Wellington City Libraries along with IP (Interactive Publications) invite you to the launch of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, on Monday 19^th October at 5.30 pm ground floor Central Library, Victoria Street. This amazing anthology is edited by poet, fiction writer, critic and publisher Mark Pirie and Tim Jones, poet and fiction writer, both Wellingtonians. There is an impressive number of New Zealand writers represented in this anthology. The readers for the evening include poets Janis Freegard, Nic Hill, Jack Perkins, Rachel McAlpine, Helen Rickerby, Robin Fry and the editors Mark Pirie and Tim Jones.

The seating will be available on a first come first served based.

So come along and join us for a wonderful evening of poetry.

October is the month for celebrating New Zealand writing and publishing. This is an annual event in which New Zealand books are highlighted,  and writers new and well-established are acclaimed and rediscovered. As part of the celebration we’ve created an online quiz - How well do you know New Zealand Fiction?  on our Popular Topics Fiction web page. Find out how your knowledge stacks up! You might know more than you think, and you may even come across an interesting fact or two that you didn’t know. Good luck – and we hope you discover a fantastic New Zealand book or two this month!

(P.S. The  book above  is the answer to one of the quiz questions…)

Hilary Mantel has been awarded the 2009 Mann Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall. A historical novel recounted through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, who started out as a Blacksmith’s boy and eventually became one of the most powerful men in England beside Henry VIII. Wolf Hall has been the most popular novel ever to win the Mann Booker Prize. Hilary Mantel has written nine other novels, two have been historical, with A Greater Place of Safety published in 1992 and set in France at the time of the French revolution, winning the Sunday Express Book of the year. Beyond Black published in 2005 was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction the same year.

There is fiction galore for avid readers this month, check out:

• Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks
• Graphic Novels Recent Picks
• Mysteries Recent Picks
• Short Stories Recent Picks
• Science Fiction & Fantasy Recent Picks

Enjoy the ride read!

The 2009 Man Booker Prize long-list has recently been announced. From 135 submitted novels, the panel of five judges have chosen thirteen. Of these, four are past-shortlisted writers, these include Colm Toibin for Brooklyn, William Trevor for Love and Summer, Sarah Waters for The Little Stranger, and Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall. Also included were two writers who have previously won this award, A. S. Byatt for The Children’s Book and past double winner J. M. Coetzee for Summertime. The short-list will be announced on 8 September 2009, with the winner on 6 October 2009.

Wellington City Libraries congratulates all the 2009 Montana New Zealand Prize winners, especially Emily Perkins winner of the Montana Medal for Fiction for her novel titled, Novel About My Wife.  Also Wellington writers Jill Trevelyan, winner of the top non-fiction prize for her biography, Rita Angus: An Artist’s Life , Kate De Goldi with the readers’ choice prize for The 10 PM Question, and Jenny Bornholdt, for winning the poetry prize for her collection, The Rocky Shore.  More information, past and present, on the New Zealand Montana Book Awards can be found on the New Zealand Book Council website.

This month’s Science Fiction Recent Picks feature assassins, sorcerers, clones, a portal to hell, warring gods and fallen angels, humanity on the brink of extinction, a math prodigy, the downtrodden masses of a corporation-owned world, sinister plots, vengeance, resurrection, space cowboys, mortal enemies, the founding of a new world, a witches’ coven, revolution, war, and a yeti in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket. For all of the above (and more!) check out our  Science Fiction Recent Picks for July. Whew.

1950s Calcutta, a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a small town in south-east Ireland in the 1950s, Shanghai in 1937, and Alabama in 1931 – our Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks this month range across many different times and places. You’ll find sprawling sagas, broken dreams, personal tragedies, a guilty conscience, one journey of a lifetime, crumbling masonry, a garden choked with weeds, and a journalist in search of justice and a Pulitzer who finds himself in the sights of a murderer (Michael Connelly’s The Scarecrow). And did we mention the prehistoric giant squid? Check out our Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks.

Mars life, the conclusion to the story begun in Mars and Return to Mars by multiple Hugo winner, Ben Bova has just arrived. It is part of his Grand Tour future histories series, the most gripping and intelligent contemporary science fiction sagas. In Mars Life, Jamie Waterman returns to Mars to prove, against political and religious protest, that the world was originally colonized by Martians. Ben Bova was born in 1932 and has published over 116 science fact and fiction books. He has been an editor of Analog, and is past president of the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. He lives in Florida.
Avid readers of science fiction can now find titles on any science fiction topic using our new drop down search option, located on the Fiction web pages. This links directly to our catalogue.

Let us know what you think of  this new feature!

Author J. G. Ballard has died aged 78 after a long illness. He was born in Shanghai, China and spent three years during World War II with his family in a Japanese Internment camp. He returned to Britain and began to study medicine at King’s College Cambridge. Here he began his writing and in 1952 abandoned his medical studies and went to the University of London to read English Literature. After a year he was asked to leave. He  had trouble getting his work published, and tried various jobs, even joining the RAF in 1953, but staying only a year. His first science fiction short story was published in New Worlds magazine in 1956, the editor who would publish all J. G. Ballard’s early stories. His first novel The Wind from Nowhere was published in 1962, later the same year he published The Drowned World, which was a major success. 20 other novels and 22 collections of short stories were to follow, some of the novels causing much controversy. Crash, published in 1973 and adapted to film in 1996 and the Atrocity Exhibition published in 1969 and adapted to film in 2001, being just two of the controversial works. Empire of the Sun, published in 1984 and adapted to film by Steven Spielberg in 1987, is an autobiographical novel of his war years in China. His last work was his autobiography The Miracles of Life , which was published to much acclaim in 2008.