Monthly Archives: July 2009

Latest Bradbury Production Reviewed

Posted on by

The Fremont Centre Theatre’s production of Ray Bradbury’s Yestermorrows received favorable ink at an LA online news site. For example, reviewer Candyce Columbus said of the third act:

Presented for the first time on stage The Meadow was originally written for talented and treasured actor James Whitmore some 50 years ago. Michael Prichard (most recently seen as Captain Beatty in the highly successful production of Fahrenheit 451) was compelling as Night Watchman Smith who yearns to save the “entire world” of a motion picture studio destined for destruction. Especially delightful was Studio Chief Douglas as Steven Robert Wollenberg who makes a detour on his way to a dinner party to deal with the errant Smith and gets drawn into the night watchman’s quest.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the link.]

George Clayton Johnson’s
80th Birthday Bash

Posted on by

 George Clayton Johnson with his 80th birthday cake Pete Atkins and Dennis Etchison outside Mystery & Imagination Bookstore Marc Zicree signs George Clayton Johnson’s 80th birthday card

By John King Tarpinian: The 80th Birthday Party for George Clayton Johnson at Mystery & Imagination Bookstore on July 11 went off very well. I stopped counting at 53 people in attendance, one person reported to me that she had counted 70. The party lasted about four hours.  Fans and old friends brought gifts. Stories were exchanged, there was an ‘open mic’ where people got to tell stories about George. (Google Café Frankenstein in Laguna Beach if you wish to know about the naked lady and the arrest) Purely by coincidence, during the middle of George talking about how Ray Bradbury was his mentor he got a call from Ray to wish him a happy birthday. George was told by Ray to start back up writing short stories, George said “Yes sir.”

Snapshots 27
Outs in a Baseball Game

Posted on by

Here are eight developments of interest to fans.

(1) Downfall, a 2004 movie about Adolf Hitler’s last 12 days, has spawned a whole genre of YouTube parody videos that change the English subtitles under Hitler’s German-language tirade after his generals inform him he has lost the war. One that every fanzine editor will relate to is Hitler Subtitler Gets a Cheap Font CD.

(2) I enjoyed Russell Seitz’ letter in Foreign Affairs about failed predictive models, facetiously captioned “The Next Top Model?”

(3) Gauntlet Press has posted these photos of the Horror Writers Association Stokers Award Weekend 2009.

(4) A comic strip character, amazed to see Kirk given command of the Enterprise at the end of the new Star Trek movie, scoffs, “I wonder what the first mission with Captain ‘No-Starfleet-Experience-Whatsoever’ would be like?”

(5) “Where in London can one purchase plutonium? At the Helios Homeopathy shop“:

I went to Covent Garden and went into the shop and said, ‘Please, may I have some plutonium.’ And the lady behind the counter said, ‘I shall fetch the chemist.’

(6) One Hemingway-esque fisherman knew what to do when he caught a test missle off the Florida coast:

Fisherman Rodney Salomon hooked the missile about 50 miles off the Panhandle town of Panama City and then kept it on his boat, the Broad Venture, for ten days. Salomon hoped to keep it as a souvenir, but took precautions because he didn’t know if it was live. “I had it secure. I keep it cool,” he said, adding that he packed it with ice.

Sounds like he’d already consumed the large number of beers such a big ice chest might hold.

David Klaus also comments, “You have to wonder about the intelligence of someone who caught something like this and didn’t immediately radio the Coast Guard for assistance.  The damned thing could have blown up while on his boat.”

(7) Does Europa have tranquil seas of H2O trapped under deep ice, as some scientists believe, or violent oceans thrown about by the immense gravity of Jupiter?

[Robert] Tyler’s model, however, has those massive gravitational forces acting on the oceans directly.  The result is truly titanic tides, waves so gigantic they make the Titanic itself look like a speck of sand.  His models put the minimum kinetic energy of the flow at seven point three exaJoules.  In the standard unit for ridiculous amounts of energy, that’s one hundred thousand times the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or 100 kilo LittleBoys.

(8) Gary Farber had an amusing exchange with Roger Ebert about early sf magazines.

[Thanks to David Klaus, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter and Gary Farber for contributing the links in this post.]

Happy Birthday, Twilight Zone Writers!

Posted on by

George Clayton Johnson and Earl Hamner, Jr. not only have in common the fame of having written memorable scripts for television’s The Twilight Zone, they also share a July 10 birthday. Best wishes to them both!

The Twilight Zone episodes written or co-written by George Clayton Johnson are “The Four of Us Are Dying” (1960), “Execution” (1960), “A Penny for Your Thoughts” (1961), “The Prime Mover” (1961), “A Game of Pool” (1961), “Nothing in the Dark” (1962), “Kick the Can” (1962), “Ninety Years Without Slumbering” (1963), and “A Game of Pool” (1989).

Earl Hamner, Jr.s Twilight Zone credits are “The Hunt” (1962), “A Piano in the House” (1962), “Jess-Belle” (1963), “Ring-a-Ding Girl“, (1963), “You Drive” (1964), “Black Leather Jackets” (1964), “Stopover in a Quiet Town” (1964), “The Bewitchin’ Pool” (1964)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Brave Old Words

Posted on by

It’s the time of year when the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s editors tell the world what “new words” have been added since the last edition. (Note: Some of these words appear in the wire service story, but not on the Merriam-Webster Dictionary webpage.)

The editors really like to make sure a “new” word has sticking power before dignifying it with an entry in their pages. Half a century is not too long to test a newcomer. Or even longer.

Consider “new” entry fan fiction, defined as “stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet.” It dates back to World War II and has just now been added.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry says “fan fiction” originated in 1944. It doesn’t identify the source of the date, which would be interesting to know because the science fiction field can document even earlier usages. Brave New Words cites an example by Bob Tucker from a 1939 issue of Le Zombie.

However, Tucker used it as an implied contrast with pro fiction, which is not the meaning that’s brought the term into common usage. Brave New Words‘ earliest example of that meaning (stories using popular characters) is from Star Trek Lives! in 1975. I wonder which meaning was intended in the Merriam-Webster staff’s 1944 example?

Another “new” dictionary entry that should resonate with science fiction fans is “flash mob”, dated to 1987 and defined as “a group of people summoned (as by e-mail or text message) to a designated location at a specified time to perform an indicated action before dispersing.” Fans know Larry Niven coined essentially the same term in his 1973 story “Flash Crowd” to describe a side-effect of the worldwide system of teleport booths.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

2009 Endeavour Award Finalists

Posted on by

Three novels and two short story collections are finalists for the 2009 Endeavour Award, given to distinguished sf and fantasy by Pacific Northwest authors.

The finalists for 2009 are: Anathem by Seattle, WA, writer Neal Stephenson; Ill Met in the Arena by Dave Duncan, who lives in Victoria, BC; Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Stories by Ranier, OR, writer Ken Scholes, Space Magic by David Levine of Portland, OR; and A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon, of Wenatchee, WA.

Judges Joe Haldeman, John Helfers, and Sarah Zettel will select the winner, who will be announced November 27 at OryCon. A $1,000 honorarium accompanies the award.

See the full press release after the jump.

Continue reading →

2011 Worldcon Site Selection
Mail-in Ballots Due by 7/15

Posted on by

Worldcon site selection ballots can be taken in person or carried by another to file at Anticipation, or mailed. Mail-in ballots must be received by the July 15 deadline.

Voters must be members of Anticipation, and buy a voting membership in the 2011 Worldcon (which automatically becomes a Supporting Membership in the con.)

Reno is the only bid to have formally filed, and the bidders, urging a higher turnout, are reminding fans of a potential savings if they vote in site selection:

Additionally, if you vote, you can convert your Supporting Membership to an Attending Membership for no more than $90, for at least three months after Anticipation.

New Bradbury Stage Production

Posted on by

Ray Bradbury's Yestermorrows 

Ray Bradbury’s Yestermorrows opens July 10 at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena, CA. The suite of stories includes two theatrical classics and  one presented on stage for the very first time:

The new story is “The Meadow.” The elderly night watchman at a motion picture studio lot finds himself with a great responsibility: He is the protector of the entire world. There are those who would come to destroy, and the old man must summon all his wit and intelligence to dissuade them from their grim task.

For classic chills on a warm summer night: “Cistern” is the story of a young couple in love. They’re undead and “live” in the cistern that runs underneath the city.

“A Device Out of Time” is a tale in which youngsters discover the secrets of time travel and, while they still can, visit the sights and sounds of decades past.

The play will run on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from July 11 through August 29. The Fremont Centre Theatre is located at 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena, CA 91030. A little bird tells me that Bradbury usually attends Saturday evening (except during Comic-Con.)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]