June 1998

Event Horizon, the new webzine from the producers of Omni Online that was announced in April, is on schedule for an August debut. Event Horizon Web Productions, Inc. comprised of Ellen Datlow, Pamela Weintraub, Robert K.J. Killheffer, and Kathleen Stein, has acquired the name Event Horizon from the already existing webzine called Event Horizon. The previous Event Horizon will change its name by late August; there may be a brief period of overlap.

Ellen Datlow's Event Horizon will launch in August with fiction by Pat Cadigan, a monthly non-fiction column by one of four alternating contributors: Lucius Shepard, Jack Womack, Barry N. Malzberg, and Douglas E. Winter. Ed Bryant, Jim Freund,and David Thomer will host alternate weekly author interviews. There will be links, and a bulletin board. Ellen Datlow will write reviews that will later appear in her Year's Best anthology. She may also regularly commission a collaborative short story that will be written over a month or two by four writers.

Event Horizon will have monthly contests and will launch with a mega contest sponsored by most of the major sf/fantasy/horror publishers.

(posted Tue 23 Jun)

Molly Gloss has won a PEN Center USA West Award in the Fiction category for her novel The Dazzle of Day, published last year by Tor. The award includes a prize of $1,000.

Gloss's novel is about a Quaker community traveling by generation starship to settle a new planet. Gloss was previously known for a 1989 literary novel, The Jump-Off Creek, a runner-up for the PEN/Faulkner Awards, and for a 1984 story, ''Interlocking Pieces'', included in The Norton Book of Science Fiction.

The Literary Awards Competition by PEN Center USA West recognizes writers from Western states. Winners in the nine other categories include James Salter's Burning the Days (Random House) for creative nonfiction; Harry W. Greene's Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature (UC Press) for research nonfiction; and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights for screenplay.

PEN Center USA West is one of a host of organizations affiliated with PEN, an international writers organization whose acronym stands for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists. Among the many other awards given by various branches of PEN is the PEN/Faulkner Award, the largest annual juried prize for fiction in the United States, whose winner receives $15,000. The 1998 PEN/Faulkner winner, announced in March, was The Bear Comes Home, a fabulist novel by Rafi Zabor.

(posted Tue 16 Jun)

The 1998 Bram Stoker Awards were presented June 6th at the New York Marriot East Side:

Novel
Children of the Dusk, Janet Berliner and George Guthridge (White Wolf)

First Novel
Lives of the Monster Dogs, Kirsten Bakis (Farrar Straus Giroux)

Long Fiction/Novelette
''The Big Blow'', Joe R. Lansdale (Revelations, HarperPrism)

Short Story
''Rat Food'', Edo van Belkom and David Nickle (On Spec, Spring 1997)

Fiction Collection
Exorcisms and Ecstasies, Karl Edward Wagner, edited by Stephen Jones (Fedogan & Bremer)

Non-Fiction
Dark Thoughts: On Writing, Stanley Wiater (Underwood)

Life Achievement
William Peter Blatty

Life Achievement
Jack Williamson

(posted Mon 8 Jun)

Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow has won this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award, as the best science fiction novel that received its first British publication in 1997.

The award, which consists of an engraved bookend and a check for £1,000, was announced in a ceremony at the Science Museum in London and was presented by Angie Edwards, Sir Arthur C. Clarke's niece. Russell was present for the ceremony.

This is the third award for The Sparrow, which previously won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award.

(Judges and other shortlisted titles)

(posted Sat 30 May)