(1) KOREAN SF THRIVING. Abigail Nussbaum offers a “Quick Book Rec: Tower by Bae Myung-hoon” at Lawyers, Guns & Money.
…In late 2020 and early 2021, someone seems to have decided that it was Korean SF’s turn, with several major works receiving English-language editions (in particular, check out UK-based publisher Honford Star, who have put out handsome editions of several books). At the vacation house where I recently stayed with some friends, these books were available for reading, and today I’d like to talk about one them. Tower by Bae Myung-hoon was originally published in 2009 (the English translation is by Sung Ryu), and its concerns connect with conversations we’ve had on this blog about urbanism, vertical construction, and most importantly, the relationship between capital and citizens….
(2) PRIX AURORA. Aurora Awards voting is now open for members of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, who have until September 4 to complete their online ballots. See the list of nominees here.
(3) DRAGON AWARDS. And, of course, Dragon Awards voting has started and will continue until September 4. To vote, fans must first register on the Dragon Awards website: Register Here. Ballots are then emailed in batches every few days through August.
Fans have until Friday, September 3 at 11:59 p.m., Eastern, to register. Voting ends 24-hours later on Saturday, Septenber. 4 at 11:59 p.m., also Eastern.
Winners will be announced on Sept. 5 at Dragon Con
(4) ANIMATION HONOR. While researching an item today I discovered the Writers Guild has a page devoted to the award they gave Craig Miller last year: “Television Writer Craig Miller Named WGAW’s 2020 AWC Animation Writing Award Honoree”.
TV animation writer and WGAW Animation Writers Caucus Chair Craig Miller (The Smurfs, Curious George, Pocket Dragon Adventures) will receive the Writers Guild of America West’s 2020 Animation Writers Caucus Animation Writing Award at November 24’s virtual AWC awards ceremony.
Comic book writer and Miller collaborator Marv Wolfman will present the Guild’s AWC career achievement award to Miller in recognition of his distinguished career and contributions to the animation field….
(5) TRADPUB AT IT’S FINEST. Literary Hub shares “A Legendary Publishing House’s Most Infamous Rejection Letters” – Animal Farm? No thanks. Lord of the Flies – came damn close to being rejected. Paddington Bear? Well, who wants to read about a poor, rudely-treated bear? (A 2019 article.)
T. S. Eliot rejects George Orwell, again: Animal Farm
T. S. Eliot to George Orwell Esq., 13 July 1944:
“I know that you wanted a quick decision about Animal Farm; but the minimum is two directors’ opinions, and that can’t be done under a week. But for the importance of speed, I should have asked the Chairman to look at it as well. But the other director is in agreement with me on the main points. We agree that it is a distinguished piece of writing; that the fable is very skilfully handled, and that the narrative keeps one’s interest on its own plane – and that is something very few authors have achieved since Gulliver.
“On the other hand, we have no conviction (and I am sure none of the other directors would have) that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time.[. . .]
“I am very sorry, because whoever publishes this, will naturally have the opportunity of publishing your future work: and I have a regard for your work, because it is good writing of fundamental integrity.”
It is that last paragraph that particularly strikes me: in turning down Animal Farm—essentially because it was being rude about our Soviet allies—Eliot was also turning down the unwritten 1984.
(6) NICHELLE NICHOLS NEWS. Although only Los Angeles Times subscribers can read the article “Nichelle Nichols: Conservatorship battle of ‘Star Trek’ star”, this excerpt encompasses the current state of affairs.
A three-way fight over Nichols’ fate involves her only child, Kyle Johnson, who is also her conservator; her former manager Gilbert Bell; and a concerned friend, Angelique Fawcette.
In 2018, Johnson filed a petition for conservatorship, arguing that his mother’s dementia made her susceptible to exploitation. In 2019, Bell filed a lawsuit against Johnson, alleging attempts to remove him from Nichols’ guest home, where he has lived since 2010, and “aggressive and combative behavior.”
Bell says that while living in close proximity to Nichols, he helped to restore her career and financial well-being. According to Johnson, who filed a countersuit against Bell in 2020, Nichols’ home was the place where her former manager “exerted his undue influence and took control over Ms. Nichols’ assets and personal affairs,” misappropriating the star’s income as her health deteriorated and memory faded.
Fawcette, a producer and actress who met Nichols in 2012, entered the legal fight opposing Johnson’s conservatorship petition. Fawcette pushed for visitation rights to spend time with her friend, and she argued for Nichols to stay in Woodland Hills — a scenario that has looked increasingly improbable.
At 88, Nichols no longer occupies the house. Last year, Johnson moved her to New Mexico, where he and his wife live. Johnson declined The Times’ requests to speak with Nichols directly.
Against the backdrop of the #FreeBritney movement around Britney Spears raising public consciousness about conservatorships, Nichols’ former agent and friend have launched court battles to intervene, they said in interviews. Their fear: Nichols is being denied a chance to live out her remaining years as she wants….
(7) ACE DOUBLE IS A JOKER. At Galactic Journey Cora Buhlert reviews what’s on West German newsstands in August 1966, including a book she deems truly terrible, The Star Magicians by Lin Carter. “[August 14, 1966] So Bad It’s Hilarious (The Star Magicians by Lin Carter/The Off-Worlders by John Baxter (Ace Double G-588))”.
(8) REDEEMING FEATURES. But Cora also sent this link, saying “Because Lin Carter was actually a good editor, even if he was a terrible writer, here is Filer Fraser Sherman’s appreciation for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series of the 1970s, which Carter edited” – “Lin Carter and the Ballantines Changed My Life” at Atomic Junk Shop.
…Thanks to Carter and the Ballantines, I could read George MacDonald’s allegorical Lilith. Clark Ashton Smith’s stylized dark fantasy short stories, collected in Poseidonis, Xiccarph, Hyperborea and more. James Branch Cabell’s cynical tales of less-than-noble knights, with a healthy serving of sex. New authors such as Evangeline Walton, with her retelling of the Welsh Mabinogion and Saunders Anne Laubenthal’s remarkable Alabama Grail quest, Excalibur (some of the covers are in this old post of mine).
It would be a satisfying ending if I could say reading these books shaped my own fantasy-writing style, but I don’t think they did. I did try to write some Dunsanian stories when I started out, but like most writers who imitate a distinctive stylist, the results were … not good (I’m not even going to mention my efforts at imitating Lovecraft — crap, I just did). They did, however, do a marvelous job broadening my taste beyond Conan and Frodo Baggins….
(9) ONWARD AND DURWARD. Adam Roberts analyzes how J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by Sir Walter Scott in “Black Riders: a Note on Scott and Tolkien” at Sibilant Fricative. For example, Roberts finds significant parallels between Tolkien’s work and Scott’s Quentin Durward, such as —
…Schwarz Reiters, Black Riders. It seems to me likely that Tolkien, reading Scott’s adventure story, retained a memory of this episode and reworked it for Fellowship of the Ring: not just men riding black horses, but black men riding black horses, at the behest of a terrible malevolent master, pursuing our heroes across a spacious, late medieval landscape of field, stream and woodland.
One of Scott’s footnotes makes plain that the Schwarz Reiters were historical; but that seems to me only to reinforce the aptitude of the Tolkienian appropriation….
(10) SCHLUESSEL Q&A. Tanya Tynjala launches a new interview series at Amazing Stories: “Meet Edmund Schluessel (Scriptor in Fabula Program)”. See the video at the link.
Months ago I decided to make a program about foreign writers living in Finland, and finally here it is. The name is Scriptor in Fabula and is a different kind of interview.
Three of the writers included are science fiction and fantasy ones, so I decided is a good idea to present them also here, at Amazing Stories.
The first one is Edmund Schluessel a PhD physicist with PGCE teaching qualification that also writes good science fiction. But there is more: An avid socialist activist, he helped organize Finland’s largest demonstration against Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.
(11) UNA STUBBS (1937-2021). British actress Una Stubbs died August 12 at the age of 84. US viewers will mainly know her as Mrs. Hudson in Sherlock, but she had several genre roles as well. Here’s an obituary from The Guardian as well as a photo overview of her memorable roles.
(12) MEMORY LANE.
- 1986 – Thirty-five years ago, the second version of The Fly premiered. This version was directed and co-written by David Cronenberg along with Charles Edward Pogue. It was based on “The Fly” by George Langelaan which first ran in the June 1957 issue of Playboy. The principal cast was Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz. Reception was universally positive for the film with the performance by Goldblum being singled out as the highlight of the film. It grossed over sixty million dollars at the box office against its nine million dollar budget becoming the largest commercial success of Cronenberg’s career. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a rather excellent rating of eighty-three percent. It was nominated for a Hugo at Conspiracy ’87, the year Aliens won.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born August 15, 1917 — John Joseph McGuire. Best remembered as a co-writer with H. Beam Piper of A Planet for Texans, Hunter Patrol, Crisis in 2140 and The Return, all of which I’ve read and really liked. His solo fiction was a bare handful and I don’t think I’ve encountered it. The works with Piper are available from the usual digital suspects as is a novella of his called The Reason Prisoner. It’s listed as being public domain, so’s free there. (Died 1981.)
- Born August 15, 1932 — Robert L. Forward. Physicist and SF writer whose eleven novels I find are often quite great on ideas and quite thin on character development. Dragon’s Egg is fascinating as a first contact novel, and Saturn Rukh is another first contact novel that’s just as interesting. (Died 2002.)
- Born August 15, 1933 — Bjo Trimble, 88. Her intro to fandom was TASFiC, the 1952 Worldcon. She would be active in LASFS in the late 1950s onward and has been involved in more fanzines than I can comfortably list here. Of course, many of us know her from Trek especially the successful campaign for a third season. She’s responsible for the Star Trek Concordance, an amazing work even by today’s standards. And yes, I read it and loved it. She’s shows up (uncredited) as a crew member in the Recreation Deck scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Bjo and her husband John Trimble were the Fan Guests of Honor at the 60th Worldcon, ConJose. She was nominated at Seacon for Best Fanzine for Shangri L’Affaires, and two years later at DisCon 1 for the same under the Best Amateur Magazine category.
- Born August 15, 1943 — Barbara Bouchet, 78. Yes, I’ve a weakness for performers who’ve shown up on the original Trek. She plays Kelinda in “By Any Other Name”. She also appeared in Casino Royale as Miss Moneypenny, and is Ava Vestok in Agent for H.A.R.M. which sounds like someone was rather unsuccessfully emulating The Man from U.N.C.L.E. It will be commented upon by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- Born August 15, 1945 — Nigel Terry. His first role was John in A Lion in Winter which is at least genre adjacent as it’s alternate history, with his first genre role being King Arthur in Excalibur. Now there’s a bloody telling of the Arthurian myth. He’s General Cobb in the Tenth Doctor story, “The Doctor’s Daughter”, and on the Highlander series as Gabriel Piton in the “Eye of the Beholder” episode. He even played Harold Latimer in “The Greek Interpreter” on Sherlock Holmes. (Died 2015.)
- Born August 15, 1952 — Louise Marley, 69. Winner of two Endeavour Awards for The Glass Harmonica and The Child Goddess. Before becoming a writer, she was an opera singer with the Seattle Opera, and so her works often feature musical themes.
- Born August 15, 1972 — Matthew Wood, 49. He started out as, and still is, a sound engineer but he also became a voice actor with his best known role being that of General Grievous in The Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars. He often does both at the same time as on 2013 Star Trek Into Darkness where he was the lead sound editor and provided the ever so vague additional voices. If you’ve been watching The Mandalorian, he was Bib Fortuna in “The Rescue” episode.
- Born August 15, 1972 — Ben Affleck, 49. Did you know his first genre role is in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? He’s a basketball player in it. He’s Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. IMDB claims he shows up in a uncredited spot in Suicide Squad as well. He’s reprising his role as Batman in forthcoming Flash. He’s Matt Murdock / Daredevil in Daredevil which I have seen. He’s actually in Field of Dreams too as a fan on the stands in Fenway though he’s not credited. Can I nominate Shakespeare in Love as genre? If so, he’s Ned Alleyn in it.
(14) BURTON’S BATMAN IS BACK. In the Washington Post, David Betancourt discusses Batman 89, a six-issue miniseries designed to recreate the world of the 1989 Tim Burton movie, written by Sam Hamm (who wrote Burton’s film) and designed to include storylines that weren’t in Burton’s movie (such as having a Black Robin, because Robin wasn’t in the Burton film). “Tim Burton never got to make more Batman movies. ‘Batman 89’ is the next best thing”.
…[Artist Joe] Quinones ended up suggesting something that now seems obvious: Why not just ask the person who wrote those Batman movies?Veteran Hollywood writer Sam Hamm is that person.And the result is “Batman 89,” a newsix-issue monthly miniseries featuring a Batman inspired by the performance of Michael Keaton — and a nostalgic joyride for the many hardcore fans of Burton’s two iconic trips to Gotham City.
Quinones sent Hamm a direct message on Twitter and was surprised not only to get a response but to find out Hamm is a fan of his artwork.
Hamm was hesitant about returning to super-heroic tales.He’d written two Batman films (the first with Warren Skaaren, and he was replac
ed on the second by Daniel Waters) along with the first movie script for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s legendary “Watchmen” comic. He’d even worked with Chris Columbus on a Fantastic Four movie that was never made.
“I had a long stretch where I just didn’t want to do comic book [stories]. I had been very much typed as the comic book guy,” Hamm said. Still, he added, “I thought about it for like a day, and I said, I think I can have some fun with this.”
Part of the fun for Hamm and Quinones would be exploring potential plotlines that were ripe for the taking but never used in the first two Batman films. Both agreed that classic Batman villain Two-Face should be this series’ main antagonist. Hamm had included Harvey Dent — played by Billy Dee Williams — in his “Batman” script with the intent of the character eventually transitioning into Two-Face. But Williams never returned to the role, and when Two-Face debuted in Schumacher’s “Batman Forever,” the character was played by Tommy Lee Jones….
(15) RECORD ATTEMPT. A few costumes shy of the Jurassic mark… “Mount Clemens event fails world record attempt for gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs” – see the news video at Flipboard.
A downtown Mount Clemens event Saturday sought to break the world record for the number of dinosaur costumes in one place. The record, which stands at 252, was too large to overcome. But that didn’t mean attendees didn’t have fun.
(16) CLIPPING SERVICE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] This is from a humor piece by Hallie Cantor in the July 30, 2018 New Yorker in which Elon Musk is dealing wiith public relations executives.
MUSK: “Guys, guys, guys, c’mon. I’m a socialist in the manner of Iain Banks.”
P.R. EXECUTIVE 2: “But Iain Banks was pro-union!”
(A large hole opens in the floor beneath Executive 2’s seat, and he disappears into a Hyperloop tube headed for O’Hare International Airport.”
(17) EAR CANDY. Cora Buhlert has a story called “We need to talk…” in episode 42 of the Simultaneous Times podcast presented by Space Cowboy Books.
(18) ON DC’S SHELF. GameSpot spins out the alternate Hollywood History that might have been: “9 Unmade DC Superhero Movies That We Never Got To See”.
…Unsurprisingly, there’s also a huge number of potential DC movies that have been announced or put into development that never made it to the screen. Some of these were new spins of the company’s biggest heroes, developed by big names like JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, and Tim Burton. Others were attempts to make movies based on lesser-known figures that for various reasons never got as far as production. Some were literally a few weeks away from shooting, while others never made it past the script stage.
We’ve picked some of the highest-profile and most interesting examples of these. It’s fascinating to think of how the course of DC’s cinematic journey would’ve been affected had they made it to the screen–Nicolas Cage might have forever been associated with the role of Superman, while we might never have seen Christian Bale and Chris Nolan’s take on Batman. So here’s 9 big DC films that we’ll never see….
9. Justice League Dark
In terms of DC movies that seem like a perfect match of subject and director, it’s hard to think of a better one than Gullermo Del Toro’s Justice League Dark. The Pacific Rim and Shape of Water director was attached to a movie version of the supernatural superhero team for several years and recently confirmed that he wrote a full screenplay for the potential movie. But he left the project in 2015, and although Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) was also briefly attached, it remains unmade.
However, while a full Justice League Dark movie doesn’t seem likely any time soon, that doesn’t mean we won’t see some of the characters. Last year it was reported that JJ Abrams is developing several Justice League Dark projects, with a John Constantine series and Zatanna movie both in the works.
(19) PETRI DISHES. In the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri says if Tucker Carlson enjoyed his trip to Hungary, he’s really looking forward to going to Mordor!” “Forget Hungary. Tucker Carlson is all about Mordor now”.
… I am honored to announce I will be speaking next week at the Mordor Summit in Barad-dur at the invitation of Dark Lord Sauron! This is the future of conservatism, and I’m excited to throw open the Overton Window and let in the nazguls.
It was wonderful to spend time in Hungary, a country Freedom House describes as “sliding into authoritarian rule” — but why stop there when I could be in a land Freedom House describes as “under authoritarian rule for two-and-a-half thousand years”? That’s two-and-a-half thousand times more aspirational! That’s 10 times longer than the United States has been a country at all, and hundreds of times longer than we’ve been deliberately sliding away from at least theoretically embracing representative democracy….
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, Cora Buhlert, Alan Baumler, Will R., John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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Thanks for the title credit!
(13) One of the biggest thrills of my first con was meeting Bjo.
(8) REDEEMING FEATURES. Lin Carter was a not very good writer in large part because he apparently never took the time to polish anything he did. Everything seemed like a first draft. A lot of first drafts at that. It’s weird considering, as Cora notes, he was a first rate editor.
(6) This is worrying.
“Scroll. Or Scroll not. There is no File.”
(17) Congrats, Cora! Looking forward to taking a listen.
8) Without Lin Carter’s Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (which also debuted Katherine Kurtz’ Deryni books) and some of the other short story anthologies he edited, my reading life would be much the poorer — for one thing, excerpts in his anthologies were my first introductions to Rider Haggard and A. Merritt.
And I always enjoyed his wildly enthusiastic if sometimes factually dubious introductions.
Ah. Lin Carter. Here’s a link to my own Lin Carter experience….
13) Forward has some very memorable characters. They just happen to be things like schemes for mitigating tidal forces on an object nearer to a neutron star than is generally advisable, or phase diagrams for water-ammonia ices at various temperatures and pressures.
@ Patrick Morris Miller:
He was also pretty good at writing aliens. Probably better at aliens than humans, come to think of it.
Meredith moment: Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 which won a Nebula and was nominated for a Hugo at NyCon 3 as well is available from the usual suspects for a buck ninety nine.
8.) Unlike others, I’m not surprised that Lin Carter was a good editor but…less than stellar as a writer. Not all editors can carry their editing skills over to their written work, and I think that this situation was more common in past days than now.
I’d advance the argument that in this current era, the fact that you see much, much more of the writer/editor combination than in the past is due to economics more than anything else. Most of the writers (including myself) who also wear an editorial hat do it simply because they need that side gig to make money.
There’s also a greater demand for editors due not only to self-publishing but greater competition for agents and fewer debut publishing slots–many aspiring writers will hire a freelance writer to perform editorial review before submitting book manuscripts. As a result, today’s editor (especially if freelance and not working with a publishing house) often needs to demonstrate their own writing chops in a manner that past editors didn’t.
Did Lin Carter really name a character “Herpes Zoster”?
And for Ballantine Adult Fantasy fans:
The Scroll of Elfland’s Pixel
The Pixel Beyond The Scroll
A Scroll Dinner in Pixelson
About Lin Carter and editors: There’s a range of activities covered by the title, and not all of them involve the skill-set that produces good prose. Carter’s strength would seem to have been on the acquiring side–and since pretty much everything in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series had already been published elsewhere, Carter had no role in shaping the prose. He was a student of the history of the genre and a good talent-spotter.
The side of editing that involves working with a writer’s prose and getting it into shape for publication demands a distinct set of skills, and while the acquiring/assigning and hands-on skills might reside in the same person (as they often have in the magazine editors I’ve worked with), it’s not inevitable. Some of the sharpest eyes and ears (and virtual pencils) I’ve encountered have been on the “associate” or “assistant” level–and those editors’ main job was to work on the copy, while their superiors also had to manage the whole magazine.
Yes, even for Carter’s original anthologies (Flashing Swords in particular), I doubt that he was taking a very hands-on approach once the submissions were received — I’m guessing they were printed pretty much as they arrived in hand.
(13) Ben Affleck was also in Paycheck a movie based on a story by Philip K Dick.
and he was in Dogma which has got to be genre, just don’t ask me what genre.
Jee Jay says Ben Affleck was also in Paycheck a movie based on a story by Philip K Dick. and he was in Dogma which has got to be genre, just don’t ask me what genre.
I se the latter was nominated for a Nebula for its script. And condemned as an act of heresy by the Catholic League. V’impressive indeed.
Joe H. says Yes, even for Carter’s original anthologies (Flashing Swords in particular), I doubt that he was taking a very hands-on approach once the submissions were received — I’m guessing they were printed pretty much as they arrived in hand.
Not that unusual an occurrence. Certainly say Ellen Datlow does it with herYear’s Best Horror anthologies and it would not be hard to list any number of editors who do anthologies in a similar process with already edited material. I remember one editor who told me in a conversation we had about his series that he call himself a packager and not an editor.
Joe H.: ” for one thing, excerpts in his anthologies were my first introductions to Rider Haggard and A. Merritt.”
Tangentially related: Over at my secondary Twitter account, “GOBI – Great Old Book Illustrations” ( @BruceArthurs4 ), I just posted a thread of Lancelot Speed illustrations from an 1893 edition of Haggard’s ERIC BRIGHTEYES.
(I’ve been doing the GOBI account for several months now, with about one or two posts a week. Tons of potential material –some from obvious artists or sources, some from very obscure sources– I’ve found browsing the British National Library’s image archive on Flickr, but it’s also yet another timesink. But I enjoy it, and have been learning a lot about old artists, old books, research sources and methods to try and identify uncredited artists, and learning how to use Paintshop Pro to cleanup yellowed or stained images.)
Anybody know why Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s blog isn’t being updated? The last new entry in late April. That seems like a very long time for time to go dark.
From memory Carter’s short fiction wasn’t as bad as his novels. Granted that this was long ago and I was less discriminating then – but the shorts I read didn’t seem as bad as Carter’s Thongor novels. (Yes I read several of them. But I read a lot back then, and my brother had copies and I had to read something…)
FLASHING SWORDS! was an original anthology series, with new fiction; the Datlow BOTY series collects the best already-published stories of the year. Datlow’s original anthologies are a more sensible comparison…but Carter was always kind of haphazard editor, tending to offer weak work cheek by jowl with much better fiction, in anthologies and book selection. Not true of Datlow.
(5) “It is that last paragraph that particularly strikes me: in turning down ANIMAL FARM—essentially because it was being rude about our Soviet allies—Eliot was also turning down the unwritten 1984.”
T. S. Eliot, a reactionary politically, more likely offended by the equation of the Stalinist pigs with the Tory and similar human farmers who were all but indistinguishable from the porcine betrayers…even if the critique of either might not be hailed by super-nationalists even as the Axis nations were starting to crumble.
Todd Mason says FLASHING SWORDS! was an original anthology series, with new fiction; the Datlow BOTY series collects the best already-published stories of the year. Datlow’s original anthologies are a more sensible comparison…but Carter was always kind of haphazard editor, tending to offer weak work cheek by jowl with much better fiction, in anthologies and book selection. Not true of Datlow.
Entirely correct with just a few exceptions. Notable too is that neatly all of the fiction Carter selected for these anthologies never got reprinted later anywhere else. Oh pieces by the likes of Leiber and Anderson did but the overwhelming majority of his selections never saw reprinting. And I’ll be damned if I recognised most of the writers.
@Nicole J. Le Boeuf-Little
Thanks. I really enjoyed your story in Apex, BTW.
Regarding Lin Carter, several people have told me that enjoyed the Carter/De Camp Conan pastice or the Thongor novels as teenagers to scratch that sword and sorcery itch and didn’t really notice the issues with his writing, unless they revisited them as adults.
And one thing that’s always obvious about Carter’s work, whether as an editor or authors, is that he genuinely oves the older SFF he draws upon. His attempts to imitate what he loved just tended to fall flat. As for the Conan pastiches, most of the problems with those are probably more due to De Camp than Carter, because De Camp didn’t really get Conan or Howard. Carter loved both, he just wasn’t very good at writing them.
Are you really thinking about the Flashing Swords series? Because most of the authors he published were well known authors in the sword and sorcery/heroic fantasy realms, e.g. Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Tanith Lee, C.J. Cherryh, Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, John Jakes (mainly known for historical fiction now, but better known for sword and sorcery back then), Katherine Kurtz, Diane Duane, L. Sprague de Camp, etc… There is only one name in all five Flashing Swords anthologies that I don’t recognise, namely Craig Shaw Gardner, who mainly seems to have written tie-in novels later on.
The Flashing Swords anthologies also had lots of stories in established series such as Dying Earth, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Brak the Barbarian, Witch World, Dilvish the Damned, etc… All of those have been reprinted. Lin Carter’s own stories and L. Sprague de Camp’s usually haven’t been.
Also regarding Galactic Journey, I couldn’t mention Carter’s editing career there, because Flashing Swords and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series are still in the future.
Yeah, Flashing Swords was mostly fairly well-known authors at the time. Carter’s “Year’s Best” for DAW were more of a mixed bag, including some great stories and occasionally one of Carter’s own stories, and also occasionally one of Carter’s own stories published under a pseudonym.
Maybe @evilrooster knows something?
Cat: Re: Making Light. I can’t say why they aren’t blogging but based on their twitter feeds they’re at least alive and relatively hake. Teresa has tweeted within the month. Patrick hasn’t tweeted since July 20 but there might be reasons; that looked like an intense day. Abi has been open about dealing with personal stuff that ate into her blogging, and was the most prolific blogger there; meanwhile she’s tweeted within the day. And she shows up here on occasion.
I was just forwarding an email to someone, intending to type “FYI”, except I typed “FYU”. Very glad I caught that before I hit send.
@Mike Glyer: I have to be careful with “Bodhisattva Fu Kyo”–or it will be taken as the exact opposite.
Mike Glyer says I was just forwarding an email to someone, intending to type “FYI”, except I typed “FYU”. Very glad I caught that before I hit send.
I just had an entire day like that starting with a med order that was supposed to be ready a week ago that wasn’t and getting increasingly annoying from there. I didn’t actually tell anyone to, well you know the words, but I came close several times.
I awarded myself tonight for not doing so by eating a dark chocolate Ritter square. I had never seen a plain one sans hazelnuts before but found oodles of them today at one of the stores I find such things at. It was most excellent.
@OGH: For Your Unobscuration?
@Mike Glyer–
Quote incomplete, because you triggered the dread laugh/cough/choke!
For those interested in the saga: The dog who is now named Cider has given birth to three healthy puppies. All boys. Two powderpuffs and one hairless. If this description puzzles anyone, google “Chinese Crested Dog.”
So the countdown has begun to when I can take Cider home.
@Lis Carey,
Yay!
@Lis
Cider. A lovely name.
I suppose you’ll have to wait at least until the puppies are weaned, won’t you? 8-12 weeks, roughly?
@Bonnie McDaniel–8-12 weeks before the puppies can go to new homes, but 6-8 weeks till Cider can leave them. Most puppies wean by six weeks, some need as much as eight weeks. Once they’re weaned, they still need socialization, including doggy socialization, but they don’t specifically need mom. And the breeder, in this case, in addition to several other Chinese Cresteds, has two each of Lowchens, American Hairless Terriers, and pit bulls. They will learn their doggy manners, in addition to being well socialized with people.
So, optimistically, six weeks. Maybe eight weeks.
@ Lis Carey:
Yay!