Pixel Scroll 5/25/21 I Have No Button But I Must Correct That Typo

(1) STAR WARS AT 44. On the “realio trulio” Star Wars Day, Craig Miller posted two excerpts from his book, Star Wars Memories, on Facebook. Here’s a quote from the first part:

SAYING YES TO “STAR WARS” (FOX’S MARKET RESEARCH)

It wasn’t an easy sell to get a studio to okay production on “Star Wars”. George Lucas had made the extremely successful “American Graffiti” for Universal Studios. He had a three-picture deal with them. “American Graffiti” was the first. They wanted him to make more films for their studio. The whole purpose of a multi-picture deal, of providing on-going office space and services, is because the studio is betting that the films you make will be profitable and they want you to make those movies for them.

They turned “Star Wars” down.

The Readers Report, while generally favorable, included the phrase “Do we have faith that Mr. Lucas can pull this off?”. Obviously, Universal didn’t….

(2) TUCKERIZED TITANS. A new Teen Titans Go! episode titled ”Marv Wolfman and George Perez” will air this Saturday at 9 a.m. Pacific, featuring animated versions of their namesakes voiced by themselves. Marv and George were the co-creators of Raven, Starfire, and Cyborg, who were added to Robin and the other Titans.

(3) CORA MAKES THE PAPER AGAIN. The second of Cora Buhlert’s two local papers, the Weser-Kurier, published its coverage of her latest Hugo nomination came out today: “Cora Buhlert aus Seckenhausen ist erneut für den Hugo Award nominiert” – behind a paywall, unfortunately.

Here’s a link to a scan of the print edition, where you can actually read the whole thing, though it’s still in German: “Neue Aussichten Auf die Rakete” (“New prospects for the rocket”).

 (4) CGI ZOMBIES. What, the studio wasn’t willing to hire real zombies? “Zack Snyder Breaks Down a Zombie Heist Scene from ‘Army of the Dead’” for Vanity Fair.

In this episode of ‘Notes On A Scene,’ Director Zack Snyder breaks down a zombie heist scene from ‘Army of the Dead.’ Zack guides us through the nuances and challenges of working with CGI zombies, and explains how he was able to edit Tig Notaro into his ‘Army of the Dead’ universe.

(5) IN CASE YOU WERE IN DANGER OF FORGETTING. Reddit’s u/caeciliusinhorto explicates a very sensitive bit of recent fanhistory: “Pounded in the Butt by the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Related Work, or Who Can Call Themselves Hugo Award Winners?” The lengthy analysis begins mysteriously —

Many months ago I found myself on r/fanfiction explaining the history of the AO3 tag “Serious Human Male/Handsome Gay Living Archive”, and made a mental note that it would make a good HobbyDrama post if I wrote it up more comprehensively….

— and ends a mere 2700 words later with a link to the Tingle-esque work involved.

(6) REAR GUARD ACTION. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Isaac Asimov, in his autobiography In Joy Still Felt, discusses a Star Trek convention he went to in New York City in 1975.

The climax of the convention came on Sunday the twelfth (January 12, 1975), when William Shatner (Captain Kirk) spoke before a superenthusiastic audience of more than four thousand, who filled the seats and aisles to capacity.  Shatner answered all questions with good humor and unpretentiousness and had everyone enthralled. When it was time to leave, he explained to everyone there was no way he could sign autographs for such huge a crowd and made ready to get off the stage.

At this point, the young man who organized the convention whispered in my ear, ‘Quick!  Get on the stage and hold the audience so that Shatner can get away.’

I said, ‘They’ll tear me limb from limb.’

But he was physically pushing me onto the stage while one of his henchmen was busily announcing me.

I started talking–babbling, rather.I waited for a mad, furious rush on the part of disappointed ‘Star Trek’ fanatics, but it didn’t come.  They seemed to be enjoying me, actually, and I was just beginning to relax and settle down when the organizer approached and said, ‘Shatner’s safely away.  Get off, so we can get on with the program.’  So I got off.

Talk about being used!

(7) CAN NEVER LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE. James Davis Nicoll tells you about attempts to terraform Terra in “Five Stories About Alien Attempts to Reshape the Earth” at Tor.com.

All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (Trans. Alexander O. Smith) (2004)

The aliens who dispatched the engineered lifeforms humans call Mimics did stop to consider the morality of xenoforming a world that might well be inhabited. But they concluded that xenoforming would be as ethically neutral as killing insects to make way for housing construction. No need to examine Earth before reshaping it.

Keiji Kiriya, human, thinks human needs are more important than alien schemes. Thus, his brief, glorious career in Earth’s defence forces. Thus his inevitable death the first time he encounters Mimics. His resurrection in the past—on the morning before the first battle—comes as an unexpected surprise. Alas, the results of the rerun battle are little better than the first. The same is true of the second. And the third…but by death 157, Keiji is getting the hang of the time loop in which he is trapped and well on his way to figuring out how he might save the Earth for humans.

(8) M.I.T. SF COURSE. MIT News discusses the aims of the institute’s sff course: “Inhabiting 21st-century science fiction”.

In March, literary heavyweights Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman — a Nobel laureate, and the beloved author of “American Gods,” “Sandman,” and “Good Omens,” respectively — convened at an independent bookstore event to discuss genre and science fiction.

They arrived at twin conclusions: one, that rigid genre distinctions between literary works promote an unproductive and false hierarchy of worth, and two, that the 21st century is a very tricky time to attempt to define “science fiction” at all. Gaiman said that he increasingly feels genre “slippage where science fiction is concerned” because, he says, “the world has become science fiction.” The hacking exploits in William Gibson’s novel “Neuromancer” or the sequencing of an entire genome overnight no longer belong to the realm of fantasy.

For MIT students, the permeable relationship between reality and science fiction is often familiar territory. In their labs and research projects, students and faculty experience personally the process by which imaginative ideas turn into new techniques, possibilities, medicines, tools, and technologies. (And they learn that many such new realities actually have had their origins in speculative literature.)

Students in the MIT Literature course 21L.434 (21st Century Science Fiction), taught by Assistant Professor Laura Finch, also discover that science fiction is a powerful, useful way to think about and understand the world we currently inhabit…. 

(9) ROBOT CREDENTIALS. Katie Engelhart parses “What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely” in The New Yorker.

It felt good to love again, in that big empty house. Virginia Kellner got the cat last November, around her ninety-second birthday, and now it’s always nearby. It keeps her company as she moves, bent over her walker, from the couch to the bathroom and back again. The walker has a pair of orange scissors hanging from the handlebar, for opening mail. Virginia likes the pet’s green eyes. She likes that it’s there in the morning, when she wakes up. Sometimes, on days when she feels sad, she sits in her soft armchair and rests the cat on her soft stomach and just lets it do its thing. Nuzzle. Stretch. Vibrate. Virginia knows that the cat is programmed to move this way; there is a motor somewhere, controlling things. Still, she can almost forget. “It makes you feel like it’s real,” Virginia told me, the first time we spoke. “I mean, mentally, I know it’s not. But—oh, it meowed again!”

She named the cat Jennie, for one of the nice ladies who work at the local Department of the Aging in Cattaraugus County, a rural area in upstate New York, bordering Pennsylvania. It was Jennie (the person) who told her that the county was giving robot pets to old people like her. Did she want one? She could have a dog or a cat. A Meals on Wheels driver brought Virginia the pet, along with her daily lunch delivery. He was so eager to show it to her that he opened the box himself, instead of letting Virginia do it. The Joy for All Companion pet was orange with a white chest and tapered whiskers. Nobody mentioned that it was part of a statewide loneliness intervention….

(10) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • May 25, 1977 — On this day in 1977, Star Wars premiered. Later retitled as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, it was written and directed by George Lucas. You know who the cast is so we’ll not list all of them here. Lucas envisioned the film as being in the tradition of Buck Rogers which he originally intended to remake but couldn’t get the rights to.  Reception by critics and fans alike alike was fantastic with IguanaCon II voting it the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo over Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It holds a stellar ninety-six percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born May 25, 1915 – DeeDee Lavender.  Four decades an active fan with husband Roy Lavender.  Together served a term as Secretary-Treasurer of the N3F (Nat’l Fantasy Fan Fed’n).  They’re in Harlan Ellison’s forewords to his collections I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Angry Candy; they knew Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton, and were guests at the B&H homes in Ohio and California.  They were part of a Southern California fannish social group called the Petards, named by one of Rick Sneary’s famous misspellings, hoist for host.  Here she is with Roy at a Petards meeting in 1983, and thirty years earlier in New York (L to R, Bea Mahaffey, Hannes Bok, DeeDee, Roy, Stan Skirvin).  (Died 1986) [JH]
  • Born May 25, 1916 – Charles Hornig.  Published his fanzine The Fantasy Fan in 1933, thus First Fandom (i.e. active by at least the first Worldcon, 1939), and hired, age 17, by Hugo Gernsback to edit Wonder Stories.  Founded the SF League with HG; later edited Fantasy; also Future and Science Fiction (they eventually combined); SF Quarterly.  See his notes on Nycon I, the first Worldcon, here. (Died 1999) [JH]
  • Born May 25, 1926 – Phyllis Gotlieb.  Prix Aurora for A Judgement of Dragons (note spelling; she was Canadian).  The Sunburst Award is named for her first novel.  A dozen SF novels, a score of shorter stories, eight poetry collections – the first being Who Knows One?  Among her husband’s Physics students was Cory Doctorow’s father.  (Died 2009) [JH]
  • Born May 25, 1935 — W. P. Kinsella. Best I’d say known for his novel Shoeless Joe which was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams, one of the few films that Kevin Costner is a decent actor in, ironic as the other is Bull Durham. Kinsella’s other genre novel is The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and it’s rather less well known than Shoeless Joe is but it’s excellent as well. He also edited Baseball Fantastic, an anthology of just what the title says they are. Given that he’s got eighteen collections of short stories listed on his wiki page, I’m reasonably sure his ISFDB page doesn’t come close to listing all his short stories. (Died 2016.) (CE)
  • Born May 25, 1939 — Ian McKellen, 82. Best known for being Magneto in the X-Men films, and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. I’m fairly sure his first genre role was as Dr. Faustus in an Edinburgh production of that play in the early Seventies. He also played Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre during that period. He’d played Captain Hook in Peter Pan at The Royal National Theatre, and was the voice of the Demon in The Exorcist in the UK tour of that production. Of course he was Dr. Reinhardt Lane in The Shadow, The Narrator in Stardust, Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes, Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast and finally he’s  the Gus the Theatre Cat in the best forgotten Cats. (CE)
  • Born May 25, 1946 — Frank Oz, 75. Actor, director including The Dark Crystal, Little Shop of Horrors and the second version of The Stepford Wives, producer and puppeteer. His career began as a puppeteer, where he performed the Muppet characters of Animal, Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and oh-so-patriotic Sam Eagle in The Muppet Show, and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover in Sesame Street. Genre wise, he’s also known for the role of Yoda in the Star Wars franchise. An interesting Trivia note: he’s in the Blues Brothers as a Corrections Officer, and is the Warden in Blues Brothers 2000. (CE)
  • Born May 25, 1949 — Barry Windsor-Smith, 72. Illustrator and painter, mostly for Marvel Comics. Oh, his work on Conan the Barbarian in the early Seventies was amazing, truly amazing! And then there was the original Weapon X story arc involving Wolverine which still ranks among the best stories told largely because of his artwork. And let’s not forget that he and writer Roy Thomas created Red Sonja as partially based on Howard’s characters Red Sonya of Rogatino and Dark Agnes de Chastillon. (CE)
  • Born May 25, 1950 – Kathryn Daugherty.  Engineer.  Married four decades to James Stanley Daugherty.  At Bucconeer the 56th Worldcon, headed Contents of Tables; a typo made it “Contests of Tables”: in each newsletter I announced “Today’s winner is the Picnic”, “Today’s winner is the Periodic”.  Chaired Westercon LIII, a hard one: it was at Honolulu, see my report here [PDF; p. 11]. Luckily not exhausted; she and JSD were Fan Guests of Honor at Baycon 2001, Loscon 36.  OGH’s appreciation here.  (Died 2012) [JH]
  • Born May 25, 1953 – Stan Sakai, age 68.  Lettered Groo the Wanderer comics; since 1984, author of Usagi Yôjinbô comics about samurai rabbit Miyamoto Usagi, who has (wouldn’t you know it) crossed paths with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The rônin life is hard.  During the most recent Year of the Rabbit (2011), the Japanese-American Nat’l Museum in Los Angeles had an Usagi Yôjinbô exhibit.  Parents’ Choice award, an Inkpot, six Eisners, an Inkwell, two Harveys, two Haxturs (Spain), a Plumilla de Plata (Mexico), a Cultural Ambassador award, and a Nat’l Cartoonists Society award.  [JH]
  • Born May 25, 1966 — Vera Nazarian, 55. To date, she has written ten novels including Dreams of the Compass Rose, what I’d called a mosaic novel structured as a series of interlinked stories similar in tone to The One Thousand and One Nights that reminds me more than a bit of Valente’s The Orphans Tales. She’s the publisherof Norilana Books which publishes such works as Catherynne M. Valente’s Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies,and Tabitha Lee’s Lee’s Sounds and Furies. (CE)
  • Born May 25, 1982 – Bertrand Bonnet, age 39.  Six dozen reviews in Bifrost (French-language prozine; European SF Society award for Best Magazine, 2016), of Blish, Herbert, Le Guin, Pohl (with and without Kornbluth), Resnick, Strugatsky, Tolkien (including the Letters, yay).  [JH]

(12) HIS SHIP CAME IN. “Working for Marvel Comics is a dream come true for Malaysian artist Alan Quah”, and it’s not a 9-to-5 job he says in a Yahoo! profile.

What is it like being a Marvel Comics artist? For Malaysian artist Alan Quah, it is nothing short of having a wish granted.

“It is a dream come true, because I collected Marvel Comics when I was really really young. When I became a teenager I drew comics for a living, then I left the [comics] industry for 15 years to venture into advertising. Then I came back and tried my luck drawing comics for the American market again,” said Alan Quah, who became a cover artist for Marvel Comics in late January this year.

The Petaling Jaya-based artist mainly does comic book covers for Marvel Comics in a work-for-hire agreement. In the United States, comics retailers may sometimes commission a cover for an issue of a comic. These covers are known as retailer exclusive variant covers. Comics retailers will liaise with Marvel Comics to determine the requirements and specifications of the cover art. Marvel Comics will then get in touch with Quah to create the artwork, along with all the relevant stakeholders.

Since joining Marvel Comics, he has worked on covers for the following titles: Alien, The Spider’s Shadow, Venom, and The Marvels (not related to the 1994 series Marvels, which was told from the perspective of man-on-the-street Phil Sheldon)….

(13) I KNOW — YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES! A teaser trailer for Last Night in Soho has dropped. Opens in theaters this October.

Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller about a young girl, passionate in fashion design, who is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters her idol, a dazzling wannabe singer. But 1960s London is not what it appears, and time seems to fall apart with shady consequences…

(14) FASHION SHOW. Someone on eBay is selling this UFO-themed “Space Shopping” Hermes scarf.  They want $629 – but you can pay on monthly installments! This is not something to blow your nose on.

(15) IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST. “Body of missing man found in Spanish dinosaur statue” – the BBC reports how he got there.

Spanish police are investigating the death of a 39-year-old man whose body was found inside a dinosaur statue.

Authorities were alerted on Saturday after a father and his son noticed a smell emanating from the papier-mâché figure in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a suburb of Barcelona.

The father then saw the corpse through a crack in the Stegosaurus’ hollow leg.

Police said the man had been reported missing by his family, and no foul play is suspected.

Three fire brigade teams were called to scene after the body was discovered, and firefighters cut open the dinosaur leg to retrieve it.

Local media report the man – who has not been named – was trying to retrieve a mobile phone he dropped inside the statue. He then fell inside the decorative figure and was left trapped upside down, unable to call for help.

(16) IT MAY BE NEWS TO YOU. “Rachel Bloom sings Season’s of Love… in Klingon!” at the 2011 Worldcon.

Rachel Bloom’s performance at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention. She was at the convention because her song “Fuck Me Ray Bradbury” was nominated for a Hugo award. Sorry about the poor lighting. The room was set up for a disco, and Rachel gave a short performance.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers: Pokémon Snap”, Fandom Games says that this Pokémon movie where you take photos instead of shooting people, is the gaming equivalent of “a little amusement park ride and some photos at the end.”

[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, N., Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Tom Galloway, Cora Buhlert, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Cat Rambo.]

24 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/25/21 I Have No Button But I Must Correct That Typo

  1. (6) So Asimov was involved in an Errand of Mercy allowing Shatner to Corbomite Maneuver his Way to Paradise?

  2. (10) Media Anniversary. There’s a small place in Hell if it exist for whoever decided to take the elegantly named Star Wars and rename it up the absolutely inelegant Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. I’ll continue to call it Star Wars.

    Now reading Simon R. Green’s Jekyll and Hyde Inc., the rare Baen book that actually I’m enjoying reading. You can read it when it comes out this Autumn.

  3. Thanks, JJ. I could access the full article via my subscriber log-in (and even that took a few tries, because as a print subscriber I was not automatically registered for the online version), but I’m glad everybody else can do so as well.

  4. 5) The article is fairly decent, though we again get the all to common sneering at those of us who think well-researched non-fiction about SFF is important and should have a Hugo category of its own. Even though many genre awards have a non-fiction category and the Tolkien Society and REH Foundation Awards have multiple non-fiction categories devoted only to a single writer. Not to mention that the author doesn’t understand that the main problem with the “1% of a Hugo winner” merchandise was the service mark infringement, not that people were having fun.

    The comments, however, repeat all of the usual stuff about how the white sexist old guard of fandom doesn’t have a sense of humour and wanted to keep the lovely diverse transformative works fandom from having fun. Plus, the Hugos admins didn’t disqualify the puppies (because they couldn’t) and some Hugo finalists and winners turned out to be problematic people later on. We even get a Requires Hate stan complaining about the Mixon report six years after the fact.

  5. 11) Contrary to legend, in Blues Brothers Frank Oz does not also play the clerk in the Cook County Tax Assessor’s office; that’s Steven Spielberg.

  6. (15) My first reaction to seeing that headline was “Next on CSI: Barcelona.” It could also fit into any TV police procedural. You wonder if some staff writer hasn’t already started working it into a script for next season.

    It’s Towel Day. Celebrating the works of Douglas Adams. It was originally celebrated in 2001.

  7. Cora Buhlert: 5) The article is fairly decent

    … albeit extremely economical with the truth; it’s rather slanted. It plays up the idea that a lot of people didn’t think AO3 was eligible, despite the fact that I didn’t see that many people arguing that it was ineligible.

    And saying “A bunch of longtime Worldcon fans were annoyed by what they saw as people trivialising an Important Award by joking about having won 5.4e-5% of a Hugo.” is a nice dodge that totally ignores the couple hundred people who were calling themselves straight-out a “Hugo Award Winner” and claiming that they had written “Hugo Award-winning fanfic”. Not to mention numerous people who were referring to themselves as “Hugo Award Winner” on LinkedIn and Patreon, and the people who were producing infringing pins and selling them on Etsy and Kickstarter. 🙄

  8. Yes, the article doesn’t mention that the problem weren’t the “0.005% of a Hugo winner jokes”, but the blatantly false claims of a small percentage of AO3 users that they are Hugo winners (and not 0.0005% of a Hugo winner either) and the service mark infringing merchandise.

    Besides, the only person who makes the call whether a work is eligible is the Hugo administrator and he obviously thought that AO3 was eligible. Personally, I may disagree and indeed I have no awarded a few finalists over the years, mostly in Best Related, but also in the fan categories and for the Campbell/Astounding, because I personally feel that these finalists were miscategorised. However, that’s my personal decision and since I’m not the Hugo administrator, it doesn’t matter whether I think these finalists are misclassified.

  9. Jack Lint: Never mind. Have to remember to read more than the comments.

    I’ve never been sure there aren’t separate universes of fans who only read the front page, and only read the comments. Because that would explain a lot of what happens around here.

  10. OGH says I’ve never been sure there aren’t separate universes of fans who only read the front page, and only read the comments. Because that would explain a lot of what happens around here.

    You’re overlooking the third set that exist only to seek and note the mistakes made in putting together the Scroll. No matter how trivial those mistakes are.

  11. Meredith moment: Gemma Files’ the Hexslinger trilogy is available from the usual suspects for three dollars and ninety nine cents. It’s a rather awesome reading experience.

  12. 11) The photo in DeeDee Lavender entry brought back some fond memories; forty-five years ago next month, I attended my very first sf convention, Midwestcon 27. And the VERY first person I met was none other than Bea Mahaffey, who registered me and gave me my badge, a peel off HELLO sticker, which I have to this day. Good Times ensued…

  13. Did anybody see the SuperBloodyFlowerMoon this morning? It was too cloudy here in Houston, alas.

    (11) I was going to grumpily assert that David Ogden Stiers voiced Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast until a swing through IMDB reminded me of the thoroughly unnecessary 2017 ‘live-action’ remake.

  14. Acoustic Rob says I was going to grumpily assert that David Ogden Stiers voiced Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast until a swing through IMDB reminded me of the thoroughly unnecessary 2017 ‘live-action’ remake.

    I’d hardly call it a remake given the different mediums. Comparing an animated film to a live action film is really not a fair comparison. And did they even have the same script?

  15. Cat Eldridge: They have extremely similar scripts, t the point where yes, it is indeed a remake of the movie in a different medium, not a different telling of the French tale. The few changes were mostly meant to smooth out the long-noted plot issue (if the prince was cursed until his 21st birthday and it’s been 10 years, the enchantress was assaulting a child and was Not a Nice Person) and to try and give a wee bit more backstory to Belle and her father’s move to a provincial town. There are teensy changes to the song lyrics too, mostly for the worse, and a new song popping up related to the backstory that is eminently forgettable.

    Oh, and they made LaFou openly gay, which was lauded as inclusion, but also the worst gay stereotype, such that it brings them about to the level of maaaaaybe the 90s as far as inclusivity goes.

  16. Finished reading Ten Things I Hate About the Duke and without thinking started A Deadly Education so that’s two in a row I’m apprehensive about writing reviewlets for.

  17. 13: This new Edgar Wright movie looks interesting. Is Matt Smith in it?

    17: Rachel Bloom is a great talent and we discovered her first. We should take credit for that.

  18. 6) The next item after a Chuck Tingle mention is “Rear Guard Action?” My inner 12-year-old salutes you!
    12) Typo correction: Barry Windsor-Smith would be 72.

  19. Jack Dominey: My inner 12-year-old salutes you!

    My own inner 12-year-old must have arranged that. I didn’t notice the juxtaposition til after I posted the Scroll. The “Rear Guard Action” title was drafted several hours before I finished the AO3/Tingle item, which for reasons of newsiness gravitated towards the top of the Scroll. I should probably just shut up and pretend it was all planned.

  20. Rachel Bloom singing in Klingon is a great way to start my day! Thanks! I love Rachel Bloom! And I am sitting here imagining the Klingons who live in Greenwich Village.

    I remember how astonished I was when I first entered Fandom (I capitalize it to make clear that I am referring to the Real Fandom, not the use of the word by all those other people who have culturally misappropriated the word [that’s meant to be humorous]) that there were many Big Name Fans who did not read Science Fiction or Fantasy at all: some, in fact, who had never read any!
    Now I think of them in terms of those Shakespeare scholars who devote their lives to proving some obscure thesis about the use of commas but who never go to see any of the plays, or those in our own field who pontificate on panels about the value of books they have never read.

  21. And let me append, staring at that wonderful picture, that it is one of my great regrets that though I was in Fandom, had been in long enough to have done so, I never met Hannes Bok, the only artist whose work I had framed all around me (prints, from the Bokanalia Foundation) in my writing room. My first (and only, I think) letter to a magazine was in admiration of his splendid cover for “A Rose for Ecclesiastes.”

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