Monthly Archives: March 2009

Ackerman’s Egyptian Tribute

Posted on by

John King Tarpinian was on hand when fans and celebrities honored the late Forry Ackerman at the Egyptian Theater on Sunday, March 8:

The Egyptian Theatre was full to capacity, 700 plus seats. There were no empty seats and there were people who did not get in. The testimonials were very nice, respectful, heartfelt and funny. I am very bad at names but here are a few of interest. Ray Bradbury gave the opening tribute (to the only standing ovation of a guest), followed by John Landis who read tributes from Stephen King and Ray Harryhausen along with his own. Joe Dante and Guillermo Del Toro also gave lovely tributes. Del Toro said he learned English by reading copies of Famous Monsters and Mad Magazine with the help of a dictionary. All four gave the audience their personal stories about how and when they first met Uncle Forry. Del Toro flew in from New Zealand just for the day so he could share his love for Forry.

Since it was known that Forry was going to pass away, they had filmed a final farewell from Forry…as a floating head. His last words were “SCI-FI.” A perfect ending for such a kind and gentle soul.

As an aside, my “job” at the event was to keep the oddballs away from Ray. Never having met Del Toro I almost kept him away from Ray because he looked more like a crazed fan from the general public. Ill-fitting clothing two months past the need for a haircut, etc. Luckily John Landis came up right behind him. Saved me embarrassment. (Del Toro is excused since he had just gotten off a plane from New Zealand: he is directing some silly movie called The Hobbit.)

The lady that spoke the first words from Dracula, now 99 years old, Carla Laemmle was sitting just behind Ray. Also, Ann Robinson from the good version of War of the Worlds, was there.

I did not stay for the movie tributes but am told the documentary was brilliant.

There’ll be pictures posted here in a few days.

Levine’s “Homebrew Gravitics” at Reno in 2011

Posted on by

Award-winning writer David Levine’s short story “At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco’s Homebrew Gravitics Club” has been posted on the Reno in 2011 bid website, giving everyone a new reason to visit. Patty Wells announced online:

We have been using articles, and now a story, in our New Frontiers section to help push our thinking on what are the new frontiers, but also to add in some of the content we always wished would show up on websites. A story by David Levine always falls into this category, as do the other material we’ve run, and we thank our contributors.

Benefit For Fans Caught in Montecito Fire

Posted on by

Carla and Lance Hoffman, two Santa Barbara fans, escaped last November’s Montecito fire with their lives though both suffered serious burns. They were hospitalized for over a month before being able to visit together. Now they have made such progress that doctors cleared them to attend Wondercon in San Francisco late in February.

On Sunday, March 15 area firefighters and law enforcement departments will raise funds to assist the Hoffman’s at a free community concert featuring Dishwalla, The Upbeat, Dominic Balli, Still Time:

In coordinated efforts with Santa Barbara City Fire, Santa Barbara County Fire, Montecito Fire, Carpentaria/Summerland Fire, US Forest Service, Cal Fire, CHP, Santa Barbara Police, Santa Barbara County Sheriff, Santa Barbara County Search & Rescue, and Equine Evac the community is encouraged to come together to celebrate the lives of Lance & Carla Hoffman and help assist their road to recovery. Every department will be on site to support this event in raising funds for the Hoffman’s. Their finest equipment will be brought in to the Earl Warren Showground parking lot for display, giving families and the community the opportunity to express thanks for their efforts. Lance Hoffman’s grandfather was a Santa Barbara City Fireman.

Casting to Type

Posted on by

Harlan Ellison

The Classic Typewriter Page has a list matching authors with their favorite typewriters. Now I know that Harlan Ellison and Philip K. Dick favored exactly the same model of typewriter.

Other sf/f authors listed are Isaac Asimov, L. Frank Baum, and Rod Serling, Kurt Vonnegut, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, James Thurber, George Orwell, Stanislaw Lem, L. Ron Hubbard and David Gerrold.

Where Another Real Writer Worked

Posted on by

Diana stayed at The Kilns, C.S. Lewis’s home, when she visited Oxford in February. Her photo of Lewis’s desk, taken in the wintry daylight pouring through the window of the common room, has been posted on the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s blog together with a poem it inspired Malcolm Guite to quote.

This desk is one of the places where Lewis wrote the Narnia books. You can see how cluttered it is with artifacts, preserving the way his work space actually looked.

That’s why the photo reminded me of – and genuinely belongs to — that set of pictures of well-known writers’ messy offices I collected in “Where Real Writers Work.”

Belle Keeps Ringing Up Sales

Posted on by

Hamit at Clovis conference

Are Civil War books immune from what’s ailing the economy? Francis Hamit hopes so, and the trend so far is in his favor. The latest favorable review of The Shenandoah Spy can only help.

Charlize Theron, call your agent.  In The Shenandoah Spy, Francis Hamit has cast into brilliant light a character from history any actress would kill to play—Belle Boyd, the first American female Army officer, who, beginning in her late teens, served as a spy for the Confederacy.

If you’re strongly interested in Civil War talk, you’ll enjoy the podcast of Hamit’s appearance at the West Coast Civil War Roundtable Conference last November in Clovis, CA. The free download is 37 minutes long and 8MB; use this link to Brett Schulte’s Civil War blog.

Hamit’s covering the past, present and future in self-published shorts distributed on Smashwords.

“Why Publishers Use Freelancers” is a nonfiction article about the Tasini case and the Electronic Database Litigation settlement, which Hamit points out “has risen from the dead to appear once more at the U.S. Supreme Court.”

His new novel, Robot Dreams, is available as downloadable episodes, to take advantage of new technology:

Something new I am trying [is] a novel written specifically for cell phones and e-readers, designed to be read in short bites (or is that “bytes”?). The novel itself is about a squad of homicide detectives in a dystopian setting a few decades in the future. In this first episode a new man arrives, except he’s not really a man, or is he? Because of the short length and the experimental nature of the work I am using the “Set your own price” option at Smashwords.com, which means, yes, that can be zero. But naturally I hope it won’t be. Not to pull a Stephen King here or anything, but the pace of delivery on future chapters will be accelerated by the amount of money each previous chapter earns.

I always enjoy Hamit’s fiction, so I’ve already picked up the first installment.

Photo credit: Hal Jespersen.

Robert Quarry, Count Yorga

Posted on by

Actor Robert Quarry, 83, who died February 20th, starred in the title role in Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and sequel The Return of Count Yorga (1971). His other films, all horror, were Deathmaster, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (both 1972), Sugar Hill (1974), Mind Twister (1994), and The Prophet (1999).

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

It’s All in the Elbows

Posted on by

BookViewCafe’s Jennifer Stevenson made the roster of flat-track roller derby’s Haymarket Rioters, farm team of Chicago’s Windy City Rollers. Don’t look for her under her own name, though. Jennifer skates as “Flash Hottie.” Like everyone else in the league, she uses what I might call a nom de roulette.

The BookViewCafe newsletter ran Jennifer’s comments on the way this experience has shaped her writing:

The book I’m working on now is about roller derby, of course. Maybe because I scare the crap out of myself on skates three times a week, I’ve been going for the jugular in this MS more than I used to. The scenes are tighter. The emotion is more intense. My heroine may be more of a drama queen than past heroines, but she’s entitled: her world could end any minute, in every single chapter.    

Update 03/06/2009: You can view BVC’s February newsletter with the complete Stevenson article and a color photo of Flash Hottie if you register free at BookViewCafe.