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08.08.02
From the height of the English summer heatwave, from the wreckage of a
country paralysed and laid waste by killing temperatures in the high seventies
and even low eighties,
Ansible
sweatily reports
Warren Lapine of DNA Publications 'has fired Andrew Porter as editor of SF Chronicle.... The magazine will become
just Chronicle, and the new editor will be John Douglas.'
Thus our café society spy Ms Una Tributable, who wonders if this is because AP 'told a number of people at Readercon that Warren owed him $20,000 in back pay.' Other sources point instead to Lapine/Porter disagreements over SFC editorial policy, dating from well before
Readercon. Andrew Porter himself who founded SFC,
published it himself from 1979 to mid-2000, and twice won the semiprozine
Hugo with it preferred not to comment.
R.I.P. Laurence M. Janifer (1933-2002), US author who began
publishing sf in 1953, died on 10 July aged 69. His work included early
collaborations with Randall Garrett (their joint pseudonym 'Mark Phillips'
achieved a 1960 novel Hugo nomination) and the ambitiously controversial You
Sane Men (1965; reissued as Bloodworld), for which Janifer had high
but unfulfilled hopes. Ron Walotsky (1943-2002), prolific,
popular US book and magazine cover artist who produced more than 50 covers for
F&SF, died from kidney failure on 29 July. He was only 59.
Kevin J.Anderson suffers from a familiar worry: 'Two years ago I
sold my rather immense SF series, "The Saga of Seven Suns", to John
Jarrold at Earthlight and Betsy Mitchell at Warner Aspect (US). Mere moments
after I had delivered the ms for Book 1, Hidden Empire, Betsy Mitchell
resigned her position and moved over to Del Rey Books. John Jarrold, though,
toughed it out and remained at his editorial desk until I turned in Book 2. Mere
moments after I had delivered the second manuscript, he, too, has announced his
resignation. (Perhaps it has something to do with those two quotes you cited in
Thog's Masterclass?) Regardless, I have grave concerns about the careers of my
various foreign editors when I deliver Book 3
'
Thog's Masterclass. Dept of But What Do You Keep It In?
'There was, after all, a certain fascination to the clever drain-cleaning
devices. [
] There were chemical compounds that had some quite military
properties, such as the ability to dissolve anything instantly including human
flesh.' (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game, 1990)
David Langford is an author and a gentleman.
His newsletter, Ansible,
is the essential SF-insider sourcebook of wit and incongruity. He lives in Reading, England with his wife Hazel, 25,000 books, and a few dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add books and Hugos.
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