Aliette de Bodard – On
motherhood and erasure: people-shaped holes, hollow characters and the illusion
of impossible adventures (Intellectus Speculativus
blog)
Best Artwork
Likhain – In the Vanishers’
Palace: Dragon I and II (Inprnt)
Nina
Allan – The Gift of Angels: an
Introduction (Clarkesworld)
Malcolm
Devlin – The Purpose of the Dodo is to be Extinct (Interzone #275)
Hal
Duncan – The Land of Somewhere Safe
(NewCon Press)
Ian
McDonald – Time Was (Tor.com)
Martha
Wells – Exit Strategy (Tor.com)
Liz
Williams – Phosphorus (NewCon Press)
Marian
Womack – Kingfisher (Lost Objects, Luna Press)
Best
Non-Fiction
Nina
Allan – Time Pieces column 2018
articles (Interzone)
Ruth
EJ Booth – Noise and Sparks column
2018 articles (Shoreline of Infinity)
Liz
Bourke – Sleeps With Monsters column
2018 articles (Tor.com)
Aliette
de Bodard – On motherhood and erasure: people-shaped holes, hollow characters
and the illusion of impossible adventures (Intellectus
Speculativus blog)
Adam
Roberts – Publishing the Science Fiction
Canon: The Case of Scientific Romance (Cambridge University Press)
Best
Artwork
Ben
Baldwin – wraparound cover for ‘Strange Tales’ slipcase set (NewCon Press)
Joey
Hi-Fi – cover for ‘Paris Adrift’ by EJ Swift (Solaris)
Sarah
Anne Langton – cover for ‘Unholy Land’ by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon Publications)
Sing
Yun Lee and Morris Wild – artwork for ‘Sublime Cognition’ conference (London
Science Fiction Research Community)
Likhain
– In the Vanishers’ Palace: Dragon I and II (Inprnt)
Bede
Rogerson – cover for ‘Concrete Faery’ by Elizabeth Priest (Luna Press)
Del
Samatar – artwork for ‘Monster Portraits’ by Sofia and Del Samatar (Rose Metal
Press)
Charlotte
Stroomer – cover for ‘Rosewater’ by Tade Thompson (Orbit)
In the first round of voting members nominated a longlist of 45 novels, 44 short stories, 15 items of nonfiction, and 27 artworks.
Once voters have determined the shortlist, BSFA members and members of the British national science fiction convention Eastercon will vote for the winners.
2018 RULES CHANGE: The criteria for the Best Novel award have changed this year. To match the other Awards, BSFA no longer requires that a novel be published for the first time in the UK or Ireland. Novels are eligible in the year of their first publication regardless of the place they were published.
Best Novel nominees:
Rachel Armstrong – Origamy (NewCon Press)
Andrew Bannister – Stone Clock (Bantam Press)
RJ Barker – Blood of Assassins (Orbit)
EM Brown – Buying Time (Solaris)
Pierce Brown – Iron Gold (Hodder & Stoughton)
Becky Chambers – Record of a Spaceborn Few (Hodder & Stoughton)
Andrew Crumey – The Great Chain Of Unbeing (Dedalus)
Juno Dawson – Doctor Who: The Good Doctor (BBC Books)
Aliette de Bodard – In the Vanishers’ Palace (JABberwocky Literary Agency)
Dominic Dulley – Shattermoon (Jo Fletcher Books)
Berit Ellingsen – Now We Can See the Moon (Snuggly Books)
Rachel Fellman – The Breath of the Sun (Aqueduct Press)
Daniel Godfrey – The Synapse Sequence (Titan Books)
Sam Hawke – City of Lies (Bantam Press)
Dave Hutchinson – Europe at Dawn (Solaris)
Simon Ings – The Smoke (Gollancz)
T Kingfisher – The Wonder Engine (Argyll Productions)
Mary Robinette Kowal – The Calculating Stars (Tor Books)
RF Kuang – The Poppy War (HarperVoyager)
Derek Künsken – The Quantum Magician (Solaris)
Rich Larson – Annex (Orbit)
Yoon Ha Lee – Revenant Gun (Solaris)
Roger Levy – The Rig (Titan Books)
Ling Ma – Severance (Text Publishing Company)
Ed McDonald – Ravencry (Gollancz)
Sam J Miller – Blackfish City (Orbit)
Patrick Ness – And the Ocean Was Our Sky (Walker)
Emma Newman – Before Mars (Ace Books)
Naomi Novik – Spinning Silver (Macmillan)
Malka Older – State Tectonics (Tor.com)
Gareth L Powell – Embers of War (Titan Books)
Christopher Priest – An American Story (Gollancz)
Elizabeth Priest – Concrete Faery (Luna Press)
Alastair Reynolds – Elysium Fire (Gollancz)
Adam Roberts – By the Pricking of Her Thumb (Gollancz)
Audrey Schulman – Theory of Bastards (Europa Editions)
James Smythe – I Still Dream (The Borough Press)
Anna Stephens – Darksoul (HarperVoyager)
Tasha Suri – Empire of Sand (Orbit)
EJ Swift – Paris Adrift (Solaris)
Tade Thompson – Rosewater (Orbit; first UK publication 2018)
Stuart Turton – The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Raven Books)
Peter Watts – The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Tachyon Publications)
Aliya Whiteley – The Loosening Skin (Unsung Stories)
Jen Williams – The Bitter Twins (Headline)
Best Shorter Fiction nominees:
Nina Allan – The Gift of Angels: an introduction (Clarkesworld) – https://bit.ly/2CS47bX
Vajra Chandrasekera – Rupture & Complicity: The 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist (Strange Horizons) – https://bit.ly/2QvN8Qz
Will Davies (ed.) – Economic Science Fictions (Goldsmiths Press)
Aliette de Bodard – On motherhood and erasure: people-shaped holes, hollow characters and the illusion of impossible adventures (Intellectus Speculativus blog) – https://bit.ly/2FeeyZc
Andy Hedgecock – Future Interrupted column 2018 articles (Interzone)
Erin Horáková – Erin Groans: A Gormenvast Review of Every Adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Books (Strange Horizons) – https://bit.ly/2zyiZcN
Nick Hubble, Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Joseph Norman (eds) – The Science Fiction of Iain M. Banks (Gylphi)
Polina Levontin – Scientists in Nigerian Science Fiction (in The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction, Luna Press)
Robert S Malan – Portrayals of South Africans in Popular Entertainment: Bad Accented Baddies, Prawns and Black Panther (in The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction, Luna Press)
Laura Miller – Ursula K. Le Guin and the Three Obstacles (Slate) – https://bit.ly/2QtoLTx
Adam Roberts – Publishing the Science Fiction Canon: The Case of Scientific Romance (Cambridge University Press) – https://bit.ly/2GYQbBd
Best Artwork nominees:
(artist unknown) – Cover for ‘An American Story’ by Christopher Priest (Gollancz) – https://bit.ly/2TBQEuG
(artist unknown) – Cover for ‘Melmoth’ by Sarah Perry (Serpent’s Tail) – https://bit.ly/2C97722
Ben Baldwin – Wraparound cover for Strange Tales slipcase set (NewCon Press) – https://bit.ly/2FdsHXd
Rovina Cai – Cover for ‘And the Ocean Was Our Sky’ by Patrick Ness (Walker) – https://bit.ly/2FknIn7
John Coulthart – Cover for ‘Moonshine’ by Jasmine Gower (Angry Robot) – https://bit.ly/2C4LEHL
Clare Boothby explains a major rules change that makes it possible now to nominate books published anywhere.
This year we’re making a change to the BSFA Award rules for Best Novel. To bring it into line with all the other awards, we are dropping the publication location requirement for novels. Previously novels were only eligible if they were published for the first time in the UK or Ireland (or solely in e-book format). From this year, novels are eligible in the year of their first publication, regardless of where they were published.
Because occasionally a book can still be hard to find in the UK when it’s only been published elsewhere, novels may also be eligible in the year of their first UK/Ireland publication, at the awards administrator’s discretion.
We’re making this change for several reasons, but in general terms we’re doing it to keep awards eligibility in line with the books that British fans are reading and talking about. Publishing availability has changed dramatically since the rule was written. Books published only in the US are now much more widely available in the UK, which means some books never get a formal UK publication even though they’re really easy to get hold of in the UK. Publishing models are also changing, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell what “counts” as UK publication.
And of course it isn’t the big names who are affected by this, which means that as a side-effect we’re narrowing our focus unnecessarily and ruling out some really great books, often by British authors or authors living and working in Britain. That’s the main motivation behind this change; we want to keep the novel award as relevant and interesting as the novels we’re all reading.
BSFA members can vote online here. Those attending Eastercon can vote at the BSFA stand until noon on the day of the awards ceremony, Saturday, March 31 – Eastercon attendees do not need to be a member of the BSFA to vote onsite.
Best Novel
Nina Allan – The Rift (Titan Books)
Anne Charnock – Dreams Before the Start of Time (47North)
Mohsin Hamid – Exit West (Hamish Hamilton)
Ann Leckie – Provenance (Orbit)
Best Shorter Fiction
Anne Charnock – The Enclave (NewCon Press)
Elaine Cuyegkeng – These Constellations Will Be Yours (Strange Horizons)
Greg Egan – Uncanny Valley (Tor.com)
Geoff Nelder – Angular Size (in ‘SFerics 2017’ edited by Roz Clarke and Rosie Oliver, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform)
Tade Thompson – The Murders of Molly Southbourne (Tor.com)
Best Non-Fiction
Paul Kincaid – Iain M. Banks (University of Illinois Press)
Juliet E McKenna – The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and Other Obstacles in Science Fiction & Fantasy (in Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Francesca T Barbini, Luna Press)
Adam Roberts – Wells at the World’s End 2017 blog posts (Wells at the World’s End blog)
Shadow Clarke Award jurors – The 2017 Shadow Clarke Award blog (The Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy). The 2017 Shadow Clarke jurors are: Nina Allan, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Victoria Hoyle, Vajra Chandrasekera, Nick Hubble, Paul Kincaid, Jonathan McCalmont, Megan AM.
Vandana Singh – The Unthinkability of Climate Change: Thoughts on Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement (Strange Horizons)
Best Artwork
Geneva Benton – Sundown Towns (cover for Fiyah Magazine #3)
Jim Burns – Cover for The Ion Raider by Ian Whates (NewCon Press)
Galen Dara – Illustration for ‘These Constellations Will Be Yours’ by Elaine Cuyegkeng (Strange Horizons)
Chris Moore – Cover for The Memoirist by Neil Williamson (NewCon Press)
Victo Ngai – Illustration for ‘Waiting on a Bright Moon’ by JY Yang (Tor.com)
Marcin Wolski – Cover for 2084 edited by George Sandison (Unsung Stories)
[Thanks to Mark Hepworth and Clare Boothby for the story.]
In the first round of voting members nominated a longlist of 48 novels, 41 short stories, 20 items of nonfiction, and 28 artworks.
Once voters have determined the shortlist, BSFA members and members of the British national science fiction convention Eastercon will vote for the winners.
Best Novel nominees:
Nina Allen – The Rift (Titan Books)
Katherine Arden – The Bear and the Nightingale (Del Rey)
Andrew Bannister – Iron Gods (Bantam Press)
Nicola Barker – H(A)PPY (William Heinemann)
Chris Beckett – America City (Corvus)
Peter V Brett – The Core (Harper Voyager)
Chris Brookmyre – Places in the Darkness (Orbit)
Lisa Carey – The Stolen Child (Orion)
C Robert Cargill – Sea of Rust (Gollancz)
Anne Charnock – Dreams Before the Start of Time
Adam Christopher – Killing is My Business (Titan Books)
Paul Cornell – Chalk (Tor Books UK)
Nicholas Eames – Kings of the Wyld (Orbit)
Omar El Akkad – American War (Picador)
Daryl Gregory – Spoonbenders (riverrun)
Mohsin Hamid – Exit West (Hamish Hamilton)
Frances Hardinge – A Skinful of Shadows (Pan Macmillan)
Nick Harkaway – Gnomon (William Heinemann)
Jonathan L Howard – After the End of the World (Thomas Dunne Books)
Kameron Hurley – The Stars Are Legion (Angry Robot)
Jaroslav Kalfa? – Spaceman of Bohemia (Sceptre)
Mur Lafferty – Six Wakes (Orbit)
Anthony Laken – One Cog Turning (Luna Press)
Mark Lawrence – Red Sister (Harper Voyager)
Ann Leckie – Provenance (Orbit)
Yoon Ha Lee – Raven Stratagem (Solaris)
Ian R Macleod – Red Snow (PS Publishing)
Paul McAuley – Austral (Gollancz)
Ian McDonald – Luna: Wolf Moon (Gollancz)
Peter McLean – Damnation (Angry Robot)
Philip Miller – All the Galaxies (Freight Books)
Jeff Noon – A Man of Shadows (Angry Robot)
Ada Palmer – Seven Surrenders (Head of Zeus)
Ada Palmer – The Will to Battle (Head of Zeus)
Benjamin Percy – The Dark Net (Hodder & Stoughton)
Adam Roberts – The Real-Town Murders (Gollancz)
Kim Stanley Robinson – New York 2140 (Orbit)
Justina Robson – The Switch (Gollancz)
John Scalzi – The Collapsing Empire (Pan Macmillan)
Gavin Smith – The Bastard Legion (Gollancz)
Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland – The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (Borough Press)
Kenneth Steven – 2020 (Saraband)
Allen Stroud – The Forever Man (Luna Press)
Tricia Sullivan – Sweet Dreams (Gollancz)
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Dogs of War (Head of Zeus)
Karen Traviss – Black Run (Createspace Independent Publishing Platform)
AJ Dalton – The Sub-genres of British Fantasy Literature (Luna Press)
Rick Edwards and Dr Michael Brooks – Science(ish): The Peculiar Science Behind the Movies (Atlantic Books)
Roy Grey – Interzone #271 Editorial (Interzone #271)
Grady Hendrix – Paperbacks from Hell: A History of Horror Fiction from the ’70s and ’80s (Quirk Books)
Melissa Hillman – “This is Not Going to Go the Way You Think”: The Last Jedi Is Subversive AF, and I Am Here for It (Bitter Gertrude blog) – http://bit.ly/2zqN0Jv
Paul Kincaid – Iain M. Banks (University of Illinois Press)
Kim Lakin-Smith – Doll Parts: Reflections of the Feminine Grotesque in Frances Hardinge’s Cuckoo Song and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (in Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, Luna Press)
Roger Luckhurst – Science Fiction: A Literary History (British Library Publishing)
Juliet E McKenna – The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and Other Obstacles in Science Fiction & Fantasy (in Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, Luna Press)
Sinéad Murphy – Science Fiction and the Arab Spring: the critical dystopia in contemporary Egyptian fiction (Strange Horizons) – http://bit.ly/2gV3aUP
John Rieder – Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System (Wesleyan)
Adam Roberts – Wells at the World’s End 2017 blog posts (Wells at the World’s End blog) – http://bit.ly/2CBakaI
(1) PRONOUNS AND ROCKET STACK RANK. Bogi Takács wrote a series of tweets criticizing Greg Hullender’s statements in reviews about the usage of pronouns for non-binary characters in stories reviewed at Rocket Stack Rank, adding many screenshots of examples. Takács also pointed out the reviews are given a certain implied authority because Rocket Stack Rank is linked from the official The Hugo Awards site as a “Third Party Recommendation Site.”
Get into the thread here:
I will say it again in my main feed because this is important.
If a reviewer repeatedly states that nonbinary pronouns in a story are an automatic -1 star, that reviewer does NOT get to claim to be a trans ally.
That's not how any of this works.
— Bogi Takács: POWER TO YIELD & OTHER STORIES Nov 7! (@bogiperson) November 26, 2017
The Hugo connection is illustrated here:
I would not bother if this was a random dude who spouts random dudedom.
This is a site EXPLICITLY promoted by the Hugo award website.
— Bogi Takács: POWER TO YIELD & OTHER STORIES Nov 7! (@bogiperson) November 26, 2017
The comments on the Hugo linkage include one from Patrick Nielsen Hayden:
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/934760409487331328
For those who are unfamiliar, here is Bogi Takács’ brief bio from Patreon:
I’m Bogi Takács, a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person (e/em/eir/emself or singular they pronouns) currently living in the US as a resident alien. I writespeculative fiction and poetry – I have had work published in various professional venues like Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex and Strange Horizons.
Other comments on RSR, Hullender’s views, and their impact included —
Second of all, @bogiperson's long thread shows this is not new. This is not a case of "I messed up, whoops" but an ongoing trend of using an increasingly important platform to consistently downgrade stories that correctly use non-binary pronouns for non-binary characters
— Razorblade Snowflake (Keffy R.M. Kehrli) (@Keffy) November 26, 2017
Pixar’s “Coco” sang its way to the fourth best Thanksgiving weekend ever with an estimated $71.2 million over the five-day weekend, a total that easily toppled Warner Bros.’ “Justice League.”
“Coco” rode strong reviews and an A-plus CinemaScore from audiences to the top spot at the domestic box office. According to studio estimates Sunday, it grossed $49 million from Friday to Sunday. Centered on the Mexican holiday Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), “Coco” has already set box office records in Mexico, where it has made $53.4 million in three weeks.
(3) BSFA AWARDS. The British Science Fiction Association invites members to “Nominate for the BSFA Awards” between now and December 31:
The BSFA awards are presented annually by the British Science Fiction Association, based on a vote of BSFA members and – in recent years – members of the British national science fiction convention Eastercon. They are fan awards that not only seek to honour the most worthy examples in each category, but to promote the genre of science fiction, and get people reading, talking about and enjoying all that contemporary science fiction has to offer.
…Nominations are open until 31st December. This will be the first round. Then from 1st January to 30th January the opportunity for members to vote for their shortlist from the collated suggestions will be provided. This will be the second round.
or email your nominations to [email protected]. A form and process for the second round will be made available on this page after the first round has closed.
A parent in Florida is citing profanity and violence in trying to get the local school to ban Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” — itself a cautionary tale on the banning of books. Another wants to remove Walter Dean Myers’ “Bad Boy” for using the word “penis” and a homophobic slur.
Elsewhere in Florida, some say global warming and evolution are a hoax and should not be taught in textbooks unopposed. Others say their local school’s textbooks shortchange Islam’s role in the world, while their opponents argue it’s the danger posed by Muslim terrorists that’s underexposed.
Under a bill passed by the Florida Legislature this year, any district resident — regardless of whether they have a child in school — can now challenge material as pornographic, biased, inaccurate or a violation of state law and get a hearing before an outside mediator.
The mediator advises the local school board, whose decision is final. Previously, challenges could only be made by parents to the school or district. There was also no mediator and fewer mandates. Districts must now also post online a list of all new books and material by grade level to make monitoring easier.
One Thanksgiving party will literally look down upon them all, as the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) continues its longstanding tradition of observing the festive harvest holiday from orbit. This year’s menu includes irradiated smoked turkey, rehydratable cornbread dressing, green beans and mushrooms, broccoli au gratin, mashed potatoes, candied yams, sweet tea, and thermostabilized cherry blueberry cobbler for dessert.
“They don’t actually have the day off on Thursday,” NASA spokesman Dan Huot told Space.com in an email, adding that the crew has “a lot of cargo-unloading tasks to complete” with the Cygnus spacecraft that arrived last Tuesday (Nov. 14). However, the astronauts will at least have Friday off, Huot said.
Along with over 7,700 lbs. (3,500 kilograms) of supplies and science equipment, the Cygnus cargo craft delivered the crew their Thanksgiving dinner and some other tasty treats, like pizza and ice cream. Holiday gifts and care packages from the astronauts’ families also shipped with Cygnus. With that trove of holiday goodies just waiting to be unpacked, the astronauts have plenty of incentives for working through the holiday
(6) AFTER THE STUFFING. Here’s how it looks from the Batcave:
The Guardian includes eleven science fiction stories by international authors, all featuring guardians of some kind. My own story in the anthology, “Baptism of Fire” is a prequel story to my In Love and War space opera romance series, so all you fans of Anjali and Mikhail (come on, I know there are some of you out there) rejoice.
The sad news is that this Alantim could not be revived after the attack. But the silver lining is that its death inspired Olga Budnik, a spokesperson for the Muscovite tech hub Phystechpark, to create the world’s first dedicated robot cemetery.
“Alantim was a really good robot,” Budnik told me in an email. “It was supportive, always polite, always happy to see you. You know, like a pet. And [the cemetery] was an idea to bury it like a pet. Not disassemble or carry it to the trash. To say good-bye.”
On October 31, Alantim’s Earthly remains were placed at the Phystechpark cemetery site next to a box for collecting other dead robots. He was eulogized by another Alantim, who honored his dearly departed “brother” for being “very useful to your people and Russian science,” according to a Russian-to-English translation of the ceremony as seen at the top of this article.
J.R.R. Tolkien Ownership Claimed by: The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate
The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate owns numerous trademarks based on Tolkien’s works, as well as registered trademarks on Tolkien’s name. Last year, a fellow who sold buttons reading “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion” through Zazzle was contacted by Zazzle, who said that they were removing the buttons at the Tolkien Estate’s request. Later, Zazzle restored the buttons, saying that they had been removed erroneously due to a miscommunication, but it shined a light on the estate’s ownership of Tolkien’s name and left lots of folks wondering where the line was. When are you invoking Tolkien the brand and when are you referring to Tolkien the man?
The estate also owns the right to publicity for Tolkien’s name and image, which they used to challenge the publication of Steve Hillard’s historical fiction book, Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien. Eventually Hillard and the estate settled, with Hillard agreeing to make some changes to the book’s appearance to make it look less like one of Tolkien’s novels. A Mirkwood movie is in the works.
Bonus Round: Like any other trademark holder, the Tolkien Estate has to be vigilant about enforcing their trademarks. But some are stranger than others. In 2004, the estate issued a cease and desist letter to the owner of the domain Shiremail.com, claiming the estate owned the trademark on the word “shire.” The word “shire,” which means an administrative subdivision, such as a county, has been around since the 12th century.
(10) BOARDMAN OBIT. Perdita Boardman (1931-2017) died November 26 after a long illness. Mark Blackman writes:
Perdita was best-known in Northeast Fandom for hosting Lunarians meetings and running the Lunacon Con Suite for many years, and with her husband, John, hosting a monthly fannish gathering called First Saturday. For their long service, she and John were voted Honorary Members of the Lunarians.
Her younger daughter, Deirdre, shared the following on Facebook:
I wanted to share with family (& friends) about the passing of my mom this morning peacefully in her sleep.
Many know she has been suffering from severe dementia well over a decade now, but she became very sick about two weeks ago and moved to hospice care.
Born Dec 27, 1931 in Baxter Springs, KS she grew up outside of Detroit, bounced around a bit living in Chicago, San Francisco, Virginia and finally settling in New York City about 1960, first in Manhattan, then Park Slope and finally her well known home in Flatbush. She spent her final years in Frederick, MD to be closer to Karina & I.
She has loved science fiction & fantasy (as well as mysteries & regency romances) novels since the 50s and was an avid reader.
She was a talented artist, master seamstress and knitted the most amazing sweaters!
I could go on all.
One of her funny quotes from the other day after being annoyed by nurses prodding her was, “I am Perdita Ann Lilly Nelson Boardman and I am going to sleep”
One of these brilliantly told stories, “The Walls”, begins: “A man, let’s call him D, is seen digging his way out through the wall of his cell. To help in this project, D has only the thinnest and least reliable tools: two dessert spoons (one stainless steel, one electro-plated nickel silver); half of a pair of curved nail scissors; some domestic knives lacking handles; and so on. The cell wall, constructed from grey, squarish cinder blocks about a foot on a side has been carelessly mortared and laid without much attention to detail. But this lack of artifice makes no difference; none of the knives is long enough to reach the last half inch of mortar at the back of each block, and the more D uses them the shorter they get. Each block must, eventually, be loosened and removed by hand, a task which can take several months, and which leaves him exhausted.”
A close attention to detail characterises this story and contributes much to its effectiveness, and yet, like the careless mortaring of the cinder blocks, it makes no difference in the end. Why and how does D have two dessert spoons? What does he live on during these months (which become years)? Who brings it to his cell? We have nothing with which to fill in unstated facts, as we’re used to doing when reading fiction, because the story is consistent only in pulling the carpet out from under its own feet. It is a play of imagination in a void. Its power is that of a dream, in this case a bad one, the kind that keeps repeating itself with variations in an endless loop of frustration.
This holds for all the stories collected in You Should Come With Me Now. Some of them are surrealistic, some are spoofs, some are fables; many are funny, all are inventive; none entirely escapes the loop….
(12) 25 WAYS TO RUB YOUR LAMP. A Yahoo! Movies piece, “Disney’s ‘Aladdin’: 25 magical fun facts for 25th anniversary”, has lots of trivia about Aladdin, including how Patrick Stewart nearly played Jafar but couldn’t get out of his Star Trek: The Next Generation commitments and how there is a hidden Aladdin reference in Hamilton.
The animators crafted the Genie around Williams’s rapid-fire improv. Co-director Ron Musker said Williams did 25 takes for the movie’s first scene, “and they were all different.” The entertainer would stick to the script for the first few takes, “then he would riff.” Musker said Williams recorded 16 hours’ worth of material, forcing the creative team to piece the character together “like a ransom note.”
(13) COMICS SECTION.
Mike Kennedy quit groaning at the Tolkien pun long enough to send a link to today’s Brevity.
On September 27 [1849] —almost a week earlier—Poe had left Richmond, Virginia bound for Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems for Mrs. St. Leon Loud, a minor figure in American poetry at the time. When Walker found Poe in delirious disarray outside of the polling place, it was the first anyone had heard or seen of the poet since his departure from Richmond. Poe never made it to Philadelphia to attend to his editing business. Nor did he ever make it back to New York, where he had been living, to escort his aunt back to Richmond for his impending wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore, where he launched his career in the early 19th- century, again—and in the four days between Walker finding Poe outside the public house and Poe’s death on October 7, he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he had come to be found, in soiled clothes not his own, incoherent on the streets. Instead, Poe spent his final days wavering between fits of delirium, gripped by visual hallucinations. The night before his death, according to his attending physician Dr. John J. Moran, Poe repeatedly called out for “Reynolds”—a figure who, to this day, remains a mystery.
On Saturday there were two announcements from What We Left Behind, the upcoming crowd-funded Star Trek: Deep Space Nine documentary. Adam Nimoy, while remaining involved, will no longer be directing, and the release date is likely being pushed back.
Nimoy stepping back
In a statement posted on Facebook Saturday, Adam Nimoy revealed he was stepping down as director for What We left Behind, but he will continue to be a producer and advisor on the doc. The reason given for the change was that he needed more time to focus on other responsibilities. From the statement:
“The real creative force behind the DS9 documentary was well in place before I came along. I was happy to lend them support and guidance to push the project along so that it could be completed in time for the 25th anniversary of the show which is coming up in 2018. I wish the creative team all good things as they Boldly Go!”
Mr Poolman’s sculpture is described as “not just a dragon but a tableau”, telling the story of a village bringing a dragon from the sky with arrows and stones.
“It’s partly collapsed,” Mr Powell said, “brought to the ground, in its death throes.”
Tens of thousands of old horseshoes were provided by farriers in Hampshire – some of them were used whole and others cut into smaller pieces.
“A complete horseshoe is quite limiting in what it can be made into,” Mr Poolman said.
(19) NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Brandon Sanderson isn’t just on the list, he’s #1 —
I'm humbled and honored to say that because of all you wonderful readers out there, Oathbringer is the #1 New York Times bestselling hardcover book on the 12/03 list. I hope you've enjoyed reading it! pic.twitter.com/MLnLQcwv7I
(20) UNDER THE TREE. We continue our cavalcade of holiday presents with –
perfect holiday gift is here! HANDSOME HOLIDAY SWEATER great for proving love and getting hard by the fireside with a bud. also good for big time sweater parties where you want to be the talk of the dang town https://t.co/EY0T6l4ZtGpic.twitter.com/xAC4y735MB
She’s talented and beautiful and she plays Luke Skywalker’s new padawan, Rey, in one of the most anticipated “Star Wars” films of all time, but now comes the true test: Can Daisy Ridley build the Millennium Falcon with Legos?
Elle UK interviewed the “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” actress, asking her things like when was the last time she cried, what color her lightsaber would be, and if her father still prefers “Star Trek” (ouch) ? all while she’s tasked with building the Millennium Falcon out of Legos.
(22) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Happiness by Steve Cutts is a cartoon on Vimeo about rats trying to survive the rat race as commuters, consumers, and at work. I’m having trouble getting it to embed, so here’s the link — https://vimeo.com/groups/motion/videos/244405542
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, DMS, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mark Blackman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]
The BSFA Awards are presented annually by the British Science Fiction Association, based on a vote of BSFA members and – in recent years – members of the British national science fiction convention Eastercon.
BSFA members and attending members of Eastercon can vote on the winners online now, and voting will continue at the convention up to midday on Saturday, April 15
Best Novel
Chris Beckett – Daughter of Eden (Gollancz)
Becky Chambers – A Closed and Common Orbit (Hodder & Stoughton)
Dave Hutchinson – Europe in Winter (Solaris)
Tricia Sullivan – Occupy Me (Gollancz)
Nick Wood – Azanian Bridges (NewCon Press)
Best Short Fiction
Malcolm Devlin – The End of Hope Street (Interzone #266)
Jaine Fenn – Liberty Bird (Now We Are Ten, NewCon Press)
Una McCormack – Taking Flight (Crises and Conflicts, NewCon Press)
Helen Oyeyemi – Presence (What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Picador)
Tade Thompson – The Apologists (Interzone #266)
Aliya Whiteley – The Arrival of Missives (Unsung Stories)
Paul Graham Raven – New Model Authors? Authority, Authordom, Anarchism and the Atomized Text in a Networked World (Adam Roberts: Critical Essays, Gylphi)
