The Apex Book of World SF as an iPhone app!
The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, is now available as an iPhone app for only $4.99. You can check it out here. Below are some screen shots:
Kaaron Warren’s Novel Comes With Free Novella
Apex Book of World SF contributor Kaaron Warren’s last novel from Angry Robot Books, Walking the Tree, now comes with a free novella. Here’s the official press release:
While writing Walking the Tree, ace AR author Kaaron Warren naturally concentrated on her central character, Lillah. But as she explored that woman’s incredible journey around Botanica’s immense Tree, she became just as fascinated with the story of one of her young companions, Morace.
So fascinated, in fact… that she rewrote the whole book from Morace’s point of view! Well, we couldn’t just hide that away and so, if you buy a physical copy of Walking the Tree you’ll find, amongst our usual swathe of extras and freebies at the end, the first two chapters of his story… and a secret download link and password, that will allow you to download or read the entire novella. And if you get the eBook edition, well, you get the whole thing as an added extra.
Who knows – perhaps this sort of thing could catch on. I’m sure we could all think of secondary characters whose adventures we’d like to read from their POV. And plenty more who we wouldn’t, of course.
Strange Horizons Reviews Anil Menon’s The Beast with Nine Billion Feet
L. Timmel Duchamp over at Strange Horizons reviews Anil Menon’s The Beast with Nine Billion Feet. Here’s an excerpt:
The Beast with Nine Billion Feet tells a story in which the characters’ personal lives and relationships become inextricably braided into an ideological conflict pitting two takes on the material consequences of biotechnology in bitter opposition… In the course of the novel’s denouement, Menon reveals a terrible irony that casts a new light over the entire story. The revelation not only explains the mysteries encountered throughout, but more importantly, compels a re-evaluation of what we have previously understood.
Administrative Notice
I’m going to be in between continents again for the next month, so Charles is taking over regular posts. We’ll be back in service tomorrow. As always, you can follow us on RSS, on Livejournal and on Twitter. Essays and editorials always welcome – just drop us a line. See you the other side of the planet!
Wednesday Editorial: The Sir Julius Vogel Award in New Zealand
Award Season in New Zealand
By Ripley Patton
For writers the world-over, what comes after the holiday season? Award season, of course. Early in the calendar year, every year, nominations are accepted for the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Sir Julius Vogel. Haven’t heard of that last one? I’m not surprised. While international awards are well-publicized and renowned, their younger siblings, nationally specific awards, tend to be overlooked.
Did you know there is a science fiction and fantasy award specific to Australian work? And Canadian. There is a Polish award for science fiction, and a Dutch award, a Japanese award, a Croatian award, an Italian award, and an award for work originating in Finland. And last, but not least, there is an award for New Zealand science fiction, fantasy, and horror called the Sir Julius Vogel Award.
Where have all these awards come from? More often than not, they have originated from the heart of fandom and a sense of national pride. Every country in the world has its own culture of creativity, its favorite writers, its beloved stories, and a deep, genuine desire to honor them. But often that honoring has humble beginnings, and goes on quietly and unnoticed by the wider world. At least, at first.
The Name
And so it was with the Sir Julius Vogel Award, which started out in 1989 as the New Zealand Fan Awards and was given for such categories as Best Fan Writing and Best Fan Zine. The Award kept its fandom emphasis and its fannish name until OdysseyCon (New Zealand’s 22nd annual science fiction convention) in 2001, at which it was decided by the New Zealand fan organization, SFFANZ, to expand the award categories to include professional efforts. This also resulted in the need for a new name, and Sir Julius Vogel was chosen by a near unanimous vote.
But who is this Sir Julius Vogel? Well, he was the eighth Prime Minister of New Zealand in the mid 1870’s, but he was also a writer of science fiction. In 1889, he published his science fiction novel, Anno Domini 2000 – a Woman’s Destiny. The book was strongly centered on New Zealand and depicted a utopian society where women were allowed to hold positions of authority. (It can be found in its entirety on-line at http://130.195.86.216/tm/scholarly/tei-AnnVoge.html). Four years later, in 1893, New Zealand became the first country to give women full voting rights, and later went on to boast a period (2005-2006) when all five of its highest government offices were held by women. The New Zealand award had a formidable name. Now all it needed was a trophy and some professional nominees.
The Trophy
In 2009, at ConScription in Auckland, while nervously awaiting my first award nominee banquet, I stepped into a back room at the Grand Chancellor Hotel into a world of wonder. There, I found a group of dedicated fans, patiently and painstakingly painting the ornately designed Sir Julius Vogel Award trophies, one of which I dreamed would soon be mine. It was like stumbling upon Santa’s workshop. But Santa’s workshop is a little farther north. Here in New Zealand we have a different workshop known as Weta. You may have heard of it. Weta Workshop http://www.wetanz.com/weta-workshop-services/ is internationally famous for its creative work on such projects as the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, King Kong, and, most recently, Avatar. Weta also spends a little time every year making a few, stunning award trophies, one of which it was awarded in 2003 for Services to Science Fiction and Fantasy.
The original design of the trophy was created by fans Norman Cates and Peter Friend, with help from Creative New Zealand, Brownstone Design, Te Papa and Te Maori. As seen below, the trophy has three sides, one depicting a dragon (or taniwha), one a spaceship, and one a robot (sort of).
The Nominees
What is an award without nominees? A new award can sometimes have difficulty acquiring them in quantity and quality. It takes time for an award to prove itself as prestigious, legit and viable. It takes money, organization and concentrated effort to publicize it. Thankfully, in 2001, Peter Jackson had released Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He was a New Zealander who had put New Zealand on the world fantasy map, and he was awarded a SJV for Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form and an SJV for Services to Science Fiction and Fantasy in the first year of the awards.
In 2002 the SJV had only 5 professional categories and only 12 total nominees in those categories. Over the years, as the award has became better known, the amount of categories and nominees has risen. In 2009, the SJV had 9 professional categories and 37 professional nominees on the final ballot.
In order to qualify for a Sir Julius Vogel Award, nominees must be New Zealand citizens or residents. Professional categories for nomination include Best Novel, Best Novella/Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Collected Work, Best Artwork, Best Dramatic Presentation (both long and short forms), Best Production/Publication, and Best New Talent.
The Process
1. During January-March (though this may vary depending on the timing of the annual Con) anyone in the world can nominate any number of works published or produced in the previous calendar year in any category. Information on how to submit nominations can be found at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwards.shtml
2. In early April, a short-list is announced of up to five finalists (or up to seven in the case of ties) in each category. The short list is determined by the number of nominations in the first round.
3. The final ballot is made available to members of SFFANZ and members of that years Con, and is a preferential ballot, allowing members to rank all the nominees.
4. At that years Con (or by mail, previously), the ballots are submitted, tallied, and the trophies awarded at a ceremony and banquet honoring the nominees. In 2010, the SJV awards will be presented at Au Contraire http://www.aucontraire.org.nz/ in Wellington, New Zealand.
The Future
The Sir Julius Vogel Awards have come a long way in the last decade, thanks to the perseverance and commitment of the SFFANZ community. They expanded it from a fan only award, to include the professional realm. They acquired an inspiring and historically relevant name. They honored outstanding men and women from New Zealand in the field of speculative fiction, fandom, and other media. They increased their public profile, their prestige, and were flooded with an onslaught of nominations last year that is only likely to increase this year.
In preparation for writing this article, I interviewed Norman Cates, a founder of SFFANZ and, for all intents and purposes, the father of the SJV awards. I asked him what he hoped to see for the awards in the future.
He said, “I would love to see the awards gain national recognition, even TV coverage.
Science fiction and fantasy are genres where we can discuss ideas that cannot be done any where else. There is a vast history of SF literature behind us, and it’s getting more and more main-stream all the time. We are no longer a minority genre, if we ever were. I would like to see these awards recognize that more publically. There are hurdles to that, of course. But who knows 5 or 10 years in the future…”
For those of us who write science fiction and fantasy, the future isn’t all that hard to imagine. I, for one, like to imagine it with a shelf in my office sporting an ornate, green and copper trophy. I like to imagine it as a place where creative minds are beautifully rewarded, even in one of the smallest, hemispherically-challenged, island nations of the world.
And I like to imagine that the whole world knows about it.
*
Ripley Patton is an American writer of speculative fiction happily living on the South Island of New Zealand. She was short-listed for the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Short Story in 2009, and currently has multiple short stories and one novelette that qualify for the awards for 2010. More about her writing, plus links to her work, can be found on her website at http://www.ripleypatton.com or at her Livejournal http://rippatton.livejournal.com.
Kenya’s “First SF Film”: Pumzi
Wired reports on a new science fiction short film from Kenya, Pumzi, written and directed by Wanuri Kahiu:
Pumzi, Kenya’s first science fiction film, imagines a dystopian future 35 years after water wars have torn the world apart. East African survivors of the ecological devastation remain locked away in contained communities, but a young woman in possession of a germinating seed struggles against the governing council to bring the plant to Earth’s ruined surface.
to produce Pumzi, Kahiu looked to the past, as well as the future.
She researched classic 1950s films to create her movie’s futuristic sets, comparing the processes of matte painting and rear-screen projection with indigenous African artwork.
“We already have a tradition of tapestries and functional art and things like that, that loan a backdrop for films,” Kahiu said.
Made with grant money from Focus Features’ Africa First short film program, the Goethe Institut and the Changamoto arts fund, Pumzi will share the screen with two other films as part of Sundance’s New African Cinema program.
Watch the trailer! Or read the full article at Wired.com.
Monday Original Content: Dagon Magazine and an Interview with Roberto Mendes
Dagon is a new Portuguese magazine, edited by Roberto Mendes and dedicated to showcasing both Portuguese and international speculative fiction. The first issue contains stories from Luís Filipe Silva, João Barreiros and Carla Ribeiro, and articles by Pedro Ventura and Nuno Fonseca. It also publishes Nir Yaniv’s story, “Cinderers” from The Apex Book of World SF, features an interview with anthology editor Lavie Tidhar and an article by Larry Nolen.
The magazine was launched on the 23rd of January – click here for photos from the event.
This week on the WSNB, Charles Tan interviews Roberto Mendes:
It is an honour Charles. It was a book that first drove me into speculative fiction. I was eleven years old when the magic first appeared in my life, in the form of a book; It was The LOTR by Tolkien. I remembered feeling really small, standing at the gates of the gigantic Middle Earth. From that moment on I read almost every thing that came out by Tolkien. I also began to discover other writers, such as Jules Verne, Edgar A. Poe, Lovecraft, and many more. It was love at first sight.
I will have to say that pretty much everything excites me about speculative fiction. But not only in the form of literature: I love every type of art inspired by the marvellous world of fantasy, science fiction, horror, you name it! I love the drawings of many authors, like L. Royo, Karem Beyit, etc. I also love the music inspired in fantasy such as the classical Wagner (inspired by Norse mythology) and the recent metal by Manowar or the melodic metal by Ayreon, in which we can embark on a voyage into space, filled with science fiction references!
Well, I think the term “Speculative Fiction” stands for various genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy and all sub-genres. I believe that all these genres came from the same place: the mythology and the need to think about the past and the future, so I really prefer this term!
It is the only magazine of speculative fiction published in paper, since the magazine “Bang”, edited by Rogério Ribeiro, left the market (now it is published for free in the web). Its objectives are clear: to promote speculative fiction in Portugal, reveling in new worlds of opportunities for writers and readers. It is not only a magazine of literature, we are also going to have an illustrator working on every issue, who will draw a cover inspired by one of the tales and we intend to publish really good illustrations inside every issue. In the first issue, we have cinema reviews, articles (including one from Larry Nolen), tales from Portuguese writers such as João Barreiros, Luís Filipe Silva and Carla Ribeiro, a tale by Nir Yaniv (“Cinderers”), in cooperation with Lavie Tidhar, to whom I thank, and finally we have some poetry and an interview with Lavie. The name of first issue cover illustrator is Miguel Ministro.
I’ve edited the August 2009 issue as an experimental issue in e-book. It is free on the web, that was the first step for the magazine.
Here goes the link for the download. It has really great illustrations and those who cannot read in portuguese can watch them:)
Why the name Dagon?
Dagon is sort of a fetish character for me. It was a major northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain and agriculture, but it is more known as one of the characters that came out from the imagination of Lovecarft, one of my favorite writers. It is, mostly, a name that almost every reader of speculative fiction knows, so I thought it would be a great choice!
The state of the speculative fiction in Portugal, but it was an old dream of mine to publish a magazine like Dagon. The idea just popped into my head one day and I thought “well, the hell with it, I’m not going to just sit back and wait for the winds to change, I’m going to be an active part of a new age of speculative fiction in Portugal”. With the help of my girlfriend I started to make contacts with the writers, and I had already drawn some objectives: to be a magazine not only for regular writers, those that had their names already on the market. I wanted to publish new voices you know?
I’ve already assembled some tales to another project, an anthology of Portuguese SF, called “Vollüspa”, that will come out in March, and so I was already impressed by the quality of the works that got into my hands. Some people called me crazy, and told me that this project was too weak, that it was never going to last. But more and more people became really supportive, and now I’ve got really a lot of people to thank to.
After the first experimental issue, published for free on the web, a few editors approached me, with interest in the magazine. I’ve decided to accept the offer of the “edita-me” company, and they have been great all this time!
Well, mainly the Portuguese and Brazilian readers. Not only the genre lovers, I have the objective to reach out to a new market, the mainstream readers, showing them the quality of speculative fiction.
I think that Portuguese speculative fiction first needs to be strong within our walls, and only then we can reach to other markets, such as the international one. Maybe after the first four issues we will be ready to publish the magazine in English, and then everyone will have access to the Portuguese SF. But first, we need to be careful and to get better and better.
I thought that that would be more of challenge, but everything’s great so far, every contributor has been supportive, the translations work out really good (Jorge Candeias and Luís Filipe Silva were the translators), and the acceptance of the magazine turned out to be wonderful.
It will surely be a great afternoon!
Why did you choose the Web as your platform?
Mainly because when I edited the experimental issue, I did not have the necessary funds to publish it on paper. But it turned out to be a great choice. Ive learned a lot doing issue zero. The difference in quality between that issue and the first issue now is enormous!
We are like a frozen river: the silence is becoming overwhelming! With Dagon I intend to crack the ice a little bit, making some noise! In Portugal the editorial markey is failing and the readers are despairing every day but we have great writers like João Barreiros, Luís Filipe Silva or David Soares and emerging writers with enormous quality like Carla Ribeiro or Pedro Ventura. But the market is saturated with books of little quality, mostly vampire books taking advantage of the “Twilight” success or fantasy books, almost copies of Tolkien’s work.
There are only a few publishers that go out on a limb to publish Speculative Fiction: mostly Saída de Emergência, Editorial Presença and Gailivro! We had some good fanzines like Nova or Phantastes but now they are over, leaving Bang the only online magazine. The “edita-me” publisher is taking a risk in publishing a collection of Portuguese speculative fiction called Yggdrasil and I hope that will bring the writers and readers together. There are great gaps that we need to fill such as readers’ low knowledge of the genre and the inability of publishers to “teach” published fundamental works of SF.
Who are some of the writers that have influenced you?
Portuguese writers? Well, I’ll have to say João Barreiros and Luís Filipe Silva regarding science fiction. As to fantasy, Pedro Ventura. On horror I have no preferred Portuguese writers (well, there isn’t much of that specie either) but David Soares is a really good writer.
I think that our past could make us unique SF writers. But I do not think SFin Portugal has reached a stage in which we are unique. The only way to make our SF unique is to provide exotic references, exclusively Portuguese, as well as to reinvent our past of adventures through the world, a time of colonizers…writing about it, say, in a steampunk way, would be something unique! But a Portuguese SF writer cannot expect to write a novel set in New York, and then be perfect doing it or just writing a romance of vampires and expect it to be a masterpiece! But we have great voices, if only all of you could hear them… I mostly think we forget a lot about our great past, not realizing that the future of our SF is there, in our history, in our blood, in our hearts!
Survey: Western Authors working in Non-Western Settings?
It occurs to me a list of Western writers setting novels in non-Western settings might be useful, for several reasons. Not sure anything like that is available online, so I wondered if some of our readers might make suggestions. Please use the comments below! It would also be interesting to note if the main protagonists are outsiders or from within the depicted culture, or any other data points you can think of. It would also be interesting to note dates of publication and see how it fits in a historical context – most of these titles are fairly recent? Not read most of the books on this list, apart from the McHugh, the Ryman and the Williams, all of which I enjoyed.
I’ll kick it off with the few I can think of off-hand:
- River of Gods, Ian McDonald (India)
- Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Brazil)
- Chaga and Kirinya, Ian McDonald (Kenya)
- China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh (China)
- The Wind-Up Girl,Paolo Bacigalupi (Thailand)
- Bengal Station, Eric Brown (India/Thailand)
- Air, Geoff Ryman (Kazakhstan)
- Nine Layers of Sky, Liz Williams (Kazakhstan)
- Kirinyaga, Mike Resnick (Kenya)
ETA:
- Kalimantan, Lucius Shepard (Borneo – Indonesia)
What writers/locations are missing? Comments below would be appreciated, and I’ll post an updated list once we get enough material.
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Black Coat Press Announces Ambitious “Best of French SF” Program
Black Coat Press have announced their forthcoming plans for an ambitious release of a whole slew of translated French science fiction – here is the press release:
This month, Black Coat Press is launching an extensive program of translations of both classic and contemporary works of French science fiction and fantasy, spearheaded by award-winning writer and translator Brian Stableford, under the editorship of Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier.
At the top of the list of titles to be released in 2010 are a five-volume series of works by Maurice Renard and a six-volume series of works by J.-H. Rosny Aîné, best known to English-speaking audiences for The Hands of Orlac and Quest for Fire, respectively. More classic works by André Couvreur, Henri Falk, Jules Lermina, Gustave Le Rouge, José Moselli, Han Ryner, and Jacques Spitz are currently in the planning stage.
Contemporary authors to be translated include Kurt Steiner (a.k.a. André Ruellan), G.-J. Arnaud, Richard Bessière, André Caroff and P.-J. Hérault. New editions of previously translated works by Gérard Klein and Michel Jeury are also planned.
In total, over two dozen new translations will be released during 2010, an unprecedented effort in the history of genre publishing.
Among the proto- and golden age French science fiction classics already released by Black Coat Press are such significant works as Félix Bodin’s The Novel of the Future (1834), Didier de Chousy’s Ignis (1883), C.I. Defontenay’s Star-Psi Cassiopeia (1854), Charles Derennes’ The People of the Pole (1907), Arthur Galopin’s Doctor Omega (1906), Octave Joncquel & Théo Varlet’s The Martian Epic (1921), Jean de La Hire’s Nyctalope novels (1911-21), Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny’s The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist across the Solar System (1888-96), Gustave Le Rouge’s The Vampires of Mars (1908), Jules Lermina’s Panic in Paris (1910), Henri de Parville’s An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars (1865), Gaston de Pawlowski’s Journey to the Land of the 4th Dimension (1912), Albert Robida’s The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul (1879) and The Clock of the Centuries (1902), as well as two collections of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam stories, two collections of the pulp hero adventures of Sâr Dubnotal and Harry Dickson, and two anthologies of ground-breaking proto-SF stories by Brian Stableford.
Contemporary works include two collections by Jean-Claude Dunyach, The Night Orchid and The Thieves of Silence, a collection of stories by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier, Pacifica, Xavier Mauméjean’s award-winning novel The League of Heroes, and Philippe Ward’s contemporary horror thriller, Artahe.
Since its inception in the summer of 2003, Black Coat Press has been the foremost publisher of French science fiction and crime thrillers in the English-language.
A division of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, Black Coat Press, named after Paul Féval’s seminal 19th century crime thriller saga The Black Coats, which it publishes, is a Encino, CA-based small press publisher whose products are listed on the Bowker’s Books in Print â index and Publishers Authority Database. Its books are produced by Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Industries, Inc.
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Buy a copy of THE APEX BOOK OF WORLD SF directly from the publisher
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