A resolution by Mark Richards, Chris Barkley and Juli
Marr has been added to the Dublin 2019 Business Meeting agenda. It has been
designated B4, (although there was another item which had that number.)
B.4 Credit to Translators of Written Fiction
Resolved, it is the sense of the Business Meeting that, for the written fiction categories of Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story, when the winner in one of these categories is a translated work, the credited translator shall be awarded a Hugo alongside the author.
Mark Richards explains the purpose of the resolution with these comments:
The choice of translator can make the difference in the impact of a work of fiction in translation, in comparison to its impact in its original language.
Fluency in the original language may be enough for a good translation. We feel that familiarity with the context in which a work was written adds to the quality of the result, and that a translator’s contribution there can make a difference.
For example, Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem wouldn’t have been nearly as successful had Ken Liu not gotten all of the nuance of Chinese history during the Cultural Revolution and been able to transmit that emotional impact.
And there’s a collection of connected short stories, Kalpa Imperial, by the Argentine author Angelica Gorodischer, Any decent translator, I imagine, would have given us a good translation. It was the late Ursula Le Guin, however, whose prose style was perfect for giving us as fine a work in English as it presumably was in the original Spanish.
Closing, we feel that a translator’s contribution to the success of a story merits recognition in the awarding of a Hugo.
(1) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS. Christopher
J. Garcia and Chuck Serface are co-editing an issue of The Drink Tank
dedicated to science-fiction comics of the 1950s and 1960s! Any critical
articles, fanfic, personal remembrances, artwork, and any media we can publish
in a fanzine are welcome.
Chuck Serface says, “Consideration of materials from any comic publisher of the time is fair game: Atlas/Marvel, DC, Gold Key, Charlton, Warren, EC, ones I’m forgetting at the moment — all of them.”
The deadline’s October 14, 2019. They’ll have it out
by the end of the calendar year. Send submissions to [email protected].
(2) COLSON WHITEHEAD Q&A. His new book is not sff, but some of his answers are about genre in “Powell’s Interview: Colson Whitehead, Author of ‘The Nickel Boys’”.
Rhianna: You’ve mentioned in other interviews being an avid reader of horror, and your novel Zone One is a zombie horror story. You’re very skilled at depicting violence. I was wondering if the horror genre has stylistically influenced the way that you depict historical atrocities, like those in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys.
Whitehead: Again, I think the story determines how you tell it. The violence in Zone One is gorier. It’s more flamboyant than some of the stuff in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. In those two books, I think the horrific brutality that they experience speaks for itself. They don’t have to be dramatized.
This kind of language, I borrowed from reading the slave narratives. You don’t have to dramatize or sell to the listener or the reader how terrible everything is that is happening because it speaks for itself. If the violence is speaking for itself, I can concentrate more on the characters and what they’re feeling.
San Diego’s Comic-Con International starts Wednesday night, which makes this the perfect time to talk about Bad Weekend, a noir set against the backdrop of a fictionalized version of the now famous comics convention.
Writer Ed Brubaker described the graphic novel — with art by Brubaker’s longtime collaborator Sean Phillips and colors by Phillips’ son Jacob — as a weird love letter to comics, being a fan, and the strangeness of the comic book industry.
…Bad Weekend is the product of filing away stories he’s heard around the comic book industry for the past 20 to 30 years, according to Brubaker — stories of who screwed over whom, of success not bringing happiness, and of comic companies getting rich off their work with movies and TV shows without the creators sharing in that wealth.
(4) OP-EDS. [Item by Olav Rokne.] If, like me, you’ve been enjoying the New
York Times’ series of science fictional op-eds, they’ve just created a landing
page with all the articles in the series now organized in one place: “Op-Eds
From the Future”
It’s worth checking back every second Monday to
see the latest installment, as they’ve been excellent so far.
(5) FILER NAMED FGOH. Chris Barkley shared on
Facebook: “I am pleased to
report that I was asked and accepted to be the Fan GoH at the 2021 Astronomicon
in Rochester, NY along with my good friend (and Identical twin) Robert
J. Sawyer.”
I have taken this past week to ponder a response to Neil Clarke and Taiyo Fujii’s objections to the viability of a Hugo Award category for Best Translated Novel. And frankly, their objections puzzle me.
I ask this of Mr. Fujii and to Mr. Clarke; if the three Hugos awarded to translated works are the awakening of fandom to translated literature, why haven’t more of those works been nominated in their wake? In the past three years of nominations; only 2017’s Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu, has been included in the Best Novel category, all of the other nominees in the category have all been decidedly anglocentric.
The truth of the matter we think that the Worldcon and the Hugo Awards have been overwhelmingly perceived for quite a while as an English speakers only party since a majority of the conventions have been held in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Mr. Clarke and Mr. Fujii may see the proposed award as either unnecessary, pandering or condescending to authors and fans but all Ms. Cordasco, my co-sponsors and I only want to do is shine a spotlight to fervently call attention to and honor authors and their translators. Speaking for myself, had there been three, four or five nominees on the final ballot since those historic awards, I would not have contemplated initiating and offering this proposal for an open debate…
Horizon still could have gotten the case to trial, but it then needed to show an inference of copying through the similarity of the works. Specifically, Horizon argued the two works were “strikingly similar,” with reliance on an expert report discussing anatomical structures, faces and heads, and camera views.
The judge responds that the expert report is “equivocating” on some of the noteworthy similarities by addressing features on careful viewing and not going quite so far to rule out any reasonable possibility of independent creation. Plus, the judge adds, “there remain enough differences between the two works,” nodding to Marvel’s pointing out differences in pose, differing placement of blue lights, and significantly different overall coloring.
(8) SEE READERCON 30. Ellen Datlow has posted 89 photos
taken at ReaderCon 30 in a Flickr
album.
Catherynne M. Valente, Heath Miller, and Sebastian
A nationally representative sample of 2,200 adults carried out between July 8 and 10 revealed that, when it comes to genre properties, Marvel is far and away the most successful, with 63 percent of those surveyed considering themselves fans. The next most popular property was Marvel’s Disney sibling, Star Wars, with a 60 percent fandom, and DC followed with 59 percent.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.
July 17, 1955 — Disneyland Park opened in Anaheim, California.
July 17, 1987 — Robocop premiered on this day.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 17, 1858 — Florence Balcombe Stoker. She was the wife and literary executor of Bram Stoker. She’s best remembered for her extended legal dispute with the makers of Nosferatu, an unauthorized film blatantly based on her husband’s novel Dracula. (Died 1937.)
Born July 17, 1889 — Erle Stanley Gardner. Though best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, he did write a handful of SF stories, all of which are collected in The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner. (Died 1970.)
Born July 17, 1944 — Thomas A. Easton, 75. SF critic and author who wrote the book review column in Analog from 1979 – 2009. His Organic Future series is quite entertaining and I’m reasonably certain I read Sparrowhawk when it was serialized in Analog.
Born July 17, 1952 — Robert R. McCammon, 67. Horror writer whose Michael Gallatin books, The Wolf’s Hour and The Hunter from the Woods, Alllied WWII werewolf agent and his adventures, I strongly recommend. His “Nightcrawlers” short story was adapted into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Born July 17, 1954 — J. Michael Straczynski, 65. Best known rather obviously for creating and writing most of Babylon 5 and its short-lived sequel Crusade. He’s also responsible for as well as the Jeremiah and Sense8 series. On the commit sides, he’s written The Amazing Spider-Man, Thor and Fantastic Four. Over at DC, he did the Superman: Earth One trilogy of graphic novels, and has also written Superman, Wonder Woman, and Before Watchmen titles.
Born July 17, 1967 — Kelly Robson, 52. I just got done reading her brilliant “Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach”. Right now, it appears only this plus “A Human Stain” and “Waters of Versailles” are available on iBooks and Kindle for reading as she has no collection out yet. And no novel as far as I can tell.
Born July 17, 1971 — Cory Doctorow, 48. I’ll admit that I’ve mixed feelings about his work. I enjoyed Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, his first novel, and thought The Rapture of the Nerds had potential but really failed to live to that potential to great. Everything else is ‘Meh’. His activism is oft times that of an overeager puppy trying to get attention for himself.
Born July 17, 1976 — Brian K. Vaughan, 43. Wow. Author of Ex Machina, Pride of Baghdad, Runaways, Saga, Y: The Last Man, and his newest affair, Paper Girls. And yes, he’s won Hugo Awards. You could spend an entire summer just reading those series. In his spare time, he was a writer, story editor and producer of the television series Lost during seasons three through five. And was the showrunner and executive producer of the Under the Dome series.
From its inception, Comic-Con had intergalactic ambitions.
The initial show, then called San Diego’ Golden State Comic Con, featured science fiction writers Ray Bradbury and A.E. Van Vogt; Jack Kirby, creator of Captain America, X-Men and other iconic superheroes; vintage films; an art auction; and dozens of dealers peddling mountains of new and used comics.
An unforgettable event — for the 300 attendees. Few others noticed and even they dismissed this as a juvenile jamboree. For instance:
On the show’s first day, Aug. 1, 1970, the author of “Fahrenheit 451″ and “The Martian Chronicles” granted an interview to The San Diego Union. Yet Bradbury’s spirited defense of comics was buried on page B-11, under articles about a flower show, the repainting of the White House East Room and a medical brief with the headline “Fat Men More Tipsy.”
… Neil Kendricks is a writer, filmmaker and teacher who recently led a San Diego State course on comics and sequential art. In the early 1980s, though, he was a high school student at his first Comic-Con. In the dealer’s room, he bumped into a white-haired gentleman flipping through the cardboard boxes full of used comics.
“Mr. Bradbury,” he stammered, “will you be here for awhile?”
When Ray Bradbury nodded yes, Kendricks dashed out of Golden Hall and ran the half-mile to Wahrenbrock’s Book House.
“I went upstairs to the science fiction section and bought as many of his books and I could find. Then I ran all the way back and he signed them. That,” Kendricks said, “could never happen now.”
On Monday it came to light that long time staffer of Twin Cities based Anime Detour Stephen Gifford has been charged with third-degree sexual assault in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Gifford was head of Convention Communications for Anime Detour’s 2019 event earlier this year, and has previously served as the event’s convention chair.
… Now we’ve seen cons react to situations like this in many ways, but thankfully Anime Detour’s staff has taken the situation seriously.
…At a presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, hastily announced via Twitter and beginning a half hour late, Musk presented the first product from his company Neuralink. It’s a tiny computer chip attached to ultrafine, electrode-studded wires, stitched into living brains by a clever robot. And depending on which part of the two-hour presentation you caught, it’s either a state-of-the-art tool for understanding the brain, a clinical advance for people with neurological disorders, or the next step in human evolution.
The chip is custom-built to receive and process the electrical action potentials—“spikes”—that signal activity in the interconnected neurons that make up the brain. The wires embed into brain tissue and receive those spikes. And the robotic sewing machine places those wires with enviable precision, a “neural lace” straight out of science fiction that dodges the delicate blood vessels spreading across the brain’s surface like ivy.
…And, sure, there’s more. A public records request from WIRED in April 2019 found that Neuralink is licensed to have hundreds of rats and mice in its research facilities. In a seemingly unplanned moment at the Cal Academy, Musk also acknowledged that Neuralink’s research had progressed beyond rodents to non-human primates. It’s only because of a records request filed by Gizmodo that Neuralink’s affiliation with the primate research center at UC Davis is public knowledge. That affiliation has apparently progressed: “A monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain, just FYI,” Musk said during the Q and A after the presentation.
His team seemed as surprised and discombobulated by the announcement as the audience. “I didn’t know we were running that result today, but there it goes,” said Max Hodak, president of the company, on stage next to Musk. (Monkeys have controlled computers via BCIs before, though presumably this would be the first time one used Neuralink.)
One small holograph for man, one giant holograph for the Washington Monument.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with a life-size projection of the Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
The Saturn V rocket is now iconic for carrying the Apollo 11 crew to the moon in 1969. The projection-mapping artwork will occupy 363 of the monument’s 555 vertical feet.
As the 17th century’s most famous Italian astronomer surveyed the heavens, he likely never dreamed a rocket shooting fire would one day power people up among the stars he eyed through his telescope, or that his work would help guide a ship to the moon.
But Galileo Galilei’s observations would become a key link in the chain of scientific research and discovery fundamental to our understanding of the universe and our drive to explore it.
That scientific continuum is at the heart of a new Houghton Library exhibit connecting early celestial calculations to the Apollo 11 mission that put two American astronauts on the lunar surface 50 years ago this July. “Small Steps, Giant Leaps: Apollo 11 at Fifty” features gems from Harvard’s collection of rare books and manuscripts as well as NASA artifacts from an anonymous lender and Harvard alumnus, many of which were aboard the spaceship that left Earth’s orbit in 1969.
Not all of the equipment carried into space was cutting edge and expensive. Some of the more humble odds and ends even prevented disaster.
…25: Length of duct tape rolls carried to the Moon, in feet
If there’s one saviour time and again of American space missions over the past 50 years, it’s a roll of duct tape. During Apollo missions, it was used for everything from taping down switches and attaching equipment inside the spacecraft, to fixing a tear on a spacesuit and, during Apollo 17, a fender on the lunar rover.
One of the surviving crew members of the first manned mission to the Moon – Apollo 11 – has returned to the site where the mission set off 50 years ago.
Michael Collins, 88, visited Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday. He marked theprecise time – 09:32 (13:32 GMT) – when their rocket took off.
Mr Collins had stayed in lunar orbit while his colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.
…Mr Collins described how he felt during take-off.
“The shockwave from the rocket power hits you,” he told Nasa TV. “Your whole body is shaking. This gives you an entirely… different concept of what power really means.”
…Esquire was not expecting much from Neil Armstrong.
“While the space program is poised on the brink of a truly epoch-making triumph of engineering, it is also headed for a rhetorical train wreck,” the story said.
“The principal danger is not that we will lose the life of an astronaut on the Moon, but that the astronauts will murder English up there . . . . That they are likely to litter the intergalactic void with gibberish and twaddle.”
The smugness is rather remarkable, because despite the talent of the people it enlisted, Esquire got not a single decent line from any of them.
It got, in fact, a lot of gibberish and twaddle.
…With that as your benchmark, here’s a sampling of what Esquire’s best and brightest came up with:
John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist: “We will hafta pave the damn thing.”
Ayn Rand, libertarian thinker and novelist: “What hath man wrought!”
…Leonard Nimoy, the actor, then in his third season as Spock on the new TV series Star Trek: “I’d say to Earth, from here you are a peaceful, beautiful ball and I only wish everyone could see it with that perspective and unity.”
(16) BACK SEAT FLYING. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Washington Post: “Airline tweets about where passengers are least likely to die
in a crash”. The pic below is cribbed from the WaPo article. Apparently,
they got ahold of a screenshot of the since-deleted tweet. The thought process
of whoever sent this out must have been, well, let’s just call it astounding.
(17) A KING WILL BE CROWNED. Looper fills us in
about The Most Anticipated Sci
Fi Movies Of 2020.
2020 might feel far away, but Hollywood’s major studios are already planning ahead with some legit super hits on the horizon. And if you’re a fan of sci-fi flicks, then 2020’s looking like an especially good year for you. These are just a few of the most anticipated sci-fi blockbusters on their way to a big screen near you. Film fans will finally get the answer to an age-old question in 2020, when Godzilla and King Kong face off on the big screen. Director Adam Wingard has already assured fans that his take on the two monsters will crown a definitive winner, unlike the 1962 film that first pit the two characters against each other. This will be the fourth entry in Legendary’s MonsterVerse, first established in 2014’s Godzilla and further explored in Kong: Skull Island.
[Thanks to Olav Rokne, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip
Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Carl
Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to
File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
(1) ARISIA BACK IN THE WESTIN. The convention website indicates
Arisia 2020 will return to the Westin
Boston Waterfront, from January 17-20, 2020.
(2) READERCON. Kate Nepveu compiled a great set of panel
notes about the Readercon panel “Translation and Embedded
Assumptions”
with Anatoly Belilovsky, John Chu,
Neil Clarke, Pablo Defendini, Tamara Vardomskaya (mod).
Neil: is publishing translations without being able to read original, has to count on team of people. So a lot of these granular issues settled before comes to, but not always. It’s interesting when there’s an American in the translated story . . . who is not always that American. They try to get the spirit of story across, so often work extra with the translators on that situation. Has edited bilingual anthology of Chinese SF, two volumes published in China, not been able to get published in U.S.
Tamara: gives example from Ada Palmer, in whose books gender is outlawed: everyone uses “they” (except narrator) to signal that progressive viewpoint has won. Polish translator said, in Polish that’s the conservative position, the progressive is to give high visibility to female existence (e.g., “waitress and waiter”, not “server”). Ada went with political connotation rather than word-for-word….
The Moon’s luminous, cratered face, visible to the naked eye, has sparked the imaginations of writers and scientists for centuries with much proto-science fiction…
This included the second-century Syrian satirist Lucian of Samosata, whose A True Story is often cited as the first science-fiction narrative….
But Greek the biographer Plutarch’s Moralia (ad 100) is arguably the first such narrative to introduce scientific ideas…
Lunar literature began to crystallize in the ferment of the Renaissance, and to surge in the seventeenth century…
This month, Simon & Schuster will reissue a short story collection entitled The Toynbee Convector, by science fiction master Ray Bradbury, best known for classics like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. First published in 1988, The Toynbee Convector features 23 stories, among them “Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned,” about a priest who hears a chilling confession on a snowy Christmas Eve.
That story—as well as countless other science fiction classics published over the centuries—raises an intriguing question: Why do priests and other religious figures play such an important role in the fantastic worlds and futuristic dystopias conjured by a wide range of sci-fi writers?
(5) SPACE INVADERS. The Alien Party Crashers
official trailer has dropped.
In the style of Shaun Of The Dead, The Lost Boys and Attack the Block, this is a funny, dark and action packed sci-fi horror comedy that pits a group of drunken friends on New Years Eve in a Welsh valley against an invasion task force of creepy time-traveling aliens. A kick-ass M.O.D agent, an insecure radio DJ and a kung fu master who owns the local B&B learn their new years resolution this year is simple: STAY ALIVE.”
(6) HEAR WRITERS’ THOUGHT PROCESSES. Authors
Marshall Ryan Maresca, Alexandra Rowland, and Rowenna Miller have started a
podcast called World Building for Masochists, Downloadable at the website, transcripts also available. They have two
episodes out so far. The first, “Playing God in Your Spare Time” includes this
exchange:
ROWENNA: …I think that I start thinking about the character first, and what are they encountering, what do they have for breakfast, what do they see when they go out of their door in the morning, and there might be things that the character doesn’t know about their world. I think, you know, like you, Marshall, I started the story in a city, and my character actually doesn’t know very much about what’s going on outside of that city; she’s never been outside of it. So there’s kind of a freedom there for her to be ignorant, and it was kind of weird for me at first to be like, okay, there are things that I might know, but I need to keep that shoved aside, because there’s no reason for her to know what this other city would look like, or what the patterns of trade are between, you know, these two coastal towns. She’s never been there, she has no idea.
MARSHALL: But she might have, say, heard the name, and has her own preconceived notions of what it’s supposed to be.
ALEXANDRA: And I think that having a character with some degree of ignorance can also be a really useful tool for you as an author, because then you can — and I’m going to keep bringing this up because it’s my favorite trick of all time to use — you can sort of build a negative space and invite your character to make assumptions about the world, and also invite the reader to make assumptions about the world…
We’re keeping an eye out for the arrival of
“World Building for Sadists,” too.
Disney’s Lion King remake, starring Donald Glover and Beyonce, has been described equally by pun-tastic critics as both a “roaring success” and “tame”.
The original 1994 animation won two Oscars for best music and score, while the stage version is also Broadway’s top grossing musical.
…In a four-star review, The Telegraph said “the power of this new Lion King comes from the outside”.
…The Guardian, were less impressed with the film, writing the “deepfake copycat ain’t so grrreat.”
Netflix has said that Stranger Thingsamassed a bigger audience over its first four days than any other original show in its history. New data from Nielsen shows that a lot of people did, in fact, spend the July 4 holiday weekend watching the series.
Per the ratings service’s SVOD content ratings, the eight episodes of Stranger Things 3 had an average minute audience — the closest approximation for streaming shows to Nielsen’s average viewership on linear TV — of 12.8 million viewers over its first four days of release. That’s a 21 percent increase over the same time frame after the release of season two in October 2017 (10.6 million)
The other characters in the novel, human and otherwise, are the strength, power and richness of the novel. Beyond Marian herself, Robin comes off as a prat at first, someone to intensely dislike and hate because of his abandonment of Marian. The reasons how and why he did so, and his ultimate connection with the unraveling of the plot, humanize him to a degree, but the writer’s and reader’s intended sympathy comes off the page intended for Marian. Even by the end of the novel, I still thought he was a prat for his actions, even if I ultimately understood the how and why of them by the end of the novel.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 13, 1904 — Norvell W. Page. Chief writer of The Spider pulp series as Grant Stockbridge. He started out by writing a backup story in the first issue of The Spider pulp: “Murder Undercover” and by the third issue was writing the main Spider stories which he did for some seventy stories. He also wrote The Black Bat and The Phantom Detective pulps. (Died 1961.)
Born July 13, 1937 — Jack Purvis. He appeared in three of director Terry Gilliam’s early fantasy films, with roles in Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil. He’s in three of the Star Wars films, the only actor he says to play three different roles, and he’s also in Wombling Free (based on The Wombles, a UK Children’s series), The Dark Crystal and Willow. (Died 1997)
Born July 13, 1940 – Sir Patrick Stewart, 79. If you count The Avengers as genre (and I certainly do), his first SF role was as a man walking in from the sea in “The Town of No Return” episode. Setting aside Trek, other memorable genre roles include Leodegrance in Excalibur, Gurney Halleck in Dune, Prof. Macklin in The Doctor and the Devils, Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise and he’s played Macbeth myriad times in the theatre world.
Born July 13, 1942 — Mike Ploog, 77. He’s a storyboard and comic book artist, as well as a visual designer for films. his work on Marvel Comics’ Seventies Man-Thing and The Monster of Frankenstein series are his best-known undertakings, and as is the initial artist on the features Ghost Rider, Kull the Destroyer and Werewolf by Night. He moved onward to storyboarding or other design work on films including John Carpenter’s The Thing, Little Shop of Horrors, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and The Storyteller series.
Born July 13, 1942 — Harrison Ford, 77. His best films? Raiders of The Ark, Star Wars and Blade Runner. Surely that’s not debatable. His worst film? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Equally not debatable.
Born July 13, 1955 — David J. Schow, 64. Mostly splatterpunk horror writer of novels, short stories, and screenplays. (He’s oft times credited with coining the splatterpunk term.) His screenplays include The Crow and Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. He’s also done scripts for Masters of Horror, Perversions of Science and The Outer Limits. As an editor, he’s did the very impressive three-volume collection of Robert Bloch fiction, The Lost Bloch.
Born July 13, 1953 – Chip Hitchcock, 66. A conrunner who co-chaired the 1999 World Fantasy Convention with his wife, Davey Snyder, he also has worked Worldcons as a Division Head, and chaired Bosklone, Lexicon 7 and Boskone 24. He was made a Fellow of NESFA in 1979. Other fannish credits include book editing, Worldcon floor plans, and producer of fannish theatricals.
Born July 13, 1966 — David X. Cohen, 53. Head writer and executive producer of Futurama. Cohen is a producer of Disenchantment, Matt Groening’s fantasy series on Netflix. He also wrote a number of the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes on the Simpson’s which have a strong genre slant such as “Treehouse of Horror VII” (“Citizen Kang”).
Born July 13, 1981 — Monica Byrne, 38. Her debut novel The Girl in the Road which is I’ve added to my reading list as it sounds fantastic which won the 2015 James Tiptree, Jr. Award and was also nominated for the Locus and Kitschies awards. She also had an essay in Wired back four years ago, “Hey, Book World: Sexism is Way Bigger Than the Hugos”, commenting on the Sad Puppies. It’s interesting reading still. And this essay, “Literature Still Urgently Needs More Non-White, Non-Male Heroes”, certainly shows where she is ideologically.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
Rhymes With Orange shows an unexpected source wants to comment on a family purchase.
(12) IN THIS DICTIONARY, HIS PICTURE REALLY IS RIGHT NEXT TO
THE WORD. For reasons you can now guess, Sir
Patrick Stewart figures in the entry for the Wikitionary word of the day for
July 13, 2019: “calvous”.
(13) UNDER THE LID. Alastair Stuart’s “The Full Lid 12th July 2019” stops “in at Centerville for Jim Jarmusch’s deeply strange The
Dead Don’t Die, which may be the oddest horror movie you’ll see this year.
It’s certainly, along with Midsommar, one of the most interesting. Also
on deck this week is Greg van Eekhout’s startlingly good middle-grade SF novel Cog
and the always excellent ZoomDoom Stories continue to impress with season one
of The Six Disappearances of Ella McCray.”
The Dead Don’t Die
The best way to spot a Jim Jarmusch movie is to throw a dart, blindfold, at a wall of ideas. He’s done existential westerns (Dead Man), anthologies about taxi drivers (Night on Earth), a documentary about The Stooges (Gimme Danger) and the best hip-hop/samurai/film noir movie ever made (Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai). Now, he’s turned his attention to horror comedy and the result is so inherently Jarmuschian it basically breaks the meter and embeds the needle in the wall of the lab. Where, I can only assume, Bill Murray stares at it for a moment, goes…’Huh’ and then continues about his day.
(14) SHALL WE DANCE?
The folks at @Dublin2019 have announced it so I can too: "John Scalzi’s Saturday Night Dance Across the Decades" is a THING THAT WILL HAPPEN AT WORLDCON. I'll be DJing, featuring the most danceable tracks from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s. Come dancing!https://t.co/FGH5mV28Pc
Can I admit to something silly? I am a little bit scared of mind-readers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually believe in telepaths. Then again, who knows what sort of freaky experiments certain entities get up to.
I just think the idea of someone reading my mind, or even manipulating it, is one of the most horrifying concepts out there.
And it looks like Doctor Who agrees with me.
(16) CHESS PLAYER CHEATED IN TOILET. I saw ESPN’s headline
and I said to myself, that’ll get some clicks. They sourced their post from
this Chess.com
story:
GM Igors Rausis is under investigation for cheating after he was caught with his phone during a game at the Strasbourg Open. The 58-year-old Latvian-Czech grandmaster had raised suspicions after he increased his rating in recent years to almost 2700.
During an open tournament July 10-14 in Strasbourg, France, a phone was found in a toilet that had just been used by Rausis. He later signed a declaration that the phone was his.
Whether he was using his phone to get assistance from a chess engine is not clear at the moment.
In a comment to Chess.com, Rausis said:
“I simply lost my mind yesterday. I confirmed the fact of using my phone during the game by written [statement]. What could I say more? Yes, I was tired after the morning game and all the Facebook activity of accusers also have a known impact. At least what I committed yesterday is a good lesson, not for me—I played my last game of chess already.“
…Six years ago, in May 2013, [Rausis’] rating was still 2518, and it had fluctuated around the 2500 mark for at least 10 years. It has since increased by almost 200 points.
Over the last six years, Rausis increased his rating steadily as he mostly limited himself to playing lower-rated opponents against whom he continued scoring perfectly or almost perfectly. For instance, in the July 2019 rating calculations, he scored 24.5/25 against almost only players rated more than 400 points below his own rating.
…To increase one’s rating like Rausis did requires almost perfect play over a long period of time, which is not easy even against very low opposition.
The case of Rausis is similar to that of a Georgian grandmaster who got banned from a tournament in 2015 after his phone was found in a toilet. In that case, it was discovered that he had been analyzing his position with a chess engine. He was banned for three years and lost his GM title.
In the summer of 1962, Walter Schirra — who would soon become America’s third man to orbit the Earth — walked into a Houston photo supply shop looking for a camera he could take into space.
He came out with a Hasselblad 500C, a high-end Swedish import that had been recommended to him by photographers from Life and National Geographic.
“He was sort of an amateur photographer,” Jennifer Levasseur, a curator in charge of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s astronaut cameras, says of Schirra. “Somewhere along the line, the decision was made that he could select what camera was flown on his flight.”
…When NASA got a look at Schirra’s Hasselblad, they liked what they saw. The space agency purchased at least one more. Engineers tore into the off-the-shelf consumer model to make it space-worthy. They stripped it down to save weight and painted it dull black to reduce reflections. They also had to “astronaut-proof it,” says Cole Rise, a photographer and filmmaker who builds custom reproductions of the Hasselblad space cameras.
…Hasselblad’s Chris Cooze says until then, the space agency was so focused on the technical side of spaceflight that photography was something of an afterthought.
He says it was in 1965, when NASA released stunning photos of Ed White’s spacewalk on Gemini 4, that Hasselblad “put two and two together” and realized the pictures were taken with one of their cameras.
“Then they got in touch with NASA to see if there was anything that we could cooperate on,” Cooze says.
Curious how much the ground shifted after the two large earthquakes last week in Southern California? NASA has just the map for that question — and it happens to look like beautiful, psychedelic art.
On July 4, a 6.4 magnitude quake hit the town of Ridgecrest, north of Los Angeles. The next evening, the area was jolted again by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. Luckily, there were no serious injuries or major infrastructure damage.
The map was created by the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It shows rippling rainbows forming a circular pattern around the faults of the two quakes.
Each rainbow stripes[sic] means that the ground has been displaced there by some 4.8 inches. It’s the same logic as a topographic map, where lines that are closer together indicate steeper slopes. In this case, the closer together the rainbow stripes are, the more the ground was displaced by the temblor.
(19) THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT. Steve J. Wright has done both sets of Hugo editor categories now:
The editing categories are always hard for us non-initiates to judge; we do not know the Dark Arts of editorship, the secret and sacred magic by which a piece of text is transmogrified into a professional story…. However, at least we can see the general tenor of a skiffy magazine, and read, well, editorials and the like, and we can work out from that how the short-form editors think. Sort of.
And, of course, it is distorted in 1943 by the unassailable fact that there’s only one right answer: Astounding, edited by John W. Campbell Jr. Like it or not, Campbell was shaping science fiction in his own image at this time. He is the unavoidable choice; the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of the SF world.
Wright begins his Long Form Editor reviews (the Retro
category was cancelled) with the same observation, but faithful to the
category, at greater length:
Anyway, here we are again, with the category no one is particularly qualified to decide on. We don’t know, for example, if Beth Meacham found a scrawled note one day that read “dere iz dis wumman who wantz 2 b a spaceman” and worked it up into The Calculating Stars from that, or if Mary Robinette Kowal submitted the manuscript exactly in its current form, and Meacham’s only contribution was to fling it at a passing minion with a cry of “Publish this!” The truth, of course, must lie somewhere in between those extremes… and it is probably (unless you’re actually interested in the minutiae of the editing profession) pretty darn boring, for those of us not directly concerned. I think it was John Sladek who said that there were secrets of the universe which Man was not meant to know, and some of them are not even worth knowing.
One of the most significant Russian space science missions in the post-Soviet era has launched from Baikonur.
The Spektr-RG telescope is a joint venture with Germany that will map X-rays across the entire sky in unprecedented detail.
Researchers say this information will help them trace the large-scale structure of the Universe.
The hope is Spektr-RG can provide fresh insights on the accelerating behaviour of cosmic expansion.
It should also identify a staggering number of new X-ray sources, such as the colossal black holes that reside at the centre of galaxies.
As gas falls into these monsters, the matter is heated and shredded and “screams” in X-rays. The radiation is essentially a telltale for the Universe’s most violent phenomena.
Spektr-RG is expecting to detect perhaps three million super-massive black holes during its service life.
(21) APOLLO DOCUMENTARY. Assembled by Voice
of America:
As the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic mission to land humans on the surface of the moon, VOA’s Kane Farabaugh presents this reflection of the monumental achievement through the eyes of the NASA astronauts themselves. In exclusive interviews Farabaugh gathered, the men of the Apollo program reflect on the path to the moon, and what lies beyond.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chip Hitchcock, Cat
Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Kendall,
Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes
to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kendall.]
(1) VINTAGE. New art from Star Trek: Picard. What should we call this episode? “The Grapes of Wrath of Khan”? The big reveal on the story and characters of the new show will be at San Diego Comic-Con next week.
(2) MORE BEST TRANSLATED HUGO FEEDBACK. Taiyo Fujii
commented about the proposal on Facebook.
Thanks for M. Barkley and Rachel S. Cordasco for proposing Best Translated Novel for Hugo, but I should say as a Japanese writer, It’s not necessary.
Hugo already honored 3 translated works without translated category, and we saw the translator of that works Ken Liu was celebrated on the presentation stage. This is why I respect Hugo and voters, who don’t cares the work is from overseas or not.
I worry if translated category is held, translated short forms will be ignored by s-s, novelette and novella which are fascinated category for new young non anglophone writers. We are trying to open the door to be just a writer with contributing short forms, and readers already saw our works, and voted for nomination. But if translated category was held, only novels are honored.
In fact, translated fiction category is set on literary award held in non anglophone country, then we Japanese couldn’t give prize for Three Body Problem as the best novel of Seiun Awards even if we hope to honor.
Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (13 hrs)
I have argued that Dr. Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia is the most important resource for reading Narnia that has emerged in the new century. While one might argue with parts of Ward’s thesis–as I have done—Planet Narnia is a great book for providing close readings of Lewis’ greatest works in a literary way that invites us into a deeper understanding of the books behind the Narnian chronicles. I hope the publishers record The Narnia Code, the popular version of the Planet Narnia resource, but I am thrilled that they began with the magnum opus, Planet Narnia. Meanwhile, Audible also has Ward’s “Now You Know” audio course, “Christology, Cosmology, and C.S. Lewis,” a shorter but helpful resource for newcomers to the conversation. The audiobook reader, Nigel Patterson, is professional and even in tone.
(4) INTRODUCING NEWTON EWELL. Yesterday a commenter noticed
that artist Newton Ewell was one of the NASFiC/Westercon guests who had no entry
in Fancyclopedia 3. Overnight someone (“Confan”) decided rather than
complain, they’d write one for him. It’s very good, and apparently there’s a
lot to know about – Newton Ewell.
(5) TIL THEY ATE THEM. An unexpected discovery in the
Crimea: “Early
Europeans Lived Among Giant 300kg Birds”. I suspect this state of
affairs lasted until dinnertime. [Via Amazing Stories.]
Early Europeans lived alongside giant 3-meter tall birds new research published on Wednesday explains. The bird species was one of the largest to ever roam the earth weighing in at a staggering 450 kg.
Bones of the massive, probably flightless bird were discovered in a cave in Crimea. “We don’t have enough data yet to say whether it was most closely related to ostriches or to other birds, but we estimate it weighed about 450kg,” says the study’s lead author Dr. Nikita Zelenkov. This formidable weight is nearly double the largest moa, three times the largest living bird, the common ostrich, and nearly as much as an adult polar bear.”
(6) MARTIAN CARAVANSARY. Slate has
posted an interview with Robert Zubrin, Founder and president of the Mars
Society and author of The Case for Space: “What Will Life On Mars be Like?”
Slate: How do you envision settling Mars will begin, and what will the early settlements look like?
Robert Zubrin: I think it will begin with an exploration, and then the establishment of a permanent Mars base to support exploration. Whoever is sponsoring this base, whether it’s the U.S. government, an international consortium of governments, or private groups, it’s going to be tremendously to their benefit to have people stay extra rotations on Mars because the biggest expense is transporting people back and forth. If it costs $100 million to send someone to Mars and back—and that’s a low estimate—it would be a no-brainer to offer someone $5 million to stay there an extra two years. So, I think you’ll start to see people staying extra rotations on Mars, just like there are some people who spend an extra rotation on trips to Antarctica. And then, relationships will form. And people will have children. And you will see the beginning of an actual settlement, a base.
(7) AUREALIS AWARDS. The 2019 Aurealis Awards are now
taking entries:
The Aurealis Awards, Australia’s premier awards for speculative fiction, are for works created by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published for the first time between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019.
Full guidelines and FAQ can be found on the Aurealis Awards website:
A federal appeals court’s opinion on Lindie Banks v. Northern Trust Corp. is — as one would expect from a case charging breaches of fiduciary duties — full of references to assets, investments and irrevocable trusts. Naturally, the Night King from Game of Thrones also makes a showing.
In the opinion filed July 5, Judge John B. Owens writes that the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit won’t discard a prior legal precedent “the way that Game of Thrones rendered the entire Night King storyline meaningless in its final season.”
Rip Torn, an Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in “Men in Black” and HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show,” has died, according to his publicist Rick Miramontez. He was 88.
Torn died Tuesday at his home in Lakeville, Connecticut with his family by his side, Miramontez said.
The actor had a seven-decade career in film, television and theater, with nearly 200 credits to his name.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born July 10, 1903 — John Wyndham. His best-known works include The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos, both written in the Fifties. The latter novel was filmed twice as Village of the Damned. Both iBooks and Kindle have an impressive selection of his novels though little of his short fiction is available alas. (Died 1969.)
Born July 10, 1923 — Earl Hamner Jr. Though much better known for writing and producing The Waltons, he wrote eight scripts for the Twilight Zone including “Black Leather Jackets” in which an alien falls in love with a human girl and “The Hunt” where raccoon hunters enter the Twilight Zone. He also wrote the script of the Hanna-Barbera production of Charlotte’s Web. (Died 2016.)
Born July 10, 1929 — George Clayton Johnson. He’s best known for co-writing with William F. Nolan the Logan’s Run novel, the source for the Logan’s Run film. He was also known for his scripts for the Twilight Zone including “A Game of Pool”, “Kick the Can”, “Nothing in the Dark”, and “A Penny for Your Thoughts”, and the first telecast episode of the original Star Trek, “The Man Trap”. (Died 2015.)
Born July 10, 1931 — Julian May. She‘s best known for her Saga of Pliocene Exile (known as the Saga of the Exiles in the UK) and Galactic Milieu series: Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask and Magnificat. She also chaired the 1952 Worldcon in Chicago. (Died 2017.)
Born July 10, 1941 — David Hartwell. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes him as “perhaps the single most influential book editor of the past forty years in the American science fiction publishing world.” I certainly fondly remember the The Space Opera Renaissance he co-edited with Kathryn Cramer. Not to mention that his Year’s Best Fantasy and Year’s Best SF anthologies are still quite excellent reading. (Died 2016.)
Born July 10, 1945 — Ron Glass. Probably best known genre wise as Shepherd Book in the Firefly series and its sequel Serenity. His first genre role was as Jerry Merris in Deep Space, a SF horror film and he’d later show up voicing Philo D. Grenman in Strange Frame: Love & Sax (“slated as the world’s first animated lesbian-themed sci-fi film”; look it up as it as an impressive voice cast) and he showed up twice as J. Streiten, MD in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Oh and he was on Voyager playing a character named Loken in the “Nightingale” episode. (Died 2016.)
Born July 10, 1970 — John Simm, 49. The second of modern Masters on Doctor Who. He appeared in the final three episodes of series three during the Time of the Tenth Doctor: “Utopia”, “The Sound of Drums”, and “Last of the Time Lords”.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
Wizard of Id comes up with a problem faced by witches in the land of Oz, one that never occurred to me before.
The movie opens up aboard a spaceship carrying Commander Christopher Draper (played by Paul Mantee, appearing in his first film major film role), Colonel Dan McReady (Adam West, an actor commonly found on television westerns) and an adorable monkey named Mona. Things take an unexpected turn when they detect a meteoroid and are “forced out of orbital velocity to avoid collision with planetoid into tighter orbit of Mars.” As the situation worsens, the crew is left with no other option than to immediately attempt to land on the fourth planet. While fleeing the vehicle in their individual escape pods, Draper is separated from McReady and Mona.
Draper adapts to the conditions on the red planet, while searching for McReady and Mona. Even though he is part of the first crew on Mars, Draper learns quickly what it takes to survive. He finds shelter in a cave. For heat, Draper discovers yellow rocks that “burn like coal.” Heating the rocks not only keeps him warm, but also produces oxygen, which he then uses to refill his oxygen tank. Throughout the film, Draper keeps a careful audio record about all that he experiences, which provides a useful narrative device when things happen off-screen.
I knew this was going to be good, but I definitely did not know just how good it would be.
Elizabeth Lim’s Spin the Dawn was a classic-style story with a lush and beautiful world and gorgeous prose. Featuring the classic “girl dressing as a boy” trope, a Project-Runway-esque competition, and a quest, Spin the Dawn weaves tradition and fantasy into a phenomenal story.
…Fancast suffers from some of the same issues that many of the down ballot categories do, though perhaps “suffer” is the wrong word. There is a lot of institutional memory built in here for fancasts which are consistent year after year. With a core of listeners who are frequent participants in the Hugo Award process, it is not surprising to see a number of finalists come back year after year. I’ve said this about a number of other categories, but it does make me wonder a little bit about the health of the category, but on the other hand it does also give a snapshot of what the genre and fan conversation and communities may have looked like over a several year period. A positive takeaway, though, is that the only repeat winner was SF Squeecast in the first two years of the category. Both Be the Serpent and Our Opinions Are Correct are new to the ballot and are new to being a podcast.
Walker Stalkers LLC, which runs conventions under the Walker Stalker Con, Heroes & Villains, and FanFest names, has been having a bit of a rough patch when it comes to finances lately. We reported on this back in April, and while the company has made some effort to refund people for cancelled events and appearances, many might claim that it hasn’t been quite enough. Those issues seem to have come to a head though, as their problems are now becoming known outside of the geek community.
Nashville’s WSMV is reporting that the Better Business Bureau is now openly warning people to avoid Walker Stalkers LLC run events.
Swedish film reviewers are giving a cautious welcome to Midsommar, a horror film about a bizarre pagan festival in a remote part of Sweden.
Directed by Hereditary’s Ari Aster, the film stars Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor as an American couple who travel to Harga village in Halsingland to observe the midsummer ritual that takes place there only once every 90 years.
The film – which was actually shot in Hungary – has been getting strong reviews since it opened in the US earlier this month. It currently has an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
One critic, IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, tweeted that Midsommar would “do for Swedish pagan rituals what Psycho did for showers”.
The film opened in Sweden on Wednesday and the first reviews have been appearing in the Swedish press. So what do the critics there think?
When Disney announced that Halle Bailey, a teen actress and one-half of the singing group Chloe x Halle, had landed the role of Ariel in the forthcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, some people on social media went bonkers.
But not over the fact that it’s 2019 and the Danish fairy tale tells the story of a young female creature who loves singing and wearing a seashell bikini top and eagerly gives up her voice in exchange for a romance with a good-looking guy. Nor are critics outraged by the kind of message that narrative conveys to young children.
Instead, certain circles of the Internet are aghast that the ingenue cast by Disney is black.
The complaints run along the lines of: “The actress should look like the real Little Mermaid!” By which they presumably mean the white-skinned, blue-eyed cartoon character in the 1989 blockbuster film. The hashtag #NotMyAriel quickly began trending on Twitter, and since the announcement last week, scores of fans have pledged to boycott the film.
For days the company remained silent regarding the controversy, but Freeform, a cable network owned by Disney and on which Bailey appears as a cast member on Grown-ish, issued a statement on Instagram clarifying that, “Ariel…is a mermaid.”
The strongest earthquake to hit California in two decades left a scar across the desert which can be seen from space, new pictures show.
The 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck on Friday at a depth of just 0.9km (0.6 miles), creating a fissure near its epicentre about 240km north-east of Los Angeles.
It was felt as far away as Phoenix, Arizona – more than 560km south-east.
…The crack in the desert – captured in before and after pictures released by Planet Labs – opened close to the epicentre of the quake near the town of Ridgecrest.
A skull unearthed in Greece has been dated to 210,000 years ago, at a time when Europe was occupied by the Neanderthals.
The sensational discovery adds to evidence of an earlier migration of people from Africa that left no trace in the DNA of people alive today.
The findings are published in the journal Nature.
Researchers uncovered two significant fossils in Apidima Cave in Greece in the 1970s.
One was very distorted and the other incomplete, however, and it took computed tomography scanning and uranium-series dating to unravel their secrets.
The more complete skull appears to be a Neanderthal. But the other shows clear characteristics, such as a rounded back to the skull, diagnostic of modern humans.
To the many numismatists who may be reading this newsletter, here is a unique piece for your consideration: a Gemini 8 Flown United States 1864 Large Motto 2¢ Piece, graded MS 61 BN by NGC and encapsulated by CAG (Collectibles Authentication Guaranty) . This coin was supplied by an Ohio coin dealer to Neil Armstrong who took it with him on the mission, “carried in a specially sewn pocket in my pressure suit.” As you may know, Gemini 8 performed the world’s first orbital docking in space but it nearly ended in disaster when one of the Orbit and Maneuvering System thrusters stuck in the on position causing an uncontrollable tumbling. Armstrong was somehow able to control it and bring the craft in for a successful emergency landing. This coin, for many years on loan from the Armstrong family to the Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, is extensively provenanced by the dealer and also Neil Armstrong’s father.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, John
King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for
some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the
day ULTRAGOTHA.]
Chris M. Barkley, Juli Marr, and Mark Richards have submitted an motion to create a new Hugo Awards category for Best Translated Novel. It will soon be listed on Dublin 2019’s New Business Agenda. (Update Barkley says this is the text they submitted, but some minor tweaks will be made to the language before it is posted online.)
D.1 Short Title: Best Translated Novel
Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution for the purpose of creating a new Hugo Award category for Best Translated Novel, by inserting a new subsection after existing Section 3.3.4 and revising sections 3.2.5 and 3.2.6 as follows:
3.3.4: A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more that was translated and published into English for the first time within the previous calendar year. The Award will be given both to the writer(s) of the work and the credited translator(s) of the novel.
3.2.5: In the story categories (3.3.1-3.3.56 and 3.3.78), an author may withdraw a version of a work from consideration if the author feels that the version is not representative of what that author wrote.
3.2.6: The categories of Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story, and Best Translation shall be open to works in which the text is the primary form of communication, regardless of the publication medium, including but not limited to physical print, audiobook, and ebook.
Provided that unless this amendment is re-ratified by the 2022 Business Meeting, this Section shall be repealed and; and
Provided further that the question of re-ratification shall automatically be placed on the agenda of the 2022 Business Meeting.
Proposed by: Mark Richards (Attending Member), Juli Marr (Attending Member) and Chris M. Barkley (Attending Member).
Commentary by Chris M. Barkley and Rachel Cordasco:
Eighty years ago, in July 1939, NYCon 1, the very first World Science Fiction Convention was held in New York City.
The title “World Science Fiction Convention” was a bit of a misnomer; it was about as accurate and plausible as baseball’s championship title “World Series” is today. It was named as such in honor of the World’s Fair exhibition being held nearby in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
We have no doubt that while many of the convention’s participants (and those who were excluded for political reasons) imagined science fiction and fantasy literature had a future, at the time the only thing they could be sure of at that time was that war was on the immediate horizon.
As the decades passed, sf and fantasy literature not only took hold in North American and England, it became a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
And as the Hugo Award grew in stature, so did its reputation outside the confines of the English speaking nations where it was born and nurtured.
Until recently, a majority of the nominated writers in the fiction categories have been dominated by English language authors. In 2015, Cixin Liu’ s The Three Body Problem (translated by Ken Liu) became the first novel translated from another language to win the Hugo Award.
Since then there have been very few non-English language nominees in the fiction categories although there have been two winners in the short fiction categories (Hao Jingfang, also from China and Thomas Olde Heuvelt of the Netherlands).
We feel that it is high time that the World Science Fiction Society honor writers from around the world with one of literature’s highest honors.
Each year, US/UK/Australian publishers are giving us more SF in translation (SFT) to read from countries like France, Iraq, Argentina, Japan, Finland, Israel, and many others. In recent years, the number of translated speculative novels has risen to 60-70. After several decades of speculative fiction flowing mostly from the US and UK into other countries, the tide seems to be turning and people who grew up reading translations of Anglophone science fiction or fantasy have been inspired to become translators themselves. Plus, more presses and magazines are open to SFT, and we now have two online publications that actually specialize in international speculative fiction (Samovar Magazine and Future Science Fiction Digest).
The Hugo Award, like the annual Worldcons, are sponsored by the World Science Fiction Society, and it is this inclusion of the word “world” that is at issue when discussions of a “Best Translated Novel” come up. As Donald Wollheim once wrote, “We science fiction readers whose native language happens to be English-…tend to a curious sort of provincialism in our thinking regarding the boundaries of science fiction. We tend to think that all that is worth reading and all that is worth noticing is naturally written in English. In our conventions and our awards and our discussions we slip into the habit of referring to our favorites as the world’s best this and the “world’s best that.”
Shouldn’t the Hugo Awards recognize more than just those texts originally written in English? SFT is more popular than some people think, and if given the opportunity to recognize a non-Anglophone novel, SFT readers would probably jump at the chance. It’s time to shrug off our Anglocentric perspective, especially in relation to a genre that encourages us to look beyond our immediate environs and learn about those who are sometimes radically different from us.
Simply put, if the Best Novel Category is the equivalent of the Academy Award for Best Picture, the Best Translated novel can serve as our Best Foreign Film. If France, Spain, Israel, China, and other countries can successfully include a “Best Translated Novel” category in their SF awards, so can the US/UK-dominated Hugos.
As the noted philosopher and American football coach George Allen once sagely noted, “The Future is NOW.”
The 2019 Prix Imaginales winners have been announced. The
awards will be given at Imaginales, the Festival of the Imaginary Worlds in
Épinal, France, being held May 23 to May 26.
The Prix Imaginales recognize the best works of fantasy of the
year published in France in six categories.
The winners were selected by a jury composed of critics,
journalists and specialists: Jacques Grasser (Président), Jean-Claude Vantroyen
(Vice-président), Annaïg Houesnard (Secrétaire), Stéphane Wieser (Directeur du
Festival), Christophe de Jerphanion, Natacha Vas-Deyres, and Frédérique
Roussel.
[NOTE: The Prix Imaginales is a
different award than the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.]
Catégorie roman francophone / French novel
Robert DARVEL, Femmes d’argile et d’osier (Les moutons électriques)
Catégorie roman étranger traduit / Foreign Novel translated into
French
Dmitri LIPSKEROV, Le dernier rêve de la raison [Last Dream of Reason] (Agullo),
translated by Raphaëlle PACHE
Catégorie jeunesse / Youth category
Estelle FAYE et Nancy PENÀ, Les Guerriers de glace (Nathan)
Catégorie illustration / Illustration
Daniel ÉGNEUS, Le Dogue noir, de Neil GAIMAN (Au Diable
Vauvert)
Catégorie nouvelle / Short Story
Neil GAIMAN, Signal d’Alerte [Trigger Warning](Au Diable
Vauvert)
Catégorie prix spécial du Jury / Special Jury Award
Anne BESSON, Dictionnaire de la Fantasy (Vendémiaire)
The winner of the Prix Imaginales de Bande Desinée (for Comics) also
has been announced:
Prix Imaginales de la bande dessinée
SHI
– Tome 3 : Revenge by José HOMS (dessinateur); ZIDROU (scénario). Published by Dargaud
The members of the jury who selected this winner included Élisa Ambalard, Izneo marketing manager, Victor Battaggion, deputy editor of Historia, Frédéric Bosser, director of DBD magazine, Jacques Grasser, Deputy Mayor of the Town of Épinal, Hubert Prolongeau, Télérama journalist, Olivier Souillé, director of the Maghen Gallery, Stéphane Wieser, Director of Imaginales.
Walter Catalano, Gian Filippo
Pizzo, Andrea Vaccaro, Guida ai narratori italiani del fantastico. Scrittori
di fantascienza, fantasy e horror made in Italy, Odoya
Romanzo di autore italiano – Fantascienza /Science fiction novel
Dario Tonani, Naila di mondo9,
Mondadori
Romanzo di autore italiano – Fantasy / Fantasy novel
Maico Morellini, Il diario
dell’estinzione, Watson Edizioni
Antologia / Anthology
Giulia Abbate e Lukha Kremo, Next-Stream:
Visioni di realtà contigue, Kipple Officina Libraria
Racconto di autore italiano su pubblicazione professionale /
Story by an Italian Author in a Professional Publication
Dario Tonani, Sabbia nera,
Robot, Delos Books
Donato Altomare, La seconda
morte, Quasar, Edizioni Della Vigna
Giulia Massini, La colonia,
Hypnos, Edizioni Hypnos
Lukha B. Kremo, Invertito,
Robot, Delos Books
Maddalena Antonini, Il
determinatore, Dimensione Cosmica, Tabula Fati
Racconto di autore italiano su pubblicazione amatoriale / Story
by an Italian Author in an Amateur Publication
Claudio Chillemi, Il Grande
Errore, Fondazione Sf
Articolo su pubblicazione professionale / Article in a
Professional Publication
Giuseppe Lippi, I curatori di
Urania, Robot, Delos Books
Articolo su pubblicazione amatoriale / Article in an Amateur
Publication
Francesco Spadaro, Si può
fare, Fondazione Sf
Romanzo internazionale / International sf novel
Ian McDonald, Ares Express,
Zona 42
Fumetto di autore italiano / Comic by an Italian Author
Carlo Recagno, Giovanni
Freghieri, Dylan Dog & Martin Mystere: L’Abisso Del Male, Bonelli
Fumetto di autore internazionale / Comic by an International
Author
Tipton, Tipton, Lee, Purcell e
Woodward, Star Trek The Next Generation / Doctor Who Assimilazione 2,
Ultimo Avamposto
Film fantastico (premio non ufficiale) / Fantastic Film
(unofficial prize)
Avengers:
Infinity War
Serie televisiva (premio non ufficiale) / TV Series (unofficial
prize)
The finalists for the 10th Xingyun (Nebula) Awards for Global Chinese Science Fiction have been announced by the World Chinese Science Fiction Society. 533 valid nominating ballots were received and counted from 109 members of the nomination committee. Winners will be judged by a jury and announced in the Xingyun Weekend to be held in September or October 2019.
Best Novel
The Orphans of Red Planet, by Liu Yang
The Dead,by Han Song
The Azure Tragedy, by Hui Hu
Life Upgrade, by Tianjiang Longxia
Best Novella
Flowers on the Other Side, by A Que
Brain Gambling, by Gu Shi
The Wings of Earth, by Jiang Bo
The Peach Blossom Spring, by Suo Hefu
Best Short Story
Fields of Gold, by Liu Cixin
The Kite of Jinan, by Liang Qingsan
Fear Machine, by Chen Qiufan
Sin, by Yang Wanqing
Best Children’s Science Fiction (Long
Form)
Qi Qiguai’s Historical Adventures in
Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties,
by Chao Xia
Cosmic Adventure King vol. 10, by Peng Xuluo
Adventures of Four Friends, by Lu Yang
Mind Surveyors by, Xu Yanli
Best Children’s Science Fiction (Short
Form)
Where have you been, Dad? , by Chao Xia
Nightmare of Conan, by Lu Yang
Immigrating to Planet 9, by He Tao
Millions of Tomorrows, by Qin Yingliang
Best Non-Fiction
From Rebirth to Immortality: Post-human,
Cyborg and Blockchain,
by Chen Qiufan
The History of Chinese Science Fiction, by Xu Yanli
Strange Person and His Strange Books:
about Han Song’s Science Fiction Works,
by Dong Renwei
After the Three-body Problem, from
Science Fiction to Literature: A Reflection on Contemporary Science Fiction, by Song Mingwei
Best Translated Fiction
The Quantum Magician, by Derek Künsken, translated by Yan
Wei
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, translated by
Chen Yuechen
The Golden Man: Collection of Philip
K. Dick vol. 3, by Philip
K. Dick, translated by Hao Xiuyu
Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer, translated by Hu
Shaoyan
Best Artwork
Cover
art of The Fountains of Paradise, by
Guo Jian
The Tähtivaeltaja (“Star Rover”) Award winner was posted on May 2. The award, given by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society, goes to the best science fiction book published in Finland in the previous year.
Johannes Anyuru: He hukkuvat äitiensä kyyneliin
(De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar; The Rabbit Yard.
Translated to Finnish by Outi Menna, S&S)
Johannes Anyuru is a Swedish writer and poet who was born in 1979
and has published two collections of poems and two novels. His father is
Ugandan and his mother is Swedish.
The Helsinki Science Fiction Society has been presenting the “Star Rover” award since 1986. This year’s winner was selected by a jury composed of journalist Hannu Blommila, editor Toni Jerrman, critic Elli Leppä, and critic Kaisa Ranta.
The nominees for the 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards were announced
May 2.
The awards are given for outstanding achievement in the
literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
They are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors,
critics, and academics. The jurors for the 2018 awards are Chikodili
Emelumadu, Michael Thomas Ford, Gabino Iglesias, Kate Maruyama and Lynda E.
Rucker.
2018 Shirley Jackson
Awards Nominees
NOVEL
Everything Under, Daisy Johnson (Jonathan Cape)
In the Night Wood, Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Little Eve, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group)
Social Creature, Tara Isabella Burton (Double Day/Raven Books)
We Sold Our Souls, Grady Hendrix (Quirk Books)
NOVELLA
Judderman, DA Northwood (Gary Budden) (Dead Ink Books/Cinder House Publishing)
