The results of the SFWA officers’ election were announced during the 2012 Nebula Awards Weekend (May 17-20, 2012 in Arlington VA) at the SFWA business meeting.
President: John Scalzi
Vice President: Rachel Swirsky
Secretary: Ann Leckie
Treasurer: Bud Sparhawk
West Coast Representative: Jim Fiscus
Canadian Representative: Matthew Johnson
For more information, see their blog post.
The Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation (ARESFFT) is delighted to announce the finalists for the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards (for works published in 2011). There are two categories: Long Form and Short Form.
Long Form
Good Luck, Yukikaze by Chohei Kambayashi, translated from the Japanese by Neil Nadelman (Haikasoru)
Utopia by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, translated from the Arabic by Chip Rossetti (Bloomsbury Qatar)
The Dragon Arcana by Pierre Pevel, translated from the French by Tom Clegg (Gollancz)
Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves (Little, Brown & Company)
Zero by Huang Fan, translated from the Chinese by John Balcom (Columbia University Press)
Short Form
“The Fish of Lijiang” by Chen Qiufan, translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld #59, August 2011)
“Spellmaker” by Andrzej Sapkowski, translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel (A Polish Book of Monsters, Michael Kandel, PIASA Books)
“Paradiso” by Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Liquid Imagination #9, Summer 2011)
“The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, translated from the Dutch by Laura Vroomen (PS Publishing)
“The Short Arm of History” by Kenneth Krabat, translated from the Danish by Niels Dalgaard (Sky City: New Science Fiction Stories by Danish Authors, Carl-Eddy Skovgaard ed., Science Fiction Cirklen)
“The Green Jacket” by Gudrun Östergaard, self-translated from the Danish (Sky City: New Science Fiction Stories by Danish Authors, Carl-Eddy Skovgaard ed., Science Fiction Cirklen)
“Stanlemian” by Wojciech Orliński, translated from the Polish by Danusia Stok (Lemistry, Comma Press)
The nominees were announced at Åcon 5 <http://aconfive.wordpress.com/>, a joint Finnish-Swedish convention, over the weekend May 19-20. The announcement was read by Guest of Honor, Catherynne M. Valente.
The winning works will be announced at the 2012 Finncon on the weekend of July 21-22 <http://2012.finncon.org/>. Each winning author and translator will receive a cash prize of US$350. ARESFFT Board member Cheryl Morgan and jury member Irma Hirsjärvi will be present to make the announcement.
ARESFFT President Professor Gary K. Wolfe said: “I think this list proves that once you start looking for it, the diversity and quality of translated science fiction and fantasy are considerably greater than most of us had suspected, and I hope the nominations list calls attention to works too often overlooked by the usual awards processes.”
The money for the prize fund was obtained primarily through a 2011 fund-raising event for which prizes were kindly donated by George R.R. Martin, China Miéville, Cory Doctorow, Lauren Beukes, Ken MacLeod, Paul Cornell, Adam Roberts, Elizabeth Bear, Hal Duncan, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Peter F. Hamilton, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, Nalo Hopkinson, Juliet E. McKenna, Aliette de Bodard, Nicola Griffith, Kelley Eskridge, Twelfth Planet Press, Deborah Kalin, Baen Books, Small Beer Press, Lethe Press, Aeon Press, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Kari Sperring, Helen Lowe, Rob Latham and Cheryl Morgan.
The jury for the awards was Dale Knickerbocker (Chair); Kari Maund, Abhijit Gupta, Hiroko Chiba, Stefan Ekman, Ekaterina Sedia, Felice Beneduce & Irma Hirsjärvi.
ARESFFT is a California Non-Profit Corporation funded entirely by donations.
Contact
info@sfftawards.org
http://www.sfftwards.org/
Cheryl Morgan
The Vampire Film: Undead Cinema by Jeffrey Weinstock is now available from Columbia University Press. It retails for $20 but if you are in North America and enter the code VAMWE you can get it for 30% off through CUP’s Web site. <http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16201-2/the-vampire-film>
Preternature Volume 3:1
The Early Modern Witch (1450-1700)
The publication of early witchcraft texts created witches by generating controversy about them. Witch-dramas, pamphlets, testimonies about witch-encounters, sermons, and accounts of trials published the anxieties, related the long standing suspicions, and sensationalised the physical manifestations that made women into witches. Sometimes accompanied by woodcuts, many texts insisted on the reality, materiality, and immediacy of witches and their familiars. In these writings, the early modern witch was represented as both a perpetrator of violence and the victim of it. The early modern witch is thus a fascinating enigma: a legal entity and a neighbourhood resource or nuisance, she purportedly engaged in natural and supernatural forms of wisdom with the potential to heal or harm others, or even herself. The words she spoke could become malefic by intent, if not by content. According to the sensationalist constructions of witchcraft, her body was contaminated by the magics she used: she fed familiars with blood, grew spare parts, could not weep, and would not sink. In accounts focused on bewitchment and possessions, the witch vomited pins or personified pollution and a culturally legitimate cunning-person such as a physician or minister or exorcist acted as curative. Despite the skepticism about witches that followed Reginald Scot’s assertions and the decline of legal examinations trials, the early modern witch is an enduring force in the cultural imagination. Witchcraft continues to be the focus of academic articles, scholarly volumes, digital resources, archaeological.
This issue of Preternature, in association with the “Capturing Witches” conference, invites contributions from any discipline that highlight the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the early English witch. Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus, adhere to the journal style guide, and be formatted in the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes). Contributions must be submitted through the Preternature CMS.
Queries about journal scope and submissions can be made to the Editor, Dr. Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Queries concerning books to be reviewed can be made to the Book Reviews Editor, Dr. Richard Raiswell. Queries concerning this special volume, The Early Modern Witch (1450-1700), can be sent to special volume editors, Professor Alison Findlay and Dr. Liz Oakley-Brown. Final submissions are due November 30, 2012.
Full journal style guides are available at http://preternature.org. Information on the early English witch can be found at the WEME project at http://witching.org. Details on the “Capturing Witches” conference can be found at http://www.transculturalwriting.com/?page_id=1535
Preternature is a subscription based bi-annual publication, published through the Pennsylvania State University Press, and available in print or electronically through JSTOR, Project Muse, and as a Kindle e-book.
Seminal children’s literature author, Maurice Sendak, died today from complications from a recent stroke. He is a Caldecott Medal winner and National Medal of Arts winner who illustrated more than 50 books but was best known for “Where the Wild Things Are” and “In the Night Kitchen”.
Articles:
Invitation to the Third Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GFF), at the University of Zurich from 13th to 16th September 2012
The third conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung will take place at Zurich University, from 13th to 16th September 2012.
The fantastic raises a significant number of questions about cultural and social developments and challenges existing boundaries. With regard to transitions and the crossing of boundaries, the focus of this conference will lie on objects, norms, knowledge, ascribed meanings and potential spectrums of interpretation associated with the fantastic. The aim is to explore representations of worlds and subjects, reality and fiction, in order to contribute to a further assessment of the cultural relevance of the fantastic – in its contemporary, historical, social and medial dimensions.
Speakers from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Turkey and the USA will present and discuss their papers in more than thirty sections, either in English (E) or German (G).
Keynotes will be presented by Renate Lachmann (G), Hans Richard Brittnacher (G), John Clute (E), Dieter Petzold (E), Alexander Knorr (G) and Marleen S. Barr (E). The wellknown authors Jan Koneffke (G) and Lev Grossman (E) and the illustrator John Howe (E) will also be present to speak about their work and be available for discussion.
The conference will take place in the main building of Zurich University, in the town centre, with good connection to public transport. It starts on Thursday, at 01:30 p.m., and ends on Sunday, at 01:00 p.m.
Up to date information is available on our conference homepage: http://www.ipk.uzh.ch/tagungen/gff2012.html, where you also find the programme, some information about accommodation, the registration fee, and the registration form, to be handed in by 31.07.2012. Hotel bookings should be made as early as possible.
We are looking forward to welcome you at Zurich University.
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers has been declared the best science fiction novel of the year and the 26th winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Published by Sandstone Press, the novel is set in a near-future world living in the aftermath of biological terrorism and the release of the MDS (maternal death syndrome) virus.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is the most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain. The annual award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a shortlist of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.
The six shortlisted books are:
Stanley Schmidt won this year’s Robert A. Heinlein Award, which is given for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space. The award committee consists of science fiction writers and is chaired by Dr. Yoji Kondo, a long time friend of Robert and Virginia Heinlein. Members of the committee were originally approved by Virginia Heinlein. Virginia Heinlein authorized multiple awards in memory of her husband. The Robert A. Heinlein Award is not the one fully funded by Virginia Heinlein’s estate. This award is supported by independent donations from the interested public. To donate contact dale at bsfs dot org for details.
The winners of the fourth annual R.D. Mullen Research Fellowship have been announced. The R.D. Mullen Research Fellowship is funded by SF Studies in the name of their late founding editor to support archival research in the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature at UC-Riverside. The committee—chaired by Rob Latham and consisting of Jane Donawerth, Joan Gordon, Roger Luckhurst, and John Rieder—reviewed a number of excellent applications and settled on a slate of three winners for 2011-12:
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top five finalists in each category of the 2012 Locus Awards.
Winners will be announced during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 15-17, 2012. Connie Willis will MC the ceremony and judge the annual Hawai’ian shirt contest on Saturday, June 16. Additional weekend events include author readings, a kickoff meet-and-greet, panels with leading authors, an autograph session with books available for sale thanks to University Book Store, and a lunch banquet, all followed by the Clarion West Party on Saturday night honoring Clarion West supporters, awards weekend ticket holders, and special guests. NW Media Arts is running a writing workshop with Connie Willis and James Patrick Kelly bookending the weekend. Tickets are still available here.
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