Monthly Archives: March 2009

John Brooks Passes Away

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St. Louis fan John Brooks died on March 15 while in the hospital with a heart valve infection. Ken Keller wrote for Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol:

“I’d guesstimate he was in his mid-to-late fifties… John and I shared a mutual love and interest in aviation (he was retired from McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis), in science fiction & SF fandom, as well as in scale modeling. When Terry and I moved to St. Louis in early 1991 for nearly seven years, it was John who introduced me into the local Gateway Chapter of the International Plastic Modeler’s Society, of which he had been a founding member. He and I both worked on the 1991 IPMS National Convention (scale modeling’s Worldcon) in St. Louis that summer. But I actually first met John just prior to the very first Archon waaay back in summer of 1977. He was part of the revived and reborn (and very eager) St. Louis fandom that had emerged following its exposure to Kansas City’s 1976 Worldcon, MidAmeriCon. He was one of St. Louis fandom’s movers-and shakers in that era and during the ’80s. He was a past chair of Archon and years later served as its Fan Guest of Honor.

“Unfortunately, I lost contact with John after we moved back to Kansas City in the fall of 1997. But during the last Archon Terry and I attended back in ’98,  John and I did have a chance to get caught up on All The Latest. Those memories will now have to be my last of him, sad to say.”

David Klaus adds, “His younger brothers Michael and David Brooks were also active in the local club as well.”

[Via Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol and David Klaus.]

2009 FAAn Award Winners

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The 2009 Fanzine Activity Achievement (FAAn) Award winners were announced during the Corflu Zed banquet on March 15. The winners are:

Best Fanzine: eI, edited by Earl Kemp
Best Fan Writer: Bruce Gillespie
Best Fan Artist: Dan Steffan
Best Letterhack: Lloyd Penney
Best Online Fanac Site: eFanzines.com
Best New Fanzine Fan: (tie) Jean Martin (SF/SF) and Kat Templeton (retstak.org)

Awards administrator Hal O’Brien said 36 ballots were cast. A beautiful award plaque designed by Ulrika O’Brien was given to the winners: when a photo is posted online I will add a link.

Update 3/16/2009: Filled in the Best New Fanzine Fan winners, courtesy of Peter Sullivan. Update 3/17/2009: Corrected title of SF/SF.

Comic Con Memberships Going, Going…

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San Diego Comic Con International has already sold out its 4-Day, full conference memberships, wrote Craig Miller on the Smofs list. Daily membership for all days (July 23-26) remain plentifully available — for example, just 25% of Saturday dailies are gone. But he logically points out that demand for dailies should now accelerate.

Ackerman Tributes to Air

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John King Tarpinian passes the word: “KPCC’s Off Ramp program just did a nice piece on Forry’s memorial service. It will be repeated at 7 p.m. Sunday night (89.3 FM) [March 15] or available for download from their website on Monday: http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/

“They also linked a nice YouTube interview from 1986: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesPyGX9o5c.”

The Corflu Comes Up Like Thunder

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Fans this morning are coming by twos and threes into Tully’s, the coffee counter in the hotel. In another part of the country a careless person could explain that it’s kind of like Starbucks, but never in coffee-conscious Seattle with its rival chains. That’d be a little like saying wearing blue is the same as wearing red in parts of LA…

Another quick note about opening day: Andy Hooper’s inspiration for Friday night’s 10 p.m. program was to have an array of fans read aloud excerpts of Corflu reports from over the years. There may have been about 25 pieces, with John D. Berry reading aloud Hooper’s connective tissue and perhaps eight others performing the quotes.

As Hooper said, the material ought to provide some of the entertainment, and the juxtaposition of speakers and fanwriters should supply the rest. He was right about that.

Sandra Bond has a flair for reading conreports aloud, sounding easy and yet striking the right emphasis where needed. Chris Garcia’s enthusiasm was infectious, as always. Claire Brialey enjoyed some of the humorous readings quite a bit, but never went so far as to crack herself up. I got to read a bit of Ted White’s account of the dread which some felt before the 2001 Corflu — finding it impossible to actually mimic Ted and equally impossible not to try. The triumphant matching of material and reader was a British conreport with a Jersey accent. Not the Isle of Jersey, either.

Corflu Zed Begins

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Randy Byers in a red fez greeted all the fans filling the banquet room at Corflu Zed. After he identified himself as chair, thanked a list of the people making it all possible, he then went right to the one ceremony needed to launch the convention — drawing the name of the guest of honor from a hat.

First, Andy Hooper asked the rhetorical question, “When did being Corflu’s guest of honor become compulsory?” He said Frank Lunney had originated the practice of paying $20 to have one’s name removed from the hat, taking away any risk of being drafted to give a GoH speech at the Sunday banquet. And between Andy and Ted White, everyone present heard the legend of how drafting began. Now, however, Andy proposed a new “tradition” — of allowing somebody to say “no” if his or her name was drawn. Despite Corflu’s culture of adhering to fannish tradition, there was immediate acceptance of the idea. And immediate practice.

The first fan to have her name drawn declined. No problem. Next out of the hat was Bill Burns — but he said he had only one speech in him, which he did not want to upstage as he needs to deliver it when he’s a GoH at Eastercon. Elinor Busby’s name was the final one drawn, and we expect to hear from her at the banquet.

Maybe I will talk to Andy about my idea of merging several of these traditions: if someone is picked who is reluctant to do a speech, let them enlist one or more paladins to do the duty in their stead. A rebirth of fannish chivalry is sure to follow.

Snapshots XX

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Ten developments of interest to fans:

(1) Hear, hear! SFFaudio asks an excellent question: Where are are the Charles Stross audiobooks?

Seriously, the guy is super talented. There have only been three commercially released Charlie Stross audiobooks (all from Infinivox). The were terrific, but they’re not enough.

If Saturn’s Children and Halting State were available as audiobooks they’d shoot up to the top of my listening stack.

(2) The Los Angeles Times says a new Mark Twain collection is on the way, with no love for Jane Austen:

“Who Is Mark Twain?” is due to hit shelves next month. It’s the first collection of Mark Twain’s unpublished short works and will include both fiction and nonfiction. In one essay, he wonders if Jane Austen’s intent is to “make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters?”

(3) Coming soon: a new Card trilogy:

Simon Pulse senior editor Anica Rissi has acquired world English rights to the first three books in a new fantasy series by Orson Scott Card written specifically for a YA audience; Barbara Bova of the Barbara Bova Literary Agency made the sale.

(4) Do you study Google Analytics’ map of the hits on your blog? The other day File 770 got a hit from Gabarone, Botswana, the locale of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. Spammers beware! Precious Ramotswe reads my blog.

(5) The Virginia legislature has declared June 27, 2009 to be Will F. Jenkins Day. Steven H. Silver is soliciting reminiscences about Murray Leinster/Will F. Jenkins, or pieces talking about how he/his writing has influenced writers and fans, for a memory book that will be presented to Jenkins’ family. Written pieces or photos of Jenkins/Leinster for inclusion should be sent to Steven at [email protected] no later than May 31.

(6) Alexis Gilliland’s website is up and running. Lee Gilliland announces, “We are slowly adding cartoons (we have an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 total to post) and we also now have a forum.” It’s quite nicely designed.

(7) The fastest growing category in the iTunes App Store is: books. O’Reilly Radar explains:

Granted releasing an e-book for the iPhone is a lot easier than writing a gaming application using the iPhone SDK. Roughly 6 out 10 of the Books on the app store sell for 99 cents or less, and 1 in 20 are free.

(8) Laurraine Tutihasi’s Feline Mewsings #35 can now be downloaded at http://homepage.mac.com/laurraine/Felinemewsings/index.html.

(9) Have you already heard about the Dalek found in an English pond?

I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up right in front of me. It must have been down there for some time because it was covered in mould and water weed, and had quite a bit of damage. One of the dome lights was smashed, but the eye-stalk was intact and the head and neck stayed in one piece as I carefully lifted it out.

(10) Guy Gavriel Kay’s piece for the Toronto Globe and Mail tries to make sense of readers’ intrusive demands on writers who blog:

These days, writers invite personal involvement and intensity from their readers. In direct proportion to the way in which they share their personalities (or for- consumption personalities), their everyday lives, their football teams and word counts, their partners and children and cats, it encourages in readers a sense of personal connection and access, and thus an entitlement to comment, complain, recommend cat food, feel betrayed, shriek invective, issue demands: ‘George, lose weight, dammit!'”

[Thanks to Francis Hamit, Andrew Porter, Steven Silver, David Klaus and John Mansfield for the links included in this story.]

Faster Than a Speeding Star Wars Collector

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David Klaus sends along a Seattle Times story “Speeding driver tells State Patrol he was rushing to bid on eBay”:

So maybe it’s not an exact case of life imitating art, but a Fall City man may have been channeling the character played by Steve Carrell in the 2005 film, “The 40 Year Old Virgin.”

When cops pulled the fan over for exceeding the speed limit, they saw that his car was stuffed with Star Wars memorabilia. 

David aptly says, “Some jokes just write themselves.”

Randy Bathurst’s Death
Reported in Newsweek

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Randy Bathurst, a popular fanartist in the Seventies, died of a heart attack on January 10. Someone who knew about it from Mike Glicksohn added Randy’s name to a fannish memorial list weeks ago. I tried to Google a public death notice, unsuccessfully, and have been looking for more details.

I did not expect to discover them in the pages of Newsweek. An article in the March 16 issue on discount funerals, “Where Death Comes Cheap,” begins:

On Jan. 10, Diane and Randy Bathurst were having breakfast when Randy began to feel ill. He excused himself to lie down, and a moment later Diane heard a thud.

The rest of the sad story is in the first paragraph.

Bathurst was a prolific cartoonist who contributed to a lot of fanzines, including the first issue of File 770. Yet he is best remembered for a particular three-dimensional creation: the bheer can cranking a mimeograph on top of the original FAAn Awards.