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Brian Aldiss: pioneer of British sci-fi

Brian Aldiss: pioneer of British sci-fi

By Jake Kerridge

Brian Aldiss, one of the pioneers of British science fiction, has written or edited more than 100 books. He has met Dylan Thomas, John Masefield and T S Eliot, been a drinking buddy of Kingsley Amis (“Kingsley would land one in a lot of trouble, I have to say”), and shared a Jacuzzi with Doris Lessing. He spent years enduring the caprices of Stanley Kubrick as they worked on a screenplay of Aldiss’s story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long”, a project that eventually became Steven Spielberg’s A.I. – “a lousy film,” he says.

New Book: The Angel of Losses

The Angel of Losses

The Tiger’s Wife meets A History of Love in this inventive, lushly imagined debut novel that explores the intersections of family secrets, Jewish myths, the legacy of war and history, and the bonds between sisters. 

A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection

One of the Washington Post’s Top Five Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2014

“This impressive debut from Feldman is a page-turner that celebrates sisterly love.” —Publishers Weekly

“This imaginative first novel leads you on a journey of fantastic tales, stormy family ties and a tragic discovery of redemption that will break your heart.”—The Washington Post

[A] breathtakingly accomplished debut … a story of magic and bold imagining… .Every once in a while a book comes along that reminds us that even though a horror was visited upon a particular people, in a particular place and at particular moment in history, the story told is really about all of us, everywhere and for all time. It takes an extraordinary writer like Stephanie Feldman to bring that story to life.” —NPR

“Stephanie Feldman’s first novel is a compelling mix of fable, history and mystery, but at the center, it is a very human story about how families accept one another’s choices while forgiving one another’s mistakes. The Angel of Losses is an ambitious work by a brilliant new author.”—Bookpage

“Stephanie Feldman writes with tremendous warmth, tenderness, and insight, and The Angel of Losses is a smart and beautiful novel that is all at once a literary thriller, a multigenerational family saga and a stunning exploration of Jewish mysticism. I loved this book.” –Molly Antopol, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and author of The UnAmericans: Stories

“Stephanie Feldman is one of the smartest and most original young writers at work today. . . .Watch out for her. She is here to stay.” —Sheri Holman, author of Witches on the Road Tonight and The Dress Lodger

“Lucid, tender, and masterfully portrayed, The Angel of Losses is an intergenerational story of perseverance and love in a changing world. Rich with Jewish lore and history, there is magic at play here in more than one sense. A must-read.” —G. Willow Wilson, author of Alif the Unseen

“[H]aunting. Even more gripping than the real and imagined folktales that Feldman weaves into the book, however, is her exploration of sisterly rifts and bonds and family secrets shrouded by time.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Family saga, mystery, and myth intersect in Feldman’s debut novel. . . .vivid, imaginative.” —Booklist

“In her spellbinding debut novel, Stephanie Feldman tells an epic tale of mystery, discovery, and familial love…moving, mature, and deeply original.” —Ploughshares

“[F]illed with magic, faith, love, rejection, loyalty, family, secrecy, loss, and adventure.”—Jewish Book World    

“Feldman’s prose is intelligent, engaging, and at times figurative. . . .[and] demonstrates a versatile virtuosity impressive for a debut work.”—New York Journal of Books

“Feldman’s debut novel is an unusual combination of literary thriller, family drama, and Jewish mysticism. . . .Fans of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian or the works of Lev Grossman will find something here in a similar vein.” —Library Journal

“Beautifully constructed and just plain beautiful.” —BOOKRIOT

Named as one of the “Essential Books Coming in 2014” by io9

Nature and the Numinous in Mythopoeic Fantasy Literature (Sept. 2014)

About the Book

About the Book

This book makes connections between mythopoeic fantasy—works that engage the numinous—and the critical apparatuses of ecocriticism and posthumanism. Drawing from the ideas of Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy, mythopoeic fantasy is a means of subverting normative modes of perception to both encounter the numinous and to challenge the perceptions of the natural world. Beginning with S.T. Coleridge’s theories of the imagination as embodied in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the book moves on to explore standard mythopoeic fantasists such as George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Taking a step outside these men, particularly influenced by Christianity, the concluding chapters discuss Algernon Blackwood and Ursula Le Guin, whose works evoke the numinous without a specifically Christian worldview.

Winners of the 2014 Ditmar Awards

At Continuum X, 6-9 June 2014, the following were the winners and runners-up of the annual Australian SF Awards (Ditmars). Winners in each category are in bold.

Best Novel

Ink Black Magic, Tansy Rayner Roberts (FableCroft Publishing)

Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead, Robert Hood (Wildside

Press)

The Beckoning, Paul Collins (Damnation Books)

Trucksong, Andrew Macrae (Twelfth Planet Press)

The Only Game in the Galaxy (The Maximus Black Files 3), Paul Collins (Ford Street Publishing)

Best Novella or Novelette

“Prickle Moon”, Juliet Marillier, in Prickle Moon (Ticonderoga

Publications)

“The Year of Ancient Ghosts”, Kim Wilkins, in The Year of Ancient

Ghosts (Ticonderoga Publications)

“By Bone-Light”, Juliet Marillier, in Prickle Moon (Ticonderoga

Publications)

 “The Home for Broken Dolls”, Kirstyn McDermott, in Caution:

Contains Small Parts (Twelfth Planet Press)

“What Amanda Wants”, Kirstyn McDermott, in Caution: Contains Small

Parts (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story

 “Mah Song”, Joanne Anderton, in The Bone Chime Song and Other

Stories (FableCroft Publishing)

 “Air, Water and the Grove”, Kaaron Warren, in The Lowest Heaven

(Jurassic London)

“Seven Days in Paris”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Asymmetry (Twelfth Planet

Press)

“Scarp”, Cat Sparks, in The Bride Price (Ticonderoga Publications)

 “Not the Worst of Sins”, Alan Baxter, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies 133

(Firkin Press)

“Cold White Daughter”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in One Small Step

(FableCroft Publishing)

Best Collected Work

The Back of the Back of Beyond, Edwina Harvey, edited by Simon

Petrie (Peggy Bright Books)

Asymmetry , Thoraiya Dyer, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth

Planet Press)

Caution: Contains Small Parts, Kirstyn McDermott, edited by Alisa

Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories, Joanne Anderton, edited by

Tehani Wesseley (FableCroft Publishing)

The Bride Price, Cat Sparks, edited by Russell B. Farr

(Ticonderoga Publications)

Best Artwork

Cover art, Eleanor Clarke, for The Back of the Back of Beyond by

Edwina Harvey (Peggy Bright Books)

Illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, for Eclipse Online (Nightshade

Books)

Cover art, Shauna O’Meara, for Next, edited by Simon Petrie and Rob

Porteous (CSFG Publishing)

Cover art, Cat Sparks, for The Bride Price by Cat Sparks

(Ticonderoga Publications)

Rules of Summer, Shaun Tan (Hachette Australia)

Cover art, Pia Ravenari, for Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier

(Ticonderoga Publications)

Best Fan Writer

Tsana Dolichva, for body of work, including reviews and interviews

in Tsana’s Reads and Reviews

Sean Wright, for body of work, including reviews in Adventures of

a Bookonaut

Grant Watson, for body of work, including reviews in The Angriest

Foz Meadows, for body of work, including reviews in Shattersnipe:

Malcontent & Rainbows

Alexandra Pierce, for body of work, including reviews in Randomly

Yours, Alex

Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work, including essays and reviews

at www.tansyrr.com

Best Fan Artist

Nalini Haynes, for body of work, including “Defender of the Faith”,

“The Suck Fairy”, “Doctor Who vampire” and “The Last Cyberman” in Dark

Matter

Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including “Illustration

Friday”

Dick Jenssen, for body of work, including cover art for Interstellar

Ramjet Scoop and SF Commentary

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

Dark Matter Zine, Nalini Haynes

SF Commentary, Bruce Gillespie

The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

 Galactic Chat Podcast, Sean Wright, Alex Pierce, Helen Stubbs,

David McDonald, and Mark Webb

The Coode Street Podcast, Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan

Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner

Roberts

Best New Talent

Michelle Goldsmith

Zena Shapter

Faith Mudge

Jo Spurrier

Stacey Larner

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review

Reviews in Randomly Yours, Alex, Alexandra Pierce

“Things Invisible: Human and Ab-Human in Two of Hodgson’s Carnacki

stories”, Leigh Blackmore, in Sargasso: The Journal of William Hope Hodgson

Studies #1 edited by Sam Gafford (Ulthar Press)

Galactic Suburbia Episode 87: Saga Spoilerific Book Club, Alisa

Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Reviewing New Who series, David McDonald, Tansy Rayner

Roberts, and Tehani Wessely

“A Puppet’s Parody of Joy: Dolls, Puppets and Mannikins as

Diabolical Other”, Leigh Blackmore, in Ramsey Campbell: Critical Essays on

the Master of Modern Horror edited by Gary William Crawford (Scarecrow

Press)

“That was then, this is now: how my perceptions have changed”,

George Ivanoff, in Doctor Who and Race edited by Lindy Orthia (Intellect

Books)

Winners of the Sixth Annual R.D. Mullen Research Fellowships

I would like to announce the winners of the sixth annual R.D. Mullen Research Fellowships, which are funded by the journal Science Fiction Studies in the name of our late founding editor to support archival research in the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside. The committee—chaired by me and consisting of Jane Donawerth, Joan Gordon, Roger Luckhurst, and John Rieder—reviewed a number of excellent applications and settled on a slate of three winners for 2014-15:

·      JAMES MACHIN is a PhD student in Arts and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. His dissertation offers a cultural history of “weird fiction,” with a focus on its “Golden Age” of 1880-1940. He has had articles published in The Victorian and East-West Cultural Passage and has a review forthcoming in the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies. While at the Eaton, he will explore the legacy of nineteenth-century decadence in Weird Tales magazine and will also examine the recently acquired archive of William Hope Hodgson’s papers.

·      STEVEN MOLLMANN is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. His dissertation examines scientists in Victorian literature and the way that thinking like a scientist is represented as a visual practice. He has had articles published in English Literature in Transition and Gaskell Journal and has presented his work at numerous conferences. His time in the Eaton will be spent reading rare future-war stories from the turn of the twentieth century, investigating the ways in which science and scientists were mobilized in fictional scenarios of large-scale conflict and revolution.

·      HANNAH MUELLER is a PhD student in German Studies at Cornell University, where she is pursuing Minors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Film Studies. She has had chapters published in books on gender in Sherlock Holmes stories and on nudity in “quality television” series and has also done extensive translation work. While at the Eaton, she will examine materials relevant to her ongoing study of “transformative media fandom,” with particular attention to the influence of media fans on the representation of female and sexual minority characters in popular culture.

I am very grateful to my committee for their work in vetting the applications, and my congratulations to the three winners.—Rob Latham, UC Riverside

Locus Student Special

Hello Everyone!

Locus has a student special available; twelve digital issues for the price of six. Everyone, please check it out at http://tinyurl.com/locusstudent and let your friends know. Educators incentive: sign up five students and get the discount yourself!

We are also pleased to offer a free download of the May 2013 issue of Locus, which includes last year’s ICFA writeup and photos. Please visit http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/Digital/May2013icfa.html to download your choice of epub, pdf, or .mobi for kindle versions (or you can download them all!) You won’t need a username or password despite what the instructions say: just click the links to download. The links will be live until late Tuesday March 25, 2014.

To subscribe visit http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/Subscribe.html

To learn more about the new Locus Science Fiction Foundation visit http://www.lsff.net.

Liza and Fran

Locus Publications locus@locusmag.com

Science Fiction Collection adds Filk as Deeper than Swords Exhibit Closes

Marketing and Communications | January 08, 2014

Fans of Game of Thrones have until February 7, 2013, to visit the George R. R. Martin Deeper than Swords exhibit at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives before it closes. The exhibit showcases objects, editions and manuscripts from the best-selling author’s prolific writing career. The collection forms the capstone of Texas A&M University Libraries’ internationally recognized Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection.

As the exhibit closes, the Libraries will broaden the dimensions by adding “filk” related materials to its science fiction collection. Filk is best described as a musical culture, genre and community among science fiction and fantasy fans, which is a manifestation of fan labor to create a wide-range of musical styles and topics.

Science fiction conventions, as well as designated filk conventions, have various filk programming that includes concerts and late night filk circles, where music is performed and shared, as well as panels about music and fandom. Most filk conventions put out songbooks with songs submitted by members of the community to share with attending members.

The Cushing Library filk collection will showcase examples of these songbooks, as well as audio, video, digital recordings and fanzines and fanvids— which demonstrate the interest and affection for particular aspects of both literary and broadcast science fiction and fantasy media. The collection seeks to preserve the popular legacy of science fiction and fantasy by documenting and acquiring various fanworks. Cushing Library is also a depository for many books and materials of famous science fiction and fantasy authors, from the likes of George R. R. Martin to Joe Lansdale, Elizabeth Moon and Ray Bradbury, among others.

The collection features a diverse mixture of materials, including the personal science fiction and fantasy library of Anne McCaffrey, and thousands of science fiction and fantasy-related monographs in hardcover and paperback, which date from the 17th century to the present. The extensive periodicals collection contains over 90 percent of the American science fiction pulp magazines published prior to 1980.

For more information about donating fanworks and filk-related materials, please contact Jeremy Brett, processing archivist, at jwbrett@library.tamu.edu, or Lauren Schiller at l_schiller@library.tamu.edu.

To learn more about the collection itself, please visit the Cushing website at: http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/collections/browse-major-collections/the-science-fiction-collection/index.html.

Doris Lessing

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing, 94, died at her home in London on November 17.  Lessing was Guest of Honor for ICFA’s tenth annual conference in 1989, only a year after the conference relocated to Fort Lauderdale, and proved quickly to be one of ICFA’s most accessible and popular guests—working out on the hotel treadmills in the morning, hanging out by the pool in the afternoon, and inadvertently giving rise to one of the conference’s enduring anecdotes.

Lessing had expressed an interest in taking a short cruise while she was in Florida—meaning an ocean day cruise—but ICFA organizers instead booked her on a riverboat called the Jungle Queen, a notorious tourist trap largely for senior citizens, which made its way up the New River past various celebrity homes to a proprietary island, where a rather tacky rib dinner was served on picnic benches to the accompaniment of a live accordion band.  Then-IAFA president Marshall Tymm was appalled, but Lessing, in good spirits, commented that she had learned a good deal more about Florida culture than she had expected.

A few IAFA members kept in touch with Lessing over the next few years, during which she continued to express her support for science fiction and fantasy both in her own writing and in interviews, revealing a knowledge of the field that ranged from Arthur C. Clarke to her friend Brian Aldiss (who had helped arrange her guest of honor appearance) to more contemporary writers like Greg Bear.  Along with Isaac Bashevis Singer, she is one of two ICFA Guests of Honor to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Story and photo courtesy of Gary K. Wolfe

Brown, Wolfe, and Lessing

Charles Brown, Gary K. Wolfe, and Doris Lessing in 1989

Other posts on Doris Lessing:

NYTimes…
Telegraph…
Washington Post…
LA Times…
FT…
Bloomberg…
Margaret Atwood…
Justin Cartwright…
Eileen Battersby…

Journal Launch

Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to pass on the announcement of the launch of the first issue of the new journal Alambique: revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía /Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasia [Alambique: Academic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy].

Alambique (ISSN 2167-6577) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to scholarly research and criticism in the fields of science fiction and fantasy originally composed in Spanish or Portuguese.

You can find it at:

http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/alambique/

Best Regards,

Rachel Haywood Ferreira

New York Review of Science Fiction #300

Special Anniversary Issue: On Wolfe’s Genius; Maps and Blank Spaces; Ghosts, Living and Otherwise; Cynthia Asquith’s Ghosts; Ursula K. Le Guin’s short fiction, in depth; Bruce McAllister’s magic; Deep sea puppets; Scalzi’s metafictions; and a passel of screed!
From the editors:

As a thank you to the many people who have made it possible for us to reach this milestone, the digital edition of NYRSF Issue 300 is FREE. It’s a sampler of all the types of material NYRSF publishes—appreciations of authors both well-known and forgotten; reviews, long and short, of good science fiction, fantasy, and horror books; theatre reviews; personal essays related to the larger f&sf field; and a vigorous letter column.

Anyone who wishes to can download a copy of the issue in ebook (epub or mobi/Kindle format) or print-ready PDF. Please share this issue as widely as you would like, since we are also hoping to attract new readers to carry us forward for another quarter-century!

http://weightlessbooks.com/format/new-york-review-of-science-fiction-300/