Ahira's Hangar

The nominees for the 2003 Hugo Awards, sponsored by the World Science Fiction Society, have been announced. They will be presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, scheduled for the end of August in Toronto. This year's nominees for best novel are:

Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick (Eos)
Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor)
Kiln People by David Brin (Tor)
The Scar by China Mieville (Macmillan; Del Rey)
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i>Edited by: danlo60 at: 7/29/03 8:30 am
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The only one of thsoe books I have read (so far at least) was Brin's Kiln People, which I found to be both fun and deep.

I have heard many good things about The Scar and its author. Several people have recomended Mieville to me.

I have heard that there is a secret to understanding and enjoying the Robinson book. Apparently it follows a group of souls through several lifetimes and it can be quite confusing trying to keep straight which souls are which as they change names and interact in different ways from one life to the next. The secret, or so I have been told, is that each soul keeps the same first letter of his/her names from one life to the next. Hope this might help someone someday if they read the book! I have heard that the book is extremely difficult to read if you do not know that...

I haven't really heard anything about the other two books...has anyone here read them or heard anything about them? Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

The 2003 Britsh Science Fiction Assn. Award nominees:

The Reliquary Ring - Cherith Baldry
The Iron Chain - Steve Cockayne
Singing the Dogstar Blues - Alison Goodman
Felaheen - Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Dark Heavens - Roger Levy
* Untied Kingdom - James Lovegrove
Natural History - Justina Robson
Varjak Paw - S F Said
And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i>Edited by: danlo60 at: 7/29/03 8:45 am
</i>

best novel:
Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

best novella:
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
(I have read this and it is very good -- don't let the fact that it is a children's book put you off)

best novellette:
"Slow Life" by Michael Swanwick

best short story
"Falling onto Mars" by Geoffrey A. Landis

Lord of the Rings The Two Towers was the best drama presentation, and the best short drama presentation was one of the episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

Quote:Lord of the Rings The Two Towers was the best drama presentation, and the best short drama presentation was one of the episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer The episode from season 7 (the series final season) was the one titled Conversation with Dead People. The seventh episode, written by Drew Goodard and Jane Espenson and IMO, this episode will have to go on the lists of top ten episodes of the Series. In the episode, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) each have very dramatic confrontations with dead entities brought forth, spewing lies and elaborate psychological head games, by the Big Bad known as the First, with the sole purpose to distract and remove them from the Slayer's cadre of allies.

The episode was well deserving the award. taraswizard
Allan Rosewarne N9SQT/WDX6HQV
Chicago area
W/T forever, always
Plan C - http://planc.bravepages.com/main.html<i></i>

I've recently run into another of the Hugo nominees, one of the books and authors I have not heard of. Here is a description of Michael Swanwick's Bones of the Earth.

Quote:Paleontologist Richard Lester has achieved professional nirvana: a position with the Smithsonian Museum plus a groundbreaking dinosaur fossil site he can research, publish on, and learn from for years to come. There is nothing that could lure him away - until a disturbingly secretive stranger named Griffin enters Leyster's office with an ice cooler and a job offer. In the cooler is the head of a freshly killed stegosaurus. Griffin has been entrusted with an extraordinary gift, an impossible technology on loan to humanity from unknown beings for an undiclosed purpose. Time travel has become a reality millions of years before it rationally could be. With it, Richard Leyster and his colleagues can make their most cherished fantasy come true. They can study the dinosaurs up close, in their own time and millieu. Now, suddenly, individual lives can turn back on themselves. People can meet, shake hands, and converse with their younger versions at various crossroads in time. One wrong word, a single misguided act, could be disastrous to the project and to the world. But Griffin must make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen - no matter who is destined to be hurt...or die. And then there's Dr. Gertrude Salley - passionate, fearless, and brutally ambitious - a genius rebel in the tight community of "bone men" and women. Alternately both Leyster's and Griffin's chief rival, trusted colleague, despised nemesis, and inscrutable lover at various junctions throughout time, Salley is relentlessly driven to screw with the working mechanisms of natural law, audaciously trespassing in forbidden areas, pushing paradox to the edge no matter what the consequences may be. And, when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever lived, the consequences may be terrifying indeed.

the author's website is at www.michaelswanwick,com Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

Yeah, I'm a huge Swanwick fan. One of the best writers in the business. Unfortunately his stuff is very hard to find for some reason - guess it doesn't appeal to the average sci-fi fan - so I haven't been able to read his more recent works. Old favorites are: In The Drift, Vacuum Flowers, The Gryphon's Egg, Gravity's Angels, Stations of the Tide, and The Iron Dragon' Daughter. Oh, and the short story he wrote with William Gibson was great too, "Dogfight". <i></i>

Let's start a topic on this guy Alph! *****
Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.
Fravashi saying (from the formularies of Osho the Fool) <i></i>

Will do. I'll see what Swanwick info I can dig up on the web, and post a topic later tonight.

Oops, in my other post I called his short story collection "Gravity's Angels" - must have been thinking of Pynchon - I believe it's actually just Gravity Angels. <i></i>

Here are the winners of the 2003 World Fantasy Awards, as rewarded last weekend at the World Fantasy Covention:

Best novels:
The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce
Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip
Best Novella:
The Library by Zoran Zivkovic
Best Short Story:
"Creation" by Jeffrey Ford
Best Anthologies:
The Green Man, Tales from the Mythic Forest edited by Datlow and Windling
Leviathon 3 edited by Vandermeer and Aguirre

I've read The Green Man, and there were some pretty good stories in there.


I was glad to see that in two years this convention will be in Madison, Wisconsin. That's not too terribly far away, and my children will both be pretty well grown by then, so maybe I will be able to go. Next year's will be in the Phoenix area, as will also be the 2004 World Horror Convention. Horror in the spring, Fantasy in the fall. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i>

I saw Hominid in the bookstore today, for the first time, along with its sequel, Human. It looks as if they are about scientists who have opened some sort of portal into an alternate earth where Neanderthals are dominant and their interactions with a Neanderthal scientist who comes here in order to be studied, and study us... It also looks as if it will be a trilogy someday... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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