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News Log:
Briefs and Links
Monday 30 April 2001
More Awards!
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The Cordwainer Smith Foundation has established the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, an annual literary award for forgotten SF classics. John Clute, Gardner Dozois, Scott Edelman, and Robert Silverberg will be jurors for the first award, whose date has yet to be set. The Foundation consists of the two daughters of Paul M.A. Linebarger (who wrote as Cordwainer Smith), Rosana Hart and Marcia Linebarger, along with Dr. Alan C. Elms, past president of the SFRA. Executive director for the award is Eleanor Lang. The jurors have the option each year of also awarding a Cordwainer Smith Discovery Award for contemporary writers who achieve high literary standards and create a sense of wonder, as Smith did.
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The eighth annual Spectrum jurors, consisting of Harlan Ellison, artists Gregory Manchess, Brom, Guy Giunta, John Jude Palencar, and Tor Books art director Irene Gallo, met in Kansas City MO in February to select 300 works out of nearly 4000 submitted for inclusion in Spectrum 8: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner, to be published later this year by Underwood Books.
Winners include David Bowers and Shaun Tan, for book covers; Dave McKean and Phil Hale in the comics category; and a Grand Master Award to Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Complete results will be published in the book.
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PW Daily announced results of several UK book awards this week, including Philip Pullman, the Booksellers Association Author of the Year for The Amber Spyglass (beating out among others J.K. Rowling, who won the award each of the past two years). But Rowling did win a W.H. Smith Book, with its prize of £5000, in the Children's Book category for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Writers prize -- for which J.G. Ballard was a regional winner -- went to Peter Carey. And finally, Pullman is a finalist for the Carnegie Medal, winner to be announced July 13.
Wednesday 25 April 2001
Awards
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Mark Z. Danielewski's haunted house novel House of Leaves (Pantheon) has won the New York Public Library's first Young Lions Fiction Award, a $10,000 prize honoring a novel or collection of short stories published by an American author age 35 or younger. Judges included recent Pulitzer-winner Michael Chabon.
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J.G. Ballard's near-future satire Super-Cannes has been named winner, by default, of the Eurasian regional Commonwealth Writers Prize, replacing Amitav Ghosh, who withdrew his book The Glass Palace over objections that the "Commonwealth" prize was open only to work written in English. The overall Commonwealth prize will be announced later this week.
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Winners of the Australian Ditmar Awards, announced April 15 in Perth, include Sean Williams & Shane Dix's Evergence 2: The Dying Light for novel, a tie between Stephen Dedman and Terry Dowling for short story, and Shaun Tan for best artwork.
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Nominations for this year's Chesley Awards are given here (page down about four screens) --
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Here's a London Times article about that artist, Glenn Brown, whose entry for the Turner Prize, an art award, is a near-copy of the Anthony Roberts cover for the 1974 British edition of Robert Heinlein's novel Double Star. Well-known artist Chris Foss has also accused Brown of copying his work; "We agonise over them (the originals). Then some guy comes along and copies it, and there he is selling them at 30 grand", Foss is quoted.
Obits
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Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japanese filmmaker and flower arranger, died April 14 at age 74. He directed Woman in the Dunes (1964), written by Kobe Abe and based on his novel, nominated for both the Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film Academy Awards. Later films based on novels by Abe include The Face of Another in 1966 and The Ruined Map in 1968.
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George Slavin, prolific TV writer, died April 19 at age 85. He won a Writers Guild of America award for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "The Indestructible Mr. Weems", and co-wrote the Star Trek TOS episode "The Mark of Gideon".
Monday 23 April 2001
Pierre Versins, French writer, fan, editor, critic, and author of the
L'Encyclopedie des Voyages Extraordinaires, de l'Utopie et de la science fiction, which won a Special Award from the 1973 World SF Convention, died April 19 in Avignon, France. A survivor of Auschwitz, winner of the Pilgrim Award in 1991, he was 78. (A full obituary will appear in the June issue of Locus Magazine.)
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Deals
— Palm Digital Media has acquired peanutpress.com --
— Leisure Books, an imprint of Dorchester Publishing, is now a sponsor of horror website Chiaroscuro.
— Fictionwise.com has signed deals to distribute selected e-books from other publishers, including LiveREADS and ElectricStory.com.
§ Looking for a Deal
Aurealis, Australia's only professional fantasy and science fiction magazine, is for sale. E-mail straz@fhills.starway.net.au for further details.
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Larry Niven's recent yoga-related injury, which gets a mention in the upcoming May issue of Locus, is explained at:
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Tangent Online has launched a new website --
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ForeWord Magazine has announced finalists for its Best Indie Books in 2000 award, results to be announced June 2 at BookExpo America in Chicago. SF finalists are by Michael P. Calligaro, Joshua Mertz, Robert Humphrey, and Marie Jakober (who, the press release tells us, has won 2nd place).
Tuesday 17 April 2001
Awards
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Michael Chabon has won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House), which is in part about the golden age of comics. The novel, a runner-up in the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner Awards, perhaps had an advantage in the competition for the Pulitzer, whose arts categories specifically target works depicting American life.
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The British Science Fiction Awards, presented this past weekend at Eastercon, went to Mary Gentle's 1100-page novel Ash: A Secret History (Gollancz; published in four paperback volumes in the US by Eos), Peter F. Hamilton's "The Suspect Genome" (Interzone), and Dominic Harman's cover art for Interzone 157 (July 2000).
Tuesday 10 April 2001
Announcements
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The Frank Frazetta Museum in East Stroudsburg, PA, opens officially on Saturday, June 9, 2001. Tickets for opening day are $295.
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Future Fantasy Books in Palo Alto, CA, is closing on June 30, 2001. There's a store-wide sale in April, with all merchandise discounted 15%, increasing in May and June until closing.
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The Slamdance Film Festival (the 7th largest film festival in the world), is expanding its Annual Screenplay Competition to include its first Slamdance/Sci-Fi.com Science Fiction Screenplay Competition, in conjunction with the SciFi Network. Deadline for submittals is July 23, 2001.
Awards
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America will present a Bradbury Award (for only the third time ever) at this year's Nebula Awards Banquet in Los Angeles on April 28, to the NPR Radio series "2000X - Tales of the Next Millennia", produced by Yuri Rasokovsky and hosted by Harlan Ellison.
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Finalists for this year's Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award are:
- Dykstra's War, Jeffery D. Kooistra (Baen)
- The King's Peace, Jo Walton (Tor)
- Mars Crossing, Geoffrey A. Landis (Tor)
- Murphy's Gambit, Syne Mitchell (Roc)
- Storm Front, Jim Butcher (Roc)
- Transformation, Carol Berg (Roc)
The award is presented by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society for the best first SF or fantasy novel of each year. This year's winner will be announced at the annual Baltimore convention, Balticon, on May 25-28, 2001.
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Finalists for this year's Prometheus Awards, presented by the Libertarian Futurist Society, are:
- Novel
- Eagle Against the Stars, Steve White (Baen)
- Forge of the Elders, L. Neil Smith (Baen)
- Lodestar, Michael Flynn (Tor)
- The Sky Road, Ken MacLeod (Tor)
- The Truth, Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins)
- Hall of Fame
- It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis
- Orion Shall Rise, Poul Anderson
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: "The Measure of a Man", Melinda Snodgrass
- The Survival of Freedom, Jerry Pournelle & John F. Carr, eds.
- The Wardove, L. Neil Smith
The Hall of Fame Award will be presented May 26, 2001 at Marcon 36 in Columbus, Ohio, where the LFS will hold its first national conference and 20th anniversary celebration; the Best Novel Award will be presented during this year's World SF convention, the Millennium Philcon, over Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia.
Publishers
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Sheila Williams has been promoted to Executive Editor for Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
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This New York Times article on Baen Books' e-publishing venture includes a quote from Locus Magazine editor and publisher Charles Brown.
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