Category Archives: Reference Director!

Tyson’s Starry Vest

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I gather that the starry vest is astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s signature outfit. I wasn’t aware of that when I first saw this panel from Action Comics. My reflexive response was to wonder, “Why is Tyson wearing a Friend of the Boston in 2001 Worldcon Bid vest?”

The history of those vests was explained in an an ad for Boston’s next (2004) bid:

Our “Ladies Sewing Circle…” got together their sewing machines, scissors, pin cushions, and a couple of hundred yards of starry fabric and began to make vests (for the SurRealEstate brokers, of course). Eventually, they custom-made about 300 vests for committee, friends of the bid, and potential guests of honor of the 2001 Worldcon.

Peter Grace wearing his starry vest at L..A.con IV (2006). Photo by Chaz Boston Baden.

A Blurb for ERB

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Roger Ebert doesn’t find John Carter unentertaining, just paradoxical. However, it wasn’t so much Ebert’s opinion of the latest sci-fi epic that caught my eye but the reference in the lede:

I don’t see any way to begin a review of “John Carter” without referring to “Through Time and Space With Ferdinand Feghoot.” That was a series of little stories that appeared in the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1956 to 1973 and had a great influence on my development as a critic. In one of the Feghoot adventures, the hero finds himself on Mars and engaged in bloody swordplay. He is sliced in the leg. Then in the other leg. Then an arm is hacked off. “To hell with this,” Feghoot exclaims, unholstering his ray gun and vaporizing his enemies.

Fallen Angels at 20

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On Saturday, Loscon 38 celebrated the 20th anniversary of Fallen Angels, Niven, Pournelle and Flynn’s novel starring over a hundred Tuckerized science fiction fans out to save two downed astronauts from a tech-hostile government.  

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and facilitator John Hertz discussed the novel’s enduring appeal with a standing-room-only audience.

Baen synopsizes the story:

One minute the two space Hab astronauts were scoop-diving the atmosphere, the next they’d been shot down over the North Dakota Glacier and were the object of a massive manhunt by the United States government.

That government, dedicated to saving the environment from the evils of technology, had been voted into power because everybody knew that the Green House Effect had to be controlled, whatever the cost. But who would have thought that the cost of ending pollution would include not only total government control of day-to-day life, but the onset of a new Ice Age

Stranded in the anti-technological heartland of America, paralyzed by Earth’s gravity, the “Angels” had no way back to the Space Habs, the last bastions of high technology and intellectual freedom on or over the Earth. But help was on its way, help from the most unlikely sources ….

Pournelle said the book is still selling about 30 copies a week, which is especially gratifying because a Baen Free Library edition has been available for years. He theorized these sales were driven by referrals from Amazon’s “customer’s who bought this also bought that”robot.

The characters in the novel were based on fans the authors knew – but Mike Flynn lived on the East Coast and hadn’t met many of the people Niven and Pournelle incorporated in the story. Larry Niven said one thing he was proud of is that Mike Flynn was able to recognize a particular person based on his description of her in the book.

Beanie Goes To Congress

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Rep. Don Young (R - Alaska)

In the 1940s Ray Nelson appropriated the propeller beanie as a symbol of science fiction fandom. Fans ever since have cast a jaundiced eye on mundane exploitation of our icon.

But no manifestation of the beanie could have been more unexpected than on Alaska Representative Don Young’s bulbous noggin during a Congressional hearing on November 16.  According to public radio station KMXT:

Alaska Congressman Don Young gave Interior Secretary Ken Salazar a piece of his mind on the Obama Administration’s energy policy Wednesday. Young tried to drive his point home by showing up late into the hearing wearing a beanie on his head. It was topped by a propeller, and sported a pin that said “Obama’s Energy Plan.”

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]

Ellison Reference in Paul?

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Reviewer James Ward at The Californian.com says the movie Paul is loaded with sf references, and one of them is unlikely to be caught by anybody — except fans like us!

The script by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost — who also star in the film as Clive and Graeme — is full of loving references to “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.”

The script also at times gets esoteric with a pointed joke aimed at the famously grumpy sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison. It’s a joke that only a few hundred people will get, but those who do will appreciate the laugh.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Heinlein in My Neighborhood

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I mentioned in yesterday’s Snapshots that Robert A. Heinlein’s struggle with tuberculosis is thoroughly chronicled in Patterson’s biography. In fact I got a little bit excited when I first read that my home town of Monrovia is the place Heinlein came for treatment in 1933, at a facility that once stood about 10 blocks from where I live.

Dr. Francis Pottenger, Sr.

Heinlein petitioned the Navy to be allowed to pay for his own treatment and when permission was granted he and Leslyn moved to Arcadia, a short ride on the Red Car from Robert’s new physician, Francis M. Pottenger, Sr., co-founder of the then-famous Pottenger Sanatorium:

…the sanatorium cure was the gold standard for TB care, but that was really nothing more than rest in the fresh air, in a mild climate, and a reduction of physical stresses. Being…able to rest, and undergoing Dr. Pottenger’s tuberculin treatments brought about a rapid improvement.

The Pottenger Sanatorium was at 600 N. Canyon Road in Monrovia. The hilltop property has since been developed for housing and now is known as the Canyon Crest neighborhood.

Initially I thought that the old Pottenger place might have been just up my street on the property now used by the Maryknoll Sisters as a home for retired nuns. I’ve been inside many times on Election Day when it was the precinct polling place. That guess was proven wrong. While Maryknoll was once a sanatorium, it was not Pottenger’s. It was taken over in 1930 by the Maryknoll Sisters, associated with mission work in Japan, who use dit to provide care for Japanese afflicted with tuberculosis. I learned that before the Depression there were three or four sanatoriums in the area.

Incidentally, the Heinleins arrived in Arcadia just a month before one of the biggest earthquakes in local history, on March 10, 1933. Welcome to California!

Postscript: The treatments at the Pottenger Sanatorium worked, however, because the tuberculosis was controlled rather than cured Heinlein had to accept a medial retirement from the Navy in 1934. But he was well enough by then to become involved in Upton Sinclair’s campaign for governor. Sinclair, too, has a Monrovia connection — he lived at 464 N. Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia between 1942 and 1966. Sinclair wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning anti-Nazi novel, Dragon’s Teeth in the rear garage which he’d had converted into his study. (I wonder if that was a violation of the Monrovia building code in those days? It is now. Trust me, I know.)

Upton Sinclair House in Monrovia, CA.

Looking Down the Road

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The Port Huron Times Herald story about Peter Watts’ conviction begins with the following lead:

Toronto author Peter Watts has been found guilty of assaulting, resisting and obstructing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.

Watts calls this a mistake — saying he was not convicted of assault. Indeed, one of the jurors has written to tell Watts he felt obligated to vote for a conviction on grounds of resisting and obstruction, but says Watts was not guilty of assault.

I wondered if a look at the statute would reconcile both viewpoints. By that I mean — What if the newspaper reporter’s phrasing is legally correct, just less insightful than the juror’s explanation?

The St. Clair county court records and the Michigan code are all available online. Watts was charged under this section of Michigan law:

Section 750.81d: Assaulting, battering, resisting, obstructing, opposing person performing duty; felony; penalty; other violations; consecutive terms; definitions.

(1) Except as provided in subsections (2), (3), and (4), an individual who assaults, batters, wounds, resists, obstructs, opposes, or endangers a person who the individual knows or has reason to know is performing his or her duties is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 2 years or a fine of not more than $2,000.00, or both.

Section 750.81d(1) deals collectively with seven distinctly different actions, five of which are in the title of the statute. So a jury that found someone guilty of any one of these actions might be said to have convicted him of violating the law against “assaulting, battering, resisting, obstructing or opposing” a person performing his or her duties.

But the reporter (or copyeditor) has taken a cafeteria approach, selecting just a few of the listed items. So it doesn’t read like a paraphrase of the statute — it reads like an assertion about the jury’s factual findings that led to Watts’ conviction. And since the jurors were willing to talk out of court the reporter had as much opportunity as the defendant to get the most insightful possible story. I don’t score the lead’s accuracy very highly.

On another topic… For the past two days I have searched for information about how frequently people convicted under this law avoid a prison sentence. I located the Michigan Department of Correction statistical report for 2008 (PDF file): it shows 42% of the people convicted under Section 750.81d just received probation, and another 8% received delayed or suspended sentences (or were dealt with under terms of a youth offender statute).

Everything ultimately comes down to the details in individual cases, of course.

Fannish “H” Footnote

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Bhob Stewart would like to make one thing clear about the “h” in his first name:

Well, it wasn’t a typo.

When I was in college I did a weekly cartoon for the campus newspaper. One day I decided to change my signature on the cartoons. I recalled the fannish “h” and added it in my signature. When I later did fanzine drawings in 1960, the NY fans just began using the signature as my name.

Thanks, Bhob, for a quick trip in the wayback machine!

Reference Director: Zotz!

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Editor’s Note: John’s contribution, reprinted by permssion from Vanamonde, made me think it would be good to have a new category devoted to fannish references and in-jokes.

By John Hertz: When one is to master ceremonies one doesn’t know whether they will need stretching or shrinking. It is good to be prepared.

On the day of the L.A. S-F Society’s 75th-anniversary dinner I happened upon a used-book sale at Nick Smith’s place, the Pasadena Central Public Library, where I see him working sometimes, and there was a copy of Walter Karig’s Zotz! (1947). Of course I bought it. I had it in my briefcase, with my propeller beanie and the speech Paul Turner gave me to read about the Building Fund.

Of Zotz! I could have told, a fantasy novel well-made and worth reading, its author a United States Navy captain (1898-1956) who wrote Nancy Drew books and a five-volume Battle Report of the World War II Navy assigned him in parallel with S.E. Morison’s history; a novel whose neat satire escaped the posthumous 1962 movie (indeed I don’t perceive how the tragedy of Ch. 32 could have gone onto the screen); a novel which, despite its modest but definite merit, became the butt of the annual LASFS Gift Exchange as copies kept appearing, glutting, surfeiting, until Zotz! was a byword for an unwanted unvalued gift.

But just as the fannish god (or ghod) Roscoe brought me and the book together that day, he (or if you don’t believe, the course of human events) brought no moment to take the book forth that night. How would it have been received? Would it have been known at once? Could I have given it the honor, comic and other, it deserved? Perhaps those of us who love the small and not only the great, those who relish what might have been (indeed see “I Thought I Had a Pumpkin Bomb”, Trap Door 23), may be pleased that our dinner was adorned, among its other ornaments, with a ready but never unleashed copy of Zotz!