Monthly Archives: March 2012

Village Voice on Writers of the Future’s
Scientology Connection

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Letting the cat out of the cellophane bag, the Village Voice reports that the Church of Scientology has a handle on the Writers of the Future Contest. It’s unlikely anybody in sf will be surprised at the connection being documented.

What’s news is that in Scientology’s Writers of the Future Contest: Troubling Ties to Abuse in the Church the Village Voice also purports to show several individuals with oversight of the contest allegedly have participated in imprisoning and physically abusing of out-of-favor Scientology executives.

People in the sf field engaged with the WoTF contest, now in its 29th year, have long expressed satisfaction with the divide between the contest and the Church.

Here’s what Tim Powers told the reporter:

“When the winners get there, they get to attend how-to-write lectures from people like Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Orson Scott Card. It’s a hell of a lineup,” Powers says. “They maintain very deliberately a solid firewall between Scientology and the contest. There was even a time when a winner asked about Scientology and he was told, ‘Not this week.'”

Powers admits that in his years of involvement, he’s “never looked behind the scenes — I don’t know what the logistics of it are,” he says. But the effort that Author Services puts into keeping things separate is something he appreciates.

“I like the firewall. As a Catholic, I’d have to quit if it turned into proselytizing,” Powers says.

Frank Wu’s favorable account of his experience with the WoTF’s counterpart Illustrators of the Future Contest is quoted in the article, too.

I forwarded the link to Jerry Pournelle for his response and he answered:

I’ve seen it. I got into the contest because AJ Budrys, an old friend since 1960 (his father was an official in the Lithuanian exile government and I worked with them when I was part of the Captive Nations Committee back when I was active in politics) invited me and assured me there was no connection with Scientology; it was something Hubbard wanted to do for writers. So far as I am concerned the contest is a good thing. It tends to glorify Hubbard, of course, but I have never heard any mention of Scientology in any of the lectures, awards, ceremonies, or indeed anything else connected with the contest.  As to glorifying the founder, I seem to remember a man named Smithson…

Although the relationship between WoTF and various pros, and its organized presence at Loscon, was defined ages ago, I wonder if the news reports might lead people to reconsider lending their names to the event? In addition to this Village Voice article, sf novelist Deirdre Saoirse Moen, a former Church member and staff member, posted in February about harassment she personally experienced. Is the “firewall” proof against such heightened scrutiny?

[Thanks to Gary Farber for the link.]

Charles Lee Riddle Fanzines Online

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Charles Lee Riddle’s 1947-58 fanzines Peon and LEER have been scanned and made available online by his son, Bob Riddle, who says:

While the name Peon was probably his humorous way of describing a poor man’s magazine, LEER is definitely a play on his name. He was always called Lee, and so Lee Riddle became LEER.

Because Riddle’s first title Peon is a word in Spanish, I wonder if the second title was equally a play on his name and the Spanish word leer meaning “to read,” the quintessential fannish activity?

Maybe if I read the zines I’ll find out.

[Thanks to Bill Burns for the story.]

Peter Sagal Added as Chicon 7 Special Guest

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Peter Sagal, the host of National Public Radio’s irreverent weekly news quiz “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me”, will be a Special Guest at Chicon 7.
Sagal has

Sagal made his debut on “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me” as a panelist in 1998 before becoming host of the show, which is broadcast from Chicago.

He has often identified himself on the radio as a science fiction fan. He attended Noreascon 3 (1989) and met his literary heroes, including Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl.

His other Chicagocentric credentials include recording the narration for a self-guided walking tour of the city’s famous Field Museum of Natural History (which my sister-in-law used to call “the stuffed animal museum.”)

The full press release follows the jump.

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Program Participation as Civil Disobedience

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British comics writer Si Spurrier, inspired by Paul Cornell’s appeal for convention panel gender equality, surrendered his seat on a panel at the inaugural Super London Comic Con (February 25-26) reports James Bacon on Comic Buzz:

[Spurrier] sought out a female creator [Tammy Taylor] before hand, discussed it, and then not long before the panel, explained himself to the SLCC organisers and fellow panelists. In fairness, everyone seems to have been very cool, the crowd reaction as Si explained himself at the beginning and apologised for the disruption, was good, and the welcome for Tammy Taylor was superb.

Spurrier acted in response to the initiative Paul Cornell announced on his blog last month. Cornell declared:

I think there should be gender parity on every panel at every convention.  I’m after 50/50, all the time.  I want that in place as an expectation, as a rule.  Now, to make that happen, what really should be done is a ground-up examination of society, huge changes at the heart of things which would automatically lead to women being equally represented everywhere, not just on convention panels….

If I’m on, at any convention this year, a panel that doesn’t have a 50/50 gender split (I’ll settle for two out of five), I’ll hop off that panel, and find a woman to take my place.  

Spurrier took this step because he, too, worries about gender imbalance on panels at comics conventions:

A lot of people don’t think that’s a problem. The argument is that there simply aren’t many women working in the industry, so why should you expect them to be represented on panels? Which is… well, it’s a bloody lazy argument – there are loads of women working in comics – but, sure, okay, fine, let’s be blunt: there are fewer women working in mainstream superhero comics than men. True fakt.

Paul’s contention is this: if we comics-people want our industry to become a genuinely gender-blind place – that is to say, a place in which a professional is judged on his, her or its merits rather than the shape of their junk – then we need to do something about the elephant in the corner: the Where-Are-All-The-Women question.

Without suggesting America can’t furnish its own bad examples, it wouldn’t be surprising if Cornell and Spurrier have been influenced by dramatic news stories published in Britain over the past few years about extreme examples of gender disparity in the publishing field, such as the Guardian’s article ”British Fantasy Society admits ‘lazy sexism’ over male-only horror book” about a collection of 16 interviews with writers that neglected to pay any attention at all to the horror genre’s female authors.

Paul Cornell feels there’s a similar injustice in the makeup of convention panels. And he’s certainly right in thinking that a convention guest who’s in such great demand as he is has more clout to force a conversation and change the game than others do.

Civil Disobedience: Cornell’s chosen tactic means reneging on a program assignment made after he agreed to appear at a con, and then unilaterally drafting his own replacement. These acts are a type of civil disobedience, directed against the people who program sf conventions.

Cornell predicts,  

50/50 will be called, and is, all the following: ‘positive discrimination’; ‘tokenism’; ‘treating the symptom, not the cause’; ‘political correctness’.  Those words are just descriptions convention organisers are going to have to get used to, until the point, in a couple of decades, where 50/50 has become ‘the way things have always been’.

In saying 50/50 is something “convention organizers are going to have to get used to,” Cornell reveals his full understanding that controversy won’t arise from his goal of starting a ground-up examination of society that leads to equal representation of women everywhere – most fans already subscribe to the idea. It will come from his interfering with the prerogatives of conrunners.

Program organizers broker the assignment of people to panels which are intended to amuse fans, play to the participants’ strengths, and raise the profiles of those who benefit from publicity. Fans who put in hundreds of hours recruiting and communicating with pros and other volunteers, analyzing their responses, and tailoring their schedules, do not react with delight when their work is appropriated as a forum for someone to act out his agenda.

That being said, if it’s a source of controversy, I guess that’s too damn bad. We organizers are the people responsible if there are gender imbalanced panels. And weathering criticism is one of the requirements of doing this and, honestly, most any work for a convention.

My Own Lab Rat: Yes, I’m part of the establishment Cornell is rebelling against. I’ve run program at several Westercons and Loscons, and worked program at various levels for several Worldcons. My most recent assignment was organizing the 2010 Loscon program.

Do I need his wake-up call? I decided to put my latest opus to the test.

I consider myself someone who invests a lot of effort finding women participants. It may be the right thing to do but it’s also an easy choice — mixed panels are more interesting for me, so that’s my inclination when I create programming. My unscientific theory is that a mixed panel deters the male dominance games and posturing that bores my socks off, whether by actually modifying mens’ behavior, or through the intervention of women panelists who won’t accept being dominated by male participants. By avoiding what bores me I expect it’s more likely other fans will have a good time.

Loscon 2010 had 140 program participants — 91 men and 49 women. We ran 91 discussion panels. Thanks to Paul Cornell’s willingness to count 2-women-out-of-5-panelists as meeting the test I can say 37 of the panels were gender-balanced. That’s 40%. What a horrible percentage! Am I in denial? Or does that number tell me I wasn’t working hard enough? Not for the sake of achieving a number, but because there usually are women writers, editors, artists and fans capable and qualified to talk about any topic. I just have to find them and persuade them to come to the con.

Calm as that may sound, it’s also just an unforced self-criticism safely tucked away on my blog. It’s probable that on-site I (or any other conrunner) will be much more emotional upon learning Paul Cornell has just reshuffled my chosen panelists and cited my work as a bad example.

It may have been that mental picture of fans being blamed for the social injustice Cornell wants to overcome that led a commenter on Cornell’s blog to chastise him for taking this public:

[Why] would you not address the gender equality issue before the panel starts? If you know that the balance is uneven, show up anyway and then step down from the dais are you not just grandstanding under the pretense of calling attention to the problem?

Yet that is the one part I have no doubt about — Cornell is taking a stand to effect widespread change. Cornell’s first step is to take actions that change perceptions of women within the publishing industry by making them more visible at conventions through an object lesson that will be witnessed and talked about by other professionals and their fans. Cornell has to announce his policy publicly and act it out publicly. If he did nothing more than have a quiet conversation behind the scenes he might succeed in getting his own panels gender-balanced but who the hell would know, and how likely is it anyone else would profit from his example?

[Thanks to James Bacon for the story.]

Professor Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker Dies

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Professor Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman (MAR) Barker, retired University of Minnesota Professor, author, linguist, and Tékumel creator died March 16 at the age of  83. He was also a popular science fiction author who helped inspire the creators of Dungeons and Dragons.

His creation of the world of Tékumel over the course of 70 years,has been compared to Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’ in its sophistication and complexity. Barker was a Professor of Urdu and South Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota during the period when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were developing Tactical Studies Rules’ (TSR) first role-playing games in the Twin Cities and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

In 1975 Barker’s game Empire of the Petal Throne was the first role playing game published by TSR, Inc. following the release of Dungeons and Dragons.

Role playing games set in Tékumel, have been published every decade since the 1970’s, including the 1983 Swords and Glory, 1994’s Gardásiyal, and 2005’s Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne.

Beginning with Man of Gold in 1985 Barker published five novels, several game supplements, and a number of short stories set in Tékumel.

[Based on the press release. Thanks to Dan Goodman for the story.]

Where No Lizard Has Gone Before

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Russian scientists are training geckos to go into space aboard a research satellite:

“Geckos don’t need much special training because of their particular way of life — they are not badly fitted to extreme conditions,” [the spokesman] said. “Even under effects of unusual gravity changes, you see that they don’t care where they run, on the floor, wall or ceiling.”

We already know they’re great at selling insurance. Will they be equally great as space explorers?

If William Shatner’s career is any guide, probably so.

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the link.]

James Bacon: Robert Rankin’s Ebooks

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By James Bacon: I was chatting with Robert Rankin who has decided to self-publish as E-books many of the novels from his backlist, with new edit and covers.

I was surprised by this, as he has some 31 books in print. He told me, “’I am self-publishing in ebook form my entire Transworld back catalogue. The Antipope came out on Tuesday on Amazon for the Kindle and that the other 22 will be following one at a time over the coming weeks.”

What sorta surprised me was what he said next: “Jo Fletcher, my then editor with Gollancz, my present publisher, expressed an interest. She wanted to publish all of the Transworld backlist as ebooks. However, I then learned that a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ exists between publishers, that they will not publish each other’s backlists in ebook form. I’ll bet not many authors know that!”

And I didn’t. Who’d have known.

His plans are to issue them one a week over the next 22 weeks. He is doing new cover art for each one and scrupulously re-editing where needed.

Bokanovsky or Big Brother?

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Soon after 1984 was published George Orwell sent a copy to his old French teacher – better known as Aldous Huxley, author of the other great dystopian novel, Brave New World.

Huxley’s answer, now posted on Letters of Note, complimented Orwell’s book but argued that his own vision of the future was more likely to come true:   

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World.

Book View Cafe Launches Beyond Grimm

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Book View Café’s latest anthology is Beyond Grimm: Tales Newly Twisted, offering updated classic fairy tales by Vonda N. McIntyre, Laura Anne Gilman, Sherwood Smith, Judith Tarr, and others.

From the press release:

These are not your grandmother’s fairy tales.

From the far-ranging imaginations of Book View Café authors comes this delirious collection of classic tales newly twisted into dark, dangerous, and occasionally hilarious retellings. From the golden isles of Greece to the frozen north, from fairytale castles to urban slums, join us on an unforgettable journey!

Snapshots 78 RPM

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Here are 7 developments of interest to fans.

(1) Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire registered a “no” vote for John Carter but still found one thing to like about the film:

Thankfully, there’s the pleasingly goofy creature who becomes John Carter’s de facto animal companion. He’s sort of a monster-dog hybrid: an overgrown pug with a sweet, smushy face, incredible speed and boundless enthusiasm. This gives “John Carter” something in common with yet another pop-culture phenomenon, “The Artist”: The dog is the best part.

That’s brutal.

(2) The 2012 LA Vintage Paperback Show takes place March 25 at the Valley Inn and Conference Center in Mission Hills, CA.

Karen Anderson, Peter Beagle, John DeChancie, Dennis Etchison, Laura Freas, David Gerrold, Mel Gilden, Cody Goodfellow, Earl Hamner, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Kemp, Dani & Eytan Kollin, Michael Kurland, Richard Lupoff, Ib Melchior, Lisa Morton, Larry Niven, William F. Nolan, Jerry Pournelle, Tim Powers and Harry Turtledove are some of the authors who will be on hand.

(3) Four people were injured when art display panels fell over at a mundane art show in Canberra. Someone knocked over the first panel and the others dropped like a row of dominos. David Klaus comments: “Considering how many convention fandom art shows there are every year, our track record is pretty good, I think.”

(4) If you want a complete rundown about the hack on Washington DC’s election software that declared a Futurama robot the winner, you’ll find it in this entry in “District of DeBonis”, a Washington Post blog written by Mike DeBonis. He has more information about the successful D.C. voting hack by the University of Michigan, including a link to the academic paper that The Register riffed from.

Martin Morse Wooster provided the link and he adds: “You should make clear that the U. of Michigan hackers did NOT affect any ACTUAL elections. The D.C. elections board was proposing Internet voting and this proposal died after the Michigan hackers had their fun.”

(5) There’s a move afoot to replace the site of the 1983 and 1998 Worldcons. See the Baltimore Sun article ”Subject Study: New arena, larger convention center would transform city”.

(6) An artist has created a steampunk version of Thing from the Addams Family. It’s on exhibit in North Carolina.

(7) Tweeting from the Titanic? Yes, if our ancestors aboard the unsinkable ocean liner had owned smartphones I’m certain they’d have used their last minutes above water to hype their internet following. [Irony alert.] Since they couldn’t, The History Press is doing it for them:

In just over a month, the world will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15. The History Press, one of the U.K.’s largest local and specialist history publishers, is planning to use Twitter to bring the story of the Titanic back to life by live-tweeting a re-enactment of the ship going under. The handle @TitanicRealTime became active March 10, and already has more than 13,000 followers.

Right now, the account is tweeting the preparation of the ship’s April 10 launch. Later, when the ship would have set sail, the handle will send historically accurate tweets by historians through the eyes of people who were directly involved in the tragedy — from the captain and crew to passengers and the band. The publisher is also launching an interactive iPad app on March 15 to commemorate the anniversary and give more in-depth analysis and historical references of the event.

As my colleague Elst Weinstein might say, “Ook ook!”

[Thanks for these links goes out to Martin Morse Wooster, David Klaus, James Hay and John King Tarpinian.]