Sunday, May 21, 2017

Jim Lowder Chaosium Announcement

So, the latest issue of the Chaosium e-newsletter announces the news that my friend Jim Lowder is now in charge of their fiction line. Jim's a good guy -- I've known him since we were at Marquette in the early '80s, he as an undergrad in the honors program and I as a grad student working on my PhD while sneaking off to look at the Tolkien manuscripts in the archives in my spare time. Together we survived The Science Fiction Class of Doom (more about that some other time), having found a shared interest in fantasy, roleplaying games, and King Arthur.* Later on he became the first person I knew who worked at TSR, and gave me good advice when I eventually came to apply for a job there myself.

He's also an experienced editor and designer, both freelance and in-house, with a long string of successful anthologies to his credit, and a longtime advocate for creator's rights, especially when it comes to things like work-for-hire, royalties, and reprints. Here's hoping he can revive Chaosium's fiction line, which put out some interesting collections in the '90s but has rather languished of late.



CHAOSIUM APPOINTS JAMES LOWDER EXECUTIVE EDITOR FOR FICTION

Award-winning editor and author James Lowder has joined Chaosium as executive editor of fiction. Chaosium President Rick Meints commented: “James embodies that magic combination of wisdom and enthusiasm. Knowing his craft inside and out, he brings his advocacy and integrity to the table at every turn. Having him relaunch our fiction line is a ‘the stars are right’ moment.”





I look forward to seeing what new releases they have in store.

--John R.
current reading: THE PROFESSOR AND THE MAD MAN by Simon Winchester, an interesting and annoying book about the creation of the O.E.D.


*he later put together the Green Knight Publishing line of Arthurian reprints

2 comments:

PeterFZoll said...

1. Is the font for Silm on page xxxii (fourth line from the bottom) the right size?

2. On page 475 line 21 where it says 'Perhaps the wizard will suddenly come back to day'is that the text that Tolkien wrote and later corrected (it is 'today' on page 222 of the 50th anniversary edition)

3. On page 40 (50th Anniversary again) the text is 'At first they had passed through hobbit-lands, a wild respectable country' - does 'wild' paired with 'respectable' make sense? Page 89 of your work gives the word as 'wide'.

peterfzoll@yahoo.com

John D. Rateliff said...

Hi Peter.

I'll try to look up the answers to your questions over the next few days.

--John R.