Way back when in August 2008 I flew out to Oakland to spend some time with Charles on my way to the Denver WorldCon. On the Saturday afternoon Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade came up to the house and we drank beer, laughed and talked science fiction for hours.

In amongst the beer, laughter and doing an online interview for Conflux’s Minicon, I agreed to do three books for Night Shade. One was a reprint anthology of dragon stories, Wings of Fire, and one was a ‘best of’ volume of stories by the late, great Fritz Leiber. I remember sitting there and looking across the table and realising that Charles had to be involved with the Leiber book. He’d known Fritz well, and knew his work intimately. I also wanted a chance to work on something with him again, just as thing for friends to be doing.

Jeremy was enthusiastic about the idea, and Charles was too. The very next day he arranged for us to have dinner with Fritz’s agent and, before we’d got to dessert, we were set. Charles and I would select the stories, and Charles would ask Neil Gaiman if he’d do the introduction. The paperwork took a little while, as it always, does, but Charles and I began back and forthing on the length of the book, possible contents etc etc.

As I recall, we’d got to an almost final list of stories when I got the phone call from Liza that Charles had died. It threw the project into something of a loop for me for a while, but when things had settled I looked over the list we had and made, I think, one change. I also did some shuffling in running order, which was revised again following a helpful note from Marty Halpern.

 And now, a year and a half after that first conversation Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories is complete. Night Shade has just released the cover, which I love, and the book itself should be out in April. I’m very, very proud of the book, and am happy to have it stand as something of an end note to a long friendship that a valued very highly.  And should anyone ever wonder, it was very much a collaboration, right to the end. I wish Charles had lived to see the book done, but I’m glad it exists and that we did it together. I’m also grateful to Jeremy and the Shade for their work on it, and to Liza and the Locus gang who helped with the book at the end.

The great fantastist Jack Vance won the Hugo for the first time in 1963 for his novella “The Dragon Masters”, and backed up the following year winning again for his novelette “The Last Castle”. He was nominated again in 1975 for “Assault on a City”, but has not appeared on a Hugo ballot since. That’s thirty-four years, during which time he amassed a wonderful body of work, won or was nominated for many awards, and become one of the most influential and best-loved writers our genre has seen.

Vance, who lives in Oakland, California, is now ninety-three years old and writes very little. However, in 2009 he made an enormous exception to a writer’s life that has seen him consistently reluctant to comment on his work or on his life.  That exception was the wonderful short autobiography This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This Is “I”).  The book is revelatory without being confessional, and tells of a long and interesting life, without ever giving away too much about what drives Vance as a writer. I think it seriously deserves your consideration for the Hugo Award in the Best Related Work category.

Full disclosure. I met Jack Vance once, when I visited his home for coffee and conversation.  He was a charming host.  I have also co-edited four volumes of his work for Subterranean Press, who also published the autobiography.

Regardless of that, I think Vance deserves at least a Hugo nod for his important book, and can’t help feeling that a win would be appropriate after all these years.

My post supporting Starship Sofa for the Hugo Award in the category of Best Fanzine has been drawing a healthy number of comments, all of which have been both civil and welcome.  Some commenters have stated the view that a fanzine is a very specific thing and that podcasts really should not be considered in the fanzine category.

In truth, I don’t have a strong opinion on this and I certainly don’t want to advocate for the inclusion or exclusion of anything from any category.  Instead I’d simply direct people to the Hugo rules, which are contained in the WSFS Constitution and to this comment on recent changes to those rules by Hugo Administrator Vince Docherty in File 770.

My own feeling is that if the laws of the WSFS suggest that a podcast can be considered as a fanzine then I’m very happy to nominate StarShip Sofa.  I’m also very happy to leave decisions on such matters to the Hugo Administrator, and to suggest that if  people feel strongly that the rules are amiss that they should become involved in the WSFS process and work to change the rules.

I’m perhaps happiest that everyone seems to agree that StarShip Sofa is a worthy potential Hugo nominee, even if they can’t quite agree into what round hole its square peg should fit into.

For all that I love science fiction and science fiction magazines; my favourite magazine in the world is, by some considerable margin, The Word.  It’s the only magazine that I subscribe to that I don’t read for professional reasons and one of the few that I read cover-to-cover every issue.

Just the month before last the indefatigable scribes at The Word reviewed former Go-Betweens frontman Robert Forster’s book of essays, The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll and I was sufficiently interested that I picked up a copy at the greatest independent bookstore in Australia, Planet.  The book was smart and witty and perceptive, so I decided to keep an eye out for more from Forster. 

It turns out that he reviews for The Monthly, where Australian SF writer John Birmingham also appears fairly regularly.  Being a 21st Century kind of magazine, The Monthly makes all of its content available online for free a month or so after the print issue has been and gone. While I’ve now started buying The Monthly, I was delighted to get a chance to read Forster’s review/essay, “From Mop Tops To Moustaches“,  on the recently remastered Beatles catalogue.  An excellent essay and the sort of thing I’d love to see done really well in the science fiction field.

Reading Forster’s book led me directly to former Hunters & Collectors singer Mark Seymour’s book, Thirteen Tonne Theory (also obtained from Planet) which was one of the best books about life in the rock business that I’ve come across. It’s strongly recommended, even if you’ve never heard of the band.  Smart, funny, and he cut out all the dull bits. And, between these two books, I may just have had enough time off reading SF that I’m feeling like diving into some new work again, which would be terrific.

So I need to lose like a billion kilos, right, cos almost all of my activities are sedentary. I’m trying to fit in as much walking as I can to aid in the cause. Just did a six kilometre round trip walk to the local shopping centre in 28C sunshine. I am sweating like a porcine creature. Blech. Did I mention the blech? Blech.