August BSFA Meeting: Shaun Tan interviewed by Judith Clute

On Tuesday 28th August 2012, Shaun Tan (artist, illustrator, author, film-maker, Academy Award winner) will be interviewed by Judith Clute (Canadian/British artist).

Please note the date change! This event is taking place on the fifth Tuesday, due to the availability of Shaun Tan.

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (Non-members welcome.)

The interview will start at 7 pm. We have the room from 6pm (and if early, fans are in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House, 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE. Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line).

FUTURE EVENTS:
26th September – Rob Shearman, interviewed by Simon Guerrier
24th October** – Nina Allan, interviewed by Niall Harrison
28th November – Paul Cornell, interviewed by Roz Kaveney

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

July BSFA Meeting: Roz Kaveney interviewed by Pat Cadigan

On Wednesday 25th July 2012, Roz Kaveney (multi-talented writer) will be interviewed by Pat Cadigan (award-winning author and critic).

The event is the UK launch of Rhapsody of Blood 1: Rituals, Roz Kaveney’s debut novel and the first volume of her new fantasy tetralogy.

Roz is also a poet, critic, editor, political activist, and author of Reading The Vampire Slayer (2001/2003), From Alien to the Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film (2005), Teen Dreams: Reading Teen Film and Television from ‘Heathers’ to ‘Veronica Mars’ (2006), and Superheroes! Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films (2007), and others.

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (Non-members welcome.)

The interview will start at 7 pm. We have the room from 6pm (and if early, fans are in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House. 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE. Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line).

FUTURE EVENTS:
28th August* – Shaun Tan, interviewed by Judith Clute
26th September – Rob Shearman, interviewed by Simon Guerrier
24th October** – Nina Allan, interviewed by Niall Harrison

* Note the date change. This event is taking place on the fifth Tuesday, due to the availability of Shaun Tan.

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

June BSFA Meeting: Paul McAuley interviewed by Paul Kincaid

On Wednesday 27th June 2012, Paul McAuley (multi-award winning author, most recently of In the Mouth of the Whale) will be interviewed by Paul Kincaid (BSFA Award winning critic).

Due to circumstances beyond the control of anyone involved, Tanith Lee will be unable to appear at our June meeting. We will make every effort to book her for a future meeting. Please accept our apologies for any disappointment or inconvenience. We are grateful to Paul for stepping into the breach to appear as our guest in June.

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (Non-members welcome.)

The interview will start at 7 pm. We have the room from 6pm (and fans in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House. 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE . Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line).

FUTURE EVENTS:
25th July – Roz Kaveney (interviewer TBC)
28th August* – Shaun Tan (interviewer TBC)
26th September – Rob Shearman, interviewed by Simon Guerrier

*Note that this is event is taking place on the fifth Tuesday, due to the availability of Shaun Tan.

BSFA/SFF Mini-Convention and AGMs

Tomorrow is the BSFA/SFF Mini-Convention and AGMs with Guests of Honour Marek Kukula and Aliette de Bodard.

The venue is the Royal Astronomical Society at Burlington House on Piccadilly in Central London, halfway between Piccadilly Circus and Green Park stations. It’s the first door on the left once you’ve entered the courtyard.

Hopefully many of you will be able to be there.

Here’s the schedule:

10:00 am Welcome (SFF)
10:05 am Marek Kukula Talk
10:55 – 11:05 Break
11:05 am Aliette de Bodard interview with Edward James
12 pm – 12:45 SFF AGM
12:45 pm – 1: 45 pm Lunch
1:45 pm – 2:30 pm BSFA AGM
2:30 pm – Astronomy Q&A with Marek Kukula
3:25 – 3:35 – Break
3:35 pm – SF & Colonialism panel with Aliette de Bodard, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Lavie Tidhar, and Sophia McDougall (moderator)
4:30 Concluding Remarks (BSFA)

Food and Drink – with the exception of water – is not allowed on site. There are many nearby cafés, drink and snack shops, restaurants and pubs.

The designated pub for the day is the King’s Head, located approximately behind the Royal Astronomical Society, at 10 Stafford Street, W1S 4RX.

Imagining London

I apologise for recent silence around here. On top of various bits of Life, I was thrown by the resignation of Martin McGrath.

If anyone could have been said to have been doing too much for the BSFA, it was he, inasmuch as he was single-handedly dealing with a good half of the organisation’s day-to-day business, from editing Focus, to storing any extra publication copies, to mailing out new member’s packs, to doing all design and layout for all of the BSFA’s publications and liaising with the printer. (And that’s not all.) It’s far more than any one person should need to do for one organisation, and it’ll take at least three new committee members to replace him!

Insofar as Vector is concerned, his resignation meant that the publication schedule for the next issue (due out in June or early July) was put in doubt, as at least some of its contributors are aware.

The good news is that we now have a volunteer, as a one-off, to do layout for this next issue of Vector: so this issue definitely happening, and on schedule too at this rate! And I’m excited about the contents – this issue has articles from an exciting group of contributors! (To whom I still owe many edits – coming soon, now that the issue is back on track!) (This is no guarantee that the following issue of Vector will be coming out on time, however. That depends on one or more additional, as yet not-found, volunteers.)

However, as a caveat, it’s up to me, as features editor, and any other willing volunteers, to track down, volunteer, and recruit any and all images to be used in this issue, from the cover art to all the interiors. Without imagery, the issue can still go ahead – but it will look notably image-free!

The theme of this forthcoming issue is “London & SF”, as proposed by James Bacon, as a tie-in to the London in 2014 Worldcon bid.

The cover art will be in full colour, but otherwise, reproductions will be in black and white. Do you have drawings, photographs, and paintings you’ve made yourself and can grant permission for their use in this one issue of Vector, whether in print or PDF? Suggestions of artists who might be willing to contribute to this issue? Ideas of other legal and appropriate ways to illustrate this issue?

Can you help?

Guess-the-Arthur-C-Clarke-Award-Shortlist Contest Winner

At long, long last, SCI-FI London begins today, the winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award will be announced on Wednesday, and we have a winner for the Guess-the-Clarke Shortlist contest!

Thanks to the generosity of the Clarke Award, the winner will receive a copy of every book on the shortlist.

Three entries, submitted by Nicholas Whyte, Duncan Lawie, and Kenny Lucius, tied for first place, with four correct guesses each. For comparative purposes, I note that all three correctly guessed Embassytown and Rule 34.

Contest judge Tom Hunter has drawn the winning name from the hat… and the winner is Duncan Lawie!

April BSFA London Meeting: Sharyn November interviewed by Farah Mendlesohn

On Wednesday 25th April 2012, Sharyn November (Senior Editor for Viking Children’s Books and Editorial Director of Firebird Books, visiting thanks to this last weekend’s Diana Wynne Jones memorial) will be interviewed by Professor Farah Mendlesohn (Academic, critic and editor).

ALL WELCOME – FREE ENTRY (No entry fee or tickets. Non-members welcome.)

The discussion will commence at 7.00 pm, but the room is open from 6.00 (and fans in the ground floor bar from 5ish).

There will be a raffle (£1 for five tickets), with a selection of sf novels as prizes.

Location: Cellar Bar, The Melton Mowbray Public House. 18 Holborn, London EC1N 2LE . Map is here. Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane (Central line)

FUTURE EVENTS:
23rd May* – CJ LINES interviewed by Tony Keen
27th June – TANITH LEE interviewed by Nadia van der Westhuizen
25th July 2012 – Roz Kaveney (interviewer TBC)

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

New Reflections

If you enjoyed the excerpt from the interview with Diana Wynne Jones which appeared in Vector #268, then you may be interested to know that the volume in which the full interview appears, Reflections, will be published in the next few weeks from David Fickling Books.

Early copies may be available this weekend at the celebration of DWJ’s life and works being held this Sunday, 22 April at 2pm, at St. George’s in Brandon Hill, Bristol. Details of how to get to the venue are available here.

BSFA Awards Winners

Congratulations to all those who won the BSFA Awards for work produced in 2011!

Best Non-Fiction: The SF Encyclopedia, third edition (beta), edited by John Clute, Peter Nicholls, David Langford and Graham Sleight.
Best Artwork: Cover of Ian Whates’s The Noise Revealed by Dominic Harman (Solaris)
Best Short Fiction: “The Copenhagen Interpretation” by Paul Cornell (Asimov’s, July)
Best Novel published in Britain: The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

At Eastercon, as well as four other conventions held that same weekend, the Hugo shortlists were announced. The BSFA Award winners for best non-fiction and best short fiction both made that ballot, so their fans will have another opportunity to vote for them, should they wish!

Gollancz did extremely well this year, since they host/publish The SF Encyclopedia as well as The Islanders.

P.S. Please see the BSFA’s apology for the way the awards ceremony worked out.

2012 BSFA Lecture at Eastercon

The 2012 BSFA Lecture at Eastercon will be given by Dr Marc Morris, and is entitled ‘Regime Change in England, 1066’. It draws on his recently-published book The Norman Conquest. The lecture will be given at 2.30 on Saturday April 7th, in the Commonwealth Hall of the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow. The lecture is open to any members of Eastercon (if you’re not already a member, I’m afraid membership is now closed).

Marc is a mediaeval historian and broadcaster. He presented the television series Castle in 2003, and wrote the accompanying book (a new edition comes out in May 2012). He is also the author of The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century, and A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain. His new book, published on March 29, is a history of The Norman Conquest. Copies will be available to purchase at Eastercon. He also appeared in the most recent episode of Time Team.

The BSFA lecture is intended as a companion to the George Hay Lecture presented at the Eastercon by the Science Fiction Foundation. Where the Hay Lecture invites scientists, the BSFA Lecture invites academics from the arts and humanities (with a particular bias towards history), because we recognise that science fiction fans aren’t only interested in science. The lecturers are given a remit to speak “on a subject that is likely to be of interest to science fiction fans” – i.e. on whatever they want! This is the fourth BSFA Lecture.