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MAVEN to launch any minute now!
Live streaming video by Ustream
The MAVEN launch is happening now (as of this posting, of course). Above is the live feed. MAVEN is the Mars orbiter that is going to find out why Mars lost all that water. It’s rather important that it launches relatively soon, as that rather big storm that caused trouble in Illinois is pushing winds toward Florida. If NASA misses its window, MAVEN will have to wait two more years before Mars gets close enough to try again.
Good luck, MAVEN!
The Night of the Doctor
If you can’t wait to get just a little bit of the Doctor Who 50th, you’re in luck!
2013 Hugo Awards Announced (Live Blog)!
We are live at the 2013 Hugo Award ceremony, where the committee are reporting a solid ballot turnout. The Grand Ballroom here in the Rivercenter at San Antonio is so full, even nominees are being forced to <gasp> sit next to someone! We’re live blogging the results, so refresh this post to get fresher and fresher results…that is, unless you decide to watch Breaking Bad and then get your results in one fell swoop, later. I know I was torn between those options, and I’m at the con!
Better yet, watch the ceremony on U-Stream.
8:22: The Big Heart Award, presented by the impressive superfan David Kyle, went to Tom Veal, who promptly pointed out that he had been given the wrong plaque. This, of course, proves Tom’s worthiness. Congrats to him, and thanks for all the hard work!
8:33: A rarely given Chairman’s Special Award was presented by astronaut Katie Coleman is describing her time in space. She’s here to announce the rarely given special committee award, which went to Stanley Schmidt for his work on Analog Magazine. Money quote: “He kept the science in sci-fi”
8:40: The Seiun Awards, established in 1970, is the Japanese Hugo. It literally means “nebula”. The award for best translated short story went to Paolo Bacigalupi, for “Pocketful of Dharma”. The best translated novel award went to John Sclazi‘s The Android’s Dream (it was his second Seiun Award).
8:46: The Hugo ceremony’s tradition of listing fans, authors, publishers and artists who are no longer with us is unfortunately long.
8:54: “I think the Campbell Award doth protest too much,” says MC Paul Cornell, about how everyone points out that the Campbell is not a Hugo. I usually find myself pointing out that it is not the same as the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
8:58: The winner of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer goes to Mur Lafferty, who graciously pointed out that past Campbell nominees (such as George RR Martin and Lauren Beukes) went on to careers just as illustrious as the winners.
9:03: The Hugo trophy base has been unveiled:
Vincent Villafranca, the base designer, is on stage to explain the concept. I love this base. I think it might be my favorite. “It depicts an astronaut and some aliens sitting around reading some books ” They are hand-cast in bronze.
9:10: “We now come…to the Hugo Awards themselves.”
9:12: The Best Fan Artist Award goes to Galen Dara.
9:15: The Best Fan Writer Award goes to Tansy Rayner Roberts, who was unavailable ot accept in person.
9:19: The Best Fancast Award goes to SF Squeecast, xurprising precisely nobody. Seanan McGuire: “I attended my first Worldcon when I was fourteen,” and “this is an in-your-face for all those people I went to high school with.”
9:23: SF Squeecast has officially withdrawn themselves from consideration of future awards.
9:26: The Award for Best Fanzine goes to SF Signal. Congrats, guys! “I’m totally tweeting this.” They, too are recusing themselves from future awards in this category.
9:32: “There’s a reason why semiprozine sounds like Semiprozine sounds like something you’d ask your doctor for”
9:34: The award for Best Semiprozine goes to Clarkesworld.
9:40: The winner for Best Professional Artist is John Picacio. His response? “Well, hello, Texas.” He ended his speech with with a political statement about the status of women in Texas. I assume he means HB2.
9:48: The Best Editor, Long Form Award goes to Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
9:50: The Best Editor, Short Form Award goes to Stanley Schmidt, who is having an extraordinarily good night. “Copy and paste the acknowledgements from previous speech.”
9:53: “We now come to The Best Doctor — I mean, Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.”
9:55: We now get to see all of the nominated clips, which, of course, is a Whofest.
9:59: And the winner is Game of Thrones, ending the Whovian monopoly! Also, has George R. R. Martin lost weight?
10:04: Paul Cornell just confessed that he voted for Hugo last year, so that Hugo could win a Hugo, thus creating a singularity.
10:10: The winner for Best Presentation, Long Form, is The Avengers. Stephen H. Silver is accepting for Joss Whedon.
10:11: Oh, boy, Silverberg is hitting the stage. That means you won’t be hearing new news for a few minutes, now…
10:17: This year’s stall tactic consisted of Silverberg reading a transcript of the first schtick he did in 1965. Brilliant.
10:20: The Best Graphic Story Award goes to Saga, Volume One, written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics).
10:24: The Best Related Work Award goes to Writing Excuses Season Seven, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson. “You’re out of excuses. Now, go write.”
10:27: “Kij [Johnson], you and George R. R. Martin should really make some television together. It’d solve the population crisis.”
10:28: The Best Short Story Award goes to “Mono no Aware”, by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)
10:31: The award for Best Novelette goes to “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris). She stood behind the podium for a while, expecting to wake up in her bed at any moment.
10:36: The Best Novella Award goes to Brandon Sanderson, for The Emperor’s Soul (Tachyon Publications).
10:42: And Best Novel goes to….John Scalzi, for Redshirts! Congrats to him, and to all of the folks at Tor.
10:45: “I’m at the convention of misfit toys.” – Scalzi
10:46: On the heft of the trophy: “It’s very heavy, but also light on my heart.” – Scalzi
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
After that stellar Ozymandias recital in the last teaser, I just had to hear more Breaking Bad poetry. Before you interject, “but, Rico…Breaking Bad isn’t science fiction,” permit me to beseech you, on this day to bite me. Chemistry is science. So there.
Revenge of the Geezers
After the current series’ trend toward ever more youthful Doctors, the BBC has tapped 55 year-old Peter Capaldi to be the 12th Doctor. That makes him the same age as William Harnell, when he started.
I had hoped for a mature Doctor (in the tradition of classic Who), but I was convinced it couldn’t happen. Boy, am I thrilled to be proven wrong!
Gemsigns Book Giveaway Winners!
The Stephanie Saulter free books re-tweet contest closed on Monday but work and life kept us from announcing the winners until now. We had, in all, 47 entries – thanks everyone for participating. After copying all names into a spreadsheet and assigning each one a number, we used a random number generator to select our five winners. For the record, the numbers we generated were 10, 16, 21, 27 and 39.
Congrats to our winners:
If you are one of our prize winners please send your mailing address to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can get your autographed books in the mail right away.
Our thanks to Stephanie Saulter and Jo Fletcher Books for donating the prizes! Between you, me and the lamp post, I think we can expect more such freebies from the folks at JFB.
2013 Locus Award Winners Announced
Locus Magazine has announced the winners of the 2013 Locus Awards. The winners in the novel categories are:
- Science Fiction Novel: Redshirts, by John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz)
- Fantasy Novel: The Apocalypse Codex, by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
- Young Adult Novel: Railsea, by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)
- First Novel: Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW; Gollancz ’13)
The complete list of all categories is available on the Locus web site. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees! So what do you think of the results?
Richard Matheson Leaves A Great Legacy
You may or may not know Richard Matheson by name, but it’s likely that you know his work. His 1954 novel, I Am Legend, has been adapted to film three different times, and was the precursor to the earliest zombie films (it was the inspiration for Night of the Living Dead). I Am Legend appears on some of the most prestigious lists that WWEnd covers, including those of the Guardian, NPR and SF Masterworks. Another novel, The Shrinking Man, appears on five such lists, and was also a blockbuster in 1957. His horror novel, Hell House, is one of the top 100 in its field according to Nightmare Magazine, and also made it to the silver screen. Matheson’s psychic thriller, A Stir of Echoes, was adapted to film twice, and his super romantic time-travel novel, Bid Time Return, may be better known to you as that Christopher Reeves/Jane Seymour 1980 classic Somewhere in Time.
Mr. Matheson’s influence was far bigger than just genre fiction. He made his mark on the culture at large, and that is a rare accomplishment.
He died Sunday, at age 87.
69 Reasons not to Send a Message to Space
The Jamesburg Earth Station, a communications dish just outside Carmel, California, is currently pointing into space. Unlike most such dishes, it isn’t passive:
Instead of listening for ET, like SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), or waiting for ET, like the wonderfully humorous WETI (Wait For Extraterrestrial Intelligence – success to-date is 100%, they note) the METI movement is proactively messaging the universe.
David Brin isn’t so sure this is a good idea:
Let there be no mistake. METI is a very different thing than passively sifting for signals from the outer space. Carl Sagan, one of the greatest SETI supporters and a deep believer in the notion of altruistic alien civilizations, called such a move deeply unwise and immature. (Even Frank Drake, who famously sent the “Arecibo Message” toward the Andromeda Galaxy in 1974, considered “Active Seti to be, at best, a stunt and generally a waste of time.) Sagan — along with early SETI pioneer Philip Morrison — recommended that the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.
The body of science fiction works seems to support Mr. Brin’s view. A blank search of the WWEnd database’s “alien invasion” subgenre tag (through Booktrackr) netted 69 books. Here’s just a few:
