The Open Page: Book & Print News – 6/9/08
 
1) Lee Thomas’ novel The Dust of Wonderland (Alyson Books) won the Lambda Literary Awards for Best SF/Fantasy novel. The awards were announced at a 20th annual gala held by the Lambda Literary Foundation. The awards are given for fiction dealing with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender material.
 
2) Stephen King and Marvel Publishing will adapt King’s apocalyptic fantasy novel The Stand into a series of comics through a licensing agreement with the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group. The writer for the series will be Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, with illustrations by Mike Perkins. Marvel had previously adapted King’s dark fantasy Gunslinger series. The first issue of The Stand will be released in September 2008. King will serve as creative and executive director for the series.
 
3) SF Canada, the Canadian writers organization, presented author Phyllis Gotlieb with its first Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of an outstanding and groundbreaking body of work in science fiction. Ms. Gotlieb, 82, of Toronto, Ontario, is considered to be one of the founders of contemporary Canadian science fiction and has been a prominent voice in the field for over four decades. She has had a prolific writing career in the genre, beginning with her 1964 novel, Sunburst, for which Canada’s top juried award for speculative writing, the Sunburst Award, was named. Her most recent release is Birthstones, published in 2007 by Robert J. Sawyer Books. Ms. Gotlieb is also a celebrated poet and received a Governor General’s Award nomination in 1970 for her collection Ordinary, Moving, and has written numerous radio plays. Her novel A Judgment of Dragons won the Canadian Science Fiction Award in 1981.

4) David Drake has entered into an agreement with UK company Mongoose Publishing for a role-playing game based on his Hammer’s Slammers series of novels. A miniatures games currently exists with company Pireme, but is not easily available in the U.S.