(1) George R.R. Martin in “The First Emmys” on Not A Blog.
Andy Samberg’s joke about my attending the first Emmy Awards ceremony made me curious about Emmy history. This year was the 67th Emmy Awards, and I turned 67 last Sunday, but until Andy appeared beside me I hadn’t actually connected the two. Pretty amazing.
For a few hours I entertained the amusing thought that they were perhaps giving out those first Emmys even as I was being born. Alas, that was not actually the case. Emmy and I may both be 67, but I actually came into the world a few months before her. The first Emmy ceremony took place on January 25, 1949, to honor work telecast during 1948.
Interestingly, those first awards were strictly a local matter: a Los Angeles award, for shows broadcast in the LA media market. Not at all national. The first winner — for “Most Popular Television Program” — was a show called PANTOMIME QUIZ. A drama called THE NECKLACE won for “Best Film Made for Television,” and Shirley Dinsdale won as “Most Outstanding Television Personality.” She was a ventriloquist with a dummy named ‘Judy Splinters.’
(2) Brad R. Torgersen, in “A matter of canon” at Mad Genius Club, has a good handle on the importance of canon to fans’ relationships with successful franchises. He questions why Star Trek and Star Wars have sometimes gone astray.
See, respecting the canon isn’t just a matter of preserving timelines or sequences of events; though this is a huge part of it. Respecting the canon also means respecting what it is that fuels the enthusiasm of the people who watch your TV show, go to see your movies, or pick up and read your books.
I remember in the mid-1990s when it was revealed that neither Paramount Pictures, nor Viacom (the parent of Paramount) considered any of the many Pocketbooks Star Trek novels to be canonical, in terms of the movies and TV shows. That was a rather serious blow to me, as a fan. I’d read several dozen of those very same Pocketbooks novels, and considered some of them to be among the finest works of science fiction I’d ever encountered — they were that good. Written by top-notch SF/F authors who were doing terrific storytelling within the Star Trek framework. Then, ruh-roh, the corporate powers behind the franchise revealed that the Pocketbooks novels didn’t count. I was rather upset by this, as a fan. Both because of the time and money I’d invested, and because of the fact some of those Pocketbooks Star Trek novels were every bit as good as, if not better than, the movies and TV episodes of the time. Who were Paramount and Viacom to tell me, the fan, what was legit, or not?
(3) Greg Hullender’s new post on Rocket Stack Rank analyzes which magazines have placed the most stories in the finals of the Hugo and Nebula Awards over the past fifteen years.
(4) Margaret Atwood discusses the enduring controversy over The Handmaid’s Tale in the Guardian.
Some books haunt the reader. Others haunt the writer. The Handmaid’s Tale has done both.
The Handmaid’s Tale has not been out of print since it was first published, back in 1985. It has sold millions of copies worldwide and has appeared in a bewildering number of translations and editions. It has become a sort of tag for those writing about shifts towards policies aimed at controlling women, and especially women’s bodies and reproductive functions: “Like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Here comes The Handmaid’s Tale” have become familiar phrases. It has been expelled from high schools, and has inspired odd website blogs discussing its descriptions of the repression of women as if they were recipes. People – not only women – have sent me photographs of their bodies with phrases from The Handmaid’s Tale tattooed on them, “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” and “Are there any questions?” being the most frequent. The book has had several dramatic incarnations, a film (with screenplay by Harold Pinter and direction by Volker Schlöndorff) and an opera (by Poul Ruders) among them. Revellers dress up as Handmaids on Hallowe’en and also for protest marches – these two uses of its costumes mirroring its doubleness. Is it entertainment or dire political prophecy? Can it be both? I did not anticipate any of this when I was writing the book.
(5) NPR reported about the devoted fans who crossed the country to Dodge City for the Gunsmoke reunion – even though all the leading characters are no longer with us.
WILSON: The show was nominated for a dozen Emmys and received critical acclaim for its unprecedented realism. It’s set in Dodge City, the hub of frontier cattle drives, with a reputation as a lawless town. Many of the main characters are no longer alive. Dennis Weaver, who played Chester Goode, passed away in 2006. Amanda Blake, who played the beloved Ms. Kitty, died in 1989 and James Arness, whose towering frame and distinctive voice made the character Marshal Matt Dillon shine, passed away four years ago….
Curiously, two actors now famous in the science fiction genre played characters with rhyming names in bit parts on Gunsmoke (not in the same episodes).
WILSON: Bruce Boxleitner played the character Toby Hogue in 1975.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRUCE BOXLEITNER: It was totally character-driven, but it was about a character. It wasn’t about the last sunset or the last cattle drive.
And Harrison Ford played “Hobey” in a 1973 episode.
(6) Kim Stanley Robinson answered questions about his new novel Aurora from readers at io9 earlier this week.
Among them was a question about some of the unexpected impact that encountering alien life out amongst the stars could have on a space colony—and how Robinson thought the meeting might play out:
[Robinson:] “I do think it might be possible than an alien life form could co-exist with Terran life and the two just kind of pass each other by. But mainly life tries to live by converting other things to energy, so other things can look like food to it. And Terran immune systems are very powerful. Allergic shock kills many people, and it seemed to me possible that an alien would have that effect on our immune systems, either correctly or incorrectly, in terms of diagnosing a threat.
“If that happened, some people would panic. It would become not just a medical question but a political question. Who do we trust, what do we trust? What’s safest? People aren’t rational in that situation, or, some are and some aren’t, and they can fight.
“I think the scenario in the book is quite plausible. But I admit what you say, in other situations, the alien-Terran interaction need not be so bad.”
(7) NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was scheduled to examine the moon’s surface during the eclipse today.
Sunday’s eclipse is special as it follows three other total lunar eclipses in the past 18 months (usually you don’t get that many in a row) and the moon will be at its closest point in its orbit to Earth, making it slightly bigger in the sky than usual — an event popularly known as a “Supermoon.”
The LRO has been observing Earth’s satellite since 2009, and wasn’t designed to operate during eclipses. The solar-powered spacecraft would switch off almost everything until sunlight returned again. But as controllers became experienced with the drops in power during LRO’s time in shadow, they got comfortable enough to turn on one instrument: the Diviner.
More formally known as the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, the instrument looks at day-night changes in temperature on the moon. And it turns out that during an eclipse, the plunge in temperature is sudden — almost like leaving a hot tub for an icy pool, according to NASA. Click here to watch a NASA animation of what it looks like, from the surface of the moon, during a lunar eclipse.
“Ideally we want to measure the full range of temperature variation during the eclipse,” Noah Petro, the deputy project scientist for LRO, told Discovery News. Petro is based at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
(8) Old Neckbiter is back on the big screen October 25 when Fathom Events delivers a Dracula Double Feature with a twist – the double bill is the 1931 English and Spanish language versions of Dracula. However, the Spanish version was filmed sequentially on the same sets, with a different cast, rather than dubbed, and is claimed by some to be the superior work. Also part of the event is a specially produced introduction from Turner Classic Movies that will give insight into both of these 1931 vampire-horror films.
Here is the trailer for the event.
(9) James Davis Nicoll would hate for you to miss his photo of the dinosaur joke on the Kitchener Library sign, which has now been shared on Facebook over 1100 times.
(10) Star Trek Continues Episode 5 “Divided We Stand” premiered this weekend at Salt Lake Comic Con. It’s now available online.
Kirk and McCoy are trapped in time while an alien infestation threatens the Enterprise.
(11) The Palm Restaurant opened in New York in 1926, near the headquarters of the King Features Syndicate, and the place attracted a lot of cartoonists who drew their own creations on the walls in exchange for their meals. Now the property has changed hands and the art is gone.
New York Eater has “before and after” photos in “Shock/Horror: The Murals Have Been Scrubbed From the Walls of The Palm”.
Jeremiah Moss at Vanishing New York said it for everyone.
What the fuck is wrong with people? This was the original Palm restaurant, 90 years old, gorgeous, storied, beloved, its walls covered in caricatures hand-drawn by some of America’s most celebrated cartoonists. This was a one-of-a-kind treasure, never to be reproduced. You can’t buy this kind of uniqueness, it has to grow organically and mature over time–over a century of time. But we’re living in a fucked up city where fucked up people do fucked up things like destroy art, culture, and history–all in one fell swoop if they can manage it–just to replace it with something banal and miserable from the monoculture of the day.
(12) Jessica Lachenal is not impressed with one dictionary’s effort to update itself: “Some of These New Oxford Dictionary terms Make Me Feel Pretty Out of Touch” at The Mary Sue.
For starters: social justice warrior? Really? I mean, okay, sure, your definition is pretty ironic: (informal, derogatory) a person who expresses or promotes socially progressive views. “How dare they,” I can hear you saying. That’s fine. And I guess we can all agree that anyone who uses that term unironically is… well, you know.
Which brings me to the next term: fatberg. Fatberg?! Really? According to you, it’s a “a very large mass of solid waste in a sewerage system, consisting especially of congealed fat and personal hygiene products that have been flushed down toilets.” I get the wordplay–iceberg, fatberg–but… was there really a need for this? Do people run into fatbergs on a daily basis, so much so that they need a portmanteau to cover it? What are kids even doing these days? Oh, pro tip: don’t image search that.
What’s that, Collins? Yeah. Yeah, you have a good point. Awesomesauce is pretty old. Kids have been saying that for years now. Same goes for its buddy weak sauce.
[Thanks to Will R., Andrew Porter, JJ, Gerry Williams, Michael J. Walsh, Greg Hullender, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anthony.]
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Who will be publishing Duty After School?
1. YOUR CITIES LIE IN RUINS
Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve
2. SPREADING PLAGUE
World War Z, Max Brooks
4. WORMHOLE WEAPONRY
Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks
5. I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS JOB
Kiln People, David Brin
6. FOREIGNERS
Explorer, C. J. Cherryh
8. SECOND CLASS CITIZENS
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
10. A SINGLE SYLLABLE IS ALL I NEED
Light, M. John Harrison
11. THE STUDY OF DANGEROUS CREATURES
Bones of the Earth, Michael Swanwick
12. SECRET WEAPONS
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
15. I’LL SEE YOUR THREE MAIN CHARACTERS AND RAISE YOU SIX
River of Gods, Ian McDonald
16. JAX OR CHO
Embassytown, China Miéville
17. SEND IN THE CLONES
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
18. THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING
The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon
19. THE COMPUTER AND THE GUN
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge
21. THEY VANISHED LONG AGO
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds
22. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
23. INTERCONNECTIONS
Air, Geoff Ryman
24. COPS AND ROBBERS
The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi
25. AN UNUSUAL UPBRINGING
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
27. STRANGE TERRITORY
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
28. THE TIPPING POINT
Farthing, Jo Walton
29. SOCIETY EVOLVES
Blindsight, Peter Watts
30. LIFE ON MARS
The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker
31. ISOLATED PLANET
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
32. BROKEN SHIPS
Passage, Connie Willis
Early stuff, hard to say: I started reading at age 3, was really bored during phonics in first grade, and my father was an SF fan with a subscription to Asimov’s, so I really don’t know what my first SF was. By age 10 I’d read The Dark is Rising, Lord of the Rings, Dune, and some of Larry Niven’s stuff available at the time (late 70s); one of my friends at school got me into Ray Bradbury with ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ when I was in middle school, which was also when I got into The Chronicles of Prydain and the Tripods trilogy.
I wanted to pop in from the year 772* (where I am feeling amazingly lucky to have purchased a solar-powered battery for my laptop AND a solar powered printer, and I’ll be dropping this post off into a time capsule to, hopefully, be discovered by OGH and added to the end of this thread) to encourage everyone who’s been public about their teeth-gnashing at unknown favorites being pitted against blockbusters. Please continue. It adds to my TBR pile, but that is a consequence I can deal with.
Intro to SF/F… I’d say the cartoon version of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” probably heavily inspired me to read fantasy. That was probably the first fantasy book I read. “Puff the Magic Dragon” didn’t hurt, either. My dad was a big trekkie (for someone who is not in any way a member of fandom) at the time, so I don’t really remember a time when I didn’t know who Spock, McCoy, or Captain James T. Kirk were. I was obsessed with Greek mythology around age 8(?) I recall reading any book about Greek mythology that I could find in the kid’s section at the library. Once I ran out of those, I checked out Norse mythology. I was also obsessed with these little books I remember that covered various Hammer monsters (I’m pretty sure the books were put out in conjunction with Hammer Studios, as all the monster pictures came from those movies). And I loved the Jack Chick tracts at the fundamentalist church I attended. Those last two are more Horror, but I love SF/F and Horror, and have bounced between the three all my life, never quite forsaking all of them at once.
I also recall a story at the end of our reading workbook in maybe 1st grade. You could tear it out and fold it into a little book. I think it was an abridged version of a middle grade novel. It was about a little kid in NYC who met some sort of creature who lived in Central Park, and some adventure(s) they had. I can’t recall the name, any more, but I remember it piqued my imagination.
* The year, it turns out, when the position of “priest” was first implemented in the Catholic Church. Not my fault, I hope. I’ll try to get back to the 21st Century soon.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on September 29, 2015 at 7:20 am said:
… Frankly, the differences between the European and Latin American comics and the English language ones is so vast that I never really was able to read graphic novels before Saga. I recognize the greatness of the stories, but the art looks so crude that I just can’t suspend my irritation. The last time I tried was with V for Vendetta. I’d seen the movie and liked many things about it. I had to abandon the book after very few pages. There are probably lots of really great comics out there with great stories and great art, but I haven’t found them yet. It doesn’t help that I am not too keen on the whole superheroes thing.
I would love some titles to go hunt down.
I’m a total sucker for the art stuffs.
Favs?
I have no idea when I started reading science fiction/fantasy.
The house was full of all manner of books, and I was raised by wolves.
Which is to say, there were no gatekeepers, and no one was recommending things.
The classic stuff – Verne, Wells, and the like had been bought by my mother.
Then my oldest sister started bringing in “new” stuff by the early-50s.
With four older sisters all buying books, things escalated quickly, and by the time I was looking for things to read, there was a lot underfoot.
Family theory was, if you were “too young for it” you just wouldn’t get it.
Cally on September 29, 2015 at 9:27 am said:
When I was a small child I devoured the set of “My Book House” books my grandparents had, that was published in 1925 LINK (as I see by looking at various websites. There were later editions, but this had to be the 1925 one. Which is now, apparently, worth several hundred dollars). It included quite a few fairy tales, and not just Western ones, but not fantasy per se.
oooooo
These are lovely, lovely books.
I still have ours, which I left about, enticingly, for my own kid.
I too practiced the Surround Them with a Multitude of Books school of child-rearing, with an added side of Read Aloud Daily.
@Lauowolf
I think Anna put a list earlier in the thread. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. 🙂
I keep seeing Engelhart and misreading it as Engelbreit. As in kitsch artist Mary Engelbreit.
I admit without shame that I would read the hell out of her run on The Avengers.
The Hulk: “Hulk fine. Just fine. Perfectly fine.”
o I can vote in one whole bracket! That’s … better than I expected in the first round.
8. SECOND CLASS CITIZENS
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Tobias S. Buckell, Ragamuffin
Close, because both were entertaining and had points about using people (as entertainment, even). Buckell was a bit less the same old ground, though Collins popularized her ground in a huge way.
Jim Henley: Hey, I know Old Venus is the anthology that’s relevant for Hugo nominations, but what did people think of Old Mars? Worth getting?
I’ve not gotten to read it yet — but the list of authors is impressive. Two of the stories, the Waldrop and the McDonald, made the Hugo longlist last year.
• Martian Blood • novelette by Allen Steele [as by Allen M. Steele ]
• The Ugly Duckling • novelette by Matthew Hughes
• The Wreck of the Mars Adventure • novelette by David D. Levine
• Swords of Zar-Tu-Kan • novelette by S. M. Stirling
• Shoals • novelette by Mary Rosenblum
• In the Tombs of the Martian Kings • novelette by Mike Resnick
• Out of Scarlight • shortstory by Liz Williams
• The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls • shortstory by Howard Waldrop
• A Man Without Honor • novelette by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)
• Written in Dust • novelette by Melinda M. Snodgrass
• The Lost Canal • novelette by Michael Moorcock
• The Sunstone • novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein
• King of the Cheap Romance • novelette by Joe R. Lansdale
• Mariner • novelette by Chris Roberson
• The Queen of the Night’s Aria • novelette by Ian McDonald
I’ve got Old Venus sitting here from my library (along with a half a dozen books). At some point, I’ll have them fetch Old Mars for me, but 2015 stories are my priority at the moment.
Comics with great art, in English?
OK, first up, anything by P. Craig Russell. I particularly recommend his adaptations of The Magic Flute and The Ring of the Nibelung, because he renders music in a particularly beautiful way. But anything with his art will be gorgeous.
Likewise for Charles Vess. Stardust, the graphic novel he did with Neil Gaiman, is a good place to start.
There’s my link quota for this post, so the rest you’ll have to look up on your own:
* Writer and artist Matt Wagner. Now, the thing about Wagner is that he’s really committed to artistic growth and development, so many of his pieces don’t look much at all like each other. Mage: The Hero Discovered was his first big work, and it looks radically different from Grendel: Devil By The Deed, which ran as a backup strip in Mage and then got collected on its own. Both are quite different from the sequel volume Mage: The Hero Defined. And so forth and so on.
In addition, Wagner apparently likes to collaborate, and does it well. The original Grendel story, Devil By The Deed, is essentially a prose story illustrated with full-page graphic composition that have a heavy art deco influence. The first sequel, Devil’s Legacy, was 12 issues of high-octane enthusiasm illustrated by Jacob and Arnold Pander, and then there were 3 issues of gaunt tragic doom illustrated by Bernie Mirault, and on and on. It’s also an interesting story for moving its subject forward, from the modern-day assassin Hunter Rose to his granddaughter in Devil’s Legacy, to her ill-fated lover in The Devil Inside, through further centuries past apocalypse to post-apocalypse and post-post-apocalypse.
There’s also Kurt Busiek right here, and the wonderful artwork of Brent Anderson!
Lauowolf: I would love some titles to go hunt down. I’m a total sucker for the art stuffs. Favs?
I don’t read graphic novels or comics, but I have read Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and it is spectacular.
A friend who knows I have a big art background lent me Gareth Hinds’ version of The Odyssey, and the artistry in it is amazing.
Ben Templesmith’s art (he of 30 Days of Night and Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse) is all gorgeous grotesque sketchy watercolours, but that might be an acquired taste. I have a great deal of fondness for Michael Zulli’s art, too – he did some of The Sandman and, also with Neil Gaiman, the accompanying comic book for Alice Cooper’s very best album, The Last Temptation (which is a rather good story, by the way). Probably far too comic booky, but the early Cassandra Cain as Batgirl run had some great kinetic artwork whose artist escapes me… Damion Scott? And, again probably too comic booky, Stuart Immonen’s work on Nextwave is pretty great.
I have one book I feel strongly enough about to vote for without having read its competition…
3. Fledgling
…and one bracket where I’ve read both works.
29. Carnival (by a proverbial hair).
ZOMG I had those! I loved them SO MUCH! I went and bought the couple volumes I had off Amazon–they’re cheaper as singles.
There was another series that I’ve never been able to nail down, although booksellers will swear they’ve got it and then I’ll order the book and nope, wrong one. It was an early human history with two kids named Dee and Dart inventing pottery, agriculture, the bow and arrow, and domesticating the dog. (Sort of like Ayla, only twins and without the sexy mammoths.)
Susana:
Sort of. For years it’s been available now and again in astonishingly shitty translations or poorly-produced editions. It’s now finally coming out in decent (actually, very nice) editions, but only two are out so far and they had to skip SALT SEA until later because it’s been done badly so often it would hurt sales.
Cassy:
Both of them are only “graphic novels” in that they were comics that were collected into book form. The difference is the binding, not what’s on the pages.
David:
So you think. It’s a slow-corrupting curse.
Nothing beats GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS 2. Can’t be done.
Bruce:
While Charles has done many excellent comics, including a World Fantasy Award-winning issue of SANDMAN with Neil Gaiman, STARDUST isn’t one of them. It’s a short novel with copious amounts of lovely illustration, but it’s not comics.
To brag a little, I have the art to one of the double page spreads framed above my fireplace…
JJ: You need to check out Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze, a lengthy (and very slowly published) version of the Trojan War. It’s been ongoing for years and I don’t know if he’ll ever manage to get to the Iliad, but the art is very, very nice and the storytelling impressive.
As we’re moving more into comics, I should clarify that the Jeff Smith that occasionally posts here is NOT the Jeff Smith responsible for Bone, RASL and Tuki.
I read a lot of comics at a very young age back in the 50s — pretty much everything being published except any horror comics. (But yes to the pre-Marvel monster comics.) Rawhide Kid, Sgt Rock, Millie the Model, Jimmy Olsen, Little Lulu, Challengers of the Unknown — they all passed through my hands, and I read them and reread them. Classics Illustrated…there are a number of books that I don’t know if I ever read or not, because I reread the CI versions so much. Some of the full books I got out of the library, some I didn’t. Did I ever actually read The Prince and the Pauper? I think so, but I couldn’t swear to it.
So that messes me up a bit when I try to remember what my first sf was. Things that weren’t in Classics Illustrated are things I know I read in book form. The Mushroom Planet books, Tom Swift Jr, Tom Corbett Space Cadet. There was always sf in Boys Life — somebody already mentioned their lame time travel stories, which I knew were lame but still reread them all the time, too. But they also published Arthur C. Clarke. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew it was Good Stuff.
There was a book club my parents signed me up for that sent me a little hardcover book every month or two. I looked forward to these because I always enjoyed them, and I never knew what I was going to get. Tee Vee Humphrey, about a kid who volunteered at the local tv station. Follow My Leader, about a boy who was blinded by a fireworks accident and had to get a guide dog. Pirates’ Promise. And my absolute favorite, David and the Phoenix by Eugene Ormandroyd, about all the adventures a boy had with fantasy creatures, taken everywhere by a talking phoenix. I loved that book so much. It even ended with a eucatastrophe, probably my first. In college a friend came back from a used bookstore expedition with a copy of it for me, and I loved reading it again. Maybe ten years ago somebody else who had loved it as a kid reprinted it, so there should be copies around if anybody is interested.
Ooh, it sounds like I would have loved the Dee and Dart books, whatever they were called. I hope someone here recognizes them!
Voting on the current bracket will likely close within the hour.
For translated manga, I would suggest Bannana Fish by Akimi Yoshida and Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya.
If I recall, the framework of Banana Fish is an investigative journalism thriller, as a Japanese exchange student becomes involved in plot involving uncovering secret drugs used on soldiers. The main characters are on the run from rogue government agencies and gangs, and there are dark conspiracies to be uncovered. The student befriends a current gang leader/ former child prostitute named Ash, and their friendship has more than a hint of boy’s love to it.
Fruits Basket is a coming of age tale where a girl learns the secret of a cursed family, and the focus is on emotional healing and growth, as well as how to build authentic relationships. The mood swings from tragedy to comedy. The heroine is rightly criticized for being a bit of a doormat, but… That’s her lesson to learn. And the series has a rich ensemble cast, all flawed, who demonstrate the dynamics of the cycle of abuse so clearly and yet find ways to move forward.
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
Does anyone else remember the Rick Brant books? (I’m convinced the creators of Jonny Quest were fans). They were packaged in the same format as Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, etc. The science was only a little ahead of its time when they were written (late 40s to early 60s?) so already obsolescent when I read them in the late 60s to early 70s, but they were fun.
Earliest science fiction I was aware of as such was Heinlein’s Red Planet, and Norton’s Lord of Thunder in 7th grade (about the same time I encountered Tolkien) but I’d been reading mythology and folklore and fantasy for years before that. And I’m pretty sure I’d encountered Mr. Bass, etc. before that as well. Red Planet was when I realized there were cards labeled Science Fiction in the school library catalog and started with Aldiss… When I ran out of Science Fiction, I read everything else by the same authors (there was a lot of Asimov non-fiction).
I don’t remember whether I encountered the Rick Brants (and started collecting them) before or after Heinlein and Norton. The school covered grades 7-12, so it wasn’t just juveniles on the shelves: I was glad when Baen reprinted Godwin’s The Survivors (with the wolf critters) because I had begun to wonder if I had hallucinated that one.
There’s an ebook collection of a bunch of the Rick Brants on my tablet that I found a year ago. They’ve aged, but held up fairly well to rereading.
2. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
3. Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler
9. Little Brother, Cory Doctorow
10. Feed, Mira Grant
12. Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
13. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
22. 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson
23. Air, Geoff Ryman
28. Farthing, Jo Walton
31. The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
32. Passage, Connie Willis
emgrasso: I had the Rick Brant books. I enjoyed them, but they didn’t get the number of rereads the Tom Swift Jr ones did. Rick’s electronic inventions weren’t as far out as Tom’s.
Entry books…
I was about 8 or 9, already a bookworm, and bored stiff because I was getting over chickenpox. My mother handed me a copy of the Hobbit to keep me occupied. When I devoured that and asked for more books about hobbits, she offered me LotR. After that I got into Narnia and Earthsea and Pratchett and Anne McCaffrey and Eddings and Moorcock and the Crystal Cave and the Cities in Space books. I don’t remember the exact order. I was a pretty indiscriminate reader as a kid.
Writing this in the year 6952, where books are downoaded into the brain, but we still argue about plots…
Kurt Busiek, Both of them are only “graphic novels” in that they were comics that were collected into book form. The difference is the binding, not what’s on the pages.
I get that; really I do. It’s a weird thing I was raised with that “comics are trivial” and somehow my hindbrain got around that by insisting, “but these are NOVELS; look, they have a binding and everything!” and so it was ok to like them. I’m pretty much over that whole prejudice now, but that means I missed a helluva lot of good comics. Which is why I’m looking forward (as a spectator) to the comic bracket. (Although my credit card is not…)
@ Jeff Smith
I preferred Rick Brant to Tom Swift. Definitely different sub-genres, though. I think I liked the travelogue aspect and purported plausibility of the Brants. I suspect I was treating them as historical thrillers more than science fiction as such.
David and the Phoenix is available on Gutenberg.
I have to agree about P Craig Russell. I totally love his Magic Flute adaptation. And I have every issue of The Book of Ballads and Sagas by Charles Vess. They are so lovely to look at and read….
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
I remember that when I first read Saga, I assumed it was a European comic based on the art and storyline. I was stunned when I realised it was American.
Entry into SFF:
For fantasy, as a small child, I had fairy tales told to me as bedtime stories, the original Grimm versions, not the sanitised Disney versions. I also had fairy tale picture books and – for SF – Mecki in the Moon, the gorgeously illustrated adventures of a space-travelling hedgehog, which I mentioned in my comic post.
I also watched reruns of Star Trek, Space 1999, Raumpatrouille Orion and Time Tunnel on TV as a kid and loved them all. Like pretty much every German kid of the time, I also read the children’s and YA fantasy novels of Michael Ende, Ottfried Preußler, Astrid Lindgren, Max Kruse and Ellis Kaut. Both Max Kruse and Ellis Kaut passed this month, BTW. Somewhere along the way, I also found The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
Sometimes, I also read German pulp novels (in secret, because parents and teachers frowned on them). Ghost Hunter John Sinclair was a particular favourite, though I also read Perry Rhodan and Atlan and Professor Zamorra.
My first science fiction novel was Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes at the age of approx. 13. A bit later, I read the Star Wars novelisations and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (the EU didn’t start until a few years later), because I’d never seen the movies and wanted to know what they were about. Then I found Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Anne McCaffrey, Arthur C. Clarke and others.
This post is brought to you from the far-off future of 7497 AD, where the Star Wars canon wars are still raging.
OK, I’m closing the voting. Results posted momentarily …
21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART ONE:
MY GOD IT’S FULL OF BOOKS
In addition to the votes below, there where off-bracket votes for Feed (no, the other Feed), Best of All Possible Worlds, Perdition, Chasm City, House of Suns, and My Real Children.
1. YOUR CITIES LIE IN RUINS
WINNER: Oryx & Crake, Margaret Atwood – 11 votes
Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve – 8 votes
In a battle of lit sf vs. YA sf, lit sf wins, although in a close match. A YA book is knocked off the ballot – not the last time you will read similar words.
2. SPREADING PLAGUE
WINNER (seeded): Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold – 29 votes
World War Z, Max Brooks – 9 votes
A good showing by Brooks, but Bujold once again establishes herself as a powerhouse on the brackets.
3. OTHERS AMONG US
WINNER (seeded): Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler – 21 votes
The Fresco, Sheri S. Tepper – 2 votes
A solid win for the Butler over the Tepper. The vampire novel goes on.
4. WORMHOLE WEAPONRY
WINNER (seeded): Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks – 21 votes
Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams – 5 votes
It probably does not come as a shock to many that Banks is continuing on, but there are those who will miss the Williams.
5. I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS JOB
WINNER: Kiln People, David Brin – 10 votes
God’s War, Kameron Hurley – 7 votes
In a close match, Kiln People ekes out a victory over God’s War.
6. FOREIGNERS
WINNER (seeded): The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon – 17 votes
Explorer, C. J. Cherryh – 10 votes
A solid win for Chabon over Cherryh; lit sf is doing better than it has before, at least in the early rounds.
7. THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND BEYOND
WINNER (seeded): Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey – 14 votes
Probability Moon, Nancy Kress – 5 votes
Another solid win, this time for Corey over Kress.
8. SECOND CLASS CITIZENS
WINNER: Ragamuffin, Tobias Buckell – 13 votes
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins – 11 votes
A very close match, but another YA title goes down.
9. PRIVACY, FREEDOM, AND CONTROL
WINNER (tie): Little Brother, Cory Doctorow – 10 votes
WINNER (tie): The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata – 10 votes
And a tie! Both Little Brother and First Light will fight another day.
10. A SINGLE SYLLABLE IS ALL I NEED
WINNER: Feed, Mira Grant – 13 votes
Light, M. John Harrison – 12 votes
A razor-thin margin here, but at least one zombie novel is going to the next round.
11. THE STUDY OF DANGEROUS CREATURES
WINNER: The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein – 13 votes
Bones of the Earth, Michael Swanwick – 11 votes
Another extremely close match, but Kirstein manages the victory.
12. SECRET WEAPONS
WINNER (seeded): Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie – 35 votes
Fortune’s Pawn, Rachel Bach – 2 votes
And to no one’s surprise, Ancillary Justice establishes itself as a bracket powerhouse.
13. TRADERS VS. ACTORS
WINNER: Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel – 13 votes
Balance of Trade, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller – 9 votes
And still another victory for lit sf, although this one was quite close.
14. ROMANCE NOVELS
WINNER: Learning the World, Ken MacLeod – 12 votes
Gabriel’s Ghost, Linnea Sinclair – 4 votes
A solid win for MacLeod’s book.
15. I’LL SEE YOUR THREE MAIN CHARACTERS AND RAISE YOU SIX
WINNER: River of Gods, Ian McDonald – 12 votes
Spook Country, William Gibson – 4 votes
And an equally solid win for River of Gods.
16. JAX OR CHO
WINNER (seeded): Embassytown, China Miéville – 17 votes
Grimspace, Ann Aguirre – 4 votes
Possibly a bit of a David and Goliath match here, with Goliath winning this one.
17. SEND IN THE CLONES
WINNER: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell – 10 votes
The Quiet War, Paul McAuley – 8 votes
And still another victory for lit sf! This is quite unusual in the brackets.
18. THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING
WINNER (seeded): The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon – 14 votes
The Skinner, Neal Asher – 6 votes
The Speed of Dark wins handily.
19. THE COMPUTER AND THE GUN
WINNER (seeded): Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge – 17 votes
Black Man AKA Th1rte3n, Richard Morgan – 7 votes
As does Rainbows End.
20. LOVE ACROSS THE AGES
WINNER (tie): The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger – 6 votes
WINNER (tie): Love Minus Eighty, Will McIntosh – 6 votes
Another tie! But low vote totals here may mean bad news for these books in subsequent rounds …
21. THEY VANISHED LONG AGO
WINNER: Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds – 14 votes
Eifelheim, Michael F. Flynn – 4 votes
A convincing win for Reynolds.
22. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
WINNER (seeded): The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey – 14 votes
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson – 10 votes
Quite close, but a second zombie novel heads for the next round.
23. INTERCONNECTIONS
WINNER: The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang – 10 votes
Air, Geoff Ryman – 6 votes
Another close match, but Ted Chiang’s novella proceeds onwards.
24. COPS AND ROBBERS
WINNER (seeded): Lock In, John Scalzi – 17 votes
The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi – 10 votes
The Quantum Thief made double digits, but Lock In will be going forward.
25. AN UNUSUAL UPBRINGING
WINNER (seeded): Anathem, Neal Stephenson – 16 votes
Alien Taste, Wen Spencer – 9 votes
Alien Taste was actually leading at some points during the voting, but the better-known Anathem eventually picked up a head of steam and didn’t look back.
26. MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
WINNER (seeded): Accelerando, Charles Stross – 16 votes
Crescent City Rhapsody, Kathleen Ann Goonan – 5 votes
A healthy victory for Stross here.
27. STRANGE TERRITORY
WINNER: Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer – 11 votes
Natural History, Justina Robson – 2 votes
And another for VanderMeer, but with a comparatively low vote total.
28. THE TIPPING POINT
WINNER (seeded): Farthing, Jo Walton – 15 votes
Zendegi, Greg Egan – 4 votes
Walton easily defeats Egan.
29. SOCIETY EVOLVES
WINNER (seeded): Blindsight, Peter Watts – 15 votes
Carnival, Elizabeth Bear – 10 votes
Fairly close, but a definite win for Watts. Another novel with vampires moves forward.
30. LIFE ON MARS
WINNER (seeded): The Martian, Andy Weir – 19 votes
The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker – 6 votes
And a solid win for Weir.
31. ISOLATED PLANET
WINNER: Spin, Robert Charles Wilson – 12 votes
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness – 6 votes
The last YA novel on the bracket falls away, and Spin goes on to the next round.
32. BROKEN SHIPS
WINNER (seeded): Passage, Connie Willis – 17 votes
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi – 6 votes
And finally, a healthy win for Willis over Bacigalupi.
Clearly I should have worked harder at getting people to read The Knife of Never Letting Go when it came up last round, sigh.
Meredith on September 29, 2015 at 4:55 pm said:
Clearly I should have worked harder at getting people to read The Knife of Never Letting Go when it came up last round, sigh.
It is in the queue.
Not that that helps at this point, since I haven’t read the other either.
Too many books, not that that is really a complaint.
Meredith, it’s on my TBR mountain, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet….
I guess I can forgive you both. You know, eventually. 😉
@Kurt Busiek:
Looked it up. Aw, yeah.
I was also blown away, at age 12, by the landmark Avengers #113 (“Your Young Men Shall Slay Visions”). Years later I interviewed Englehart about that issue. He was very kind, but admitted he didn’t remember much about writing it. “I’ve written an awful lot of comic books,” he said.
Also, Rick Brant! Man, it is so rare I come across anyone who ever read those books. I loved those suckers, and much more than the Hardy Boys. I still fully intend to join JANIG at some point.
Patrick Ness seems to have entirely escaped my notice… Can somebody sell me on The Knife of Never Letting Go? Or a different good starting point?
A recount! I demand a recount!
Well, actually, I have no intention of demanding anything, but I just thought THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE had gotten more votes than that. So I checked, and I make it not 6-6 but 11-5.
Votes for TTW came from AndrewM, Bitty, Ian, MaxL, Bruce Baugh, AnnieY, Lis Carey, me, Steve Wright, you and Cora Buhlert. That’s 11.
Votes for L-80 came from BigelowT, Paul Weimer, AndyL, JJ and lurkertype.
I either miscounted somehow (twice) or something went wrong. I don’t actually have the budget to curse six people’s bookshelves, but I figured I’d point it out in case something went wrong with the rest of the votes, too. Or I’ve managed to badly miscount even with names attached.
Anyway. Just offered as a heads up.
Regarding wether or not make movie adaptions of Corto Maltese…
The worst comic adaption ever is The Phantom from 1996. It is loosly based on the first Phantom comic from 1936. A well known legend in the Phantom Comic Universe is that The Phantom never unmasks. He has mask on or sunglasses. To see the face of The Phantom will cause the viewer to die in the most horrible way.
And just 5 or 10 minutes into the movie Billy Zane (playing The Phantom) was shown with absolutely nothing to hide his face. Both me and my brother simultaneously screamed “AAAAH!” and covered our eyes. As I guess several other fans in the audience did.
For some reason, The Phantom is the only comic book that continues to sell in swedish stores since the 50s. And since the 60s, quite large amount of it is a licensed product with scandinavian authors and writers.
I’m a little late to the party, but I wanted to share my first read. Of course, it’s hard because I read widely as a child without much concern to genre, and I read fast. I know there was a few Matthew Looney books in the mix, the aforementioned Danny Dunn, a bunch of the Classics Illustrated series, and a whole boatload of kid mysteries — Encyclopedia Brown and the McGuff Detective Agency come to mind most readily. I have a battered copy of Wrinkle in Time (Camazotz fascinated me), but I don’t recall when I first read it.
The first science fiction book I truly remember was The White Mountains, by John Christopher. It was required reading in sixth grade, and I fell in love with the premise, and particularly with Beanpole, who struck me as rather similar to myself. Then my mom mentioned to me that there were other books in the series. She’d read them in school. My mom isn’t a big SF reader, but on her word, I looked up the next two books in the series and discovered that in the interim, Christopher had wrote a prequel.
I still pull the series out every few years and give it a reread.
@Hampus
I don’t think I was ever able to sit through a full sitting of that Phantom movie.
Mind you, the Stallone Dredd movie committed the same sin (showing his face) and much worse, and I did sit through it. To my eternal regret.
Ah, I wish I was at home with my trusty (and dusty) collection of old comics…
But yes, the late Hugo Pratt, get them in color if possible. These are going to be hard to find anyway, has Kurt said.
1918–1920 Corte sconta detta Arcana (black and white 1974–1975), better known under its French title Corto Maltese en Sibérie; in English as Corto Maltese in Siberia
1921 (Italian) Favola di Venezia – Sirat Al-Bunduqiyyah (black and white 1977; colour 1984), in French as Fable de Venise, in English as Fable of Venice
1921–1922 (French/Italian) La maison dorée de Samarkand/La Casa Dorata di Samarcanda (published simultaneously in France and Italy, black and white 1980, colour 1992); in English as The Golden House of Samarkand
Magnus is going to be hard, but all the Unknown books and Milady in 3000 are great – the rest are… quirky. There is what is largely considered his masterpiece, a special edition of Tex which took him eight years to complete – the story unfortunately is not up to the art.
I intensely dislike Manara but he did some good stuff earlier on.
I personally love the art of Giogio Cavazzano, especially his collaboration with Tiziano Sclavi in Altai & Jonson, which had a completely off-the-wall surreal humor.
While researching this I have found traces of all the magazines I bought faithfully for so long – L’Eternauta, Comic Art, Il Mago, Orient Express, and even Corto Maltese (the magazine). Have a look at the covers of Orient Express and understand my longing for those happy times: http://www.slumberland.it/contenuto.php?id=11016
Also, my collection of Blue, a monthly magazine of, well, blue comics, has assured me a long series of eagerly volunteers cat- and house-sitters in my house in Padua. That was where I think I read Wolinski and Pichard’s Paulette.
But it wasn’t comics that turned me kinky, honest guv.
Milo Manara, yes, used to read those. Click, The Hidden Camera and whatever the rest were named. Couldn’t stand Paulette really, something with the artwork.
I guess I will have to pull down my collection of Corto Maltese and give them another chance. Weirdly enough, all these international comics sold in edition of around 2000 copies, regardless of artists or title. It was always the same people buying everything they could find. :/
And at last I got the answer from where our publisher found all the good comics. Orient Express seem to have been a copy for what was published in sweden in magazines like Epix and Casablanca.
Orient Express was really good. Mind you, for a time around 1984 in Italy I was buying, every month,
1. Eternauta
2. Comic Art
3. Orient Express
4. Corto Maltese
5. Dylan Dog (or maybe that was later?)
6. Four weekly numbers of Lancio Story (which had one or two good things and a lot of dreck)
7. Four weekly numbers of Skorpio (ditto).
8. Metal Hurlant when I could find it.
I think Il Mago, Orient Express and Comic Art did not overlap, and Blue was probably later, because I don’t remember wondering if they would sell it to me, and it must have been over 18.
Those weren’t cheap and it was basically were all of my pocket money went.
We had Dylan Dog for a while in sweden. End of 80s if I remember correctly. Only bought a few copies. It is kind of hard to map swedish titles to english, italian or what not. For individual artists or works it can be done. For magazines more or less impossible. Apart from Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal/Tung Metall and whatever it is named in different countries.
ooo, thanks!
off to exercise my google-fu.
@ LunarG re: The Knife of Never Letting Go
Just the premise was enough to sell me on the Ness: The book opens with a boy stomping through the woods on an Earth like planet, as he tries to get away from the Noise (every vocalized and unvocalized thought that pretty much every living creature gives off), except women. Because, for some reason, just about 15 years ago, all the women died/vanished/its not clear.
And he runs into a crashed space ship. The only survivor is a girl, about his age, and she doesn’t make Noise.
It’s a complete trilogy, the follow up books go in a totally different direction than I was expecting.
Ness is brutal with his characters, and I was genuinely devestated at the end of every book, though the final book is not at all nihilistic/hopeless. (I think my reaction was basically, “Oh, thank God.”)