Special NYRSF Reading 11/27

Deborah Grabien and Roz Kaveney will feature at a special edition of the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings on November 27. Veronica Schanoes will guest host.

Deborah Grabien has 18 published novels, including her current series, the JP Kinkaid Chronicles. She is a writer, musician, songwriter, cook, traveller, editor, publisher, music editor and feral cat rescuer.  In her spare time(!), she copes with her multiple sclerosis and is Artistic Outreach director for the Filaments Project, a nonprofit that raises money for musicians in need by turning used instrument strings into jewelry. 

Roz Kaveney is a British writer — two collections of her work appeared in August: Dialectic of the Flesh concentrates on her poetry on love, sex and LGBT themes and What If What’s Imagined Were All True on themes from fantasy and sf.  Rituals – Rhapsody of Blood, Volume One has just been released in the UK.  She was poetry guest of honour at Eastercon in 2011. Roz is also a founding member of Feminists Against Censorship; a former deputy chair of Liberty; and a transgender rights activist . She is deputy editor of the transgender-related magazine META.

The full press release follows the jump.

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Hertz: Two Chicon Exhibits

Leo & Diane Dillon Exhibit

Chicon 7 exhibit about Leo and Diane Dillon. Photos by Richard Lynch.

By John Hertz: In May when Leo Dillon died I felt that Chicon VII (officially “Chicon 7” for the Mercury 7 astronauts) really ought to have an exhibit honoring the Dillons’ work, two of our finest illustrators over fifty years.  I found nobody else was yet planning one.  I got valuable advice from Vincent Di Fate and Jane Frank.

Mark Olson had the swell idea of displaying books the Dillons had done.  Alice Massoglia rounded up two dozen decent-quality reading copies – not collectors’ copies, I wanted to let people pick them up and look through them.  A good handful of Harlan Ellison books, issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction with Dillon covers, the Byron Preiss collection, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with their cover and interiors, Ashanti to Zulu which won one of their Caldecotts (and reminded me of my Nigerian drum teacher), Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymous Bosch which they did with their son Lee, the hundredth-anniversary Wizard of Oz, some Lafferty, The Snow Queen, and a host of others reached me in Los Angeles, were sent on to Chicago, and arrived safely.

Elizabeth Klein-Lebbink resplendently with her electronic powers made three banners, one for the top with “Art of Leo and Diane Dillon” and a color photo, one mounted under that and one mounted on the front of the display table with images of every shape and size, some we had physical examples of and James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Shakespeare, Mark Twain.

Richard Lynch took photos so you can see how it looked.  This involved his climbing onto a chair on top of a table muttering “This is stupid, this is stupid” while Nicki across the Exhibit Hall wondered.

Richard also helped me put up the Rotsler Award exhibit and photographed that for you.  My guide through various spacetime problems with it was Randy Smith, as ever a big help.  All three judges, Claire Brialey, Mike Glyer, and I, were at the con, but no more than two of us ever managed to be in the same place.  If we all had, that might have popped Dave McCarty into the 14th Chorp Dimension.

Which reminds me, Dave, what happened to the Jay’s potato chips?

Dillon exhibit.

Dillon exhibit table display.

Rotsler Award exhibit at Chicon 7.

John Hertz.

Based on an Untrue Story

To rescue six U.S. foreign service members trapped in Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis, the CIA and Canadian government brazenly misrepresented them as part of a film crew intending to make a movie based on Zelazny’s Lord of Light. The CIA’s fake production company used real designs by comics legend Jack Kirby and Barry Ira Geller’s screenplay.

While you may wait forever for a real film about Zelazny’s book, in a few weeks you’ll be able to see a movie about the rescue.

Ben Affleck directs and stars in Argo (trailer available here), slated for an October 12 release.

[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the story.]

Council Approves Bradbury Square

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously on September 18 to designate the intersection of Fifth and Flower, near the Central Library, as Ray Bradbury Square.

Here are Steven Paul Leiva’s remarks:

Good Morning.

Two years ago this council did something rather extraordinary. In order to mark the 90th birthday of literary legend Ray Bradbury, this council declared not just a day in his honor, which is pretty typical of what city councils do, but a week. As the creator of Ray Bradbury Week, I was incredibly grateful to you. For your blessing allowed me to organize a series of events throughout that week of August 22nd to 28th, all of which were free to the public, that celebrated Ray’s life and work. And Ray was able to attend three of those events. Sadly, they were his last public appearances. But what wonderful events they were. Not only for the public, but for Ray, who — if he ever had any doubts — learned that week how much the reading public, his fans, but, most importantly, this city, loved and revered him.

The one thing I wanted to accomplish that week that just couldn’t get done, was to have some great location in this city named after Ray. But I never gave up on the idea. For over a year now, I’ve worked with Councilmember Koretz and his staff, who brought in Councilmember Huizar and his staff, and because of their dedication to this idea and their hard work, we have come to this day.

Now, I know Paul Koretz would have loved to have been here today, but he is observing Rosh Hashanah. He is missed.

Councilmembers, it is absolutely appropriate to name the intersection of Fifth and Flower RAY BRADBURY SQUARE not only because it sits right next to our city’s Central Library, and Ray was libraries greatest champion, but because it is downtown, an area of this city that Ray one lived in, wrote about, and loved.

But it is also appropriate for an intersection to be named after Ray, for, as a writer he worked at the intersection of genre fiction and literary fiction; as a man he lived the intersection of being a public artist people loved so much they wanted him in their families, and being a private man with a wonderful wife and four loving daughters for whom he was husband and Dad; and as an internationally renowned author he stood at the intersection of being a citizen of the world — and a citizen of this municipality, a proud Angeleno who loved this city passionately.

So I thank you for considering to once again pay Ray Bradbury a great honor, and I urge a YES vote on the motion before you.

Thank you.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Update 09/25/2012: Susan Bradbury Nixon, Ray’s daughter, was permitted to address the Council meeting and her remarks appear in Steven Paul Leiva’s comment below. 

Stu Shiffman News 9/20/12

Doctors have diagnosed Stu’s latest problem – the one that put him back in ICU – to be an infection of Clostridium difficile, a disease generally associated with having been in hospitals and on antibiotics. It usually reacts well to certain other antibiotics and Stu will be staying in the ICU for a little longer while they get that going. The infection is described as serious but rarely life-threatening.

Endeavour’s Last Flight – and First Commute

Fans in the LA area — keep an eye out for the passing of the shuttle Endeavour on Friday morning (September 21.) Around 10:30 a.m. it will be carried over several local landmarks, including the Getty Center, the Griffith Observatory, Malibu and Disneyland.

It will also fly over its new permanent home at the California Science Center in Exposition Park before landing at LAX around 11 a.m.

Next month, on October 12 and 13, Endeavor will be hauled from the United Airlines hangar via surface streets to the science center.

Nearly 400 trees have been cut down along the route so the shuttle will have clearance. However, they will be replaced by receive the state minimum requirement of two replanted trees for every one removed, and other economic incentives have been promised to win over the affected neighborhoods.

O Captain, My Captain

“All I wanted to do was set up a new account with [Time Warner Cable] but 36hrs later I’ve lost the will to live,” Sir Patrick Stewart tweeted under the handle @SirPatStew Thursday.

Stewart became frustrated while trying to get cable service installed in his new $2 million home in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.

Over a thousand people retweeted his complaint, rousing @TWCableHelp to offer its aid. Stewart brushed off the company, replying, “If that question had been asked at any time in the last 36 hours it would have been of value. But now…”

[Thanks to Francis Hamit fr the tory.]

Digging Richard III

Last week archeologists searching for the remains of Richard III at the site of Greyfriars in Leicester discovered a skeleton they think is a prime candidate:

Five reasons were given: the body was of an adult male; it was buried beneath the choir of the church; there was scoliosis of the spine, making one shoulder higher than the other; there was an arrowhead embedded in the spine; and there were perimortem injuries to the skull.

If laboratory tests, including DNA comparisons, verify that’s the body of the king, the Richard III Society says “we look forward to their eventual interment in an appropriate place with the dignity due to an anointed English king.”

Some feel that place would be York Minster, or somewhere in Leicester, but Dian Crayne points out that as an anointed King of England he is entitled to Westminster Abbey.

I supposed reinterring him beneath the stage of the (new) Globe Theater would be right out, even if the version of Richard seen in Shakespeare’s play is largely the reason the for the worldwide interest in this news item.