R.I.P. Jay Lake

 

Writer Jay Lake passed June 1 2014.  He lost his six year battle with colon cancer just five days short of his fiftieth birthday.

Jay was born  June 6, 1964 in Taipei, Taiwan China.  He grew up living and traveling in Asia, Africa and Europe. Jay graduating in high-school 1982 and graduated from the  University of Texas Austin in 1986. After college, Jay started a professional career in advertising and marketing in the high tech industry, which gave him exposure to technology  and trends.

In 2001 Jay made his publishing debut on the science fiction and fantasy scene. As he said, after 11 years of effort, he was an overnight success.  One of the most prolific writers in the genre, he has seen more than 300 short stories and 10 novels published. 

RIP: Joanna Russ

Legendary feminist science fiction author Joanna Russ died April 30, 2011 after a series of strokes. She was 74. Russ was the author of The Female Man and many other science fiction classics.
From the Wikipedia:

• She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire. It used the device of parallel worlds to consider the ways that different societies might produce very different versions of the same person, and how all might interact and respond to sexism.

For more info on Russ

• Joanna Russ at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• NovelGuide.com Biography
• IMDB

RIP: author Jeanne Robinson

Author Jeanne Robinson died on May 30 after a long battle with a particularly nasty and virulent form of biliary cancer. Jeanne was undergoing treatment but toward the end the cancer was not responded to treatment.

Robinson, the wife of Spider Robinson, co-authored the Stardance novels and won the Nebula and Hugo Awards in 1978 for the original novella, “Stardance.” Robinson has also been a dancer and choreographer. At the time of her death, she was working with James Sposto and David Gerrold to bring Stardance to the screen.

Jeanne Robinson was born in 1948 and passed at the age of 62.

Boing Boing article

Catherine Asaro's "The Spacetime Pool" available online

More and more authors are coming to realize that if they want to reach the biggest audience possible, they have to consider adding the internet/web to their strategy. As the prelim listing for the Nebula awards makes it's rounds I see several author that aren't afraid to wade in early. Take for example Catherine Asaro. I was just reading in SFScope's blog that she has release her novella The Spacetime Pool on her Facebook page. It is well worth searching it out. My only complaint is that the story was released first in chapters as kind of a "here it is, if you like it, buy it" idea. Nothing wrong with that....the problem is that the rest of the story has been released in the same manner....and in slightly different places on her page. I know....its a BS complaint, however if I am a voting member for Nebula or Hugo awards, I just would reather sit back and read the offering in one go and not have to search for parts. But that is me.

Oh and if anyone finds it listed differently let me know and I will updat asap.

<- Catherine Asaros' facebook page ->

**UPDATE!**

Catherine said... Thank you for the post about the novella. I much appreciate it. You can indeed now find the full text in one chunk, at

http://www.analogsf.com/nebulas09/TheSpacetimepool.shtml

McCaffrey not attending Albacon due to health

Author Anne McCaffrey's health continues to decline. Recent reports including this one in SF Scope has her missing the upcoming Northeast US science fiction convention Albacon. Cited reasons are as suspected - she is staying home to protect her health. The good news is that Son Todd is making appearances in her stead.

I for one hope that this health problem is a transient thing and Mz. McCaffrey will be well enough to venture out in the near future.

<- SF Scope article ->

RIP: Author James Killus

SF Scope blog reports: Writer James Killus died 23 September 2008. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1950, Killus was an sf author, as well as a chemist who specialized in the field of smog analysis and research. He earned a BS in Engineering and an MS in Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then moved to the San Francisco Bay area in the mid-1970s.

Killus was the author of two sf novels: Book of Shadows (Ace, 1983) and SunSmoke (Ace, 1985), the latter of which was reissued in 2003. He also had nearly two dozen stories published between 1981 and 2007, including "Flower in the Void", published in the Summer 2002 issue of Artemis Magazine. His scientific papers are more numerous, and his web site has many of them available as pdfs.

He is survived by his wife, Amelia "Amy" Sefton.

RIP: Algis Budrys

Steven Silver Via SfSignal blog is reporting that sf author Algis Budrys passed away June 9, 2008. Lithuanian-born Budrys was also known under the pen name Frank Mason.

Budrys is perhaps best known for his works Who? (1958), Rogue Moon (1960), and Michaelmas (1977).

Check out the Wikipedia listing

Mike Resnick on the Hugo Awards in Baen's Universe

Is Mike Resnick mad? No..... but is he bemused and concerned? Oh most certainly. Over what you might ask. Well in his how words:

.....1957,.... only three Hugos were handed out.....You know how many Hugos were awarded this year? Fourteen. And of those fourteen, you know how many were given out for written science fiction, which is the basis for this entire field? Four. That’s right. Less than 30% of the Hugos now go to written works of science fiction.

In the newest issue of Jim Baen's Universe, Mike goes on to describe the relative dysfunction that has come to embody the Hugo categories. I really have to agree that there is something amiss about an awards system that give an award to the best non-fiction book......That's right, in 1980 they gave a science fiction award to a book about well certainly not science fiction.... Isn't that like getting a Nobel for painting a house? Very off center for sure.

Click here for the newest issue of Jim Baen's Universe

or click the article title to go to Mike's article.

Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies

Kurt Vonnegut author of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater died last night in Manhattan. He was 84. His death was reported by his wife, the author and photographer Jill Krementz, who said he had been hospitalized after suffering irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. His novels — 14 in all — were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism.