Windup Girl cover art
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi made Time Magazine’s list of this year’s 10 best fiction novels, ranked number 9.
Reviewer Lev Grossman hits on everything I admired about as much of the novel as I read. However, I quit in the middle of a graphic description of the title character being sexually abused when I found myself wondering – is this my idea of entertainment? I decided it was not.
[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the link.]
Elvis or Elvish? Pat Wynne, the incredible fanartist and Elvish Linguistic Fellowship scholar, has posted a video of himself singing Tolkien’s Elvish verse “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” to the tune of “O Tannenbaum.”
Facebook friends can see it here. Everyone else can find it on Karen Traphagen’s Boulders 2 Bits (where it is sometimes necessary to reload once or twice to start the thing running.) As a bonus for visiting Traphagen’s site, you can also see the lyrics in Elvish script alongside the English translation.
Let your season be merry and bright, watch Pat Wynne’s video tonight!
The first edition, dedication copy of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, presented to the original Alice by Lewis Carroll, fetched $115,000 at a Profiles in History auction on December 16. Another first edition of the book that also came with two fine original pencil drawings by John Tenniel of Alice and Humpty Dumpty sold for $46,000.
The auction was full of items science fiction and fantasy fans would love to own. Beatrix Potter’s personal copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit went for $92,000; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, First Edition, first state of the text and first state of the plates, cost a bidder $51,750; and The Time Machine: An Invention, first edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author, H.G. Wells, brought $25,875.
Inklings fans would have needed deep pockets to take home The Fellowship of the Ring, first British edition in dust jacket: its new owner paid $11,500. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, with a tipped-in autograph letter about Narnia by C. S. Lewis, was a comparative bargain at $9,200. Diana has wanted a Lewis autograph for years, but more becoming of Scrooge than Peter and Susan, just before the auction I blew the family fortune on a used 2007 Camry.
The full press release follows the jump.
Tricky Pixie
The musical group Tricky Pixie has been selected by the Renovation committee as a special guest of the 2011 Worldcon.
A popular group in the Pacific Northwest since it started performing in 2007, its members are S. J. Tucker, Alexander James Adams and Betsy Tinney, “animated entertainers, capable of taking the listener on a musical journey ranging from Celtic rock, to haunting and bluesy a cappella numbers, to sweetly sung circus lullabies and even to roaring tribal folk songs.”
Their current album is Mythcreants. You can listen to one of the cuts at the 2011 Worldcon website.
The full press release appears after the jump.
The San Diego Space Society invites interested people to help design SpaceUp, the world’s first space exploration unconference. Leading the list of things to be done is picking a date for the event in the late February/early March 2010 range.
Participants will decide the meeting’s topics, schedule, and structure. Everyone who attends SpaceUp is encouraged to give a talk, moderate a panel, or start a discussion. Sessions are proposed and scheduled on the day they’re given – (so, even more last-minute than the Loscon program — and I didn’t think that was possible!) Attendance will be capped at 200.
The organizers include Chris Radcliff, author, technology speaker, and frequent unconference participant; Jesse Clark, founder of the San Diego Space Society who previously worked for NASA; Jeff Berkwits, a freelance writer and publicist, Hugo-nominated editor of Amazing Stories; Edward O’Connor and Patrick Crowley who helped organize BarCamp San Diego unconferences; and members of the San Diego Space Society, a chapter of the National Space Society.
Further information on SpaceUp is available at SpaceUp.org, via the SpaceUp Twitter feed , or on the SpaceUp Facebook page.
It turns out the video from Predator drones is a top-rated show among Iraqi insurgents. The drones use the same transmission technology as DirecTV, and because they are not equipped to handle encrypted signals insurgents can intercept their transmissions with a $30 Windows utility. And the Taliban appears to be doing the same thing in Afghanistan. According to CBS News:
When a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, is far from its base, terrain prohibits it from transmitting directly to its operator. Instead, it switches to a satellite link. That means an enterprising hacker can use his own satellite dish, a satellite modem, and a copy of the SkyGrabber Windows utility sold by the Russian company SkySoftware to intercept and display the UAV’s transmissions.
The Air Force became aware of the security vulnerability when copies of Predator video feeds were discovered on a laptop belonging to a Shiite militant late last year, and again in July on other militants’ laptops, the Journal reported. The problem, though, is that the drones use proprietary technology created in the early 1990s, and adding encryption would be an expensive task.
[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]
Roy Edward Disney, who led two separate revolts against chief executives of his late uncle’s corporation, and helped revive its legendary animation unit, died December 16 of cancer. He was 79. The Los Angeles Times paid him tribute in a long article.
The first chief executive of the Walt Disney Co. that Roy unseated was Walt’s own son-in-law, Ron Miller. The struggle began in 1984:
The turmoil Disney ignited eventually swept the old management group from the corporate suites. In the end, Disney, with an alliance formed with the billionaire Bass family of Texas, returned to the board and forced out the studio management, paving the way for the hiring of a new team led by Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
However, after the death of Wells in 1994 relations between Roy and Michael Eisner grew strained.
By November 2003, Disney learned that the board’s four-member nominating committee was planning to leave his name off the slate of directors scheduled to be elected at the company’s next annual meeting. The longtime animation chief discovered he had been shut out of a Thanksgiving week screening of ideas for new animated films. The company had been in a prolonged financial slump, with its earnings flat and its stock performance anemic, but the snub was the last straw. Disney and Gold, his business partner, abruptly quit the board of directors in December 2003 and called for Eisner’s resignation.
[Thanks to David Klaus for the link.]
The Iron Man 2 trailer is available for online viewing. You can briefly see Gary Shandling as Senator Stern, joining that select fraternity of comic actors who have appeared as Senators — Dick Smothers on screen, and George Murphy and Al Franken on the Senate floor.
Fans have launched a project to celebrate the 50 years of fanhistory since the first Australian National Science Fiction Convention was held at Sydney in 1952. The Natcon 50 Project committee plans to publish a commemorative book and now they’re actively seeking out the raw material — photos, stories, programs, scanned images, or links to stuff already posted online. They’ve opened an impressive variety of technological portals to make it easy to send things to them:
You can share your Natcon mementos with us in whatever way is most convenient. If you have a Flickr account, upload photos and scanned images (or find stuff you’ve already uploaded) then tag them with “Natcon50? to add them to the pool. Or you can email us at [email protected], or contact us through our Facebook page. Keep up to date with how the project is going by following our RSS feed or follow Natcon50 on Twitter.
There’s just one thing I didn’t see – an address for sending them dead tree fanac. Did I miss it? Either way, that would be easy to fix. And I suspect some of the vintage fans who own the old, old material they need will relate more easily to making paper copies.
Jumpgate pin by Elana Kestrel
“If you or anyone you know would be interested in Babylon 5 ‘jumpgate’ pins,” writes faned Linda Bushyager, “A friend of mine, Elana Kestrel, has Stage 4 cancer and is selling these high quality pins to raise funds. She really can use the money.”
When Babylon 5 was in first run Kestrel used B5 fans’ ASCII “jumpgate” symbol to create a great collector’s item. The show’s creator, J. Michael Straczynski, praised the pin design:
JMS liked my handiwork, saying in email on October 29, 1995 that, “…it’s quite nice. By all means, good luck, looks terrific.” It is great to know that this Pin had passed THE most difficult quality test possible within the B5 fan world.
Now the artist needs financial help to keep fighting cancer:
In June 2007, your pin artist was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was treated in Portland, Oregon just before I moved to Southern Nevada. Now, two years later, the cancer is back and has spread to the liver. I am at Stage 4. There is no Stage 5. The tumor is showing signs of being under control, and with your help, it can stay that way…
Times are tough. I am having trouble affording proper food, medicine, basic living expenses and get the car’s brakes fixed so that I can safely go to chemotherapy.
I have decided to turn to the B5 community for help. My goal: sell out the rest of my pin inventory before Christmas so that I can have funds to just heal without worrying about covering the basics of life, even for just a few months.
You can see the pins online and order them today via email at Kestrel’s website — http://www.jumpgatepins.com/index.html. An online shopping cart is coming.
[Thanks to Linda Bushyager for the story.]