International Horror Guild Award.

[JohnDavey]

Dear all,

Not a question, I know, but the Q.&A. still seems the best place to announce that Savoy's 2004 book, 'A Serious Life' by D.M. Mitchell, has won the International Horror Guild Award in the non-fiction category. The results were announced last Thursday (3rd Nov.) at the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, WI. (See www.ihgonline.org for the full list). Jeff VanderMeer accepted the award on Savoy's behalf.

For those of you unaware of the book, 'A Serious Life' is "An evaluation of the books, records and comics produced by Savoy -- publishers of the eclectic, the maverick and the marginalised -- over the last thirty years". ( www.savoy.abel.co.uk )

Although M.M. is mentioned throughout, there's also a whole section of the book devoted to him which begins: "To even a casual reader it must be obvious by now that Michael Moorcock is the linchpin of the Savoy gestalt. His fingerprints are to be found on literally everything Britton and Butterworth [i.e. Savoy] do. One of the greats of Twentieth Century imaginative literature, Moorcock's archetype-generating, fabulist presence permeates the whole of this volume."

It's heavily illustrated throughout, including several previously unpublished photographs of M.M.

Best,


John.

[GuyLawley]

Great news! Thanks for that John.

[Marca]

I'd missed this thread up to now. Thanks for pointing out the book John, it sounds excellent.

While we're on the subject of Savoy I thought I'd stick in a link to Throwaway Friends on the Savoy site. This is Jack Trevor Story's piece on Mike that appeared as the intro to The Russian Intelligence. Not sure if it's been referred to here before. I'm sure Guy's got a link to it on his JTS site?

http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/rusintro.html

[Michael Moorcock]

Although the book is an ego-boost no one deserves, it's still a very good book, I think, in what it tells us about one of the most marginalised and yet one of the very best idiosyncratic publishers of our time. Whether it's PJ Proby reading The Waste Land or the Fuck Off And Die comic annual, there's nothing like it, nothing with as much energy and wit (and considerable seriousness on occasion) anywhere else these days.
Savoy will never win over 'the mainstream' but everyone who thinks of themselves as supporting the best of fringe culture should have some Savoy titles in their collection. It's not all confrontational work, either, given that they did so much Jack Trevor Story and Henry Treece (among others), some of which is still in print. It's just what Dave Britton and Michael Butterworth think is worth presenting to the public, including a beautiful edition of Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus which is so costly a production it can never possibly get its costs back. Costs (as with the Zenith book, the Meadley book and others, including Britton's own fiction) have never been a consideration for them. They publish the best possible quality and that's all they care about. The money comes from Britton's own funds and it's about all he wants to spend it on.
We get the benefit.

[GuyLawley]

I'd missed this thread up to now. Thanks for pointing out the book John, it sounds excellent.

While we're on the subject of Savoy I thought I'd stick in a link to Throwaway Friends on the Savoy site. This is Jack Trevor Story's piece on Mike that appeared as the intro to The Russian Intelligence. Not sure if it's been referred to here before. I'm sure Guy's got a link to it on his JTS site?

http://www.savoy.abel.co.uk/HTML/rusintro.html

Yes, AV, there is a link from this page:

http://www.jacktrevorstory.co.uk/new_page_2.htm

and you have reminded me to check that it still works (it does).