02.14.03
Censorship Horror! Ansible's one e-mail subscriber at
parliament.uk was denied his February issue by some strange power which has yet
to master the apostrophe: 'Ansible 187 This is to advise you that your
email has been blocked and will be deleted by the Houses of Parliament in due
course since we believe it has inappropriate content. The intended recipient has
not received the email. In the event that you believe the email has been
blocked incorrectly please contact the intended recipient directly to discuss
it's release.' Apparently this new, prudish blocking system objects not only to
raunchy Ansible but to MPs' own e-mail discussion of legislation about
s*x ... see The
Register.
Nebula Final
Ballot. Follow link for the full list and various excerpts. The novel
finalists are:
Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin
Picoverse by Robert A. Metzger
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick
Stephen Baxter 'happened to be in NYC when the Columbia news broke.
All very sombre. I take no pleasure in my prediction of such a thing in Titan,
published in 1997. I predicted a crash of the oldest orbiter, Columbia, on
reentry as that's the second most dangerous time of the mission after launch,
and in 2004 (not 2003) as I knew there'd be more than 100 missions by then and
the odds were on a failure. But I guessed an internal failure rather than a
problem with the tiles, as it looks to be as I write. The fact that this was
going to happen sometime only enhances the courage of those who climb aboard
those beasts, I think. I remember being enthralled by John Young's first flight
of Columbia; shame she won't end up in the Smithsonian where she belongs....'
Mike Ashley, whom we have long suspected of criminal tendencies, is
shortlisted for an Edgar Allan Poe award (the crime field's Hugo): The
Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction made the final ballot under
Best Critical/Biographical.
Gary Westfahl is to receive the SF
Research Association's Pilgrim Award for lifetime critical contributions,
presented at the SFRA event in June.
R.I.P. Lana Clarkson (1961-2003), the 41-year-old actress
shot dead at record producer Phil Spector's home on 3 February, had several
minor genre credits: the Conanesque Deathstalker (1984) and Barbarian
Queen (1985), Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), etc.
Thog's Masterclass. Dept of Single Yet Amazingly Devastating
Shots. 'The Scorpion smirked before sending a bullet into Francesco's
forehead. Looking around the blood and gut-spattered dining room, the killer
...' (Peter Senese and Robert Geis, Cloning Christ, 2002)
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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