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Robert J. Sawyer - Hugo winner at this year's Worldcon, - has sold two novels, Webmind and Skins to Tor in the US, which means hopefully Tor UK may perhaps release them in due course. We mention this particular sale as a hook to alert you to the fact that we have just posted an interview with the man himself.
Mainstream literature and SF has just taken a step closer. J.M.Coetzee is the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (announced on 2 Oct) to have ever been short-listed for the Philip K.Dick Award. In 1982 his Waiting for the Barbarians lost in the race for the P. K. Dick Award to Rudy Rucker's Software. Does this recognition of a genre writing author give "genuine" literary status to science fiction? Or is SF giving mainstream literature street cred? (Neither we suspect, but we note this sideways recognition with mild interest as Coetzee joins the band of those contemporary authors with feet in both SF and mainstream camps, along with the likes of: Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard, Iain Banks, and Doris Lessing.)
The BBC TV show Blake's 7 may well be making a comeback as a new series! The news is very much at the gossip stage but does seem to involve actor Paul Darrow. If a new series, minus the wobbly sets, can be made then it could be the biggest thing since the recently demised Farscape.
DD Video continue to provide a valuable archiving service for fantastic film buffs. Further to previous news regarding The Final Programme, DD have this year begun releasing Hammer films. We received The Quatermass Xperiment which was Hammer's cinematic adaptation of the original classic TV series. Available as DVD or video, the film comes with a few notable extras including both a filmed and audio-only interviews with director - and Festival of Fantastic Films regular - Val Guest (one of which was made specially for the release and so is of collector's interest). There is also a booklet of viewing notes but this was not included with our copy, so we can't say how useful this is. Young SF aficionados may not know that the TV Quatermass had a bigger impact on the UK population in the late 1950s and early 1960s than the X-Files has today and so is essential viewing by anyone with any claim to an interest in the genre's history. Quatermass II has also been released.
The normally on-the-ball folk at Locus devoted their July issue to graphic novels including material from the likes of Talbot and Moore. Locus usually has very much a books-only focus so this was a rare (and welcome) foray into other territory. But apparently a mention of the comic 2000AD, would have been going a tad too far. They did not even refer to it! A shame really as credit due where credit is due. Not only were a good number of today's leading SF graphic novelists associated with the 2000AD stable, including Moore and Talbot, but some of its series' strips such as The Ballad of Halo Jones, Skizz and even a number of the Judge Dredd epics such as Necropolis (get the 2003 part 1 & 2 editions) and The Pit, are worthy graphic novels in their own right and not mere episode collections. We at Concat felt it was part of our information service to let you good folk know. (Don't let this put you off the excellent Locus just note their purity of focus.) Meanwhile check out the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine which has slightly more adult material than 2000AD and three-quarters of the material in it is not Dredd related.
Following-up to our 'Time to challenge the Hugo'... article of the Summer we have been in touch with the folk who run the World SF Society. You may recall our bug-bear was that while excellent fantasy works such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are excellent 'fantasy', they are not 'science fiction' and therefore it is not appropriate for them to win the World Science Fiction Achievement Award, the Hugo. After a few pints at our local, a few of us on the Concat team decided to take this further and one of us contacted Kevin Standlee who is currently Chairman of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) business meetings under whose auspices the Worldcon is separately run and Hugo Awards administered. We have to say that Kevin Standlee gave a very full answer, even if it was unsatisfactory as regards solving our problem, but he was most helpful, so we can't expect more than that. OK. To sum up what was a lengthy exchange, we were told that, "There are no World SF Achievement Awards" and that though there is a reference to the Hugo being an award for 'Science Fiction Achievement' in the WSFS constitution (article 1, section 1.2.1). This reference, says Kevin Standlee, was "left in as a sop to [WSFS] members who want to maintain a ceremonial link with our past. It has no practical significance. Trying to use this reference to change the scope of the Award is like trying to speculate about HM Queen Elizabeth not giving Royal Assent to a Act of Parliament - it isn't going to happen." With regards to our point that there is already a World Fantasy Award he rightly said that this is tightly juried with a select panel and not an award voted for by a broad constitution of the thousands who are registered for the Worldcon. Finally, we suggested that the wording of the constitution should be changed effectively dropping 'science fiction and fantasy', and replacing it with 'science fiction and science fantasy'. That way borderline works with fantasy (such as Superman) would still be eligible. Kevin Standlee outlined the way we might try to get a motion passed at a business meeting but this would be long and tortuous and take a few Worldcons to do. So where to from here? Well the practicalities do not look good. The Concat team usually has a member or a friend attend the Worldcon when (as it is most years) it is not held in Europe, but rarely is it the same person: for instance it was Pete Tyers last year and Jonathan Cowie this. Consequently it would be difficult for us to generate the momentum at business meetings and we could only lobby en masse when once a decade the Worldcon is on the Eastern side of the Atlantic. Some of us do have a nodding acquaintance with the London-based WSFS Secretary, Pat McMurray, but not the access to the necessary mind-control pharmaceuticals to ensure our bidding is done. It did not take us long to decide that we would sooner engage in projects like the International Weeks of SF, or our forthcoming paperback guide to the genre, than spend effort on a lengthy and tortuous process at WSFS business meetings over a number of years. Life's too short. We did not, though, come to this decision lightly and anyway Kevin Standlee advised us that our "proposals [would] have little chance of passage". Ideally there would be both a World SF Award and a Fantasy one that have a broad electorate. Alas this really means changing the rules governing both World Fantasy as well as that of the WSFS and ideally simultaneously. That ain't at all likely. So there we have it. The Hugo is not a 'science fiction' award it is, we might be led to believe. Rather it's democratic speculative fiction award for works including fantasy and horror. Perhaps, we gently venture, it should be billed as that throughout the WSFS constitution? But we guess there are those in WSFS who need the aforementioned "sop"
Still on Worldcons, we followed up on the grand two-year silence as to the Japan 2007 bid for the Japanese Worldcon .. Following on from the Summer 03 News and Spring News earlier this year, we are pleased to report that our man tracked down the Japanese 07 bid team at the Torcon 3, Worldcon. The committee spoke to us through the kind translation services of Shouich Hachiya. Apparently what happened was that a) they put someone who did not speak English in charge of their English website for the past couple of years and he deleted some of the incoming English e-mails (including four of our messages sent a month apart) thinking it was spam. Furthermore b) the English part of site was not updated for over a year so that non-US Anglophone registrants were not listed. Apparently things were largely sorted out in July. We have to say that we find this unsatisfactory on two counts. First, it was a very basic mistake and does not bode well for the convention if it wins, and secondly, Japan should have put an apology up front in the English promotional material they were dishing out to show that they had found the problem and promptly dealt with it. Did they think we would not notice? Our advice to those considering supporting Japan is to see how effectively they communicate their plans over the coming year until when the 2007 bid is voted on at next year's 2004 Worldcon. But please, no charity votes! That would be both insulting to the Japanese SF community and would not do the Worldcon any favours either. As for how the two 2007 Worldcon bids performed at this year's Worldcon 2003, see below...
Meanwhile the >Columbus, Ohio, bid for the 2007 Worldcon still continues to truck along. They are rivalling Japan and they too have a bit of a communication problem according to some comments heard by our man at this year's Worldcon. Concerns here did not revolve around a communication breakdown as with its rival Japanese bid for 2007 (see above), rather the problem related to a desire for more information. This could actually be a welcome sign for the bid, for Columbus' information is as every bit as detailed as Japan's, not counting their web site's annoyingly noisy firework display. (Ooops! We should have warned you about that with the link at the head of this paragraph.) So at least people are seriously interested in finding out more. Their room party (bang opposite Japan's) at the Worldcon boasted homemade pasties (made by one of the committee) and a friendly atmosphere. (Well, they helped out our man when jet lag suddenly hit.) The Committee have apparently been organising the past regional SF convention which we understand to be over 3,600 strong. They have a good venue and the mid-west US is quite economical in terms of cost. The big question seems to centre around whether they have the organizational ability to scale up three or four fold to Worldcon level: this is not a linear thing but more of a quantum leap as the Worldcon comes with much baggage and a broader range of topics to be covered than with regional US conventions. Though at Concat we understand that their previous regional conventions did have a Worldcon-type organizational structure (Chair & Board/division heads/department heads/staff) and so at least they have the feel for Worldcon-running even if it is a quantum step up. Other comments from some US fans heard included 'who wants to go to Columbus' (referring to the place and not the bid) but we are not sure whether these comments truly reflect the majority view. Meanwhile...
The Japanese 2007 bid room party at this year's Worldcon was packed solid. Japanese cuisine was evident with the nibbles and sake which definitely hit the spot. There was much interest in the Japanese bid though there were the occasional translation problems. Most people (as we are) seemed pleased that the Japanese are running and in the theoretical concept of a Japanese Worldcon. However few commented on the website problem. Much if this was because few European fans were at this year's Toronto, convention, and these fans who registered were the only one's not on the Japanese web site; many US pre-supporting registrants were on the website so would be unaware of the problem unless they tried to e-mail a query. Furthermore of comments received at Torcon many US fans who were prepared to travel at least as far as Canada like the concept of a Japanese convention but do not intend going to one.
So how to the two Worldcon bids compare? This is a difficult one. Our completely unscientific poll of non-random encounters at this year's Toronto Worldcon suggests that Japan definitely has the sympathy vote... BUT no Canadian or US folk our man asked at Toronto said that they would actually back this up by actually going to Japan. So what's putting them off? Aside from the language barrier (which of course we are used to in Europe) there is also a written one. But Yokomama (where the Japan 07 will be held if it wins) is next to the US's largest overseas military base so one presumes signposting in the key areas is sufficiently good enough for Anglophones to get around(?). The other problem is cost. Apart from the travel (not cheap either from Europe or the US) Japan's hotels are pricey. The Japanese team told us that currently people would be looking at US$150-300 with the possibility of multiple occupancy, though they hoped to get a discount on this of perhaps as much as 30%. Japan has since quoted us US$60 for a single but we are unsure as to what exactly you get for this and where with regards to the rest of the convention. We assume that the Japanese will be providing comprehensive details on their website. Contrastingly, Columbus has room rates of US$85-100 and twins of US$90-$110 a night. Japan also has the disadvantage of an extremely high cost of living. The total cost of someone from the US attending could very easily top US$4,000, or UK£3,500 for Europeans travelling the extra distance and this assumes you do not stay on a little while for some tourism. Of course US fans are less concerned as to where the Worldcon will be held for they always have a North American Science Fiction Convention (the NASFiC) on years the Worldcon is held outside of US/Canada. Many US fans would be happy to vote for Japan to help keep the Worldcon international but would actually go to the NASFiC instead. One American fan said that the Japanese 07 convention would consist of their national convention of about 3,000 doing what they usually do with about 500 non-Japanese doing more Worldcon things. As for Columbus' chances, apart from having to win over the 'politically correct' vote currently going Japan's way, they are going to have to convince US fans that they can organise a Worldcon far better than ConJose and Torcon 3 (as both were beset with organizational difficulties). If they can do this, and bearing in mind that North America does need to encourage Worldcon-level conrunners, they might just win. But Columbus (and Japan for that matter) are going to have to tell us more about the sort of programme they propose, how they will entice non-US fans and SF representation and how the extravaganzas will be handled. At the moment it is early days and things could go either way over the coming year; both bids have yet to get into top gear!
More news (if the above wasn't a large enough dollop) on Worldcons can be found in the Concat convention report of this year's TorCon 3, Toronto, and in Jonathan's Canadian personal trip report, the latter includes news on how the European Worldcon preparations for 2005 were perceived. Meanwhile if you want more of an insider's view of what went wrong at this year's TorCon then check out Emerald City No.97 as this contrasts neatly with how things were perceived on the ground. Finally we have a review of this year's Hugo winner for best novel and an interview with its author.
Los Angles (Anaheim to be precise) won the bid to hold the 2006 Worldcon in case you hadn't already heard. (It's across the road from Disneyland (so be warned).)
'Eastercon', the generic term for the UK National SF convention - held at Easter time - has been successfully registered as a trademark. Apparently UK convention runners feel threatened. 'Why?' is a harder question to answer since for the past decade the Eastercon has ceased to be the annual gathering of the UK SF clans. Which leaves us asking who is desperate for the name? Furthermore, the legal argument of 'prior use' should be sufficient for protection, especially if an on-going Limited company (say the British SF Association) was to be associated with the Eastercon as World SF Society (WSFS) is with the Worldcon. However such nervousness is not restricted to UK fans. This year's WSFS business meeting at the Worldcon saw continued effort to legally protect the Hugo Award rocket shape. (Had this happened in the 1950s arguably a number of SF movies would have had to have different looking spacecraft.) Whatever next? Does the European SF Society know that not too long ago there was a commercial trade event called 'Eurocon'?
Experience Science Fiction through an`interactive, media-rich experience that combines artefacts and information in evocative environments that immerse visitors in science fiction's alternative worlds'. The 'SF Experience', should open in Seattle next June.
R.I.P. Hal Clement, US author of hard SF died peacefully on 29 October aged 81. His writing career lasted more than more than 60 years. Few writers in the first few decades after World War II produced SF stories as hard as did Hal Clement (real name Harry Clement Stubbs), but then he did study chemistry and astronomy at college. His best stories were those where the science springs from his tales' settings: unlike much other hard SF where it arises from technology. Mission of Gravity (1954) is typical of this, where a high gravity world (or is it a dead proto-star?) has near normal gravity around the equator due to the centrifugal reaction from the planet's high rotation rate. Ocean on Top (1973) takes place in the high pressure depths of the sea, Close to Critical (1964) in the midst of high pressure atmosphere, and Iceworld (1953) on Earth... but the Earth as viewed from a high-temperature alien visitor to the Solar system who prefers the more hospitable warmth of Mercury for its base camp. Indeed Iceworld exhibits the second theme that runs through much of Clement's work, that of viewing life from an alien perspective while taking us along for the ride. In Needle (1950), and its sequel Through the Eye of a Needle (1978), this literally happens to the young protagonist who is half of a symbiotic relationship with a sentient and beneficent alien parasite who is in fact a cop after a fugitive. Mission of Gravity's sequel is Star Light (1971), and the novel also incorporates characters from Close to Critical (1964). Hal Clement was one of the Guest of Honours at the 1991 World SF Convention (Chicago). He ain't heavy...
Pirate copies of unauthorised translated editions of Harry Potter... books have been seized and arrests made in India. Solicitors Akash Chittranshi & Associates of New Delhi are following up with prosecutions acting on behalf of J. K. Rowling. India is also cracking down on pirate publishing generally. In the past three years they have seized a quarter of a million books and made 180 arrests. The campaign continues. Meanwhile back to Harry Potter... in China very poor translations, using just 100 Chinese characters, are available at £4.00 each - this is twice the going rate for paperbacks in China. China's first official edition of Harry potter and the Goblet of Fire was released in October and had a print run of 800,000 copies.
The British have been voting on their favourite books to read courtesy of the BBC and its 'The Big Read' programme. Of the top 100 books the British love most some 42 (not to mention Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy) were SF and fantasy titles. These included: 1984, Dune, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Lord of the Rings, Winnie the Pooh, The Stand, Magician, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Alice in Wonderland. Who says that speculative fiction is a minority interest?
Even more parochial news (but then over half Concat's visitors are from the UK), the London based SF store Forbidden Planet is in the process of relocating. The new premises is in fact what was once (ages ago) their cinematic wing and is literally around the corner at 179 Shaftesbury Avenue (half way down to Cambridge Circus on the right). FP is one of the top 5 stores in central London for books and graphic novels. (It also does videos, role-play gaming and models.) The new store boasts two floors, 10,000 square feet and one mile of shelving (that's 1.609,34 kilometres for those of you who are ten fingered beings).
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Broken Angels by Richard Morgan, Gollancz, pbk, £6.99, ISBN 0-575-07550-3, is his sequel to Altered Carbon some 50 years on with espionage against a backdrop of future war.
Castles Made of Sand by Gwyneth Jones, Gollancz, pbk, £6.99, ISBN 0-575-07395-0, is the sequel to As Bold As Love which won the Aurthur C Clarke Award.
Cartomancy by Mary Gentle, Gollancz, pbk, £9.99 ISBN 0-57-5-07532-5, is a collection of shorts some of which have already been published in Soldiers and Scholars but there is much new material too.
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by Alastair Reynolds, from Gollancz, pbk, £6.99, ISBN 0-575-07516-3. A collection of novellas, some of which have already been published in Redemption Ark and one other in Infinities but also has one new one.
Down the Bright Way by Robert Reed, from Orbit, pbk, £6.99 ISBN 1-841-49255-8. A thriller linked in with mankind's destiny.
The Oryx and Crake CD audio of the Margaret Atwood book is out from Bloomsbury at £16.99. A chilling tale of a genetically engineered future world where the mysterious woman Oryx distributes bliss pills and you can watch criminal executions on the web. The reading is abridged at six hours length.
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Maul by Tricia Sullivan, from Orbit, pbk, £10.99 ISBN 1-841-49312-0. A gang of teenage girls gets caught up in the violence around a shopping mall (hence the title pun), and who fight for the life of a man in another world who could possibly change the future. This has had great advance reviews in both literary and SF circles.
Rulers of the Darkness by Harry Turtledove, from Earthlight, pbk, £6.99 ISBN 0-743-46851-1. A world is at war but the weapons are magic rather than technological. In case you have not come across him before Turtledove is well established and respected in fantasy circles but also has a reasonable and long-standing SF following on the book convention circuit.
Amara by Richard Laymon, Headline, pbk, £6.99, ISBN 0-747-26731-6, sees a mummified Egyption Princes come back from the dead to leave in her wake a trail of (not surprisingly) death.
The Origins of Tolkein's Middle-Earth for Dummies by Greg Harvey, Wiley, pbk, £12.99, ISBN not supplied by publisher at time of writing. We've only seen one sample chapter and though we can say this is reasonably well researched we don't have a feel as to the guide's utility as a reference work or an introductory guide to LOTR. However it will be in the shops in time for Christmas and the final LOTR film in the trilogy. So keep an eye out for it, but because it is in the style of the computer '...For Dummies' series you may wish to check those shelves in the shops rather than the SF ones in case it's been misplaced.
Click here for detailed reviews of past SF book releases
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Right Hand, Left Hand by Phoenix, pbk, £7.99, ISBN 0-753-81355-6, is the paperback release of this year's UK Aventis Prize for Science. It looks at symmetry and asymmetry from folklore to genetics.
Utopia Theory by Philip Ball, William Heinemann, hdbk, £20.00 ISBN 0-434-01135-5. An examination of whether there are 'laws of nature' that govern the way we behave from how we vote to what we buy.
A Traveller's Guide to Mars by William K. Hartmann, pbk, £10.99. ISBN details not provided. Release date in time for Christmas.
The Next 50 Years edited by John Brockman, Phoenix, pbk, £7.99 ISBN 0-753-81710-1. Leading scientists look at the future of their respective disciplines and how these will affect the way we live our lives.
The Future of the Past by Alexander Stille, from Picador, pbk, £7.99, ISBN 0-330-37535-0. How what is meant to be improved data flow, handling and so forth, of our information age threatens to destroy our cultural heritage. (Could be interesting as we at Concat separately note that recently Berkley University (California) researchers have announced that information generation Worldwide has been increasing at 30% a year for the past three years and storage since 1999 has doubled. In terms you and I understand the 800 megabytes our 6 billion global population each produce equates to 800 books: again Worldwide, that's equal to half a million new Libraries of Congress.)
101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit, from Faber, pbk, £6.995 ISBN 0-571-20162-8. This title has had tremendous success on mainland Europe. It reveals how many of our everyday actions really pose significant philosophical questions.
Big Questions in Science edited by Harriet Swain, from Vintage, pbk, £7.99 ISBN 0-099-42892-X. A score of scientists contemplate questions that have dogged mankind since time immemorial.On the Shoulders of Giants by Stephen Hawking, from Penguin Press, hdbk, £12.99, ISBN 0-141-01571-3. The famous Oxbridge physicist draws on the original papers of Einstein (whose Nobel was for the photo-electric effect and not relativity), Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton (hence the book title's paraphrase) and then explains how these changed the course of science.
How To Keep Dinosaurs by Robert Mash, from Weidenfield, hdbk, £12.99, ISBN 0-297-84347-8. A delightful guide of how to choose and then raise your own pet dinosaur. It goes through the range from little lap dinosaurs to those loud guard dinosaurs to protect your house and (non-edible) belongings. A friend of the team had this comment: "It's funny as Hell! There's lots of cool pictures showing dinosaurs in 'real' life, top notch piece of computer imaging, highly recommended!" An absolute must this Christmas for monster fans who also own a pet. Also educational. Great stuff.
Seas Monsters by Nigel Marven and Jasper James, BBC Books, hdbk, £17.99, ISBN 0-563-48898-0, is the spin off of the marine series looking at the dinosaurs of the sea. The TV series has great effects so the illustrations could well be good.
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction eds: Edward James and Farah Mendelson, Cambridge University Press, hdbk, ISBN 0-521-81626-2 £45/US$60 & pbk £16.95/US$24 ISBN 0-521-01657-6. Academic books on SF are all too rare hence most welcome. This one takes a sociological approach (as opposed to social science) so lacks hard data but consists of a score of essays on an eclectic range of topics by a variety of luminaries. However those whose interest in SF stems from one of science (this website's perspective) will be disappointed here by the minimal cover: tad odd, given the publishers are noted for their scientific activities.
How to Clone the Perfect Blonde by Sue Nelson and Richard Hollingram, from Ebury, hdbk, £12.99, ISBN 0-091-89228-7. Light hearted science, much needed given that cloning has had so much coverage in the past 18 months.
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood, from Virago, pbk, £7.99, ISBN 1-844-08027-7. The paperback release of the acclaimed SF author's (and former winner of the A. C. Clarke Award) hardback of six essays on writing. However it is no dry academic read containing underlying humour.
Meditations on Middle Earth edited by Karen Haber, from Earthlight, pbk, £6.99, ISBN 0-743-468740. Sixteen leading fantasy and SF authors (including Terry Pratchett, Raymond E Feist, George RR Martin, Orson Scott Card and Ursula K Le Guin) share their thoughts on Tolkien's work and how it has influenced their own.
Click here for detailed reviews of past non-fiction book releases
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Matrix Warrior by Jack Horsley, Gollancz, pbk, £5.99, ISBN 0-575-07540-6, is the unofficial and witty handbook to The Matrix phenomenon, but risks being a tad pretentious with references to the teachings of Castaneda.
Dr Who: The Legend by Justin Richards, BBC Books, hdbk, £40.00, ISBN 0-563-48602-3, celebrate Dr Who's 40th anniversary recounting 4 decades of chases up and down corridors, wobbly props and disused quarry sites. A must for Who buffs but probably a tad expensive for the rest of us, unless you wish to treat someone for Christmas.Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts, BBC Books, pbk, £5.99, ISBN 0-563-48610-4, a specially commissioned Dr Who novel to commemorate his 40th anniversary. As Terrance Dicks was involved with the series aficionados will definitely want to get this.
Hollywood Vampire by Keith Topping, Virgin Books, pbk, £6.99, ISBN 0-753-50807-9, is the latest Angel novel.
The Human Mind: And How to Make the Most of it by Robert Winston, from Bantam Press, hdbk, £18.99. ISBN 0-593-05210-2. The tie-in to the BBC TV series. Solid science and it does have two or three interesting tips.
Rungs on a Ladder: Hammer Films Seen Through a Soft Gauze by Christopher Neame, Scarecrow Press, hdbk, £30.95, ISBN 0-8108-4735-3. A must for those into vintage fantastic films.
Science Fiction Poster Art edited by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh, £18.99, other publication information not supplied. We've not actually received a copy of this and so we can't say how comprehensive is this collection of film posters but from the promo flier it looks like its worth checking out.
Want a good SF video/dvd for the weekend? Click here to find out this and previous years' top tens. Tip: The top five of the top tens are usually the best (the next five are not nearly so hot as this chart is based on the public's (not SF buffs') views) and then scroll down to the "also released" section as there are some good cult films that failed to make the rental top tens.
See also SF News for the Summer 2003, Spring 2003 SF News, November 2002 News and the Forthcoming book news to December 2002.
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