Interzone #244 Jan - Feb 2013 (2 page)

Terry Pratchett
‘nearly died’ in a New York cab during his November US publicity tour. When his heart went into fibrillation, his assistant Rob Wilkins ‘had to kneel on the back seat of the taxi and give him CPR. It was fingers down throat stuff.’ After a rapid recovery, Terry remarked that he’d heard book-signing tours could kill you ‘quicker than drugs, booze and fast women’. (
Telegraph
) He also announced that he’ll pass the Discworld novel franchise to Rhianna Pratchett when no longer able to write: ‘The Discworld is safe in my daughter’s hands.’ (Interview,
New Statesman
)

As Others See Us II.
A little love in the
Firefly
reunion TV special: ‘And for the fans – the greatest moment is this brief snippet where Gina Torres says, “There’s nothing like a scifi fan. Like warm honey, poured all over you.” I want to watch that clip over and over.’ (io9) Depends which fan gets poured.

Malcolm Edwards
, a founding
Interzone
editor, is in
The Bookseller
’s list of ‘100 most influential people in the book industry’. They call him ‘The brainy fixer behind the scenes at Orion since 1998’.

Publishers & Sinners.
Fictionwise.com, the early e-publishing venture that was pretty good until bought up by Barnes & Noble, closed in December. After so many years I’ll miss all those Fictionwise royalty payments of exciting sums like $1.84. •
Analog
and
Asimov’s SF
increased their short-fiction payment rates from 6–8 cents per word to 7–9 cents per word.

Paul Krugman
, introducing a Folio Society edition of the Foundation trilogy, has a Margaret Atwood Moment: ‘Maybe the first thing to say about “Foundation” is that it’s not exactly science fiction – not really. Yes, it’s set in the future, there’s interstellar travel, people shoot each other with blasters instead of pistols and so on. But these are superficial details, playing a fairly minor part in the story.’

Algis Budrys
has a new
nonfiction book out
: a little project in which I took part. See http://ae.ansible.co.uk.

Thog’s Masterclass.
Sharing Dept. ‘Leaks were something Emma didn’t want to share.’ (Elizabeth Lowell,
Death Echo
, 2010) • Dept of Girly Superlatives. ‘“Good girl,” said Dex, patting her satiny bare shoulder as he stood free again. “You’re a sport and a gentleman. You don’t understand the terms? They’re earth words, Greca, that carry the highest praise a man can give a woman.”’ (Paul Ernst, ‘The Red Hell of Jupiter’,
Astounding
, October 1931) • Spung in a Cold Climate Dept. ‘His nipples were standing so erect they looked like little pink pencil erasers.’ ‘I looked down and noticed my own chest made it look like I was trying to smuggle candy corn out of the country, two at a time.’ (Nancy A. Collins,
Right Hand Magic
, 2010) • Dept of Pet Names. ‘When he got there, his Deputy, a portly bald man with a ginger moustache called Bo Sampson, was trying to calm down a hysterical man.’ (Adam Millard,
Dead West
, 2011

* * * * *

R.I.P
.

Janet Berliner-Gluckman
(1939–2012), South African-born horror/dark fantasy author and anthologist who won a Stoker award for ‘Children of the Dusk’ (1997) with George Guthridge, died on 24 October; she was 73.

John Coates
(1927–2012), UK film-maker and TV executive best known for
Yellow Submarine
(1968) and
The Snowman
(1982, based on Raymond Briggs’ book), died on 16 September aged 84.

Charles E. Fritch
(1927–2012) US author and editor whose stories are collected in
Crazy Mixed-Up Planet
(1969) and
Horses’ Asteroid
(1970) died on 11 October; he was 85. One story, ‘The Misfortune Cookie’, was adapted for
The Twilight Zone
.

Jacques Goimard
(1934–2012), French critic, editor, novelist and anthologist, died on 25 October aged 78. As acquiring editor at the Paris-based Pocket paperback imprint, he published some 800 works of sf/fantasy.

David Grove
(1940–2012), US illustrator inducted into the Illustration Hall of Fame in 2007, died on 25 October aged 72. Genre work included the striking
Something Wicked This Way Comes
film poster, the
Eye of the World
ebook, and covers and interiors for Gene Wolfe titles.

Larry Hagman
(1931–2012), US actor best remembered as J.R. in
Dallas
and the harried Captain/Major Anthony Nelson in the fantasy sitcom
I Dream of Jeannie
(1965–1970), died on 23 November; he was 81.

Alan Hunter
(1923–2012), UK artist whose work included covers for
Nebula SF
in 1952–1953 and much interior art for
Nebula
and
New Worlds
through the 1950s, died on 31 August aged 89. He was unfailingly generous with artwork for semiprozines and fanzines including
Algol/Starship
,
Ansible
,
Banana Wings
,
Ghosts and Scholars
,
SF Chronicle
,
SFinx
,
Vector
,
Whispers
and many more.

Julie Ann Jardine
(1926–2012), sf author and fan who with her then husband Jack Jardine wrote
The Sword of Lankor
(1966) and
The Mind Monsters
(1966) as by Howard L. Cory, died in November; she was 86.

Kenneth Kendall
(1924–2012), BBC radio announcer and newsreader (the first to appear on BBC television) who featured as a newsreader in
Doctor Who:
‘The War Machines’ (1966) and
2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968), died in November aged 88.

Paul Kurtz
(1925–2012), humanist/sceptical author and founder of Prometheus Books in 1969, died on 20 October aged 86. Prometheus published many genre works (including Martin Gardner’s
No-Sided Professor
) before launching its dedicated sf/fantasy imprint Pyr in 2005.

Patrick Moore
(1923–2012), UK astronomer, author and TV personality who had presented the BBC’s
The Sky at Night
since April 1957, died on 9 December; he was 89. His over 20 novels for young readers were all sf; nonfiction works of genre interest include his sf survey
Science and Fiction
(1957), the spoof
How Britain Won the Space Race
(1972 with Desmond Leslie), and the round-up of oddball science
Can You Speak Venusian?
(1972). He made a cameo appearance as himself in the
Doctor Who
episode ‘The Eleventh Hour’ (2010).

Patrick O’Connor
, former editor-in-chief or senior editor for several US publishers including Pinnacle and Popular Library, died on 13 October aged 87. His authors included Ayn Rand and Andrew M. Greeley.

Kevin O’Donnell, Jr.
(1950–2012), US author of several entertaining sf novels including
Mayflies
(1979),
ORA:CLE
(1984) and the
Journeys of McGill Feighan
tetralogy, died on 7 November; he was 61.

Spain Rodriguez
(Manuel Rodriguez, 1940–2012), US underground cartoonist who created the post-holocaust superhero Trashman, died on 28 November; he was 72.

John D. Squires
(1948–2012), US book dealer,
New York Review of SF
contributor and world authority on M.P. Shiel, died on 2 November; he was 64.

Boris Strugatski
(1933–2012), Russian author whose collaborations with his brother Arkady (1925–1991) were among their country’s finest and most-translated genre sf, died on 19 November. Their best-known single work may be the story translated as
Roadside Picnic
(1972) and adapted as Andrei Tarkovsky’s
Stalker
(1979). Both were popular guests of honour at the 1987 UK Worldcon in Brighton.

* * * * *

Copyright © 2013 David Langford

* * * * *

by Lavie Tidhar

Illustrations for
The Book Seller
by Warwick Fraser-Coombe

THE BOOK SELLER

Achimwene loved Central Station. He loved the adaptoplant neighbourhoods sprouting over the old stone and concrete buildings, the budding of new apartments and the gradual fading and shearing of old ones, dried windows and walls flaking and falling down in the wind.

Achimwene loved the calls of the alte-zachen, the rag-and-bone men, in their traditional passage across the narrow streets, collecting junk to carry to their immense junkyard-cum-temple on the hill in Jaffa to the south. He loved the smell of sheesha pipes on the morning wind, and the smell of bitter coffee, loved the smell of fresh horse manure left behind by the alte-zachen’s patient, plodding horses.

Nothing pleased Achimwene Haile Selassi Jones as much as the sight of the sun rising behind Central Station, the light slowly diffusing beyond and over the immense, hour-glass shape of the space port. Or almost nothing. For he had one overriding passion, at the time that we pick up this thread, a passion which to him was both a job and a mission.

Early morning light suffused Central Station and the old cobbled streets. It highlighted exhausted prostitutes and street-sweeping machines, the bobbing floating lanterns that, with dawn coming, were slowly drifting away, to be stored until nightfall. On the rooftops solar panels unfurled themselves, welcoming the sun. The air was still cool at this time. Soon it would be hot, the sun beating down, the aircon units turning on with a roar of cold air in shops and restaurants and crowded apartments all over the old neighbourhood.

“Ibrahim,” Achimwene said, acknowledging the alte-zachen man as he approached. Ibrahim was perched on top of his cart, the boy Ismail by his side. The cart was pulled by a solitary horse, an old grey being who blinked at Achimwene patiently. The cart was already filled, with adaptoplant furniture, scrap plastic and metal, boxes of discarded house wares and, lying carelessly on its side, a discarded stone bust of Albert Einstein.

“Achimwene,” Ibrahim said, smiling. “How is the weather?”

“Fair to middling,” Achimwene said, and they both laughed, comfortable in the near-daily ritual.

This is Achimwene: he was not the most imposing of people, did not draw the eye in a crowd. He was slight of frame, and somewhat stooped, and wore old-fashioned glasses to correct a minor fault of vision. His hair was once thickly curled but not much of it was left now, and he was mostly, sad to say, bald. He had a soft mouth and patient, trusting eyes, with fine lines of disappointment at their corners. His name meant ‘brother’ in Chichewa, a language dominant in Malawi, though he was of the Joneses of Central Station, and the brother of Miriam Jones, of Mama Jones’ Shebeen on Neve Sha’anan Street. Every morning he rose early, bathed hurriedly, and went out into the streets in time to catch the rising sun and the alte-zachen man. Now he rubbed his hands together, as if cold, and said, in his soft, quiet voice, “Do you have anything for me today, Ibrahim?”

Ibrahim ran his hand over his own bald pate and smiled. Sometimes the answer was a simple “No.” Sometimes it came with a hesitant “Perhaps…”

Today it was a “Yes,” and Achimwene raised his eyes, to him or to the heavens, and said, “Show me?”

“Ismail,” Ibrahim said, and the boy, who sat beside him wordless until then, climbed down from the cart with a quick, confident grin and went to the back of the cart. “It’s heavy!” he complained. Achimwene hurried to his side and helped him bring down a heavy box.

He looked at it.

“Open it,” Ibrahim said. “Are these any good to you?”

Achimwene knelt by the side of the box. His fingers reached for it, traced an opening. Slowly, he pulled the flaps of the box apart. Savouring the moment that light would fall down on the box’s contents, and the smell of those precious, fragile things inside would rise, released, into the air, and tickle his nose. There was no other smell like it in the world, the smell of old and weathered paper.