Briefs and Links

Thursday 27 June 2002

News from Down-Under

§ A new award, the McNamara Achievement Award, for outstanding achievment in Australian science fiction and fantasy, was launched at Convergence in Melbourne earlier this month. The winner was Paul Collins (editor, author, and publisher); other nominees were Stephanie Smith (HarperCollins Voyager editor), Shaun Tan (artist), Sean Williams (author), and Dirk Strasser & Stephen Higgins (10 years at the helm of Aurealis Magazine).

The award is named after Peter McNamara, whose outstanding achievements forged new paths for SF and F in Australia. Sadly Peter McNamara has a brain tumor and is not expected to live past 12 months, so it is to him this award has been dedicated. Peter was present for the award, but the award was presented by Robert N Stephenson and Tony Shillitoe.

— Robert N Stephenson

§ Artist Shaun Tan recently completed a spectacular mural at the Subiaco Public Library in Perth, Western Australia, installed as part of the building's renovations. Tan took about three months to execute the 20 square meter area, first at his home studio and then touching it up after it was bolted to the library wall, using a combination of interior house-paint, artist's acrylics and oils, and collage (old book pages in different languages, diagrams, postage-stamps, photocopies of engravings, etc.). Click the image or here for a large photo of Tan and the mural, and here for a page of thumbnail links to additional photos. (Additional photos also show head librarian Susan Marie; high school student Grace Kovesi, the photographer; and Grace's father.)

Wednesday 26 June 2002

Awards: Finalists

§ Finalists have been announced for this year's John W. Campbell Memorial Award. The winner will be announced, along with the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, July 5 at the Campbell Conference in Lawrence, Kansas. This marks a new procedure for the Campbell Award; previously no finalists were announced in advance, just the winner and runners-up at the awards presentation.

The Chronoliths, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

Dark Light, Ken MacLeod (Orbit)

Deepsix, Jack McDevitt (Eos)

Fallen Dragon, Peter Hamilton (Macmillan)

Hammerfall, C.J. Cherryh (Eos)

The House of Dust, Paul Johnston (Hodder & Stoughton)

The Meek, Scott Mackay (Penguin/Roc)

Nekropolis, Maureen F. McHugh (Eos)

Pashazade: The First Arabesk, Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Earthlight)

Passage, Connie Willis (Bantam)

Probability Sun, Nancy Kress (Tor)

Terraforming Earth, Jack Williamson (Tor)

Further information on the award process and judges is given here:

— 2002 Campbell Award

§ The final ballot for this year's Prix Aurora Awards, for works of Canadian SF, has been released:

— 2002 Prix Aurora Awards Voting Ballot

§ Finalists for this year's Endeavour Award, given to an SF or fantasy book by a writer from the Pacific Northwest, have been a announced:

— SFWA News

Publishing and Events

§ Kuo-Yu Liang has left Ballantine Books, where he was a marketing and licensing executive, to take a position as vice-president of sales and marketing at a new division of Diamond Comics called Diamond Book Distributors. Further details:

— Publishers Weekly

§ John Jarrold, senior editor of Simon & Schuster UK's SF and Fantasy imprint, Earthlight, is leaving the company in August to explore other opportunities.

— The Alien Online
— booktrade.info

• Locus Magazine publisher Charles N. Brown celebrated his 65th birthday this past weekend during an open house at his residence (and Locus headquarters) in Oakland, CA. Over 50 guests attended. Click on the thumbnails for larger images. Additional photos by Ellen Datlow are posted here.

Charles N. Brown

Charles N. Brown

Eileen Gunn, Grania Davis, bagels

Gary K. Wolfe, Marina Fitch, Mark Budz

Charles N. Brown and one of the cakes

Carolyn Cushman, Lisa Goldstein, Ellen Datlow, Pat and Dick Lupoff, Steve Davis, and others watch Charles open gifts (photo by Mike Ward)

Gary Shockley (back turned), John Berry (white shirt), Mandy Slater, Stephen Jones, Eileen Gunn, Gary K. Wolfe, Bill Contento and more watch Charles open gifts (photo by Mike Ward)

Charles N. Brown opening gifts

§ Amazon.com, Inc., has opened a Canadian site at http://www.amazon.ca/. Reactions among Canadian booksellers are mixed, according to this Globe and Mail article.

§ Stephen King has revealed that the author of The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, a tie-in to the Stephen King TV miniseries "Rose Red" broadcast earlier this year, and published as "edited by Joyce Reardon, P.H.D.", is actually suspense novelist Ridley Pearson.

— The Official Stephen King Web Presence

§ Ellen Datlow has posted photos from the Stoker Awards weekend, held earlier this month in New York City, on her website here and here.

Sunday 16 June 2002

Awards: Winners

§ Winners of this year's Ditmar Awards, or Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards, were announced at Convergence 2002, the 41st Australian National Science Fiction Convention, held June 7 - 10, 2002, and include works by Garth Nix, Lucy Sussex, Jack Dann, and others.

§ This year's winners of the Golden Duck Awards, for excellence in children's SF, include books by Jon Scieszka, Quenin Dodd, and Steven Layne (This Side of Paradise). The website also lists other nominations in each of the three categories. Winners were announced at Duckon 11, June 7-9, 2002, and will be presented at ConJose, this year's World SF Convention to be held over Labor Day weekend.

§ Winners of the Saturn Awards, for best SF, fantasy, and horror films, were announced June 10 in Los Angeles. A.I. Artificial Intelligence won five awards, including best SF film, best writing, and best music.

— Sci Fi Wire

Awards: Finalists

§ Finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction of 2001 are as follows. The winner will be announced July 5, during the Campbell Conference in Lawrence, Kansas, which will also include announcement of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of 2001. Nominations for the Sturgeon Award come from various short fiction critics and readers [including Locus Online editor Mark R. Kelly], and magazine and anthology editors, while judging for the winner will be performed by James Gunn, Kij Johnson, Frederik Pohl, and Andros Sturgeon (one of Theodore Sturgeon's children).

FINALISTS

"The Cat's Pajamas", James Morrow (F&SF Oct 2001)

"The Chief Designer", Andy Duncan (Asimov's Jun 2001)

"The Dog Said Bow-Wow", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Oct 2001)

"Eternity and Afterward", Lucius Shepard (F&SF Mar 2001)

"Have Not Have", Geoff Ryman (F&SF Apr 2001)

"Hell Is the Absence of God", Ted Chiang (Starlight 3)

"Interview: On Any Given Day", Maureen F. McHugh (Starlight 3)

"Isabel of the Fall", Ian R. MacLeod (Interzone Jul 2001)

"Lobsters", Charles Stross (Asimov's Jun 2001)

"The Measure of All Things", Richard Chwedyk (F&SF Jan 2001)

"New Light on the Drake Equation", Ian R. MacLeod (Sci Fiction 05.02.01)

"Undone", James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's Jun 2001)

§ The 2002 shortlist for the Sunburst Award, for Canadian literature of the fantastic, consists of books by Candas Jane Dorsey, Hiromi Goto, Margaret Sweatman, Thomas Wharton, and Robert Charles Wilson. Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the award consists of a cash award of C$1000 and a medallion that incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo. The jurors for the 2002 award are Douglas Barbour, Nalo Hopkinson, Hazel Hutchins, Don Hutchison and Tanya Huff. The winner will be announced this Fall.

§ Nominations for the 17th annual Chesley Awards, given by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, are listed in the June issue of Locus Magazine and online at SF Site. Winners will be announced at this year's Worldcon, ConJose.

§ ConJose, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in San Jose, California, from August 29 through September 2, 2002, has released the Hugo Awards final ballot. Nominees include both Locus Magazine (for best semi-prozine) and Locus Online (for best website). Deadline for voting is July 31, 2002.

§ Nominations are open for the British Fantasy Awards, and can be made online, though you have to be a member of the society to vote.

Tuesday 11 June 2002

Awards

§ Winners of the 2001 Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, given by the Horror Writers of America, were presented June 8, 2002 at the 2002 Stoker Banquet and HWA Annual Meeting in New York City.

NOVEL

American Gods, Neil Gaiman (Morrow)

FIRST NOVEL

Deadliest of the Species, Michael Oliveri (Vox13)

LONG FICTION

In These Final Days of Sales, Steve Rasnic Tem (Wormhole Books)

SHORT FICTION

"Reconstructing Amy", Tim Lebbon (As the Sun Goes Down)

FICTION COLLECTION

The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists, Norman Partridge (Night Shade Books)

ANTHOLOGY

Extremes 2: Fantasy and Horror from the Ends of the Earth, Brian A. Hopkins, ed. (Lone Wolf Publications)

NONFICTION

Jobs in Hell, Brian Keene, ed. (JIHad Publications)

ILLUSTRATED NARRATIVE

no award

SCREENPLAY

Memento, Christopher Nolan & Jonathan Nolan (Newmarket)

WORK FOR YOUNGER READERS

The Willow Files 2, Yvonne Navarro (Pocket Books)

POETRY COLLECTION

Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes, Linda Addison (Space & Time Press)

ALTERNATIVE FORMS

Dark Dreamers: Facing the Masters of Fear, Beth Gwinn & Stanley Wiater (Cemetery Dance)

LIFE ACHIEVEMENT

John Farris

— Bram Stoker Awards

Tuesday 4 June 2002

Awards

§ The Heinlein Society announced it is establishing the Heinlein Award, for outstanding published works in hard SF and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space, according to the June issue of Locus Magazine.

The award, to be given periodically but no more often than annually, will be presented at an appropriate SF gathering, and will consist of a certificate and a trophy. The winner will be selected by an Advisory Board, which currently consists of SFWA members Greg Bear, Joe Haldeman, Yoji Kondo (Chair), Elizabeth Moon, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Spider Robinson, Stanley Schmidt, and Charles Sheffield, plus US Naval Academy English professors Herb Gilliland and John Hill.

Internet

§ Harlan Ellison's Internet piracy lawsuit against AOL, et al, is at the top of the agenda for the Federal 9th Circuit Court, now that Napster's bankruptcy has suspended pending litigation regarding that company.

— Ellison News
— KICK Internet Piracy Homepage

Sunday 2 June 2002

Obit

§ "John M. Murry"'s funeral was on May 7, but the family apparently only announced the death on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times obituary.

Critics particularly liked his 1974 mystical work, "The Twilight of Briareus." The book describes how the explosion of a supernova in outer space prompts the creation of a paradise on Earth and details the resulting interactions between aliens and humans.

— Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2002

Saturday 1 June 2002

Obit

§ The New York Times runs an obit for John Middleton Murry, who "wrote novels of the paranormal".

By 1970, after he had published six novels under the pseudonym Colin Middleton Murry, Mr. Murry gave up teaching and became a full-time writer. Since his early novels had not been commercially successful, he adopted a second pseudonym, Richard Cowper, for his later work.

His second Cowper novel, "Clone" (Gollancz, 1972), was one of his three comic novels in the science fiction genre. "Time Out of Mind" (Gollancz, 1973) helped to feed his reputation. It was "The Twilight of Briareus," however, that revealed his power in a form that was seen as cartoonish in the hands of lesser authors.

— New York Times

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