Donal's Ray Feist Stuff

This is the page about the mailing list for fans of Raymond Feist (author of the Riftwar and Serpentwar Sagas, amongst other things)

FEISTFANS-L

Index


You can join the list for yourself by mailing listproc@cornell.edu with a body of:

   SUBSCRIBE FEISTFANS-L <Your Name>

(this is according to the Feistfans-l Mailing List Options FAQ, so errors are those that are in there... <grin>)


Following a spam-attack, you must now be a list member to send messages to the list. I personally approve of this change anyway...


Please note that this is a very busy list so you should really make sure you have enough space in your mailbox first... <grin>

Also, please read the FAQs and kindly keep the number of messages you send to 2 or 3 per day. Otherwise, we'll probably go crazy answering all the questions that have been answered many times before! You can check what has already been asked by looking in the archive.

The list is usually among the first places to get news of where signing tours are going to happen though I will post the info up here as soon as I can.

Yes, Ray Feist is a list member, and he does answer questions put on the list (often with ``Wait until the next book...'' though, so I wouldn't be too set on finding out)


Should you become totally overwhelmed by this marvellous fount of information, you can unsubscribe again by sending mail to listproc@cornell.edu from the same address as your subscribe request with a body of:

   UNSUBSCRIBE FEISTFANS-L

Should you suddenly find that you are no longer receiving messages from the list, you might be unsubscribed or you will have receipt of messages from the list turned off. You can fix this by sending a message to listproc@cornell.edu from the same address as your subscribe request with a body of:

   SET FEISTFANS-L MAIL ACK

If you get a message back telling you that you are not subscribed to the list, then you know for certain that you have been automatically removed from the list for some reason (the server has been set to be incredibly touchy due to the number of subscribers...)

One easy way of testing to see if you've been unsubscribed or had delivery of messages to you turned off is to send the following message to the list processor, which will then tell you what various settings (including whether you are receiving mail and what address it is delivered to) by return of e-mail...

   QUERY FEISTFANS-L

For people who are on the list, you can send messages to the list by mailing feistfans-l@cornell.edu, but please don't do this unless you are a list member - it's very easy to join so you don't really have any excuse.

Remember that sending to this address send a message to everyone on the list, so try to keep your messages short. Quote what you need to give context to what you are saying (if replying to another message) and avoid attachments unless really necessary, as there are people out there who will probably not be able to use any binary that you attach. Putting your binary on an FTP or WWW site and posting the address to the list is fine though (provided it is on topic - by some definition...)

Please don't quote someone else's .signature as we've probably seen it too often already! <grin>


There are a lot of other things you can do with the list server, for a full list of them, send a message to listproc@cornell.edu with a body of HELP only. The subject doesn't matter.

I've got a list of the things that you'd be most likely to want to send to the list server which omits loads of stuff that is there for list management (and therefore very unlikely to be of interest to you).


If you are about to go off on vacation away from your mail for a while and do not feel inclined to receive several hundred messages from this list in your mailbox, you may prefer to send the following message to the list management software to take yourself out of the loop for a while.

   SET FEISTFANS-L MAIL POSTPONE

When you want to start receiving messages as normal, you can just send the following message instead:

   SET FEISTFANS-L MAIL ACK

Note that as of 19th January, 2000 the following few bits are not quite accurate. It'll still work, but not quite as it did before. More details when I can get around to it...

An alternative to not receiving any messages is to just receive the messages in digest form (one message per day, with virtually all the pointless bulk trimmed out) using the following message:

   SET FEISTFANS-L MAIL DIGEST

I use digests to receive a backup of the list at my home account (which is on a dialup) and it is quite reasonable with a 56k modem. Use the MAIL ACK request (just above) to switch out of digest mode.


The FEISTFANS-L Archive:

Currently, I've just made available my archives of mail messages archived from the FeistFans mailing list at Cornell. This archive can now be searched provided you have a Java 1.1-compliant browser. Sadly, this counts against all but the latest versions of Netscape, but since I'm only interested in Sun's JDK and I'm not about to write a decompression class, I don't care.

Some of the messages will have been edited, though this is generally to either unMIME a message (which I do sometimes) or reformat a paragraph so that it is less than 80 characters wide. I do not alter the actual content.

Note that this is an archive. There are lots of things said here that I do not agree with. The only parts of it that can be said to be my opinion are those bits that are associated directly with my name, and only necessarily on the date given. The copyrights on the messages lie with their respective authors, and none of the messages should be used for any purpose beyond that implied by the normal usages associated with the rest of the mailing list without the explicit, written permission of the author in question.

  1. 17th February, 1995 to 21st August, 1995
  2. 21st August, 1995 to 20th October, 1995
  3. 20th October, 1995 to 20th November, 1995
  4. 20th November, 1995 to 12th December, 1995
  5. 12th December, 1995 to 22nd January, 1996
  6. 22nd January, 1996 to 21st February, 1996
  7. 21st February, 1996 to 18th March, 1996
  8. 18th March, 1996 to 23rd April, 1996
  9. 23rd April, 1996 to 24th May, 1996
  10. 24th May, 1996 to 8th July, 1996
  11. 8th July, 1996 to 4th September, 1996
  12. 4th September, 1996 to 13th November, 1996
  13. 13th November, 1996 to 3rd February, 1997
  14. 3rd February, 1997 to 14th March, 1997
  15. 14th March, 1997 to 3rd April, 1997
  16. 3rd April, 1997 to 18th April, 1997
  17. 18th April, 1997 to 9th June, 1997
  18. 9th June, 1997 to 4th July, 1997
  19. 4th July, 1997 to 24th July, 1997
  20. 24th July, 1997 to 8th August, 1997
  21. 8th August, 1997 to 9th September, 1997
  22. 9th September, 1997 to 13th October, 1997
  23. 13th October, 1997 to 8th December, 1997
  24. 8th December, 1997 to 14th January, 1998
  25. 14th January, 1998 to 13th February, 1998
  26. 13th February, 1998 to 16th March, 1998
  27. 16th March, 1998 to 28th April, 1998
  28. 28th April, 1998 to 27th May, 1998
  29. 27th May, 1998 to 2nd July, 1998
  30. 2nd July, 1998 to 25th August, 1998
  31. 25th August, 1998 to 19th October, 1998
  32. 19th October, 1998 to 8th December, 1998
  33. 8th December, 1998 to 19th January, 1999
  34. 19th January, 1999 to 20th February, 1999
  35. 20th February, 1999 to 29th March, 1999
  36. 29th March, 1999 to 8th June, 1999
  37. 8th June, 1999 to 9th July, 1999
  38. 9th July, 1999 to 10th August, 1999
  39. 10th August, 1999 to 16th September, 1999
  40. 16th September, 1999 to 11th November, 1999
  41. 11th November, 1999 to 20th December, 1999
  42. 20th December, 1999 to 11th February, 2000
  43. 11th February, 2000 to 10th May, 2000
  44. 10th May, 2000 to 14th July, 2000
  45. 14th July, 2000 to 1st September, 2000
  46. 1st September, 2000 to 19th October, 2000
  47. 19th October, 2000 to 22nd January, 2001
  48. 22nd January, 2001 to 30th March, 2001
  49. 30th March, 2001 to 13th July, 2001

There are currently around 71700 messages here, but you'll need gzip to read them, and Emacs rmail-mode to make full use of them. They are (virtually) plain text though, so they should present no problems (once you've got them uncompressed, that is <grin>)

People with a PC or a Mac can find ready to run programs to handle gzipped files in a place like a Simtel mirror for a PC version (I don't know enough about the Mac world to recommend where to go). I can't really do a lot more there to help you out then that though, as I don't use those platforms a lot myself. Recent enough versions of WinZip also handle the gzip format but I've had some reports of problems relating to auto-MIME handling. I don't intend to do anything about this.

Requests that I store them uncompressed will be blithely ignored, as I find that 41.7MB is much more manageable than around 236.6MB <grin>

You may also read my current load of stuff from the list but this is not guaranteed to be a good link, and may not always download successfully. 9am to 5pm GMT/BST, Monday to Friday, are the times when it is most likely to be messing up (as I may be adding messages to it at the time <grin>)

Thanks to Phil Adamson <phil.adamson@keble.oxford.ac.uk>, the loss of archive from the 23rd of April, 1996 to the 25th of the same month has now been rectified (about 35 messages have entered the archive that I had thought lost forever).

Apologies for the loss of service (both archiving and serving of this page) on the 26th and 27th of March, 1997. This was due to the sysadmins bringing down our fileserver for two hours (for "preventative maintenance") and the listproc deciding that this meant I was no longer on the list... People wishing to add the missing messages to the archive are welcome to contact me, and we'll work something out.

Yet another loss of service occurred on the 23rd and 24th of April, 1997. What is up with this stupid listserver? Every time one of our fileservers crashes, I'm slung off the list! Grrr...

Yet again, there was a loss of service. This time it was on the 1st of December, 1998. Luckily, this outage has been resolved with the kind help of Richard "rip" Williamson. Cheers!


News and Events

First off, I can advise going to hear Ray talking. He is a very entertaining speaker indeed, and you can get a feeling for just how much he appreciates his friends. You can also get to see where Ray is taking Midkemia in the future...

If you feel aggrieved that Ray only really seemed to be doing the Mid-West and a couple of Californian sites this time round, remember that the last time he was on tour, his publisher took him to other cities (the East Coast IIRC) and this time he's mainly doing places that lost out last time. Next tour, it will be somewhere else's turn. What with him being a best-selling fantasy author, Ray would have great trouble getting much work done if he visited everywhere that would have him. Be patient, and agitate with your bookstore to ask for him to visit. If they persuade Ray's publisher that visiting your area is a good thing, then he will (eventually) come.

Europe

The last tour of Europe was 15th September 1999 to 25th September 1999 and covered the UK (Cambridge, Manchester and Birmingham) and the Netherlands (Oosterhout, Den Haag and Rotterdam).

The next tour (autumn 2002) will be going to the following places in the UK:

Date Time Venue Telephone Notes
Mon 09 September 12.30-1.30pm Hammicks, 60-62 St Anns Road, Harrow, UK 020 8863 4578
Mon 09 September 6.30pm Borders, 203-207 Oxford Street, London, UK 020 7292 1650 Chaired by Pat Cadigan
Tue 10 September 12.30-1.30pm Hammicks, 14-16 Chelsea House, Queen Anne's Walk, Basingstoke, UK 01256 460646
Wed 11 September 6.30pm Ottakar's, 72 Midsupper Place, Milton Keynes, UK 01908 395384
Thu 12 September 12.30-1.30pm Blackwell's, 89 Park Street, Bristol, UK 0117 927 6602
Thu 12 September 6.00pm Waterstone's, 128 Princes Street, Edinburgh, UK 0131 226 2666
Fri 13 September 12.30-1.30pm Ottakar's, 31 The Bridges, Sunderland, UK 0191 567 4331
Fri 13 September 7.00pm Waterstone's, 91 Deansgate, Manchester, UK 0161 837 3000
Sat 14 September 1.00-2.00pm Ottakar's, 76 High Street, Chelmsford, UK 01245 268737

Lunchtime venues seem to be just signings, but evening venues are doing "events", which on past experience probably mean that Ray will talk for a while and answer questions before the signing.

New - 14 August 2002 In Holland, there will be the following signing sessions:

Date Time Venue Notes
Friday 6 September 5pm Scheltema in Amsterdam Signing
Saturday 7 September 3pm Donner in Rotterdam Interview & signing

North America

The last tour of North America was 10th March 2001 to 29th March 2001 and covered San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Palo Alto, Chicago, Cleveland and Austin (I think I got that right...)

New - 13 August 2002 Ray Feist writes this on the topic of tours in the US:

OK, so here's the deal on Talon tour in the US.

So far it looks like I'll be in So. Cal (big surprise), though specific 
locations are under discussion. San Francisco,  Denver/Boulder, 
Portland, Or, and Seattle, are pretty high up the list on where I'll be.

Minneapolis is also a possibility.

So, where else is there a bookstore where they'll put on a show in your 
area?  Now, before you start tying and filling up this list, here's a 
few things to consider.

I don't want to hear "So and so puts on some good signings!  You should 
try there."  What I want to hear is "I've talked to the manager at so 
and so and they'll talk to their corporate liason/PR person/whatever it 
is and contact HarperCollins/Avon."


In other words if you know of a store and have a contact, let us know.  
It is far more effective, however, if the store makes the overture.  If 
a store asks for me during a tour and can guarantee a certain number of 
books there, it's a good thing.

Other possibilities I'd like to see are St. Louis, Milwaukee, New 
Orleans, Atlanta, Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Washington D.C., or 
Philadelphia.

Needless to say what I want has very little impact on Avon, but any data 
helps make the decision.

Australia and New Zealand

New - 14 August 2002 The following places in Australia and New Zealand are currently on the list, though revisions are of course possible:

Date Time Venue Notes
Tuesday 17th September 3:00pm Dymocks Carousel, Westfield Shopping Centre, Albany Highway, Cannington, WA Book Signing
Tuesday 17th September 6:30pm Perth Town Hall, Cnr Hay Street and Barrack Street, Perth, WA Literary Event
Wednesday 18th September 12:30pm A & R Fremantle, 120 High St, Fremantle, WA Book Signing
Wednesday 18th September 1:45pm Dymocks Garden City, Garden City Shopping Centre, Riseley St, Booragoon, WA Book Signing
Thursday 19th September 1:00pm Dymocks, 136 Rundel Mall, Adelaide, SA Book Signing
Friday 20th September 12:30pm Dymocks, 234 Collins St, Melbourne, VIC Book Signing
Friday 20th September 4:30pm Slow Glass Books, 305 - 307 Swanson St, Melbourne, VIC Book Signing
Saturday 21st September 10:30am Borders Shop B16, 134 Dandenong Rd, Chadstone, VIC Book Signing
Saturday 21st September 1:30pm Robinsons Bookshop, Shop 3, 11 Stations Street, Frankstone, VIC Book Signing
Sunday 22nd September 10:00am Galaxy, 222 Clarence St, Sydney, NSW Book Signing
Sunday 22nd September 2:00pm Infinitas Bookshop, Shop 5, 1 Horwood Place, Parramatta, NSW Book Signing
Monday 23rd September 11:00am A&R Bookshop Pitt St Mall, Sydney, NSW Book Signing
Monday 23rd September 4:30pm Australian National University, Canberra, ACT Book Event
Tuesday 24th September 1:30pm Borders, Westfield S/C, 236 Pacific Highway, Hornsby, NSW Book Signing
Wednesday 25th September 11:00am A&R Post Office Square, Adelaide St, Brisbane, QLD Book Signing
Wednesday 25th September 1:30pm Myer, Queens Street Mall, Brisbane, QLD Book Signing
Wednesday 25th September 7:15pm Pulp Fiction, Anzac Square Arcade 265-269 Edward St, Brisbane, QLD Book Event
Thursday 26 September 7:00pm Whitcoulls, Queen St, Auckland, NZ Event
Saturday 28 September 12:30pm Dymocks, Lampton Quay, Wellington, NZ signing?

This page is way too big, and its graphics to real (i.e. useful) content ratio seems to be creeping up. Yet another case for feeping creatureism...


Donal K. Fellows / Computer Science / University of Manchester / U.K.

donal.fellows@cs.man.ac.uk

with a bit of help from Ethan Friedman.

Magician - Raymond E. Feist

The Raymond E. Feist Ring

This site

Donal's Ray Feist Stuff

is owned by Donal K. Fellows.

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