The Millions Guide to the Nebulas

"The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) is a curious group, though given that they’re a writers’ guild, curious is par for the course. Gathering together scribblers from two related but nevertheless distinct disciplines under one umbrella seems like a holdover from a less genre-friendly time, when artists like these needed to band together for strength and comfort. After all, when the Edgar Awards come out every year, it’s under the aegis of the Mystery Writers of America; that’s it, just mystery.

But the SFWA are a welcoming bunch, nevertheless, handing out their Nebula Award in recent years to everyone from crackerjack dreamweavers like Neil Gaiman (the mainstream dark fantasy American Gods in 2002 and the fey nightmare Coraline in 2003) to once-mainstream writers gone gleefully genre like Michael Chabon (his brilliantly imagined counterfactual-cum-detective novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union in 2007). Time will tell if the last decade’s batch of winners will hold up to scrutiny like those in its first decade, when the Nebula was passed out to Frank Herbert’s Dune, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, three foundational works in 20th century science fiction.

There are six novels nominated for this year’s Nebula Award, which will be announced May 19th. They cover the future, the present, and the indefinable. They feature shy faeries, magicians who wield bugs like weapons, and a postapocalyptic steampunk traveling circus. What they don’t do much of is splash about in that shallow, mucky pool of vampire/alien/cop/erotica/fallen angel serial potboilers (new variations ever-spinning off as though generated by some genre virus) being snapped up by ever more readers. Only two of the six Nebula nominees are series books, the rest are novel-novels – left to live or die on their own, no cliffhangers to entice you back."

Read more at http://www.themillions.com/2012/05/worlds-beyond-your-ken-a-guide-to-the-nebula-awards.html

Bruce Sterling - Cities under stress

Check out cyberpunk author Bruce Stirling writing on the Arup website

http://thoughts.arup.com/post/details/191/cities-under-stress

The Sparrow

The book for March is Mary Doria Russell's debut novel about first contact with Aliens, which is by Jesuits.

From the Amazon review:

This strange, ambitious science fiction novel has already won enough attention for its first-time author to make it a selection by both the Book of the Month and QPB clubs. Father Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit linguist, heads a team of scientists and explorers on an expedition to the planet Rakhat, where contact has been established with two apparently primitive races, the Runa and the Jana'ata. The narrative shifts back and forth between 2016, when contact is first made, and 2060, to a Vatican inquest interrogating the maimed and broken Sandoz. A palaeoanthropologist, Russell makes the descriptions of the inhabitants of Rakhat both convincing and unsettling.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sparrow-Mary-Doria-Russell/dp/0552997773

and from Wikipedia:
The Sparrow (1996) is the first novel by author Mary Doria Russell. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis and the British Science Fiction Association Award. It was followed by a sequel, Children of God, in 1998. The title refers to Matthew 10:29-31, which relates that not even a sparrow falls to the earth without God's knowing of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sparrow_(novel)

Every Doctor Who Story 1963 to Now

An video from Babelcolour detailing every Doctor Who adventure from 'An Unearthly Child' in 1963 right up to 'The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe' Christmas Special. But remember, there are still 106 episodes missing from the BBC archives (these have been represented in this video by way of either small surviving clips or reconstructions).

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

The book choice for February is 'Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang' by Kate Wilhelm. The book won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1977. I'm box ticking here - female author (following earlier discussions about not having read very many), not too long (so those of us who haven’t finished Imajica yet can do!) and a favourite genre of mine (post-apocalyptic sci-fi), plus it has some still contemporary themes (ecology and cloning).

Blurb from back of book: “The Sumner family can read the signs: the droughts and floods, the blighted crops, the shortages, the rampant diseases and plagues, and, above all, the increasing sterility all point to one thing. Their isolated farm in the Appalachian Mountains gives them the ideal place to survive the coming breakdown, and their wealth and know-how gives them the means. Men and women must clone themselves for humanity to survive. But what then?”

Happy reading
Regards
Julia

VALIS

The book for October is Philip K Dick's theological SF work VALIS. Published just a year before his death in 1982, it is about Horselover Fat (who as author surrogate both is and is not Dick) and his experience of God.

Philip K Dick (1928-82) was described by The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction as ‘one of the two or three most important figures in 20th century US SF’. Over his career he wrote more than 50 books, won the Hugo for ‘The Man in the High Castle’, the BSFA award for A Scanner Darkly’, and had his work made into a number of major Hollywood films (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, etc)

2011 Hugo results

The votes have been counted, the tuxedos pressed, and the 2011 Hugo rockets presented to the deserving. But who were they?

Where are we now? A Greenbelt 2011 talk by Simon Morden

Blue Pill – Red Pill

I like the film The Matrix. And yes, it is a shame they never made any sequels. In The Matrix, a young computer hacker called Neo starts to realise that reality isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. He ends up being offered a choice by Morpheus.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

I’m going to offer the writers in the audience a similar choice: you can listen to what I have to say, and decide it’s not for you. You’ll wake up tomorrow, and the world won’t have changed. Or you can decide I’m on to something here – and it could end up changing everything.

A Total Lunar Eclipse Over Tajikistan

OK, it's not science fiction, but the thought that it was a magical event.

This is an extremely cool video of a total lunar eclipse over Tajikistan

Latest Dr Who trailers

The BBC have released the trailer for episodes 8 - 13 of the current series and it is looking good

The Curse of Chalion

This month’s book (well, this month and next) is Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion. It won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and was nominated for the Hugo, Locus Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards, subsequently vindicated with the sequel Paladin of Souls, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel. Bujold has actually won the Hugo four times (a record only beaten by Robert Heinlein), Locus three times and the Nebula twice with her novels, making her one of the most feted SF&F authors.

Locus Awards 2011 Winners

The winners of the 2011 Locus Awards have been announced:

Best Science Fiction Novel

Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis

• Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks
• Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold
• Zero History, William Gibson
• The Dervish House, Ian McDonald

Best Fantasy Novel

Kraken, China Miéville

• Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
• The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross
• The Sorcerer’s House, Gene Wolfe

SF and the Gender Divide

Following on from the Guardian SF&F special in May there has been a lot of debate on the blogosphere regarding the gender divide in science fiction, exemplified by this article on the SFWA website by Cheryl Morgan.

In response to the British Library’s summer exhibition: “Out of this World”, which celebrates science fiction right back to its earliest incarnations, the Guardian asked a number of prominent SF&F authors (mostly male) to nominate their all-time favourite SF. Nearly all the men and most of the women picked male authors. Nicola Griffith on her website did some maths and found that females accounted for only 4% of these recommendations.

Do women really write so little good SF? Is there a male conspiracy at work? Are we as a book group contributing to gender inequality?

Matt Smith to return for new Doctor Who series

Matt Smith has signed on to appear in a new series of Doctor Who, the BBC has confirmed.

Nebula Award Winners Announced

The 2011 Nebula Award Winners are:

Winning Novel:

Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

Also Nominated:

The Native Star by M.K. Hobson
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal
Echo by Jack McDevitt
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

Life is a Beach

An original short story by Peter Willox
The first I knew of my mother’s demise was the alarm in my eye. I was at work at the fusion plant so I flipped down the clear screen on my helmet and read the auto message from Mum’s implant. She had died at a clinic in Birmingham, coordinates attached. I buzzed the clinic. Something had “malfunctioned” on her ‘stay young’ driver. There was nothing they could do. Could I pick up her ashes and deal with them according to her will (attached)?

The Quantum Thief

Nominated by Peter W, chosen by Rodney (one of our increasing number of remote members), the book for this month is The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is described as a far-future thought experiment SF detective novel.

Reviews

'If you dropped Greg Egan's hard physics chops into a rebooted Finnish version of Al Reynolds with the writing talent of a Ted Chiang you'd begin to get a rough approximation of the scale of his talent. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I read it. Hard to admit, but I think he's better at this stuff than I am. And The Quantum Thief is the best first SF novel I've read in many years -- Charles Stross

BSFA Award 2010 Winners

The 2010 British Science Fiction Awards ceremony at the 62nd Eastercon convention, Illustrious 2011, has announced this year's winners:

Equations of Life

Simon Morden, author of The Lost Art and Another War, and contributer to this site, has a new book out: Equations of Life. Its London cyberpunk distopian setting is alreading getting excellent critical review.

Samuil Petrovitch is a survivor. He survived the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone - the last city in England. He's lived this long because he's a man of rules and logic. For example: GETTING INVOLVED = A BAD IDEA.

But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he's saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London. And clearly: SAVING THE GIRL = GETTING INVOLVED.

Now, the equation of Petrovitch's life is looking increasingly complex: RUSSIAN MOBSTERS + YAKUZA + SOMETHING CALLED THE NEW MACHINE JIHAD = ONE DEAD PETROVITCH.

But Petrovitch has a plan - he always has a plan - he's just not sure it's a good one.

You can read an extract, or find more information at Simon's website or that of his publisher, Orbit

Book club short story vote

As you may have seen, the Hugo nominations for 2011 have been released (list on http://sfbk.blogspot.com/2011/04/2011-hugo-award-nominees-announced.html).

As the four nominated short stories are all available online, I thought that it might be a good idea if we had our own vote (using AV in the best Tory (and Hugo) tradition). If you are interested, would you like to read the following and place them in order of preference, “1” for first place, “2” for second and so on. If you dislike a story then don't give it a vote. I will use the Hugo methods on http://hugos.renovationsf.org/vote/ for the sums.

Get me your votes by May 14th and I will announce the winners on the 16th. It will be interesting to see how they compare to the “real” vote announced in August.