Category: Snippets

Murray notes:
As our lockdown continues and Victoria opens up on the modelling that it’ll be a 50/50 coin-toss whether or not our hospitals get overwhelmed, I’m hoping that your spirits are well and you and your friends and family are reaching out to each other with care and fun.

Here’s some fun! Paul Voermans is our guest at the Nova Mob on Wednesday 6 October! 

Paul will be telling us about his latest novel, 2020’s The White Library. It is highly likely that byways and tangents of sfnal, surrealist and fannish interest may be pointed at, explored, and poked with sticks.

Paul says, “I’ve attended a few Nova Mobs in my day, but I assume that this one will not include attending a restaurant in Richmond! I suspect that dates me….” 

In truth it dates all of us because that was pre-pandemic. Our meeting will be by Zoom, invitation below, but first the calendar:

Calendar

Sep 28 – Nova Mob Special 1-hour meeting: Clarke Awards announcement.

Oct 6 – Paul Voermans on The White Library.

Oct 27 – Critical Mass Adelaide – Online SF Magazines Lightspeed, Escape Pod, Uncanny.

Oct 29 – Australian Science Fiction Foundation Awards Night with Nova Mob party room.

Nov 3 – Ian Mond – 2021’s ten best books of SF interest not branded as SF.

Nov 27 – Critical Mass Adelaide – Roman Orszanski on Empires, Galactic and Magic. 

Dec 1 – Iain McIntyre – Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985 by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre.

Dec 18 – end of year Nova Mob lunch hopefully face to face. To be confirmed, it’s subject to  pandemic restrictions and requirements.

💥 💥 💥

Meeting: Paul Voermans on The White Library (2020)

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting of the Nova Mob.

Date and Time: Oct 6, 2021 8:00pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, 7:30pm Adelaide

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Passcode: nova

Meeting ID: 417 758 3193

Paul speaks from about 8.10pm to around 9.00pm followed by questions and discussions. Formal close after discussions, say 9.20pm, and final close for those who wish to linger and chat will be at or before 10pm.

Ian Mond reviews The White Library in Locus:

Melbourne’s State Library is the setting for Paul Voerman’s third full-length published novel, The White Library. 

What’s the weirdest thing you could imagine going on in a national library?

Dropout physics student Angela Donohoe is about to discover just that. Release it.  Become it. All in a world where colonial history did not quite turn out like ours, where the global power is the Federated Kingdom of Mendana and David Bowie was an astronaut, The White Library is a surreal escapade of library friends and enemies, love—and a remarkable woman.

Full review in Locus

It’s also a slightly sideways sequel-by-association to Paul’s The Weird Colonial Boy.
Says Paul:

[I’ve bought the e-book and it worked out at AU$5.89 — I received the email link within five minutes and had a choice of mobi or epub ]

J. Michael Straczynski told Facebook readers August 12th that The Last Dangerous Visions has been finished.

THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS has at last been completed. The final draft went off to the agency that will be handling the sale about fifteen minutes ago. This has been a massive effort…112,000 words…tracking down the estates of the original writers to be included in the book, and nailing down some newer A List writers; fans of Harlan’s who wanted to be a part of TLDV. (And for the record, Harlan continued to buy stories for the anthology right through the 90s, and stopped only due to illness. He saw TLDV as a living document, and fought to keep it relevant when some stories became less timely or were supplanted by real world events.)

I will have more to say about the contents at a later date, but suffice to say that they include some of the most visionary writers in the science fiction genre over the last 48 years.

Murray notes:

Dear Nova Mob and friends, our guest at the forthcoming Nova Mob is the witty, erudite, compelling, and encyclopaedic John Clute, science fiction’s foremost critic!

Frankly I’m just gobsmacked, colour me purple, tickle me pink, and over the moon. Delighted, yes definitely delighted. But expect no such cliches from our guest! Our time together will be a fireside chat, and I do recommend “some research required” for your questions to be put to John.

Already I’ve enquired gently of John about book storage problems, reflections on where the Encyclopaedias came from and where they are going, and whether the phrase “the Gene Wolfe of SF criticism” would be a good fit. With some poise he has replied:

Gene Wolfe —  I can certainly say in our conversation why that’s interesting, but also (stature aside) I’d distinguish between us. I can do questions about Fantastika; memories of Peter Nicholls; the theory of archive as applied to Collections

Fantastika has considerable appeal; the concept solves many of the field’s definitional problems. It acknowledges that the English-speaking world has taken up some ill-wrought terms to describe science fiction, fantasy, and horror, to the point where the term “Fantastic” as used by Suvin and many others cannot comfortably be applied directly to American, UK, and other English-language criticism of the field. “Fantastika” has the ring of truth to it, please dive in, it’s worth it. (The first four items steadily get more sophisticated and nuanced)

From Locus, an introduction to John: https://locusmag.com/2009/09/john-clute-fantastika/

From a certain essential Encyclopedia:

http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/fantastika

Fantastika in the World Storm – a talk by John Clute

https://web.archive.org/web/20161217191546/http://www.johnclute.co.uk/word/?p=15

Fantastika; or, The Sacred Grove. Article, Fantastika Journal. Volume 1. Issue 1. April 2017. John Clute.
Start at page 13, and describes the eight or so dimensions contained in the  concept of Fantastika

https://fantastikajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Fantastika-Journal.-Vol-1.-Issue-1.pdf

Others:

A brief yet lightning-sharp review of Thomas Harris’s Hitler Wins novel, Fatherland:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161229131658/http://www.johnclute.co.uk/word/?p=9

An introduction to John Clute by Douglas Fratz which captures tone superbly:

https://www.sfsite.com/09b/pi376.htm

“Clute has dedicated his life work to the field of SF, fantasy and horror — to Fantastika — and all of us in the field should be profoundly grateful that he has done so.”

Obligatory wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clute#Excessive_candour

John Clute’s web site and books:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160326014153/http://johnclute.co.uk/

https://www.fictiondb.com/author/john-clute~32306.htm

NOVA MOB JUNE MEETING – 2 JUNE – JOHN CLUTE

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Nova Mob 2 June – John Clute – A Fantastika Fireside chat
Time: Jun 2, 2021 8:00pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney; 7:30 Adelaide

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Meeting ID: 417 758 3193
Passcode: nova

While we’re talking about variants on the Holmes canon, let me recommend Enola Holmes, a delightful film based on a novel The Missing Marquess. I was smitten by the opening scenes on the bicycle! An excellent film.

Murray writes
Hi all Nova Mob participants and friends
Our guest this coming Wednesday is best-selling science fiction author and commentator John Birmingham. With thanks to the Mob members who asked for some military SF on the Nova Mob program. John is Australia’s biggest-selling and finest exponent of the timeslip military SF alternate history monster apocalypse great powers airport thriller genre.

John won the 2005 Locus Award for best first novel for his “Weapons of Choice”, the first in his Axis of Time trilogy of alternative history novels based on a modern fleet of warships going back in time to World War Two. A later trilogy, Stalin’s Hammer, addresses the legacy of the fall of the Axis of Time as Stalin’s USSR seeks to reshape the world. The James Kipper series asks, “what would happen if the USA just suddenly disappeared?” and the Dave Hooper series is a monster apocalypse thriller gorefest. Of course, John first came to fame with He Died with a Felafel in his Hand and is known for his commentary on modern Australia politics. 

John reports, “By happy coincidence I’ll have two new(ish) titles out that week. The ebook of Zero Day Code and the audio of American Kill Switch (which closes out the series)”. Those are from the End of Days series, a very plausible scenario for bringing down the American civilisation.  

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51080208-zero-day-code

As Penguin put it: “John Birmingham has written for Rolling Stone, Playboy, Long Bay Prison News, Quarterly Essay and The Monthly. His published works include He Died With A Falafel In His Hand and Leviathan: The unauthorised biography of Sydney. He started writing airport novels because they were more fun.”

John Birmingham – Reality? What price our reality?
Wednesday March 3rd
8.00pm – 9.30 pm or so, Melbourne time, 7:30 — 9pm Adelaide By Zoom:

Nova Mob 3 March 8.00pm 
login after 7.50 PM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (7:20pm Adelaide)

Join Zoom Meeting for Nova Mob
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09
Meeting ID: 417 758 3193
Passcode: nova

About John – 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birmingham
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/birmingham_john
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?27931
https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A9492?mainTabTemplate=agentWorksBy
https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/john-birmingham
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-17/brisbane-author-john-birmingham-makes-leap-to-self-publishing/8127990

To read some of John’s work: free download!

Tweets by JohnBirmingham

http://cheeseburgergothic.com/
https://aliensideboob.substack.com/p/time-line-of-a-cover-up
[Deeply regrettably, not SF]