VCON 35 Is Steaming Your Way

“Steampunk – From Alchemy to Zeppelins” will be the theme of VCON 35, October 1-3, 2010. The con will be in the Vancouver, British Columbia area — they’re still picking a facility.

The Guests of Honour are — Author Cherie Priest (Boneshaker), Artist James Beveridge (On Spec Magazine), and Musician Heather Dale.

Memberships are C$45 to July 1, C$50 to September 1, C$60 to October 1 (at the door).

Dealers’ rates: $50 per table. Artshow panel spaces (4×4-foot) $15 each, table spaces (6×3-foot) $20 each ($10 per half-table).

Bradbury Profiled in WSJ Online

The Stories of Ray Bradbury—a 1,112-page Everyman’s Library anthology to be published April 6, a few months ahead of its author’s 90th birthday on Aug. 22,” begins the Wall Street Journal’s profile of Ray Bradbury.

It’s a nice gloss of Ray’s life, and I know LASFS members will be especially pleased to discover the club has been mentioned in the Journal’s prestigious pages:

When the would-be writer graduated from high school in 1938, his family had no money to send him to college. Mr. Bradbury educated himself in the public library. He sold newspapers at a street-corner newsstand. And he joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, which met downtown at Clifton’s Cafeteria.

“We were all loners,” he says of the 30 people in that group, whose ranks included such other future-famous scribes as Robert Heinlein and Leigh Brackett. “We were all lonely. We believed what we believed, and the society didn’t believe in what we believed.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the link.]

Jerry Weist Medical News

When Jerry Weist e-mailed his client list in March about a new e-Bay auction he also shared the latest information about his cancer treatment, reports the Scoop.

…Weist told his email client list that this will be his last eBay auction prior to entering a stem-cell transplant procedure later this Spring/Summer to fight cancer.

“Many of you have sent your thoughts on my cancer,” he wrote. “I’m extremely grateful to have such a great client base. Right now I am half way through. All soft tumors are cured, my doctors are working on a new chemo (Cytoxin) to get my bone marrow count down so that I may enter stem-cell transplant, so hang in there with me! I may yet survive this battle. I may enter stem cell in May or June!”

Weist is the author of Bradbury: An Illustrated Life, The Comic Art Price Guide, and The Art of Frank R. Paul. From 1990 to 2001 he was a consultant at Sotheby’s specializing in popular culture, overseeing the auction of Sam Moskowitz’s collection.

Superman Comic Breaks Record

When I was a boy and Action Comics No. 1 was selling for only a little more than the cost of my parents’ house I couldn’t afford it. Now that it just sold for a record $1.5 million I still can’t afford it. Why do they even call this news?

The record price for a comic book, already broken twice this year, has been shattered again.

A copy of the 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1 sold Monday for $1.5 million on the auction Web site ComicConnect.com. The issue, which features Superman’s debut and originally sold for 10 cents, is widely considered the Holy Grail of comic books.

The same issue sold in February for $1 million, though that copy wasn’t in as good condition as the issue that sold Monday.

[Via the Associated Press and David Klaus.]

Ray Bradbury Week is Coming

The City of Los Angeles will celebrate Ray Bradbury Week starting on Ray’s 90th birthday, August 22.

Steven Paul Leiva began pushing the idea last July when his essay “Searching for Ray Bradbury” was posted on the LA Times’ Hero Complex blog. An advisor to LA City Council President Eric Garcetti has agreed with his suggestion to pass a resolution dedicating the week to Ray.

Leiva’s celebration is gathering momentum, with the LA Public Library and the Writers Guild considering how they will participate. And the media will be involved too.

Recently Leiva went public by starting a Facebook page to let the public know how the plans are progressing.

Super-Science Fiction Coming from Haffner Press

Robert Silverberg is assembling a collection of 14 stories from Super-Science Fiction for Haffner Press. SSF launched during the sf boom of the mid-1950s. Paying a princely rate of 2 cents a word the magazine attracted fiction by Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison. James Gunn, Jack Vance, and Donald Westlake, and featured cover art by Frank Kelly Freas and Ed Emshwiller.

Running for 18 bi-monthly issues (Dec ’55 to Oct ’59), the magazine eventually devolved into a publication capitalizing on the then-current craze of “monster” stories. Editor Silverberg traces the genesis of Super-Science Fiction from it’s beginnings as an outlet for numerous colonization/expedition stories to its conclusion with such stories as “Creatures of the Green Slime,” “Beasts of Nightmare Horror” and “Vampires from Outer Space.” It’s fun, it’s cheesy, and we’re really looking forward to it!

Stephen Haffner plans to bring out the collection in 2011.

The full press release appears after the jump.

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