NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE
Extensive Fanzine Collection Moves to Iowa. The University of Iowa library has recently acquired a huge collection of sf fanzines from Martin M. (Mike) Horvat, a longtime fan and collector in Stayton, Oregon. The Horvat Collection contains an estimated 250,000 separate items, including substantial runs of all major and many minor fanzines from the 1960s to the 1990s, including Algol, Energumen, File 770, Khatru, Outworlds, Riverside Quarterly, and many more. Zines from the 1940s and 1950s, including Bob Tucker’s legendary Le Zombie and Robert Silverberg’s Spaceship, are also well represented. The collection includes many British, Canadian, and Australian zines, such as Pete Weston’s Zenith/Speculation and Bruce Gillespie’s SF Commentary. The archive rivals the Bruce Pelz and Terry Carr collections housed in the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of the University of California at Riverside.
Mike Horvat founded the American Private Press Association and during the 1970s and 1980s published South of the Moon, a catalog of publications of amateur press associations. As a result, the Horvat Collection houses a vast archive of apazines, including NAPA, the long-running zine of the National Fantasy Fan Federation. The correspondence files of fan editors Gertrude Carr and Richard Geis are also part of the collection. At present, the archive is being sorted and indexed, a painstaking task that will take many months. One portion of the collection, including issues of about 3000 individual titles, came very well organized in file cases. A list of those titles is now available online at the library’s Special Collections homepage at <www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll>, where further updates on the collection may be found as cataloguing proceeds. When it is fully available to scholars, the Horvat Collection will provide an invaluable resource for research into the history of modern sf and the formation of fan communities.—RL
Corrigendum to the Bibliography of Jules Verne’s English Translations. Canadian Verne collector and scholar Andrew Nash has discovered another (anonymous) English translation of the 1886 short story “Frritt-Flacc.” It was published in 1947 by Futuria House, and it begins as follows:
Frritt! ... the wind is raging.
Flacc! ... the rain is falling in torrents.
The trees along the Volsinian coast bend in the bellowing squall which breaks itself against the mountains of Crimma.
To all Vernians: if you find any additional English translations of Verne’s works not listed in the Bibliography published in the March issue of SFS, please send them along!—ABE
SFRA Honorees: The Clareson, Pioneer, and Pilgrim Awards. I am delighted to announce that Muriel Becker, a bibliographer of Clifford D. Simak and an expert on sf for young people as well as a longtime member of SFRA, is the 2005 recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service.
Lisa Yaszek has been awarded the Pioneer Award for 2005 for “The Women History Doesn’t See: Recovering Mid-century Women’s SF as a Literature of Social Critique” (Extrapolation 45.1 [Spring 2004]: 34-51). Lisa is on the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a member of SFRA.
Gérard Klein of Paris, France, is the Pilgrim Award recipient for 2005. He is a novelist, short story author, literary critic, and long-time editor of a major sf publishing house; he has been, for over half a century, one of the principal spokespersons for science fiction in France. An economist by training (with a heavy dash of political science, sociology, and psychology), Klein was already beginning to contribute sf stories and articles to the French sf magazines Fiction and Galaxie by the time he was 18. By age 21, he had published his first novel, Le Gambit des Étoiles (Starmaster’s Gambit). From 1960 through the early 1970s, he was arguably the most famous French sf author of his generation, with nine more novels to his credit (many published under the pseudonym “Gilles d’Argyre”) and more than thirty stories. Critics have discerned in his work influences from sf authors ranging from Olaf Stapledon and Ray Bradbury to A.E. Van Vogt and Philip K. Dick. Although seemingly destined to become one of the best sf authors in France during the final decades of the twentieth century, Klein suddenly stopped writing sf around 1973, devoting himself almost exclusively to editorial matters—most notably, to the development of the “Ailleurs et demain” sf series (begun in 1969) of the Robert Laffont publishing house. The series, with its signature “metallic” book covers, quickly became renowned. Publishing both leading French authors and the best classic and contemporary Anglo-American sf in high-quality translations, the series today includes over 185 titles. “Ailleurs et demain” helped to bring sf in France to a more “literary” audience, and it was through this series that the French reading public came to know the works of Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Brunner, Samuel R. Delany, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, Greg Bear, Iain Banks, and many others. Another aspect of Klein’s illustrious career in sf has involved his numerous critical essays on the genre, including “Défense et illustration de la S.F.” (1967, with Alain Dorémieux and Jacques Goimard), “Malaise dans la science-fiction américaine” (1977), “Trames et moirés” (1986), a series of articles in the influential fanzine Nous les Martiens (1980s and 1990s), and finally the dozens of prefaces, afterwords, and forewords that he has contributed to published works of sf (see <http://www.quarante-deux.org/archives/klein.html>). One might argue that Gérard Klein is the John W. Campbell of French science fiction.—David Mead, SFRA President; ABE
From Germany: New SF Magazine in English. Ronald M. Hahn, Olaf G. Hilscher, and Michael K. Iwoleit, editors of the German sf magazine Nova (8 issues to date, published by Books on Demand GmbH.), have begun a still more ambitious project in the English language. Titled InterNova: The Magazine of International Science Fiction, the first issue (Spring 2005) reached 204 pages. Two issues per year are planned. Single issues may be purchased for 14.80 Euros, which includes shipment within the European Community; single orders outside Europe may be placed through <www.amazon.com>. A subscription for four issues is 59.20 Euros, and is available through the magazine’s website <www.inter.nova-sf.de>.
Introduced by Brian W. Aldiss, the first issue features essays by Richard Kunzman and Lavie Tidhar (on sf in China), and a varied array of reprinted, original, and translated stories. Eric Brown acted as proof-reader for this first issue, and the English is satisfactory. Included are stories from Brazil (Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, “Peak Time”), Israel (Guy Hasson, “Her Destiny”), South Africa (Arthur Goldstuck, “The Fabulous Yesterdays”), Germany (Sven Klöepping, “Let’s Talk About Death, Baby”), Argentina (Eduardo J. Carletti, “God’s Gut”), Croatia (Aleksandar Ziljak, “What Color is the Wind?”), China (Wu Yan, “Mouse Pad”), and India (Vandana Singh, “The Tetrahedron”). The second issue of InterNova will appear in August 2005, with stories by Milena Benini (Croatia), Alain Dartevelle (Belgium), Claudia De Bella (Argentina), Elze Hamilton (Lithuania), Guy Hasson (Israel), Frank W. Haubold (Germany), Michael Haulica (Romania), Pasi Jaaskelainen (Finland), H.L. Oldie (Ukraine), Lavie Tidhar (Israel), Thanassis Vembos (Greece), Bruno Vitiello (Italy), and a classic story by Renato Pestriniero (Italy).—Franz Rottensteiner, Vienna
SF Hub Launched at the University of Liverpool Library. With fewer than normal jokes about “going boldly,” the Science Fiction Hub, a new venture in sf scholarship developed by the University of Liverpool Library and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, was launched April 12, 2005 at the Sydney Jones Library with an address by Liverpool author Ramsey Campbell. Project manager Roy McCready developed The Hub <www.sfhub.ac.uk> as a web-based route into sf’s multidisciplinary riches. Building on the Science Fiction Foundation Collection of 30,000 books and over 2,000 magazine and fanzine titles deposited with the University of Liverpool in 1993, the Hub allows search of the catalogue records of this major resource as well as other archive collections held by the University, including the Olaf Stapledon, Eric Frank Russell, and John Wyndham Archives. During the three-year Hub project, 20,000 journal articles (including many from scarce fanzines) were indexed and recorded in the University catalogue; access to these records is provided. The Hub also provides easy links to other major library holdings of sf and significant scholarly web resources, including the largest database of material about sf, Hal Hall’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database at Texas A & M University.
The Hub was launched with a description of the Hub by Roy McCready and a flurry of thank-yous from SF Collections Librarian Andy Sawyer. Ramsey Campbell, who deposited an extensive archive when the Science Fiction Foundation first came to Liverpool, declaimed a poetic tribute to all concerned. Also in attendance were Brian Aldiss and Stephen Baxter, authors who have also deposited archive material. Not to be outdone, Brian read a poem he’d written on the train to Liverpool. Faced with the challenge of composing a praise-song in thirty seconds, Stephen Baxter uttered a well-chosen impromptu welcome to the Hub. Roy McCready is moving on from the project, but a process of tidying-up, cataloguing new material, and adding new links will be ongoing during the next few months. Comments and information are therefore welcome to Andy Sawyer <asawyer@liv.ac.uk>. It is hoped that the Hub will be of use not only to researchers in sf and fantasy, but also to scholars in other disciplines who find sf—the literature of speculation and extrapolation—useful for their research.—Andy Sawyer, Special Collections and Archives, University of Liverpool Library
Science Fiction and Fantasy Wiki. This is an interesting website as well as an opportunity for scholars to contribute to an online information source. There are many articles to be added and many authors yet to be covered. As described on its Main Page, Science Fiction and Fantasy Wiki is a collaborative project to create a comprehensive open encyclopedia of sf and fantasy. In addition to providing factual information, the site features political analysis and reader reviews. The site was launched on May 22, 2004; the site address is <http://www.infoshop.org/sf/index.php/Main_Page>.—Hal Hall, Texas A&M University
Utopiales 2005. Founded in 1998, the International Science Fiction Festival of Nantes known as “Utopiales” is a four-day multimedia extravaganza featuring sections devoted to literature, comics, science, video games, and film. With over 200 international guests invited each year, the festival has become the most important cultural event in Europe on science fiction and one of the largest sf writers’ conventions in the world. The film section at Utopiales organizes international feature and short film competitions as well as retrospectives and special programs.The 2005 Utopiales will focus on the legendary Jules Verne and his Voyages extraordinaires and will offer a variety of literature and film panels and exhibitions. It will be held November 10-13 at the Cité des Congrès de Nantes, France. For more information about Utopiales 2005, contact Patrick Gyger at <organisation@utopiales.org>.—ABE
CFP: ICFA 2006. The 27th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts will be held March 15-19, 2006 at the Wyndham Ft. Lauderdale Airport Hotel in Dania, Florida. The focus for 2006 will be on the fantastic in media other than the written word or film, including sf and fantasy art, comics and graphic novels, web design and photo manipulation, cover art and illustration, picture books and pulps, film posters and CD covers, trading cards and tarot cards, cityscapes and landscapes, maps, tattoos, and costuming. Participants will examine the role of art and artists as subjects of the fantastic and also the influence of the fantastic, written or filmed, on the world of art. Papers are invited that explore the construction of race and gender in images of vampires, elves, and aliens; in addition, we especially welcome papers on the work of Charles Vess (Guest of Honor), M. Thomas Inge (Guest Scholar), and Kathleen Ann Goonan (Special Guest Writer). As always, we also invite proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any medium. The deadline for proposals is November 30, 2005. Keep checking <www.iafa.org> for updated information.—Christine M. Mains, University of Calgary
CFP: Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society, Hyderabad, India, December 12-15, 2005. Following the success of the inaugural conference, held at the University of California at Berkeley, we are pleased to announce that the second will convene in one of the emerging information technology centers of the world, Hyderabad. Taking a broad and cross-disciplinary approach to technology in society, the conference will focus on digital information and communications technologies (including human usability, technologies for citizenship and community participation, and learning technologies). Participants will include researchers, teachers, and practitioners whose interests are either technical or humanistic, or whose work crosses over between the applied technological and social sciences. As well as an impressive line-up of international plenary speakers, the conference will also include numerous workshop and colloquium presentations. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the conference call for papers. Papers submitted for the conference proceedings will be fully peer-refereed and published in print and electronic formats in the new International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registration is available, which would allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this journal as well as allowing access to the electronic version of the conference proceedings. The deadline for the first-round call for papers is 1 June 2005, but proposals will be reviewed over the next four weeks; readers of SFS interested in proposing a paper might be able to have their proposals considered. Full details are to be found at the conference website: <http://www.Technology-Conference.com>.—Prof. Amar Galla, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Life, the Universe, and Everything. This free symposium on sf and fantasy will be held February 16-18, 2006 at the Wilkinson Student Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Guest authors will include Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta; artist Stephanie Pui-Mun Law and Mike Allred, creator of the “Golden Plates” comics, are also special guests, along with Michael R. Collings, poet, bibliographer, scholar, and teacher. The symposium will feature panels, presentations, and workshops on writing, world-building, media, art, sf and fantasy gaming, and academic sf and fantasy. There will also be an art show, a charity auction, a book drive, storytelling, and a banquet ($10). The symposium is sponsored by the Brigham Young University College of Humanities. For further information, or to be added to the mailing list, see <http://ltue.byu.edu>.—CM
Back to Home