Pixel Scroll 10/26 Racket Online

(1) Arthur C. Clarke’s papers came to the Smithsonian Institution earlier this year. Patti Williams, acquisition archivist for the National Air and Space Museum, blogged about the steps in bringing the materials from Sri Lanka to the U.S.

I have been the Museum’s acquisition archivist for almost 26 years, and during that time over 3,200 archival collections have been entrusted to us. Most of these materials have been personally delivered or shipped, but it has sometimes been necessary for me to travel to obtain a collection, whether to California, New York, or South Dakota. Sri Lanka has certainly been the furthest I’ve travelled for a collection.

Martin Collins, a curator for the Space History Department, gave an overview of what’s in Clarke’s papers, accompanied by many photos.

What emerges from a first review of his papers is a deeply thoughtful man shaped by and creatively responding to his time—with World War II and the first decades of the Cold War as critically formative. From his early 20s through the rest of life he possessed a remarkably consistent vision and purpose of what was important to him: to make sense of a world experiencing tremendous advances in science and technology, the result of which, in his view, augured potentially radical changes in the fabric of social and cultural life. In the years after the war, this dynamic seemed especially  insistent, making the idea and reality of the “future” a critical problem in need of understanding. Through his career, this challenge led Clarke to advance his three laws of prediction (easily found via an internet search), an attempt to make serious the future as a shared, collective human concern but do so with a light touch.

From this vantage, Clarke’s interest in science fiction, as is evident throughout his papers, was not merely incidental but central: It was his essential tool, perhaps the best one, for sorting through and understanding this condition and educating readers about the time in which they were living.

(2) In a podcast for Creature Features, Walter Murch, writer and director of Return to Oz, “discusses the long genesis of the 1985 fantasy film, how personal a project it was for him, how tumultuous it became at times, and how happy he is with it after 30 years.”

Soundcloud – Pod People Episode 4 – Walter Murch

(3) The PBS documentary about cosplay aired in 2013 can be viewed online.

(4) The Golden Age Site’s post about “New York Comic Book Conventions ~ 1966-1978 ~ The good old days when Comic Shows were about comics” shows many many fans in those days were involved in both comics and sf, inspiring Andrew Porter to comment, “Gosh, there’s my name at the top, along with a bunch of [now] old pharts!”

I also ran off the program — about 250 copies of a single page, as I recall — for Dave Kaler’s NY Comic Convention, held in 1965 at the Hotel Broadway Central (an impressive pile in Theodore Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie”) on my Ditto machine.

 

02_seulingcon_1966_title

(5) The University of Oregon Libraries will celebrate the acquisition of the James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) literary papers with a two-day symposium at the Eugene, Oregon campus on December 4-5, 2015.

The acquisition of the Tiptree Papers enriches Special Collections and University Archives’ growing collection of feminist science fiction manuscript collections, which include the Ursula K. Le Guin Papers, the Joanna Russ Papers, the Sally Miller Gearhart Papers, and the Suzette Haden Elgin Papers.

The symposium will kick off with a keynote talk by Julie Phillips, author of the biography: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon (St. Martins, 2006), and will also feature a panel discussion with other writers who carried on lively and engaging correspondence with Tiptree, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Suzy McKee Charnas and David Gerrold.

 

tiptree_03 COMP

(6) Emily Hughes conducts “Updraft: A Q&A with Fran Wilde” at Suvudu.

SUVUDU: Updraft has some of the most original worldbuilding I’ve ever come across – could you tell us a little bit about your process for creating the details of this city built out of bone towers and its residents?

FRAN WILDE: That’s wonderful to hear! The city of bone towers was born late one night at a writing workshop following many cups of coffee. I realized that I wanted to write a story set in a living city with a focus on engineering and flight. (I wasn’t drinking Red Bull, I swear.)

What emerged from that writing session was a short story that had elements of Milton’s Paradise Lost, The Codex Seraphinianus, China Mieville’s short stories about living cities in Looking for Jake, and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as ancestors. The story contained the man-made wings, bridges, and bone towers that exist today, but the characters and conflict were different.  After reading it, Gordon Van Gelder of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine wrote me to suggest I look at other high-altitude megastructure stories like Steven Gould’s “Peaches for Mad Molly” and K.W. Jeter’s Farewell Horizontal as well.

So my process from the first draft involved a lot of reading. In the end, when the short story had grown into a novel, and the very spare sketch of bone towers and wings had grown into a world, the process also involved getting into a wind tunnel to go indoor skydiving, and talking to cloud and weather experts about wind shear near steep, high-altitude objects, and to biologists about bone growth. I also researched scarcity societies, high-altitude food production, and cephalopods, among other things.

(7) John Plotz recalls A Wizard of Earthsea in “Le Guin’s Anarchist Aesthetics” on Public Books.

Le Guin’s peculiar gift, though, is to make the ordinary feel as important as the epic: mundane questions about who’s cutting firewood or doing the dishes share space with rune books and miscast spells. Her Earthsea has less in common with Narnia, Hogwarts, and Percy Jackson’s Camp Half-Blood than it does with medieval romances and Icelandic sagas, where dragons and death keep company with fishing yarns, goat-herding woes, and village quarrels.

Plotz also interviewed Le Guin for Public Books in June.

JP: And has it always been clear to you which category your books fall into?

UL: Oh no. When I started it was all mushed up together! My first three novels are kind of science fantasy. Rocannon’s World (1966) is full of Norse myth barely disguised. But I began to realize there was a real difference between these two ways of using the imagination. So I wrote Earthsea and Left Hand of Darkness. From then on I was following two paths.

In Left Hand of Darkness I was using science fiction to come at a problem that I realized was very deep in me and everybody else: what is gender? What gender am I? A question we just hadn’t been asking. Look at all the answers that are coming out now. We have really deconstructed it. We really didn’t even have the word “gender” back then. Just, “What sex are you?” So in some respects we really have come a long way, and in a good direction, I think.

(8) Gregory N. Hullender says, “No one seems to have commented on it yet, but I think the December 2015 Analog is unusually strong. After a really weak year, maybe they’re getting their act together.” He has more to say on Reddit.

(9) Irish children’s laureate Eoin Colfer (“Artemis Fowl”) and illustrator and writer Oliver Jeffers  have joined forces to create an imaginary friend.

They decided to collaborate on ‘Imaginary Fred’ due to a chance meeting in New Zealand.

“We were there for the Auckland book festival and we met up at a story slam competition,” Mr Colfer said.

“We were giggling like schoolboys at each other’s stories, and at the end of the night we said let’s do something together.”

‘Imaginary Fred’ tells the story of Fred, who becomes the imaginary friend of Sam, a boy in need of company.

The two embark on a series of adventures together, but when Sam meets Sammi, a girl with an imaginary friend of her own, Fred has to move on from Sam.

The story, unusually, is told from Imaginary Fred’s point of view.

“I like to do that with my books,” said Mr Colfer.

“To take what is often a secondary character and make them the main character because they’re a lot more interesting to me.”

(10) An event celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Marion E. Wade Center on October 29 at 7 pm Central time will be livestreamed. The Wade is a focal point of Inklings scholarship. Featured speakers will include the Wade’s former director, Dr. Lyle W. Dorsett, poet Luci Shaw, and Dr. Leland Ryken, who is currently at work on a book length history of the Wade Center. The dedication of the new Bakke Auditorium will be part of this special evening. Watch the proceedings online via WETN.

(11) Bradbury-inspired art! Vroman’s Art on the Stairwall presents George Cwirko-Godycki on November 14 at 2 p.m. at the main store in Pasadena.

Join us as we celebrate our newest Artist on the Stairwell! Illustrator George Cwirko-Godycki presents a limited edition poster show inspired by the works of Ray Bradbury. The show is the first in Vroman’s Artists on Authors series in the stairwell where visionary artists interpret the works of renowned authors.  The first 25 attendees will receive a signed catalog of the exhibition that details the process of creating this unique show from start to finish. George is based in San Francisco where he provides concept illustration for the entertainment industry and teaches figure drawing at the Academy of Art University.

(12) Frequent File 770 contributor James H. Burns’ writes about the Tri-State losing a major supermarket chain, Pathmark, in a piece for the Long Island Press.

Ultimately, the neatest feature at Pathmark for a youngster may have been a huge paperback section featuring an amazing array of bestsellers and non-fiction books. Pathmark was where I bought some of my very first books on the history of movies, including, in my monster-loving youth, a biography of Boris Karloff!

From its inception in Franklin Square, Pathmark had tried to be unique. At the back of the store was a section invoking the classic Horn and Hardart cafeterias in Manhattan, famous for all the food, sandwiches and cakes and the like, being offered through slots in the wall protected by a glass cover. If you put coins in the apparatus, you could lift the cover and take your treat.  Horn and Hardart was famous for the quality of its offerings, and for being a very affordable place for any New Yorker to put together a decent meal. More than one location also became known as a writers’ hangout, with some of the best-known reporters and talent of the era sitting for a long while, sipping their coffee, and enjoying the conversation.

Beginning in the 1970s, Pathmark also had a long running series of television commercials, starring James Karen. Most of us probably presumed he was a Pathmark executive, until he also began popping up as an actor in horror movies like “Poltergeist” and “The Return of the Living Dead.”

(13) Pee Wee Herman’s blog features a gallery of photos of work by the “’Picasso of Pumpkin Carving’ Ray Villafane”.

Grimace-Pumpkin-by-Ray-Villafane COMP

Until October 31st, the town of Carefree, Arizona is hosting the Enchanted Pumpkin Garden, a one-of-a-kind event conceived by master pumpkin carver Ray Villafane! The Wall Street Journal calls him the “Picasso of pumpkin carving.”

(14) Ray Bradbury is all over the place in this documentary about Charlie Chaplin, first at the 40 second mark

 

(15) The Nitrate Diva links to “Fear You Can Hear: 31 of the Scariest old Time Radio Episodes for Halloween”

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but, when it comes to the best old-time radio horror, each word is worth a thousand pictures.

By using voices, sound effects, and snippets of music, masters of radio terror turned what could’ve been a disadvantage of the medium—we can’t see what’s happening—into their greatest asset.

Radio writers and actors spawned monsters that the technology of the time couldn’t have realistically portrayed on film. They suggested depravity and gore that screen censorship would’ve banned. And they could manipulate the imagination so that listeners themselves collaborated in the summoning of their worst fears.

In case you can’t tell, I adore old-time ratio (OTR) horror. After countless hours poring over archives of old shows, I’ve selected 31 bloodcurdling episodes, from 1934 all the way up to 1979, for your pleasure.

(16) Oh noes! “William Shatner Isn’t a Huge Fan of the New ‘Star Wars’ Trailer”.

Millions of Star Wars fans may have eagerly devoured the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, due out on December 18, but William Shatner—captain of the starship Enterprise and star of the original Star Trek series—wasn’t among them. “To me there isn’t a controversy,” the actor tells Newsweek. “Star Trek is far superior to Star Wars.”

(17) Would Dr. Sheldon Cooper agree? He certainly has plenty of reason to be happy with Star Trek.

tbbt-spock

Fans of The Big Bang Theory and Star Trek can rejoice because an upcoming episode the geektastic TV sitcom will feature a guest appearance from the son of Mr. Spock himself, Adam Nimoy! Plus, we have an exclusive first look at the episode, which airs on Thurs., Nov. 5 at 8/7! In “The Spock Resonance,” recurring guest star Wil Wheaton will appear alongside Adam, an accomplished writer and director in real life, who asks Sheldon Cooper to be in a documentary about his beloved father, Leonard.

(18) Natalie Luhrs has a terrific post about “World Fantasy’s Harassment Non-Policy” at Pretty Terrible.

The final progress report from World Fantasy was emailed to members this evening. It included the harassment policy, which is legalistic and is essentially useless. For posterity, here it is…

[Thanks to Bill Menker, Michael J. Walsh, Andrew Porter, Bill Burns, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

277 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/26 Racket Online

  1. BTW, I would like to express my appreciation to Meredith for all the publicity work she’s taken on during the US day when I haven’t got much time to devote to tournament topics. She has made this lively and fun.

  2. Trailing Region – Round One

    1. PON FARR AND FANGBANGERS IS THE NAME OF MY NEXT BAND
    Star Trek: The Original Series (1)

    5. I’M NOT SAYING IT WAS ALIENS. BUT IT WAS ALIENS.
    Lois and Clark (14)

    6. FEMMES FATALES AND JUST GENERALLY FATALES
    The Avengers (6)

  3. @Jim Henley

    Aw shucks. 🙂

    (And I guess the jumping skill would be okay, but I could do without the gross and slimy…)

  4. And, THE WHISTLE BLOWS! Results sometime after I get the final bracket of Round One going. Could easily be an hour until you see scores.

  5. @Meredith: That era’s rendition of the Toad didn’t incorporate sliminess, or the tongue powers for that matter. So you needn’t worry!

  6. FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS

    Trailing Region – Round One Results!

    To say these were the toughest matches of the tournament so far is to engage in something like the inverse of litotes, or maybe the converse. Once again, all victories were comfortable, but with one noteworthy exception, margins and scores were a bit lower than the previous two nights. And seeding for this region appears to have been very, very good: only one “upset” and that in the always dicey 8vs9 matchup. In fact, so far, the last thing you want to be in this tournament is an 8 seed.

    1. PON FARR AND FANGBANGERS IS THE NAME OF MY NEXT BAND
    Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
    True Blood (16)

    How lopsided was this match? Even all the Enterprise’s red-shirts survived. The Beasts of Bon Temps finally scored 2 in a row after they were already down 22 nothing, and those were their only points of the match. Strangely ordinary point-guard Sookie Stackhouse was heard wailing, “Where’s my fairy godmother?” Final score:

    Star Trek: TOS 58
    True Blood 2

    2. TIME OUT OF JOINT
    Fringe (8)
    Life on Mars (9)

    This was a low-scoring game and seemed for a long time like it was closer than it in fact proved to be. When the outcome became apparent the Homeland Security squad protested that the Manchester side – they’re called “sides” over there, you know – had scored several of its points decades before the match actually began. The protest was withdrawn when it turned out that the parents of several Fringe players were murdered before the players were born. Final score:

    Life on Mars 22
    Fringe 14

    3. SCIENCE VS. FANTASY DEATHMATCH GO!
    Xena: Warrior Princess (5)
    Doomwatch (12)

    What would avail the Mythic Greek team’s puny weapons against the superior technology and exquisite moral sensibility of Team Doomwatch? And could their powerhouses carry hapless small forward Joxer at this level of competition? Answers: ZAP! BIFF! POW! Final score:

    Xena 36
    Doomwatch 8

    4. SOMEONE GOES ON A JOURNEY. A STRANGER COMES TO TOWN.
    Quantum Leap (4)
    The Middleman (13)

    “This is the kind of trope our show would make fun of,” complained the Middlemen (and women) as Scott Bakula kept taking over their bodies and making them score own-goals. Sometimes sincerity has a power all its own. Final score:

    Quantum Leap 32
    The Middleman 9

    5. I’M NOT SAYING IT WAS ALIENS. BUT IT WAS ALIENS.
    Blake’s 7 (3)
    Lois and Clark (14)

    Lois and Clark came into the match heavy underdogs, but confident for all that: they had Superman on their team! Unfortunately for them, Nation Conference powerhouse Blake’s 7 had enough time in space and enough moral flexibility to acquire and employ Green Kryptonite. The Metropolis Marvels had to settle for breaking into double digits. After this drubbing, scouts suspect only Lois will have much of a career. Final score:

    Blake’s 7 – 27
    Lois and Clark 11

    6. FEMMES FATALES AND JUST GENERALLY FATALES
    The Avengers (6)
    Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (11)

    Once again, the underdog came in expecting to take advantage of their super-powered talent. What they didn’t expect was to face opponents with even greater powers than their own. Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch walked all over fan-favorites Summer Glau and Lena Headey. Meanwhile, having tricked their namesakes into doing their dirty work for them, John Steed and Mrs. Peel relaxed in the sun room with mixed drinks. Final score:

    Avengers 40
    Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 15

    7. RETURN WITH US NOW TO THOSE THRILLING DAYS OF (RELATIVE) YESTERYEAR
    Wild Wild West (7)
    Star Trek Enterprise (10)

    The black sheep of the Roddenberry Conference squared off against mid-major Wild Wild West hoping pedigree meant more than regular-season record. It did not. Enterprise lost respectably, but never commanded much power or inspired much hope. “I should have figured,” sighed Enterprise captain Scott Bakula, who was also perhaps fatigued from playing two matches in one day. Final score:

    Wild Wild West 27
    Enterprise 16

    8. WHAT’S SPACE OPERA, DOC?
    Farscape (2)
    Star Trek Voyager (15)

    Another Roddenberry-Conference also-ran met a similar, but more epic, defeat. “I was told there would be no puppets!” Captain Janeway lamented. O’Bannon Conference powerhouse Farscape made good use of both their human and muppet players, Reflecting on the landslide victory, American Astronaut John Crichton reflected, “I’ve got no business even being on this team, but there’s no place I’d rather be.” Final score:

    Farscape 39
    Voyager 10

    Of the Trailing-region matches coming up in the round of 32, handicappers were unsure about calling Xena vs. Quantum Leap and Avengers vs. Blake’s 7 at press time, while predicting likely victories for favored Star Trek: TOS and Farscape against Life on Mars and Wild Wild West respectively.

  7. @Meredith, Rev. Bob & Kyra: Thanks for your input on Ness & Holt! I think I’ll give The Knife of Never Letting Go a try for Ness and see if I can find Flying Dutch as a handy standalone intro. Or I might see if I can find Snow White & The Seven Samurai because Seven Samurai.

  8. Oh good! No favourites got clobbered this time. At least, not ones I minded too much. Nice change from the last couple! Alas, poor Mighty Boosh and Pushing Daisies

    Good write-up as always, Jim. 🙂

  9. @Oneiros

    I hope you enjoy them! (And yeah, that was pretty much why I picked up the Holt book, too.)

  10. @Meredith: Thank you! Looks like Round 2 for this region will have a couple of forehead-clothers, and possibly a couple of nailbiters too.

  11. Meredith on October 29, 2015 at 8:28 pm said:
    Oh good! No favourites got clobbered this time. At least, not ones I minded too much.

    Of course that just means they’ll be up against each other next time.
    Wicked, wicked dice.

  12. Ha, the show I voted for beat the show I predicted would win. At least it wasn’t by one vote!

    Adding my voice to the chorus of appreciation for Jim’s writeups. Very entertaining, Jim.

  13. Oh, for those following along with the Google doc, try pasting this into an empty cell somewhere:

    =COUNTIF(C14:C76,”*Q”)+COUNTIF(S14:S76,”*Q”)+COUNTIF(E16:E75,”*Q”)*2+COUNTIF(Q16:Q75,”*Q”)*2+COUNTIF(O20:O70,”*Q”)*3+COUNTIF(G20:G70,”*Q”)*3+COUNTIF(I27:I62,”*Q”)*5+COUNTIF(M27:M62,”*Q”)*5+COUNTIF(K44,”*Q”)*88+COUNTIF(K46,”*Q”)*8+COUNTIF(K45,”*Q”)*13

    Now if you take each cell with a result and append a Q to the ones you got right, it should automatically calculate your score.

    You can substitute any character for that Q: my first attempt used (and my actual doc uses) a Unicode checkmark character, but when I tried to use that here, WordPress ate it.

  14. David, I tried pasting your formula into a cell and appending Qs to the bracket winner names, but it says “#ERROR!” and I don’t understand spreadsheets so I have no idea what’s going wrong. Which is the worst possible sort of bug report, I know…. <rueful>

  15. @David Goldfarb, hovering over “#ERROR!”, it says “Formula parse error”. For whatever that’s worth.

    (On the plus side, appending Qs to names shows me that I’ve only missed two in the three brackets tallied thus far. So there’s that.)

  16. The problem is the quote marks. When I look at the comment above, I see that WordPress has auto “corrected” all my quotes to curly quotes. Straight quotes are needed.

    The fix is this: copy one of the quote characters from my comment above. Go to your sheet and do a find-and-replace. Tick the box for “search within formulas”. Replace that quote character with a straight-quote character. Then it works.

  17. @David Goldfarb,

    Ok, that worked… to a point. It’s now returning a value of “0” although I put Q after every “winning” contestant. Example:
    4. Star Trek: The Next GenerationQ
    in cell 59A.

    So I’m apparently still doing something wrong. Sorry….

  18. Cassy: Put your Q’s in the box that shows the result, not the contestant. E.g., for TNG put it in C60 not A59. The function isn’t looking at the outermost columns.

    Here’s an experiment with an HTML tag. If this works it’ll have unchanged quote marks, more readily copy-and-pastable.
    =COUNTIF(C14:C76,"*Q")+COUNTIF(S14:S76,"*Q")+COUNTIF(E16:E75,"*Q")*2+COUNTIF(Q16:Q75,"*Q")*2+COUNTIF(O20:O70,"*Q")*3+COUNTIF(G20:G70,"*Q")*3+COUNTIF(I27:I62,"*Q")*5+COUNTIF(M27:M62,"*Q")*5+COUNTIF(K44,"*Q")*88+COUNTIF(K46,"*Q")*8+COUNTIF(K45,"*Q")*13

    Okay, a <code> tag works; a <pre> tag doesn’t.

  19. Jim Henley, actual letter Qs are now working. For example, in cell C38,
    ARGH! TorchwoodQ
    is now giving me a point.
    (Why, yes, I did editorialize in the brackets. Didn’t everyone?)

    It appears I have 22 points so far. Thanks for your patience, David Goldfarb, in talking me through this.

  20. The formula as shown above requires a literal upper case Q. You can of course substitute any character you like…as I mentioned above, I use a checkmark. Unfortunately, the checkmarks appear in preview here but not in the actual post.

  21. “The Beasts of Bon Temps finally scored 2 in a row…”

    Should I be blamed for the fact that I initially read this as “the Breasts of Bon Temps”? I mean, it only seems too appropriate for the show. (And “2” was mentioned immediately afterwards.) 🙂

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