JACK VANCE AND FRED POHL ON THE STARSHIPSOFA

The 2011 Hugo Award Nomination period is now open.

As you may or may not know the StarShipSofa won the Hugo last year for the Best Fanzine. The first ever podcast to be nominated. The good ship then went on to win the Hugo.

Nothing has gone slack aboard the good ship and the year ahead promises to be more interesting than ever. So I see no reason to not nominate her again for BEST FANZINE.

There is one episode in particular, however, I think should be singled out for special note. The episode contains an extended interview bwtween the host, Tony C. Smith, and Jack Vance and Frederik C. Pohl. Click on the title of this post, above, or on the URL below to listen:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/starshipsofa/StarShipSofa_Interviews_Fred_Pohl_and_Jack_Vance.mp3

In particular this episode should be singled out for a nomination in the BEST RELATED WORK category. Both in their 90s, Vance and Pohl were leaders in the field when I was a kid. They remain so today. Their conversation was beyond interesting and not entirely about writing and science fiction, this was two guys who helped create a literary genre talking about life and age and time. This was history speaking.

I recommend at least you have a listen.

StarShipSofa Stories - Volume 2

Okay. I've probably done this all wrong...probably all you'll see as I try to 'embed' this YouTube video onto the blog is a string of letters, slashes and otherwise indecipherable code.

However...there IS a video on YouTube. It's at the link above. And the video tells you, among other things, that the Hugo Winning StarShipSofa's second Best-Of volume will be out on trip-tens: 10/10/10 and that stories in the book are by some very famous, very good writers...and there's also one by me, THEN, JUST A DREAM, which won this past year's short fiction award at the StarShip. The cover is by Skeet Scienski -- who did the painting that inspired, then did the illustrations for LORD DICKENS'S DECLARATION. Interior art for SSS Vol. 2 is by a gathering of fantastically talented people. Dani Serra illustrated ...DREAM. And the animation on the video is incredible! Thanks for being there Tony, Dee, Skeet, Dani...all of you out there in StarShipLand.

We are StarShipSofa.