Category: Snippets

Tor.com reports:

In Sergey Dyachenko and Marina Shyrshova-Dyachenko’s fantasy Vita Nostra, described as “The Magicians but set in a rural Russian technical college,” Alexandra (Sasha) Samokhina is forced into a seemingly inconceivable situation: Against her will, she must enter the Institute of Special Technologies. A slightest misstep or failure at school—and the students’ loved ones pay a price. Governed by fear and coercion, Sasha will learn the meaning of the phrase “In the beginning was the word…”

The recipient of eight literary prizes and much critical acclaim in Russia, Vita Nostra has been translated into several languages. Harper Voyager has acquired Julia Hersey’s English translation of the novel, which was named the best novel of the twenty-first century in the sci-fi/fantasy genre at Eurocon-2008. The Magicians author Lev Grossman has described it as “a book that has the potential to become a modern classic of its genre.”

—- Tor.com
Harper Voyager Acquires English Translation of Russian Fantasy Vita Nostra

Our next meeting is at 7pm Wed April 5th, at Kappys Tea & Coffee merchants in Compton Street. The Hugo nominees will be known by then, and may offer an interesting guide to what’s currently popular.

We’ll also look at the growth of serial publishing, with samples of SerialBox for your delight.

If you act in the next 3 days, you can score a lovely selection of Big Finish Dr Who related stories.

Details at Humble Bundle Audio

Humble Bundle also has an offering featuring works by Women — these are digital books by an excellent selection of writers including Elizabeth Hand, Katherine Kurtz, Kate Elliot, Octavia Butler, Jane Yolen and more!

See the Women of Sci-Fi and Fantasy bundle

from io9:

On Wednesday, Earthlings were shocked—and certainly relieved—to finally get a push notification about planetary discovery, not political corruption. News broke that an international team of scientists had spied seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. Three of those planets are located in the habitable zone, where liquid water might form. NASA, the unofficial planetary hype train conductor, along with researchers behind the discovery, are doing everything in their power to drum up public excitement—including building a mythology for TRAPPIST-1 that blends science fact and fiction.

This week, planetary scientists launched a website for the star system that’s full of gorgeous infographics with data on the seven TRAPPIST planets. NASA has also added TRAPPIST-1 to its “Exoplanet Travel Bureau,” where it imagines what vacationing in the star system might be like.

— from io9

With the Fringe, the car race, and the unavailability of speakers, we’ve decided to cancel the March 1st meeting. We’ll try and make it up to you with a special extra meeting later in the year.

Our apologies if you were looking forward to it: go watch The Incredible Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec if you need your SF fix!

iOTA is a little efanzine put together by Leigh Edmonds for the singular purpose of keeping informed the fans who are interested the progress of his project to write a history of Australian sf fandom with a focus on the period from 1956 to 1975, and sundry offences.

Leigh’s kindly sent me electronic copies, and we chatted last weekend about how it’s progressing. As a professional historian, he’s talking to key fans active pre-1975 and sharing his interim results in iOTA. You can download copies at efanzines.

As he notes in the first issue:

The first reason for researching and writing as history of Australian fandom is; why not? From an academic point of view, I think that a history of what science fiction fans did might be considered a vital adjunct to the current study of science fiction, due to the very close relationship between sf and fandom over the generations. I’m also keen to do this because most of my recent history projects have been about large organizations employing thousands of people, and I’m looking forward to a project in which it is possible to get closer to people and their daily lives. Perhaps most important, this project will tell a story about what fans did and what their lives were like. We had fun, didn’t we? That should be worth celebrating.

Perhaps better described as a cross between Indiana and Lois Lane, our intrepid reporter, Adèle deals with curious events in pre-war Paris (1911).

The wonderful SBS recently screened The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec, the glorious fantasy based on a french graphic novel series. If you haven’t seen it yet (for some reason it didn’t get general cinema release, despite its well-known director), you can view it via SBS’ OnDemand service on their website. Worth catching if only for the most violent tennis match you’ll ever see on screen!

Luc Besson directs this visually impressive adaptation of the graphic novel following an independent-minded writer who becomes embroiled in a mystery involving mummies, bad guys, and dinosaurs in pre World War I Paris. Desperate to cure her near catatonic sister, intrepid authoress Adèle Blanc-Sec braves ancient Egyptian tombs and modern Egyptian lowlife to locate a mummified doctor and get him back to Paris. Her hope is that oddball Professor Espérandieu will then use his unusual powers to bring the doctor back to life so he, in turn, can use his centuries-old skills on the unfortunate sister. In Paris however Espérandieu is already causing mayhem, having brought to life what was a safe museum egg but is now a very active pterodactyl.

While we’re talking about Philip Pullman, you might want to view his commentary from the Guardian, June 2016:

There is our country’s post-imperial reluctance to let go of the idea that we are a great nation, combined with our post-second-world-war delusion that we were still a great power. That was why we refused the chance to join the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and our infatuation with our own greatness was sufficiently undamaged by Suez in 1956 to make us refuse to join the EEC when that got going with the Treaty of Rome in 1958. If we’d committed ourselves to Europe early, with everyone else, we’d now have a much deeper understanding of our real relationship to the continent, namely that we belong there.

He also has some scathing things to say about Australian media moguls, the British Labour Party and the British Constitution. Worth a read.

I still wasn’t sure whether England was in Europe or not; I had the impression that the English would have quite liked to be in Europe as long as they were running it, but weren’t particularly bothered otherwise
— Dave Hutchinson, whose character was commenting on English attitudes in the middle book of his  Fractured Europe trilogy