The Booker Prize 2003

Australian born first-time novelist DBC Pierre was announced the winner of the 2003 ManBooker Prize on 14th October for his novel Vernon God Little, a satirical tale of contemporary America. The prize is worth £50,000 to the winner and each of those on the shortlist receive £2,500 as well as a custom designed special edition of their entry. The other shortlisted books were:

Monica Ali, Brick Lane
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor
Zoe Heller, Notes on a Scandal
Clare Morrall, Astonishing Splashes Of Colour

Customer Service Award to ibooknet member

We are delighted to announce that one of our members, Stella & Rose’s Books, was awarded the Viking Direct Award for Outstanding Customer Service at Parcelforce Worldwide’s Small Business ‘Oscars’ in London on 22 October. The ceremony was hosted by broadcaster Michael Buerk and speakers included Richard Branson and Nigel Griffiths MP, minister for Small Business and Enterprise.

The family-run business has two shops - Stella Books in Tintern, Monmouthshire and Rose’s Books in the international book town of Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire. Established by Chris and Cliff Tomaszewski in 1991 the bookshops specialise in children’s and illustrated books and also UK topography, railways and natural history. They have around 50,000 rare and out-of-print books in stock, all of which are available online.

To what do Chris and Cliff attribute their success? Chris says: "When we opened Stella & Rose’s we recognized that we are selling an undifferentiated product and that we would never be the biggest, but we could aim to be the best. It is our staff and the excellent service they provide that differentiates us in the eyes of our customers and we are thrilled and proud to be selected from over 4,500 entries to be the winner of this prestigious award."

Michael Moorcock
from Bagot Books

Michael John Moorcock was born in London in 1939, and began his career in the literary world by publishing various fanzines produced by 'MJM Publications'. His first job at 15 was as editor of Tarzan Adventures from which he was purportedly sacked for publishing too much prose and too few strips. He next did a spell at Fleetway's Sexton Blake Library. In 1962, his first professionally published work 'Caribbean Crisis' (Sexton Blake Library #501) by Desmond Reid (a house name) was issued, although it was, by all accounts, heavily edited & rewritten.

His breakthrough came with selling Elric of Melnibonë sword and sorcery stories to John Carnell's Science Fantasy magazine, and shortly afterwards he took over as editor of the sister magazine”New Worlds”. From a 'space opera' vehicle Moorcock steered the magazine into the 'New Wave' experimental/alternative field, with authors such as J G Ballard, Brian Aldiss, and Norman Spinrad, at the same time changing the format from digest to A4. Despite an Arts Council grant, the magazine struggled financially, especially following Smith's decision to ban it, and folded in the early 70’s leaving Moorcock to pay off the debts himself. He produced a number of series of hastily-written swords & sorcery novels, reputedly producing each story by sitting in front of a typewriter for 48 hours at a stretch, to be sent off to the publisher unread. “New Worlds” went on through various irregularly published incarnations being edited, amongst others, by Hilary Bailey (Moorcock’s ex-wife), Charles Platt, and lately David Garnett.

Following this period Moorcock produced novels which were better written and properly crafted, some in the fantasy genre, some experimental (e.g. the Jerry Cornelius sequence), but others more mainstream. An example of the latter is the Pyat sequence which deals with an unpleasant Russian emigré, and which will climax with the Holocaust. Moorcock has won several literary awards although not all are in the SF/Fantasy field. More recently he has returned to the fantasy genre but the latest Elric novels are of a very different nature from the earlier ones.

Moorcock’s other interests have included politics - he had an involvement with the Liberal Party in the 1950s; rock music - he has released an album, Michael Moorcock and Deep Fix: 'New Worlds Fair', and single 'The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, and has worked extensively with Hawkwind, both as lyricist and on stage. He enjoys authors as diverse as George Meredith, Jack Trevor Story, Andrea Dworkin, Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair, and Richmal Crompton, but dislikes the works of Tolkien. He has also published two anthologies of Victorian and Edwardian invasion stories, 'Before Armageddon' (1975) and 'England Invaded' (1977).

Collecting Moorcock first editions is still affordable, even firsts from 20 years ago or so can still be found for under £20, but moving back to the 70’s the prices start to increase. However, prices rarely go above £75, and to get above £100 it has to be a very early book, probably signed, or an association copy. The Mayflower paperbacks are often true firsts and are common, but it can be difficult to find one that is in very good condition or better, as they were mass produced on poor quality paper and with cheap glues.

For the completist, collecting Moorcock is a nightmare. There are a multitude of reissues and re-jacketings, short story collections with slight rewrites, reissuing of collections with one or two new stories added, US paperback editions often being the true first edition, omnibus editions of series with slight variations; and he has written many forewords to other authors' books. There are also various pieces published in periodicals and anthologies, and a number of small-press publications. A number of his early books, especially the Compact paperbacks published by Roberts and Vintner, don't appear in the British Library catalogue or Whitaker's Books in Print volumes.

His pseudonyms include James Colvin, Edward Powys Bradbury, Bill (or William) Barclay, Michael Barrington, and Philip James (with James Cawthorn). The novel “Time of the Hawklords” was incorrectly credited as a collaboration of Moorcock and Michael Butterworth. In New Worlds 197 there is an obituary for "James Colvin", who died when a filing cabinet fell and crushed him, puncturing a lung: it was written by "William Barclay".

Moorcock co-wrote, with James Cawthorn, the script for the movie based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel "The Land That Time Forgot" (1975), but despised the resulting film which starred Doug McClure. "The Final Programme", the first Jerry Cornelius novel, was filmed in 1973, but had more in common with Austin Powers than Moorcock's disturbing world, and he hates this film also. His "Letters from Hollywood" (1986), a series of letters to J G Ballard whilst he was in the employ of a film company, record his feelings about Tinsel Town. The Elric of Melnibonë series of eleven books has, however, recently been optioned by Chris and Paul Weitz, and will probably end up as a movie trilogy. Therefore more tie-in editions to follow to annoy the completist collectors.

Further information is most easily found by starting at www.multiverse.org, to which Moorcock posts regularly, and there are various bibliographies, printed and online.  

Fulfillment of the dream of the Internet

Virtually every important journal in science, technology and medicine is now available for free on the internet. The effect of this is to better-enable the worlds science and technology communities to benefit from easily accessible research papers on subjects they are interested on and for free. The only complaints so far are from the publishers who previously produced these specialist magazines, at substantial profit

Publicity works both ways

First print-run of the Penguin Paul Burrell book on Princess Di is 125,000 copies in the UK and 800000 in the USA. Most of this stuff belongs in some kind of OK -Science Fiction Weekly amalgamation. It is therefore welcoming that publicity for literature by the BBC’s Big Read program has greatly increased sales of more ennobling texts, with titles such as Catcher in the Rye, Nineteen eighty four and To Kill a mockingbird increasing their sales by over 50% within a six month period over the previous 12 months sales

And here is a link to the BBC’s Big Read - titles are nominated by its viewers & listeners - the full list

Their shortlisted 21 titles are:

Meanwhile, the Observer has created its own top 100 booklist of all time list, which is topped by Don Quixote

The Great future for E-books has passed

In the not too distant past, it was widely thought that e-books - that is books on the internet - would speedily surpass the hardcopy book. But publishers at this years Frankfurt book fair were of the opinion that this was unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Barnes and Noble have discontinued e-book sales due to lack of demand and many publishers have lowered their sights and are aiming at a much smaller market, which they hope will grow as technology improves to create better reading devices.

So it appears that the book will live on for another generation at least.

13-digit ISBNs on way

The Book Industry Study Group recently endorsed the expansion of ISBNs from 10 digits to 13, effective January 1, 2007.