Andrew Oldham

Born Into An Unquiet: T.F. Griffin at 60

‘Born Into An Unquiet’ (Flux Gallery Press 2009) is a unique celebration of the work and life of T.F. Griffin to mark his 60th birthday; edited by the poet, Ian Parks. This collection comprises of a seminal interview between the two discussing the core of his work, together with critical book reviews and appraisals from a variety of academic resources.

Also included, together with facsimile pages from his notebooks, are a number of essays and poems from fellow poets and friends, such as, Jules Smith, Andrew Oldham, Ed Reiss, Gaia Holmes, Tony Flynn, Milner Place, Genny Rhatz, Linda Marshall, Ian Pople, Peter Didsbury and William Park. All of whom have encountered T.F. Griffin’s poetry over the years. Due from Flux Gallery Press in October 2009, for further enquiries visit: http://www.fluxgallerypress.co.uk/

Tags: Andrew Oldham, Born Into An Unquiet, Ed Reiss, Flux Gallery Press, Gaia Holmes, Genny Rhatz, Ian Parks, Ian Pople, Jules Smith, Linda Marshall, Milner Place, Peter Didsbury, T.F. Griffin, Tony Flynn, William Park

The Turing Test wins the 2009 Edge Hill Short Story Prize

About time! At last an SF book claims a literary prize. Showing that good writing is good writing. This is a great result for fans of SF. I am a big supporter of ‘The Turing Test’ and know that Chris is a great teller of stories. I have been a subscriber to Interzone for many years and Chris’s work was often the highlight of an edition. Interzone knew they were onto a winner with Chris and devoted an issue to him, Interzone 218! So, to those of us in the SF world it comes as no surprise that Chris has won this award. It’s about time SF was recognised by such awards, roll on the Booker with SF winners!

Cult science fiction writer Chris Beckett has won this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize – the UK’s only award for a short story collection by a single author.  The judges chose his book The Turing Test, with its tales of robots, alien planets, genetic manipulation and virtual reality over collections by Anne Enright, Shena Mackay, Ali Smith and Gerard Donovan. 

Chris was presented with the £5,000 prize and a specially commissioned painting by Liverpool artist, Pete Clarke, at a ceremony held by Edge Hill University on Saturday evening, 4 July, at the Bluecoat centre in Liverpool. He was also awarded the £1,000 Readers’ Prize.  Anne Enright won the second prize, worth £1,000, for her collection Yesterday’s Weather published by Vintage.

This year’s judges were James Walton, journalist and chair of BBC Radio 4′s The Write Stuff; author and 2008 winnerClaire Keegan and Mark Flinn, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Edge Hill University.

James Walton commented:

‘I suspect Chris Beckett winning the Edge Hill Prize will be seen as a surprise in the world of books. In fact, though, it was also a bit of surprise to the judges, none of whom knew they were science fiction fans beforehand. Yet, once the judging process started, it soon became clear that The Turing Test was the book that we’d all been impressed by, and enjoyed, the most – and one by one we admitted it. 

This was a very strong shortlist, including one Booker Prize winner in Anne Enright, and two authors who’ve been Booker shortlisted in Ali Smith and Shena Mackay. Even so, it was Beckett who seemed to us to have written the most imaginative and endlessly inventive stories, fizzing with ideas and complete with strong characters and big contemporary themes. We also appreciated the sheer zest of his story-telling and the obvious pleasure he had taken in creating his fiction.’   

The Edge Hill Short Story Prize was launched by the university three years ago and is co-sponsored by Blackwell bookshop.

 Ailsa Cox, Reader in Creative Writing and English commented:

‘This is a double for Chris Beckett.  He not only wins the first prize but also the Readers’ Prize, voted for by local reading groups and MA Creative Writing Students.  They also responded strongly to the powerful Irish voices in Gerard Donovan’s work.  Once again the prize celebrates the enormous appeal and vitality of the short story, whether it’s the black humour of Anne Enright’s Yesterday’s Weather or the postmodern playfulness in Ali Smith’s The First Person.  So far as I’m concerned, each of these collections is a winner and I’m glad that I wasn’t the one who had to choose between them.’

The phrase ‘The Turing Test’ refers to a proposal made by Alan Turing in 1950 as a way of dealing with the question of whether machines can think.

THE TURING TEST

Fourteen stories featuring, among other things, robots, alien planets, genetic manipulation and virtual reality, but which focus on individuals rather than technology, and deal with love and loneliness, authenticity and illusion, and what it really means to be human.  Chris Beckett‘s first story was published in Interzone in 1990, and his stories have since appeared in Britain, the US and Russia.  His novel The Holy Machine was published in 2004 by Wildside Press, and his second novel, Marcher by Leisure Books in 2008.  He lives in Cambridge with his wife and three children and lectures in social work. www.elasticpress.com

‘A committed, serious writer of science fiction – subtle and adventurous in equal measure… he should already be on the radar of anyone who professes concern for science fiction as a literary form.’                                

Alastair Reynolds, author of the Revelation Space series

‘Aficionados of the genre will know Beckett for his intellectually rigorous and entertaining short fiction, and this outstanding collection should bring him to the attention of a wider audience.  His preoccupation is with identity and self-perception… He’s good at delineating the psychology of the outsider, and brilliant at depicting artificial intelligence and humanity’s relation to it.’                                                          

Eric Brown, The Guardian

Tags: Chris Beckett, Edgehill Short Story Prize, Interzone, The Turing Test

New Book

Andrew features in the new academic book The Short Story edited by Ailsa Cox. His essay on Ray Bradbury is included along with an introduction by AL Kennedy that he aided to edit.

Long regarded as an undervalued and marginalised genre, the short story is undergoing a renaissance. “The Short Story” celebrates its unique appeal. Practitioners and scholars address the issues facing short story criticism in the 21st century. Author A.L. Kennedy shares the pleasures and frustrations of writing the short story in the literary marketplace. This is followed by an assessment of recent attempts to promote short story readership in the UK. Other contributors look at forms such as the short-short and the short story sequence.The range of authors discussed includes Martin Amis, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and James Joyce. The short story is the most international of genres; this is reflected in chapters on Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino and on Japanese short fiction. Postcolonial and translation theory are combined with the close reading of specific texts. Neglected authors, such as the Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards and the colonial figure Frank Swettenham, are re-evaluated and we also consider genre writing, with chapters on crime fiction and Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles”. Integrating theory and practice, “The Short Story” will appeal both to writers and to students of literary criticism.

Tags: Ailsa Cox, Andrew Oldham, Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, Short Story