07.16.02

Ansible has watched with morbid fascination as genre authors revenge themselves on critic Greg Feeley by writing him cruelly into their stories. James Blaylock, Lucius Shepard, the Niven/Pournelle team and Gene Wolfe are now joined by Grant Morrison, whose comic The Filth contains such tasteful dialogue as: 'Greg Feely's just a para-personality […] That's him running out of your nose.' Later, from the same woman: 'I'm washing Greg off my tits. Para-personas corrupt fast outside the bloodstream.' Man: 'Smells awful.' Woman: 'Well, that's "Greg Feely" all over.' Oh dear, oh dear.

Awards. John W. Campbell Memorial Award: this year saw a tie between Terraforming Earth by Jack Williamson and The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson, as best sf novel of 2001. Williamson, who is 94, says that Terraforming Earth will be his last novel. Sturgeon Award for short story: 'The Chief Designer' by Andy Duncan (Asimov's 6/01).

R.I.P. Ward Kimball, a pioneer of movie animation and one of Disney's fabled 'Nine Old Men', died on 8 July aged 88. His countless animation and animation-director credits include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Fantasia.

In Typo Veritas. When Mark Bould received an official academic registrar's list of his research publications, he learned that he'd reviewed an sf novel for Vector: The Criminal Journal of the BSFA.

'Mmmmm,' He Hissed. Michael Quinlon of World Wide Words adds a footnote to Thog's thoughts about unhissable dialogue — his own selection being: 'Lem,' he heard someone hiss. 'Over here.' (China Miéville, Perdido Street Station, 2000) Not a mistake, several of his readers insisted. 'A few American dictionaries do actually include a relevant sense of "hiss". The Oxford American Dictionary, for instance, has "to whisper something in an urgent or angry way" and even has the example "'Get back!' he hissed".'

Thog's Masterclass. Dept of True Romance, or Smoking In Bed. 'Tita timidly touched the hard muscles on Pedro's arms and chest; lower down, she felt a red-hot coal that throbbed through his clothes.' (Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate, 1992)

David Langford is an author and a gentleman. His newsletter, Ansible, is the essential SF-insider sourcebook of wit and incongruity. He lives in Reading, England with his wife Hazel, 25,000 books, and a few dozen Hugo awards. He continues to add books and Hugos.