We regret to announce that the James White Award will not be running a competition this year. Due to technical issues with the current website, and problems caused by a certain global crises beyond our control, we have not been able to set a timetable for this year and, with a great deal of reluctance, we have concluded that it will not be possible to schedule the competition in 2020.
The James White Award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition last year, the winner received a £200 prize. The competition in prior years has been open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers.
Award Administrator McGrath also said:
We have been put off this decision for months, hoping (perhaps increasingly foolishly) that we could come up with a fix for the problems we are facing within a timescale that would allow us to go ahead this year. Ultimately, however, it simply hasn’t been possible to get things in place in time and we have – with very great reluctance – made the decision to not hold the competition this year. We will, however, be back in 2021.
In 2019, judges Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott selected “Limitations” by David Maskill as the winner.
David wins £200, his story
will be published in a forthcoming issue of Britain’s longest running science
fiction magazine, Interzone, and
his story will be translated into Italian to be included in Mondi Incantati
2019).
Competition judge Chris Beckett
described “Limitations” as an “ingenuous story” and said it was:
“very rich in ideas, it managed to be funny and touching while playing clever games with some very exotic science. I won’t say the science was plausible, but it was implausible in the way that real science is implausible these days. It was plausibly implausible. Likeable characters too.”
The judges also awarded a
special commendation to runner up “Property Crime” by Michael Donoghue.
They say he missed out by the narrowest margin in the Award’s history.
Martin McGrath, Award
Administrator, described “Property Crime” as:
“an immensely likeable story with a strong emotional core that manages to combine recognisable elements from the crime and science fiction genres without ever feeling over familiar.”
The
winner was selected by the James White Award’s final panel of judges, Chris
Beckett, Donna Scott and Justina Robson.
The other shortlisted stories in this year’s competition were:
The competition is open to
original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by
non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers
non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the
UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.
The winner, selected by judges Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna
Scott, will be announced on Thursday, September 5.
(1) WHITE AWARD LONGLIST. The James White Award’s 2019 longlisted stories have
been posted – titles only, not author names yet: “judging is still going on and
we want to preserve anonymity as part of the selection process.” They received
355 submissions.
The James White Award Short Story Competition was established in 2000. It is open only to non-professional writers and offers them the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone,
(2) SF IN CHINA. Derek Künsken’s news-filled “SF in Beijing
Report” for Locus Online tells about his visit to Another Planet Science Fiction Convention this
past May.
It’s interesting to try to understand where Chinese science fiction conferences are coming from and why this one in particular is being led by a multi-media SF company. I chatted with Ji Shaoting, the CEO of FAA. She’s a former journalist at the Xinhua news Agency who later co-founded Guokr, a massive Chinese-language pop-science website with a few stories, and pop-culture blog, and a fan club called Future Affairs Administration. Her work with FAA and Guokr caught the attention of an investor who wanted to create a repository of IP that could be developed into movies, TV, games, etc., because he “believes in the imagination industry.” FAA transitioned from a fan club into a company whose business goals are publishing SF and developing new Chinese writers.
(3) GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY. The Addams Family animated
movie comes to theaters October 11.
Get ready to snap your fingers! The first family of Halloween, the Addams Family, is back on the big screen in the first animated comedy about the kookiest family on the block. Funny, outlandish, and completely iconic, the Addams Family redefines what it means to be a good neighbor.
Entrance requirements to New Zealand (NZ) are changing on 1 October 2019. Please read these instructions carefully, even if you have travelled to NZ before.
The key change is that New Zealand is introducing a pre-travel electronic authorisation process, called an NZeTA (New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority). This authorisation must be obtained in advance of travel, and will apply to many citizens of countries included in the Visa Waiver programme, including the United States of America, the UK and most European countries (full list here)….
There is additional information in the full post.
(5) DON’T WASTE A MOMENT. Heritage Auctions’ Intelligent
Collector interviews sff art collector Glynn Crain in “Amazing
Sci-Fi Story”. The Glynn and Suzanne Crain Science-Fiction Collection
goes under the hammer August 13-14.
If Glynn Crain has a tip, it is don’t ignore late-night phone calls. Especially if you are a collector.
Crain vividly recalls the evening several years ago that he and his wife came home from the movies. “It was about 10 o’clock and a friend of mine had left a message. ‘Hey Glynn, give me a call when you get a chance.’ I didn’t call him back until the next evening. I didn’t think there was any urgency. Well, there was urgency and when he couldn’t get ahold of me, he picked up the phone and called someone else and the painting sold instantly.”
The friend’s find was a painting by famed illustrator Stanley Meltzoff, who in the 1950s created dozens of covers for novels by science-fiction author Robert Heinlein and others. “[Meltzoff] influenced a host of illustrators that came later,” Crain says, “people like Paul Lehr, Vincent Di Fate, and on and on. He’s revered. It was a painting I would dearly love to have, a fantastic example.
“It’s in a good home now,” says Crain, 63, who knows the collector who acquired the painting. “But that was definitely the one that got away. There’s a saying: ‘You don’t regret the art you buy. You regret the art that you don’t buy.’ For some reason, you thought it was too expensive or you just couldn’t come to terms with the person who had it or the timing wasn’t right or maybe you didn’t have the money. It’s always the things you pass on that you really regret. That was something I learned quickly.”
(6) HOGGING THE LIMELIGHT. Let Alexandra Erin sing it for
you —
And the 30-50 hogs I admired the most — the bacon, ribs, and the shoulder roast — they took the last train to the coast…
And yet, “These improvements were partially offset” by a loss from the 21st Century Fox (21CF) business. And the loss at 21CF was “driven by the performance of ‘Dark Phoenix,’ for which we also recorded a film cost impairment.”
(8) NUTTALL OBIT. Early UK fan Stanley Nuttall
(1926-2019) died April 26. He was a former Chairman of the Liverpool Science
Fiction Society and the British Interplanetary Society. He was made a Knight of
St. Fantony at Cytricon III (1957). Dave Kyle quoted Nuttall quite extensively
in his Mimosa article “The
Noble and Illustrious Order of St. Fantony”.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.
August 7, 1942 — Invisible Agent premiered.
August 7, 1953 — Spaceways debuted.
August 7, 2012 — The Curiosity Rover landed on Mars at Bradbury Landing.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born August 7, 1933 — Jerry Pournelle. Yes, I read his Byte column. And much of his Janissaries series and more than a bit of his CoDominium work as well but I’ll hold that his best work was The Mote in God’s Eye that he co-authored with Niven. The follow-up, The Gripping Hand, wasn’t nearly as good unfortunately. (Died 2017.)
Born August 7, 1936 — Richard L. Tierney, 83. A Lovecraftian scholar. Coauthored with David C. Smith, a series of Red Sonja novels which have Boris Vallejo cover art . Some of his standalone novels riff off the Cthulhu Mythos. Unless you read German, he’s not available digitally on either iBooks or Kindle.
Born August 7, 1957 — Paul Dini, 62. First, he’s largely responsible for the existence of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman/Superman Adventures, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and yes, Duck Dodgers And Tiny Toons as well which are superb, too. He’s recently been writing for the Ultimate Spider-Man series which is quite good. He co-authored with Pat Cadigan Harley Quinn: Mad Love.
Born August 7, 1960 — David Duchovny, 59. Obviously, Fox Mulder on X-Files. Now, has he done any other genre? Well he was Dr. Ira Kane in Evolution, a comic SF film, and then there’s Denise Bryson, formerly Dennis Bryson, played by him, who’s a transgender DEA agent on the Twin Peaks series. He also voices Ethan Cole in Area 51, a first person video game shooter.
Born August 7, 1960 — Melissa Scott, 59. I think the first work I read by her was Trouble and Her Friends which holds up well even now. I’m also fond of Night Sky Mine and The Jazz. I see she has an entire series set in the Stargate Atlantis universe.
Born August 7, 1964 — A. J. Hartley, 55. His Steeplejack is not only really well-written but has an interesting conception as he tells here. Though written for the Tor Teen line, I recommend it as it’s a fun series. Well fun as dystopias go.
Born August 7, 1975 — Charlize Theron, 44. She surprised me by being in a number of genre films including 2008), Snow White and the Huntsman and The Huntsman: Winter’s War (which are both quite superb), Prometheus, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Addams Family as Mortica Adams, The Devil’s Advocate, Æon Flux in Æon Flux, the narrator of Astro Boy and her first film, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, a horror film I suspect she’d prefer everyone forget. She played Pria Lavesque on The Orville in the episode called, errr, “Pria”.
Born August 7, 1978 — Cirroc Lofton, 41. Jake Sisko on Deep Space Nine which I still consider the best Trek series to date, though Discovery is now my second favorite series. Lofton btw, like many performers on all of the series, has shown up in the fan-made video series. He’s played Jacob, no last name, on two part “Requiem” of Star Trek: Renegades. Presumably the name change was because he didn’t have permission to appear as his Trek character. And he played Sevar on Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, another such endeavor.
Born August 7, 1979 — Eric Johnson, 40. Scifi’s Flash Gordon on the series of that name that they aired from August 10, 2007 to February 8, 2008. Look, I’m used to Flash Gordon series that are nearly a century old so I had no idea no one had been done recently. Anyone see this?
So the Dragon Awards finally seem to be moving towards what they were supposed to do, namely reward broadly popular works in a variety of genres. Indies and eager self-promoters can still grab slots in the less popular down ballot categories, but except for military science fiction they no longer dominate any one category. Chris Kennedy still managed to grab a few slots for his publishing outfit, but then maybe he is one of the few who still care. Meanwhile, the 20Booksto50K/LMBPN Publishing folks are notable by their complete absence. There are a few puppy/puppy adjacent authors, but most of them have fanbases beyond the puppy bubble. And indeed, Camestros Felapton dug up Brad Torgersen’s reaction to the ballot and a list of which finalists he considers the relevant ones. It’s about the names you’d expect except for Philip Ligon, who’s notable by his absence.
(12) THE ORIGINAL CRASHLANDERS. Meanwhile, could tardigrades
be hibernating on the Moon for however long it takes
for us to get up there and terraform it? The Guardian speculates “Tardigrades may have survived spacecraft crashing on moon”.
The odds of finding life on the moon have suddenly rocketed skywards. But rather than elusive alien moonlings, the beings in question came from Earth and were spilled across the landscape when a spacecraft crashed into the surface.
The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. And all was going smoothly until mission controllers lost contact in April as the robotic craft made its way down. Beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash, Beresheet had an unusual cargo: a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the toughest animals on Earth.
In the summer of 2018, palaeontologists hammering away at 500-million-year-old rocks high in the Canadian Rockies turned up hundreds of specimens of an unknown but evidently hyperabundant creature. With a hand-size carapace that looks like it was sketched out in science fiction concept art,the diggers nicknamed it “the spaceship.” Now, they’ve given the creature its first scientific description and a name: Cambroraster falcatus—after the famed Millennium Falcon starship from Star Wars.
…Per CNN’s Ashley Strickland, the scientists’ research pinpoints a different explanation for S. fatalis and other giant cats’ demise, positing that factors, including climate change and an uptick in nearby human populations, precipitated the species’ eventual extinction. (The team is collaborating on a second study with experts across six institutions to further refine these causes, Chrissy Sexton notes for Earth.com.)
Smaller predators such as coyotes and grey wolves, on the other hand, weathered harsh conditions by adapting to the times. As DeSantis tells National Geographic’s John Pickrell, “When the large predators and prey go extinct, not only do [the smaller animals] shrink, but they fundamentally change their diet and start scavenging to become the opportunists we know today.”
(15) NOVEL: ENDORSEMENT. Here’s the plug on the cover of
JDA’s next book: “’Could be the most dangerous sci-fi novel of my lifetime.
Read it before it’s banned.’ – MIlo Yiannopoulos.” Jon is sure I’ll want
to pick that up the first day.
…In a study published in February, researchers examined how the stones were quarried. They suggested the Neolithic people may have constructed a platform to excavate the rocks, then used wooden levers to lower the rocks onto a wooden sledge that could then have been “hauled away with ropes.”
The largest of the stones, known as the sarsen trilithons, are over 25 feet in height and weigh over 30 tons. These were moved from a site 18 miles away.
Researchers have also previously suggested these sledges were greased to help move them along—past experiments show the most efficient way to transport them would be a greased timber slipway. However, physical evidence to back this up was lacking—the logs used for the sledges are unlikely to have been preserved.
In a study published in Antiquity, Shillito, from the U.K.’s Newcastle University, has said fat residues found on pottery near Stonehenge may help back the greased sled theory….
The yeast microbes had been asleep for more than 5,000 years, buried deep in the pores of Egyptian ceramics, by the time Seamus Blackley came along and used them to bake a loaf of bread.
An amateur Egyptologist and one of the inventors of the Xbox game console, he’s also a keen hobby baker who routinely posts pictures of his breadmaking projects on social media.
He has, he admits, made his fair share of “horrible, rock-like loaves”. But this experiment was in a different league altogether.
The first step was to extract the yeast without destroying the vessels where it was held. With the help of archaeologist Dr Serena Love, Mr Blackley gained access to the collections of Egyptian beer- and bread-making vessels held in two museums in the US city of Boston.
A giant parrot that roamed New Zealand about 19 million years ago had a height of 1m (3ft 2in) – more than half the average height of a human, a new study has found.
The remains of the parrot were found near St Bathans in New Zealand’s southern Otago region.
Given its size, the parrot is believed to have been flightless and carnivorous, unlike most birds today.
…”There are no other giant parrots in the world,” Professor Trevor Worthy, a palaeontologist at Flinders University in Australia and lead author of the study, told the BBC. “Finding one is very significant.”
The National Library [Israel] unveiled the documents after years of international searches and legal disputes.
It was left the collection in 1968 by Max Brod, the friend who Kafka had trusted to burn his writings after his death in the 1920s
But Brod refused, later going on to publish them instead.
Brod then left the papers to the National Library of Israel in his will.
However, after he died in 1968 they disappeared – eventually sparking a hunt which led investigators to Germany, Switzerland, and bank vaults in Israel.
It was, the National Library’s spokeswoman Vered Lion-Yerushalmi said, a story which was in itself “Kafkaesque”.
The final batch, which has just been sent to Jerusalem, had spent decades stored in vaults at the headquarters in Zurich of Swiss bank UBS.
Consider, for a moment, the circuitous journey of the insecticide called thiamethoxam, on its way to killing a wild wasp.
Alejandro Tena, a researcher at the Valencia Institute of Agricultural Research, in Spain, mixed the chemical into water used to irrigate clementine trees. This is a common practice among citrus farmers. As intended, the tree roots absorbed the insecticide, and it spread throughout the trees’ branches and leaves.
A mealybug landed on the clementine tree, bit through the bark, and began feeding on tree sap underneath. The bug ingested traces of the insecticide. This, in fact, is how thiamethoxam is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, though, the pesticide’s journey wasn’t over. Traces of it showed up in a sticky, sugary, substance called honeydew that the mealybugs excrete. Honeydew is an important food for other insects, such as wasps and hoverflies. In Tena’s experiments, wasps and hoverflies that fed on this contaminated honeydew died in large numbers. Wasps and hoverflies are a fruit grower’s friends, because they help to fight harmful insects.
Tena’s study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is just the latest evidence that a family of pesticides called neonicotinoids, sometimes just called “neonics,” can pose risks to the insect world that are not fully understood.
(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Retrobites: Hanna Barbera (1961) CBC” on YouTube is an
excerpt from a 1961 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary in which Bill
Hanna and Joe Barbera explained how an episode of “The Flintstones”
was made.
[Thanks to Mark Hepworth, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John
King Tarpinian, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip
Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title
credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
Asking “Who Should Live in Flooded Old New York?” Bolander imagines a time in which it’s illegal to live in the flooded remains of NYC, with the only residents being those who are too poor to move elsewhere. In this future, Mr. Rogers’ theme song has turned into an “old folk song,” and “draconian federal regulations” punish those remaining, while millionaires running illegal tourism schemes in the city get off scot-free.
Sanford interviewed Fritz Foy, president and publisher of Tom Doherty Associates, the unit
of Macmillan that includes Tor, who shared “an unprecedented look at their
embargo test….”
…To discover if library ebook lending was indeed hurting sales, Macmillan used their Minotaur imprint as a control group and Tor Books as an experimental group. The two groups have books which sold in similar patterns along with authors and book series which drove steady sales from year to year.
For the experiment Tor prohibited ebook sales to libraries until four months after a book’s release. After that date libraries could purchase the Tor ebooks. The control group Minotaur instituted no such restriction. (As a side-note, Foy said the there was never a plan to do a six-month embargo on ebook sales to libraries, as reported in that Good e-Reader article.)
Foy was surprised by the experiment’s stark results.
“All but one title we compared (in the Tor experiment group) had higher sales after the four month embargo on ebook sales to libraries,” he said. “And the only title where we didn’t see this happen had bad reviews. And when you looked at the control group, sales remained the same.”
Amazon Studios’ high-profile The Lord of the Rings TV series has made a key hire. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona has been tapped to direct the first two episodes of the big-scope fantasy drama, following in the footsteps of Peter Jackson, who directed the feature adaptations of the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novels.
…Bayona’s first feature film, critically acclaimed thriller The Orphanage, executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, premiered to a 10-minute standing ovation at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and later won seven Goya Awards in Spain, including best new director.
Bayona most recently directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide last year. He also directed the features The Impossible, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, and A Monster Calls, starring Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones, as well as the first two episodes of Showtime’s hit series Penny Dreadful.
Amazon’s $1.5 billion (£1.19bn) Lord of the Rings series looks set to begin filming in New Zealand this month, after producers reportedly got cold feet about shooting in Scotland.
The NZ Herald reports that a “huge” part of the series, said to be the most expensive TV show ever made, will be produced in Auckland, specifically at the Kumeu Film Studios and Auckland Film Studios, with an official announcement coming this month. The report states that pre-production on the Amazon show has been based at the two studios for the last year.
Producers were also said to be considering Scotland as a production base, but New Zealand’s public-service radio broadcaster Radio New Zealand (Radio NZ), claims “the tumultuous Brexit situation hindered Scotland’s pitch”.
(5) RESNICK RETURNS TO FB. Mike Resnick gave
Facebook readers a medical update about his frightening health news:
Sorry to be absent for a month. 4 weeks ago I was walking from one room to the next when I collapsed. Carol called the ambulance, and 2 days later I woke up in the hospital minus my large intestine. Just got home last night.
I don’t like growing old.
(6) TIDHAR PICKS BUNDLED. Storybundle announced the The 2019 World SF Bundle, curated by
Lavie Tidhar:
For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.
Afro SF
V3 by Ivor W. Hartmann
The Apex
Book of World SF 5 by Cristina Jurado and Lavie Tidhar
Nexhuman by
Francesco Verso
Under
the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus SIX more!
The
competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than
6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers
non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. The
deadline for submissions was June 28. The winner will be announced in August.
(8) JUMANJI. The next sequel
will be in theaters at Christmas.
In Jumanji: The Next Level, the gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to Jumanji to rescue one of their own, they discover that nothing is as they expect. The players will have to brave parts unknown and unexplored, from the arid deserts to the snowy mountains, in order to escape the world’s most dangerous game.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.
July 3, 1958 — Fiend Without A Face premiered.
July 3, 1985 – Back to the Future was released.
July 3, 1996 – Independence Day debuted in theaters.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 3, 1898 — E. Hoffmann Price. He’s most readily remembered as being a Weird Tales writer, one of a group that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. He did a few collaborations, one of which was with H. P. Lovecraft, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. Another work, “The Infidel’s Daughter”, a satire on the Ku Klux Klan, also angered many Southern readers. (Died 1998.)
Born July 3, 1926 — William Rotsler. An artist, cartoonist, pornographer and SF author. Well, that is his bio. Rotsler was a four-time Hugo Award winner for Best Fan Artist and one-time Nebula Award nominee. He also won a “Retro-Hugo” for his work in 1946 and was runner-up for 1951. He responsible for giving Uhura her first name, created “Rotsler’s Rules for Costuming”, popularized the idea fans wore propeller beanies and well, being amazing sounding. (Died 1997.)
Born July 3, 1927 — Tim O’Connor. He was Dr. Elias Huer in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century for much of its run. Other genre appearances were on The Six Million Dollar Man, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Wonder Woman, Knight Rider, Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Burning Zone. (Died 2018.)
Born July 3, 1927 — Ken Russell. Altered States is his best known SF film but he’s also done The Devils, an historical horror film, and Alice in Russialand. Russell had a cameo in the film adaptation of Brian Aldiss’s novel Brothers of the Head by the directors of Lost in La Mancha. And, of course, he’s responsible for The Who’s Tommy. (Died 2012.)
Born July 3, 1937 — Tom Stoppard, 82. Screenplay writer, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which is adjacent genre if not actually genre. Also scripted of course Brazil which he co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeow. He also did the final Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade final rewrite of Jeffrey Boam’s rewrite of Menno Meyjes’s screenplay. And finally Shakespeare in Love which he co-authored with Marc Norman.
Born July 3, 1943 — Kurtwood Smith, 76. Clarence Boddicker in Robocop, Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and voiced Kanjar Ro in Green Lantern: First Flight. He’s got series appearances on Blue Thunder, The Terrible Thunderlizards, The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Men in Black: The Series, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Judtice League, Batman Beyond, Green Lantern and Beware the Batman. His last role was as Vernon Masters as the superb Agent Carter.
Born July 3, 1962 — Tom Cruise, 57. I’m reasonably sure his first genre role was as Jack in Legend. Next up was Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire followed by being Ethan Hunt in the first of many Mission Impossible films. Then he was John Anderton in the abysmal Minority Report followed by Ray Ferrier in the even far more abysmal War of The Worlds. I’ve not seen him as Maj. William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow so I’ve no idea how good he or the film is. Alas then Nick Morton in, oh god, The Mummy.
(12) IT DON’T PAY TO BE IGNORANT. Not on Jeopardy! as
Andrew Porter witnessed tonight:
In the category American Writers, the answer was, “In a story by this sci-fi master, ‘I Sing the Body Electric!’ is the title of a pamphlet for a robot grandmother.”
Wrong questions: “Who is Isaac Asimov?” and “Who is Robert Heinlein?”
(13) AURORA AWARDS. The 2019
Aurora Awards Voter Package is online, available to members of the Canadian Science Fiction &
Fantasy Association.
The purpose of the Aurora Awards Voter Package is simple. Before you vote for the Aurora Awards this year, we want you to be able to read as much of the nominated work as possible, so you can make and informed decision about what is the best of the year. Please note: the package is only available while voting is open. Remember voting ends September 14, 2019 at 11:59:59 EDT!
The electronic versions of these Aurora Award nominated works are made available to you through the generosity of the nominees and publishers. We are grateful for their participation and willingness to share with CSFFA members. If you like what you read, please support the creators by purchasing their works, which are available in bookstores and online.
(14) EN ROUTE. John Hertz, while packing for his journey to Spikecon,
paused to quote from the classics:
Farewell my friends, farewell my foes;
To distant planets Freddy goes;
To face grave perils he intends.
Farewell my foes, goodbye my friends.
(15) MORE BOOKS I HAVEN’T READ. At Tor.com, Gabriella
Tutino publicized a list compiled by Reddit User einsiboy, creator of the TopRedditBooks site: “Here
are the 100 Most Discussed Fantasy Books on Reddit”. The Reddit link is here. I’ve only read 19
of these – what a disgrace!
(16) JDA REAPPLIES TO SFWA. Mary Robinette Kowal took
office as SFWA’s new President at the start of the month. Jon Del Arroz says
his latest application for membership is already in her inbox: “A
New Dawn For SFWA!” [Internet Archive link].
Things are changing at SFWA as my friend Mary Robinette Kowal has been installed as president, after I endorsed her candidacy early on.
…As she has featured my books on her blog not once, but twice, I know that Ms. Kowal’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity is important to her, and she will be doing everything she can to change the perception that SFWA is a place where Conservatives and Christians are not welcome to be called professional authors.
As such, I have reapplied to SFWA as of yesterday, and let Ms. Kowal know, so we can begin the long journey of working together to ensure equality for Conservative and Christian authors. I’ve offered my services as an ambassador to the community, so she will directly be able to hear the grievances of such authors who have been treated as second class citizens — dare I say, 3/5ths of a professional author — for so long now within the science fiction community.
On Monday, a Russian submarine caught fire during a mission, killing 14 sailors on board.
But the public didn’t find out about the incident until the next day, when Russia finally released a statement about the accident — though two days after the event, the nation still wouldn’t say exactly what kind of sub caught fire or whether it was nuclear-powered.
A possible reason for Russia’s caginess? Multiple sources are now claiming the sub was an AS-12 “Losharik,” a nuclear-powered submarine some speculate was designed to cut the undersea cables that deliver internet to the world.
In Joe and Jack C. Haldeman’s There Is No Darkness, English is an obscure language, spoken only on backwater worlds and a few places on Earth. We don’t know exactly when the book takes place, as year zero has been set to the founding of the (future) Confederacion. We are told the year is A.C. 354.
What we see of a future Texas suggests that it’s still as recognizably American as Justinian’s Constantinople would have been recognizably Roman. While the region seems a bit down at heel, it’s also one of the more optimistic takes on a future America.
(19) SCALZI GIVEAWAY. Or maybe Christmas will come early and
you can read this:
WHY HELLO TWITTER I AM GIVING AWAY A THING:
Namely the ARC to "A Very Scalzi Christmas," which you can win! YES YOU. Go to my site to enter:https://t.co/4i7xuO9mdZ
Open to everyone everywhere!
(Also, post guesses THERE not here, here doesn't count)
Aigamo is a Japanese farming method that uses ducks to keep unwanted plants and parasites out of rice paddy fields. This duck crossbreed is able to keep the paddy clear without the use of herbicides or pesticides, and the fowls’ waste actually works as a pretty good fertilizer.
The method was first introduced in the 16th century but soon fell out of favor. It wasn’t reintroduced as a natural farming method until 1985 and it quickly became popular across the country as well as in China, Iran, France, and other countries.
About 15 ducks can keep a 1,000-square-meter area clear of insects, worms, and weeds, and they even enrich the water with oxygen by constantly stirring up the soil. But as humans are prone to do, an engineer from Nissan Motor, needed to build a better mousetrap, although this one may not have too many beating down a path to his door.
Created as a side project, the Aigamo Robot looks less like its namesake and more like a white, floating Roomba with eyes. While the ducks can be trained to patrol specific areas, the robot employs Wi-Fi and GPS to help the robot stir up the soil and keep bugs at bay, though no word yet on how much ground it can cover in a single day.
(21) SPIDER TO THE FLIER. Have you seen “United–Fly Like a
Superhero” on YouTube? The Spider-Man version of the United Airlines
safety video? Too bad it’s
not as much fun as the Air New Zealand hobbit videos.
(22) STRANGE VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “9 Ways To Draw A Person” on Vimeo, Sasha
Svirsky offers a strange video that doesn’t actually tell you how to draw a
person.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Jason
Sanford, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chip
Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Greg Hullender, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for
some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the
day rcade.]
The winning story was selected by judges Anne Charnock, RJ Barker and Una McCormack.
The winner receives £200 and publication of the story in Interzone.
The judges also awarded a special commendation to:
“A Sip of Pombé” by Gustavo Bondoni
RJ Barker, author of Age of Assassins, praised the winning story:
A short story is a hard thing to write. You have to establish a a realistic and believable character in a very short space of time to carry it (sometimes I struggle to do this with a whole novel at hand). Then of course you have to tell a satisfying, and self-contained, story. An SFF short story is an even harder thing to write because you not only have to do all of the above but you have to establish a world with rules and structure and make the reader buy into it. ‘Two Worlds Apart’ does that brilliantly.
Life springing up on a planet with no sun that just wanders the galaxy? Is that even possible or likely? Probably not, I reckon, when you start thinking about radiation and meteors and all that science stuff. But did I ever question it in this story? No. Not for a moment. It absolutely sold its premise and ideas and I flew through it with a real sense of wonder at the alien-ness of it all, it felt like something new – and that is a beautiful thing to happen. More than that, the story itself left me with a sense of hope and real feeling that in the end people are worthwhile and I think, in a time when the news cycle is increasingly grim, that’s an important message to be putting across. A worthy winner in among a set of stories that showed some real talent at work and were a pleasure to judge.
And Anne Charnock added:
A tightly written story with well-drawn characters, ‘Two Worlds Apart’ poses profound questions about what it is to be a species. Earth hopes to join a Consortium of species and, as a test, a group of human emissaries aided by a Consortium facilitator – an augmented insectoid – is attempting first contact with the Tarshach. The Tarshach face extinction, their energy resources close to depletion. But will they accept help? Why do the Tarshach repeatedly ask “What is expected of us?” A fascinating glimpse into the imagined cultural differences between intelligent species, the inevitability of good intentions lost in translation.
Una McCormack said about runner-up, Gustavo Bondoni’s “A Sip of Pombé”:
Our world at the moment seems to have turned inwards, away from the stars and the promise of the stars, becoming lost in divisions and threat. ‘A Sip of Pombé’, which concerns an illicit Ugandan mission to Mars, shows us how humanity can be audacious and strive towards a better future. It reminds us that if we are to have such a future, it must be found together. A fine story within an excellent set of short stories.
The other shortlisted stories in this year’s competition were:
“Imago” by Matthew Eeles
“Ms. Höffern Stays Abreast of the News” by Sarah Pauling
“My Fault” by Sarah Palmer
“The Big I Am” by E.M Faulds
Award administrator Martin McGrath said the 2019 James White Award will open to entries in October.
“Ms. Höffern Stays Abreast of the News” by Sarah Pauling
“My Fault” by Sarah Palmer
“The Big I Am” by E.M Faulds
“Two Worlds Apart” by Dustin Blair Steinacker
The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.
The winner, selected by judges, RJ Barker, Anne Charnock and Una McCormack, will be announced August 2.
The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.
The competition received 312 valid entries, and 29 stories made it to the second stage of judging. Because the stories are judged anonymously, only the titles have been released:
A Long Way From Home
A Sip of Pombé
Amalus and the Automatons
Androids for the Elderly
Blood, Bone, Feather
By the Boiler’s Hand
Deliver Us
Dimensions
For the Love of AI
Ghost in the War Machine
Halfway Human
How Grady Lost Andraya
Imago
In Communion with the Invisible Flock
Inheritance
Insert
Ms Hofferen Stays Abreast of the News
My Fault
New Instruments
Sky Burial
Suburban Twilight
The Big I AM
The Gift That Keeps on Taking
The Human Condition
The Malfunctioning Heart
The Snowstorm
Transaction
Two Worlds Apart
Waiting for the Winter
The judges for the final stage of the competition will be announced in weeks to come. The winning story is scheduled to be chosen by the end of July
The James White Award Short Story Competition is accepting entries through Friday, April 27. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. The author of the winning story also receives a £200 prize.
Award Administrator Martin McGrath said the winner will be announced in July 2018, and explained why the competition has changed its schedule:
In the past we have sought to announce our winning story earlier in the year, traditionally at Eastercon, but have struggled to keep to that timetable. We hope that by moving the judging period into the summer that it will help us stay on schedule and to make the competition more reliable and predictable for those who enter.
The panel of judges for 2018 will be announced in January.
The James White Award is open to previously unpublished stories between 1000 and 6000 words by non-professional authors.
For purposes of the award, a “professional author” is defined as a writer with three short story sales to a professional level market or one professionally-published novel.
Entries must be written in English. Stories are judged anonymously, with no names on the manuscripts. Complete submission guidelines are on the award’s Rules page.
The James White Award Short Story Competition was founded in 2000 to commemorate the work of Irish science fiction author, James White. It is supported by the BSFA and TTA Press, publishers of Interzone.
The winner of the 2017 James White Award is “The Morrigan” by Stewart Horn. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine.
Commenting on the winning story on behalf of the judging panel, David Gullen said:
The Morrigan works very well, a very tight piece of writing, confident and accomplished. It breaks the rule on colloquial speech and not only makes it work but is stronger for it. An original take on a very old tale with good pace, and sense of time and place.
Horn’s story wins £200 and will be published in a future issue of Interzone.
The judges also chose to give a special commendation to “May the Pain Guide You Home” by Daniel Roy. Award Adminstrator Martin McGrath said, “Daniel’s story scored highly with all the judges, it packs a powerful emotional punch in a well-written and tightly told story.”
The winning story was chosen from a field of almost 200 entrants this year.
The judges were Lorna Gibb, David Gullen, and Konrad Waleski.
