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July 29, 2005
Shallow readers may think Harry Potter is fantasy, but The
Sunday Times (24 July) knows better: 'J.K. Rowling's books
seem like fantasy, but she is tackling the dark heart of the real
world.' Interviewed under this headline, Rowling confesses to
never having finished The Lord of the Rings or the Narnia
series, and to not having realized she'd written a fantasy until
after her first was published: 'I really had not thought that
that's what I was doing. And I think maybe the reason that it
didn't occur to me is that I'm not a huge fan of fantasy.' Terry
Pratchett observes: 'Well, of course not: that's the stuff with
all those wizards and witches and magic schools and wands and
other such nonsense ...'
Hugos There? As the 2005 Hugo ceremony looms,
Cheryl Morgan announces that
her Emerald City will henceforth compete for the
semiprozine rather than the fanzine Hugo.
Meanwhile, Chris M. Barkley and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are
campaigning to split the Best Professional Editor category into
book- and magazine-editor subdivisions,
a
proposal now being debated at Trufen.net. (Whose editorial
remark that the present system 'overwhelmingly favors the dead
over the living' made me wonder whether Trufen.net believes
Gardner Dozois, the most overwhelmingly Hugo-favoured editor of
recent decades, to be secretly dead.)
As Others See Us. Quentin Letts shows off his sf
erudition in an article about tracking down UK politician John
Prescott: 'Like Doctor Who, I could sense the Force was nearby.
But where?' (Daily Mail)
R.I.P. John William 'Long John' Baldry
(1941-2005), British-born singer, songwriter and latterly voice
artist whose roles included Sonic the Hedgehog's evil nemesis Dr
Robotnik, died from a chest infection on 21 July; he was 64.
David
Jackson (1934-2005), UK actor whose best-known genre role was
Olag Gan in Blake's 7 (1978-9), died from a heart attack
on 25 July. He was 71. (Fan site
obituary and
biography)
George
Wallace (1917-2005), US actor whose 50-year career included
the role of Commando Cody in Radar Men from the Moon,
(1952 film serial) died on 22 July aged 88. He also appeared in
Minority Report. (Cantonrep.com
obit)
The Dark Side scandal (see
Runcible 175) rumbles on, with
editor Allan Bryce seemingly unmoved by evidence that literally
hundreds of film reviews have been plagiarized in his magazines.
Mirek Lipinski has discussed all this with a leading rights lawyer
and plans a publicity bombshell (see
posting here -- scroll down to 'The Long Arm of the Law').
He urges contributors and advertisers to boycott The Dark Side:
'Simply put: If you become aware of what's been going on [...] and
you continue to write for the magazine or place ads in it, you are
electing to help Allan Bryce conduct business as usual and you
don't give a damn about plagiarism or your fellow writers and the
fans in the genre. I hope this doesn't sound too severe as a
judgment, but I simply cannot respect people who turn a blind eye
to the most grievous case of plagiarism ever found in the horror
genre press. Others can make their own judgments, but that's
mine.'
Miscellany.
Queen
Elizabeth is confirmed as a Doctor Who fan who plans to
spend her summer hols watching the DVDs.
Fred
Saberhagen is being treated for metastasized prostate
cancer.
ESA
Clarke/Bradbury award winners.
Shameless Self-Promotion! Your columnist's new
nonfiction collection
The SEX
Column and other misprints will indeed be available at
the Glasgow
Worldcon. Rog Peyton (Replay Books) has ever so many copies,
Bob Wardzinski (The Talking Dead) has also placed a large order,
and Dave Langford will be stalking the dealer's room with
autograph pen at the ready.... [That's enough free plugs --
The Editrix] The next Runcible upload won't be until
after the Worldcon.
Thog's Masterclass. Dept of In Space No One Can Hear
Your Castrophony. 'Then there came a sound, distant at first,
that grew into a castrophony so immense it could be heard far away
in space.' (Gorillaz, Demon Days, 'Fire Coming out of a
Monkey's Head' lyrics)
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 couple of dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add
books and Hugos.
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