Monthly Archives: February 2010

A Big Bomb

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Charles Pellegrino, an author of several SF novels who also worked on Avatar, has discovered his newly published history The Last Train from Hiroshima is probably based on fraudulent information reports the New York Times. His source Joseph Fuoco supposedly had flown with the crew of a B-29 accompanying the Enola Gay on its mission to drop the first A-bomb:

But Mr. Fuoco, who died in 2008 at age 84 and lived in Westbury, N.Y., never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer, Mr. Corliss’s family says. They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor.

Of course Pellegrino is no stranger to controversy, having co-authored The Jesus Family Tomb (subsequently made into a documentary by James Cameron, who has a similar plan in mind for the new Hiroshima book.) Nevertheless I am sure he is shocked, shocked I tell you.  

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Online CUFF Voting

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The CUFF ballot is now online. The Canadian Unity Fan Fund (CUFF) invites any Canadian (resident or citizen) fan who was active in fandom prior to April 2008 to contribute CDN$5 (or more) and vote to select Diane Lacey or Rob Uhrig as Eastern Canada’s delegate to Canvention 30/Keycon 27.

Due to a delay in getting the ballot out, the voting deadline has been extended to March 13.

[Thanks to Diane Lacey for the story.]

Will San Diego Lose Comic-Con?

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San Diego Comic-Con

Whether San Diego Comic-Con International will relocate to another city after 2012 when its current commitments expire is a question getting a lot of media attention lately. It’s startling to think of the 126,000 person convention happening anywhere but its birthplace and home for the past 40 years.

The San Diego Union-Tribune ran a story “Is Comic-Con Really Leaving San Diego?” on February 21. The next day the question was echoed by television stations in Southern California serving communities that would like to attract the con, like KTLA in Los Angeles.

Sometimes these stories come in response to information released to leverage public opinion, and that is evidently true in this case. The San Diego Convention Center Corp. recently sent a proposal to Comic-Con seeking to extend its contract through 2015. At the same time, it is making a concerted effort to focus public support on keeping the con in San Diego.

Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer pointed out to the Union-Tribune that four-day passes to this year’s convention sold out in September, and individual tickets for Friday and Saturday are gone, as well. Space is at a premium and the Comic-Con board is already being courted by other convention agencies.

“We have to be aware of our attendees, and we don’t want it to be problematic for them to attend the show,” Glanzer said. “When you have to limit exhibit space and sell out early, those are negatives, but by San Diego trying to increase hotel-room blocks and utilize space at adjacent hotels, that may neutralize some of those things.

“It’s not a secret that Anaheim would love for us to move up there, and they have a world-class facility and a lot of hotels and have put forward a great location, but it will be up to the board to decide exactly what it is we can do. We have to look at the pluses and minuses of everything. It’s not just as easy as choosing a pin on a map and saying, ‘Let’s go here.’?”

Charles Ahlers, president of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau. Ahlers told a reporter, “Candidly, we think of Comic-Con as a good fit because we have a very nice, walkable housing package and a big convention center that is the largest in California. The emotion is with San Diego because it grew up there and is at risk of leaving, but nothing lasts forever.”

Comic-Con is expected to make its decision within the next month.

LASFS Co-Founder Roy Test Dies

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Roy Test

Roy Test, who helped start the LASFS, died December 20 of complications from a fall. He was 88.

As a teenager Test co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League in 1934. Interviewed in 2007 about the club’s first meeting Roy recalled, “I had been corresponding with people through the SF magazines, and it was surprising to be in the same room with them. There were only eight or 10 of us, but that was more science fiction readers than we’d ever seen in one place.” (The club was renamed the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society when it left the SFL a few years later.)

Speaking at the club’s 75th anniversary banquet last October, Roy described meetings at Clifton’s Cafeteria when he was 13 or 14 years old, and how his mother, Wanda Test, volunteered to be club secretary as a way to come “and see what kind of oddballs I was associating with. Maybe it didn’t occur to her I was the oddest one there.” (They called her minutes “Thrilling Wanda Stories.”)

Roy joined the Army in WWII and became a pilot. He flew 32 missions over Europe in a B-17 Flying Fortress known as “The Bad Penny.” He earned two Bronze stars, the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross.

In recent years Roy actively participated in the Commemorative Air Force, spoke publicly about his WWII experiences, and volunteered as a docent at the Planes of Fames Air Museum in Chino.

Roy’s family and friends will hold a memorial service at 11 a.m. Feb. 27 at the Baldwin Park Performing Arts Center.

There is an online memorial and guest book here.

Strangely Familiar

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The Crotchety Old Fan’s site is well on its way to recovering from the depredations of several hijackers. What he’s learned is worth reading.

Crotchety’s sense of humor is back, too, as he shows in a post about two characters’ conversation about science fiction in a Riverworld novel by Philip Jose Farmer.

And at the moment, Crotchety’s blog is looking strangely familiar because he’s using WordPress’ default “Kubrick” theme, the same one I’ve relied on since the beginning.

Paul Krugman’s Anticipation

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Economist Paul Krugman’s appearance at last year’s Worldcon received a couple paragraphs of analysis in a lengthy profile by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker.

“Last August, Krugman decided that before he and Wells departed for a bicycle tour of Scotland he would take a couple of days to speak at the sixty-seventh world science-fiction convention, to be held in Montreal. (Krugman has been a science-fiction fan since he was a boy.) At the convention, there was a lot of extremely long hair, a lot of blue hair, and a lot of capes. There was a woman dressed as a cat, there was a woman with a green brain attached to her head with wire, there was a person in a green face mask, there was a young woman spinning wool. There was a Jedi and a Storm Trooper. Those participants who were not dressed as cats were wearing T-shirts with something written on them: “I don’t understand—and I’m a rocket scientist,” “I see dead pixels,” “Math is delicious.” Krugman has always had a nerdy obsession with puns….

Krugman explained that he’d become an economist because of science fiction….. “If you read other genres of fiction, you can learn about the way people are and the way society is,” Krugman said to the audience, “but you don’t get very much thinking about why are things the way they are, or what might make them different. What would happen if ?”

[Thanks to Gary Farber for the link.]

Kim Stanley Robinson in Times

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Kim Stanley Robinson has been profiled by Reed Johnson in the LA Times.

There are the dark wizards of apocalypse, terrifying us with visions of humanity’s grim comeuppance. And the starry-eyed fantasists, insisting how much better the future will be than the messy, middling present.

And then there’s Kim Stanley Robinson: family man, High Sierras pilgrim, ex- Orange County homeboy and prolific author of several of the most influential science fiction works of the last 25 years.

The article is insightful about Robinson’s life and views, though let those of you who are sensitive about such things be forewarned that Johnson repeatedly describes Robinson as a “sci-fi writer.”

Smile for the Camera

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Of course this technology was going to be abused. That was the plan from the outset.

The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania has been sued by the parents of a student who claims an assistant principal accused him of engaging in “improper behavior” at home. In a case of true life science fiction, she supported her accusation with photos of him taken remotely by the built-in webcam on his MacBook.

The district purchased 2,620 laptops costing around $1000 apiece to fulfill a goal of issuing laptop computers to all high school students. Each computer was equipped with a security feature whereby the MacBook’s webcam could be remotely activated by the school technical staff. A student told NBC: “Occasionally a green light would go on on your computer which would kind of give you the feeling that somebody’s watching you.”

Although as a condition for receiving the laptop the student’s family had to sign an “acceptable-use” agreement that made them aware of the school’s ability to monitor the hardware, they were not explicitly told that the webcam could be remotely activated by the school.

In response to publicity generated by the lawsuit, the Lower Merion district Superintendant posted a letter to parents saying that the security feature was “limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help locate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer….”

But the webcam could be and was put to other use, according to the attorney for student Blake Robbins. He said in the photos Robbins was shown by the assistant principal, the teen was allegedly holding two pill-shaped objects. School officials believed they were drugs. The family says they were Mike-N-Ike candy. “They were trying to allege that…those were pills and somehow he was involved in selling drugs,” said the attorney.

While the district Superintendant has admitted the capabilities of the security feature he has completely denied Robbins’ story:

Did an assistant principal at Harriton ever have the ability to remotely monitor a student at home? Did she utilize a photo taken by a school-issued laptop to discipline a student?

No. At no time did any high school administrator have the ability or actually access the security- tracking software. We believe that the administrator at Harriton has been unfairly portrayed and unjustly attacked in connection with her attempts to be supportive of a student and his family. The district never did and never would use such tactics as a basis for disciplinary action.

Truth is not determined by a poll, but officials of the school district that sent home laptops with this security feature are going to find it hard to convince the public their version is true.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

Bleeding Edge Signing in Glendale

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Seated: Ray Bradbury, Norman Corwin, George Clayton Johnson. Standing: Cody Goodfellow, John Tomerlin, Lisa Morton, Earl Hamner Jr., John Shirley, William J. Nolan. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

Ray Bradbury and many other contributors to the The Bleeding Edge signed copies of the book at the Mystery and Imagination Bookstore in Glendale, CA on February 20.

Stefan Rose posted two YouTube videos of the event. In the first Ray Bradbury arrives and greets Norman Corwin. The second scans the writers assembled around the autograph tables. 

John King Tarpinian notes, “Very nice event. The only ones missing in action were Richard and R.C. Matheson due to their having forgotten that it was Richard’s birthday when they committed to attend. Darn. We hope that he will be making it to the Charles Beaumont documentary premiere next month. Everybody else listed on the flyer was in attendance plus John Shirley came down from the Bay Area.” 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Dave Langford Made Me Laugh

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And it’s not the first time, either.

This installment of Dave Langford’s SFX column is titled “The Agony Aunts” and pretends to be “a trial run of the SFX personal advice column in which genre notables solve problems posted to our on-line forum.”

Part of the humor comes from the repeated motifs so I won’t spoil anything by quoting jokes out of context. Just hie thee hence and read them for yourself.