08.16.02

A terrible fate awaits me as I prepare this instalment: I'm one of several minor guests at the Discworld Convention in Hinckley, Leicestershire, which rages unchecked from 16-19 August. The sole major guest is of course Terry, er, Terry wossname, it's on the tip of my tongue …

David G.Hartwell is greatly taken by the latest trend in e-mail spam: faking a celebrity sender to lure you into opening the message. Thus the interesting juxtaposition:

From: William Gibson
To: David G.Hartwell
RE: dgh,Bigger breasts without surgery in 30 days …

Robert L.Forward was recently diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and is unlikely to be with us for more than another year. There have been too many farewells in the sf world lately.

Minority View? Earlier this week, the BBC Radio website offered the following headline and contents listing for Radio 4:

What are the seven horrors of Britain?

    Today programme
    Woman's hour
    The Archers
    Programmes a-z
    Lord of the Rings

(Presumably they count LotR as three, one for each volume…)

World Fantasy Awards book-length nominations — winners to be announced 3 November:

	NOVEL American Gods by Neil Gaiman; Brown Harvest by Jay Russell; The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold; From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury; The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint; The Other Wind by Ursula K.Le Guin; The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll.
	ANTHOLOGY Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 12 ed. Stephen Jones; Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women ed. Stephen Jones; The Museum of Horrors ed. Dennis Etchison; Stigmata ed. Jerad Walters; Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 14 ed. Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling.
	COLLECTION Dark Universe by William F.Nolan; The Essential Ellison (revised) by Harlan Ellison; Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson; Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link; Talking in the Dark by Dennis Etchison.

Thog's Masterclass. Dept of One Lip Clapping.'Mr Ibis said nothing, but he smirked loudly.' (Neil Gaiman, American Gods, 2001) Dept of Athletics. 'Her eyebrows leaped at him.' (Megan Lindholm, The Wizard of the Pigeons, 1986)

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.