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News
& What's New - August 2019 |
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The
Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolaño |
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30 Aug
2019
 "The
most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation" wrote
The
New York Times
on 20 December 2012. Roberto Bolaño was praised for the
eleven
novels he wrote. He was only 50 years old when he died on July 15, 2003.
The
Spirit of Science Fiction (El espíritu de la
ciencia-ficción
in Spanish) was completed by Bolaño in approximately 1984.
It
was published posthumously in Spanish in 2016 and in English in 2019.
The novel is seen by many as an ur-text to The Savage Detectives,
another of his novels, "populated with precursory character sketches
and situations" and centering on the activities of young poets and
writers living in Mexico City.
 In
the novel Bolaño published several letters of admiration to
American science fiction writers, one of them to Philip José
Farmer. He shared the same ideas about the use of sex in science
fiction. Bolaño proposes several ideas about this in his
letter:
«In each story, there should be at least one sexual
act.»
Alas Farmer never saw this letter, although he would have liked it very
much in my opinion.
But Fred Fischer (US) bought and read the book and did see the letter.
It prompted him to write an interesting essay about this, with the
complete text of the letter to Farmer for which Fred and I got
permission from Penguin Press. You can read the essay here on the
site.
(The shown covers are of the first
Spanish edition, 2016, and of the English translation, published in the
UK by Picador, 2019.)
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Campbell
Award Renamed |
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29 Aug
2019
Locus, the Magazine
of the Science Fiction Field, had on August 27, 2019 a news item about
the renaming
of the Campbell Award.
Jeannette Ng, winner of this year's Campbell Award, started a
discussion about its name:
«John W. Campbell, for whom this award was named, was a
fascist. Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction,
he is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still
haunts the genre to this day. Sterile. Male. White. Exalting in the
ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists.
Yes, I am aware there are exceptions.»
The award's name changed to "The Astounding
Award for Best New Writer".
 In
1954 Farmer already was very critical about Campbell. He calls to Mr.
Campbell to dare to publish more interesting and literary stories as he
was publishing at the time in Astounding.
And to open up Astounding
to new types of ideas and for allowing his writers to use more
mainstream techniques.
Farmer wrote this in his essay "Parables
are Pablum: A Reply to Mr. Farmer, a Letter to Mr. Campbell" in
the fanzine Skyhook
#23.
«Farmer is applauding from the grave», writes Fred
Fischer (US) in his e-mail to me. I fully agree!
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| Statistics |
These are the
numbers for the book pages this month.
 1914
publications
1301 different
covers
There are less covers than publications due to the reprints with the
same cover, and due to omnibuses.
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)
