The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association #249 • september/october 2006 • £2.so Vector 249 The critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association Contents The British Science Fiction Association Torque Control 3 Officers Editorial by Geneva Melzack & Niall Harrison President Sir Arthur C. Clarke, CBE Finding Tomorrow's Futures 4 Vice President Stephen Baxter By Angie Edwards Chairs Pat McMurray & Julie Rigby Twenty Years After 5 [email protected] By Paul Kincaid Treasurer Martin Potts 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton, Near Tamworth A Brief Survey 7 B79 0JJ Some views on the Clarke Award [email protected] Preface to The Critical Companion 11 Membership Peter Wilkinson By Neil Gaiman Services 39 Glyn Avenue, New Barnet, Herts Air by Geoff Ryman 12 (UK & Europe) EN4 9PJ [email protected] An extended review by Andy Sawyer US Agent Cy Chauvin The Clarke and Me 15 14248 Willfred Street, Detroit, MI 48213, USA By Geoff Ryman Membership fees Winner Written All Over It 16 UK £26 p.a., or £18p.a. (unwaged), or £28 By Tom Hunter (Joint/Family membership), Life membership £260 Archipelago 17 Europe £31 p.a. By Geneva Melzack and Niall Harrison USA $35 p.a. (surface mail) $45 p.a. (airmail) First Impressions 19 Rest of the World £31 p.a. (surface mail) Book Reviews edited by Paul N. Billinger £37 p.a. (airmail) UK and Europe, make cheques payable to: BSFA Ltd and send to Peter Particles 32 Wilkinson at the address above. US cheques payable to: Cy Chauvin edited by Paul N. Billinger (BSFA) The New X 36 The BSFA was founded in 1958 and is a non-profitmaking organisation A column by Graham Sleight entirely staffed by unpaid volunteers. Registered in England. Limited by Cover: Geoff Ryman receiving the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award. guarantee. Company No. 9215000. Photo by Tony Cullen ©2006 Registered Address: 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, Daventry NN11 3BE Vector website: http://www.vector-magazine.co.uk/ Website www.bsfa.co.uk BSFA Awards Ian Snell Vector [email protected] Editors Orbiter Writing Gillian Rooke Features, Editorial Geneva Melzack & Niall Harrison Groups Southview, Pilgrims Lane, Chilham, Kent, and Letters Flat 6, Arvon House, 3 Boyn Hill Avenue, CT4 8AB Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 4ET [email protected] Other BSFA Publications Book Reviews Paul N. Billinger Matrix: The news magazine of the BSFA 1 Long Row Close, Everdon, Daventry Commissioning Tom Hunter NN11 3BE Editor 46 Saltwell Street, London, E14 0DZ [email protected] [email protected] Production and Tony Cullen Features & News Claire Weaver General 16 Weaver’s Way, Camden, London Editor [email protected] NW1 0XE [email protected] Production & Media Martin McGrath Editor 48 Spooners Drive, Park Street, St Albans, Associate Editor Tanya Brown AL2 2HL amaranth@ amaranth.aviators.net [email protected] Published by the BSFA ©2006 ISSN 0505 0448 Focus: The writer's magazine of the BSFA All opinions are those of the individual contributors and should not Editor Simon Morden necessarily be taken as the views of the editors or the BSFA 13 Egremont Drive, Sherriff Hill, Gateshead Printed by PDC Copyprint (Guildford), Middle Unit, 77-83 NE9 5SE [email protected] Walnut Tree Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4UH September/October 2006 • Vector 249 ay back in February, the guest at you could say that Sheldon had to create the BSFA's London Meeting was one story, that of being James Tiptree Jr, Steve Cockayne, author of the to be able to tell the other stories she WLegends of the Land trilogy (and, most recently,wanted to tell. The Good People, reviewed by Elizabeth But what is it that sf and fantasy, in Billinger last issue). Instead of reading from a particular, have to bring to the story of fiction work-in-progress, he read an lives? That's the question we asked Gary unpublished autobiographical essay, about K. Wolfe; his answering essay, ‘Framing growing up with the sf of the 1950s, and in the Unframeable', leads off this issue. particular about the sf adventure his father Our other articles take in a range of created for his Pegasus Marionette Theatre. It perspectives. In ‘The Modern was a lovely story, and we'repleased to be Storytellers', Jon Ingold outlines the able to reprint it in this issue. Even better, quest for interactive fiction (for example, Cockayne had some of the original puppets in computer g times), a fo rm which used in the production with him: they're the ultimately may come closer to capturing ones on the cover of this issue. the experience of living than any prose or Originally, on our plan for the year, this filmed narrative could. Speaking of issue was going to be The One With No filmed narratives, Alison Page looks at Theme, the one where all the articles that the first season of BBC television drama didn't quite fit into other issues could go. But Life on Mars through an epistemological having acquired Cockayne's essay, we started lens: more explicitly than in most fiction, thinking about what sort of thing might go the show's protagonist, Sam, is trying to with it. Things started to fall into place at find out what the story of his life is, and Concussion last Easter. In her guest of honour his uncertainty colours everything the interview, Elizabeth Hand talked about the show is and does. Of course, stories can ways in which she uses her personal be instrumental within lives, as well as experiences in her fiction, and in particular the applying to them. In this month's differences between working on a fantasy Archipelago section, Paul Kincaid looks novel and working on her forthcoming realist at ome of the moral rtosies we tell novel, Generation Loss. You can read her ourselves about human actions and thoughts on ‘Writing without a filter' in this societies, through the lens of Ursula Le issue, as well. There was another panel later Guin's ambiguously utopian tale ‘The on at the convention called ‘Mining the Heart', Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'. which looked like it was going to explore And in his regular column, Graham similar issues; sadly neither of us were able to Sleight tackles the question of ‘Storying make it (send us a report, if you were there), Genres', otherwise known as that old but by now we had an overall theme for the definitions game. issue: ‘storying lives'. So that's how this issue came to be. Or The more we thought about it, the more at least, it's one story of how this issue facets this theme seemed to have to explore. came to be. You see, the problem is that Every day, we story our own lives, both we're writing this in September, and we internally and in how we represent ourselves were commissioning articles between to others. We story other peoples' lives, and March and June, and it's hard to use those stories as the basis for friendships remember exactly what order things and relationships. And clearly, writers are happened in. So maybe it was at always going to draw on their experience Concussion that it all came together, but when creating fictional stories. Take this maybe it happened before or after. That's Editorial year's winner of the BSFA Award for Best the other thing you realise when you Short Fiction, Kelly Link's ‘Magic for start thinking about how to story by Beginners', for instance, which draws on something: there's always more than one Link's experiences of watching Buffy the way to do it. Geneva Vampire Slayer with friends. (The collection to This issue also marks the end of a which the story lends its title is finally due to story: it is Geneva's final issue as co­ Melzack be published in the UK next February, by editor of Vector. Next issue will be the HarperPerennial.) Or take one of the big books 250th Vector, and the start of a new & Niall of this year, Julie Phillips' biography of Major chapter in the magazine's story, as Niall Alice Hastings Bradley Davey Sheldon, PhD: begins his solo stint as editor. Harrison 3 Vector 249 • September/October 2006 his fiction and seem almost intended to obfuscate; even the poem Framing the which provided these titles turns out to be a fake, written by Asimov himself specifically to generate the titles. Only much later, literally on his deathbed, did Asimov revisit his life in Unframeable another massive volume, I. Asimov (1994), with fragmentary - but one feels more unmediated - meditations on his work and by Gary K. Wolfe his career. Similarly, Robert Bloch’s 1995 autobiography Once Around the Bloch is essentially an extended version of one of his "Unser Leben ist kein Traum, aber es soil und wird viellicht einer legendarily funny con speeches, Frederik Pohl’s The Way the werden". Future Was is mostly an engaging insider’s history of much of (“Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will.") American sf, and Piers Anthony’s 1988 Bio of an Ogre features -Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg), as quoted in George more cranky score-settling than genuine introspection. MacDonald’s Phantastes (1859) Perhaps we shouldn’t expect more; after all, as I mentioned, for the most part these are celeb memoirs, written more to satisfy “And do not rely on the fact that in your life, circumscribed, regulated, the curiosity of fans than to draw us deeper into the authors’ and prosaic, there are no such spectacular and terrifying things." works and worldviews.