Christopher Priest will be visiting the Birmingham Science Fiction Group in March 2012. Christopher is the author of twelve novels and numerous short stories. He has won the Arthur C. Clarke best novel award 2003 and the British Science Fiction Association best novel award 2002 (for The Separation) as well as the 1996 World Fantasy best novel award 1996 for The Prestige.

Christopher’s writing career spans an enormous breadth of subjects, published over a 40 year period (his first novel, Indoctrinaire, was published in 1970). The BSFG is very lucky to host to such a well respected author and Christopher’s talk is likely to give fascinating insights into his creative process.

The meeting is on 9 March 2012 at the Briar Rose Hotel on Bennett’s Hill, Birmingham; this venue is just 5 minutes walk from New Street Station and handy for all bus routes. The meeting opens its doors at 7:30 p.m.

The group itself has many members of all ages, and between them the membership has an enormous wealth of knowledge of literary SF, as well as films, television, etc. If you want to know about a particular author or book, the BSFG is likely to be able to help you! Just let us know you are a first timer when you turn up and any member will be happy to introduce you to the committee and make you feel as welcome as we can…

If you live anywhere in or around the West Midlands, the BSFG is the group for you! For further information, and a copy of our monthly newsletter, please email:            bhamsfgroup [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

It has been reported that Hall of Fame illustrator-cartoonist John Severin passed away on 12 February 2012 at the age of 90. One of the last of the legendary EC Comics’ artists, he was especially known for his Westerns.

Read the full obituary HERE

Also, photographer Sir Simon Marsden died on 22 January 2012. Marsden was famed for his use of infrared film to produce black and white photography in the gothic style. His photos have graced many book, magazine and CD covers. His published collections include The Haunted Realm, Phantoms Of The Isles, Visions Of Poe and The Twilight Hour amongst others.

Colin Leslie’s obituary of the artist can be found on the This Is Horror website HERE

Strange Chemistry, the YA imprint of Angry Robot Books, has announced the signing of another exciting author. Jonathan L. Howard has been signed for two books – the first of which is Katya’s World which will be published in November 2012 – in a deal for World English rights, concluded between Strange Chemistry’s Amanda Rutter and Sam Copeland, of Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd.

About Katya’s World:
“The distant and unloved colony world of Russalka has no land, only the raging sea. No clear skies, only the endless storm clouds. Beneath the waves, the people live in pressurised environments and take what they need from the boundless ocean. It is a hard life, but it is theirs and they fought a war against Earth to protect it. But wars leave wounds that never quite heal, and secrets that never quite lie silent.

Katya Kuriakova doesn’t care much about ancient history. She is making her first submarine voyage as an apprentice navigator; the first nice, simple journey of what she expects to be a nice, simple career. But there is nothing nice and simple about the deep, black waters of Russalka and soon she will encounter pirates and war criminals, see death and tragedy at first hand, and realise that her world’s future lies on the narrowest of knife edges. For in the crushing depths lies a sleeping monster, an abomination of unknown
origin. And when it wakes, it will seek out and kill every single person on the planet…”

Jonathan L. Howard has been a game designer for the last twenty years, and a full-time author for the past three. He is the author of the Johannes Cabal series of novels.

More information can be found HERE

Night Shade Books have bought North American rights to E.J. Swift‘s début novel Osiris. The three book deal was negotiated by John Berlyne of the Zeno Agency.

An ingenious and engaging work of dystopian fiction, the eponymous Osiris is a retro-futuristic metropolis reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World. The novel tells of an unlikely romance across social divides between a glamorous young socialite grieving for her missing twin and an idealistic activist from the wrong side of the wall.

Osiris will be published in hardcover in summer 2012, with books two and three following in 2013 and 2014 respectively. All other rights are with Zeno Agency.

An animation competition has been launched by The Literary Platform “inviting creatives to produce an animation that illustrates a rare and prophetic audio recording of Douglas Adams talking in 1993 about the Evolution of the Book.

In 1993 Douglas Adams, the world-renowned author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, recorded a short piece of audio for his US publisher of the time – Bob Stein of Voyager Expanded Books. Who would know how prophetic his words would sound nearly twenty years later, and how accurate his sense of the evolution of the book was.

In this short recording, kindly donated to The Literary Platform by Bob Stein, Douglas Adams charts the evolution of the book from the ‘hardware problems’ of writing on rocks, to scrolls, to the bound book and finally the silicon chip.”

The deadline for uploading entries to the competition platform is 15 April 2012, and full details of how to enter, the prizes, and the judges can be found HERE

SF Scope has reported that Christopher Samuel Youd, who wrote SF as John Christopher, died on 3 February 2012.

He will be best remembered for his outstanding apocalyptic novel, The Death of Grass, and was often viewed as the successor to John Wyndham.

Read the SF Scope obituary HERE

Dread Central have reported that Clive Barker has recently had a very serious health scare from which he is now recovering. Apparently, he suffered a severe infection following dental treatment and was in intensive care for several days. Thankfully, he is now out of hospital and making very good progress.

Read the full report – including Clive’s own comments on what happened – HERE

Maine author/editor Howard Hopkins died suddenly on 12 January 2012, aged 50.

Hopkins wrote horror stories and children’s horror novels under his own name in the tradition of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and wrote westerns under the pseudonym Lance Howard. He was also an editor and writer for Moonstone Books.

Meteor House Press have made a generous offer to help his widow, Dominique, with funeral expenses. For orders placed from now until midnight 20 January 2012 they will send the money to her for this purpose. Alternatively, donations may be made direct to Dominique Hopkins.  Full details at the Meteor House website HERE

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame will present SFF writer Gene Wolfe with the first Fuller Award on 17 March 2012, acknowledging an outstanding lifetime contribution to literature. Wolfe’s novels include The Book of the New Sun, Peace and The Fifth Head of Cerberus. More recently, his novel Home Fires was published by PS Publishing.

Neil Gaiman, Audrey Niffenegger and Peter Straub are just some of the authors set to pay tribute to him at the lavish event at a private estate outside Chicago. Full details HERE

2012 has started well for author E.J. (Emma) Swift. Her short story The Complex appears in the January issue of Britain’s premier science fiction magazine Interzone, marking her debut as a professional author. Her work will appear in the upcoming issue alongside stories from Carole Johnstone, Tyler Keevil and Ray Cluley. The Complex was Emma’s first short story and, as such first time success is rare, it suggests that she has all the attributes necessary to make a career as an author.

Emma’s story has a mid-fifties woman facing freedom after serving forty years on a hellish prison planet. Her sentence is over … but she thinks it’s about to start.

Interzone #238 will begin mailing out around 13 January 2012. So, with that issue, Emma will join the ranks of Interzone authors like Brian Aldiss, Terry Pratchett, and J.G. Ballard, along with Liz Williams and Alastair Reynolds who established their writing careers in its pages.

Emma is 28 and has a BA in English and American Literature from the University of Manchester and an MA in Creative Writing (Royal Holloway, London). She now works at the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama, an affiliation of eight dance, drama and circus schools, and is responsible for communications and events. She takes time out from writing and the day job by exploring circus skills such as trapeze classes at Circus Space in London, and hula hooping.

Emma plans to make a career of her writing and is represented by Zeno Agency. Her novel, Osiris, the first in a planned trilogy, is currently waiting for a publisher’s decision.