Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Editors, check your slushpiles. There’s a plagiarist afoot.

If this were a case of a single plagiarized story, it would not be news.

A few days ago Shock Totem received a story called “Baboulas” by an author calling himself Richard Ridyard. John Boden, Assistant Editor of Shock Totem, read the story and immediately cried foul.

“This is plagiarism,” he said. “This is Stephen King’s ‘The Boogeyman’ from his Night Shift collection. Even the title is the same!” ‘Baboulas’ is the Greek word for ‘Boogeyman.’

US Justice Dept. urges rejecting current Google Settlement

Today the US Justice Department’s team of lawyers urged U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin in New York to reject the Google Book Settlement in its current form, citing “class action, copyright, and antitrust” concerns.  However, they go on to suggest continued negotiations, “Because a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential […]

Quick Updates for 2009-08-21

Congratulations to Edward Willet for winning the Aurora Award for the best long-form work of science fiction or fantasy by a Canadian writer in English in 2008. Mike Resnick is the newest Writers of the Future judge Celebrate Mary Shelley’s birthday in Boston! Hear SFWA members Jennifer Pelland and Elaine Isaak read.

Site Errors and Slowdown

As you may have noticed, the site is intermittently slow or returning server errors such as 500 server errors, configuration errors, etc. We have contacted the hosting company and it appears that another site on the same server is experiencing a lot of traffic and it is affecting our site as well. The hosting company […]