04.30.04

The Future Is Tekon! But never mind, here's another Runcible.

Margaret Atwood's oft-mentioned Oryx and Crake made it on to the shortlist of the UK Orange Prize for fiction about talking squids in outer space ... I'm sorry, I'll read that again ... for writing by women.

Harry Harrison declares a Thogglewhack: two finds on the same pulsating page, all the more remarkable because 'I gave up on page 4....' Thus, from page 3: 'They walked up the drive, Buchanan's long legs striding ahead of them.' 'Saafeld turned and glared from under bushy eyes at the men.' (Colin Forbes, The Vorpal Blade, 2001)

Michael Moorcock, according to The Spectator (24 April), has 'Wonderful news for Europe! Michael Moorcock, the brilliant anarcho-syndicalist science-fiction writer, is planning his escape from Bastrop, Texas, where he has lived for the past ten years.' Old cowpoke Moorcock explained laconically, 'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do ...' By the autumn, if his devious plot succeeds, he'll be living in Paris or Rome.

Andre Norton fell and badly broke her hip on 8 April, underwent surgery on the 10th (involving screws and a metal plate), and was able to return home on the 14th. A full recovery is hoped for. No gifts or foodstuffs, please, but her fans suggest that a small contribution to medical bills wouldn't come amiss: checks to Ms Andre Norton, c/o her 'personal health care giver' Sue Stewart, 1007 Herron St, Murfreesboro, TN 37130, USA. The Norton house and much property will be sold by auction on 5 June, at the house: 114 Eventide Dr, Murfreesboro, TN 37130, USA. Sue Stewart writes: 'There will be custom made jewelry at a reasonable price, fantasy/sci-fi art work. Several pieces of antique glassware ... Even her personal computer will be sold.' Andre Norton herself will be living at 1007 Herron St from mid-May.

Robert Silverberg announced his latest 'retirement' from sf, to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: 'I've struggled back and forth between my desire to make science fiction into a visionary literature of great emotional and literary intensity, and the publisher's desire to make a lot of money. Every decade or so I've walked out in anger saying I can't cope with this dichotomy anymore.' And therefore: 'I'm just removing myself from that whole commercial battlefield,' he says. 'I've moved toward relatively small publishing houses. And I'll write what I please ... without commercial prodding.' (16 April)

Small Press. Four Walls Eight Windows is to be acquired by Avalon Publishing on 31 May and merged into their Thunder's Mouth Press imprint, with 4W8W publisher John Oakes becoming an Avalon vice-president and publisher of both this imprint and Nation Books.    Moondust Books is a new UK venture by Meredith MacArdle, specializing in reprints and launching in May with Diana Wynne Jones's first novel, Changeover (1970).

Thog's Masterclass. Dept of Continuity. Prologue: 'The last mountains had been ground to dust by the wind and the rain, and the world was too weary to bring forth more.' Chapter 10: 'Time had not conquered everything; Earth still possessed mountains of which she could be proud.' (Arthur C.Clarke, The City and the Stars, 1956)

David Langford is an author and a gentleman. His newsletter, Ansible, is the essential SF-insider sourcebook of wit and incongruity. His most recent books are Different Kinds of Darkness, a new short-story collection of horror, SF, and fantasy, Up Through an Empty House of Stars: Reviews and Essays 1980-2002, 100 pieces of Langfordian genre commentary, and He Do the Time Police in Different Voices, a short-story collection that brings together, all of Dave's SF parodies and pastiches. (This is a scary thought. Are you ready to laugh that hard?)

Dave lives in Reading, England with his wife Hazel, 25,000 books, and a few dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add books and Hugos.