File 770 #164 Available

Ring out the year 2014 with the new issue of File 770!

Featuring:

  • My Short Career as a Chess Non-Prodigy by Rich Lynch
  • A Switch In Time: Mr. Peabody and Sherman by Taral Wayne
  • World Fantasy Convention 2014 report by Martin Morse Wooster
  • NASFiC, My NASFiC by John Hertz
  • The Glicksohn Memorial Service… and Other Memories of Mike by Joel Zakem
  • Remembering the “Dean” of 1950s Fandom by Rich Lynch

Plus, Cover by Steve Stiles (in which the artist makes a Hitchcockian cameo appearance…), bacover by Jose Sanchez, illos by Brad Foster, Alexis Gilliland, Sue Mason, Steve Stiles, and Taral Wayne.

Also news, selected features from the blog, and letters of comment.

Click here — File 770 #164

2016 DeepSouthCon Names Guests of Honor

ABC DeepSouthCon 54, to be held in Roswell, GA in May 2016, has announced its guest of honor slate.

Author John C. Wright, a Nebula nominee in 2006 for his novel Orphans of Chaos, is Guest of Honor.

Wright’s wife, L. Jagi Lamplighter, is a special guest of the convention. She is the author of the Prospero’s Daughter trilogy. Wright and Lamplighter live in Virginia with their family. Fan Guest of Honor

Bill Ritch, head of the popular Atlanta Radio Theater Company, has long been active in Southern fandom. He ran the film program at ConFederation, the 1986 Worldcon in Atlanta. He’s also been seen in his Tom Baker costume working pledge breaks during Dr. Who broadcasts on Georgia Public Television.

The Toastmaster will be Wendy Webb Nesheim, Ph.D. who has served in that role at many cons, especially Chattacon. She works in the medical field, specializing in humanitarian disaster assistance. Wendy is also the daughter of the past Southern SF writer Sharon Webb.

The Fan Artist Guest of Honor is Chattanooga-based artist Julia Morgan-Scott, a regular contributor to Southern fanzines over the years.

Details for joining the convention are included in the full press release which follows the jump.

Continue reading

Cadigan Says Cancer Is Back

Pat Cadigan, who had successful surgery to remove cancer in 2013, announced today, “My cancer is back. The form I have can’t be eradicated or cured but only held at bay for a while by chemo. The specialist I saw today at the Macmillan Cancer Centre said ‘a while’ is usually about two years.”

But, added Cadigan:

That’s okay–she only just met me today. She barely knows me.

I have already ordered my first wig. For those who remember my old hair extensions, my wigs (yes, plural–I plan to have a wig wardrobe Gaga will envy) will be just as flamboyant, perhaps more. I also bought some beautiful new boots for kicking cancer in the balls. I’m ready.

Pat Cadigan is toastmaster of Midamericon 2, the 2016 Worldcon.

Rick Brooks (1941-2014)

Richard Alan Brooks, 73, passed away May 19 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Rick Brooks and Alan G. Thompson published four issues Nargothrond in 1968-1969, with contributions from leading Indiana fans like Buck and Juanita Coulson and Sandra Miesel, plus letters of comment from around the country by Hank Davis, Mike Deckinger, Richard A. Delap, Seth A. Johnson, Bill Mallardi, Ron Smith, and Roger Zelazny.

Brooks also wrote short stories for fanzines and semiprozines.

He joined the Air Force in 1960 and served during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After his discharge he took a degree in Electrical Engineering and worked at Square D in Huntington, Indiana.

Brooks was a distant midwestern cousin of It Goes On The Shelf editor Ned Brooks. He is survived by a sister Elizabeth Brooks of Fremont, Indiana and a brother James Brooks of Houston, Texas.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Pournelle Plans To Live Long and Prosper

Chaos Manor’s latest update about Jerry Pournelle’s recovery came from the author himself. (Jerry supplied the words; the text was posted by a digital amanuensis.)

Monday Dec. 25, I had a stroke.   I think my head is all right, and I am recovering.  Alas I used to be a touch typist and I am now learning to be a two finger typist.  At present I am a one finger typist.  Call it 1.1 finger, but after today’s therapy , maybe 1.2; I am learning. I just made the Spock sign.

Started a ramble to post, but it is easy with Windows 8 to have what you write vanish.  I will keep trying.

Please someone post in my blog that I am here and learning.  The Surface works but learning to use it and Outlook 13 after a stroke is hard enough and I am clumsy. But I am trying and think I will recover. But it takes time.

But I am coming back

Good news indeed!

2015 British Eastercon Update

Entertainment reigns at Dysprosium, the 2015 Eastercon, being held April 3–6 at the Park Inn Heathrow.

Guest of Honour Seanan McGuire, supported by Talis and her band, will give an evening concert on April 4. McGuire’s record as an award-winning singer/songwriter parallels her success as a fiction writer and podcaster.

Professor Elemental, a “steampunk-flavoured mad Professor,” will perform live on Friday April 3. His act combines comedy and music, friendly audience banter, and plenty of improvisation.

Attendees also can look forward to the Masquerade Ball on April 5.

The convention’s other events will include:

  • “Unseen London” –  Showing how some of the real bits of London can be included in a fantasy story, and how some bits are even stranger than fiction;
  • “Justice and the Home Department Way” – After all, people who blow up vampires and evil lairs don’t have a problem with the Police, Fire Service and Urban management, do they?;
  • “Colonies in Space – Is Pluto a Planet” – Note that the exact status of Pluto at the time of the convention is liable to change without warning;
  • “Swashbucklers and Bravoes” – this will likely involve some demos of swordplay to accompany the talk.

These are just some examples of the talks and panels happening during the convention.

Eastercon has been an annual event since 1948.Recent Eastercons were in Bradford (2013) and Glasgow (2014). Attendance ranges from 800-1,200.

The full press release follows the jump.

Continue reading

2015 World Fantasy Con Website Goes Online

A new web site for the 2015 World Fantasy Convention has just opened — www.wfc2015.org.

It has all the usual features, including writeups about the two guests of honor, Steven Erikson and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and two special guests, Glen Cook and David Drake.

Those interested in being on the program can fill out a questionnaire here.

Massoglia Merry Minds’ Morphology Mundifies Mystery

By John Hertz: Book dealer, Regency dance teacher, and wise guy Marty Massoglia at Loscon XLI (November 28-30) showed me this formula:

(12 + 144 + 20) + 3 ? 4 ÷ 7 + 5 x 11 = 92 + 0

and then read it out, “A dozen, a gross, and a score, plus three times the square root of four, divided by seven, plus five times eleven, is nine squared, and not a bit more.” I thought it worthy of him, since he had earlier explained how a poem cut into a tree can reveal how old the tree is — just scan the bark ode.  But he said he’d heard it from his daughter Mariel McKinley. She told me she hadn’t made it, only found it. And you thought “mundify” must mean “make mundane”!

Verse and Re-Verse

Morris Keesan answered John Hertz’s recent metrical sally Verse and Verse with three haiku of his own. He sent them to John in a postcard, knowing better than to count on John seeing them online. However, the two poets have agreed File 770 readers should not be deprived…

Morris Keesan:

The creatures I meet
Have seven feet in one line,
Five in the others.

Meet them in a line
Exchange seven feet for five.
A net loss of two?

Do they profit, thus?
Is it how many they have,
Or how they use them?

John Hertz:

Seven-foot creatures
With five on each side to help
Exchange beauty, truth.