The Rolling Stones (novel)
The Rolling Stones is a 1952 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. A condensed version of the novel had been published earlier in Boys' Life under the title "Tramp Space Ship", it was published in hardcover that year by Scribner's as part of the Heinlein juveniles. The Stones, a family of "Loonies", purchase and rebuild a used spaceship and go sightseeing around the Solar System; the twin teenage boys and Pollux, buy used bicycles on Luna to sell on Mars, their first stop, where they run afoul of local regulations but are freed by their grandmother Hazel Stone. While on Mars, the twins buy their brother Buster a native Martian creature called a flat cat, which produces a soothing vibration, as a pet. In preparation for the asteroid belt, where the equivalent of a gold rush is in progress prospecting for "core material" and radioactive ores, the twins obtain supplies and luxury goods on Mars to sell at their destination, on the principle that it is shopkeepers, not miners, who get rich during gold rushes.
En route, the flat cat and its offspring overpopulate the ship so the family places them in hibernation and sells them to the miners. The novel ends with the family setting out to see the rings of Saturn; as with his other novels and his wife Virginia "spent countless hours in research, fiercely dedicated to getting it right for their readers." Heinlein credited the 1905 Ellis Parker Butler short story "Pigs Is Pigs" with inspiring the flat cat incident. A similar concept and plotline appeared in the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles". According to screenwriter David Gerrold, the show's producers noticed similarities in the two stories and asked Heinlein for permission to use the idea. Heinlein asked for an autographed copy of the script, but otherwise did not object, noting that both stories owed something to the Butler story "and to Noah". In Chapter XIII, Hazel Stone tells the judge, "I am a stranger here in a strange land". Heinlein used the same Biblical quote as the title of his Hugo-award winning novel of 1961.
The book makes several references to Hazel as an influential figure in founding the Lunar colony. Fourteen years Heinlein published The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which tells the story of the Lunar revolution, including a small but vital role that Hazel Stone played as a child. Hazel and Pollux reappear in Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Hazel, appears in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Dr. Lowell Stone is quoted in a chapter heading in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and referenced as Chief Surgeon at Ceres General. In that same book, Hazel states that Roger and Edith are now living in the extrasolar colony known as Fiddler's Green; the general description of the Martian met by Lowell is similar to the description of the Martians depicted in Red Planet and in Stranger in a Strange Land. Groff Conklin described the novel as "a delightful job". Boucher and McComas praised it as "easily the most plausible detailed picture of an interplanetary future we will encounter in any year".
P. Schuyler Miller cited the novel's "freshness and simplicity," characterizing it as "a life-size portrait-gallery of real people living in a real world of the future, every detail of which fits into place with top-tolerance precision". Surveying Heinlein's juvenile novels, Jack Williamson characterized Heinlein's story as "a dream of personal freedom" written with "an enviable craftsmanship", noted that the novel "carries its thematic burden tightly", unlike Heinlein's adult novels, praised The Rolling Stones for its "sense of an extrapolated future background, with all of the new technologies given an air of commonplace reality"; the Rolling Stones title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Rolling Stones on Open Library at the Internet Archive
The Green Hills of Earth (short story collection)
The Green Hills of Earth is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1951, including short stories published as early as 1941; the stories are part of Heinlein's Future History. The title story is the tale of an old space mariner reflecting upon his planet of birth. According to an acknowledgement at the beginning of the book, the phrase "the green hills of Earth" is derived from a story by C. L. Moore; the short stories are as follows, in the order they appear in the book: "Delilah and the Space Rigger" "Space Jockey" "The Long Watch" "Gentlemen, Be Seated!" "The Black Pits of Luna" "It's Great to Be Back!" "—We Also Walk Dogs" "Ordeal in Space" "The Green Hills of Earth" "Logic of Empire" Boucher and McComas described the collection as "an outstanding book", noting that the "slick" stories published in non-genre magazines included "classics in a new form". P. Schuyler Miller noted that most of the contents were "simple stories of human reactions".
The Green Hills of Earth title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Green Hills of Earth on Open Library at the Internet Archive
Nebula Award for Best Novel
The Nebula Award for Best Novel is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for science fiction or fantasy novels. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novel if it is 40,000 words or longer. To be eligible for Nebula Award consideration a novel must be published in English in the United States. Works published in English elsewhere in the world are eligible provided they are released on either a website or in an electronic edition; the Nebula Award for Best Novel has been awarded annually since 1966. Novels which were expanded forms of published short stories are eligible, as are novellas published by themselves if the author requests them to be considered as a novel; the award has been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards. Nebula Award nominees and winners are chosen by members of the SFWA, though the authors of the nominees do not need to be members.
Works are nominated each year between November 15 and February 15 by published authors who are members of the organization, the six works that receive the most nominations form the final ballot, with additional nominees possible in the case of ties. Members may vote on the ballot throughout March, the final results are presented at the Nebula Awards ceremony in May. Authors are not permitted to nominate their own works, ties in the final vote are broken, if possible, by the number of nominations the works received. Beginning with the 2009 awards, the rules were changed to the current format. Prior to the eligibility period for nominations was defined as one year after the publication date of the work, which allowed the possibility for works to be nominated in the calendar year after their publication and be awarded in the calendar year after that. Works were added to a preliminary list for the year if they had ten or more nominations, which were voted on to create a final ballot, to which the SFWA organizing panel was allowed to add an additional work.
During the 54 nomination years, 188 authors have had works nominated. Ursula K. Le Guin has received the most Nebula Awards for Best Novel with four wins out of six nominations. Joe Haldeman has received three awards out of four nominations, while nine other authors have won twice. Jack McDevitt has the most nominations at twelve, with one win, while Poul Anderson and Philip K. Dick have the most nominations without winning an award at five. In the following table, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony, rather than when the novel was first published; each year links to the corresponding "year in literature". Entries with a blue background and an asterisk next to the writer's name have won the award. * Winners and joint winners Hugo Award for Best Novel List of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards Nebula Awards official site
Jo Walton
Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004, her novel Ha'penny was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award. Her novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award, her novel Among Others won the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel, is one of only seven novels to have been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award. Walton was born in the Cynon Valley of Wales, she went to Park School in Aberdare Aberdare Girls' Grammar School. She lived for a year in Cardiff and went to Howell's School Llandaff finished her education at Oswestry School in Shropshire, at the University of Lancaster, she lived in London for two years, lived in Lancaster until 1997 moved to Swansea, where she lived until moving to Canada in 2002. Walton speaks Welsh, saying "it's the second language of my family of origin, my grandmother was a well known Welsh scholar and translator, I studied it in school from five to sixteen, I have a ten year old's fluency on grammar and vocab but no problem whatsoever with pronunciation".
Walton has been writing since she was 13, but her first novel was not published until 2000. Before that, she had been published in a number of role-playing game publications, such as Pyramid in collaboration with her husband at the time, Ken Walton. Walton was active in online science fiction fandom in the Usenet groups rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. Her poem "The Lurkers Support Me in E-Mail" is quoted on it and in other online arguments without her name attached, her first three novels, The King's Peace, The King's Name, The Prize in the Game were all fantasy and set in the same world, based on Arthurian Britain and the Táin Bó Cúailnge's Ireland. Her next novel and Claw was intended as a novel Anthony Trollope could have written, but about dragons rather than humans. Farthing was her first science fiction novel, placing the genre of the "cozy" mystery inside an alternate history in which the United Kingdom made peace with Adolf Hitler before the involvement of the United States in World War II.
It was nominated for a Nebula Award, a Quill Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. A sequel, Ha'penny, was published in October 2007 by Tor Books, with the final book in the trilogy, Half a Crown, published in September 2008. Ha'penny won the 2008 Prometheus Award and has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award. In April 2007, Howard V. Hendrix stated that professional writers should never release their writings online for free, as this made them equivalent to scabs. Walton responded to this by declaring 23 April as International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, a day in which writers who disagreed with Hendrix could release their stories online en masse. In 2008 Walton celebrated this day by posting several chapters of an unfinished sequel to Tooth and Claw, Those Who Favor Fire. In 2008, Walton began writing a column for Tor.com retrospective reviews of older books. Walton moved to Montreal, Canada, after her first novel was published.
She is married to Ireland-born Dr. Emmet A. O'Brien, she has one child, a son, born 1990. Tooth and Claw Won the World Fantasy Award. Lifelode Among Others, ISBN 978-0-7653-2153-4. Tor Books. 2000. The King's Name The Prize in the Game Small Change trilogyFarthing Ha'penny Half a Crown Thessaly trilogyThe Just City, ISBN 9780765332660 The Philosopher Kings, ISBN 9780765332677 Necessity ISBN 9780765379023 GURPS Celtic Myth Muses and Lurkers Realms of Sorcery Sybils and Spaceships, poetry chapbook What Makes This Book So Great, collected essays and book reviews ISBN 0765331934. Review by Paul Di Filippo Starlings, short story and poetry collection An Informal History of the Hugos collected essays and book reviews "Sleeper" "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction" "The Jump Rope Rhyme" "A Burden Shared" "Story behind "Ha'Penny" by Jo Walton", from "Story Behind the Book: Volume 1" The King's PeaceKillheffer, Robert K. J.. "Books". F&SF. 100: 29–36. Jo Walton's LiveJournal Jo Walton's home page Jo Walton's page at Tor.com, with links to her reviews Searchable Index of Jo Walton's Tor.com posts Jo Walton at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Jo Walton at Library of Congress Authorities, with 11 catalog records
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1985. Like many of his novels, it features Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw as supporting characters. A writer seated at the best restaurant of the space habitat "Golden Rule" is approached by a man who urges him that "Tolliver must die" and is himself shot before the writer's eyes; the writer—Colonel Colin Campbell, living under a number of aliases including his pen name "Richard Ames"—is joined by a beautiful and sophisticated lady, Gwendolyn Novak, who helps him flee to Luna with a bonsai maple and a would-be murderer. After escaping to the Moon, Gwen claims to have been present during the revolt described in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Still pursued by assassins and Novak are rescued by an organization known as the Time Corps under the leadership of Lazarus Long. After giving Campbell a new leg to replace one lost in combat years before, the Time Corps attempts to recruit Campbell for a special mission.
Accepting only on Gwen's account, Campbell agrees to assist a team to retrieve the decommissioned Mike, a sentient computer introduced in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Engaged in frequent time-travel, the Time Corps has been responsible for changing various events in the past, creating an alternate universe with every time-line they disrupt. Mike's assistance is needed in order to predict the conditions and following events in each of the new universes created. Campbell's frequent would-be assassins are revealed to be members of contemporary agencies engaged in time manipulation who, for unknown reasons, do not want to see Mike rescued by the Time Corps. During the mission, Gwen is grievously wounded and Campbell loses his foot again, though the Time Corps succeed in retrieving Mike; the story ends with Campbell talking into a recorder reflecting on the mission and his relationship with Gwen. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls may be regarded as part of Heinlein's multiverse series, or as a sequel to both The Number of the Beast and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
During a meeting of the Council of the Time Scouts, representatives from every major time line and setting written by Heinlein appear, including Glory Road and Starship Troopers, references are made to other authors' works as well. The title of the book refers to a cat by the name of Pixel, who has an inexplicable tendency to be wherever the narrator happens to be. In one scene Pixel does, in fact, walk through a wall, it is explained that Pixel is too young to know that such behavior is impossible. Gwen Novak is revealed to be Hazel Stone, a character featured in Heinlein's The Rolling Stones and who had played a small but important role in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Campbell is eventually revealed to be a son of Lazarus Long, a Heinlein character introduced in Methuselah's Children and who reappeared in Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Appearing are Jubal Harshaw, a major character in Stranger in a Strange Land; the Cat Who Walks Through Walls title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Cat Who Walks Through Walls on Open Library at the Internet Archive
John Clute
John Frederick Clute is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history" and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of sf in our time, one of the best the genre has known."He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982. Clute's articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since the 1960s, he is a co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, as well as writing The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction, all of which won Hugo Awards for Best Non-Fiction. He earned the Pilgrim Award, bestowed by the Science Fiction Research Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field of science fiction scholarship, in 1994. Clute is author of the collections of reviews and essays Strokes, Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews, Canary Fever and Pardon This Intrusion.
His 2001 novel Appleseed, a space opera, was noted for its "combination of ideational fecundity and combustible language" and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. In 2006, Clute published the essay collection The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror; the third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction was released online as a beta text in October 2011 and has since been expanded. The Encyclopedia′'s statistics page reported that, as of 24 March 2017, Clute had authored the great majority of articles: 6,421 solo and 1,219 in collaboration, totalling over 2,408,000 words; the majority of these are Author entries, but there are some Media entries, notably that for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Clute was a Guest of Honour at Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, from 14 to 18 August 2014. Raised in Canada, Clute lived in the United States from 1956 until 1964, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at New York University in 1962 while living with writer and artist Pamela Zoline.
Clute married artist Judith Clute in 1964. He has been the partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. Clute's first professional publication was a long science-fictional poem entitled "Carcajou Lament," which appeared in TriQuarterly in 1959, his first short story was "A Man Must Die", which appeared in New Worlds in 1966. In 1960, he served as Associate Editor of Collage, a Chicago-based "slick" magazine which ran only two issues. In 1977, Clute published The Disinheriting Party. Though not explicitly a fantasy, this story of a dysfunctional family has a fantasy feel, rather like much postmodern literature. Reviewer Ifdary Bailey wrote that this "everyday story of family life in a revenge tragedy, of relations and revelations, hidden identities and loss of identity and inheritance, all brooded over by the Father Who Will Not Die, carries itself forward swiftly and to its conclusion with strength and control."Clute's second novel, Appleseed, is the story of trader Nathanael Freer, who pilots an AI-helmed starship named Tile Dance en route to the planet Eolhxir to deliver a shipment of nanotechnological devices.
Freer meets a man calling himself Johnny Appleseed, who rejoins Freer with his lost lover, Ferocity Monthly-Niece. Meanwhile, a terrifying, data-destroying "plaque" is threatening the galaxy's civilizations. Clute has proposed it as the first novel in a trilogy. Science fiction and fantasy author Paul Di Filippo called it "a space opera for the 21st century." Keith Brooke suggested. Clute's first significant science fiction reviews appeared in the late 1960s in New Worlds, he has reviewed fiction and nonfiction in such periodicals as Interzone, the Los Angeles Times, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, elsewhere. Though Clute is chiefly known for his critiques of fiction, he has reviewed other modes, such as film: Peter Jackson's otherwise magnificent remake of King Kong is destroyed because it obeys PG-13 shibboleths about sexual explicitness. In the 1933 version, the beauty and the beast have sex together.
His language can be as amusing as it is honest. An empty mind. An empty book.", "Book of the Mouth", "Mage Sh*t". Clute has issued a polemic he calls the "Protocol of Excessive Candour", which argues that reviewers of science fiction and fantasy must not pull punches because of friendship: Reviewers who will not tell the truth are like cholesterol, they are lumps of fat. They starve the heart. I have myself clogged a few arteries, have sometimes kept my mouth shut out of'friendship', nothing in the end but self-interest. So it is time to call a halt. We should establish a Protocol of Excessive Candour, a convention within the community that excesses of intramural harshness are less damaging than the hypocrisies of stroke therapy
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