Monthly Archives: October 2008

Hollywood Calling!

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Have trouble finding opportunities to not get paid for your writing? Media news site SyFyPortal could be looking for you! 

Every once in a while, SyFy Portal and its sister sites like Rabid Doll and TV Plexus open its doors and tries to seek out new writers to join the SyFy Portal staff.

All of our positions are volunteer, but writers have a chance to write about the genre they love, talk to some of their favorite stars, and maybe even make a difference in how their favorite programs are portrayed on TV!

[Thanks to David Klaus for the link.]

Bradbury’s Chrysalis

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John King Tarpinian reports: “Last night there was a preview of The Chrysalis, based on Ray’s short story. I thought the movie would be a very good Sci-Fi channel movie of the week. Ray actually thought that they improved upon his short story.”

Tarpinian has posted his photos on the Ray Bradbury Board.

Tarpinian also reports that the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, on October 10 is showing Something Wicked This Way Comes and, on October 11, a double feature of Moby Dick and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Experts Analyze Sohus Handwrtiting

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David Klaus sends along this link to an August 23 story which I don’t recall posting before. It reports how three experts studied handwriting evidence in the Sohus disappearance case, contributing very little to solving the mystery. They examined a letter and a receipt known to have been written by Linda Sohus prior to her disappearance.

Philadelphia Gothic on Display

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Christopher LoobyThe Library Company gets in the Halloween spirit with its exhibition: “Philadelphia Gothic: Murders, Mysteries, Monsters, and Mayhem Inspire American Fiction, 1798-1854.”

…The Library Company’s new exhibition illuminates Philadelphia’s stunning paradox in the first half of the 19th century. Perhaps the most enlightened, genteel, urbane, and humane of American cities, it spawned a literary tradition of Lurid Crime, Weird Hallucination, and the Brooding Supernatural. By the 1840s, “The Quaker City” had become a byword for sheer horror! This was the work of three largely forgotten Philadelphia novelists: Charles Brockden Brown, Robert Montgomery Bird, and George Lippard. This exhibition resuscitates these writers, through first editions of their major works and oil portraits that have never before been exhibited, and puts them in the company of Edgar Allan Poe, who absorbed their themes and obsessions while he lived in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Gothic tradition in American literature.

To kick-off the six-month exhibition, the Library Company has enlisted UCLA’s Christopher Looby to give a talk, “The Paradox of Philadelphia Gothic,” on October 29 at 5 p.m. It’s free: RSVP to (215) 546-3181 by October 22.

[Via JB Post and Andrew Porter.]

St. Louis SciFest 08

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SciFest 08 posterThe St. Louis Science Center launches SciFest ’08 this week to help people understand and enjoy the role science plays in everyday life. A YouTube video previews the event.

The event’s name, [King] said, has been misleading to some who think it’s a celebration of science fiction. “It’s not science fiction,” [he] said. “It’s even cooler.”

The St. Louis Science Center was originally founded as the Museum of Science and Natural History in 1959. As such, it presumably is the museum whose former Director was the late Donn Brazier, the well-known editor of the fanzine Title. (Remembrances of Donn by Don Ayres and Sheryl Birkhead are on page 12-13 of File 770 #142).

[Link via Isaac Alexander.]

Getting into Gear at Halloween

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Halloween’s approaching, it’s time for the Associated Press to gin up some articles about dressing in costumes. But their coverage of science fiction costuming has an unpredictable twist.

The surprise is not in the article’s choice to discuss a narrow range of examples, or that the first one it picks is the 501st Legion, who parade as Imperial Storm Troopers. What’s unexpected is that the rest of the article is devoted to competition at World Science Fiction Convention masquerades.

The beginning is generic:

Here is how most people make a Darth Vader costume: Go to Wal-Mart, purchase flimsy mask and cape, spend Halloween night breathing funny.

For Mark Fordham, the process is a little more in-depth. Over the course of more than 20 years, this 44-year-old from Provo, Utah, has been slowly piecing together and improving his Vader ensemble, beginning with a simple jumpsuit/vampire cape combo. Today, the outfit weighs more than 40 pounds, and features a real electronic panel with blinking lights and voice mike, a vacuum-molded helmet, and a cape Fordham made himself from $30-a-yard wool crepe.

But later on the reporter interviews Marty Gear, a veteran fan who has presided over several Worldcon masquerades. Gear provides historical perspective and comic relief all at once:

“Costuming is the second oldest tradition in sci-fi fandom,” Gear says. “The first is drinking beer.”

[Via Isaac Alexander and Michael J. Walsh]

Anti-Fan Mail

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A fan named Jason wrote this e-mail to the official Hugo Awards website to voice his deep dissatisfaction with the Best Novel of 2003:

I recently bought a novel by an author I did not know based on the fact that he had won a Hugo award for his science fiction. The novel called Hominids had to be one of the worst books I have ever read, and I will never again purchase a book on the recommendation of the “Hugo Award.” You do yourself and the genre of science fiction a great disservice when you promote such work as legitimate and award worthy.

Please feel free to share my criticism with whomever you feel would benefit from it.

And so I shall. While I have no complaint about Hominids, I still haven’t forgiven the Hugo voters for choosing Bladerunner over E.T. as Best Dramatic Presentation of 1983, so I believe to that extent I feel Jason’s pain.

In my reply, I asked Jason to keep in mind that the Hugos are selected by a popular vote of members of the year’s World Science Fiction Convention. Every book generates its own bell-shaped curve of fans and haters. I rarely agree with all the Hugo winners myself, but I chalk it up to divergent tastes and that darned democracy thing at work again.

Fans’ tastes are highly divergent. I’ve seen blog entries declaring all kinds of Hugo winners unworthy of the award — including Zelazny’s “And Call Me Conrad” and even me, come to think of it.

P.S. to Jason: Feel free to join this year’s convention and become a voter. By all means, air your views about your favorite (and not so favorite) sf. And there’s nothing preventing you from Googling Robert J. Sawyer’s webpage and telling him what you think directly. Just don’t say I sent you.

Chwedyk’s Writing Advice

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Richard Chwedyk, whose short story “Bronte’s Egg” received the Nebula in 2004, is interviewed at Twilight Tales. He gives some interesting advice:

Any advice you’ve been given as a writer that’s either very good, or very out there that you would like to share with us?
Richard: 1. (from me) Never work for a newspaper. 2. (from City News Bureau) Never do a bad job well. 3. (from Ray Bradbury) Don’t think — write. 4. (from Jeff Ford) Just tell the f—ing story! 5. (from me) Trust the story. Stories are smarter than their authors — listen and follow.