(1) DANGER WILL ROBINSON! “’Lost in Space’ robot saved from Valley Village fire” reports Daily News.
TV and movie props that included a robot reportedly from TV’s “Lost in Space” were saved from destruction late Wednesday in Valley Village due to the efforts of Los Angeles firefighters.
The LAFD responded about 11:30 p.m. to a garage fire in the 5100 block of Whitsett Avenue. Firefighters attacked the blaze, which was electrical in nature, a fire department spokesman told a photographer at the scene.
The home belongs to a prop designer and special effects artist who was out of town at the time, according to a caretaker who woke to the smell of smoke.
(2) JOCULARITY. Two Easter hams are heard from.
Congrats @MidAmeriCon2 for being the first Worldcon in YEARS not to release a Hugo nominee list on Easter Saturday, ie Publicity Dead Zone.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) March 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/KameronHurley/status/714163475350691841
(3) HEARSAY. Mark Evanier’s friend has convinced him this weekend’s blockbuster is “Not the World’s Finest” – as he explains at News From ME.
I don’t have a whole lot of interest in seeing the new Batman Vs. Superman movie, a film which has achieved something I didn’t think was possible. It actually caused my dear friend Leonard Maltin to use the word “sucks” in his review. Even Rob Schneider never managed that and lord, how he tried.
(4) PARAGRAPH FROM A FUTURE TRIP REPORT. GUFF delegate Jukka Halme outlined how he spent the day.
Sunday at Contact 2016 has been a small whirlwind. Moderated my first panel (Through New Eyes), which went really well. Chatted way too long at the Fan Fund table with the Usual Suspects. Bought books. Just a few. Waited ages for my Pad Thai at the hotel restaurant, that was brimming with people and not too many employees, Presented a Ditmar, with a little bit of Bob Silverberg routine (VERY little) to Galactic Suburbia. Held an auction for fan funds, which went smashingly well. And missed the bar, since this is a dry state and while it is apparently OK to sell alcohol during Easter Sunday, places either close up really early, or everybody had left the bar.
(5) AN AUTHOR’S USE OF NAVAJO CULTURE. “Utah author features Navajo characters, history in new science fiction thriller” in Deseret News.
After serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, Robison Wells, who lives in Holladay, fell in love with both the area and the people he served. When he wrote his newest book, “Dark Energy” (HarperTeen, $17.99, ages 13 and up), which features several Native American characters and is scheduled to be released March 29, he worried about portraying them in the correct way.
“I wanted to show respect for the culture,” he said. “I didn’t want to appropriate their culture or their traditions.”
He sent his manuscript out to a lot of Navajo readers to get their reactions and tried to adjust his book accordingly. He knew writing a story centering on Native American characters and history would be a difficult and controversial thing to do, but he felt that it was such a compelling story that he had to tell it.
(6) ADDRESS FOR HAMNER CONDOLENCES. Anyone wishing to send a letter or card to the family may do so at the address below.
Jane Hamner
P.O. Box 220038
Newhall, CA 91322
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born March 27, 1963 — Quentin Tarantino
(8) TODAY’S BLOOD-PRESSURE BOOSTER. Jason Sanford says “The Retro Hugo Awards must be fixed”.
If any particular Worldcon wants to give out Retro Hugos, then e-book and/or online anthologies of eligible authors and stories must be made available to those nominating for the awards. And that must include works which are not in the public domain. Yes, it would take time to do this but I imagine most publishers and/or author estates would be willing to make the stories available for members at no cost.
But even if voters have access to stories from decades ago, it’s still unlikely that as many people will take part in the Retro Hugo nominating process as takes part in nominating for the regular Hugos. This, unfortunately, leaves the Retro Hugos open to missing important works and to being gamed.
To fix this here’s my next suggestion: Use a combination of juries and regular Worldcon members to nominate works for the Retro Hugos.
I know juries seem like the ultimate insider power play, but when you’re dealing with stories published 75 or 100 years ago it can be useful to have experts in that genre time period also nominating stories. Perhaps the jury could nominate two of the five works in each category, and Worldcon members could nominate three of five. This also seems like a sensible way to make sure the nominated stories are truly the best that year has to offer.
(9) CAN MUSK AFFORD A MARTIAN ODYSSEY? “Neil deGrasse Tyson to Elon Musk: SpaceX Is ‘Delusional’ About Mars”. A writer at The Motley Fool explains Tyson’s reasons.
In less than 10 years from now, SpaceX may or may not beat NASA in the race to Mars. Astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, and host of the National Geographic Channel’s StarTalk Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is placing his bet on “not.”
“The delusion is thinking that SpaceX is going to lead the space frontier. That’s just not going to happen…” Tyson said in an interview with The Verge. Tyson laid out his arguments for why fans of a solo SpaceX trip to Mars suffer from a “delusion.” According to Tyson, there are three main reasons SpaceX cannot go to Mars on its own.
Reason 1: Cost
“So if you’re going to bring in investors or venture capitalists and say, ‘Hey, I have an idea, I want to put the first humans on Mars.’ They’ll ask, ‘How much will it cost?’ You say, ‘A lot,'” Tyson said in the interview.
Tyson says it’s “very expensive” to go to Mars. How expensive? Some estimate $30 billion, but a bill of $160 billion isn’t out of the question, and critics in Congress charge that the total cost could reach $500 billion….
(10) CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE? Camestros Felapton is away traveling for a month. During their absence, Timothy the Talking Cat has taken over the blog, and has been busy posting such literary gems as “Timothy retells Dune”.
…Now there was this posh elitist liberal progressive family called the Artyfarties. They like super sucked at making money. The dad was a real wimp and the mum was in some sort of feminist cult. The son looked like the crazy guy in Agents of Shield but younger and more wimpy. The kid Artyfarties thought he was so much smarter than everybody but was a big wimp.
Now Boss Harkonen took pity on the Artyfarties. Big mistake! But he had a kind heart and he hated to see the Artyfarties suck so badly at businessing. So Boss Harkonen says to Dad Artyfarties: “You can run this planet for me. It is the only place you get Old Spice Magic which makes people young and makes spaceships run. It’s a classic monopoly, you can’t go wrong. Just don’t screw it up!” ….
(11) MEASURING SUCTION. Which is worse? Timothy the Cat’s retelling, or David Lynch’s? It’s close. Here’s Jonathan K. Dick’s evaluation of the movie at A.V Club, “Dune can’t capture the novel’s incalculable brilliance”.
So what the hell is wrong with Lynch’s Dune? Before the collective “everything” echoes through the internet, it’s important to understand that the phrase itself “Lynch’s Dune” should already throw up the kind of red flags usually reserved for impending, air-raid level danger. Four years removed from his time behind the chair as director for the spirit-lifting biopic The Elephant Man and its eight Academy Award nominations, Lynch received the go-ahead from producer Raffaella De Laurentiis to direct the film adaption of Dune. This after 20 years, no less than 10 directors, producers, screenwriters, scripts, and general filmmaking anxiety that included the likes of Ridley Scott, Rudy Wurlitzer, Robert Greenhut, and of course the brilliantly documented attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
(12) FIRST SEASON FLINTSONES COSPLAY? The Traveler from Galactic Journey amusingly interprets cosplay at this weekend’s WonderCon in terms of what fans knew in 1961 — “[March 27, 1961] What A Wonder! (WonderCon)”.
These are generally smallish affairs compared to their business-oriented cousins, with attendance running into the hundreds. But for the fan who normally has a local community of just a half-dozen fellows (and perhaps many more as pen pals), going to a convention is like a pilgrimage to Mecca. One meets people with completely different experiences, different perspectives. There is the opportunity to get news from far and wide on exciting new projects, both fan and professional. And the carousing is second to none, both in the heights of enthusiasm and creativity.
Take a look at my newly developed roll of shots from “WonderCon”, a sizeable affair held last weekend in Los Angeles. These are some dedicated fans, some fabulous costumes, and some terrific times!
First off, a few attendees who came in street clothes: …
(13) MILESTONES ABOVE THE SKY. Motherboard advises that “‘In Space We Trust’ is a Beautiful History of Exploration”
In the timeline (which for all its beauty will entirely monopolize your CPU usage) you navigate the history of space as a young cosmonaut. The timeline begins with the October 4, 1957 launch of Sputnik and takes the user through all the major space milestones: first spacecraft, journeys to other planets, landings on celestial bodies.
Each milestone is accompanied by a series of stunning animations, a brief description of the event and a link to a Wikipedia page on the topic in case you want to read more. Your journey is orchestrated with an ethereal soundtrack that is overlaid with sounds from space like cosmonauts on a radio or rocket engines igniting.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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@Mister Dalliard, interesting point, but it might speak more to the question of who reads these boring old “book” things anymore anyway?
@Henley, “this level of play” made me chuckle, thanks, though you don’t quite owe me a keyboard.
That someone sheepishly corrects a mistake after answering the question hey do you refuse to read dead authors who used to be mean jerks by mixing up Heinlein and Hubbard hardly suggests that one of their most prized possessions is an autographed first edition of The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. If you really want to play gotcha, crazybatcow’s profile declares “I like my books mature, easy to read and moral-free. I’m pretty tolerant but… if I’ve given an author 1 star this means they’ve managed, somehow, to offend the unoffendable me. Usually this means they were particularly misogynistic or racist. I will not read any more works by a 1 star author.” Whether one feels that way specifically about Heinlein or no, for better or worse, that pretty much captures the zeitgeist, and speaks directly to the question of whether and how to read the pulps.
@kathodus, I take Glyer’s earlier point that (to paraphrase!) since a juried award is not in harmony with the traditional spirit of the Hugos, organizing one for Retro Hugos should be unnecessary. Still, and apologies for adding an item to the endless shopping list of things volunteers should do, if Worldcons could somehow convene a jury to make at least a recommended longlist, hopefully with things of interest to today’s readers as well as things that voters in that year might have picked (because it’s valuable to keep that issue in mind when we read very old stories), and then found a way to get those in front of the membership, even potentially paying for them, that would be a terrific service in keeping with the spirit of the WSFS.
Maybe even more in keeping with that spirit than urging publishers to hand out 10,000 free copies of work that was only published last year.
@Tasha – that’s interesting to me. I discovered Heinlein around the same time I was discovering everything else – Asimov, Clarke, Lewis, Blume, Hinton, Bradbury, Cleary, Bester, Tolkien, Farmer, Alexander, *ahem* Hubbard – which is to say, I grabbed whatever looked interesting from my local library shelves, ate it up, and grabbed more from the same author if I liked what I’d read and could find more.
Heinlein is fundamental for me*, but also very much of his time. I’m not sure how well he translates to today. If he were writing today, I’m sure he’d be writing some interesting stories that everyone would want to read, but he was (in my opinion) very much a man a couple decades ahead of his time. Except the incest. He’s still… well away from his time, there.
* I have definitely not even read half of his books, to be clear, but I was heavily influenced by some of his writings as a teenager, particularly “Stranger in a Strange Land.”
Clicky.
@Brian Z
Having vainly attempted to flail through the SFF works of 1940 this year, I can not disagree with that. I am also well aware that I am not an old school fan with encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. But man, it’d be nice to have someone say “here’s the top 50 stories and the top 20 novels of 1940.” But I also see how that probably goes against the basic tenets of Worldcon fandom.
I don’t, on the one hand, want to rely on anyone to be my gatekeeper. I like finding recommendations here, but I’ve also made sure to go outside these comment threads – to puppy sites, to RSR, to the Nebula and Locus lists, to arbitrary personal blogs, to find things to read. But it’d be nice, in these retro Hugos, to see four or five or whatever different lists of “the best of 1940” to look through and read. I didn’t even come close to finishing that massive tome of eligible short stories, novellas, and novelettes.
@Brian Z.
Umm, the links provided are really weak evidence for your premise. They mostly only involve Heinlein tangentially. And they show some folks dislike Heinlein for good or bad reasons not a widespread unwillingness in modern fandom to read Heinlein.
I will say your first quote would have raised my hackles as a young reader. If someone suggested I needed someone to curate, or worse explain, my reading to me I would almost certainly have read the material in question on my own while thinking not mom approved thoughts at the person suggesting I couldn’t think for myself.
And the specific wording of various amendments to the Constitution over the years aside, I still think the larger issue is heck, why not find a way to give out awards for 1942-45. (Heck, why not 1930-1934 or 1935-38?) Why not have substantively new and innovative retrospective collections celebrating the 75 or 100 year anniversaries of all the Worldcons at which Hugos were actually given out? The genre is so big that we are well past the limits of what fans can hold in their heads. I happen to think that reading things from 75 or 100 years ago is a valuable exercise even if it is sometimes boring or unpleasant. Some others seem to agree. If so, what’s wrong with a bit of curation?
I remember the Gnomes cartoon. I first saw it in the Netherlands, but it probably was on German TV as well at some point. In fact, I still have some of the books, which were lovely.
Regarding the Retro Hugos, I don’t particularly care for Heinlein, nonetheless two of his stories found their way onto my Retro Hugo ballot. Besides, I suspect many people’s problem is not so much with Heinlein himself, but with his evangelical fans.
Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon and the Ice Kingdom of Mongo are both on my Retro Hugo ballot along with The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician (the artwork wasn’t so great, but I have a deep love for the characters) and Tin Tin. Coincidentally, Retro Hugo graphic story is the only category where my Mom’s and my ballot overlap 100%, probably because she is the one who introduced me to those comics and characters in the first place.
Coincidentally, I didn’t find the Retro Hugo ballot so difficult this time, since it turned out that there were quite a few 1940 works which were personally important to me. Isaac Asimov’s “Strange Playfellow” still sticks in my mind 27 years after I first read it. Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore, both personal favourites, have eligible stories that year. Plus, I have the chance to nominate one of the works which got me into science fiction (albeit in a roundabout way via the 1979 anime adaptation, which blew my mind at the age of 7), namely Edmund Hamilton’s Captain Future.
As for Dave Freer, echoing what others have said, he makes a bunch of mistakes. The first is to assume that those he calls puppy kickers are not from rural areas themselves. We’ve already heard from Red Wombat and others. As for me, I grew up in the country. I’ve lived next to a goose farm and have seen geese slaughtered and plucked to the point that I exclaimed “You’re doing it all wrong” during a fowl plucking scene in Game of Thrones. I’ve seen calves born, chased down errant cows, fed pigs (and heard them slaughtered) and I have a vegetable garden. So am I salt of the Earth enough for you, Mr. Freer?
His second mistake is that he assumes that the political spectrum of the entire US population (whether his figures are accurate I can’t say) will necessarily map on the self-selected population of global SFF fandom. Even for the US, the percentages probably won’t match perfectly. And if you figure in the rest of the world, you’ll get a very different picture, e.g. John Scalzi looks like a moderate conservative who would fit well into Angela Merkel’s party from a German POV, yet to the puppies he is some kind of radical leftwinger.
@ kathodus and Stoic Cynic,
If my understanding that a whole bunch of (often younger) fans really don’t want to hear that they ought to be reading this or that offensive thing just because somebody thought it was important many generations ago is mistaken, I would be happy to be wrong, since I think it is useful, sometimes perhaps necessary, to read uncomfortable things.
I agree with you insofar as like you I would not like to see anyone setting themselves up as gatekeeper of what I ought to read/appreciate either.
But I feel it’s worth trying to think outside the box a little, since science fiction, at least as I once understood it, pretty much demands that readers (and writers) have a familiarity with older work as a precondition for appreciating (and writing) newer work. In my own judgment at least, SF that sort of lets that principle slide hasn’t tended to be as good. So far.
Brian Z:
So what’s your point, with all this complaining that (according to you) not enough SFF fans are interested in reading works that are 50+ years old?
Do you even have one? Or are you just complaining because other people don’t “do SFF right” in your opinion?
@Tasha Turner
I’m not sure you have to read Heinlein as some sort of fundamental keystone of SF nor do I like the idea of reading him becoming some sort of litmus test.
That said, I think his importance, at least to a certain generation of SF reader, is he was our gateway to SF. The juveniles by him, and also Andre Norton, were our first exposure to SF and shaped our ideas of the genre (and possibly even the world generally). I think it’s those juveniles rather than his adult works that are important to the history of the genre.
Since some of those readers grew up to be the next generation of SF writer those exposures almost certainly helped shape SF even moreso whether in imitation, reaction, or deconstruction of his writing.
My .02 etc.
Geez, JJ. Why does everything have to be an attack with you? I’d like Worldcons to think about marking the 75th or 100th anniversaries of old Worldcons by creating a curated epub of works eligible that year that are judged to have been notable at the time and/or to be notable for today’s readers. Wouldn’t you be interested in reading such a collection too?
@kathodus on March 28, 2016 at 9:07 pm said:
It’s the 1970s. At home I’m being taught women are equal to men. In school supposedly I’m being graded equally to the boys in class. I fought to be treated equally all the time.
I read Judy Blume (girls in fiction!!). I read Tolkein (long book so family will hesitate before interrupting me – yes I enjoyed it). Narnia/Lewis I read years earlier. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy what fun. But as I tried reading more SFF it irritated me. Some of it was lack of women or how they were portrayed which didn’t match well with the messages I was being given at home or school. I found, still do, libraries to be intimidating. So many books, how do you pick just a few to take home. My reading was and is eclectic so I was just looking for something to read. I’ve never been good about remembering what I’ve read/authors names. A librarian can help you find an SF book given you like x. But just help me find something good to read and I’m 12 but read at college level not so much which isn’t their fault. I’ve sat in libraries and cried because there are too many choices and I have no clue how to narrow it down. Thank goodness for the electronic age where I can track books and authors easily. Now a library trip isn’t always panic inducing.
So I asked my friends parents for books. I read historical fiction, mysteries, lots and lots of romance (women/girls woot). It wasn’t until I was in my 30s I found my way back to SFF. At that point my previous comment covers why I haven’t read the “classics/golden age of SF/1900s foundational work”. LOL
Brian Z.: I’d like Worldcons to think about marking the 75th or 100th anniversaries of old Worldcons by creating a curated epub of works eligible that year that are judged to have been notable at the time and/or to be notable for today’s readers. Wouldn’t you be interested in reading such a collection too?
Great! What are you plans for bringing this about?
So you agree with me? Whoosh!
Unfortunately, I can’t start my own Worldcon site bid because Kevin Standlee has already vowed to campaign against me. 🙂
If you think that I wouldn’t volunteer to help with an idea I proposed if other people liked that idea and wanted to do it, JJ, you keep right on trolling.
@Briam Z I’d like Worldcons to think about marking the 75th or 100th anniversaries of old Worldcons by creating a curated epub of works eligible that year that are judged to have been notable at the time and/or to be notable for today’s readers.
Any thoughts on how to fund staff to undertake this? You probably need 1-2 full-time Worldcon staff members to handle the job. They need knowledge of the publishing industry of that time period, they need mad research skills to find works, to find out where copyright stands and contact copyright holders, need a fund to pay copyright holders, need skills for creating and/or hiring ebook formatters, proofreaders, typing or scanning original works in. Salary, not including IP attorney, for the two staff combined $60-120k/year.
They also need to be willing to put up with lots of public abuse yearly as no one will be happy with what they do. Certainly if they are judging what’s notable there will be yearly outrage that my favorite work wasn’t included.
I’m positive I’ve missed lots of problems as I’ve given this my under 5 minute evaluation.
I can’t quite put my finger on why I don’t think this is a good idea…
@JJ – Great! What are you plans for bringing this about?
Right? I think it’s a great idea, but it’s going to stay a great idea unless someone cares enough to do the work themselves. Otherwise, it’ll be like all those other great ideas that people thought up, but with other people doing the work. Which is to say, the ideas that didn’t become reality.
@Tasha Turner – But just help me find something good to read and I’m 12 but read at college level not so much which isn’t their fault.
I read that and almost cried myself. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but every librarian I ever met as a child (and I met a lot) had brilliant suggestions and was endlessly helpful, even when I couldn’t articulate what I liked, which was most of the time. I’m sorry you weren’t as fortunate.
Heinlein – I encountered his adult fiction as a teenager and loved some of it and liked a bunch of the rest. A few years ago, I read Podkayne of Mars and thought it was bad, so now I’m afraid to read any more Heinlein. Fortunately, Bradbury (my one true love as a kid) has held up.
Just checking in to say that the first science fiction this left wing liberal ever read were Heinlein’s juvenile books, and 20 years later, when I wanted to introduce my children to chapter books, that’s what I gave them. When my equally left wing daughter went off to college, one of the books she took with her was “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.” I’ve read everything Heinlein wrote and enjoyed most of.it. Some I wouldn’t bother to read again. Some I re-read until they fell apart (or until my kids stole them). I’ve always chalked up the squicky bits to a combination of the 1950’s ideas about sex combined with 70’s counterculture filtered through senility, and i shrugged and acknowledged that no one’s perfect, Any internet search on any writer will turn up someone being dismissive and/or disrespectful, and all that means is you’ve done a search on the internet. Big whoop ….
I had a problem with Heinlein even way back in the 90s when i first read him as he veered from the authoritarian in Starship Troopers to the hippy in Stranger in a strange land and the whatever the hell that was in Friday. And Lazarus Long in general. but seriously WTF?
And the 90s are 30 years away from the now. I suspect the suck fairy has visited since then. As others have said, it’s what you grew up with that you remember fondly.
@Chris S And the 90s are 30 years away from the now. I suspect the suck fairy has visited since then. As others have said, it’s what you grew up with.
Or accidentally missed and spend your entire life being told why you are wrong, wrong, wrong for having too many other things on your TBR to be interested in something you know has all the cultural baggage of its time. 😉
Cripes, all the posts I made in this thread, and not once did I remember to tick the box!
As someone who has read all but two of Heinlein’s novels, and all of his short fiction, let me just say that a lot of people who seem to leap to his defense strike me as people who probably haven’t read much of him! Like the Puppies: most of the ones who mention him sound to me like the only thing they’ve probably read of his is Starship Troopers.
In his day, I think he was one of SF’s best prose stylists. (Not saying much, but there it is.) But I don’t think he’s aged well, and we’ve gained a lot of good writers since then. So I certainly don’t think that reading him is mandatory.
But he was the first writer to put a woman or POC on the bridge of a starship. For that alone, the puppies should hate him. 😉
ETA: Oh, and the first to have a trans protagonist.
Not sure why Worldcon members would be necessary at all — this seems to be another case of “I am imagining this thing I want that _those_ people should therefor make for me.”
But publishing anthologies of fiction from days gone by is hardly a pursuit limited to conventions. There might be whole businesses devoted to publishing works of all sorts, and amateur groups who could do it as well. I’m not sure what we’d call these publishing-organizations, but I’m sure we could come up with a term.
I mean, it’s not as if “The best of 50 years ago” or “The best of 75 years ago” are such arcane concepts that they’d only appeal to people going to a single convention.
>> ETA: Oh, and the first to have a trans protagonist. >>
L. Frank Baum may beg to differ.
Hard for anything not to be lugging around the cultural baggage of its own time. (Which is not to say that we shouldn’t all just follow our noses.)
“Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don’t kid yourself.”–Frank Zappa
When I was very young, and so can claim no expertise from it, we lived near the Winston, Oregon Wild Animal Safari. If you drove up in a truck with a pitchfork, you could have all the elephant manure you could haul.
I regret that my local zoo uses all theirs themselves–I’ve asked–because my father swears that it was the greatest ever on the farm. I’d like to try it at least once. And they’re stingy with the rhino crap, too! I WOULD PAY MONEY!
…ahem.
At the moment, I make due with cow manure from the nice man who sells me my beef and rabbit bedding from the nice woman who sells me rabbit livers for the dogs (and now and again, whole rabbits) and bat guano.
Also wanted to add that just because Heinlein was a gateway into SF for many of us doesn’t mean he’s a good gateway for anyone else. One of the things I aimed for in giving the books to my kids was the conversation AFTER they read them. The conversation began with, “here’s a book by a man smart enough to picture a future with colonies on the moon and space ships and aliens, and he STILL couldn’t get his head out of his ass when it came to women.” I tried to make sure they had a complete education. 😉
Andrew Lang could also quibble, though lord knows where he collected “The Princess Who Became A Prince” from originally.
Cora Buhlert:
Hmmm, is it only Best Graphic Story or is it Best Graphic Story connected to SFF? I would have loved to nominate Tintin – The Crab with the Golden Claws, but it doesn’t seem like SF to me.
Mandrake was a good idea. I now there were some great stories with aliens from the beginning. Will see if I can find them. Good recommendation for Best Dramatic Presentation also.
>> Hmmm, is it only Best Graphic Story or is it Best Graphic Story connected to SFF? >>
In much the same way that Best Novel is mean to reward the best novel in the SFF field, so too is Best Graphic Story about the best in the SFF field.
Otherwise, TERRY AND THE PIRATES was kicking all kinds of ass in 1941, and GASOLINE ALLEY was doing damn nice stuff, too. It’s possible (hell, probable) that WASH TUBBS AND CAPTAIN EASY was doing Ruritanian adventure that year, though not necessarily fantasy or SF beyond being Ruritanian…
I read more or less everything Heinlein wrote, even if I think most of the stuff he wrote after 1970 is garbage. Because what he wrote before that was so good. Having said that, I re-read a few of his juveniles last year and they had not aged well. I would not recommend them to anyone. What I would do is recommend his stort stories. Many of them still hold up very well.
Because a thoughtful and multifaceted window into the eras of Worldcons past would be a great service for Worldcon to provide to its puppy kickers, puppy groomers and SiameseJWs alike. Paying the occasional rights holder – since all the work is done by us volunteers – would be as worthy a way of spending membership dues as buying a better brand of chips and soda for the con suite.
@ Another Laura,
If you did a 50th anniversary retrospective, it would be criminal not to invite folks to take a closer look at Joanna Russ. (Though as you get closer to the present day such a project might get more unwieldy/expensive.)
Brian Z: Because a thoughtful and multifaceted window into the eras of Worldcons past would be a great service for Worldcon to provide to its puppy kickers, puppy groomers and SiameseJWs alike. Paying the occasional rights holder – since all the work is done by us volunteers – would be as worthy a way of spending membership dues as buying a better brand of chips and soda for the con suite.
Again, what are your plans for making this happen?
@RedWombat
I used to live about 10 miles up the road from Winston in, ummm, Ten Mile (never let it be said Oregonians aren’t creative with names!).
The wildlife safari was one of our favorite places to take my stepson. Of course he was young enough (about 2) the first time we visited everything was either a cow or a kitty. You had bird-cows (emus), naked cows (hippos), and, in the most wonderful voice of amazement and sheer awe, taaall cows (giraffes)…
Thank you, Kurt! Gasoline Alley never reached Sweden (AFAIK), but Terry and The Pirates were great. Only read a bit of Captain Easy, was mostly Buzz Sawyer that was published in Sweden. I’ll see what I can find/remember.
I guess there should be something of Lil’ Abner also.
Li’l Abner certainly had SFF stories, now and again. And again…
Yeah, that’s one of the lamest non-sequitors I’ve ever seen pixels wasted on.
I don’t agree with this premise AT ALL. Not just for science fiction but for probably any genre of literature. A story or a novel should be able to be enjoyable all on it’s own two feet, or we’re just doing a ‘literature 101’ academic exercise. And if it’s one thing the puppies seem to agree on, it’s that ‘literary’ is a dirty word when applied to science fiction.
What makes you think this, Brian?
No, no SF in Lil’Abner for 1940. Still have to research Mandrake and Terry…
When I was a pre-teen in the ’80s, I read through my father’s shelf of classic SF. Heinlein’s earlier work was well-represented but didn’t appeal to me; I believe his characters struck me as unpleasant and their interactions stiff. Le Guin and Leiber were the authors who really grabbed me, seconded by Zelazny; Bradbury was mind-boggling but needed to be read in small doses. I also read The Voyage of the Space Beagle numerous times but didn’t like any other Van Vogt. I certainly would not recommend my own favorites to today’s young readers, because I’m well aware that they wouldn’t have the same reactions.
Late returning to the party (didn’t want to inundate 😉 )….
@Greg: One of my fiction picks was from Uncanny Magazine, so I put it on my Semiprozine list. I know that’s a ridiculously slim reason for me to nominate it, but the other mags I wanted to nominate . . . aren’t semiprozines (Tor.com, Lightspeed, Apex). I kinda “miss” (before my time) the regular magazine category, since I’d have a lot more to nominate there than in this bizarre Hugo-only category of Semiprozine. I dislike this category.
@Jim Henley / @Mike Glyer: Today is a good day to scroll! #Worf
@Hampus Eckerman: Tintin had some SFF, but not (IIRC) “The Crab with the Golden Claws.” I love Tintin with a fierce, platonic love, and it’d be great to be able to nominate it. ;-(
Brian has no plans for making this happen.
He has a plan to hector fans and worldcon for their lack of interest in the history of the field.
No SFF in TERRY AND THE PIRATES, at least not during the Caniff run. Can’t speak for the Wunder years.
Presumably, as long as one accepts Mandrake’s magic powers as magic, despite the “hypnotic” gestures, it’s all SFF.
@Kurt Busiek
Brian Z’s proposal is for Worldcon to do the work. Hence the need for the staff.
As I pointed out earlier there are some publishing houses dedicated to bringing out-of-print books/entire authors works back in ebook format. But they aren’t curating these collections to meet Brian Z’s standards.
James Nicoll has been posting covers as he gets them for reviews from a new publisher. Open Road Media has been working with authors and estates for several years now on bringing backlist and out-of-print to ebook. Kristine Kathryn Rush is working on several anthologies of lost women.
For authors with works in the public domain Delphi Collections is doing a decent job of collecting everything by a single author. They update as works go out of copyright.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see older anthologies reprinted as ebooks by any number of publishers currently involved in bringing older out-of-print books back as ebooks.
Heinlein wrote the first story I’d ever read where teenage girls could dream of being engineers and not be mocked – and that included stories that were written in 1977, when I was 12. So he gets many points from me for “The Menace from Earth”, but I won’t tell other people to read him and I’ll stop reading any thread where Heinlein fans show up, because a flame war is sure to follow.
I understand that. I even think he called himself a volunteer, as in “volunteer management,” perhaps.
But just because he proposed it that way doesn’t mean that anyone at Worldcon is necessary to make something like this happen. I’m sure they’d be delighted to have more suggestions for what to spend their money on, but if people wanted projects like this to happen, Worldcon’s not integral to the idea, however much Brian wishes they’d snatch the idea from his fingers and make it a reality just as he imagined it could be.
JJ: Keep trolling, brother.
TechGrrl: I think good science fiction can be written in a literary style, but don’t agree that good science fiction is the same as “good literature.” I think a good scientifictional story, or paragraph, or sentence, is doing something fundamentally different than what a literary one does in most other contexts. But a good example I mentioned here a ways back of something that recently passed both tests with flying colors was the first paragraph of (and most of the rest of) Gibson’s The Peripheral.
Ray: You’re silly.
Why, the very idea that someone might serve on an obscure literary jury without monetary compensation! Might check whether the selected stories are in the public domain without even getting paid for their trouble! Inconceivable!
In fact, almost as unfathomable as Worldcons voluntarily taking on the extra burden of seeking permission from rights holders to create some sort of free electronic packet and emailing the link to their members.
The Obscure Brian Z Award.
Don’t look at me, chum. Go mock the folks who talked Bruce Pelz into adding the 75 year thing.
And if that weren’t there, at the rate we’re going, by 2039 a somewhat grayer Liu Cixin could be marching into the Hive Collective and declaring I nominate “How We Went to Mars” by Arthur C. Clarke and all the Hivers would be going “Who?”
Brian Z: Keep trolling
You’ve got that backwards. You’re the Troll. I’m asking you to put your time and effort where your mouth is, which, of course, isn’t going to happen — because you never do anything constructive, you just spend most of your time telling other people here what they need to go spend their time and effort doing.
All these things you’ve proclaimed are such a GREAT idea over the last year? You haven’t actually done a damn thing about any of them.
This one won’t be any different.
Well, now you’re blatantly leaving out stuff like Lucian’s True History and Aristophanes’ The Birds. And Plato’s The Republic, though that might be more of a prehistoric fantasy.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Enkidu realizes that he’s living inside a computer simulation.