Monthly Archives: February 2009

Haffner Press Seeks Hamilton Pre-Orders

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Stephen Haffner of the Haffner Press has moved the launch of The Collected Edmond Hamilton (2 vol.) and The Collected Captain Future to May 1, in time for the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. He says it took a little more time to assemble the last of the ephemera needed to complete the first three volumes, which will go to the printer at the end of February.

A compelling reason to order these three volumes well in advance of publication is that Haffner will throw in a facsimile of Edmond Hamilton’s first “book,” The Metal Giants.” This fragile 40-page rarity was an early mimeograph effort by Jerry Siegel (co-creator of Superman) and was advertised as available in Science Fiction Digest, October 1932.

You know there has to be something to this Captain Future stuff – Bob Tucker ran Leo Margulies’ long letter plugging the Captain’s magazine in a 1939 issue of Le Zombie.

Something else you can order at the Haffner Press site is the $150 signed/slipcased edition of The Worlds of Jack Williamson. There are just 75 copies available of – don’t say you weren’t warned.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Charles Platt Undercover at WalMart

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On the one hand, this article about getting a job at Wal-Mart is highly readable, and is the type of imaginative assignment I wouldn’t hesitate to take if I could get it. On the other hand, it’s by Charles Platt. On the gripping hand, Platt once wrote a letter of comment to File 770, which could never have happened if he confined himself to the loftiest imaginable literary ambitions.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]

Snappy Valentine’s Day

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Snapshots #17 brings you seven developments of interest to fans.

(1) Reminiscences about Forry Ackerman by two fans who knew him for years, Alan White and Bill Mills, are featured on “The Wasted Hour” episode #9, hosted by Arnie Katz and produced and directed by Mills. The ‘cast is available on several sites, including the Las Vegrants website, The Fan Video Network (along with all previous episodes), the BluBrry.com podcasting communites and as an iTunes vidcast.

(2) The Los Angeles Times “Hero Complex Blog” carries an intriguing rumor about attempts to make a Jonny Quest movie:

One of the more intriguing popcorn-movie scripts floating around town right now is Dan Mazeau’s rollicking live-action adaptation of “Jonny Quest,” the savvy and sublime 1960s animated adventure series that felt like “Dr. No” for kids or a post-Sputnik version of “Terry and the Pirates.”

(3) This is as wild a piece of technological art as you would ever want to see. Check out the video of the Corpus Clock in action:

At first glance, it doesn’t look like a clock. There’s the giant fanged insect on top. And instead of hands, it uses glowing blue LEDs to tell the time. Called the Corpus Clock—it’s installed at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, England—the timepiece was designed by John Taylor, an alumnus, clock collector, and lifelong inventor who wanted to blend 18th-century tech with a hypermodern aesthetic. The bug is called a Chronophage, or time-eater, and it’s actually a scarier version of the grasshopper escapement, a 1720s breakthrough that transformed clock making. But in this case the pendulum-driven heart is wedded to a silicon brain, which lets the device do surprisingly un-clocklike things—slow down, stop, even run backward. “I wanted a clock that would play with you,” Taylor says. How steampunkeriffic.

(4) I should verify this with Scott and Jane Dennis, but it sounds like Henry the Eighth only wore what we might today call fannish medium size:

Early in Henry VIII’s reign the Venetian Ambassador described him as “the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on, with an extremely fine calf to his leg . . . and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman.”

Six wives, one Reformation and a lot of feasting later, Henry had become, by the time of his death in 1547, larger than life.

The Royal Armouries show, Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill, will be built around five complete suits of armour from the Tower, the Armouries in Leeds and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as well as incomplete ones. “It will be the one place where you see the king in three dimensions and get an idea of his immense physical presence,” Graeme Rimer, academic director of the Royal Armouries, said. “The armour tells us unequivocally that he was 6ft 1in and that he was pretty enormous but still vigorous at the end of his life.”

(5) Probably not the most romantic Valentine’s Day gift, but you can order a t-shirt captioned “And then Buffy staked Edward.”

(6) Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson are among the star cast announced for the BBC’s new version of sci-fi classic The Day of The Triffids. “No word on who plays any of the triffids, though,” says Andrew Porter.

(7) Nebula Weekend Registration Now Online:

Some of the highlights include: a mixer with the WGA, Chuck Lorre will be the Keynote Speaker, Harry Harrison will receive the Grand Master Award, Janis Ian will be our Toastmistress and much, much more.

[For links included here, thanks to James Hay, Andrew Porter, Arnie Katz and Darlene Marshall.]

I’m On The Back

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Be envious, bloggers! Do you have your own line of designer clothing? Steve Davidson does. The Crotchety Old Fan’s newly-launched collection of “Classic Hugo Award winner” shirts celebrates the winners of science fiction’s most prestigious award from 1946 until 1984 – the cutoff signifying, Steve reminds us, that “Classic” is anything 25 years old or older. The shirts are sold at his online Zazzle store.

Steve gives more details on his blog:

I put together a series of designs, some featuring golden Hugo rockets, some without, and a variety of fannishly related front images – including one that says “I’M ON THE BACK.”  That means that if you’ve won a Hugo Award, you can let people know that you’re on the list, on the back of the t-shirt you’re wearing!

He licensed the rights to use the service-marked Hugo Award and Worldcon names and award imagery from the World Science Fiction Society.

The point of these shirts is to educate fans and support the Worldcon and Hugo Awards… to celebrate the winners and to let everyone know that graying fandom ain’t dead yet! 

And to help Crotchety get to Anticipation, a worthy cause in its own way. I’ll have to get one of these. I never had a Hugo winner shirt before.

Six Time Hugo Loser - Glyer at Chicon IV (1982)

Tessa Dick Talks PKD at SPR

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Tessa and PKD

Self-Publishing Review has a long and informative interview with Tessa Dick, last wife of Philip K. Dick. She has reworked the novel he was beginning at the time of his death in 1982, The Owl in Daylight. 

The Owl in Daylight is my tribute to my husband. I attempted to recreate the masterpiece that he had in mind, even though he left few clues about the story. As with VALIS and other later works, the plot loosely follows his own life. I hope that I have captured the spirit of the Owl as Phil would have written it, if his life had not been cut short by a massive stroke.

Tessa Dick blogs at It’s a Philip K. Dick World.

P.S. The membership badge PKD is wearing shows the photo was taken at L.A.con I in 1972.

[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the link.]

Scalzi Supersizes “Big Idea”

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“Big Idea,” a regular feature on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, has proven so successful that it’s getting a whole new platform of its own, reported GalleyCat on February 11.

BigIdeaAuthors.com will debut April 20, 2009. A preview tells visitors that in these “Big Idea” pieces,

…authors explain in a short essay a major or motivating idea for their latest works.

BigIdeaAuthors.com will use that idea as the cornerstone of an online literary site designed to inform readers about new books, entertain them through author essays, appearances and interviews, and motivate them to buy new books and discuss them with friends and acquaintances.

Of course, the best place to get news about Scalzi is from Scalzi. GalleyCat also interviewed him about the project:

Scalzi was quick to note the decline of book coverage in the mainstream media in recent years. “As an author, that concerns me,” he acknowledged. “As a person who wants to tell people about books, it concerns me… [Newspapers] are cutting back on the things that their readers actually want to see, and it’s stupid.”

The new site’s leadership team is Publisher William Schafer, of Subterranean Press, Executive Editor John Scalzi, and Editor Yanni Kuznia, Director of Production at Subterranean Press.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]

2009 Pulp Fan Conventions

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As reported here last year, a schism in the Pulpcon board led to rival pulp magazine conventions being scheduled for August, both in Ohio — Pulpfest 2009 in Columbus, July 31-August 2, and Pulpcon 38 in Dayton, August 14-16.

Rusty Hevelin and PulpCon’s other top officers remain with the original con, while Mike Chomko and two other former directors have launched Pulpfest.

The two events are already competing for the core interest group, so it can’t help that their dates also bracket the Worldcon in Montreal, August 6-10. Will scheduling cost them a critical number of potential members? Hard to say. Last year’s Pulpcon ran successfully the weekend before Denvention – and really, since the date of the Worldcon has been advancing progressively earlier in the summer, it must be impossible to avoid that conflict without bumping up against the dates of MidWestCon, Dragon*Con or other events that a Midwestern specialty con cannot afford to overlap.

A lot of pulp collectors I know are from the generation that depends on paper more than it does electronic communication. However, fans who care about the quality of internet-based communication will find their decision practically made for them. The Pulpcon 38 site is static and its Registration and Information links are dormant. Pulpfest 2009 has a full-blown convention information website with incredible graphics.

Space Shuttle’s Computer
Is How Many Dog Years Old?

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The Mars Society’s San Diego chapter gives a surprising answer to the question “Does the Space Shuttle’s Computer Really Run on Just One Megabyte of RAM? “

It’s true: The brain of NASA’s primary vehicle has the computational power of an IBM 5150, that ’80s icon that goes for $20 at yard sales.

… Besides, a complete overhaul would be horrendously expensive. The GPC’s oftware would have to be completely reconfigured for a modern computer and tested until proven flawless.

For proof that you shouldn’t fix a space computer if it ain’t broke, consider Russia’s Soyuz space capsule, which since 1974 has been running Argon-16 flight-computer software with just six kilobytes of RAM. In 2003 the Russians rewrote some of the spacecraft’s software, which experts suspect led to its subsequent crash-landing in a desert in Kazakhstan.

[Via Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol]

All Over But the Shouting

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Kevin Standlee of the FOLLE committee points out in a comment that the Ackerman and Ley Hugos were reclassified as Special Awards five years ago, the change first appearing in the Noreascon 4 Souvenir Book. Questions about Ackerman’s estate only surfaced the issue for debate. But Rich Lynch, a fellow member of the FOLLE committee, feared there was decisive resistance to making the correction – which triggered his protest to a fannish listserv.

I really dislike making Kevin the lightning rod for this deal simply because he’s willing to discuss it in public. He’s already corrected the official Hugo Awards site. It’s not even clear he had a hand in the decision: “Honestly, I don’t know who the specific person was who changed it, but the change had stuck and was in the FOLLE records.” Nor do the FOLLE committee reports attached to the minutes of 2004 Worldcon Business Meeting give any details about why changes were made to the Hugos, only those made to Worldcon history are explained.

So I will confine myself to a couple of basic questions. Kevin, you were on the FOLLE committee at the time, didn’t all members know about the changes – how was that work done? Also, it would not have taken five years for this question to come up if FOLLE annotated its work on the Hugo list the way it does the Long List of Worldcons — what would it take to have that done, something which will add transparency and credibility to the work?

The FOLLE committee was created in 2003 at the TorCon 3 business meeting, and its original members (in office when the changes were made) were Mark Olson (Chair), Kevin Standlee, George Flynn, Joe Siclari, Vince Docherty, Rich Lynch and Craig Miller. The committee’s organizers told the TorCon 3 Business Meeting:

[Our] policy is to have the Long List include the version which in our judgment best reflects the facts as understood by the people involved, and to document whatever variations or details we have discovered in the notes. We will respect historical judgments as long as they are not clearly in error, and we will attempt to objectively verify any corrections or notes we add.

I have always admired that vision statement, and the latest revelation concerns me because the result isn’t consistent with the goal.

It’s easy to make an educated guess whose database is perpetuating the change. The FOLLE report in the 2004 WSFS Business Meeting minutes mentions:

We have made huge progress in developing a Long List of Hugos using data supplied by Dave Grubbs and the ISFDB and are now (slowly) working to perfect the entries. (N4 has somewhat diverted the chairman’s attention, but we’ll get back to work…)

The Internet Science Fiction Database still characterizes the Ackerman and Ley Hugos as “Special Awards.” That designation was given to all committee awards on the list published in Noreascon 4’s Souvenir Book (2004), making clear there was a reclassification involved, not just a layout decision.

Can it be that the Long List of Hugo Awards was more accurate before people set out to perfect it?

Before leaving the subject I want to field a couple of questions that hit my e-mail today.

Q: Should I include Slater on the Hugo winners?
I think not. Ackerman was voted the Hugo by the participating membership. Ackerman’s gallant gesture ought not to be confused with an actual legal right to overrule the voters’ choice.

Q: Was Ackerman’s Hugo identical to, say, Alfred Bester’s Hugo?
I can’t say from personal experience. I would expect Ackerman’s Hugo to be identical to the others (or as close as Jack McKnight could produce them) since they made a point of giving his first. But even if it is identical, that wouldn’t by itself decide the conceptual argument of how Ackerman’s award should be classified. For example, Chesley Bonestell’s special committee award was a Hugo rocket — and that’s why the rules were subsequently changed to forbid giving Hugos rockets as committee awards. At the time of the first Hugos there would have been no bar to doing so.

I’ll end by repeating that the most helpful piece of evidence in this debate has been 1953 Worldcon committee member Bob Madle’s confirmation that all the categories were voted on. So there’s no justification for reclassifying Ackerman or Ley.

Ackerman’s Hugo

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Forry Ackerman stopped being the winner of the first Hugo Award again the other day. And not in nearly so nice a way as he did originally.

History records that immediately after he was handed the very first Hugo Award as #1 Fan Personality at the 1953 Worldcon, Ackerman declined it in favor of Ken Slater and abandoned the little rocket-shaped trophy on stage to be forwarded to Britain. This was acknowledged a magnificent gesture by everyone — except Forry’s wife, Wendayne, and about that, more in a moment.

Now Forry has been deprived of his Hugo in a whole new way. Rich Lynch complained to a Southern Fandom listserv on February 9 that The Long List of Hugo Awards was changed to show Ackerman’s #1 Fan Personality honor (and Willy Ley’s for Excellence in Fact Articles, too) as being only Committee Awards. Reportedly, the Formalization of Long List Entries (FOLLE) Committee, a panel of a few fans selected by the Worldcon business meeting to vet its institutional history, has decided for some undisclosed reason that the Ackerman and Ley awards were not voted by the membership, as were other Hugos, just picked by the Philcon committee.

Was the winner of the #1 Fan Personality category determined in the same manner as the pro categories, by ballot, or not? Well, Wendayne Ackerman thought so. Forry’s article says that right after he turned it down “Wendy was furious. She said, ‘What have you done, Forry? You’ve insulted the entire convention! They voted this to you — how could you give it away??'” Harry Warner Jr., seems convinced that all the winners were voted upon because (1) he makes inferences about the unpublished results of the vote (see Wealth of Fable, page 369), and (2) draws no distinction between #1 Fan Personality and the other Hugos. Seeming to clinch the argument, Rich Lynch added to the online discussion that Bob Madle confirms both the Ackerman and Ley Hugos were voted by members.

I opened my copy of Isaac Asimov’s The Hugo Winners Volumes I & II to see whether the Good Doctor shed any light on the subject. He did, but not at the very beginning of Volume I where I expected it. Asimov’s collection of Hugo-winning short fiction only begins in 1955 — for the simple reason that there were no short fiction Hugo awards given in 1953. (Warner speculates that a lack of votes led the committee not to name a winner in some categories.)

The Appendix to Asimov’s Volume I names all the Hugo winners through 1961 based on a list compiled by Ed Wood. Ackerman’s Hugo appears first on that list. Fan historiographers know Ed Wood was a fellow with strong opinions about the subject which he never hesitated to share. Nor should it be overlooked that it was Asimov himself who presided over the 1953 ceremony and personally handed Ackerman the award. That the list in The Hugo Winners names Ackerman without further comment inclines me to treat Wood and Asimov as two more votes in favor of the proposition that what Ackerman won was a Hugo.

It happens that, decades later, Ackerman secured the return of the trophy so it could be added to his collection, having asked Slater whether he had plans for the award when he passed on. It is one of the things remaining in the estate and its fate is still being decided. Lynch seems to think that news somehow led the FOLLE committee to take up the question at this time.

Postscript: Really, the most peculiar thing about this example of FOLLE revisionism is the committee’s failure to fully extrapolate the logical implications of its own idea. (That sound you hear is John W. Campbell, Jr. spinning in his grave). Ackerman’s gesture in declining the first Hugo didn’t prevent a whole succession of editors of the Long List from recording him as its winner, with never a reference to Slater. That is the appropriate decision for a subject determined by vote of the membership because the winner is a computational fact, no matter what the winner does with the hardware. But accepting for discussion’s sake that the committee picked the winner of this award… Well, after Ackerman turned it down the committee did send Slater the award. It’s Slater that the committee gave the #1 Fan Personality trophy to in the end.