British Fantasy Society News

Finally, a very pretty trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is available.

Click here to watch it online.

The Author’s Guild reports that they have reached a settlement in the Guild’s 2005 suit with Google over Google’s unauthorized scanning and displaying of copyrighted books.

A statement by Author Guild’s President, Roy Blount, Jr says in part, “The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge before it takes effect, includes money for now and the prospect of money for later. There’ll be at least $45 million for authors and publishers whose in-copyright books and other copyrighted texts have been scanned without permission.”

Click here for the full story.

Essential reading for anyone who is a member of either of Stephen Hunt’s Facebook groups - whether for SFCrowsNest.com or the Jackelians.

In short, a hijacker gained control of both of these groups, and thus also gained access to the profiles (and potentially dangerous information, if your profile is a little too complete) of all members of both groups. Such information could be used for nefarious purposes (hijacking of Paypal accounts, sale of information to criminals, etc), so please, if you are a member of either group, click here to read Stephen’s full explanation of what occurred and what this may mean for you.

Obviously there was the leaked, filmed-in-a-cinema, slightly naughty version online for a couple of days, but finally here’s the official trailer for J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek film, due in 2009.

Click here to watch the pretty!

Barrington John Bayley passed away October 14 2008 following a recent surgery for bowel cancer. He was 71.

Although usually writing as Barrington J. Bayley he also wrote as Alan Aumbry and P. F. Woods.

His first story was published when he was 17 and he went on to publish at least 16 science fiction novels plus numerous short stories and essays between 1954 and 2006. Bayley’s novels include Collision Course, The Soul of the Robot and Star Virus. His 1983 novel, Zen Gun, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.

See the original article at the SWFA.

Award winners are:

LIVING LEGEND: Peter Straub.

NOVEL: The Terror. Dan Simmons (Little, Brown & Company)

FICTION COLLECTION: Dagger Key and Other Stories. Lucius Shepard (PS Publishing)

LONG FICTION: Softspoken. Lucius Shepard (Night Shade Books)

MID-LENGTH FICTION: Closet Dreams. Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts 10: PS Publishing)

SHORT FICTION: Honey in the Wound. Nancy Etchemendy (The Restless Dead: Candlewick Press)

ANTHOLOGY: Inferno. Ellen Datlow, editor (Tor)

NON-FICTION: Mario Bava: All the Colors of Dark. Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog)

PERIODICAL: Postscripts. Peter Crowther & Nick Gevers, editors (PS Publishing)

ILLUSTRATED NARRATIVE: The Nightmare Factory. Thomas Ligotti (creator/writer), Joe Harris & Stuart Moore (writers), Ben Templesmith, Michael Gaydos, Colleen Doran & Ted McKeever (illustrators) (Fox Atomic/Harper Paperbacks)

ART: Elizabeth McGrath for The Incurable Disorder, Billy Shire Fine Arts, December 2007

For a full list of winners and nominees, see here: http://www.horroraward.org/

At this year’s GenCon, over $17,000USD was raised in memory of Gary Gygax, to fund his favourite charity, the Christian Children’s Fund.

The CCF refused to accept the donation, allegedly as it was part-funded by the sale of D&D merchandise.

Read the full story here and here.

Published in November 2008…

Premonitions: Causes For Alarm
Magazine-anthology of science fiction, horror stories, and genre poetry

Now in A5 paperback format, with nearly 57,000 words of 1st class writing!

Fiction by Matt Bright, Andrew Darlington, Waldo Gemio, Peter Hagelslag, David Howard, Patrick Hudson, William Jackson, Sue Lange, David McGillveray, Matthew Pendleton, Steven Pirie, Cyril Simsa, Jim Steel, Julie Travis, and Fred Walker.

Poems from: Cardinal Cox, J.C. Hartley, John Hayes, Steve Sneyd, and J.P.V. Stewart.

Cover artists: Chris Moore, and Caroline O’Neal.

(A low-resolution JPEG image is attached. Print quality PDF cover is available on request.)

UK only: £5.95 (cheques/PO payable to Tony Lee)
Prices for overseas orders will be announced, shortly.

Order direct from:
Pigasus Press, 13 Hazely Combe, Arreton, Isle of Wight, PO30 3AJ, England

Premonitions can be ordered by credit card (via Paypal) from the Pigasus Press website at
www.pigasuspress.co.uk

Alex Maleev Signing on Tuesday 18th November from 5pm - 7pm Orbital Comics - 148 Charing Cross Road, London

The world renowned practitioner of sequential graphic fiction will be here in a rare visit to the U.K. signing YOUR copies of his fine works such as Daredevil, New Avengers: the Road To Civil War, Halo, Batman: No Man’s Land and suchlike.

Self Made Hero - Shakespeare Manga Signing 22nd November 2pm - 4pm Orbital Manga - 4c Orion House, Upper St Martins Lane, London WC2H 9NY

The artists Chie Kutsuwada, Ryuta Osada, Mustashrik Mahbub from Julius Caesar, As you like it and Othello will be signing & sketching for people who come along.  We’ll also have a small competition prize to win some artwork, and we’ll be holding a portfolio review for any budding artists that come down and would like some feedback on their work.

Manga Shakespeare is a series of graphic novel adaptations of William Shakespeare using manga visuals from UK-based artists.

David Lloyd Signing on 6th Dec 08 from 3pm - 5pm Orbital Comics - 148 Charing Cross, London WC2H 0LB

Orbital Comics is proud to present to you David Lloyd!! Most famous for his illustrations in V for Vendetta he’s coming to Orbital Comics on 6th Dec, 3pm - 5pm to first and foremost promote and sign his crime noir thriller “Kickback”, sign his other works and sketch for all of ya!!

Make sure theses date’s are in your diaries!

The New Uncanny edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page (ISBN-13: 9781905583188) £7.95 (£6.50 if you buy online now) published on 4 Dec 2008…

In 1919 Sigmund Freud published an essay that delved deep into the tradition of horror writing and claimed to understand one of its darkest tricks. Like a mad scientist, he performed literary vivisection on a still-breathing body of work, exploring its inner anatomy, and pulling out mysterious organs for classification. His aim: to present to the world a complete theory of ‘das unheimliche’, the uncanny.

In the spirit of this great experiment, 14 leading authors have here been challenged to write fresh fictional interpretations of what the uncanny might mean in the 21st century, to update Freud’s famous checklist of what gives us the creeps, and to give the hulking canon of uncanny fiction a shot in the arm, a shock to the neck-bolts…

…featuring: A.S. Byatt, Christopher Priest, Ramsey Campbell, Etgar Keret, Hanif Kureishi, Sara Maitland, Alison Macleod, Jane Rogers, Gerard Woodward, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Nicholas Royle, Ian Duhig, Matthew Holness, and Adam Marek.

www.commapress.co.uk