Alum Earns Science Fiction Prize

Carol Neilon Berg ’70 is the winner of the 2005 Geffen Award for the best fantasy novel released in translation. She earned the honor for her epic fantasy novel, Transformation. The award is presented to “distinguished works in the genre” to honor the memory of Amos Geffen, a prominent Israeli editor and translator of science fiction and fantasy, who died in 1998.

Transformation originally was released in the United States and Canada by New American Library/Roc Books and in the United Kingdom by Time Warner/Orbit Books. The Hebrew language version was released in fall 2004 by Graf Press, translated by David Chanoch. The book also has been translated into Russian, Czech, Polish, and German. Transformation was a finalist for the 2001 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award and the Barnes and Noble Maiden Voyage Award for the best first fantasy or science fiction novel of 2000.

Berg, a former software engineer, has written seven other novels, the most recent being Daughter of Ancients. Her book Song of the Beast won the 2004 Colorado Book Award for genre fiction.

A Hallmark Night

The 2001 memoir If Nights Could Talk by Rice University’s writer-in-residence Marsha Recknagel premiered as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on April 23 on CBS. The movie, starring Marcia Gay Harden and Taylor Handley, was titled In From the Night and tells the story of a young, single writer whose well-ordered life is upended when her troubled nephew shows up on her doorstep. As he opens up to the writer about his abusive past, she is forced to confront—and eventually triumph over—her own dark feelings.