The Adelaide Fan Review

The Tor.com site has now become Reactor (www.reactormag.com) on January 23, 2024, — with the launch of a completely redesigned website.

Since its founding in 2008, Tor.com has become a leader in coverage of science fiction and fantasy books and popular culture, with over 3 million visits per month. As an online magazine, Tor.com has won countless awards and has been the Locus Award winner for Best Magazine for 7 years running. In addition to its coverage of all things SFF, the site is also home to an award-winning short fiction program, which has published works by Seanan McGuire, E. Lily Yu, N.K. Jemisin, and scores of first-time authors, and which have gone on to win several Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards, and World Fantasy Awards.

Devi Pillai, President and Publisher of Tor Publishing Group, remarked, “I am very excited to introduce Reactor to the world! We have always been the place to come to for science fiction and fantasy—but with a new name, a new design, we are going to have a magazine that will be more of a pop culture hub for people who love genre of all types. We want to expand the audience and the community that Tor.com has built over the past 15 years.”

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation. Based on the book by Alasdair Gray, the screenplay was written by Tony McNamara, making this the second collaboration between Lanthimos and McNamara (THE FAVOURITE). The movie was produced by Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Emma Stone.

synopsis from Silverscreen notes at The Mercury

Screening at 2pm, Tuesday 13th Feb at The Mercury

This film is an interesting variant on Frankenstein, but this time the monster is female (Emma Stone) with a child’s brain in an adult body. Beautifully filmed by Lanthimos in colour and black and white, set in a turn of the century steampunk world. Bella doesn’t hide her enjoyment of sex, and is happy to demand her fair share…
A very interesting revamp of the Frankenstein story, well worth catching on the big screen.

For Doctor Who-lovers they are the missing crown jewels: lost episodes of the first series of the TV sci-fi drama, shown in the 1960s. But now film recordings of not just one, but two of the early BBC adventures, both featuring the first doctor, William Hartnell, has been found in Britain by amateur sleuths.

The episodes, one featuring the Daleks, would offer viewers a chance to travel back in time without the use of a Tardis. But the Observer has learned that the owners of the rare, rediscovered footage are not prepared to hand it over to the BBC, even as the clock ticks down to the 60th anniversary of the show’s launch this month.

Veteran film collector John Franklin believes the answer is for the BBC to announce an immediate general amnesty on missing film footage.

Vanessa Thorpe, The Guardian

Seven episodes from 1963 have been colourised and woven together into a 75-minute long monster show, The Daleks in Colour, which will be shown on BBC Four on 23 November.

Jeff Harris will be discoursing on the topic.
It is recommended persons attending Critical Mass re-read or read for the first time, Lem’s Solaris.
A pleasure not to be missed.

English translation

Murray notes the comments in wikipedia:

“Both the original Polish version of the novel (published in 1961) and its English translation are titled Solaris. Jean-Michel Jasiensko published his French translation in 1964 and that version was the basis of Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox’s English translation (Walker and Company, 1970; Faber and Faber, 1971).^[8] Lem, who read English fluently, repeatedly voiced his disappointment with the Kilmartin–Cox version.^[9]

In 2011, Bill Johnston completed an English translation from the Polish. Lem’s wife and son reviewed this version more favorably: “We are very content with Professor Johnston’s work, that seems to have captured the spirit of the original.”^[10] It was released as an audio book and later in an Amazon Kindle edition (2014, ISBN 978-83-63471-41-5). Legal issues have prevented this translation from appearing in print.^[10]“

November 22nd, 6:15 for a 6:30 start at Christie Walk Common Room, 101 Sturt Sttreet

Zoom details: Nov 22, 2023 6:30pm Adelaide; 7pm Melbourne & Sydney; 8am London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85458527256?pwd=QkE3Uy9SZTZkTjh6OHdzdFBCRDRydz09

Meeting ID: 854 5852 7256
Passcode: 384750

Everyone’s favourite lethal SecUnit is back in System Collapse, the next installment in Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series—out from Tordotcom Publishing on November 14th.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

Excerpts from the novel are available at tor.com:
https://www.tor.com/2023/10/23/excerpts-system-collapse-by-martha-wells/
and https://www.tor.com/2023/10/30/excerpts-system-collapse-by-martha-wells-2/

This weekend, the winners of the 2023 World Fantasy Awards were announced at the World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The 2023 awards recognize work published in 2022. This year’s judges were Dale Bailey, Kelly Robson, Ginny Smith, A. C. Wise, and Ian Whates. Along with the awards below, Life Achievement Awards were given to Peter Crowther and John Douglas.

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

NOVEL WINNER: Saint Death’s Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney (Solaris)

NOVELLA WINNER: Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (Absinthe Books

SHORT FICTION WINNER: “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” by Tananarive Due (Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology)

ANTHOLOGY WINNER: Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, eds. Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight (Tordotcom Publishing)

Details of all categories, winners and nominees, at tor.com

The 2023 Hugo Awards were presented October 21 during a ceremony at the Chengdu Worldcon.

BEST NOVEL: Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)

BEST NOVELLA Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

BEST NOVELETTE “The Space-Time Painter”, by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY OR COMIC Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, by Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, Krzysztof Ostrowski (Dark Horse Books)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM Everything Everywhere All at Once, screenplay by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert (IAC Films / Gozie AGBO)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM The Expanse: “Babylon’s Ashes”, written by Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, Naren Shankar, directed by Breck Eisner (Alcon Entertainment)

see the full list at File770