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Out
of the Woodwork 139. June 2008 Welcome to our newsletter, it contains up to the minute news and gossip as well as awards details and items requiring help from the collective consciousness. If you wish to contribute please do so! We welcome your thoughts, your news items and any gossip! We do love a bit of gossip here at Fantastic HQ Sad news from Locus: SF author, critic, and editor Algis Budrys, born 1931, died June 9, 2008, at the age of 77. He began publishing in 1952 with short fiction in Astounding, Galaxy, and other magazines; notable stories include "The End of Summer" (1954), "Nobody Bothers Gus" (1955), "The Edge of the Sea" (1958, a Hugo nominee), "Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" (1961), and "The Silent Eyes of Time" (1975, a Hugo nominee). His first novel was False Night (1954), revised in 1961 as Some Will Not Die; later novels included Who? (1958, a Hugo nominee), The Falling Torch (1959), and the classic Rogue Moon SFWA obituary SF and fantasy writer Robert Asprin, born 1946, died May 22, 2008, at his home in New Orleans. Asprin's first novel was SF The Cold Cash War (1977) but he was best known as creator and editor of the Thieves' World series of braided anthology/novels, and as author of numerous comic fantasy novels including series beginning with Another Fine Myth... (1978) and Phule's Company (1990). His latest book is Dragons Wild (2008), first book in another new series. Asprin won a Locus Award in 1982 for anthology Shadows of Sanctuary and he won two Balrog Awards, for that book and for anthology Storm Season the following year. SFWA obituary TV producer Robert H. Justman, born
1926, died May 28, 2008, in Los Angeles, California, at the age
of 81. He was associate producer and co-producer on the original
Star Trek series, and later supervising producer for Star Trek:
The Next Generation, to which he contributed character and script
development and championed the casting of Patrick Stewart as Captain
Picard. LA
Times obituary A book handed into an Oxfam shop which contains the first Sherlock Holmes stories has sold for £15,500. Study in Scarlet, which features Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first two Holmes tales, was donated to a Harrogate, North Yorkshire, branch of the charity.It beat a guide price of £9,000 during an auction of books given to Oxfam stores at Bonhams in Oxford on Tuesday, Full BBC story The new James Bond novel Devil May Care has become book publisher Penguin's fastest-selling hardback fiction title. The book, written by Sebastian Faulks, sold 44,093 copies in its first four days of publication. Full BBC story Locus reports : AWARD NEWS Winners of this year's Lambda Literary Awards, for Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender literature, include Lee Thomas' The Dust of Wonderland (Alyson Books) in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror category, plus Richard Labonte & Lawrence Schimel's First Person Queer (Arsenal Pulp Press) in the Anthology category, and Nicola Griffith's And Now We Are Going to Have a Party (Payseur & Schmidt) in the Women's Memoir/Biography category. Lambda Literary Awards Winners of this year's Prix Aurora Awards, for Canadian science fiction and fantasy in English and in French, include Nalo Hopkinson's The New Moon's Arms, Diane Boudreau's Cimetière du musée, and anthology Under Cover of Darkness edited by Julie E. Czerneda & Jana Paniccia. The awards were presented last Sunday at Keycon 25 in Winnipeg. Michal J Saywer has the full details. Winners of this year's European Science Fiction Society Awards, presented at Roscon last weekend in Moscow, include Best Author Alexander Gromov and Best Artist Roman Papsuev, both Russian; UK promoter Russell T Davies; American translator Michael Kandel; and a special awards for contribution to SF fandom to UK's Ken Slater and Hungary's Judit Trethon. SF Awards watch has complete list Winners of this year's Ursa Major Awards, for best anthropomorphic/"funny animal" literature and art of 2007, include film Ratatouille and novel Life's Dream by Bernard Doove. Full details Winner of this year's Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award , for best first SF, fantasy, or horror novel written by a single author, is Mark L. Van Name's One Jump Ahead (Baen). The award, voted by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, includes a cash prize of $1000, and will be presented in a ceremony on May 23, 2008, at Balticon in Baltimore, Maryland. Compton Crook Awards Shortlists for the 2008 Sunburst Awards, for Canadian writers of novels or short fiction collections in adult and young adult categories, include adult books by Michelle Butler Hallett, Amber Hayward, Nalo Hopkinson, William Neil Scott, and Robert Charles Wilson, and young adult titles by Deborah Lynn Jacobs, Carrie Mac, Kenneth oppel, Joanne Proulx, and Drew Hayden Taylor. Winners will be announced this Fall. Sunburst Awards Finalists for this year's Mythopoeic Awards for fantasy fiction and nonfiction include books by Theodora Goss, Nalo Hopkinson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Catherynne M. Valente, and John C. Wright in the Adult Literature category, Holly Black, Derek Landy, J.K. Rowling, Nancy Springer, and Kate Thompson for Children's Literature, plus nominees in categories for Inklings Studies and General Myth and Fantasy Studies. Mythopoeic Awards British Fantasy Awards 2008 - long list of nominations. BFS Shortlists for the 2008 CWA / Duncan Lawrie Daggers were announced at a reception at the British Library on 3rd June. This year we have launched an online forum on this site where you can discuss the books in contention for the Duncan Lawrie and Duncan Lawrie International Daggers. The authors shortlisted for the £20,000 Duncan Lawrie Dagger, the world's largest prize for a crime novel, are James Lee Burke (The Tin Roof Blowdown), Colin Cotterill (Coroner's Lunch), Frances Fyfield (Blood From Stone), Steve Hamilton (Night Work), Laura Lippman (What the Dead Know) and RN Morris (A Vengeful Longing). There are five authors in the running for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger: Andrea Camilleri (The Patience of the Spider), Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Dominique Manotti (Lorraine Connection), Martin Suter (A Deal with the Devil) and Fred Vargas (This Night's Foul Work). This prize is worth £5000 to the winning author and £1000 to the translator. CWA The collective consciousness is once again asked for assistance, not once but twice!: 1. Ok the story starts out with this guy who is part of a high ranking family from another planet ( planet name is something like Myrid or Madrid ). He doesn't t want to follow in his family's foot steps and goes out and joins the Earth's Imperial Navy. he quickly becomes a colonial in this imperial fleet. one day a admiral of the fleet was showing off to the higher ups in the empire and sends this Colonial out on some maneuvers on some gunboats. he colonial new that these boats were not up to code and needed repair. but against his will he did it. while flying over the moon his boat begins to malfunction and crashes on the surface upside down. 3 of the 5 on the boat die the other one is severely injured. their unable to communicate with the main ship. for 2 weeks he has to sit and wait why 4 dead bodies decay around him and he is hurt with no food. They find his ship and take him to recover. when he returns to duty he speaks to the admiral and punches him out. and resigns. from there he is at a spaceport and is looking for work. he finds this freighter which is off to the edge of the empire and becomes a ship mate. while with this ship the captain doesnt like him because of his and trys to abandon him at this planet and tries to kill him. this is because mid way through their voyage he finds out their on a search for this Ship only known as a Master Race ship. they descripe the master race as ancient race with great technology.
Toward the end of the book they find the planet where this ship is and land. while there they find out that the planet has a tribe of aliens that are like indians. they have this human woman with them that landed there many years ago with her father (whos died). the captain wants to kill the colonial and the indians, take the ship and the girl, the colonial has other ideas. so he gives the captians to the indians who kill him with help from the first mate who the colonial has become friends with. he too later dies. the girl and the colonial escape and run from the tribe. they fall in love and theres a scene where they descibe their sexual experience. a little after he finds the master ship. they get on board and the ship automaticly starts to work and takes off. it ends up on this planet where is believe to be the home of the master race that is there no more. the colonial finds other ships like his and then finds out that he can control like 20 of these ships from a single one. he takes them all back to his home planet who is now at war with the empire. He joins up with his home planets fleet teaches them all how to run the ships and leads them in this war. The last part the girl is with him on the bridge and she askes him what is he going to happen next and he gives this speach and says that he its going down with the earth's empire or something along them lines. This is a rough summary of the story from what i remember. i did skip over alot of the story. and i dont remember names to well. If you can help please email us and another reader wants some help: 2. This may seem like a bit of an odd request, but I’ve been trying to track down a story I read about 10 years ago, which makes things a little hazy. Unfortunately I don’t recall the title or the author. (I didn’t say it was an EASY request!) I have a feeling that it was a short story, but that might have been only an impression.
What I recall about it is that it started in a space ship, where a team (about 4?) of people were returning to earth. I get this impression of a long cylindrical shape, but that could be mis-remembering. These guys were not born on Earth, and they were either generational explorers (born in space), or they’ve come from an Earth colony, which is far enough away that they can’t return. Anyway, they get to the vicinity of Earth, and notice that they’re not receiving any transmissions of any kind. They try to contact Earth, and get no response.
They think that’s really odd, and survey the planet, and can’t find any indication of the advanced civilisation they’re expecting. They eventually go down to Earth, and meet up with a village (I think mainly one family) who are farming, and living a fairly subsistence lifestyle. The locals are accepting of the newcomers, but not nearly as fascinated by their space ship, and travels as one might expect.
The travellers can’t figure out what’s happened, and are really puzzled by it, but eventually most of them start to integrate into the local community. Then something goes wrong – someone is badly injured, and the locals enter a building the travellers have not been in, which contains sophisticated communications equipment. They use this to contact people in the “city”, and arrange advanced medical treatment. It’s then that the travellers discover that the Earth hasn’t regressed at all, the locals take turns in staffing the city, and taking care of the technological marvels in it, but the society have chosen to go back to a far more basic lifestyle, and they see the city as more of a chore than anything else.
It was a really interesting story, and I’d love to read it again, if anyone happens to recognise it, or even something they think is close to it? Many Thanks Deb Instant success on this one - David Langford and John Boston thought it was "The Climbing Wave" by Marion Zimmer Bradley, published in F&SF 2/55 and SCIENCE FANTASY #19, also in If This Goes On, ed. Charles Nuetzel, BCA 1965 Whilst Charles Albritton 3rd thought
it might be e a mis-remembering of "The Equalizer," a
short story by Jack Williamson. It's available in The Best of Jack
Williamson pb, or in one of the Hafner Press collections. and a third offering from Richard Christou: On your second cc request, the story sounds a little like Forgetfulness by Don A Stuart (AKA John W Campbell). I don’t think this is an exact match but I think Forgetfulness is worth reading anyway. Poul Anderson was strong on star ships returning to Earth many years in their future due to time dilation. You could try the Long Way Home. However, my best guess is that it is something by Clifford Simak. Deb responded equally fast: Simon, thanks, David came through for me, and advised that it was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s ‘Climbing Wave’ Many thanks for the help, and if you could add me to your newsletter, I’d love to take a look. Regards, Deb
Dept of smug self satisfaction - again! Laraine, The Farmer books arrived safe and sound. They will take an honored place in my library. Thanks for an excellent transaction! Peace. Angelo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- and also: Just received the books today and left some much deserved positive feedback for you. Many thanks for your expert shipping and packing job -- as I made mention to you I'm kind of a sucker for the condition of my books and any additional efforts that can be made to save my materials from any extra over-the-Atlantic damage is greatly appreciated. Many thanks again. T. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ and also - yawn! Hi there, Just a quick mail to say thanks for the book - I've received it already and it's in great condition. Also delighted to see you re-using newspaper for the wrapping - I wish more sellers would do this instead of wasting fresh paper! You might add me to your mailing list as well - thank you. Jenny and let's save the best 'till last! Attn Dept of Smug Self-Satisfaction. Dear Dept, Obviously, one of the advantages of dealing with an organisation such as that of which you are but part is your ready access to time machines. When yesterday we had sorted out the mess over credit cards and parts thereof, I could have sworn that you said that my books would be posted "tomorrow". It was, therefore, something of a surprise to find them delivered today. I can only assume that you sent the parcel back in time sufficiently far to allow the Post Office time to get over the shock of having something to do and then get the parcel on a delivery van this morning, allowing the delivery person time to hide behind a tree until my wife & I popped out for a few minutes. Fortunately, my long-suffering wife took pity on me and went to the SDO to collect it. So, I have been able, against all expectations, to enjoy the books today. Thank you. David G Tubby http://www.fantasticliterature.com We also buy books and travel around the country to purchase, we will pay a finders fee to anyone who puts us in touch with a collection we later purchase. Instant ordering on our web site in
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