Award-winning artist Dan Steffan has taken the initial steps toward building his own online display and sales gallery here.
Already posted – a Banana Wings cover, several other classic faanish illustrations, plus examples of his pro work.
[Thanks to Steve Stiles for the link.]
Here are 19 developments of interest to fans.
(1) Hard to believe fandom didn’t invent this award first.
A new literary prize aims to reward book reviews with edge.
The Hatchet Job of the Year Award honours “the angriest, funniest, most trenchant” review published in a newspaper or magazine in 2011.
(2) When Muhammad Ali celebrated his 70th birthday, Jim Burns posted this memory of meeting the champ in person:
I’ll always be grateful that I got to meet Muhammad Ali when he was still in the full height of all his many powers. The occasion was an odd one–a 1978 press party at the Warner Communications building on Fifth Avenue, heralding Superman Vs Muhammad Ali, a special edition “deluxe” comic book volume that DC Comics produced (in which aliens compel the two titans to tussle, “to save the Earth”)..
(3) This is the century of Irish comics writes James Bacon in ComicBuzz:
Of course the 21st century has been the one in which Irish comics and creators seem to have come into their own, and when I walked into Forbidden Planet in Dublin just before Christmas and saw a whole wall, separate and in prime position, dedicated to home grown comics, I was impressed. It was about 24 linear feet, all facing forward and just looking awesome.
There were over fifty titles, from stunning looking graphic novels to neat and tidy A5 photocopied comics. Although these comics are indigenous, it seems the likes of Atomic Diner, O’Brien Press, and Muccu Press are all professional when it comes to their products.
(4) Wired magazine reports on the new NASA chamber designed to mimic conditions on the surface of Venus.
They’ve needed it ever since satellites discovered the planet isn’t anything like the one in Bradbury’s stories, whose conditions can be mimicked quite inexpensively in a Turkish bath.
(5) You should track down an article by Jennifer Schuessler called “Who Word-Processed First?” that appeared in the Arts Beat blog of the January 10 New York Times. It’s about a scholar who is trying to find out who first used a computer to write fiction or poetry. The answer is: Jerry Pournelle.
In a recent blog post the science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle criticized Mr. Kirschenbaum for failing to award him bragging rights as the first to complete a science fiction novel — and perhaps any kind of novel — on a computer. Not only did he begin writing fiction on a souped-up Z-80 PC named Zeke in the late 1970s, Mr. Pournelle noted, but his old computer is also currently in the collection of the Smithsonian, albeit in storage.
Another example of something that was once widely known being forgotten. Fortunately, in this case, the person who made the history is still around.
(6) How’s this for a musical challenge – composers were called upon to create a soundtrack for rediscovered colour print of Méliès’s 1902 Le voyage dans la lune.
(7) This LA Times story is mainly about the latest trend in invading people’s privacy:
The Los Angeles Police Department is warning real estate agents not to use images of properties taken from unmanned aircraft, saying the flying drones pose a potential safety hazard and could violate federal aviation policy.
The warning was issued this week after officers saw a television news report showing a basketball-sized object with multiple rotors hovering over an expansive Westside residence.
But I wonder if problematic uses of drone technology by private individuals might eventually be answered with something like Niven’s cop’s-eyes from Cloak of Anarchy”?
(8) Patrick Rothfuss boosts his novel’s editor for a Hugo in a delightful example of that “less icky” self-promotion Mary Robinette Kowal was touting the other day.
I’m not going to beat around the bush here. If you’re eligible to vote, I’d like you to consider nominating my editor, Betsy Wollheim, for Best Long Form Editor.
The simple reason is this, if not for her The Wise Man’s Fear simply wouldn’t exist.
Although the full post is riddled with verbiage I am more likely to use while driving the I-210 than on a blog, it punctuates the kind of self-deprecating humor Rothfuss writes here to persuasive effect.
(9) It’s routine fare for bloggers to decry the injustice of some Golden Age writer never winning a Hugo. So I’m glad Fred Pohl thoughtfully explained why C.M. Kornbluth’s best stories never won the top awards:
Some of his work from that period I would match against almost anybody’s best stories ever, including “The Marching Morons,” “Two Dooms” and a good many others. (The intelligent folks at NESFA have put all those stories in a single volume, entitled His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C.M. Kornbluth.) None of them won any Hugos or Nebulae. The reason was just some of Cyril’s bad luck. The awards hadn’t been invented yet.
(10) Homer Eon Flint coulda been a contender.
(11) Thanks to the people who saved copies of old TV shows devoted to the science fiction field until the day when they could be uploaded to YouTube. Here is a digitized episode of James Day’s public TV series Day at Night from the 1970s where Ray Bradbury is interviewed.
(12) Dem bones, dem dry bones. We all know Charles Darwin collected specimens on the voyage of the Beagle, but what we didn’t know until now was how much of Darwin’s stuff had been misplaced:
British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.
Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a “gloomy corner” of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey….
“How these things got overlooked for so long is a bit of a mystery itself,” he [Falcon-Lang] mused, speculating that perhaps it was because Darwin was not widely known in 1846 so the collection might not have been given “the proper curatorial care.”
(13) Evelyn Leeper recently finished and posted her full Anticipation (Worldcon 2009) convention report with panel descriptions.
(14) San Diego’s own Qualcomm has created a new X Prize. The company is putting up $10 million for a competition for teams to create a media scanning device inspired by Star Trek’s tricorder. The final device will be judged on its ability to diagnose a series of 15 diseases as well as its usability.
(15) Andrew Porter viewed the first trailer for The Hobbit and said “I’m reminded of Tim Kirk’s cartoon about The Hobbit done as a Max Fleischer cartoon…”
(16) When clay is outlawed, only outlaws will have clay. Does Gumby have an alibi?
The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there’s no mistaking the iPad for one of the world’s oldest “tablet devices.” Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging.
Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers.
(17) On the other hand, this well-intended law is a lot harder to violate. Two US states seeking to preserve Moon exploration history have added key artifacts to their registries of historic items.
California’s catalog of historic artifacts includes two pairs of boots, an American flag, empty food bags, a pair of tongs and more than a hundred other items left behind at a place called Tranquillity Base. The history registry for New Mexico lists the same items.
That might be surprising, since Tranquillity Base is not in New Mexico or California but a quarter of a million miles away, in the spot where Neil A. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon in 1969.
But for archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, these designations were important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artifacts.
“I think it’s humanity’s heritage,” said Beth L. O’Leary, a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. “It’s just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven’t begun to look at until now.”
…It turned out to be a tricky question. Under international law, the United States government still owns everything it left on the moon: the bottom half of the first lunar lander, the scientific experiments, the urine bags. But 100 nations, including the United States, have signed the Outer Space Treaty, in which they agree not to claim sovereignty over any part of the moon.
(18) Scientists may soon know whether Renaissance artist Georgio Vasari preserved a long-lost work of Leonardo Da Vinci, “The Battle of Anghiari,” behind his own when he was commissioned to cover that space.
…Given several nights to complete the work, the team scrambled to find fiber-optic cameras and a rig that would allow them to drill safely. High up on a scaffold, Italian conservators carefully lifted off 1-inch squares of the fresco and with a 6-millimeter bit bored six holes through the brick wall Vasari had built.
In each hole, Seracini’s team inserted a 4-millimeter endoscope and watched breathlessly on a nearby monitor.
For now, the results of those probes are being guarded jealously by Seracini’s team. They are likely to hinge not on dramatic images but on an analysis of whether samples taken from the wall contain pigments or resins known to have been used by Leonardo.
(19) Some people hack web sites to demonstrate those sites’ vulnerabilities and alert possible users. A comparable thing occurred in the early days of radio:
The incoming Morse then got more personal, mocking Marconi: “There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily,” it trilled. Further rude epithets – apposite lines from Shakespeare – followed.
The stream of invective ceased moments before Marconi’s signals from Poldhu arrived. The demo continued, but the damage was done: if somebody could intrude on the wireless frequency in such a way, it was clearly nowhere near as secure as Marconi claimed. And it was likely that they could eavesdrop on supposedly private messages too.
Nevil Maskelyne, a British music hall magician, claimed the hack in a letter to the newspapers.
…Maskelyne came from an inventive family – his father came up with the coin-activated “spend-a-penny” locks in pay toilets. Maskelyne, however, was more interested in wireless technology, so taught himself the principles.
[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus, John Mansfield, James Hay, Steven H Silver, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian and Andrew Porter.]
Jon Winokur has posted a sensational interview with Harlan Ellison on AdviceToWriters. Here’s an appetizer:
Have you ever had writer’s block? Oh, I absolutely have.
Really? When? From four until about five o’clock on a Wednesday in January of 1973.
How did you cure it? I went to sleep. Went and got laid. Went and had a Pink’s hot dog. Came back, sat down, finished writing. What’s sad about writer’s block is that you forget what you were going to write about. Sometimes I’ll look at a story and say to myself, “Oh, I’ve got a perfect ending” and then make the mistake of forgetting it. It only happened to me twice with stories I had to finish because I was on deadline. I’ve looked at those stories since and wanted to do them over because I knew I had a better ending. The endings are perfectly fine and nobody notices, but I know the difference between good and bad.
Winokur’s own long list of credits includes his collaboration with James Garner on the actor’s memoir, The Garner Files. I read that last year and wholeheartedly recommend it.
[Via Locus Online.]
Dick Tufeld, one of the most influential voices in the history of science fiction, died January 21 at the age of 85.
His most famous role was the Robot from Lost In Space, uttering the iconic line “Danger, Will Robinson!” He performed this role again in the movie and an episode of The Simpsons.
Prior to that he earned science fiction immortality as the narrator of Space Patrol on radio where he opened the show saying:
Space Patrol! High adventure in the wild vast reaches of space … missions of daring in the name of interplanetary justice. Travel into the future with Buzz Corry … commander-in-chief of … the Space Patrol!
Tufeld also served as the announcer on other Irwin Allen TV shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Time Tunnel. He introduced Disney’s prime-time anthology series, and its Zorro series.
Other credits included Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,The Fantastic Four and many non-genre programs.
Harlan Ellison and Patton Oswalt
At the second Cinefamily Harlan Ellison event, January 19, Patton Oswalt crashed the interview and took the mike from Josh Olson. An 8-minute video clip is here. (And a much better still of the pair at work is here — one that resists ordinary URL image quoting.)
Oswalt is a veteran comedian, storyteller and actor, who is also a noted writer. He paid tribute to Harlan Ellison’s influence in ”The Book That Changed My Life” for GQ. Oswalt’s encounter with Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog” revealed previously unsuspected possibilities:
Ellison didn’t change my life so much as he changed my reading habits, revealing a dozen branching paths and side alleys where before there seemed to be an orderly road to adulthood. He brought rawness and confusion and awe and real terror, and I’m forever indebted.
Ellison appreciates Oswalt, too, and wrote this blurb for Oswalt’s 2011 book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland:
I have impeccable taste, and I only converse with the following three: God, the Devil, and Patton Oswalt. All three have opened for me. This book is a funny tragedy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll convert to Pattonism. If you do not love this book, remember, I know where you live in your mother’s basement.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
William Shatner’s franchise characters always have a good, long run. He played Captain Kirk in four different decades before Kirk’s heroic demise in Star Trek Generations. Now Shatner’s Priceline Negotiator has suffered a fiery ending to what proved a literal five-year mission. (This was the most recent iteration of Shatner’s role as Priceline’s public face over the past 14 years.)
The Negotiator is gone because Priceline is adopting a new fixed-price business model.
Shatner’s character meets his demise in a fiery tourist bus explosion possibly inspired by the unresolved predicament that closes the 1969 version of The Italian Job, with a bus teetering over the edge of a cliff, but in the Priceline commercial taken to the worst possible outcome.
A video of the commercial is available at this link.
The judge agreed there was enough evidence to try Christian Gerhartsreiter on charges of murdering John Sohus in 1985 after a week-long hearing where prosecutors called 23 witnesses.
Among the last to be questioned was Mihoko Manabe. She knew Gerhartsreiter by his alias Christopher Crowe and during his transformation to Clark Rockefeller. They dated and lived together until about 1994, after meeting while working at a NYC securities firm. The LA Times reports:
In 1988, Mihoko Manabe received a call at her New York apartment from a Connecticut detective looking for her live-in boyfriend, a man she knew by the name Christopher Crowe. She took a message and hung up.
When she gave Crowe the message, their lives were turned upside down, Manabe recalled in court Tuesday. The boyfriend told her that the person who called wasn’t with the police, but a bad guy who was after him. He dyed his hair and eyebrows blond, grew a beard, and insisted they shred documents. They began using P.O. boxes for their mail, threw away their garbage at public shopping malls and walked on opposite sides of the street.
Some months after, Manabe testified, he began using the name that would later gain national notoriety — Clark Rockefeller.
Gerhartsreiter will next appear February 9 in Alhambra Superior Court.
By John Hertz: John DeChancie corrected me. I reported that at Loscon XXXVIII, where he was Author and I was Fan Guest of Honor, he said he’d never heard of fanzines until Marty Cantor sent him Holier Than Thou. This was a misstatement by one or both of us. In fact DeChancie knew of fanzines; he was then given a stack by no less than Bob Leman; he wrote Thou a letter of comment; the return copy was the first specifically addressed to him. I like this version better, not only because it’s truer, and shows a fine fannish pro hipper sooner, but also because it shows him looking around. Be bigger than your immediate adventure.
Reporting on the new LASFS (Los Angeles S-F Society) clubhouse I said it had no patio. Other members later pointed out a door I hadn’t seen. It opened onto the 14th Chorp Dimension and there I was.
Cantor also reminds me DeChancie is in both APA-L (Amateur Press Ass’n – LASFS, LASFS being the host though not the sponsor of L) and LASFAPA (L.A. Scientifiction Fans’ Am. Pr. Ass’n). Cantor, who is the Official Collator of L, and the Little Tin God of LASFAPA, will not let either of his children be slighted even for the sake of the other. In fact he’s a man whose deeds are better than his words. Cantor – what do you mean I’ve ruined your – put that blaster down – augh
The 2012 Academy Award nominations show there are still some sf/fantasy stars in the cinema firmament, even if they are not in the prestigious Best Picture or acting categories. (Unless we appropriate Hugo, the 3-D movie about the man who invented special effects — I haven’t seen it, you tell me.)
The genre dominates the Visual Effects category, as is often the case:
Visual Effects
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Real Steel
Hugo
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Unlike last year, when the Short Film (Animated) category was highlighted by the work of recent Worldcon GoH Shaun Tan, there is no comparable standout in 2012, although a couple of these might be claimed as examples of sf/fantasy (links have been added to the trailers I viewed while drafting this post):
Short Film (Animated)
Dimanche/Sunday
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
La Luna
A Morning Stroll
Wild Life
In the Animated Feature Film category, the story of greatest interest to me is about the contender not nominated.
Having reported Steven Paul Leiva’s argument against allowing The Adventures of Tintin as an Oscar contender in the animation category, I was interested to find Spielberg’s movie did, indeed, fail to make the cut. Even after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had announced in July 2010 that “motion-capture films are no longer considered eligible for the Best Animated Feature Film category,” Paramount had continued to urge on voters the view that Tintin isn’t a just a performance capture film. Academy voters evidently felt differently.
Animated Feature Film
A Cat in Paris, Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli
Chico & Rita, Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal
Kung Fu Panda 2, Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Puss in Boots,” Chris Miller
Rango, Gore Verbinski
About the animated films that are up for an Oscar the NY Times observed:
The animation voters this year skewed European and hand-drawn, choosing “”A Cat in Paris,” a French film, and “Chico & Rita,” made by a Spanish director and designers, over more high-profile, high-tech hopefuls like “The Adventures of Tintin,” “Arthur Christmas” and Pixar’s “Cars 2.” (It is only the third time since Pixar was founded a decade ago that its name did not pop up in the best animated feature selections, though it did garner a nod for its short, “La Luna.”)
