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Dickson Estate
Sales of items from the late Gordon Dickson's estate have helped keep many things in the hands of fans, while generating money to cover unpaid medical expenses.
Joyce Scrivner wrote in her e-zine, "I purchased many books of his I didn't own yet…. I also found an original Ken Fletcher/Jim Odbert poster from 1974 for a signing of The Dragon and The George, which is framed, and signed by many local fans. (I picked up the original Odbert calligraphy for the "Ballad of Jacques Chertein" and a signed print as well.) I acquired some… odds and ends of other bits both fannish (the Sue Mason plaque for Gordie from Follycon) and not (some small wooden Panda bookmarks.)"
Other fans have also purchased items from the sale. It's reassuring to hear that many of his stfnal things are finding homes with people who value them.
Joyce adds, "There is talk about creating a Gordie Dickson scholarship for Clarion and there has been discussion among the local fan groups of contributions to it."
I'm Back From The Outback
Eric Lindsay and Jean Weber finished their Australian driving odyssey. Here what Eric's says about the last leg of the trip:
"As foreshadowed in my previous letter, we did indeed get to Lake Eyre, down in South Australia. It had lots of water in it, for about the third time in a century. The desert rainfall had been high for the past few years, 13 inches last year, and six inches this year so far, way up on the 2-4 inches that are usual. Lots of bird life. Took a couple of flights over both the north and the south lake. The lakes are partly in Anna Creek station, the largest cattle station in the world. Since I'm sure Texas fans may wish to point to some of their ranches, I'll mention we drove through more than five cattle stations, each larger than the largest in Texas. Anna Creek was over 30,000 square kilometres, and sold off a chunk twice as large as the largest Texan ranch. We also saw the Maree Man, a five kilometre earth figure on a plateau. The original is unknown, but suspicion falls on US and Australia army maneuvers in the area around 1990.
"We expected to have to drive via Bourke and Broken Hill, the long way around. However the roads had dried out, so we went on the dirt roads down the Strzelecki Track, up the Oodnadatta Track, and came back via the Birdsville Track. Saved thousands of kilometres of driving, and several weeks. Almost 2000 km without getting off the dirt, and 1860 kms as the longest distance between fuel stops (I admit our long range fuel tanks are fairly extreme).
"We got back so early that we took another trip a few weeks later, which was why we didn't hear of the terrorist attack on the USA until several days after it happened. Being out of touch isn't always a good idea."
Moon Flag Contest
The Moon Society is launching a contest to design a flag for the people of the moon. Everybody is welcome and encouraged to participate, and kids in grades K-12 are eligible to win things. The home page for the Moon Society's Lunar Flag Design Contest is at:
http://www.moonsociety.org/flag/
"It will be interesting to see if anyone thinks of the brass cannon with the bar sinister," kidded Greg Bennett.
The National Space Grant Foundation will announce the project to all the heads of the state space grant consortia. Bennett adds, "I expect we'll have a lot of fun with it. And if all goes well, kids just might learn something!"
Pluto Has Gas
When last heard from, space advocate Tim Kyger was rounding up people to fax letters to Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) asking her to fund a Pluto flyby mission. Tim explained, "Pluto is the only planet in the Solar System that has yet to be visited by Man (don't please give me any grief about whether or not Pluto is a planet, or whether or not a visit by a robotic spacecraft constitutes a visit by "Man" <grin> )."
It's not just that Tim feels we've neglected our celestial neighbor by failing to send the welcome wagon. There are urgent scientific reasons:
"Due to the eccentricity of Pluto's orbit, it has an atmosphere for only a part of its orbit, when it is closer to the Sun. For most of its orbit, its atmosphere is frozen out on its surface. Closer to the Sun, as it is now, its atmosphere outgases into existence as ices melt, with the freezing out of its atmosphere occurring again as Pluto recedes outward from the Sun again in its highly elliptical orbit. It would be a great scientific boon to observe its atmosphere. In a few years that won't be possible - at least until another several hundred years have again passed. In other words, if we want to see Pluto with an atmosphere, the time to look is now."
Even if mailed first class, a flyby mission will take up to 12 years to reach Pluto. Tim explains:
"Mission flight time depends upon the mass of the launched spacecraft, the power of the launch vehicle, and whether or not the mission can use a Jupiter gravity assist - and indeed, which assist opportunity is used). Under current planning, a flight launched in either 2004 or 2006 would be able to use a Jupiter assist; after that, Jupiter and Pluto will not be aligned in a way to avail a Jupiter swingby. This also assumes the spacecraft in question to be one in the mass range of the Pluto Kuiper Express-type of spacecraft, which is a general design that elements of NASA have been pursuing for almost 15 years now. The cost of a Pluto flyby mission would be roughly $500 million, which designs and builds the spacecraft, pays for the launch, and for the decade or more of mission operations through Pluto encounter. (That's the cost of a single Shuttle mission, by the way...)"
Tim's e-mail came out around Labor Day, just after the House and Senate had passed NASA appropriations. Only the Senate included money for Pluto and Tim wanted to get the attention of the conference committee so that the Pluto funding stayed in when it reconciled the two bills. Stay tuned….
Feghoot Wants YOU!
Dave Clark of ConJose, the 2002 Worldcon, writes, "In order to properly pay homage to our Imaginary Guest of Honor, Ferdinand Feghoot, and raise his image in the public's consciousness, we are looking for people who can write new Feghoots for our publications and web page. What we need are two sorts of Feghoots:
"(1) The standard Feghoot, featuring the exploits of our GoH, to be printed in our publications and web page before the convention. The standard Feghoot is a shaggy dog story, approx. 200-400 words long, ending in a wretched pun. (This is for one-time publication. There are no plans to collect these Feghoots after the convention. The copyright will read "Copyright 2001 by (your name here) and Fred Flaxman, with permission from the Reginald Bretnor Literary Estate." The estate of Bretnor -- Feghoot's creator -- is under the care of Fred Flaxman.)
"(2) Feghoots for presentation at ConJose. The plan is this: at events that feature the Guests of Honor, whenever Ferdinand Feghoot's name is called, someone comes out and delivers a Feghoot that explains why he's not there at the ceremony. We hope to continue this practice throughout the convention at panels and such."
Medical Updates
John Foyster suffered a stroke on September 28. According to Australian fans, the CAT scans did not show damage, meaning the stroke was probably not as severe as it might have been.
Gay Ellen Dennett was scheduled for gall bladder surgery after Millennium Philcon. So she found herself at the Boston bid parties busily preparing scads of food her doctor had forbidden her to eat. (The surgery was successful.)
Moshe Feder reports that prior to Millennium Philcon, Linda Bushyager was operated on to remove a football-sized ovarian cyst - benign, fortunately. She was recovering at home and was unable to attend the Worldcon.
Sidewise Award
The winners of this year's Sidewise Award for Alternate History were announced at MilPhil.
Best Long Form: Mary Gentle, The Book of Ash (Gollancz, 2000; Avon 1999-2000)
Best Short Form: Ted Chiang, "Seventy-Two Letters," Vanishing Acts, edited by
Ellen Datlow, Tor 2000.
Le Guin and Marley Share 2001 Endeavour Award
Two of the Northwest's most respected writers will share this year's $1,000 Endeavour Award. Portland's Ursula K. Le Guin shares the Award for The Telling, (Harcourt). Redmond, Washington's Louise Marley is gaining wide recognition for the high quality of her writing and will share the Endeavour for her fifth book, The Glass Harmonica (Ace).
The Endeavour Award honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, by a Pacific Northwest writer that was first published in the year preceding the award. A total of 28 books were entered for this year's award, which was presented November 9 at OryCon. This is the third time the annual Award has been given - novelist Greg Bear won it in 1999 and 2000.
"Science fiction and fantasy have always contained a mix of novels and short stories, and we are delighted that two of our finalists are single-author collections of stories," said Endeavour Award chairman James Fiscus. "Our nominees this year covered the full range of our field, including science fiction, space opera, fantasy, and fantasy with a touch of horror. They also included mass market, trade paperback, and hardcover books. We also had three print-on-demand books entered, with one of them becoming a finalist."
The judges for the 2001 Award were Dave Duncan, Elizabeth Hand, and Michael P. Kube-McDowell.
The Endeavour Award represents a collaborative effort by writers and fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy to recognize works of excellence. It is named for the H.M. Bark Endeavour, the ship in which Capt. James Cook explored the Pacific and is sponsored by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (OSFCI), the organization that sponsors OryCon and other Oregon conventions. The corporation also sponsors the Jo Clayton Memorial Medical Fund and the Susan Petrey Clarion Scholarships.
Smof Stuff Wanted
Chris "The Magician" O'Shea announced online, "I'm looking for volunteers to write up some articles for the SMOF.COM website. Don't worry if you want to remain anonymous or want me to edit and pull the articles together, I'm happy to do that ... the particular articles I'd like to get are:
"(1) How to bid for a worldcon (parties, publications, publicity, bid committees, communication, handling problems, contacting potential guests etc. etc. Plus how to handle getting the vote out and what to do when you've gone to all this effort and you find you've lost (sour grapes are fine, but I may edit them or allow a rebuttal…. );
"(2) How to run local conventions;
"(3) How fandom differs in different parts of the US (for the rest of the world the US is one country, but once you are in the good ol' US of A, it becomes very clear that LA fans are different from Boston fans and
different from New York fans and from Washington D.C. fans and from Atlanta fans etc. etc.)
"(4) Anything else that you think would be good on the SMOF.COM website. (I've left it without any updates for too long and I'm trying to bring it back up to date and add new stuff so people come back and find useful stuff there!) In particular if there were/are any forms (membership, masquerade, party booking etc.) that might be useful to pass on to other conventions, operations handbooks, advice on handling Fire Marshals etc. then they would all be greatly appreciated." Contact O'Shea through: www.smof.com,
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