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Category Archive: PS Commentary
Farewell, Sir Arthur C Clarke
Posted by Peter Crowther on March 19th, 2008 at 19:28
I got the news about Arthur C. Clarke's death first thing this morning. 'Today' started (on Radio 4) and one of the announcers - it might have been John Humphreys - mentioned it just as I was spreading marmalade on my toast. I thought of all the homes that that news would be drifting into and about how tragic it is... and yet how calmly most listeners would receive it. It's always sad when someone dies, of course, but there are certain people who, to the members of any close-knit community, should really be given an exemption card to show the Reaper when he appears at their door with that damn scythe. Arthur was one of them.
Ken Slater, much loved book dealer (Fantast Medway and, latterly, Operation Fantast) and, I seem to recall, a founder member of the British Fantasy Society and a member of First Fandom (that rare and exclusive band of SF-ers who were around at the genre's Big Bang) was another; Ken died last month. Both of them were 90 years old; not a bad innings, as they say... but I hated being 'out' when I played cricket, no matter how many runs I'd notched up.
In the early 1960s I could be found tramping around the corridors of Leeds Grammar School, age 12 or so, with a paperback stuffed into my blazer pocket. The paperbacks - mostly Ballentines and Pyramids, and Corgis and Panthers (Pan seemed to have only Charles Chilton and C. S. Lewis... curious bedfellows when you think about it) - were pretty much all SF, though Ballentine did a lovely line in 'horror' (Fritz Leiber's Night's Black Agents, John Kier Cross's The Other Passenger and Zacherley's two anthologies, Midnight Feast and Vampire Stew being good examples). Anyway, two of the writers whose work would so enthrall me were Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke.
Not surprisingly, then, this past few years have been particularly rewarding for me here at PS. First we republished Ray's R is for Rocket and S is for Space, with a new Intro by Arthur (we're currently doing several more of Ray's finest works) and then - just a few months ago, in fact - we re-published an all-time fave of mine, Arthur's Tales From the White Hart... with a brand new story from Arthur and Stephen Baxter. Alas, it's the last White Hart story that'll carry Arthur's byline.
All of us here at PS wish him well on that final journey. I trust it's as exciting and as enigmatic in reality as it was on the big screen. And when he gets there - wherever 'there' may be - I'm sure Ken will buy him a drink.
On those BFS Award wins…
Posted by Darren on September 26th, 2007 at 7:01
I asked Pete if he might have a few words to say on those BFS Award wins - a few words? I might as well have asked Bill Gates if he could spare a dollar... ;) - and Nicky had something she wanted to add as well...
Pete on Joe Hill's 'Sidney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer':
"We were delighted to discover that Joe had won the British Fantasy Society's Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer simply because it was just so absolutely the right choice. There are always going to be debates - and reasonably so - about whether so-and-so deserved such-and-such an award but in Joe's case, with the formidable potpourri of by turn phantasmagoric, poignant and chilling tales that was 20th Century Ghosts and then his masterful Heart-Shaped Box full-length debut, there really could be no realistic alternative. I reckon we'll be hearing a lot more from Mr. Hill in the years to come."
Nicky on Vincent Chong's 'Best Artist' Award:
"I've been working alongside Pete for over three years now and perhaps the most exciting part of the job for me is searching for artwork for our covers. Sometimes it involves buying the rights to existing works and sometimes a particular book requires us to commission new art.
"There are some incredible artists turning out fabulous work using a wide range of different techniques and styles... and a good cover is always important. More often than not, unless I know the writer really well, a cover can sell a book to me... and I've discovered new authors by the covers on their books, just as I'm sure I've possibly missed some other fine books because their covers did not press all the required buttons.
"Here at PS, we've got some great artists producing our covers giving them that all-important pick-me-up appeal: one of them is, of course, Vinny Chong. He's a consummate professional and a delight to work with and we're thrilled that his talents have been recognised this year with the British Fantasy Society's Award for Best Artist.
"A final note: many thanks to all the artists who have sent us examples of their work and their website details. Every one is looked at and replied to, and those whose style best suits our needs are kept on file for possible future use."
Pete on Mark Morris's 'Best Non-Fiction' Award:
"Mark Morris is a fine writer, a good friend and a regular visitor to Crowther Towers. But with Cinema Macabre he's shown himself to be an exceptional editor to boot (not to mention a man with very saleable ideas!).
"Nicky and I have attended many FantasyCons at which Mark was shortlisted for an award (usually Best Novel or Best Short Fiction) and we've seen him manfully gritting his teeth to applaud - and applaud very generously - the writer who just pipped him at the post. So it was particularly gratifying to see him burst through the finishing tape in first place with this year's British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction with Cinema Macabre. Bravo, Mark - you did good!"
Pete on Winning the 'Best Small Press Award'
"And finally, we picked up the Award for Best Small Press - for the sixth time out of seven. We're delighted... absolutely over-the-moon thrilled to bits. To all those who ask me if they still mean anything let me say immediately that the Award still means as much as it ever did... but possibly even more.
"Before you win one, you're just a contender trying to get a bit of recognition. But as time goes by, and you've won once, and then twice and then three times and so on, if you miss winning on any particular year then it must mean that you've dropped your game. Sure, it can mean that someone else has lifted their game, but generally, it means you've taken your eye off the ball.
"In all areas of our genre - writing, artwork, editing and so on - there are some fantastic talents at work. But in the British small press publishing arena, particularly over the past four, five or six years, the quality of the output has charged forward in leaps and bounds to become truly formidable. David Howe's Telos, Guy Adams's Humdrumming, Chris Teague's Pendragon, Andrew Hook's Elastic and Gary Fry's Gray Friar and many more... they're all of them exemplary, and the fact that PS edged its nose to the front of the shortlist for yet another year is all of the praise we could possibly hope to receive (though, of course, the actual Award is nice!).
"So, many thanks to everyone who voted for us; and thanks to all the other presses I mentioned, plus those I haven't, for pushing the standards ever higher. We're constantly being pushed and we love it.
"And, lest I forget, huge personal thanks from me to the rest of the team who put up with me and manage to turn out wonderful books despite my best efforts to mess things up: Nick Gevers, my fellow editor; Robert Wexler, chief designer and general design overseer; Nicky, office and process manager and my own personal general right- and left-hand co-ordinator; Ariel, webguy, marketing and publicity; Theresa Loosely, our print superviser; and Aimee Bolton, our mailing and storage manager. You're all wonderful! Onwards!"
Pete and Nick confess their mutual short fiction addiction
Posted by Darren on August 10th, 2007 at 14:14
Douglas Cohen - assistant editor at long-running US fiction 'zine Realms of Fantasy - has called for a genre fiction magazine subscription drive to help boost flagging subscriber numbers for print publications in this era of free online content.
This sounded like something that we here at PS should definitely get behind; speaking as the publishers of an award-winning short fiction 'zine ourselves, we're quite obviously all in favour of anything that boosts the circulation and popularity of fiction 'zines in general. The more, the merrier, quite frankly.
So I chivvied Pete Crowther and Nick Gevers - our two in-house editors, who between them are responsible for selecting and polishing the literary gems that feature in our very own Postscripts - out of their Friday afternoon lunchtime reveries and asked them to jot down a few thoughts on the subject of their own life-long love of short fiction in all its forms. And here's what they had to say for themselves:
Pete
"I'm a short story nut, always have been. F'rinstance, this note is being penned just one week after my buying a full run of my favorite mag (F&SF) in order to upgrade some issues and fill a few gaps (anyone want to the buy 612 issues I now have spare?).
"But that's just one title; in addition to that, I love the old pulps (Weird Tales, Fantastic, Amazing, Planet and so on) and, of course, digests such as Astounding and Asimov's, EQMM and Alfred Hitchcock's, Andy Cox's incarnation of Interzone and his absolutely superb (but criminally irregular) Crime Wave.
"The thing is that 'small' is beautiful. And all of the big novelists of today cut their teeth between the pages of the mags... so it follows that tomorrow's 'household names' will be already making their presences known.
"Make sure you're not losing out: go get in on the vanguard of genre fiction. Take a copy of Asimov's or F&SF or Crime Wave or even Postscripts to bed and I'm betting you'll have a ball.
"Better still, subscribe! Magazines like these rely on commitment, not on a once-in-a-while purchase because you happened to see a copy in the racks when you went in to buy a chocolate bar or you needed change for the bus! You've been warned. I won't tell you twice."
Nick
"My love of fiction zines began twenty-five years ago, when I bought a lot of Campbell-era Analogs second-hand and read them like a Great White binging on seals.
"Later, it was Asimov's (edited by Gardner Dozois) and Interzone (edited by David Pringle) that were my subscriptions of choice and my inspiration - what extraordinary publications they were, full of innovation and excitement; those led me to where I am today, gorging on SF/F magazines and anthologies ostensibly in order to have material for my Locus short fiction columns...
"There are superb magazines currently running that deserve our, your, everybody's support, as paying subscribers. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, brilliantly edited by Gordon Van Gelder; Asimov's, the domain of Sheila Williams; Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, and (humbly, humbly) our own Postscripts.
"And the quirky, magnificent small press zines, like Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Flytrap, and Say... These are the places where speculative fiction is made; the novels only catch up later. Often a lot later..."
Thanks, chaps. You can go back to the pub work now...