Saturday 8 February 2003

Awards and Contests

The radioplay version of Paul Levinson's story "The Chronology Protection Case" has been nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Play of 2002 by the Mystery Writers of America.

— 2003 Edgar Nominees

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Rotary International's list of 100 (well, 90) famous Rotarians, compiled to celebrate the organization's 100th anniversary in 2005, includes John F. Kennedy, Orville Wright, Richard E. Byrd, Warren G. Harding, Cecil B. De Mille, and Jack Williamson.

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Authorlink's 2003 International New Author Awards Competition is accepting entries until March 10, 2003. Finalist judges include Don D'Auria of Leisure Books.

Lem

Though Stanislaw Lem earlier reported that he had no intention of seeing the Steve Soderbergh film version of his novel Solaris, Reuters reports, via Yahoo, that he did, and now states that in this version "Emotions have triumphed over intellect", while explaining the film's failure at US box offices by saying "Soderbergh has made a piece of ambitious, artistic cinema, which is a difficult nut to crack for mass audiences fed on Hollywood pulp." More remarks are on the English-language page of Lem's website, http://www.cyberiad.info/english/main.htm.

Saturday 1 February 2003

Awards

SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has named Katherine MacLean this year's SFWA Author Emeritus. Formal presentation of the honor will occur during the Nebula Awards Weekend in Philadelphia, April 18-20, 2003.

— SFWA News

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Gary Westfahl will receive the Pilgrim Award, presented by the Science Fiction Research Association to honor lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship, at the SFRA conference at the University of Guelph in Toronto, June 26-29, 2003.

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Finalists for this year's British Science Fiction Association Awards have been released:

NOVEL

Castles Made of Sand, Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz)

Effendi: The Second Arabesk, Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Earthlight)

Light, M. John Harrison (Gollancz)

The Scar, China Miéville (Macmillan)

The Separation, Christopher Priest (Scribner)

The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperCollins)

SHORT FICTION

Coraline, Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury)

"Five British Dinosaurs", Michael Swanwick (Interzone #177 Mar 2002)

"If Lions Could Speak", Paul Park (Interzone #177 Mar 2002)

"Router", Charles Stross (Asimov's Sep 2002)

"Singleton", Greg Egan (Interzone #176 Feb 2002)

"Voice of Steel", Sean McMullen (Sci Fiction 08.21.02)

ARTWORK

Dominic Harman, Cover of Interzone #179 May 2002

Peter Gric, Cover of The Third Alternative #31 Jul 2002

Fraser Irving, Judge Death: My Name Is Death (page 1) 2000AD Prog 1289 1 May 2002

Richard Marchand, Cover of The Third Alternative #32 Aut 2002

Joachim Luetke, interior illustration for "The Routine" (by Gala Blau; The Third Alternative #31 Jul 2002)

NONFICTION

"The Interrogation", Nick Gevers & Christopher Priest (Interzone #183 Oct 2002 (Christopher Priest interviewed by Nick Gevers))

"Introduction", David Langford (Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek Big Engine)

Mapping Mars, Oliver Morton (Fourth Estate)

"Once There Was a Magazine", Fred Smith (Beccon Publications 2002)

"The Time Machine" (film review), Lucius Shepard (Electric Story 2 Apr 2002; F&SF Aug 2002)

The awards are voted by the association and members of the annual British national SF convention, which this year is Seacon '03, to be held 18-21 April in Hinckley, Leicestershire.

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Finalists for this year's Lambda Literary Awards include these books in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category:

Daughters of an Amber Noon, Katherine V. Forrest (Alyson)

The Devil Inside, Randy Boyd (West Beach Books)

Queer Fear II, Michael Rowe, ed. (Arsenal Pulp Press)

Seeds of Fire, Karen Kallmaker, writing as Laura Adams (Bella Books)

Wired Hard 3, Cecilia Tan, ed. (Circlet Press)

In addition, David Gerrold's The Martian Child (Forge) and Jim Grimsley's Boulevard are nominees in the Gay Men's Fiction category; Nicola Griffith's Stay (Doubleday) is a nominee in the Lesbian Fiction category; Rowe's Queer Fear II also appears in the Fiction Anthology category; and Lawrence Schimel's Found Tribe (Sherman Asher Publishing) is nominated in both the Nonfiction Anthology and the Spirituality categories. The awards will be presented at the Book Expo convention on May 29th in Los Angeles.

Death

Leslie Fiedler, provocative literary critic who explored race and sexuality in American literature, and who paid more attention to genre fiction than most, died January 29, 2003, in Buffalo, New York, at the age of 85. His best known book was Love and Death in the American Novel, published in 1960. He edited In Dreams Awake, "a historical-critical anthology of science fiction", in 1975, reprinting canonical stories by Wells, Lovecraft, Godwin, Asimov, Clarke, Ellison, Ballard, and others. Also of genre interest was Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided (1983).

— New York Times
— Los Angeles Times

January News