October BSFA London Meeting: SF Gateway discussion – 26th October 2011 – Free entry

On Wednesday 26th October 2011 from around 7pm:

DARREN NASH (Orion Books) and GRAHAM SLEIGHT (Science Fiction Encyclopedia) will discuss the Gollancz Science Fiction Gateway with Tom Hunter (Arthur C. Clarke Award Administrator).

Tanith Lee is unfortunately unable to attend. Her interview has been rearranged for 27th June 2012.

Venue:

Upstairs Room
The Antelope Tavern
22, Eaton Terrace
Belgravia
London
SW1W 8EZ

Nearest Tube: Sloane Square (District/Circle)
Map:here.

All welcome! (No entry fee or tickets. Non-members welcome.)
Interview will commence at 7.00 pm, but the room is open from 6.00 (and fans in the downstairs bar from 5).
There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

FUTURE EVENTS:

23rd November 2011* – STEPHEN BAXTER interviewed by Paul Cornell

(No meeting in December.)

25th January 2012 – CHRISTOPHER PRIEST interviewd by Paul Kincaid

22nd February 2012* – LIZ WILLIAMS interviewd by Ian Whates

* Note that this is a month with five Wednesdays. The meeting will be on the fourth, not the last, Wednesday of the month.

Coming up: The Carhullan Army / Daughters of the North

The next book on the Future Classics list we’ll be reading is Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army, published in the US as Daughters of the North.

We’re moving steadily towards the present now. The Carhullan Army was published in 2007 and did extremely well for itself. It won the Tiptree Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award (which was won by Richard Morgan’s Black Man). The book was her third novel, the previous one having been shortlisted for the Man Booker award.

2007 was the year that Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU. The book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published. The Writers Guild of America began the strike which would go on to give us, the following year, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog. The Hugo shortlist for best novel included Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, the only work by a female author to be nominated in that category since 2005 or until 2010. Madeleine L’Engle and Ingmar Berman died.The Science Fiction Foundation held its first-ever Science Fiction Criticism Masterclass. It was also, apparently, the Year of the Dolphin.

Tony will be leading discussion of The Carhullan Army / Daughter of the North.

(I leave it up to Niall and Tony whether we’ll be looking at Farthing or The Carhullan Army first.)

Farthing update

Niall’s been swamped, between the Strange Horizon fund-raising drive and travel, so while his posts are Farthing are still forthcoming, I can’t say when.

In the meantime, there’s some news on the subject of the book’s availability in the UK! Regardless of why it may or may not have been unpublished in the UK before now, Jo Walton has now sold world English rights for the book to Tor. The major immediate impact of this is that the audio book version of Farthing is now available in the UK (from Audible or wherever else you choose to buy it from).

Vector #268

Vector #268 Download

Contents page of Vector special on Diana Wynne Jones

No, I think it’s more about the way to do it. With Tolkien, as I said in the book, it was “Gosh, you can write a whole three-volume fantasy – this is marvellous, let’s do this thing.” With other influences like C.S. Lewis, the “how to do it” thing that grabbed me was that he was always so completely clear about what was happening. You are never in any doubt who is where, and doing what – and much more complicated things than that.
Diane Wynne Jones