Russell, Le Guin win 1997 Tiptree Award
t looks like it's going to be a good year for first-time novelist Maria Doria Russell. Not only has she earned the 1997 James Tiptree Award for her critically acclaimed novel The Sparrow, but she will also be sharing the award with one of her favorite writers, Ursula K. Le Guin.
Le Guin, who also won the Tiptree Award in 1995, is being honored for her story, "Mountain Ways." The awards were unofficially announced last month and will be formally presented at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, to be held March 19-23 at the Dania Airport Hilton in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Karen Joy Fowler, co-founder of the Tiptree Award, said an annotated short list of nominees will be released soon. Each year the Tiptree is given out to the best works of fantasy and science fiction that expand gender roles.
-- Craig E. Engler, Editor
Late breaking news...
he release date for Return of the Jedi Special Edition has been pushed back from March 7 to March 14. Lucasfilm said the move was made to give viewers more time to see the first two installments of the re-released trilogy. (Posted on Feb. 25)
The Force clobbers E.T.
ew box office revenues from the 20th anniversary rerelease of Star Wars has rocketed the film back to the top of the all-time domestic box office rankings, toppling former No. 1 E.T. and becoming the first film to break the $400-million U.S. box office barrier, Daily Variety reported.
E.T. director Steven Spielberg didn't seem to mind, however; he took out a full-page ad on the back cover of the Valentine's Day Variety depicting E.T. crowning R2D2, with the message: "Dear George: Congratulations for renewing the most enduring motion picture in cinema history. Your pal, Steven."
Meanwhile, the newly reissued soundtrack to Star Wars is proving itself a force to be reckoned with, earning the highest opening weekend of any reissue, BPI reported.
-- Patrick Lee, U.S. Correspondent
Pocket Books seeks fan fiction for Star Trek anthology
n a move sure to legitimize the fan fiction genre, Pocket Books said it will publish an anthology of Trekker-generated short stories entitled Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in late 1998. Anyone may submit stories to the anthology, which can cover any of the Star Trek universes, from the original series to Voyager. Aspiring writers must abide by rules posted on the Simon & Schuster Web site.
Winning entries will be chosen by Dean Wesley Smith, an SF editor and co-author of six Star Trek novels, and John J. Ordover, Senior Star Trek Novels Editor at Pocket Books and co-creator of the Invasion! series. -- P.L.
Submitted for your approval: A new Serling show
n SF television series concept from Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, thought lost for 20 years, is being revived by the Producers Entertainment Group, Variety reports. The series, entitled Stops Along the Way, is a time-travel vehicle in which the main character, Forrest Gump-like, views significant events from the 20th century. -- P.L.
What's NeXt for Gillian Anderson?
he X-Files' Gillian Anderson will have a busy break when this season's paranormal investigations wrap. Anderson, known to X-Philes as Special Agent Dana Scully, has signed for her first starring movie role and will appear with Sharon Stone, Gena Rowlands and Harry Dean Stanton in the very un-X film, The Mighty, about the journey of a boy whose physical growth stops at age six.
Anderson begins work on the film on March 24, before the Fox drama goes on hiatus. After that, she's taking a role in the independent film Hellcab, with John Cusack and Julianne Moore. Then she and co-star David Duchovny will have time for the the long-awaited The X-Files movie. -- P.L.
Plans firm up for UK series The Uninvited
he alien invasion series Who Are You reported in issue 32 has a new title. It is now to be called The Uninvited, but otherwise plans have firmed up for the show, with a cast and director now in place. The four-part series will follow the efforts of two people to expose a secret alien invasion, but, speaking to Science Fiction Weekly, director Norman Stone was at pains to downplay any expectations that The Uninvited would be hard SF or a Dark Skies clone
Stone described the series as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers without the pods" and further clarified that it will dispense with the usual SF accoutrements of spacecraft and ray guns. Instead, he said the series will create a growing sense of unease and dislocation from reality as the awful truth of the situation is exposed bit by bit.
-- John Gosling, U.K. Correspondent
OMPA announces 1997 nominations
his month's Academy Award nominations shouldn't obscure the first nominations of the 106-member Online Motion Picture Academy, set up to honor the best productions in television, film and on the Web. This year's nominations in the science fiction/horror category include:
- Best Actress:
- Neve Campbell (Scream)
- Glenn Close (Mars Attacks!)
- Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact)
- Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly)
- Alfre Woodard (Star Trek: First Contact)
- Best actor:
- Jeff Goldblum (Independence Day)
- Bill Pullman (Independence Day)
- Will Smith (Independence Day)
- Brent Spiner (Star Trek: First Contact)
- Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: First Contact)
- Best Picture:
- Dragonheart
- Independence Day
- Mars Attacks!
- Scream
- Star Trek: First Contact
More information can be found on the OMPA home page. Winners will be announced March 3. -- P.L.
The Force is with all of them
ollywood studios, never ones to bypass a good thing, are taking a cue from the successful rerelease of Star Wars to dust off their own aging blockbusters. Columbia Pictures will rerelease its own 20-year-old SF classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this fall. Warners, which now controls the pre-1986 MGM library, is discussing a 30th-anniversary release of 2001: A Space Odyssey next year. -- P.L.
2020 offers new vision of law enforcement
ranada Television International in the United Kingdom is set to begin shooting a pilot for a futuristic cop show entitled 2020. In an unusual arrangement, Fox is contemplating a U.S. version of the show, which would have its own unique cast and special effects, but could utilize the same scripts as the U.K. version.
Producer Joan Gerrit defined the ethos of the show as an attempt to "look at the world today and extrapolate where we are going." The action will be set in a police precinct during the night shift and will focus on the case-work of a number of plainclothes detectives. As with Homicide: Life on the Street, there will be no specific lead character.
-- J.G.
Dispatches from the S:A&B front
purred by news that reruns of Space: Above & Beyond will be shown in the U.K., Web fans of the canceled Fox military space drama tell Science Fiction Weekly that they are mounting a letter-writing campaign to United Paramount Network and Warner Bros. in the hopes that Fox's network rivals might pick up the show. It's a longshot, but the Space Ready Reserve international fan club is acting on rumors that Fox would be willing to put the show back into production if someone is willing to pick up the reported $1 million-plus per episode production costs.
Meanwhile, HarperPrism just released Peter Telep's second Space novel, Space: Above & Beyond -- Demolition Winter. Pat Moss, president of the Space Ready Reserve, is working on The Space: Above & Beyond Omnipedia, to be published in June or July, which will include a history/background of the series, an encyclopedia and cast and production staff information. -- P.L.
Reports of U.S. Goodnight Sweetheart are premature
merican versions of British sitcoms are all the rage at the moment, but recent suggestions that the hit BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart is slated to join the rush are perhaps premature. The U.K. program maker Alomo has told Science Fiction Weekly that plans are at best very tentative, and that contrary to reports in some quarters of the British SF press, no script has been prepared.
Goodnight Sweetheart is a light-hearted story of a man who can "timeslip" back to the days of the London blitz during World War II. The comedy derives largely from his efforts to successfully lead a temporal double life with a girl in each era. -- J.G.
Briefly noted...
- The low-rated Fox SF series Sliders goes on hiatus March 14. In its place: the action show Lawless, starring ex-football jock Brian Bosworth. Sliders returns in May.
- Madonna, fresh off her disappointing Oscar snub, is eyeing a Mad Max-like role in Columbia Pictures' post-apocalyptic SF thriller Pin Cushion, People magazine reports.
- Taking a cue from its post-Aladdin success, Disney is in talks for a direct-to-video sequel to its megahit Toy Story, with Tim Allen and Tom Hanks considering reprising their roles.
- Guy Raymond, who played the bartender in the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode of Star Trek and who was recently seen in the Forrest Gump-like sequel to that episode in the current season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, died earlier this month, according to the Star Trek: Continuum site on the Microsoft Network. He was 85.
