AMAZING NEWS: 10/18/15

PRESS RELEASES & NEWSLETTERS (Full Text Below)

News from Norwescon; Museum of Science Fiction; Edge Fantasy & Science Fiction; RPGNet; Project Hieroglyph:  new anthology; Latest from Harper Collins

SOCIAL

Brianna Wu is an Agent of Change

PhD:  102 year old woman defends her thesis 77 years after it was written and receives her Doctorate

ENTERTAINMENT

Dr. Who Lego is Coming (When they issue the kits, we’ll offer a copy of A Doctor for the Enterprise comic for the best Lego reproduction of a scene from the comic!)

Andy Weir and Matt Damon talk about The Martian

Far Orbit Apogee – New anthology of modern space adventures

StarShipSofa

Gregory Benford shares a Chesley Bonestell Escher-like print (from FB)

Lost Animation from The Holy Grail found (Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable)

Astronaut Lindgren’s Worldcon Videos Now Available in one place

Dark Roasted Blend Focuses on British Pulp Art

INDUSTRY

Paul Di Filippo tapped for Toastmaster at World Fantasy Con following death of Graham Joyce (via Fictionmags)

David Brin Offers up another definition of Science Fiction.  (Good try, David)

Sci Fi Romance Quarterly wants to know about your latest releases

Gary Westfahl reviews The Martian (film) and makes some interesting points regarding NASA

Diane Duane’s Young Wizards: Lifeboat is out in paperback

Fan Convention List (mostly New England)

Help Bring Lunacon Back – Contribute 

NY Times Book reports features SF&F (after a loooong time)

Fairwood Press:  Pre-order Conversations with Robert Silverberg

Magatopia:  help with finding free SF/F/H reads

SCIENCE

Star may have alien mega-structures orbiting it (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)  (all possible explanations have been ruled out except for two – an extremely unlikely cometary invasion, or, ALIENS)

Pluto has Blue Skies

NASA’s Journey To Mars – Next Steps

Rat Dreams:  Scientists fine neural switch that turns dreaming on and off – shades of Total Recall

PRESS RELEASES & NEWSLETTERS

Norwescon 39
Remembering the Future

Norwescon Art Show Now Accepting Applications
The Norwescon 39 art show is now accepting applications from artists.  We would love to hear from you! Headlined by our artist guest of Honor, Janny Wurts, this promises to be another exciting year.
The Norwescon 39 art show’s goal is to feature well-known and successful artists, while supplying a venue for up-and-coming artists to provide exposure and help build successful careers.
We would like you to be part of our community. Please go to www.norwescon.org/exhibitors/art-show for more information on how you can sign up with the Norwescon 39 art show.

Hotel Update
Don’t forget to book your room before the hotel fills up! Con rate rooms and certain room types are limited. We are already sold out of Wednesday and Sunday night rooms at the con rate. You are still able to include Wednesday and/or Sunday night in your reservation, but it will default to the hotel’s normal rate for that day. If you click on “rate details” before finalizing your reservation, it will show the rate for each night you have reserved. Thursday through Saturday night rooms at the con rate are still available!
The Norwescon 39 hotel liaison began accepting reservation requests for suites and family rooms starting at noon on October 12th, 2015. For more information about the process, and for rules on having a party, please review our webpage at www.norwescon/org/con/hotel.

Congratulations to Julie Dillon
A hearty congratulations to last year’s artist guest of  honor, Julie Dillon, for her recent recognition in the Hugo and Chesley awards.  Presented at the World Science Fiction Convention this last August in Spokane, she won the following awards:
  • 2015 Hugo Award for best professional artist
  • 2015 Chesley Award for best cover illustration – magazine
  • 2015 Chesley Award for best cover illustration – hardcover
Those of you who attended last year and got to see the artwork of our former Artist Guest of Honor know just how talented she is!

Norwescon 39 Convention Committee Meetings
Planning for Norwescon 39 is in full swing and you are invited to join us in making this the best Norwescon yet! Meetings are held monthly, generally at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport (the location of the convention itself).  For a full list of meeting dates, any location updates, and the general agenda, visit our volunteers page at www.norwescon.org/get-involved/volunteers.

Writers’ Workshop
The Fairwood Writers is once again sponsoring the writing workshop at Norwescon. They are accepting both short stories and novel excerpts to be critiqued by professional writers during Norwescon 39. Entries must be submitted by November 29, 2015. For more information, including the submission guidelines, see the Writers’ Workshop atwww.norwescon.org/con/program/writers-workshop.
In This Issue


Memberships
Pre-registration for Norwescon 39 is now open! Just $65 for a full four-day weekend membership!

Quick Links
NorwesconLogo

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Museum of Science Fiction

Project Status Update No. 7, Q3 2015
October 6, 2015

Hello Everyone –

I’m happy to report that Escape Velocity 2016 event planning is well underway with new exhibitor commitments from Carbon Origins, JetPack International, and the U.S. Navy. NASA’s exhibition presence has now expanded with three divisions participating.

Work earlier this year is now beginning to show results. Our Grants and Proposal Team have received grant awards from NASA and the CarMax Foundation to support our ongoing educational programs.

We expect to finish 2015 with a museum site commitment and major progress with our grant proposals and capital campaign. Thanks again for your continued interest and support.

Best regards,

Greg Viggiano
Executive Director

ps. please check out the Kickstarter film festival in Washington, DC on October 15.
Above image credit: Andrée Wallin, MOSF Featured Artist

NASA Grant
The Museum has been included in a major grant program of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Education Consortium (HEC). The HEC is part of a larger NASA program to promote educational endeavors by linking the science and mission directorates directly to students and the general public. The Museum’s two-year grant will be used to develop and implement a multi-part education program aimed at encouraging the next generation of students to explore science and math learning.
Escape Velocity
Lots of exciting developments for our inaugural Escape Velocity convention since we announced it in the spring.
Check out the latest updates here
Purchase your tickets here
Hotel room reservations hereCall for Escape Velocity Volunteers
As with any space launch, success depends on a great ground crew, so if you would like to volunteer at Escape Velocity and help us achieve a perfect liftoff, please contact us.
We will be hosting a meet and greet for anyone interested in volunteering at Escape Velocity in early November. Spend some time with the department heads and learn about the different volunteer opportunities available.  If you would like additional information about being part of Escape Velocity’s inaugural event, please send an email and your CV tolinda.zaruches@museumofsciencefiction.org

VGU Con
Video Gamers United will hold a special event at Escape Velocity. Ticketing information for video game activities will be available soon on the Escape Velocity registration page.

Kickstarter Film Festival
Kickstarter asked the Museum to host two films for their nationwide Film Fest. For one night only, on October 15th, 32 theaters across the country will be screening Kickstarter’s biggest festival yet. Kickstarter has combed through thousands of the features, documentaries, and shorts funded on Kickstarter to pick out an incredible program for you — including hits from Sundance, groundbreaking animation, and one knockout documentary. Details are on the Kickstarter Film Fest home page.  From here you can reserve tickets, check out videos, and learn more about the films. For DC, the 7PM screening of Afronauts andWhat We Do in the Shadows will be screened at the Avalon Theater located at 5612 Connecticut Avenue.PLEASE NOTE: Reserving a tickets does not guarantee entry. Seating is available on a first come first served basis.

MOONSHOT

Matt Lucas, Director of the Escape Velocity Film Festival for the Museum of Science Fiction is raising money for his new project, MOONSHOT starring LUVIA PETERSEN from the SyFy Channel show CONTINUUM. The film will premiere at Escape Velocity next year. “Moonshot” is the story of a homeless woman trying to leave her violent life behind and begin anew on the Moon. The crowdfund campaignfeatures an opportunity to have a walk-on appearance in the film!
Journal of Science Fiction
We are now accepting submissions for the first issue of our newly announced Journal of Science Fiction. The press release is available here. Information on how to submit articles can be found here.
Image credit: Beeple
2015 Prospectus
The newest edition of the Museum’s prospectus will be published at the end of October and can be downloaded here.

Image credit: Beeple
Future of Travel Exhibition
Only 24 days left to check out the Future of Travel exhibition before it departs Reagan National Airport on Friday, October 30th – and take a look at our new 3D Model CAD Catalog for a downloadable Orion III file for 3D printing!

Terminal C, Baggage Claim Level, near Door 11

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Canada’s largest dedicated genre publisher of thought provoking novels,
anthologies and collections of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
Quality literary entertainment in print and pixel formats.
For Immediate Release

(please share this information)

EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing

For Immediate Release:
(Calgary, Alberta)
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Announces the EDITORS for

Compostela
(Tesseracts Twenty)
Spider Robinson
and
James Alan Gardner

ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY

Compostela (Tesseracts Twenty) is an anthology of hard and soft science fiction stories that best represent a futuristic view of the sciences and how humanity might be affected (for better or worse) by a reliance in all things technological. For more than 1,000 years, Santiago de Compostela (Compostela means “field of stars”) has attracted pilgrims to walk to the cathedral that holds St. James the apostle’s relics. The stories in this anthology in their own way tell the tale of futuristic travelers who journey into the dark outer (or inner) reaches of space, searching for their own connections to the past, present and future relics of their time.

For complete submission guidelines please visit:

ABOUT THE EDITORS:

Spider Robinson

Since he began writing professionally in 1972, Spider Robinson has won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, three Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and countless other international and regional awards. Most of his 36 books are still in print, in 10 languages. His short work has appeared in magazines around the planet, from Omni and Analog toXhurnal Izobretatel i Rationalizator (Moscow), and in numerous anthologies. The Usenet newsgroup alt.callahansand its many internet offshoots, inspired by his Callahan’s Place series, for many years constituted one of the largest non-porn networks in cyberspace.

In 2006 he became the only writer ever to collaborate on a novel with First Grand Master of Science Fiction Robert A. Heinlein, posthumously completing VARIABLE STAR. That same year the Library of Congress invited him to Washington D.C. to be a guest of the First Lady at the White House for the National Book Festival. In 2008 he won the Robert A. Heinlein Award for Lifetime Excellence in Literature.

Spider was born in New York City in 1948, and holds a Bachelors degree in English from the State University of New York. He was the regular book reviewer for Galaxy, Analogand New Destinies magazines for nearly a decade, and contributes occasional book reviews to The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, for which he wrote a regular Op-Ed column from 1996-2004. As an audiobook reader of his own and others’ work, he has won the Earphones Award and been a finalist for the Audie, and his podcast Spider On The Web has appeared online weekly since September 2007. In 2001 he released Belaboring the Obvious, a CD featuring original music accompanied by guitar legend Amos Garrett. He has written songs in collaboration with David Crosby and with Todd Butler.

Spider was married for over 30 years to Jeanne Robinson, a Boston-born writer, choreographer, former dancer and teacher. She was founder/artistic director of Halifax’s Nova Dance Theatre during its 8-year history. The Robinsons collaborated on the Hugo- Nebula- and Locus-winningStardance Trilogy, concerning zero-gravity dance. Jeanne contributed to writing, producing and choreographing a film,STARDANCE, with producer/co-director James Sposto.  Spider and Jeanne met in the woods of Nova Scotia in the early 1970s, and lived for the last two decades in British Columbia.

James Alan Gardner

Raised in Simcoe and Bradford, Ontario, James Alan Gardner earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo.A graduate of the Clarion West Fiction Writers Workshop, Gardner has published science fiction short stories in a range of periodicals, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Amazing Stories. In 1989, his short story “Children of the Creche” was awarded the Grand Prize in the Writers of the Future contest. Two years later his story “Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large” won an Aurora Award; another story, “Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream,” won an Aurora and was nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards.

He has written a number of novels in a “League of Peoples” universe in which murderers are defined as “dangerous non-sentients” and are killed if they try to leave their solar system by aliens who are so advanced that they think of humans like humans think of bacteria. This precludes the possibility of interstellar wars.

He has also explored themes of gender in his novels, includingCommitment Hour in which people change sex every year, and Vigilant in which group marriages are traditional.
Gardner is also an educator and technical writer. His bookLearning UNIX is used as a textbook in some Canadian universities.

A Grand Prize winner of the Writers of the Future contest, he lives with his family in Waterloo, Ontario.ABOUT THE TESSERACTS SERIES:

Each year EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing chooses a team of editors – which keeps the collections fresh, new and ever changing – from among the best of Canada’s writers, publishers and critics. The editors then select innovative and futuristic short fiction and poetry from established and emerging voices of Canadian speculative fiction.

Since its first publication in 1985, more than 315 Canadian authors, editors, translators and special guests have contributed 529 short stories, poems, editorials and forwards to the series.

Each volume of the Tesseracts series features established as well as emerging authors. Some of Canada’s best known fiction writers have been published within the pages of these volumes – including Margaret Atwood, Susan Swan, and Hugo and Nebula award winning authors William Gibson, Spider Robinson, and Robert J. Sawyer.

The entire series includes Tesseracts One through Nineteen, plus Tesseracts Q, which features translations of works by some of Canada’s top francophone writers of science fiction and fantasy.

The series has won the prestigious Canadian Aurora Award.

ABOUT EDGE:

Celebrating its 15th anniversary, EDGE publishes thought-provoking full length novels and anthologies of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. Featuring works by established authors and emerging new voices, EDGE is pleased to provide quality literary entertainment in both print and pixels.

-30-
Compostela
(Tesseracts Twenty)
edited by
Spider Robinson and James Alan Gardner

For further information, or to book interviews with the editors, or authors please contact:

Janice Shoults
Marketing and Events
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, AB
Canada T2P 2L7
Email: events@hadespublications.com
(403) 254-0160 (Calgary office)
(780) 569-1756 (Edmonton office)
Thanks for your continued support of our press. EDGE titles can be purchased through local book resellers and from our online partners.
Distributed in Canada and the United States by Fitzhenry and Whiteside
(US wholesale via Ingram)
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Box 1714, Calgary, AB, Canada
Phone: (403) 254-0160

www.edgewebsite.com

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RPGnet Newsletter #24
October 6, 2015

New Columns

After a week off, Christopher Cecil returns with the 100th edition of Fuzzy Thinking: “Multitasking?”.

We also received the 15th edition of Bryan Jonker’s Greetings from Magrathea“Speed of Thought” – a look at the role information and communications technology should play in your worldbuilding.

New Reviews

Be sure to check out all of this week’s new reviews:

Threads You Might Have Missed

The villain twirling his moustache and pontificating about his magnificent plan is a stable of many genres. Sometimes, though, those evil master plans are stupid (paging Cobra Commander; Cobra Commander, please come to the blue courtesy phone). To share your tales of idiotic evil schemes and chuckle along with your fellow RPGnetters, head over to “[spoilers] The Most Horribly Stupid Evil Plans We Were Meant To Take Seriously.”

While you’re in Other Media, check out other RPGnetters’ attempts to answer a question that has bedeviled the community for over 30 years now: “[Star Wars] What happens to force users that are not Jedi?”

Normally, yr. Humble Editor avoids using this space to recommend threads that simply recommend another internet thing. But, RPGnetter, but … everyone should see this video and read the accompanying Tangency thread: “Oh, please stop breaking my things, bear!”

Sign Off

Have a good week, everyone.

RPGnet Newsletter Staff:

  • Tectrix
    Actual Play Spotlight Columnist
  • Iustum
    Newsletter Editor

 

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Journeys through Time and Space

A Tomorrow Project Anthology

Presented by the Intel Foundation, ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination, and the Society for Science & the Public

Edited by Ed Finn and G. Pascal Zachary
Featuring an essay by Jim Bell, Director of ASU’s NewSpace Initiative and President of The Planetary Society

Humanity defines itself by its journeys. Whether we’re crossing oceans, blasting off into space, migrating to distant unknown lands, or pursuing voyages of discovery in our own minds, we learn about who we are and who we want to become by traversing time, space, and the imagination.

In this volume, eleven young authors from Singapore, Nepal, and eight different U.S. states use science fiction to explore human futures shaped by excursions through space and time, and into the labyrinthine caverns of the human mind.

Journeys through Time and Space is free to download, read, and share at The Tomorrow Project.

Download the book

Copyright © 2015 Project Hieroglyph, All rights reserved.

You are receiving this email because you are a member of the Project Hieroglyph community (https://hieroglyph.asu.edu). If you’d like to stop receiving these emails, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.Our mailing address is:

Project Hieroglyph

Arizona State University
PO Box 870309

Tempe, AZ 85287-0309

 

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Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life, Jonathan Bate
Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life
JONATHAN BATE
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Renowned scholar Sir Jonathan Bate has spent five years in his archives – this book offers for the first time the full story of Ted Hughes’ life as it was lived, remembered and reshaped in his art.
‘Gripping and at times ineffably sad, this book would be poetic even without the poetry’ The Sunday Times

Girl in the Woods, Aspen Matis
Girl in the Woods
ASPEN MATIS
A gripping memoir of the 2650 mile hike Aspen Matis took to transform from shattered girl to self-reliant woman. After being raped on her second night at college and left devastated by the cold reaction from her university, she decided to walk the Pacific Coast Trail in an attempt to escape the trauma. Negotiating physical extremities as she treks through arid deserts and frozen mountains she learns to trust others and rely on herself.
‘Beautiful and so wildly engaging.’ Lena Dunham
Monster, CJ Skuse
Monster
C J SKUSE
At sixteen Nash thought that the fight to become Head Girl of prestigious boarding school Bathory would be the biggest battle she’d face. Until her brother’s disappearance leads to Nash being trapped at the school over Christmas with Bathory’s assorted misfits. How will they keep safe when the matron goes missing?
‘It envelops the reader like ivy … [with] echoes of The Hound of the Baskervilles.’ South Wales Echo
The Geneva Mystery, Francis Durbridge
Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery
FRANCIS DURBRIDGE
Paul and Steve are called upon to crack a case involving Carl Milbourne, the brother-in-law of wealthy financier Maurice Lonsdale. After the news that Carl has perished in a fatal car accident, strange rumours begin to stir that, despite all odds, Carl is actually alive and well.
‘A classy period piece … Great fun and surprisingly gripping.’ The Guardian
Win £1,000 Tesco Vouchers with Josephine Cox
We all love Christmas, but we know how expensive it can be – so Josephine Cox is here to give you a helping hand and spread some Christmas cheer! To celebrate the publication of Lonely Girl, we’re giving you the chance to win £1,000 worth of Tesco vouchers to put towards the Christmas of your dreams. Five runners up will also win £150 worth of vouchers.
Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Biography
With his magnetic personality and an insatiable appetite for friendship, love and for life, Ted Hughes attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron. At the centre of this book is Hughes’ lifelong quest to come to terms with the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, the saddest and most infamous moment in the public history of modern poetry.

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