News - 2003

News spans conference to conference.
June 28, 2003 - June 3, 2004.
(in reverse chronological order)

4.7.2004

Pilgrim Award

It is my great pleasure to announce, on behalf of the jury and the Association, that Edward James will receive the Pilgrim Award for 2004.

Peter Brigg. President, SFRA

4.1.2004

Clareson Award

Patricia Warrick has been selected as the winner of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service for 2004.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

3.1.2004

Nominating Committee announces candidates for SFRA Executive Board:

President:
Janice Bogstad
David Mead

Vice President:
Philip Snyder
Bruce Rockwood

Treasurer:
Joe Sanders
Donald Hassler

Secretary:
Ed Carmien
Warren Rochelle

Further nominations will be accepted until June 10, 2004, and may be made at the General Meeting in Skokie. Ballots, which will include candidate statements, will be mailed on or before August 1, 2004 and must be mailed by October 1, 2004 (the address will be on the ballot).

Candidate statements will also appear in the next issue of the SFRA Review.

Please vote. Every vote counts--don't miss this chance to participate in your organization and to help shape its future!

2.29.2004

Mary Kay Bray Award

I am delighted to inform the Association that Miriam Jones has been selected as the winner of the 2004 Mary Kay Bray Award.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

2.29.2004

2004 Pioneer Award

I am delighted to inform the Association that the winner of the 2004 Pioneer Award is Andrew M. Butler for his critical essay 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at the British Boom' (Science Fiction Studies, #91, Volume 30, Part 31, November 2003).

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

2.3.2004

New Membership-Payment Option

In response to the desires (and complaints) of our members who live overseas, SFRA has opened a PayPal account. This will allow payment of SFRA dues and journal subscriptions by credit card or bank transfer. A PayPal button has been added to the SFRA webpage. See www.sfra.org .

To use Paypal, an overseas member will have to create a FREE Paypal account for her/himself, but that is easy to accomplish, and may be useful for other purchases.

This service is costly to the organization (about 3.5% of the amount paid), so we ask everyone who is able to pay directly - by check or money order - to continue to pay directly.

Our paypal account can also be found by pasting the following web URL into your web-browser:
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dmead%40falcon.tamucc.edu& item_name=SFRA+Membership+and+Optional+Subscriptions &no_note=1¤cy_code=USD

12.29.2003

President's Travels

This is just a notice to the members of SFRA that your president will be on the move in 2004. I have a research year, most of which will be spent in Christchurch, New Zealand. From January 3, 2004 to about January 25, 2004 I shall be travelling and will be off e-mail. During that time Janice Bogstad, the vice-president of the Association, will be acting in my stead. Thereafter I will be running the Association from New Zealand by e-mail. I shall be returning briefly to North America to fulfill my duties as your President at the SFRA annual meeting in Skokie.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

12.29.2003

Assistance for Foreign Members, Graduate Students & Junior Faculty

SFRA has limited funds used to assist foreign members, graduate students, and junior faculty who are in need of assistance in order to join the association or attend its conferences.

The Scholar Support Fund, which is financed by donations from our members, is intended to assist in the payment of memberships for members from Third World countries and selected graduate students.

The other source of funding is a small pool of money from the association's general revenues which has traditionally been used to offer partial support to attend the annual conference to foreign members, graduate students, and occasionally junior faculty who are in particular need. The sums involved have usually been in the neighborhood of $300 US.

As of January 1st, 2004, we have made no allocations for 2004. We would therefore ask that anyone seeking assistance contact Peter Brigg at pbrigg@uoguelph.ca. Please make some effort to describe your circumstances so that a reasonable selection of those eligible to receive aid may be made. We would also ask that members offer us nominations for others who should receive assistance. Please note that Peter Brigg will be off e-mail from January 3, 2004 to January 25, 2004. Shortly after this date he will inform those to whom assistance can be offered.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

12.29.2003

SFRA Awards Juries 2003-2004

I am pleased to announce that the juries for our 2003-2004 awards have been set. I list the memberships below and encourage members to contact the juries with suggestions and recommendations.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA.

Pilgrim Award
John Clute (chair)
Veronica Hollinger
Andy Sawyer

Pioneer Award
Paul Kinkaid (chair)
Pavel Frelik
Hal Hall

Clareson Award
Mack Hassler (chair)
Neil Easterbrook
Joe Sanders

Mary Kay Bray Award
Jeff Prickman (chair)
Mike Levy
Margaret McBride

Graduate Paper Award
Joan Gordon (chair)
Janis Svilpis
Sarah Canfield Fuller

11.9.2003

Feminist Science Fiction Conference

WisCon 28 the conference of feminist science fiction will be held on the Memorial Day weekend: May 28-31, 2004, at the Concourse Hotel in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.

For detailed information about the convention: http://www.sf3.org/wiscon/.

We invite papers and presentations on science fiction and fantasy, with an emphasis on issues of feminism, gender, race, and class. We especially welcome papers on the work of this year's guests of honour, Eleanor Arnarson and Patricia McKillip.

Send proposals of 50-100 words (be warned: proposals longer than that will be returned unread for a rewrite) via e-mail to:

Justine Larbalestier
jazza@english.usyd.edu.au

Deadline: 13 February 2004.

11.5.2003

Reminder to MLA Members

As you are returning your MLA membership forms, please don't forget to check off "Science Fiction, Utopia and the Fantastic" as one of the allied groups to which you belong.

10.17.2003

Moorcock Papers at Texas A&M University Attract Science Fiction Reviewer

Science fiction reviewer William Thompson recently interned at Texas A&M University libraries with the staff at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. He worked for several weeks with science fiction curator Hal Hall on the Michael Moorcock Papers. A regular reviewer for the respected British magazine, Interzone, and the Hugo-nominated online SF Site, Thompson contributed his extensive knowledge of fantasy and science fiction, as well as his friendship with Michael Moorcock, to the organization and collation of Moorcock's papers and manuscripts.

Outside the Bodleian Museum in Great Britain, Cushing Library houses the largest collection of the author's papers to date, including most of his personal papers and manuscripts for the past decade, as well as an extensive collection of his novels, essays and shorter works. A British author currently residing in Bastrop, Moorcock is considered one of the most prolific and seminal writers of science fiction in contemporary literature. He has also served as editor and publisher of New Worlds, the pre-eminent science fiction periodical during the late 60's and early seventies. He has won numerous awards for his writing, including the BSFA Award, The Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America, The Guardian Fiction Prize and the World Fantasy Award.

Thompson, whose reviews have appeared in Science Fiction Revolution and Locus Online, serves as an advisor to the science fiction and fantasy collection at the Lilly Library, and is currently a contributor to the forthcoming three-volume Encyclopedia of Themes in Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is a graduate student at Indiana University.

Contact:
Charlene Clark
Public Relations Officer
Texas A&M University Libraries
(979)862-4233

10.5.2003

SFRA 2004 Details

Information about the conference.

Contact Beverly Friend with questions.

10.5.2003

Sunburst Awards Announced

The Sunburst Award is pleased to announce the winner of its 2003 award:

SKIN FOLK by Nalo Hopkinson
Warner 2001
ISBN: 0-446-67803-1

Ms. Hopkinson will receive a cash prize of $1,000 and the Sunburst medallion at the launch of her new novel, SALT ROADS. This will take place Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., at the Bambu on the Lake, 245, Queen's Quay West, Toronto (416-214-6000). For more information about the launch, please contact Heidi Winter at H.B. Fenn (1-800-267-3366 ext. 240)

The other short-listed works for the 2003 award were:

TALON by Paulette Dubé (NeWest 2002) 1-8963000-47-2
SALT FISH GIRL by Larissa Lai (Thomas Allen Publishers 2002) 0-88762-111-2
PERMANENCE by Karl Schroeder (Tor 2002) 0-765-30371-X
DEAD MAN'S GOLD by Paul Yee (Douglas & McIntyre 2002) 0-88899-475-3

The jurors for the 2003 Sunburst Award were Lesley Choyce, Hiromi Goto, Terence M. Green, Eileen Kernaghan and Arthur Slade. They selected these five short-listed works as representing the finest of novel-length Canadian fantastic literature published during the year 2002.

For more information about Nalo Hopkinson, see her web site: http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/ For a black and white photo of the author, go to http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/press/naloBW_LZW.tif [a PC- encoded tiff image compacted using LZW compression.]

For information about eligibility and the selection process, we invite you to visit the Sunburst Award web site, www.sunburstaward.org, or write the committee:

The Sunburst Award
Attn: Mici Gold, Award Secretary
106 Cocksfield Avenue,
North York, Ontario
CANADA M3H 3T2
647-282-8379
email mici@sunburstaward.org.

** THE 2004 AWARD.**
The jury for the 2004 award is comprised of Caterina Edwards, Claude Lalumière, Yves Meynard, Lyle Weis and Michelle Sagara West. Submission guidelines are available at www.sunburstaward.org. The deadline for receipt of the 2004 award submissions is 31 January 2004. Six (6) copies of each eligible book may be sent to the address above. American publishers: please mark packages PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS to facilitate their passage through Canadian customs. For more information, contact the award secretary.

9.29.2003

Graduate Student Prize Announcement

The Graduate Student Prize Committee (Joan Gordon [chair], Veronica Hollinger, Wendy Pearson, and Mike Levy) has deliberated and made its decision on the award for SFRA Guelph.

They have reported to me:

"We thought this was an extremely strong collection of essays this year but found that the essay by Sarah Canfield Fuller, "Speculating about Gendered Evolution: Bram Stoker's White Worm and the Horror of Sexual Selection" edged out the competition. The close runner-up, worthy of mention in the Review and on the Website, was Sophie Levy's "'My Mother Was a Computer': Myth and/as the Mother Machine in Canadian Feminist Speculative Fiction."

May I add my personal congratulations to Sarah and Sophie and my thanks to the ten other conference attendees who submitted papers.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

9.9.2003

Survey: Teaching Science Fiction

Marleen Barr is conducting a survey about the teaching of science fiction.

She would be very appreciative if you would please address the following questions. Please send your response to her at barrm@hotmail.com. She thanks you for your time and attention.

  1. Do you teach a science-fiction course or a course using science fiction? What kind of course: genre-focused (that is, teaching SF as a genre)? Great books or great stories (that is, these are great literature no matter what the genre)? Introduction to SF? SF used to teach other subjects: ideas? issues? Other disciplines such as history, the physical sciences, the social sciences?
  2. How often is the course offered? What is the usual enrollment? What are the student responses, good and bad? How do your colleagues and administrators feel about the course?
  3. What tools do you use: what pedagogy? What texts? What visual and auditory aids?
  4. Would you like to be included in a mailing list for information about the teaching and uses of SF?

9.4.2003

SFRA 2004 Conference Location

SFRA 2004 -- Taking Science Fiction Seriously -- but not Solemnly -- moves back to the Midwest with a Chicago suburb as the site of the June 3-6 conference featuring guest of honor Connie Willis.

The Doubletree Chicago/Northshore, 9599 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, IL 60077 (847-679 7000) offers a discounted Room Rate of $95 (with free parking). Be sure to state CODE SFR when making the hotel reservation.

The conference registration includes a Thursday night reception, Friday and Saturday mid-morning and afternoon refreshments and Saturday evening banquet. Rates are $50 for supporting,$175 before April 1; $195 between April 2 and June 1, and $200 at the door.

Co-chairs Elizabeth Hull and Beverly Friend welcome papers and proposals on varied SF topics, with papers on Willis, Chicago authors, and humor especially desired. Send proposals and 25-50 word abstracts to friend@oakton.edu or ehull@harper.cc.il.us.

8.6.2003

Russian Society of American Culture Studies Conference

Russian Society of American Culture Studies and Journalism Department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University extends an invitation to you to attend the XXIXth RSACS International conference which this year will be held over December 5 to 12, 2003 at the MSU Journalism Department in Moscow and will be devoted to the theme: LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

You are welcome to suggest your paper for any of the sections:

  1. Journalism. Media Aspects of Mass Media.
  2. The Nineteenth Century to the Twenty-First.
  3. Contemporary Prose.
  4. American Drama.
  5. Ethnic Literatures in the USA.
  6. Women Studies.
  7. Interaction of the American and World Culture.

Round Table Discussions planned:

  • Henry Thoreau (coordinator Prof. Tatyana Venediktova).
  • Imprints: Image of America and Image of Russia (coordinator Prof. Yassen Zassoursky).
  • Eugine O'Neil (Coordinator Dr. Maya Koreneva).
  • Borderline Consciousness in Culture (Coordinator Prof. Tamara Denisova).
  • Fantastic in the Arts (coordinator Larisa Mihaylova).
  • Organizing Committee is also welcoming other themes for workshops and discussions.

Papers deadline (up to 10 pages Arial 12 pt ) 10 September 2003.

Participants are supposed to pay a fee of $100 including attendance fee $30, materials of the conference $15, two excursions (to Kremlin and one more according to general preferences of the participants)$ 30 and a farewell party $ 25.

Accommodation available varies from $ 50 a day (hotels ***: University Hostel, Alpha /Izmailovo Park/,Rossia) to $120-300 a day ( hotels ****:Belgrad, Moskva,Ukraina, and ***** Savoi, Penta). Participants are welcome to express their preferences until October 30, 2003 in order to book the room. Booking is plus 25% to the price of the first day, payable upon arrival.

Very important: visa issue process takes 70 days now. That is why participants are strongly advised to send a copy of their passport by fax and information concerning their affiliation, office and home address, phone and fax numbers and the dates of stay no later than September 5, 2003.

Contact:

Society of American Culture Studies
Department of Journalism, room 217,
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Mokhovaya 9, Moscow, K-9, 125009, Russia
phone: (095) 203-89-12, fax: (095) 203-28-89
e-mail: larisa@journ.msu.ru

7.30.2003

Official Frederik Pohl Website Call for Contributors

Rich Erlich of Miami University has begun the construction of the Frederik Pohl Official website and invites contributions. Some possibilities:

  • brief scholarly essays suitable for a wide audience (e.g., in overlapping categories: on individual works, the Gateway series, The Eschaton Sequence, the satires, early works, collaborations, "Political Pohl," biography, bibliography, Pohl's own criticism-etc.) longer works (Is there a monograph out there "orphaned" by the closing of The Borgo Press?)
  • book reviews
  • brief synopses of works by Pohl, by himself or in collaboration
  • appreciations, reminiscences
  • .gif or .jpg (picture) files
  • suggested links to other sites / permission to link to your website
  • study guides

Rich says, "we will be grateful for all contributions and use those we think appropriate, and for which there are no permissions problems (we will return what we do not use)."

If interested, please contact Rich Erlich me off-list at pbrigg@uoguelph.ca.

Send MS-Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) attachments, or just embedded contributions in a plain-text email.

7.29.2003

You are invited to attend the 2003 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. It will be held Wednesday, August 27, 2003, 9:30-5:30 at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, 239 College St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Keynote address speaker will be Margaret Atwood.

The conference will feature papers on Canadian fantastic literature and a panel discussion of the fantastic in Canadian literature. Registration: $25 CDN; $15 CDN for students with ID card.

For further information please contact: Allan Weiss at York University.

6.26.2003

Cyrano de Bergerac text online

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/special/tow.html

The "Special Features" department of "Bewildering Stories" is the home of the only English-language version on the Internet of Cyrano de Bergerac's "L'Autre Monde: les états et empires de la lune" (The Other World: the Society and Government of the Moon).

"The Other World" is widely acclaimed as a classic of early modern science fiction; it is also little known except to specialists in 17th-century French literature and in the history of science and philosophy. This translation is intended for a wider audience: undergraduate students in the humanities and lovers of science fiction in general.

Don Webb
Dept of French Studies
University of Guelph

6.23.2003

SFRA Guelph update

Please check the weather forecast before you come. We seem to be going to have a bit of everything during the conference. I suggest http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/cities/can/pages/CAON0282.htm for Guelph proper.

We will have more than 100 people at the conference but latecoming SFRA members will still be very welcome. For all who are coming, remember that your destination target if you are staying in the residence system is Lambton Hall. For everyone, the Registration location (and the site of most of the conference) is the 3rd floor centre lounge area in the teaching wing of the MacKinnon Building. Campus maps were sent out, and more will be at Lambton along with someone to assist you.

Peter Brigg,
SFRA President

6.21.2003

SFRA Conference Update:

The SFRA Guelph conference schedule had to be moved. To access it please go to:
http://members.shaw.ca/sfracon/

Peter Brigg,
SFRA President

6.19.2003

CALL FOR PAPERS

For a proposed edited collection of essays on:

Time, Freedom, and Utopia: The Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed

We extend this call for papers to authors from all disciplines interested in exploring the contemporary political significance of Ursula K. Le Guin's powerful utopian novel The Dispossessed.

Published in 1974, The Dispossessed immediately received widespread critical acclaim (including both the Hugo and Nebula awards) and generated much scholarly commentary, particularly in the fields of utopian and science fiction studies. More recently, the social and political theorist André Gorz commented that The Dispossessed is "the most striking description I know of the seductions -- and snares -- of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society." To date, however, the radical political ramifications of the novel remain woefully under-explored.

We invite submissions that help to right this state of affairs. We particularly welcome papers that address questions such as the following. Is Gorz's characterization of the novel an accurate one? To what extent may The Dispossessed be read as an anarchist, ecological, post-industrial, or radical utopia? Which political themes emerge most strongly from the story? Does the book have anything distinctive to say about the nature and role of politics in general? Does it have anything distinctive to say about the relationship between art, politics, and society? To what extent does Le Guin's "ambiguous utopia" represent a challenge to traditional models of utopian thought? Is it fair to describe The Dispossessed as a "dynamic" or "pluralistic" utopia? In what ways does the work challenge the reader's sense of conventional temporal relationships? What connections does it make between conceptions of time and ideas of human freedom? What roles do moral, social, and political conflict play in the story?

If you are interested in contributing to the planned volume, please submit an essay title and c. 300-word proposal to either of the editors, by 18th September 2003, at the addresses below. Note that contributors to the proposed collection may also have the opportunity -- subject to the final approval of the USSE conference programme chair -- of presenting their work at the Fifth Annual Conference of the Utopian Studies Society Europe, to be held in the summer of 2004 at the University of Oporto in Portugal.

Peter Stillman is Professor of Political Science at Vassar College, where he has taught since 1970. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on utopian political thought, Hegel's political philosophy, ecological issues, and Marx's theories, and has co-edited a new translation of Rousseau's Confessions.

Laurence Davis was educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities, and has taught political and social theory at Ruskin College, University Colleges Dublin and Galway, and Oxford University. He is currently working in Dublin on a book on utopian political thought.

Dr. Laurence Davis
29 Parnell Court
Harold's Cross
Dublin 12
Ireland
Telephone: +353 1 473 2083
E-mail: ldavis@oceanfree.net

Professor Peter Stillman
Department of Political Science
Vassar College (#463)
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0463
U.S.A.
Telephone: +1 845 437 5581
Fax: +1 845 437 7599
E-mail: stillman@Vassar.edu

5.30.2003

SFRA GUELPH UPDATE 30/5/03

  • SARS is back in Toronto but neither WHO or Disease Control in Atlanta is telling people to avoid the city. It is confined to several health care facilities and the people who passed through them, who are in quarantine. One case slipped through the earlier net in April, a 96 year old man in a hospital. You should have no concerns about this at all. As a Toronto politician ineptly put it, “You are much more likely to be hit by a car in Toronto than to get SARS .”
  • We want to urge people to get their registrations in as soon as possible. Banquet and other arrangements are very difficult when we are unsure of final numbers.
  • SFRA Guelph is different from some other conferences. We have papers, readings, and plenaries Thursday afternoon and a 1900-2400 reception (free wine and beer) Thursday night. Papers Friday morning, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Friday afternoon and evening are blank for the Toronto trip.
  • The schedules are on-line at: http://members.shaw.ca/sfracon/program5.htm and http://members.shaw.ca/sfracon/schedule3.htm. As always, there will be some tweaking, but it will be minor.
  • The Toronto trip on Friday afternoon and evening will give people a choice of interesting options. The main objective is the Royal Ontario Museum, a world-class institution rich in dinosaurs and things Chinese and Egyptian. Robert W. Sawyer will lead a tour-within-a- tour of the dinosaurs, or you can simply roam the museum. A stopoff to see the Merril Collection of SF will be possible, with Librarian Lorna Toolis there to act as guide. The Royal Ontario Museum is in a central shopping/dining area, near the famous BAAKA sf bookstore, the Gardiner Ceramic Museum, and the BATA Shoe Museum (yeh, shoe museum ) .
  • Check-in at the university residences is open 24 hours a day.
  • Anyone driving to Guelph should get in touch with me (pbrigg@uoguelph.ca). The route given in the registration package is suddenly under construction for the summer, and while you would get here by following fairly clearly marked detours (I tried them) there is an easy alternate route.
  • If you are hovering about coming to Guelph, commit. We may well have one of the largest conferences ever, and we think the lineup and the facilities will be great.

See you in June.

Peter Brigg
for the Conference Committee

4.25.2003

SARS and SFRA Conference Update from Peter Brigg, SFRA President:

The Conference Committee has received a few inquiries about the continuation of the conference in the light of the media reports of the SARS cases in Toronto. The conference is still being held as SARS, despite a lot of overly colourful press coverage outside Canada, is very much contained and appears to have peaked several weeks ago in Toronto. All the SARS cases are traceable to two people and the health care workers who ministered to them before it was realized it was SARS. SARS is not easily transmitted, requiring extensive close contact with an ill person.

The conference is in Guelph, not Toronto, anyway, and there are no SARS cases in Guelph at all. The Toronto airport is screening incoming travelers from other SARS sites.

The WHO travel advisory for Toronto is in effect only until mid-May. Local, regional and national health authorities are confident that the outbreak has been contained and that will be clearly demonstrated by mid-May. We understand your concern but we honestly do not believe that this should or will impact the conference. So, please do register now. We must go ahead as our volunteer registration effort cannot handle a flood of last-minute registration.

We are monitoring the situation very carefully, and if the disease was to explode in Toronto we would consider cancellation. At present this is simply not the case. Should cancellation occur there would be refunds of registration and accommodation deposits.

Peter Brigg,
SFRA President

4.17.2003

From The New York Times, 17 April 2003: Sci-Fi Shrine for Seattle, Complete With Aliens

In the nearly two centuries between Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and "The Matrix," science fiction has captivated countless millions of readers, listeners and viewers. Now one of them is taking his obsession to a higher level, investing $10 million to $20 million to build a temple to the genre.

Paul G. Allen, a billionaire businessman and co-founder of Microsoft, is planning to build a "cultural project" in Seattle that will seek to draw visitors into the science-fiction experience.

Details of the project are to be announced today. Preliminary plans suggest that if it comes to fruition, it would be part museum, part amusement park and part little boy's fantasy.

more ...

3.31.2003

Mary Kay Bray Award

The 2002 Mary Kay Bray Award committee--Margaret McBride, Jeff Prickman, and Michael Levy--has chosen Farah Mendlesohn's review of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt to receive this year's Mary Kay Bray Award, given annually for the best article in the SFRA Review.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

3.26.2003

SFRA 2003 Update

Guelph Conference Adds Distinguished Guest

We are delighted to announce the addition of Frederik Pohl, 1992 Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of the 1996 Thomas D. Clareson Award, to our list of guest authors for SFRA 2003.

Fred will be reading, signing, and participating in a panel/interview at the conference.

3.26.2003

Clareson Award Announcement

The Clareson jury, chaired by Carolyn Wendell and featuring Mack Hassler and Wendy Bousfield, has selected Joe Sanders to receive the 2003 Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service.

3.20.2003

SFRA Conference Registrations

SFRA Conference: 26-29 June, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

On March 17 detailed registration packages were mailed to all 2002 and 2003 SFRA members. If you do not get yours within, say, two weeks, please email Peter Brigg at pbrigg@uoguelph.ca. Anyone not a SFRA member should email Peter Brigg, and include a complete street address to receive a registration package via postal mail.

NOTE: Payment and bookings for accomodations are made directly to University Conferences, either using the form enclosed in the package or by visiting the online registration page online [link gone].

Payment for REGISTRATION is made directly to Peter Brigg. See the instruction at the end of the Registration Form which will come in the package.

3.18.2003

Pioneer Award Update

The Pioneer Award Committee (Philip Snyder, Chair, Paul Kincaid and Pawel Frelik is pleased to announce that this year's Pioneer Award will go to Lance Olsen, for his essay "Omniphage" from the Edging into the Future collection edited by Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon.

The award will be presented at the SFRA Conference in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Peter Brigg
SFRA President

2.20.2003

The Center for the Study of Science Fiction
Science Fiction Writer's Workshop
June 29-July 11, 2003

The Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, is hosting its summer Writer's Workshop June 29-July 11, 2003. The two-week workshop is intended for writers of science fiction and fantasy who have just begun to sell or who need that final bit of insight to become published.

Classes are led by author and SF scholar James Gunn, with assistance by writer/teachers Kij Johnson and Chris McKitterick. Author Frederik Pohl and scholar and author Elizabeth Anne Hull are special guests for the last two days of the workshop, and offer their own analyses of the stories. In previous years the workshop has also welcomed surprise guests such as editors Stanley Schmidt and John Ordover, either in person or through teleconferencing.

Classes meet from 9am-noon each weekday morning of the workshop. All students lunch together near our class location; we sometimes meet immediately after lunch, as well. In previous years, classes have been held in the East Penthouse of Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall on the University of Kansas campus. This year, we may meet elsewhere on campus; final details will be made available at the educational programs section of the center for the Study of Science Fiction's website: http://www.ku.edu/~sfcenter/courses.htm#workshop.

1.29.2003

Pilgrim Award Winner 2003

The 2003 SFRA Pilgrim Committee, chaired by Adam Frisch with John Clute and Veronica Hollinger as members, has selected Gary Westfahl as the 2003 Pilgrim Award Winner. Gary, who teaches at the University of California at Riverside and resides in Claremont, CA., hosted the SFRA meeting in Long Beach (on the Queen Mary) but the jury assures me that it was his major contributions to scholarship in the field rather than than that memorable moment which have earned him this honour.

Gary will be present at SFRA 2003 in Guelph, June 26-29, to receive the Pilgrim, and this is yet another reason for members of the Association to attend.

Peter Brigg
President, SFRA

1.24.2003

Call for Papers for the 2003 MLA

San Diego Conference (Science Fiction and Utopian and Fantastic Literature Discussion Group S5)

"Imagining Peace": How has science fiction, utopian literature or fantasy (in any medium) tried to imagine peace: approaches to it and/or costs of it?

Possibilities might include: efforts between nations, genders, races, species, ideological or theoretical camps.

Abstracts due by 1 March. Abstracts via email are fine but please do not send attachments.

Lisbeth Gant-Britton, UCLA Bunche Center for African American Studies, 153 Haines Hall, Box 951545, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1545 lbritton@ucla.edu

1.22.2003

Science Fiction Research Association Conference UPDATE Guelph 2003

While we are waiting to hear on our grant application we have had a number of inquiries about the conference and this update is intended to answer these questions.

Submission of Papers:

The early call for papers yielded a good number but there is still plenty of room for more papers for the conference. Please submit proposals to the program committee ( Chrissie mains at cemains@shaw.ca or Douglas Barbour at doug.barbour@ualberta.ca ).

Starting and Ending Dates:

The conference starts officially at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, June 26th. Accommodation will be available for those arriving on the evening of June 25th.

The conference ends officially at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 29th.

Please note there we really envision the Guelph conference as a Thursday to Sunday conference. There will be an active presentation of papers on Thursday afternoon and a reception and party in the evening. There will also be papers on Sunday morning followed by the general meeting of the Association from 12 to 1:30. There will be no papers on Friday afternoon as there will be an outing at that time.

Transportation:

Pearson International Airport is the Toronto airport and should be your destination. Information about transfers to Guelph ( and the contact number and booking information for the Red Car service in Guelph) will be provided in the first mailing which we send out, probably near the end of February. Guelph is about 1 hour from the airport, which in turn is about 20 minutes from downtown Toronto. A map will also be provided in the first mailing for those traveling to Guelph by car.

Accommodation:

The University of Guelph Conference Service will manage all accommodation for the conference. They will offer conference rate block bookings at several motels close to the campus, single and double rooms in residence, and four person air-conditioned townhouses on the campus. All this information will be available in a package that we will send out to you in late February.

Currency:

I want to remind all attendees who will be traveling on the American dollar of the particular joys of a conference in Canada. As of January 21, 2003, your dollar would buy $1.53 worth of Canadian money.

Queries:

Please direct all queries about the physical conference to Peter Brigg at pbrigg@uoguelph.ca.

My conference team and I are looking forward to seeing all of you at Guelph in June.

Peter Brigg

1.14.2003

NEW: Volumes 257 and 258 of the SFRA Review have been added to the archives. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read them.