Really, never mind Vector, how ’bout the rest of that mailing?
It’s turned out to be a fiction-heavy mailing, but that’s no bad thing (and don’t worry, non-fiction fans, there are counterbalancing projects in the pipeline for later this year). We have:
- Focus fiction special — presenting the winner and final shortlist of the BSFA’s 50th anniversary short story competition: “Nestbuster” by Roderick Gladwish, plus stories by Nina Allan, James Bloomer, Nigel Envarli Crowe, Gary Spencer, and Andy West
- Postscripts sampler issue — a special issue of the magazine for BSFA members, featuring stories by Stephen Baxter, Joe Hill, Lisa Tuttle, Gene Wolfe, Paul McAuley and others.
- BSFA Awards Short Fiction Shortlist — for the first time, we’ve been able to make all the nominees for this year’s BSFA short fiction award available to members. Many thanks to the authors and venues involved for making this possible; and to members, you’ve got just over a week to read them. Final ballots are due, by post, or by email to awards at bsfa.co.uk, by Monday April 6th
Given the latter of these, I’m going to postpone my planned Hugo short fiction reading for a week, and instead read the four BSFA nominees, then make discussion posts here. For those who’d like to play along at home, the schedule I’m going to follow is:
- Tuesday 31 March: “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (audio)
- Wednesday 1 April: “Crystal Nights” [pdf] by Greg Egan (audio)
- Thursday 2 April: “Little Lost Robot” by Paul McAuley (audio)
- Friday 3 April: “Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment” by M. Rickert (audio)
(EDIT: In the comments, Tony reminds me that anyone going to Eastercon will be able to vote there, until late Saturday afternoon; it’s only people who aren’t going, like me, who have to vote by April 6th.
And on an unrelated note, I meant to mention the details of this year’s BSFA AGM, as announced on the cover sheet of this mailing — Saturday 27th June 2009, at 12pm, in Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London.)
vector-bsfa.com 
Great mailing Niall.
The chapbook was fab, exactly the kind of thing that I want to see from that format (and a joy seeing as I haven’t actually read any of the shortlisted fiction this year).
Vector was great too. You’re really making the most of the extra space, I was expecting a lot of that to be taken up by art-work and adverts but nope… just nothing but goodness.
Don’t forget that anyone going to Eastercon will be able to vote on all the BSFA awards at the convention.
“Crystal Nights” is also available as a podcast at Transmissions from Beyond. I was pretty disappointed in StarShipSofa for slamming Egan and being petty about not getting audio rights for the story when it had already been competently produced and was freely available…
Jason: aha, thank you! I was wondering why StarShipSofa hadn’t done it, but I don’t follow podcast blogs in general closely enough to have realised it was available elsewhere.
Thanks! — I already got my mailing all this way across the pond! Pretty impressive, I think.
Just out of bibliographic curiousity, is there a volume number or whole number or any such thing for the Focus Fiction Special 2009?
definitely a good sized envelope to drop in the hallway, and the BSFA awards chap book is smart.
I noted that our Commander in Chief, unwittingly gave an idea for a chap book. I hope that Ian Whates takes the suggestion to seek permission to republish the mentioned Focus alternate history articles and makes that work.
Now that would be a chap book.
Of course, only one thing missing from the package.
But overall a great selection.
James