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October 28, 2005

Hallowe'en approaches, and one of my spies has provided a link to seasonal uplift from Edgar Allan Seuss; scroll down for a list of this author's other titles....

As Others See Us. Travis Elborough of The Guardian celebrated the appearance of Interzone 200 but couldn't resist inserting an acid drop: 'Some things, however, appear impervious to change: gratifyingly SF writers today, it seems, are content to look as geeky as ever they did in the 1980s. A photograph of the lead interviewee, Richard Calder, in which the author is captured bathed in red light and sporting glasses whose lenses could windscreen an Austin Maxi, screams "here is a man who had his lunch money pinched as a child".' (22 October)

Anne Rice returns, still writing about immortal supernatural entities but with a certain change of emphasis: her new one is 'a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord."' Newsweek at MSBNC.com headlines this as 'her most daring book yet' -- though the Rice approach looks safely devout, and there seems little chance that the infant Christ will radiantly sink his teeth into deserving throats.

Doctor Who won three of the British National TV Awards presented in the Albert Hall on 25 October: most popular drama, actor and actress. (BBC News)

Prediction Corner. Words of wisdom from Brian Stableford in 1989: 'Very few new British writers have managed to establish themselves within the last ten years, but the next ten years will be different. The bandwagon is rolling, and anyone who is good enough, and prepared to put in the requisite work, ought to be able to jump aboard.' (The Way to Write Science Fiction, 1989)

As Others See Us II. From a Guardian Guide article on campaigns to save cancelled tv shows, some of which are more equal than others: 'But if sci-fi shows are more likely to attract fans with too much time and not enough social skills, more surprising are those not wanting closure or validation, but fighting for (whisper it) quality TV.' (Stuart McGurk, 22 October)

Press Releases We Couldn't Bear To Continue Reading: 'Peterborough Science Fiction Club have recently restructured its' website ...' (Which is here.)

Miscellany. George Takei uncloseted. Want to design the 2006 Hugo base? 'Tis the Season To Be Jelly. Space research finally catches up with the awful warning about mixed-sex crews in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961).

Thog's Masterclass. Heavy/Light Water Dept, or Squid vs Archimedes. 'The main body of the thing is sort of an inverted cup, like a half-inflated bladder, surrounded by a great ring of bone and muscle that anchors these tentacles. The bladder fills and empties with water to enable the creature to rise to the surface, or descend far below -- the submarine principle. By itself it doesn't weigh much, although it is amazingly strong. What it does, it empties its bladder to rise to the surface, grabs hold, and then begins to fill again.' (George R.R. Martin, 'Guardians' in Tuf Voyaging, 1986)

 


He Do the Time Police in Different VoicesDavid 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 The SEX Column and other misprints, collecting ten years of columns and essays for SFX magazine; 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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