Lovers of the English language ... and who else reads Ad Astra? ... may have come across Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, a strange magazine which is both authoritative and fun. Recently it ran an article on shortened forms of words, the official short form of 'science fiction' being given as SF ... with the annotation "sci-fi denotes bad SF". Right on! Let us hear no more of 'sci-fi' outside discussions of Perry Rhodan and the like.
Vast heaps of award information have been arriving since my last column ... once rare and special accolades, the proliferating SF awards are doing their best to justify Andy Warhol's comment that in the future, everyone will be famous (but only for fifteen minutes). The British SF Association Awards were won by J.G. Ballard's The Unlimited Dream Company (novel), Christopher Priest's 'Palely Loitering', (short fiction), The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy record (media) and Jim Burns (artist). The SFWA Nebula Awards went to Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise (novel), Barry B. Longyear's 'Enemy Mine' (novella), George R.R. Martin's 'Sandkings' (novelette) and Edward Bryant's 'giANTS' (short story). The SF/fantasy categories in the new American Book Awards were won by Frederik Pohl's JEM (hardback) and Walter Wangerin's The Book of the Dun Cow (paperback). The European SF Awards mostly went to things I can trust myself neither to spell nor to pronounce, but for some reason Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon collected the Best Novel award; John Brunner and Stanisław Lem shared the title of Best European Author. Now take a deep breath for worse is to come ... nothing less than the full nomination slate for the top honour of them all, the 1980 Hugo Awards. As follows:
NOVEL: The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C. Clarke), Harpist in the Wind (Patricia A McKillip), JEM (Frederik Pohl), On Wings of Song (Thomas M. Disch), Titan (John Varley).
NOVELLA: 'The Battle of the Abaco Reefs' (Hilbert Schenck), 'Enemy Mine' ("Barry B. Longyear), 'Ker-Plop' (Ted Reynolds), 'The Moon Goddess and the Son' (Donald Kingsbury), 'Songhouse' (Orson Scott Card).
NOVELETTE: 'Fireflood' (Vonda N. Mclntyre), 'Homecoming' (Barry B. Longyear), 'The Locusts' (Larry Niven & Steven Barnes), 'Options' (John Varley), 'Palely Loitering' (Christopher Priest), 'Sandkings' (Geogre R.R. Martin).
SHORT STORY: 'Can These Bones Live?' (Ted Reynolds), 'Daisy, in the Sun' (Connie Willis), 'giANTS' (Edward Bryant), 'Unaccompanied Sonata' (Orson Scott Card), 'The Way of Cross and Dragon' (George R.R. Martin).
NON-FICTION: Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (Wayne Douglas Barlowe & Ian Summers), In Memory Yet Green (Isaac Asimov), The Language of the Night (Ursula K. LeGuin), The Science Fiction Encyclopaedia (ed. Peter Nicholls), Wonderworks (Michael Whelan).
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION: Alien, The Black Hole, The Muppet Movie, Star Trek ... The Motion Picture, Time After Time.
PROFESSIONAL EDITOR: James Baen, Ben Bova, Edward L. Ferman, Stanley Schmidt, George H. Scithers.
FANZINE: File 770, Janus, Locus, Science Fiction Review, Thrust.
FANWRITER: Richard E. Geis, Mike Glyer, Arthur D..Hlavaty, David Langford, Bob Shaw.
FANARTIST: Alexis Gilliland, Jeanne Gomoll, Joan Hanke-Woods, Victoria Poyser, Bill Rotsler, Stu Shiffman.
The Hugos are being voted on even as I write, and will be announced at Noreascon (38th World SF Convention) in Boston late this August ... in early June the convention had 4000 registered members, so it looks a nice cozy affair. More later: I'll be attending Noreascon at enormous personal expense (actually the fare is being paid by TAFF, the TransAtlantic Fan Fund which send delegates to and fro across the great waters: I was pleasantly surprised to be chosen this year); on returning I shall doubtless be filled with Hugo news, insufferable anecdotes about how I spilt beer over Larry Niven, etc.
Time to pick up some loose ends from the last column. I am assured by George Hay that the SF Foundation far from being weakened by the loss of its Administrator through education cuts, is now infinitely more wonderful than ever before (which seems a bit hard on the former Administrator, but never mind): for £4 you can subscribe to its excellent SF critical magazine Foundation, edited by the learned David Pringle (SF Foundation, North East London Poly, Longbridge Rd, Dagenham, Essex, RMS 2AS). The gloom of the publishing recession now seems a little less, and in fact Penguin and Eyre Methuen have announced that they never had the slightest intention of cutting back their SF lines. On the other hand, Virgin Books won't be doing the unexpurgated Philip José Farmer editions promised in recent rumours ... probably just as well, since expurgated ones are bad enough. Farmer's final 'Riverworld' book has been released in the US to an accompaniment of yawns and disappointment: yet another series which ran out of steam as it ponderously went on. My notes on the British SF Association provoked queries from the British Fantasy Society as to whether the non-mention of the BFS was accidental or a calculated slight (ah, now if only they'd put D. Langford on their committee as did the BSFA ...): stark ignorance was my main reason for not telling you all to send SAEs for BFS information to 79 Rochdale Rd, Milnrow, Rochdale, Lanes, OL16 4FDT. They also run the Fantasycon convention, held this year from 3-5 October in Birmingham with Guest of Honour Ramsey Campbell. I've also been heavily bribed to plug Yorcon II, the 32nd British Easter SF Convention, sponsored by the BSFA and to be held from 17-20 April 1981 in Leeds. Guest of Honour is Ian Watson; fan GoH some chap called Langford; SAE for more details to 12 Fearnville Terrace, Oakwood, Leeds, LS8 3DU.
For the rest, no vast coherent themes seem to be emerging from the chaos of SF news items: instead we've a sackful of (as the title promises) fragments. Harlan Ellison, as always, has been in the news with his and Ben Bova's lawsuit against Paramount Pictures and ABC-TV for stealing the concept of their short story and screenplay 'Brillo' for the extremely awful series Future Cop. (If you're wondering why a robot policeman should be called Brillo in the first place, the story says it in two words: steel fuzz.) Unusually, the big firms were found guilty on every count, and Ellison and Bova were awarded $337,000 damages ... settling for a puny £285,000 to avoid the extra cost of an appeal. Ellison planned to erect a billboard opposite Paramount's offices, covered with suitably taunting "We won!" slogans; however, his further comments or insults in Time magazine and on TV caused ABC/Paramount to delay settlement and threaten a libel and/or slander suit in reply. The original judgement is expected to affect the awaited plagiarism suit concerning Star Wars and the not all that dissimilar Battlestar Galactica; A.E. van Vogt has also been muttering at 20th Century Fox about Alien's alleged use of his first story 'Black Destroyer' (you'll find it in The Voyage of the Space Beagle). Strangely enough, a discarded bit of Alien, in which the lovable beastie is found to have trussed up crew members and laid eggs in them, is exactly paralleled elsewhere in van Vogt's book: perhaps that's why it was taken out? Meanwhile, perhaps Isaac Asimov will sue every film-maker whose robots obey his Three Laws....
Michael Moorcock is doing the novelization of the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, to be published by Virgin in a format resembling a tabloid newspaper ... his fans will be watching keenly for newly written-in characters with names like Jherk Cornucopia. Following jokes by celebrated SF fan Leroy Kettle about Frank Herbert's long-awaited 'spice-opera' Dune The Fourth Is Too Late, another Dune sequel is definitely close to completion. The working title is Sandworms of Dune; the final draft should be just about ready as you read this; it takes place a few millennia after Children of Dune and the same character (Leto) is still emperor of everything. Herbert is said to be receiving $750,000 as an advance for this and two other unspecified books, lifting him above even Ad Astra contributors as a top-earning SF author. What event of comparable enormity has occurred in British SF? It seems that London Weekend TV have signed a robot called Metal Mickey as star of a new situation comedy series ... And our very own Ian Watson reports he's sold a story to the US anthology First Contact, edited by Jan Howard Finder. It's a short story: "One infinitely telling word is preceded by six words of title ... making the title six times as long as the story, a feat which only Harlan Ellison otherwise could contemplate ... thus raising the revenue from the story to at least 21 cents, which almost covers the cost of the postage!"
Alas, certain SF celebrities have recently died. One is film producer and director George Pal, noted for When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds and many other films. Another is John Collier, writer of brilliant and witty short stories ... most of the best ones are collected in his Fancies and Goodnights, which in 1952 won the International Fantasy Award, an honour it shares with very few books (e.g. More than Human, Lord of the Rings). Another British printing is long overdue. Finally, Kay Tarrant, assistant editor of Astounding/Analog until her retirement in 1973, has also died. She was celebrated for keeping 'naughty bits' out of the magazine, and reputedly was only fooled once, by George O. Smith's gag about the first ball-bearing mousetrap. This proved to be a tomcat.
Mind how you go. DAVID LANGFORD
Comments, queries and requests for specific coverage are always welcome: send them to me c/o AD ASTRA.