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News Log: Briefs and Links

§ Lots of Harry Potter news:

• J.K. Rowling will write two spin-off books on behalf of Comic Relief, to be released March 16, 2001. The books are called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, both titles mentioned in the Potter books as texts used at Hogwarts.
  — Guardian
  — CNN
• Scholastic Books got 10,000 essays in their "How Harry Potter Changed My Life" contest. Here are the 10 winning letters.
  — USA Today
• Pottermania in Germany...
  — CNN
• The Frankfurt Book Fair thanks Harry Potter...
  — CNN/Reuters

• Harlan Ellison has sold rights to 35 of his short stories for release as e-books by Fictionwise.com. Like the other venues that have reported this news, Locus Online can't resist quoting Ellison:

Watching all the blue-sky IPO websites come and go, promising the riches of Araby but delivering ashes and excuses, functioning only as sucking black holes draining off investment capital, it is some small miracle--in my view--the way Fictionwise.com operates with calm, determined professionalism to put the work out there on the web. If one needs a metaphor for their way of doing business, for their attention to detail and quality, their scrupulous honesty and respect for the creative talent in the milieu that is lousy with hot-air hustlers, adolescent hacker-thieves and just plain inept buffoons, try this: the 300 Spartans who took on all of Xerxes' vast and endless armies. Here's wishing Fictionwise.com a long and smooth highway.

• Announcements:

» The Chicago Sun-Times, after a long hiatus, is again going to review science fiction books, starting quarterly this Fall and shifting to monthly in 2001. Review copies should go to their columnist:

Charles Halevi
4224 Pratt Ave.
Lincolnwood, IL 60172-3533

» MVP Studios is launching 1000 Delights, an adult Internet publication (no print version) restricted to paying members, with contents including "SciFi, Hard SciFi, Horror, Erotica, Fantasy, Romance, Pulp, Commentary, and other articles that don't fit into any specific genre." Payment is 3 cents/word. Inquire to articles@1000delights.com.

• Editor Gordon Van Gelder is leaving St. Martin's Press after 12 years, effective Friday, October 20. He will now work full-time as editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Bryan Cholfin will be taking over most of Van Gelder's workload at St. Martin's. Van Gelder's new address is:

Gordon Van Gelder
F&SF
P.O. Box 3447
Hoboken, NJ 07030
GordonFSF@aol.com

§ Winners of the Gaylactic Network Spectrum Awards:

Best Novel (tie)

The Gumshoe, The Witch And The Virtual Corpse, Keith Hartman (Meisha Merlin)

The Wild Swans, Peg Kerr (Warner Aspect)

Best Short Fiction

''Dapple'', Eleanor Arnason (Asimov's Sep 1999)

Best Other Work

Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze, (Single Cell Pictures/Gramercy Pictures/Propaganda Films)

§ First Fandom Hall of Fame Awards, presented at Archon 24 in the Collinsville, Illinois Gateway Center on Saturday, September 30, went to Martin Greenberg (co-founder of Gnome Press) and, posthumously, to Theodore R. Cogswell and Mark Schulzinger

§ Jack Williamson, Professor Emeritus at Eastern New Mexico University, has endowed ENMU's first chair, with the largest single gift ever given to the university. The Jack Williamson Chair in Science and Humanities will bring a visiting professor to the university annually, the appointment rotating among various fields in the sciences and humanities.

Jack Williamson and Patrice Caldwell

Williamson has previously endowed ENMU's annual Williamson Lectureship and the ENMU literary journal El Portal. He's also donated thousands of books and other material to establish The Jack Williamson Collection at ENMU, one of the largest SF collections in the world.

The announcement was made September 30, 2000, at the Friends of Eastern Foundation's 25th Annual Breakfast. Also during this event Dr. Williamson received the Outstanding Alumni Award for 2000, for lifetime achievement in the science fiction field.

§ Winners of the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2001 include Terry Bisson's ''macs'' in the translated short story category; awards will be presented Saturday, October 28, at the Utopia festival in Nantes, France.

§ Alison Spedding, imprisoned in Bolivia in 1998 for drug possession, has been released.

§ Mary Shepard, Mary Poppins illustrator, has died at age 90.

§ The Harry Potter (Ha-li Bo-te) books are being released in China.

§ Booksellers are bringing an end to the discount era (in case you hadn't noticed).