping ground.
The Vincent D’Onofrio-directed cowboys vs. aliens film based on the Howard Waldrop short story is one of four short movies Martin is producing in what is shaping up to be an anthology either for the big screen (a la Creepshow) or TV (a la Love, Death and Robots)…
In addition to Night of the Cooters, Martin recently finished production on the second title he owns from sci-fi author Waldrop. Currently titled Friends Forever, the short was directed by Justin Duval, a producer and DP on Night of the Cooters, and is currently in post.
Another short currently shooting in Santa Fe under the helm of Steven Paul Judd is Mary Margaret Road-Grader, which Martin billed as a “Native American Mad Max story about tractor pulls and feminism.”
Then there’s Waldrop’s most notable work, The Ugly Chickens, about the extinction of the dodo, which is about to shoot in Toronto with Kodachrome‘s Mark Raso directing….
…In honor of spooky season (the best season), I’ve pulled together a by-no-means-exhaustive list of my favorite haunted house books, books with houses that exemplify the Shirley’s Jackson quote: “It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope.”…
The Adventures of Mansour, a sci-fi cartoon phenomenon from the Middle East that’s racked up an astounding two billion YouTube hits, is returning with an all-new sequel series, The Adventures of Mansour: Age of A.I.
Funded by Mubadala Investment Company and Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority (ECA), the dynamic adventure show is aimed at kids aged 6-12. This Mansour relaunch from Bidaya Media, recently announced at MIPCOM 2022, will be the first Arab cartoon first created in English and Arabic then realigned for a worldwide audience presenting topical themes of artificial intelligence, technology, climate change, and space exploration.
…Here’s the official description:
Set in the near future, in the technologically advanced Salam City, ‘The Adventures of Mansour: Age of AI’ is a sci-fi action adventure series that revolves around Mansour, a 12-year-old tech whiz, who unintentionally creates a mischievous sentient artificial intelligence known as Blink. With the support of his closest friends, Mansour must deal with all manner of pranks, challenges and dangers posed by Blink, who for his own amusement, is determined to cause as much chaos as possible for Mansour and the people of Salam City.
(13) LAND(ED)SHARK. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Tom Scott explores the controversy over the British house with a shark in its roof (a story I think is fandom-adjacent). “The government approves of this shark now.”
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian, for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]
The winner will receive a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2022.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
Chair of Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler, said:
“I always view the shortlist as a snapshot of the richness and variety of the genre – space operas and dystopias, debutants and veterans, page turners that you can swallow whole and books that make you want to linger on every sentence. We’re slowly seeing a wider range of authors getting published in the British sf market, so we get to see a wider range of ways of reimagining the world. If science fiction is a toolbox, then we need to keep our tools sharp by approaching the material from different angles.
“The judges also come to science fiction from different angles. We have reviewers, academics, archivists and more, but above all they are enthusiastic readers and fans who have the mammoth task of whittling over hundred submissions down to exactly six titles. There was passion and intelligence and emotion in abundance. I’m proud of how they were able to challenge and still respect each other and produce the shortlist we’re celebrating today. And they get to have the debates all over again, as they choose the single best science fiction novel of the year.”
Award Director Tom Hunter said:
“I am in awe of the work of our judges this year, reading over 100 titles submitted by 39 publishing imprints and independent authors, and for leading us to this moment. I am also delighted for the opportunity to return both to a live ceremony this year and for it to be held at the Science Museum as one of their Science Fiction exhibition events.
“Every Clarke Award shortlist is a voyage into the imagination, and an opportunity to seek out new authors, and new readers, as much as it is a moment to revisit our hopes and expectations for the genre. I couldn’t think of a better partner to take that journey with this year.”
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2022 are:
Phoenix Alexander and Dr Nicole Devarenne for the Science Fiction Foundation
Crispin Black and Stark Holborn for the British Science Fiction Association
Nick Hubble for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival
Dr Andrew M. Butler represents the Arthur C. Clarke Award directors in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.
The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay is the winner of the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year.
The winner was announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row by journalist and science fiction fan, Samira Ahmed.
Accepting the prize, Laura Jean McKay said:
Twenty years before Margaret Atwood won the first Arthur C Clarke award, she published a small but important collection of poetry called The Animals in That Country, a title I borrowed for my book. That this book could become one of the Clarke award winners alongside Atwood – as well as other writers I adore like Miéville and Whitehead – is a momentous honour. I wrote The Animals in That Country to look closely at the relationship between humans and other animals. In these strange times, I find that (more than ever) reading and writing connects us humans as well.
Chair of Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler, commented on the fact that all six shortlisted books this year were by debut authors:
Our six shortlisted debut novelists have found ways to rework tools that sf has used for over two centuries. This should give us all hope for the future of our genre.
And Award Director Tom Hunter added:
For 35 years the Clarke Award has promoted not only the best of science fiction but also new ways of defining and exploring it. Laura’s win re-positions the boundaries of science fiction once again, and we’re delighted to welcome her to the genre.
Laura Jean McKay receives a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2021.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2021 were: Stewart Hotston, British Science Fiction Association; Alasdair Stuart, British Science Fiction Association; Phoenix Alexander, Science Fiction Foundation; Nicole Devarenne, Science Fiction Foundation; Nick Hubble, SCI-FI-LONDON film festival; Dr Andrew M. Butler, non-voting Chair of the Judges, Serendip Foundation.
