Out of the Woodwork 164. May 2010
Fantastic Literature - setting the standards for out of print on-line bookselling.

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.

Contents:-

China Miéville has become the first author to win the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award on three separate occasions
Sir Ian McKellen to star in zombie costume drama - see the trailer!
The Shirley Jackson award nominees - these will be presented at Readercon 21
The first science fiction film to come out of Switzerland has received its UK premiere
Bestselling author VAL McDERMID has been presented with the prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award
The Winners for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction in 2009.
The journals of author Philip K Dick will be published next year
What is the connection between Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, Winnie the Pooh and the noble sport of cricket?
The top five finalists in each category of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced
Orbit to publish digital short fiction - a sign of the times?
The Crime Writer's Association promises a long hot summer of crime!
One for the collective consciousness - can you help - it's doozy!
Competition time - win a signed copy of John Trevillian's debut novel "The A-Men"

Crossword fun, and general silliness - contributions welcomed
Obituaries: George Scithers, writer, editor and publisher. Sharon Webb SF author. Frank Frazetta, artist par excellence
Department of Smug Self Satisfaction - what our kind customers have to say about the Fantastic experience

External Blinks:

Charity Auction for Jeanne Robinson
Russell Crowe - on the reinvention of Robin Hood (BBC video interview)
Guardian SF bookrReviews

China Miéville has become the first author to win the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award on three separate occasions.

His novel The City & The City (Macmillan) was one of six novels shortlisted for the Award, the UK’s premier prize for science fiction literature.

Speaking after the announcement China Miéville said:

'This has been a truly fantastic shortlist: it's been a huge honour to be on it, shortlists being probably the most important aspect of any award. And now after all that is the astonishment of hearing that my book won. I couldn't be more moved by and grateful for the honour the judges have done this book.” Arthur C Clarke Award

Sir Ian McKellen, who has mastered a dazzling panoply of Shakespearean roles on stage and is considered one of the most serious screen talents of his generation, is to star in a low-budget zombie costume drama set in the rural backwaters of Britain. The drama revolves around an unidentified illness which turns all of the men into beasts. After the country is infested by zombies and the government is too bankrupt to control the contagion, two entrepreneurs set up a company offering to kill the undead for a nominal fee. Trailer

Shirley Jackson Award Nominees: The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Nalo Hopkinson, Readercon Guest of Honor, will act as host.

NOVEL
•Big Machine, Victor LaValle (Speigel & Grau)
•Last Days, Brian Evenson (Underland Press)
•The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (Riverhead)
•The Owl Killers, Karen Maitland (Delacorte Press)
•The Red Tree, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
•White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi (Nan A. Talese)
NOVELLA
•The Language of Dying, Sarah Pinborough, (PS Publishing)
•Midnight Picnic, Nick Antosca (Word Riot Press)
•“Sea-Hearts,” Margo Lanagan (X6, coeur de lion)
•Shrike, Quentin S. Crisp (PS Publishing)
•Vardøger, Stephen Volk (Gray Friar Press)
•The Witnesses are Gone, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
NOVELETTE
•“Catch Hell,” Laird Barron (Lovecraft Unbound, Dark Horse)
•“Each Thing I Show You Is a Piece of My Death,” Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, (Clockwork Phoenix 2, Norilana Books)
•“Lonegan’s Luck,” Stephen Graham Jones (New Genre 6)
•“Morality,” Stephen King (Esquire)
•The Night Cache, Andy Duncan (PS Publishing)
SHORT STORY
•“The Crevasse,” by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud (Lovecraft Unbound, Dark Horse)
•“Faces,” Aimee Bender (The Paris Review, Issue 191, Winter 2009)
•“The Jacaranda Smile,” Gemma Files (Apparitions, Undertow Publications)
•“The Pelican Bar,” Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse 3, Night Shade)
•“Procedure in Plain Air,” Jonathan Lethem (The New Yorker, April 5, 2010)
•“Strappado,” Laird Barron (Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Solaris)
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION
•Everland and Other Stories, Paul Witcover (PS Publishing)
•Fugue State, Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)
•Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, Robert Shearman (Big Finish Productions)
•There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Penguin)
•Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, Kevin Wilson (Harper Perennial)
•Zoo, Otsuichi (Haikasoru/VIZ Media)
EDITED ANTHOLOGY
•Apparitions, edited by Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)
•British Invasion, edited by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, and James A. Moore (Cemetery Dance)
•Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations, edited by Danel Olson (Ash Tree Press)
•Lovecraft Unbound, edited by Ellen Datlow (Dark Horse)
•Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow (Solaris)

The first science fiction film to come out of Switzerland has received its UK premiere. Cargo - an atmospheric thriller set on a space freighter in the 23rd century - was screened on Monday as the closing film of the Sci-Fi-London film festival.Directed by Ivan Engler, Cargo sees the human race living on overcrowded space stations because Earth can no longer support life. The only hope of escape is making an expensive voyage to the paradise planet of Rhea which is five light years from Earth. BBC story

Val McDermid wins the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger: Bestselling author VAL McDERMID has been presented with the prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. Arnaud Bamberger, the Managing Director of Cartier UK, handed over the Cartier Diamond Dagger at a champagne reception at the Gore Hotel in London’s Queens Gate on may 6th.

Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce on the 201st anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, its Winners for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2009. The Edgar® Awards were presented to the winners at our 64th Gala Banquet, April 29, 2010 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.
BEST NOVEL The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur Books)
BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur Books)
BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL Body Blows by Marc Strange (Dundurn Press – Castle Street Mysteries)
BEST FACT CRIME Columbine by Dave Cullen (Hachette Book Group - Twelve)
BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL The Lineup: The World’s Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives edited by Otto Penzler (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown and Company)
BEST SHORT STORY "Amapola" – Phoenix Noir by Luis Alberto Urrea (Akashic Books)

BEST JUVENILE Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Books)
BEST YOUNG ADULT Reality Check by Peter Abrahams (HarperCollins Children’s Books – HarperTeen)
BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY “Place of Execution,” Teleplay by Patrick Harbinson (PBS/WGBH Boston)
ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD "A Dreadful Day" – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Dan Warthman (Dell Magazines)
GRAND MASTER Dorothy Gilman
RAVEN AWARDS Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pennsylvania
Zev Buffman, International Mystery Writers’ Festival
ELLERY QUEEN AWARD Poisoned Pen Press (Barbara Peters & Robert Rosenwald)
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER - MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD (Presented at MWA’s Agents & Editors Party on Wednesday, April 28, 2010) Awakening by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)

The journals of author Philip K Dick will be published next year. The Exegesis, much anticipated by fans of the writer, will come out in autumn 2011, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt revealed. Dick, who died in 1982 at the age of 53, had 44 novels published. His first was Solar Lottery in 1955. Full BBC Story

What is the connection between Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, Winnie the Pooh and the noble sport of cricket? The answer is: the creators of all those literary characters played together on the first celebrity cricket team more than a century ago. Peter Pan author JM Barrie, a cricketing fanatic, gathered the most famous writers of his day to play on his amateur team - the oddly-named Allahakbarries - between 1887 and 1913. The team members included Arthur Conan Doyle, PG Wodehouse, AA Milne and Jerome K Jerome. BBC Story

Locus Award Finalists: The top five finalists in each category of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced. Winners will be presented during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 25-27, 2010. Tickets are still available.

Science Fiction Novel
The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker (Subterranean; Tor)
Steal Across the Sky, Nancy Kress (Tor)
Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
Galileo's Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperVoyager; Ballantine Spectra)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Fantasy Novel
The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
Drood, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)
First Novel
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
The Manual of Detection, Jedediah Berry (Penguin)
Soulless, Gail Carriger (Orbit US)
Lamentation, Ken Scholes (Tor)
Norse Code, Greg van Eekhout (Ballantine Spectra)
Young-Adult Novel
The Hotel Under the Sand, Kage Baker (Tachyon)
Going Bovine, Libba Bray (Delacorte)
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic; Scholastic UK)
Liar, Justine Larbalestier (Bloomsbury; Allen & Unwin Australia)
Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pulse; Simon & Schuster UK)
Novella
The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)
"Act One", Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09)
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus", Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)
Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow (Tachyon)
"Palimpsest", Charles Stross (Wireless)
Novelette
"By Moonlight", Peter S. Beagle (We Never Talk About My Brother)
"It Takes Two", Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three)
"First Flight", Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor.com 8/25/09)
"Eros, Philia, Agape", Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/3/09)
"The Island", Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)
Short Story
"The Pelican Bar", Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse Three)
"An Invocation of Incuriosity", Neil Gaiman (Songs of the Dying Earth)
"Spar", Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)
"Going Deep", James Patrick Kelly (Asimov's 6/09)
"Useless Things", Maureen F. McHugh (Eclipse Three)
Magazine
Analog
Asimov's
Clarkesworld
F&SF
Tor.com
Publisher
Baen
Night Shade
Pyr
Subterranean
Tor
Anthology
Lovecraft Unbound, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Dark Horse)
The New Space Opera 2, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos; HarperCollins Australia)
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin's)
Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance, George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Subterranean)
Eclipse Three, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Night Shade)
Collection
We Never Talk About My Brother, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon)
Cyberabad Days, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
Wireless, Charles Stross (Ace, Orbit UK)
The Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe (Tor); as The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (PS)
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volumes 1-6, Roger Zelazny (NESFA)
Editor
Ellen Datlow
Gardner Dozois
David G. Hartwell
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Artist
Stephan Martinière
John Picacio
Shaun Tan
Charles Vess
Michael Whelan
Non-fiction/Art Book
Powers: Secret Histories, John Berlyne (PS)
Spectrum 16: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood)
Cheek by Jowl, Ursula K. Le Guin (Aqueduct)
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is "I"), Jack Vance (Subterranean)
Drawing Down the Moon: The Art of Charles Vess, Charles Vess (Dark Horse)

Orbit, the Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group, announces a digital short fiction publishing program launching later this year. Orbit (US) has offered to publish digital editions of all original short fiction written by its authors. The digital editions will be distributed widely through major retail channels, for reading on a variety of devices. Authors will be paid a royalty for each story sold, rather than the flat fee more common in the short story market.

A nationwide celebration of crime writing, National Crime Fiction Week will run from Monday 14 June. CWA members will take part in readings, discussions, readers' group events and workshops all over the country. Your favourite authors have planned Murders in Libraries, Bodies in Bookshops and Strawberries and Crime at Village Fetes. Already over two dozen events are listed on the National Crime Fiction Week Website, and there is an interactive map so you can find an event near to you. Information

Simon, Hi, I found you through a Google search and am hoping that you might be able to help me track down a book, although I have only very sketchy details.

Around the 1978-1982 period, when I was 8-12, I remember having a science fiction book that I was fascinated by. I think I threw it out when I was going through my teenage years but I'd like to try and find it again.

It was basically an illustrated encyclopaedia type book of space ships. I remember the book as being hardback, and bigger than A4 but smaller than A3. It wasn't especially thick, I think between 100-200 pages. I think the book was split up into sections, each one dealing with a category of spaceship/vehicle. Each spaceship/vehicle would have a full page illustration and then on the facing page some imagined specifications and a story or narrative about it, in the style of "future history". The illustration style was incredibly detailed, almost photo-realistic, in the style of a lot of paperback science fiction books. My memory is far from reliable but I think that the dust jacket also had a detailed illustration on it but that the actual cover was in a dull blue colour with a stippled finish.

I realise that this doesn't give you much to go on but I'd be very very grateful if you could make any suggestions as to what the book might be. I'd entertain paying good money for a copy.

Hope you can help and I hope to hear from you. (if you can help please email us)

Competition Time - this newsletter we've got a signed copy of John Trevillian's debut novel "The A-Men"

Jack is a man with no memory, awakening in a dark and dangerous metropolis on the eve of its destruction. The only clue to his former life: a handwritten note in the pages of a book of faerie tales entitled Forevermore.

Marked for death in a peacekeeping force sent to quell the riots, he finds sanctuary and survival with other renegades on the streets of Dead City. Battling to survive, they form the infamous A-Men, misfits who have a unifying dream: to be special. Yet that is until their paths cross with Dr Nathaniel Glass and his mysterious experiment locked deep beneath the Phoenix Tower.

To have a chance just email with the answer to this question - who is "The Queen of the Faerie" in a Midsummer Night's Dream?

We will draw on June 1st and get the lucky winner their copy out on that day.

I The Weakest Link 30th April 2010.

Anne Robinson. Whose first SF novel was called "The Colour of Magic"

Contestant "J K Rowling"

and just to show we can take it as well as dish it out, Ramsey Campbell contacted us after our last list!

I AM TRANSFORMED

At least, that's how it looks:

"Campbell ramsey THE HOUSE ON NAZARETH HILL Headline near fine hardcover copy in a near fine dustwrapper 1996 1st edition. In sensuous, fluid prose, Anne Rice follows the tormented vampire Lestat as he struggles to integrate his bloodthirsty nature with his aspirations to achieve humanity. FY10.403 6.95"

All the best -

Ramsey

(he obviously hasn't had a sex change and we apologise profusely!)

Obituaries:

Writer, editor, and publisher George H. Scithers, 80, died April 19, 2010 after suffering a massive heart attack on April 17.

Sharon Webb, 74, died April 30, 2010 in Blairsville GA of a heart attack

Artist Frank Frazetta, 82, died May 10, 2009 of a stroke in a hospital near Boca Grande FL. Frazetta is best known for his iconic illustrations for the works of Robert E. Howard — especially Conan the Barbarian — and Edgar Rice Burroughs

Department of Smug Self Satisfaction.

a) Conveyed in the time and the condition as suggested by this seller. Would gladly use their services again. Thankyou. (Amazon UK)

b) SIX-Star ****** Seller - book just as described, promptly dispatched. THE BEST protective packaging - FOUR layers, all recycleable! Thanx for such good care of my little paperback. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. (Amazon UK)

c) Great, GREAT Amazon seller. Delivery was delayed only slightly, due to an act of nature (the Iceland volcano)... which I should have remembered before contacting them... but they responded within minutes and assured me all was okay. And the product arrived, even better than expected and EXCELLENTLY packaged. I could gush a bit more, but you get the picture. Use THIS seller, when possible!!!!!! (Amazon USA)

d) Leider andere Ausgabe als angegeben, dafür aber blitzschnelle Lieferung, äußerst sorgfältige Verpackung und freundlicher Kontakt. Hier würde ich wieder bestellen! (Amazon German)

e) Perfect condition, Suprisingly well wrapped and a pleasure to do business with (EBay)

f) Despite the international shipping was surprisingly early arrival. Thank you. Speaking of difficulties, product is almost certainly not used as is evident by some aging. (Amazon JP)

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Recommend anything to our 8,000 readers or ask a question.
We are sure to be in touch with someone who can help.

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