Remembering Norman Mailer, 1923-2007 November 19, 2007 06:06

The great novelist Normal Mailer passed away Nov 10th, at the age of 84. More then just a writer, Mailer was a celebrity in his own right, having run for mayor of New York twice, and even bit the ear of actor Rip Torn during an on-camera fight during the filming of his movie Maidstone.

Norman Mailer was a prolific author who won two Pulitzer Prizes during his career, for Executioner’s Song, and The Armies Of The Night. Mailer also wasn’t one to shy away from controversy, either in his work, or in his personal life. His writing covered a galaxy of topics, from Picasso to Lee Harvey Oswald, Ancient Egypt, Marilyn Monroe, and even Jesus and Hitler.

Mailer’s personal life was just a conflicting. He was married six times (he purportedly stabbed his second wife with a penknife), he co-founded The Village Voice, and he once worked for the parole of convict writer Jack Henry Abbott, only to see Abbott kill a waiter six weeks after his release.

Many critics believe that The Armies Of The Night was Mailer’s greatest work. Mailer's 1968 account of the march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War is a grand and ambitious work where all of Mailer's skittish brillance falls into place. Other noted novels were Why Are We In Vietnam, and The Executioner’s Song, a true crime novel about the life of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore.

Here's an incomplete list of Mailer’s works:

The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Barbary Shore (1951)
The Deer Park (1955)
The White Negro (1957)
Advertisements for Myself (1959)
The Presidential Papers (1963)
An American Dream (1965)
Why Are We in Vietnam (1967)
The Armies of the Night (1968)
Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968)
Of a Fire on the Moon (1969)
The Prisoner of Sex (1971)
Marilyn: A Biography (1973)
The Fight (1975)
The Executioner's Song (1979)
Ancient Evenings (1983)
Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984)
Harlot's Ghost (1991)
Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (1995)
Oswald's Tale (1996)
The Gospel According to the Son (1997)
The Time of Our Time (1998)
Why Are We at War? (2003)
The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (2003)
The Big Empty (2006)
The Castle in the Forest (2006)
On God (2007)

 
 

British Fantasy Awards Announced October 8, 2007 21:11

 
British Fantasy Awards Announced
October 8, 2007 21:11

The British Fantasy Awards were announced Sunday, Sept 23 at Fantasycon 2007 in Nottingham.

Tim Lebbon’s Dusk won the award for best novel. Dusk is part of Lebbon’s dark fantasy series published by Bantam Spectra, along with it’s sequel Dawn. The New York Times Book Review wrote about that series that, "Tim Lebbon displays the sort of cool irony and uncanny mood-making that drive the best 'Twilight Zone' stories."

Editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow won the Karl Edward Wagner Award for her outstanding contributions to the field. Her latest anthology, edited with Terri Windling, it titled The Coyote Road. Illustrated by Charles Vess, the anthology includes work by Holly Black, Jane Yolen, and Jeffrey Ford.

In other awards, Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things won for best collection, Paul Finch’s KID won for best novella, and Mark Chadbourn’s Whisper Lane won for best short fiction. Peter Crowther won the award for best small press publication for his PS Publishing imprint. Vincent Chong won the best artist award, and Joe Hill took home the award for best newcomer to the field.

 
 

In Memory of Robert Jordan, 1948-2007 September 23, 2007 19:59

 
In Memory of Robert Jordan, 1948-2007
September 23, 2007 19:59

We're sorry to report that international bestselling fantasy author Robert Jordan (born James Oliver Rigney, Jr.) died on the 16th of September. Jordan's Wheel Of Time series was wildly popular, and legions of fans are mourning the passing of this highly successful fantasy author at the young age of 59.

According to Wikipedia, Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and served two tours in Vietnam, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross with bronze oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and bronze oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm. After he was discharged from the military, he went on to receive a degree in physics from The Citadel and worked for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer.

Jordan's writing career began in 1977, and his first publication came in 1980 with the novel The Fallon Blood, written under the pen name Reagan O'Neal. He went on to write a series of Conan novels in the 1980s, before turning his attention to the bestselling Wheel of Time novels in the 1990s. He is survived by his wife Harriet McDougal, who works for Tor Books.

 
 

In Memory of Author Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007 September 14, 2007 18:26

 
In Memory of Author Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007
September 14, 2007 18:26

We're sorry to report that noted author Madeleine L'Engle passed away on September 6, 2007, at the age of 88. L'Engle was an writer of childhood fables, religious meditations, and fanciful science fiction stories that transcended both genre and generation, most memorably in her children's classic "A Wrinkle in Time."

A spokeswoman reported that Ms. L'Engle (pronounced LENG-el) had died of natural causes at a nursing home where she had resided the past three years. The author had previously maintained homes in Manhattan and Goshen, Conn.

"A Wrinkle in Time" was rejected by 26 publishers before editors at Farrar, Straus & Giroux read it and enthusiastically accepted it. It proved to be L'Engle's masterpiece, winning the John Newbery Medal as the best children's book of 1963 and selling, so far, eight million copies. It is now in its 69th printing.

The St. James Guide to Children's Writers called Ms. L'Engle "one of the truly important writers of juvenile fiction in recent decades." But such admiration did not come without some controversy. "Wrinkle In Time" has been one of the most banned books in the United States, accused by religious conservatives of offering an inaccurate portrayal of God and nurturing in the young an unholy belief in myth and fantasy.

For her part, Ms. L'Engle, who often wrote about her Christian faith, was taken aback by the attacks. "It seems people are willing to damn the book without reading it," she said in an interview with The New York Times in 2001. "Nonsense about witchcraft and fantasy. First I felt horror, then anger, and finally I said, ‘Ah, the hell with it.' It's great publicity, really."

"Wrinkle In Time" is part of Ms. L'Engle's Time series of children's books, which includes "A Wind in the Door," "A Swiftly Tilting Planet," "Many Waters" and "An Acceptable Time." The series deftly combines elements of science fiction, moral purpose, love and family.

Some of L'Engle's other important works include "Meet the Austins" (1960), "The Moon by Night" (1963) "The Young Unicorns" (1968), "A Ring of Endless Light" (1980 - A Newbery Honor Book), and "Troubling a Star" (1994).

Much of her later work was autobiographical, although sometimes a bit idealized. Some books, like "A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys With Jacob" (1986) and "The Genesis Trilogy" (2001), combined autobiography and biblical themes. But she often said that her real truths were in her fiction.

L'Engle was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1991, but recovered well enough to visit Antarctica in 1992. Her son, Bion Franklin, died December 17, 1999.

In her final years, L'Engle became unable to travel or teach, due to reduced mobility from osteoporosis, and especially after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in 2002. She also abandoned her former schedule of speaking engagements and seminars. A few compilations of older work, some of it previously unpublished, appeared after 2001.

 
 

2006 Sideways Award winners for best Alternate History fiction September 8, 2007 18:22

 
2006 Sideways Award winners for best Alternate History fiction
September 8, 2007 18:22

We're happy to announce (we know, a little late, but we're peddling as fast as we can) the 2006 Sidewise Awards for best Alternate History fiction. Winners were announced at TuckerCon/Archon 31, the 2007 North American Science Fiction Convention in St. Louis, on Aug. 3, 2007.

2006 Best Short-Form Alternate History

Gardner Dozois. "Counterfactual"
In The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2006

Other Short-Form Finalists

Stephen Baxter. The Pacific Mystery
In The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction: New Generation Far-Future SF (ed. Mike Ashley)
Constable & Robinson 2006 and Carroll & Graf 2006

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. "O, Pioneer"
In Paradox #8 (Winter 2005-06)

Chris Floyd. "History Lesson"
In The Moscow Times, Feb. 22, 2006

Martin Gidron. "Palestina"
In Interzone #204 (June 2006)

Brian Stableford. "The Plurality of Worlds"
In Asimov's August 2006

Andrew Tisbert. "The Meteor of the War"
In Paradox #9 (Summer 2006)

2006 Best Long-Form Alternate History

Charles Stross. Merchant Princes, vol. 1-3
"The Family Trade", "The Hidden Family",
and "The Clan Corporate"
Tor 2004-2006

Other Long-Form Finalists

Robert Conroy. "1862: A Novel"
Presidio Press 2006

Paul Park. "The Tourmaline"
Tor 2006

Harry Turtledove. "The Disunited States of America" (Crosstime Traffic)
Tor 2006

Jo Walton. "Farthing"
Tor 2006

 
 

Hugo Awards Announcement September 2, 2007 06:23

 
Hugo Awards Announcement
September 2, 2007 06:23

The Hugo Awards for Science Fiction were announced yesterday at the World Science Fiction Convention in Japan:

NOVEL
"Rainbows End", Vernor Vinge (Tor)

NOVELLA
"A Billion Eves", Robert Reed (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2006)

NOVELETTE
"The Djinn's Wife", Ian McDonald (Asimov's Jul 2006)

SHORT STORY
"Impossible Dreams", Tim Pratt (Asimov's Jul 2006)

RELATED BOOK
"The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon", James Tiptree, Jr., Julie Phillips (St. Martin's)

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: LONG FORM
"Pan's Labyrinth" , (Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Picturehouse.)

DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: SHORT FORM
Doctor Who (Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Euros Lyn. BBC Wales/BBC1.)

EDITOR, SHORT FORM
Gordon Van Gelder (F&SF)

EDITOR, LONG FORM
Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)

PROFESSIONAL ARTIST
Donato Giancola

SEMIPROZINE
Locus, Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong & Liza Groen Trombi

FANZINE
Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan & Randy Byers

FAN WRITER
Dave Langford

FAN ARTIST
Frank Wu

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER [Not a Hugo]
Naomi Novik



In other news, we are saddened to report the death of science fiction and mystery writer Joe L. Hensley on August 27th. He was 81. His final novel, Snowbird's Blood will be released in 2008.

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