Doctor Who shocker

If you want to conduct the Doctor Who theme tune, it seems all you need is a couple of Tesla coils and 500,000 volts.  You could say that it is an electrifying performance...

Neil Gaiman meets Dr Who

The rumours excitedly circulating the blogosphere have finally been confirmed: Neil Gaiman has written (and delivered) a Doctor Who story for the next series.

Mieville on The City & The City

This month's book is China Mieville's award winning and rather strange police proceedual set in twin eastern european citys. Actually, all his books are strange; it would be strange if they were not. Here China himself discusses his work

Three Science Fiction Writing Exercises

Since many of you who visit website are also science fiction authors yourselves, I thought it might be fun to offer a few writing exercises to help get your creative juices flowing. Instead of focusing on a plot or a character, here are a few things that you can develop that might exist within your story.

The City & The City

by China Miéville

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

2010 Nebula Awards winners

The SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) have announced their 2009 award winners.

The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

A coalition of equals

Our next meeting is in a week's time (which is a long time in politics) and will be at David's house. We will, of course, be officially discussing The Forever War, but I suspect the forever election may crop up as well.


Mindful that we have a number of postal members that we should not disenfranchise, I have some suggestions for the coming months that we might discuss in advance.

Who will win the Hugo or Nebula?

This year there are six books up for the Nebula award for best novel and likewise six books for the Hugo best novel, making not twelve, but nine books in total.

The Forever War

In the not so far future, William Mandella is young, fit, smart, and conscripted to fight an unknown enemy in deep space. Due to the relativistic speeds involved, Mandella and his fellow survivors return to a society they are no longer a part of. With every mission the estrangement grows greater; Mandella fights for a humanity he is no longer a part of, and he does not know why.

Why read Starship Troopers?

“What would I have left out? The Asimovs and Heinleins, certainly, since in completely different ways they did much to distract everyone from the idea that science fiction should be written well. (This is a personal view – the consensus of the SF world is against me.)
Christopher Priest, Forward to 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

“Starship Troopers is an undoubtedly right-wing in its politics and unashamedly militaristic in outlook but it is also one of the finest coming-of-age stories in SF, a narrative that follows Johnnie Rico’s rites of passage with the kind of detail and empathy that can be appreciated even by those readers to whom Heinlein’s politics and philosophy remain an anathema.”
Stephen E. Andrews and Nick Rennison, 100 Must-Read Science Fiction Novels

“[Heinlein] forgot to insert a story.”
Anthony Boucher, founder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

2009 BSFA Award Winners

The 2009 British Science Fiction Awards ceremony took place at the 61st Eastercon convention, Odyssey 2010, at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow, London, UK. The ceremony was hosted by Ian Watson and Donna Scott, and the following awards were presented:

Sweet Charity

Yesterday was a good hunting day in those sometimes rich fields of the Great British Charity Shop. They are, admittedly, full of literary chaff: the Dan Browns and the Geoffrey Archers speak loudly of the triumph of marketing over substance; the airport thrillers nestle shoulder to shoulder with the holiday romances. Read once and then discarded like the throwaway characters they contain.

2009 Nebula Award Nominations

The Nebula Awards® are annual awards presented by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to celebrate excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing.

SFWA also presents the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement, Andre Norton Award for best young adult SF and Fantasy, Bradbury Award for best dramatic presentation, Solstice Award for significance to the SF field, and honours senior writers as Authors Emeriti.

The 2009 Nebula Awards will be announced and presented at the 2010 Nebula Awards Weekend. This will be held on May 14-16 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. If you would like to go, there is more information on the Nebula Awards website.

SF [alternative] Glossary

Alien
A foreigner, needing either a green skin and boggle eyes, or a passport and visa
Amnesia
A forgetful princess
Anaesthesia
Sleeping Beauty’s real name
Artificial Gravity
(1) a useful technology popular in Space Opera that stops the characters turning into jam under the high accelerations needed to keep the storylines down to a 1-hour format
(2) SF that is not as serious as it thinks it is

2010 Hugo Award Nominations

Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the ballot for the 2010 Hugo Awards.

Best Novel

• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
• Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

Dr Who and the Easter Eggs

The waiting is nearly over. The new Dr Who series will start in the UK on April 3rd (Americans will have to wait until the 17th and Australians the 18th) with the new Doctor (Matt Smith), new assistant Amy Pond (Karen Gillian), new Tardis interior (the last Doctor didn’t leave it in very good condition), new chief writer (Steven Moffat) and new story (The Eleventh Hour). There may be some other new stuff as well...

Military SF Double Bill

This month and next we are embarking on a award-winning military SF double bill (it is difficult to think of a greater contrast to Moominvalley): Starship Troopers for April followed by The Forever War for May.

Robert Heinlein's Hugo winning Starship Troopers is still controversial 50 years after its release. It is a right-wing, might-is-right, military service is the measure of the man product of the post-war American dream. That said, it is also a cracking good read. You had best avoid the films though...

SFBK Science Fiction Book Club: The Genres of Speculative Fiction

42blips.dailyradar.com

Book List Archive

Wow, we are now onto our 26th book: The Fountains of Paradise. I must admit it is one of my favourites (accurate technological predictions though far of the mark on spirituality) and has been a great influence on my interest in Astrotechtonics. I am now waiting for NASA to turn the Science Fiction into Science Fact

As a record, I have been listing all our books on an Amazon List: SFBK-Science-Fiction-Book-Club with 1066 viewings at time or writing. With this latest book I have run out of space and had to start a new one, which you can find at SFBK-Science-Fiction-Book-Club-2.

Watch this space!