PNNewt 3

Special Rather Wet February Edition with Not Much Going On Storming the Bastille—Justina Robson Spyglass, won the 2001 Whitbread Award, 2002 TAFF Nominations Open (The Alien Online) unleashing a flurry of comment about the Sue Mason, European TAFF administrator, ‘The Best Introduction to the Mountains’ ‘new wave of children’s literature’ from has asked for nominations for prospective —Gene Wolfe (Interzone 174) previously stagnant journalists. European candidates to attend ConJosé. Best Artwork: Written nominations (from 3 European and Cover of Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Don’t Forget those 2 North American fans) along with a £10 Grimwood—The Whole Hog Hugo Nominations bond and a platform of not more than 100 ‘Roach Hotel’—Dominic Harman If you’re a member of ConJosé or The words should reach Sue by 28 February. (cover of Interzone 166) Millennium Philcon, you can nominate in

Cover of Omegatropic by Stephen Baxter— the Hugos. Online at the ConJosé website Colin Odell even (http://www.conjose.org). You’ll need Cover of Gridlinked by Neal Asher— your Hugo Nominating PIN (not to be confused with your Hugo Nominee Pin), Steve Rawlings st Heart of Empire, the CD-Rom— and ballots must be received by March 31 . Bryan Talbot Vote in the Faan Awards But be quick—they’ll be awarded at Corflu Concourse—A Splitter Valentine next weekend. Victor is Site than Usual collecting votes; e-mail him at A 2004 Eastercon bid has emerged, with [email protected] with your top the unusual idea of asking voters to choose three picks, in order, for each of the between two sites. Would you like the categories Best Fanzine, Best Fanwriter, Eastercon to be in the recently refurbished Best Fan Artist, Best Letterhack, and Best Tobes for TAFF – and this time he’s serious Wintergardens in Blackpool, with many New Fanzine Fan. local restaurants, and cheap hotel space BSFA Shortlist Announced distributed about the town, or at the It’s that time of year again. The shortlist for Fanzines not your thing? Radisson Edwardian at Heathrow, the con the 2002 BSFA Awards is as follows: Nominate for the Pegasus Awards hotel for Evolution, sited on a dusty bit of Best Novel: The Pegasus Awards for filk will be A4, but with lovely, comfy, beds right there American Gods—Neil Gaiman (Feature) awarded at OVFF in October. Nominate up onsite? The committee consists of Marcus Pashazade—by Jon Courtenay Grimwood to five songs/people in the categories of Streets, Chris “The Magician” O’Shea (for (Earthlight) Best Filk Song, Best Writer/Composer, Best TAFF), and Jonathan “Jonjo” Jones. Bold as Love—Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz) Performer, Best Chilling/Spine-Tingling, and The Secret of Life—Paul McAuley Best Song that Tells a Story. Nominations Clarke Shortlist Announced st (Voyager) The shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke Award to [email protected] by May 1 . Chasm City—Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz) is: Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Go Read Plokta Online Lust—Geoff Ryman (Flamingo) (Earthlight), Fallen Dragon by Peter F. We’ve put two new issues (20 and 21) of Best Short Story: Hamilton (Macmillan), Bold as Love by our fanzine Plokta online at http://www. ‘Under the Saffron Tree’—Cherith Baldry Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz), The Secret of plokta.com/plokta. Plokta has won the (Interzone 166) Life by Paul McAuley (Voyager), Nova and been nominated several times for ‘First to the Moon’—Stephen Baxter & Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson the Hugo, and is about, well, stuff. Simon Bradshaw (Spectrum SF 6, July (Macmillan), and Passage by Connie Willis 2001) (Voyager). The judges are: Paul Billinger ‘The Children of Winter’—Eric Brown and Tony Cullen of the British Science (Interzone 163) Fiction Association, Doug Millard of the ‘Myxomatosis’—Simon Ings (Interzone 165) Science Museum, and Liz Sourbut and Lisa ‘Wind Angels’—Leigh Kennedy Tuttle of the Science Fiction Foundation. (Interzone 171) The administrator is Paul Kincaid. ‘Isabel of the Fall’—Ian R. McLeod (Interzone 169) His Dark Materials—Now a Best Non-Fiction: Major Motion Picture! Omegatropic—Stephen Baxter Well, not yet, in fact. But Reuters reports Terry Pratchett—Andrew M Butler (Pocket that New Line Cinema (they of Lord of the Essentials) Rings) have acquired the rights to Philip Tim Burton—Colin Odell and Mitch Pullman’s terrific trilogy, His Dark Materials. LeBlanc (Pocket Essentials) The third part of the trilogy, The Amber The cover of Plokta 20 Any Old words, Any Old Words Entirely Gratuitous Picture of Alison Slow Glass Invented Mike Christie is spear-heading a project to Freebairn in Rubber Gear According to Nature, researchers in the US collect cites for sfnal and fannish words Taken very very late at night at Novacon. and Korea have invented a crystal that under the auspices of the US wing of the sounds suspiciously like Bob Shaw’s most Oxford English Dictionary. famous creation, slow glass, as described in It’s a pilot project, and they’re looking for the stories collected in Other Days, Other high-quality cites of a wide range of words Eyes. Except that they go one better by from sf, fandom, and sf criticism. As well as being able to stop light completely, and words used in science fiction, there are then emit it when they want to. Though separate lists of sfnal criticism terms, and meanwhile we’ve acquired much of the fannish terms. They also want suggestions for social change effected by slow glass other words that ought to be on the list. through the simpler matter of slathering our So, you too can haul out your obsolete video public places in video cameras. games searching for the word ‘avatar’ in the sense of a ‘VR representation of a person’ ante RIP Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash in 1992. Or Andromeda bookshop, SF and fantasy ‘skyhook’ (not Sky Hook or sky-hook) prior to specialist, closing its doors after 30 years Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. Fun for in the trade. Rog can still fill orders from all the family. books in stock, and we urge you all to buy Cites from really well-known sources are books from him while you can. better, of course, (for some reason, Heinlein Jack “Jay” Haldeman (1941-2002), SF juveniles seem to be particularly popular) but Gosh, you’re beautiful when you’re angry author and fan, died following an illness; he there are plenty of terms where any evidence wrote novels, stories, non-fiction and poetry, will do. You would think, for example, that Date for your Diary and was chair of Discon II, the 1974 the many issues of Ian Sorensen’s Conrunner Remember that Picocon is on Saturday, at Worldcon. would be pretty solid evidence for conrunning the Imperial College Union on Prince Cele Goldsmith, managing editor of Fantastic terms such as “conrunner”. And Ansible 45 Consort Road, London. Guests are Anne and Amazing Stories from 1961-1965, died is an earlier cite for the fannish sense of Gay, Stan Nicholls and China Miéville. aged 68; she was responsible for buying the ‘condom’ than their listing from the 1989 first published stories from Zelazny, Disch, Worldcon programme book. I love this game. Fanzines Received LeGuin and many others. There’s been a few, in fact. But I Where Are They Now? specifically wanted to mention a couple. Memestream Lucy Huntzinger livened up our pre- Science Fiction Five Yearly 11, edited by Concourse: http://www.eastercon.com/ Christmas gloom by posting a couple of Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan, Jeff Schalles concourse, Beyond Cyberdrome: dozen photos of UK fans from the mid- and Terry Hughes, came out bang on time http://www. beyondcyberdrome.org.uk, eighties in her web journal. Here, for as usual, in glorious fluffy Fibertone. Fifty Weird British Buffy parody: http://www. example, is Don West in a Hawaiian shirt: years after the original publication, it’s still fluffytheslayer.com/ , The Lord of the Rings going strong. Much newer is considered as a downhill academic race: zoo nation 1, which arrived out of the blue http://danny.oz.au/danny/humour/ from neofan Pete Young. The strapline for phd_lotr.html, Just exactly how geeky are this tiny perzine is “Steam Engine Time it you? http://www.brunching.com/features/ Ain’t”, and that’s fair. Lots of design, geekhierarchy.html, cute iMac animation: photos, a tiny Novacon report, a couple of http://www.mab3d.com/images/ rants, “why I am pubbing my ish”. “what quicktimepop02.html, I’ve been reading lately”, and loads of Skin diseases in The Lord of the Rings: design. Oh, and small ads and a special http://itsb.ucsf.edu/~vcr/ issue one letter column. All very promising Spot17LOTR.html, Secret Slash Journals of Meanwhile, Alun Harries hasn’t but could do with some articles in between the Fellowship: http://www.livejournal.com/ changed a bit all the nifty bits. Also in a tiny package, users/cassieclaire/, Janice Gelb’s Smofcon News from the 2005 Worldcon but pretty much just text, is David Levine 2001 Report: http://www.geocities.com/ Vince Docherty has been appointed and Kate Yule’s Bento. The high quality of j_gelb/smofcon01.htm, Harvey the Mouse Operational Chair of the Glasgow Worldcon the writing is always the main event here, Must Die: http://www.stupidinternet.org/ (if, as expected, they win the vote.) It can with the tiny format encouraging careful mouse.html, All Your Newbie Usenet Posts be hard to decode runes like this, but I prose. David outlines the snowball effect of Preserved For Eternity: http://groups. reckon that’s Chief Executive. his writing career – perhaps we’ll be google.com, Dating SF words: http://www. If you’re interested in your views being buying his novels soon. Much bigger is the jessesword. com/SF/sf_citations.shtml taken into account when considering the latest Challenger, with more great photos, guests for the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow, e- this time of Guy’s wedding. Challenger’s The Plokta News Newt is the analog edition of the Plokta mail Mark Plummer and Claire Brialey on well worth reading, and I enjoy large News Network, oversampled (rather quickly this time) by Alison Scott. PNN includes regularly updated news for [email protected]. chunks of it, especially Guy’s fascinating SF fans, along with links to great fanwriting online and If you’re considering volunteering to help courtroom dramas. But Guy’s relentless other interesting stuff, and you can read it online at out with Worldcon, we recommend you seek pounding after a Hugo gets tiresome after a http://www.plokta.com/pnn or sign up for emails. Newt immediate medical treatment. by Sue Mason. Send news, LoCs and feedback to while. If they dished out the fan Hugos to Alison Scott, 24 St Mary Road, Walthamstow, the people who want them the most, I’d London E17 9RG or to [email protected]. have thought he was a shoo-in. Issue 3, February Nurse, 2002.