Departing marginalia

Wanted to note a couple items that popped up over the last day or so before I head off for the season’s big Junior Olympic volleyball tournament. I’m hoping the Minneapolis Convention Center (which is wall-to-wall volleyball courts during the tournament) has wireless access so I can hear the Stampede Clark Cup finals games over the internet.

• If you haven’t heard already, the legal and publishing communities are buzzing about whether the judge in the Da Vinci Code copyright case put his own code in his 71-page ruling? You can get a PDF copy of the ruling here. (Via How Appealing).
• About a week after winning the Best Novel award from the British Science Fiction Association, Geoff Ryman’s Air won the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award. The award, in its 20th year, is given for the best science fiction novel that received its first British publication during the previous calendar year. Ryman’s book is also on the short list for the Nebula Awards to be given out the first weekend in May.
• Here’s a couple opportunities to learn of some good international literature. Currently underway is PEN World Voices, a New York festival of international literature. Iif you’re interested you can follow the festival at MetaxuCafe or The Literary Saloon or even listen to PEN podcasts. More widespread is Reading the World, in which independent booksellers and publishers cooperate to bring attention to literature from outside the US. This year 40 books from 10 publishers are featured in the program, which kicks off in May.
• I think this MySpace thing is going too far. Just today I saw reports that both Neil Young and one of this year’s hottest SF authors, John Scalzi, have MySpace pages. Of course, maybe it’s just a different Blogger approach.

Alice Hoffman