Last month Ed and Gail Gero of Gainesville, Florida wrote in to ask about new Dirk Pitt adventures from Clive Cussler, which we answered, and why Dirk hadn't joined James Bond on the silver screen, which we didn't answer. Our own Hollywood connection, Pat Broeske (catch her Hannibal update in this issue), read this movie-related Burning Question and sent us the following reply:

Cussler is, in fact, a very famous Hollywood hold-out. He is known for his disdain of the industry and its book adaptations. And with good reason: Hollywood botched its adaptation of his blockbuster novel "Raise the Titanic" (which became a then-famous 1980 screen bomb.) Since that time Cussler has said thanks, but no thanks, to Hollywood. One of the very few major writers to do so, I might add.

A passage to Weybridge

Dear Burning Questions,
I just finished reading Forster's A Passage to India, and I was wondering why at the end it says "Weybridge, 1924." Who is Weybridge? Thanks!

Lisa Ellison
via the Internet

An excellent question, because you may find this sort of note at the end of other novels. Weybridge is not a person; it's a place. At one time the practice was more common than nowadays, but you can still find authors noting the place and year they completed a work. Today such notes usually appear in a foreword or introduction. Forster and his mother moved to the village of Weybridge -- which is in Surrey, southeast of London -- in 1904, when he was 25. He was still living there when he completed A Passage to India in 1924.

Wholly father

Dear Burning Questions,
Any new children's books (and/or adult books?!) from Father Goose (aka Charles Ghigna)? Haven't seen anything from him since Riddle Rhymes received a rave review in the New York Times.

D. Holmes
via the Internet

Are you kidding? There's a whole flock of Father Goose books in the works. Apparently he is as prolific as his distinguished female predecessor. The good Father informed our intrepid children's editor that he has five new books coming out in the fall. They include Mice Are Nice and See the Yak Yak (both from Random House), Animal Trunk (from Abrams), Love Poems (from Crane Hill), and Plastic Soup: Dream Poems (from Black Belt Press).

Full double bright moon messengers

Dear Burning Questions,
Double Full Moon Night, the sequel to Bright Messengers, by Gentry Lee, was supposed to come out three summers ago. Why do you think it has yet to hit the shelves?

Rex Talon
via the Internet

Gentry Lee, co-author with Arthur C. Clarke of the later Rama books, and frequently touted as heir to Clarke's formidable mantle in the grand tradition of space opera, published Double Full Moon Night last month (from Spectra). Other projects are in the works. Incidentally, like Clarke, Lee really knows his stuff when it comes to the science behind the fiction. He was chief engineer on Project Galileo, a director of NASA's Viking mission to Mars, and a partner with Carl Sagan on Cosmos.

Only nanoseconds away

Dear Burning Questions,
Peter F. Hamilton's The Nano Flower has been in hardback for 3+ years in the U.S. When will it be in paperback here, if ever?

Thornton Kimes
Seattle, Washington

The wait is over. The apocalyptic conclusion of Hamilton's science fiction trilogy about psychic detective Greg Mandel, which began in 1996 with Mindstar Rising and continued in 1997 with A Quantum Murder, will be published in paperback by Tor this very month.

The vampire's vocabulary

Dear Burning Questions:
My husband and I love the quirky, literate word book The Transitive Vampire, by Karen Gordon. Does she have any other books?

Jodi Linebaugh
Davenport, Iowa

Oh heavens, yes. Karen Elizabeth Gordon's 1997 book Torn Wings and Faux Pas was chosen by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the best books of 1997. Last November Pantheon published her handsome new word-drunk book, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness, which is just as funny and informative (and amusingly illustrated) as all of her other books. There are still more titles, including The Ravenous Muse and The Disheveled Dictionary. Your vocabulary will never be the same. Like us, you can develop both your noetic and your belletristic sang-froid and avoid ever becoming twee.

All in the family

Dear Burning Questions,
Recently I picked up a paperback called The Men and the Girls in a London airport by a woman named Joanna Trollope. It was wonderful. Is she published in the U.S.?

Melody Grant
Laramie, Wyoming

Yes, Joanna Trollope, who is a household name in England, is catching on very quickly over here in the colonies. Her new book, from Random House, is Other People's Children, which explores the consequences of divorce and stepfamilies. The one before that in the U.S. was them excellent The Best of Friends. Also, you may have seen adaptations on PBS, including a fine version of The Rector's Wife. Joanna Trollope, by the way, is the descendant of Anthony Trollope, the Victorian novelist, and his mother Frances Trollope, who wrote one of the great accounts of the young U.S.

Jose, can you see?

Dear Burning Questions,
Having recently discovered the great joy of Jose Saramago's fiction, thanks to the publicity of the 1998 Nobel Prize, I am burning to know when his latest novel "All the Names" will be available in English translation.

Ainslie Tamboline
Victoria, BC Canada

A Harcourt publicist informed us that they haven't yet scheduled publication of All the Names, but it is in the works. However, that doesn't mean you have to go without Saramago. Harcourt's trade paperback imprint, Harvest, published his Baltasar and Blimunda in trade paperback late last year, and will publish a paperback of Blindness this fall. At about the same time Harcourt will publish the hardback English translation of The Tale of the Unknown Island.