Vector 2BO Contents The British Science Fiction Association Torque Control President Stephen Baxter Letters Acting Chair lan Whates Of Time and the River chairtlibsfa.co.uk By Paul Kincaid Treasurer Martin Potts Across the Dickian Multiverse 10 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton Near Tamworth Hal Duncan interviewed by Tony Keen 879011 Euripides Bound: Hal Duncan's use of [email protected] Greek tragedy 16 Membership By Tony Keen Services Peter Wilkinson Other Views: 21 39 Glyn Avenue, New Barnet Gwyneth Jones interviewed by Tanya Brown Herts.,EN49PJ 26 [email protected] First Impressions Membership fees Edited by Kari Sperring UK £26p.a., or £18 p. a. (unwaged), Progressive Scan: Being Human 46 or £28 p.a. Uoint/family memberships) by Abigail Nusshaum Outside UK £32 Foundation's Favourites: De Bracys Drug by The BSFA was founded in 1958 and is a non-profitmaking Volsted Gridban 49 organisation entirely staffed by unpaid volunteers. Registered in England. Limited by guarantee. Company By Andy Sawyer No. 921500 Resonances #55 51 Registered address: 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton, Near By Stcphen Baxter Tamworth, 879 OJJ 53 Website http://www.bsfa.co.uk The New X: Dream Countries by Graham Sleight Orbiter writing groups Postal Vector website: http://www.vector-magazine.co.uk Coordinator Gillian Rooke Editor's blog: http://vectoreditors.wordpress.rom Southview, Pilgrims Lane Chilham, Kent Vector CT48AB Features, Editorial Online Co·ordinator Terry Jackman and Letters: Niall Harrison terryjackman~ypostoffice.co.uk 73 Sunderland Avenue Oxford Other BSFA publications OX28DT Focus: The writer's magazine of the BSFA Book Reviews: Kari Sperring Editor Martin McGrath 19 Uphall Road 48 Spooners Drive, Cambridge Park Street, CB13HX StAlbans, AU2HL Production: Anna Feruglio Dal Dan [email protected] [email protected] Matrix: The news magazine of the BSFA Editor lan Whates l'ublished by the BSFA02008 ISSN05050448 [email protected] All op,n;ons ue lhose of the individual o;onlriblllorsllndshould not Print"" by roe Copyprint (Gllilfo-rd), Middle Unit, 77-83 WlIlnut 'free, n«e5Sllrilybelllkenllslhe v;ew softheBSFA. Close, GUilrord, Su"")', CUI 4UH SUMMBR 2009 • VECTOR 260 Torque Control I think we might need another award. Or. I'm greedy: just as I like having the BSFA Award tlnd perhaps it would be more honest to say, I want Il1so the Oatke Award. I want to keep the existing there to be another award.. Specifically, I want there popular-vote awards and add a juried award. to be a fantasy award equivalent to the Arthur C 1bese Utoughts are sparked, in part.. but the new Oatke Award: a juried award, to be presented for kid on the fantasy awards blodc,. the David Gemmell the best fantasy novel published in the OK in a given Legend Award. When it was launched, last year, the calendar year. Gemmell appeared to be the best of both worlds: I realise this may seem an unlikely thing to say. an initial publie--vote stage. in which anyone could in a field as blessed (or cursed) with awards as ours nominate a boclk for the award, followed by a second already is, but I'd argue that there is no existing stagein which a panel ofexpertsconsiderthe shortlist award that does the job that this award could do. and decide the winner. However, the process was Consider: the World Fantasy Award for best noveL changed, "after receiving lots of feedback from fans, N which is juricd, has on current form about a one-in­ readers and industry alike , to make the second three chance of going to a book that's not available in stage also a popular vote. There's also the fact that the OK. This is less of a problem for consumers now the award's criteria state that it is for books "in the than ever before, perhaps, but I (parochially, I admit) spirit or tradition of David Gemmell's own work" want an award that maps the state of the field in this and, as noted, I'm greedy: I want my hypothetical country. The British Fantasy Award for best noveL award to be as broad-ranging in its selections as meanwhile .- the August Der1eth Award - slants the C1arke Award; in other words, while I want it heavily toward dark fantasy and horror. Nothing to recognise: the best of what's published as genre wrong with that in itself, but I want an award that fantasy, I also want it to seek out and bring to my maps the whole field. attention excellent fantasy titles published outside Of course, fantasy novels are eligible for the !heg<nre. BSFA Award for best noveL and there is something Just a thought.. anyway. U anyone has thoughts in to be said for an award that considers the whole response. please send them to the usual address. field of the fantastic as one; but in practice, fantasy This issue. not entirely coincidentally, we focus novels make the BSFA ballot only rarely. and the on fantasy. with essays by Paul Kincaid on Robert last unambiguously fantasy novel to actually win Hold.stock, and Tony Keen. on Hal Duncan. We have was Terry PratchetYs Pyramids, published in 1989. interviews with Duncan.. and also with Gwyneth (Mary Gentle's Ash. published in 2fXK). also won.. Jones (whose latest noveL Spirit, is a space opera; but of course, but I tend to count that as sf; and even if the Bold as Love sequence blurred fantasy and sf, of yo~ don't, one fantasy winner per decade is not a course); plus reviews, and the usual columns from terribly high strike rate.) Moreover both the BFA and Abigail Nussbau.m. Andy Sawyer, Stephen Baxter, BSFA Awards are membership-vote awards. Again,. and Graham Sleight. Enjoy. in and of itself this is a good and valuable thing. but THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION IS DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE THE RETURN OF ITS NEWS AND MEDIA REVIEW MAGAZINE MATRIX With new production staff and a determination to stay the course http://www.bsfa.co.uk/matrix.aspx VECTOR 260· SUMMER 2009 Letters DearVt'Ctor, I haven't quite finished the mag, but I did a which Tiptra put that arfijacfual language which owns double-take at something in Tanya Brown's review the world 'and tells if: tells it what it is, tells il what to of The Company: Hpreviously s/he (the publicity dD." material indicates a female author, but there is I'm at a loss to point to any dLfining cJulrIuteristic something masculine about the style)" - would that in Parm's p~ tlult sign~ 'masculine': but it's be ineluctably masculine, by any chance? not impossible that I'm piding up on the SlIme cues as the Gendu ~ie, an onlilU applialtion which wUstS a Regards, simplified version of an algorithm dtfJ/!loped by Mashe Susan Francis Koppel, Bar-Uan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender ofan author. H I ran a couple of sample chapters Tanya Brown replies: from Parkn's recent work through the Genie (http:// bookblog.netlgmrkrlgmie.php) and the p~ sron$ SUSQn Frands references Silverbetg's commmt about higherfor male signijiLrs thanfor frmale. Alice Sheldon (James Tipfree Jr): as John etute writes, This proves nothing, of course, except that Parker's wTo dmy that Tiptne did in fact sound H/ike a man His style is doser to typically masculine prose ffuln 10 typiClllly to deny one's deRr sense thRt male hegemony utters ilself feminine prose - more 'informational' Ihan 'involued', to in recogniZAble terms; it also scants the masterly uses to use Moshe Koppe/'s terminology. Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 BSFA Awards Best Novel The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod (Orbit) Best Short Fiction "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang, first published in Eclipse 2 (Night Shade Books) Best Non Fiction Rhetorics ofFantasy by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan University Press) Best Artwork Cover of Subterfuge, 00. Ian Whates (Newcon Press), by Andy Bigwood SUMMER 2009 • VECTOR 260 Of Time and the River By Paul Kim:aid Later, time would flow so sinuously that it Eye Among th~ Blind (1976), was called Zeitman. 'Zeit' affected the very landscape through which it passed, means time in German. Itsuggests an interest in time changing the ecology along its banks, leaving behind right from the start of his career; and that first novel curious abandoned ox-bow lakes. But at first,. for did involve the appearance of supposedly mythical Robert Holdstock as for many another writer, time figures from the distant past of the alien world upon progressed as a more or less coherent chronology, which it is set. Nevertheless, this novel did nothing with the occasional backward glance of memory. unconventional with the notion of time. In Holdstock's second novel, All fiction is about time. Earthwind (1977), we glimpse the Anything that records the way first eddy in the timestream. It we change, the way events is set on the planet Aeran where happen. the paradeof cause and time's "behaviour is oscill~.tory. effect, is inescapably bound to Jt fluctuates cyclically about the time. But different writers look normal time flow" (160). Again. at time differently. For most however, this is really little more realist fiction time is presented than a statement of interest in a in a basic beginning-to-end non-traditional timescape. chronology, pretty much the With Holdstock's third novel. way we seem to experience it. Whm' Tim~ Winds BImD (1981), What breaks the flow, for us and a non-standard timestream for the realist author, is memory; begins 10 weave its way into the but even this dive back into the architecture of his writing.