27 October 2003

Pegasus Awards Announced
The Pegasus Awards for Filk were awarded at Ohio Valley Filk Fest over the weekend of October 25-27. According the Steve MacDonald, this year more nominations and final ballots were received than in any other year. A new category, Best Classic Filk Song was introduced. The winner of this award, presented to songs more than a decade old, was selected this year by the OVFF concom, although in the future it will be selected as the other awards are.
Best Filk Song: "Shooting Star," by Michael Longcor
Best Classic Filk "Song: Banned From Argo," by Leslie Fish
Best Performer: "Dandelion Wine," performed by Dave Clement and Tom Jeffers
Best Writer/Composer: Cat Faber Best Parody: "Knight's in White Satin," by Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff
Best Original Humorous Song: "My Husband, the Filker," by Bill and Gretchen Roper

24 October 2003

Obituary
Television and film producer Bernard Schwartz (b.1918) died on October 17 from complications following a stroke. Schwartz produced genre films including "Psycho II."

22 October 2003

Potter Roles Available
Two cameo appearances in the fourth Harry Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" will be auctioned off at a charity dinner in Scotland on November 28. The auction will be held at National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, with tickets to the dinner priced at £175. All proceeds of the auction will benefit the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland. In addition to the roles, other Potter paraphernalia will be auctioned off.

Geffen Awards Announced
The Fifth Annual Geffen Awards were presented on October 16 at ICon in Tel Aviv. The award is presented for stories and novels published in Hebrew over the preceding Jewish year.
Best Fantasy Novel: Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Best SF Novel: Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Best Israeli Novel: Vered Tuchterman, Sometimes It's Different
Best Israeli Short Story: Guy Hasson, All of Me™

Gran Prix l'Imaginere
The Gran Prix Imaginere winners have been announced and will be presented at the Utopiales 2003 festival in Nantes from November 8-11.
Roman : Fabrice Colin, Dreamericana
Roman étranger : Robert Holdstock, Celtika - le Codex de Merlin
Roman, la jeunesse : Fabrice Colin, Cyberpan
Nouvelle / Short story : Jean-Jacques Girardot, Dédales virtuels
Nouvelle étrangère : Peter S. Beagle, Le rhinocéros qui citait Nietzsche
Traducteur : Brigitte Mariot, Le rhinocéros qui citait Nietzsche
Artiste / Illustrateur : Sandrine Gestin Essai : Jean Marigny , "Les Vampires au XXe siècle"
Prix européen : les éditions "L'Atalante"
Prix spécial : le recueil "Terra Incognita"

Nova Award Voting Open
Novacon 33 has announced a list of eligible fanzines for the 2003 Nova Awards for British fanzines, writers and artists. Ballots will be sent out to all members of Novacon in the third progress report and members may vote up until one minute after midnight on Sunday, November 9. The Nova Awards are presented for best British/Irish fanzine, best fanzine writer, and best fanzine artist.

New Telescope Planned
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is funding a feasibility study to determine whether a new telescope, with a 30-meter diameter mirror, should be built. Scientists say the new scope, which will surpass the Keck telescopes as the world's largest, will provide images 12 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope and have nine times the light gathering ability of the Keck scopes. The site for the new telescope is as yet undetermined, but may be in Hawaii, Mexico, or Chile. Caltech, which also built the Keck, and the Hale telescope at Mount Palomar, hopes the new telescope will be ready by 2012.

18 October 2003

Ticket Demand Crashes Site
The demand for tickets for the Lord of the Ring Marathon crashed the website through which fans could buy tickets. New Line Cinemas agreed to have select theaters throughout the country show all three of the films back to back to back with tickets available on-line. Tickets sold out in minutes and New Line has declared the promotion a success and has no plans to add screens to the promotion.

Deutsch Phantastik Preis

Best Novel | National: "Die Macht des Elfenfeuers", Monika Felten
Best First Novel | National: "Die dunkle Zeit 1: Schatten ueber Ulldart", Markus Heitz
Best Novel | International: Black House "Das schwarze Haus" Stephen King/Peter Straub
Best Short Story: "Numinos", Michael Marrak (from "Alte Goetter sterben nicht"
Best Original-Anthology/Collection: "Dunkle Sonne", Gerd Frey
Best Serial: "Perry Rhodan"
Author of the Year | National: W.K. Giesa
Author of the Year | International: J.K. Rowling
Best Feature Film: "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
Best TV Series: "Buffy"
Best Actress: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Best Actor: Tobey Maguire
Best DVD: "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
Best Audio: "H.P. Lovecraft's Bibliothek des Schreckens 1"
Best Internet Site | National: www.perry-rhodan.net
Best Internet Site | International: www.theonering.net
Honor: Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings')
Flop: George Lucas ("Star Wars: Episode II")

14 October 2003

China Joins Spacefarers
After weeks of speculation, the Chinese have announced that on October 15, 2003, a Shenzhou V rocket was launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu Province with Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, on board. China is only the third country to launch a man into space, joining Russia, which launched the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, and the United States, which launched Alan Shepard later that year. Yang is expected to be in space for 21 hours and fourteen orbits before landing in Inner Mongolia.

Eragon Contest
Random House is sponsoring a contest to draw attention to its juvenile novel Eragon, by teenage author Christopher Paolini. To enter the contest, readers just need to subscribe to the Eragon mailing list and the Strange Lands newsletter at http://www.randomhouse.com/teens/eragon/signup.htm. Five subscribers will be drawn at random to receive a set of juvenile novels.

8 October 2003

Governor Schwarzenegger
SF action film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who got his start in the film "Hercules in New York," has been elected governor of California following the recall of Governor Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger went on to star in two films as Conan, as well as in the Terminator films, which won a Hugo in 1992.

Sunburst Awarded
Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson has won the Sunburst Award for her collection Skin Folk, first published in 2001. The Sunburst is given annually to a novel or book-length collection by a Canadian author. The award includes a cash prize of $1,000 and a medallion.

Obituary
Cartoonist William Steig (b.1907) died on October 3 of natural causes in his home in Boston. Although an active cartoonist since 1930, when he began selling to the New Yorker, but his most famous work, the children's book Shrek, was published in 1990. Steig wrote more than 30 children's books and produced more than 1600 drawings, leading Newsweek to call him the King of Cartoons.

3 October 2003

Noreascon Blogs
Noreascon 4 has announced the creation of several blogs which are available to fandom. So far, they have established a news blog, a programming brainstorming blog and a blog for listing obituaries which should be noted in the Noreascon 4 Program Book. The blogs may be found at http://noreascon4.blogs.com/.

SFWA Rate Raise
The Board of Directors for the SFWA has voted unanimously to raise the rate of pay for membership qualification to markets which pay at least five cents per word. The new qualifications will take effect on January 1, although stories published prior to that date may be used at the lower qualifying rate for membership purposes.

1 October 2003

Heinlein Materials to Santa Cruz
The University of California at Santa Cruz, which has been the home of an archive on Robert Heinlein for several years, has received a gift of materials and cash valued at $300,000 from the estate of Virginia Heinlein, his widow, who died earlier this year. The latest acquisition includes all of his honors and tributes including his four Hugo awards, plus artwork and other memorabilia, as well as his extensive working and personal libraries. William H. Patterson, Jr. has been selected by UC Santa Cruz as the campus Heinlein Scholar for 2003-04. He is founder of the Heinlein Society, a non-profit educational charity that is dedicated to promoting Heinlein's social legacy. Patterson is also the editor/publisher of The Heinlein Journal and co-author of the book, The Martian Named Smith, a critical study of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

First Annual Norton Awards Presented
The first Norton Awards were presented at a party to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Tachyon Press. The award, which is specific to the San Francisco Bay area, is presented for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason" and named for nineteenth century San Francisco eccentric Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico. This year's awards were presented to Kage Baker for her story "A Night on the Barbary Coast" and to Ron Turner, the owner of Last Gasp, a comic book publisher and distributer.

New Magazines Announced for 2004
Bill Rupp has announced plans to launch a semi-pro 'zine, called Continuum Science Fiction in early 2004. He plans to publish three issues of the magazine per year. In addition to the print magazine, he plans to have a presence at www.continuumsciencefiction.com which will be different from the print edition.

In the United Kingdom, Peter Crowther has announced that PS Publishing will also be launching a new magazine in 2004, entitled PostScripts. The first issue is slated to be published in the Spring. A limited run of 100 hardcover copies of the first edition will also be released.

Kramer Trial Set
A date has finally been set in the trial of Ed Kramer. Kramer, who was arrested in August, 2000, on child molestation charges, has been under house arrest since that date. His trial has been delayed several times, but is now scheduled for November 2. In 1987, Kramer helped found DragonCon, an Atlanta convention which draws more than 40,000 people. He has also edited several anthologies of short stories.

Arthur C. Clarke Award Funding Cut
Rocket Publishing has announced that it will slash all funding for the Arthur C. Clarke Award except for the prize money itself. Rocket, the UK representative for Clarke, has provided all the funding for the award since its inception and the current cut is part of a broader budget cut. Award administrator Paul Kincaid is seeking other funding options.

SFRA Winners
The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) presented its annual awards at the SFRA Conference in Guelph, Canada. The Pilgrim Award winner was previously announced. Next year's SFRA Conference will take place in Evanston, Illinois on June 4-6. The guest of honor will be Connie Willis.
Pilgrim Award: Gary Westfahl
Pioneer Award: "Omniphage: Rock 'n'Roll and Avant-Pop Science Fiction", Lance Olsen
Mary Kay Bray Award: Farah Mendlesohn for her review of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt
Clareson Award: Joe Sanders
Graduate Student Award: Speculating about Gendered Evolution: Bram Stoker's White Worm and the Horror of Sexual Selection, by Sarah Canfield Fuller

SESFS Nominations Announced
The website scifidimensions.com has announced the nominations for the second Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement Awards. Voting is open to all members of the website through October 31 and the winners are scheduled to be announced on November 5.

Best Novel of 2002
Chindi, Jack McDevitt
Guardian, Joe Haldeman
Light Music, Kathleen Ann Goonan
Spaceland, Rudy Rucker
Speaks the Nightbird, Robert R. McCammon

Best Short Fiction of 2002
"The Big Rock Candy Mountain", Andy Duncan
"The Cage", Jeff VanderMeer
"The Holy Bright Number", Andy Duncan
"Mammoth Dawn", Gregory Benford

Lifetime Achievement in SF/F/H
Fred Chappell
L. Sprague de Camp
Joe Haldeman
DeForest Kelley

Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition
The winner of the first annual Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition (see the November 2002 SF Site news), has been announced. This year's prize was awarded to Lavie Tidhar for the story "Temporal Spider, Spatial Webs." The winning story will appear in an anthology based on the competition and has also been sold to magazines in Spain and Israel.

Disk Drive Bane of Zines' Existence
In the past couple of months, two magazines have had hard drive crashes, resulting in lost subscriptions and submissions. John O'Neill reports that Black Gate had a hard drive crash on August 22. If you subscribed via the internet between July 14 and August 25, please query Black Gate to make sure they have a record of your subscription.

At Lost Pages, Claude Lalumière also reports a hard drive crash and asks that if you subscribed between August 14 and September 16, to please send an e-mail to newsletter@lostpages.net with the subject line "subscribe me to Lost Pages." He notes that the October issue will be delayed and all submissions should be responded to by October 6. If you haven't heard about a submission by then, please contact Lost Pages.