07.06.04

Still I cannot say a word about current plans for a third edition of the SF Encyclopedia, but the sfe3.org domain is now in existence. Although, for some reason, it merely displays the index page from www.ansible.co.uk. If only Charles Fort were still with us to investigate and make all this less clear....

Court Circular. Another lawsuit! Ubaldo DiBenedetto, a professor at Harvard who in 1993 published the instant-Ice-Age disaster novel Polar Day 9 (as by Kyle Donner), is suing Roland Emmerich and Twentieth Century Fox Deutschland. His claim is that key plot elements of Emmerich's film The Day After Tomorrow are plagiarized from Polar Day 9 -- a copy of which DiBenedetto says he sent to Emmerich in 1998, without any movie offer following. The report in Der Spiegel notes that this case is being brought in Germany because courts there are considered more sympathetic to victims of intellectual property theft. Allegedly.

R.I.P. Max Rosenberg (1914-2004), US producer of many low-budget horror films beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), died on 14 June aged 89. His other films include Dr Terror's House of Horrors and Dr Who and the Daleks (with Peter Cushing as the Doctor), both 1965.

Douglas Adams speaks from beyond the grave in "a brand new series" of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC Radio 4, from 21 September). "Brand new" here means a radio adaptation of Hitcher books 3, 4 and 5, which unlike 1 and 2 didn't begin as radio scripts. According to the BBC, Adams is featured "thanks to the wonders of digital technology. Douglas always intended to play the part of Agrajag and recorded himself in the part a few years ago." Slightly deflatingly, the digital wonders consist not of voice-simulating supercomputers but simple cut-and-paste from the great man's taped reading of his books.

The Science Fiction Museum in Seattle had its grand opening on 18 June. Your reporter, straining his telepathic receptors from thousands of miles away, dimly gleaned that it's quite impressive.

Small Press. Interzone's move to TTA Press became final on 25 June, with ex-editor David Pringle severing his remaining links with the magazine and retiring from its familiar Brighton address to the Scots Borders. All Interzone correspondence should henceforth go to: TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs, CB6 2LB, England.

Thog's Masterclass. Dept of Urban Metamorphosis. `Like a man in wonderland Gordon Drew watched them for a while, then he went further up the main street and finally turned into a small teashop.' (Hugo Blayn [John Russell Fearn], Flashpoint, 1950)

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.