Monthly Archives: February 2008

TAFF Tally Five Star Final

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Fans learned weeks ago that voters picked Chris Garcia to be the 2008 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate. Now the administrators, Suzle Tompkins and Bridget Bradshaw, have released the final voting tallies and a brief financial report.

The final ballot count increased to 180 because the administrators discovered more valid ballots after they originally announced a total of 174. The correct count includes 126 ballots from North America and 54 from Europe. A list of the voters, and a regional breakdown of where votes came from and who they went to, can be found in the latest TAFF report at http://taff.org.uk/.  

The unofficial TAFF site also has Chris Garcia’s preliminary itinerary: “He reports that so far he is: arriving on the 15th [March] and leaving on the 30th; traveling to various parts of the UK including Croydon on the 15th/16th, North London for the 17th/18th, and then to Eastercon. After the con, he is planning to visit folks in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.”

Chris Garcia has been sent $2,000 to work with and there still remains $7,982.23 in TAFF’s North American bank account, Suzle says in the report. Presumably there are also funds in the UK.

The delightful TAFF logo by Anne Stokes sparkles in the color version of the report. It has a counterpart in Alan White’s Down Under Fan Fund logo. How did the two funds manage so long without these distinctive signatures?

Be on the Lookout for a Chocolate-Covered Manhole Cover

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After almost 40 years there’s something new to say about a chocolate-covered manhole cover. It’s missing.

Tom Digby, the wildly inventive fanhumorist, originated the line Larry Niven used as the title of his popular story, “What Can You Say About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers?” Tuckerized members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society are featured in a romp that starts with a fictionalized account of the 1968 party where Bruce Pelz and Dian (now Crayne) celebrated the finality of their divorce. (Yes, there really was a cake with a little bride and groom on top facing in opposite directions.) During the story “Tom Findlay,” the character based on Digby, was revealed to be an alien — and to this day LASFSians haven’t entirely ruled out that explanation.

LASFS holds a gift exchange during the Christmas season. It’s always leavened with gag gifts. I got the Flatbed Mimeo one year. I still have on my bookshelf one of the infinite copies of Zotz! that cycled through the exchange.

Another traditional gag gift I held for a year was the genuine chocolate-covered manhole cover. The real-life version was made by chocolate-coating a pancake-sized steel lid from a natural gas main, rather than a full-sized manhole cover. The winner is supposed to stash it in his or her freezer til they can put it into the next year’s exchange.

Except, it never appeared in the 2007 gift exchange. “This is like the swallows deciding not to visit Capistrano this year,” wrote Milt Stevens in his appeal to readers of the LASFS newzine De Profundis. “It’s very disturbing. Several fans are going to have anxiety attacks if it doesn’t return. So check the clutter around your residence pod just in case you have the Chocolate Covered Manhole Cover. If you do, please give it back.”

People Are Too Smart to Fall for That

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Cancel the Information Age! A UKTV survey of 3,000 people reveals that 23 percent think World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. And despite the many hours devoted to him on the History Channel, 47 percent believe Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

In Stewart Robb’s satirical “Letter from a Higher Critic” (Analog, November 1966), intellectuals scoff at the notion World War II actually occurred. Arguing that the leaders are merely archetypes whose names, like de Gaulle (“of Gaul”, which is France) and Churchill (“The Church on the Hill”, symbol of old England) are obvious inventions, a scholar makes it all sound as improbable as Homer’s Trojan War. (The very kind of assumption Robb was targeting.)

As a teenaged reader, I considered it perfectly likely that the future would misunderstand the 20th Century to that degree. But I never expected to be living in that future.

A Brand New Mistake

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Once upon a Worldcon Tony Lewis was a panelist at the Spanish Inquisition, there to field questions from the audience about a Boston bid that heavily touted its conrunning experience. A campaign like that can cut either way unless it is handled with the ingenuity and humor Tony displayed. After insisting experience would keep them from repeating the mistakes of the past, he promised with a smile: “We will make only brand new mistakes that no one has ever made before.”

It’s not easy for a Worldcon to make a mistake no one has ever made before. But Mike Kennedy, editor of the Huntsville clubzine The NASFA Shuttle, discovered a brand new one made on the Anticipation web site.

Mike originally printed comments about the long distance between the Montreal Worldcon’s convention center and its main hotel, because the 2009 Worldcon’s web site linked to the Delta Montreal. Mike learned afterwards:

“In fact, the main hotel is the Delta Centre-Ville – a different hotel in the same chain. The Montreal Worldcon web site at that time had the correct name of the hotel, but a web link to the wrong hotel. Once your editor discovered the error, the con was informed and their web site quickly fixed.”

A Salute to Tim Kirk

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How good a fanartist is Tim Kirk? So good that in the 1970s he won five Hugos during the greatest era in the history of fan art, running against a field including George Barr, Alicia Austin, Steven Fabian, Bill Rotsler, Grant Canfield, Steve Stiles, ATom and others.

Tim drew the signature Geis-and-Alter-Ego logo that ran above the editorials in Science Fiction Review, the dominant fanzine of the late 60s/early 70s. He did lots of terrific fanzine covers. With paint and canvas he brought vividly to life all kinds of rumpled gnomes and alien creatures, including  “Mugg from Thugg.”

Tim made a huge splash at the 1972 Westercon art show with a display of 26 Tolkien-themed paintings he’d done for his thesis project while earning a Master’s degree in Illustration from California State University, Long Beach. Thirteen of the paintings were selected for publication by Ballantine Books as the 1975 Tolkien Calendar.

Tim’s stunning entries in other art shows included vast pen-and-ink drawings that were busier than any scene by Hieronymous Bosch and infinitely more entertaining. Whenever they could, the Nivens would top all bidders at auction and take these drawings home to make them centerpieces on the living room walls. This was lucky for visitors to the Nivens’ after-LASFS poker games, like me. Once I gambled away my $5 limit I had plenty of time to study in detail all the lore Tim stuffed in every corner of Merlin’s workshop and other pictures til my ride was ready to leave.

Fandom still had a bit of an inferiority complex in those days about the mainstream’s disrespect of anyone with an interest in sf and fantasy, so when Hallmark Cards hired Tim some of us felt a little bit vindicated to see a talented artist rise from our midst and apply his abilities to products everyone in America used. Tim was with Hallmark from 1973 to 1980, doing progressively more professional art and, as seemed logical at the time, fading out of the fanzine scene altogether.

As it happened, Tim soon leaped from one pinnacle of success to another. From 1980 to 2001 he was employed as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, and was instrumental in the conception and realization of several major theme park projects, including the Disney-MGM Studios in Florida, and Tokyo DisneySea, which debuted in September 2001. In 2002 he, along with his brother and sister-in-law (also Disney veterans) founded Kirk Design Incorporated, specializing in museum, restaurant, retail and theme park work.

Their firm was responsible for the conceptual design of Seattle’s new  Science Fiction Museum, exhibiting some of Paul Allen’s vast collection, which opened in 2004. Tim also serves on the Science Fiction Museum Advisory Board.

Tim’s work on SFM led to renewed visibility in fannish circles. He was at the 2003 Westercon during Greg Bear’s SFM presentation making illustrated notes on an easel. In 2004, he contributed a highly interesting autobiographical essay to Guy Lillian’s Challenger, accompanied by a beautiful portfolio of his classic pen-and-ink drawings.

Since then Tim has been guest of honor at ConDor XIV (2007), the local San Diego convention, where Jerry Shaw photographed him at the masquerade showing off the souvenir tile they gave him.

It’s a great thing when a fannish giant proves you can come home again!

Steve & Sue Francis Win DUFF

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Steve and Sue Francis of Louisville are winners of the Down Under Fan Fund and will travel to the Australian National Convention. Administrators Joe Siclari and Norman Cates tallied 218 ballots.

Votes for Sue & Steve Francis: 163

Votes for Murray Moore: 48

No Preference: 2

Other: 5

 

Two people received 3rd place write-in nominations: Andy Hooper & Dick Spelman.

Greg McMullan (1963-2008)

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Greg McMullan died in a fire at his Central Virginia home on January 28. He is survived by Maya, his wife of seven years, and his stepdaughter Faeryn, who both were out of the house at the time. McMullan was a popular member of the filk community, which has rallied around Maya and is collecting donations to help her recover from losing nearly everything in the tragedy.

 

 

Update 12/5/2008: Corrected location of home, per Maya’s comment.

Frank Hamilton, Pulp Artist (1918-2008)

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Andrew Porter reports that pulp artist  Frank Hamilton, 89, whose work appeared in many pulp-related books and zines starting in the 1980s, died of cancer on January 28 in Gloucester, MA. Hamilton painted numerous recreations of classic “Shadow” and “Doc Savage” pulp magazine covers, as well as original works, and was co-author with Link Hullar of Amazing Pulp Heroes: A Celebration of the Glorious Pulp Magazines (1989). He was most noted for his b&w stippled effect drawings.