Monthly Archives: February 2010

Bradbury on 2116

Posted on by

Cyberfrequencies has posted interviews with Ray Bradbury about living forever and his new musical 2116:

Our podcast this week features Ray Bradbury’s musical “Wisdom 2116” which he wrote for an old couple he’d befriended as a young man. It’s taken Bradbury more than 50-years to see the musical performed on stage. “Wisdom 2116” is a robotic love story about the beauty of growing old as humans.

The podcast is complemented by fine videos featuring Bradbury.

By the way, I’ve been wondering what happened to the plan, announced while the play was still in previews, to add a Bradbury-scripted companion piece to 2116 before its official opening. Publicist Philip Sokoloff’s press release explains:

After careful consideration, an artistic decision was made regarding the new evening of theatre entitled “Ray Bradbury’s Wisdom,” to be subsequently entitled “Ray Bradbury’s Wisdom 2116.” Plans originally had been announced for the show to begin with a curtain raiser, “Wisdom (1916).” That piece is being deferred to a later date, thus keeping the current evening to a more manageable length and permitting Ray’s new musical to shine all on its own.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the links.]

2010 Grammy Follow-Up

Posted on by

I am bummed to report that Harlan Ellison did not win the 2010 Grammy for the Best Spoken Word Album for Children for which he was nominated. It went instead to Buck Howdy, who also won the category in 2009.

Immediately after the results were announced on January 31, Harlan reassured followers of his website:

I had a couple of my own favorites–neither of whom happened to be me, right from the git-go–but it has been a keen-o hoot of a ride, and you’ll just have to take my sincere smiling word on this: I am copacetic with the way it turned out.

What Will They Eat Next?

Posted on by

“What will they eat next?” — there’s a question guaranteed to keep you reading to the end of “Diving into Squid Territory,” an interview with scientist Bruce Robison in the LA Times.  

He explains that the giant squid invasion off the coast of Southern California is a byproduct of ocean warming and the elimination through fishing of 90% of the big fishes that used to compete with squid for food and eat baby squid. These changes have contributed to the growing population of Humboldt squid and their expanding home range.   

What are the consequences of this movement?

They have a new impact. For example, a type of fish called hake has plummeted in population. Hake are an important commercial species off the West Coast.

From examining stomach contents, we know the squid are eating the hake. The hake population tanked, and it looks like it is going to stay that way. So the question becomes, what will the squid eat next?

Not us, happily (or disappointingly, if you were counting on a gruesome turn to this story.) Robison says there are “no legitimate stories of any humans being damaged.”

Asked how long squid live, Robison gives an answer appropriate to the Southern California lifestyle: “A full-grown Humboldt squid lives two years, max. Lives fast, dies young.”

Even better, he explains the species’ science fictional appeal:

They’re big and they’re fast and they can change color. They can create patterns on their bodies. They can make circles, spots, stripes.

The Humboldt squid are real masters at signaling back and forth this way. They are constantly talking to each other using displays of colors and patterns on their bodies.

We know that’s what they are doing, but what we don’t know is what it means. It is an alien communication that we’d love to understand.

Earth’s homegrown aliens — no wonder fans feel an affinity for this tentacled predator.

The Shirt Off His Back

Posted on by

At last year’s Loscon I saw Larry Niven wearing his 2005 Marcon t-shirt. On the back it listed maybe a dozen different guests with a category/definer for each. I know nothing about contemporary Marcons beyond what it said on this shirt, but I wanted to report that my immediate reaction was “These guys look like they’re making a sophisticated effort to reach out to as many segments of sf fandom as they can find.”

Fans generally acquire con t-shirts at the con, so impressive as I found this one to be it probably wasn’t a component of Marcon’s pre-convention advertising.

A lot of committees start talking up their program participants well in advance, list them on websites, send e-mails to lists, etc. to attract interest. Maybe shirts could be another part of that strategy. That takes a certain amount of money, so it might be more practical for a large regional or a Worldcon. Think of a lovely pre-con shirt to be worn by Worldcon committee, given to patron friends, available for general sale, etc., as one more creative to get the attention of fans at other cons and start them thinking about attending yours.

Digging for Pixels

Posted on by

That internet archeologist Bill Burns has discovered it’s still possible to view Michael Bernstein’s old Rotsler.com dedication site on Archive.org, with images.

Rotsler’s drawings on restaurant dishes are most nostaligic. They remind me of the 1974 Westercon where Bill impersonated AWOL guest of honor Phil Dick at the start of the banquet, and later entertained fans at nearby tables by drawing on their bread plates. (So far as I know, the committee was never billed for all the disappearing dishes.)  

I assume the examples on Rotsler.com were drawn in later years because Ken Forman is listed as the owner. But it isn’t as if Rotsler didn’t do this performance more than once…

[Thanks to Lee Gold and Andrew Porter for the links.]

Pulp Lives On

Posted on by

Forces of Geek has posted an interview with Will Murray, a leading scholar of pulp fiction and the literary executor for the estate of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent:

Pulp is always relevant because solid, contemporary escapist reading is always relevant. Pulp may have migrated to TV and video games, among other frontiers unknown to dime novelists, but it always sings to us in its frenetic cracked-voiced splendor.

Murray has a lot of irons in the fire. I was especially interested in the news that DAW will release Darrell Schweitzer’s Cthulhu’s Reign anthology in April, with Murray’s “What Brings the Void.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]

Snapshots .38 Caliber

Posted on by

Here are 11 developments of interest to fans:

(1) It’s 2010. Time to check on the monolith says cartoonist Cam Cardow.

(2) I just discovered Brian Earl Brown Books, the pulp fiction imprint of a classic fanzine publisher. His pulp reprints include the Secret Agent “X”, Peter the Brazen and Jimmie Dale adventures. They cost more than a Sticky Quarter, but so did Brian’s fanzine by that name:

…Not all of the great fantasy from the teens and twenties of the last century has been reprinted or were reprinted in unacknowledged abridged, butchered editions. Beb Books is going back to the original pulp appearances of these great stories, OCRing the text directly from those pages to produce a true, accurate text, newly laid out in easy to read type, printed with cost mindful inkjet technology on 8.5 x 11 inch paper, side stapled, to make these great stories available again to a new generation of fans.

Letter-sized paper, side-stapled? That’s why I haven’t described him as a former fanzine publisher.

emSlaughterhouse 5/em t-shirt design.

Slaughterhouse 5 t-shirt design.

(3) These classic paperback covers look nice on t-shirts.

And the seller has permission, says Moshe Feder, which is good to hear in these highly piratical times.

(4) If you’re traveling to ConDor it’ll be worth making a detour to visit the San Diego Air and Space Museum’s exhibit The Science of Aliens”. It covers aliens in fiction, “alien” life here on Earth, concepts of life on alien worlds and the prospects for communicating with aliens.  

(5) If the big hotel chains seem hardnosed when you negotiate a convention facilities contract, rest assured they play a lot rougher with each other: Starwood recently charged Hilton with involvement in the theft of hundreds of confidential Starwood files.

(6) Some of these Known Space “get well” cards are really funny if you know about Larry Niven’s alien races:

From a Thrint:

Front: “GET WELL NOW”

Inside: “STOP IGNORING MY ORDERS!”

The card artists include Ames, Wayne Douglas Barlowe, Bonnie Dalzell, Virgil Finlay, Lisa A. Free, and H.R. Van Dongen.

(7) Until March 5 the University of Alabama at Birmingham is hosting a traveling exhibit, “Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine.”  The exhibit shows how Rowling’s exploration of writings by real 15th and 16th century physicians, scholars and scientists helped her devise the basis of magic in the seven Potter books.

“Even scholars in the 1400 and 1500s thought there might be fantastic beasts such as unicorns or centaurs in the world, and alchemists searched for the philosopher’s stone, a magic ingredient that would turn metal into gold,” says museum curator Stefanie Rookis. “Belief in witches and warlocks, spells and potions was still very real.”

Rowling pays small homages to her sources in the Harry Potter novels, referencing alchemist Nicholas Flamel, the physician Paracelsus, and occultist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.

(8) The Telegraph warns that the star called T Pyxidis is set to go supernova:

Although the star is thought to be around 3,260 light-years away – a fairly short distance in galactic terms – the blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away the Earth’s ozone layer, the scientists said.

Bummer.

(9) Dan Neil, the Los Angeles Times technology reviewer, acclaims James Dyson’s Air Multiplier as the better mousetrap of household fans:

There are many things about the Air Multiplier that are delightful. First, the personal electric fan has remained relatively unchanged since the late 19th century, and before that you’d have to go back to the Hittites, slaves and palm fronds. You have to give Dyson full marks for so boldly re-conceptualizing something so familiar and functional. This is the proverbial better mousetrap.

Neil also comes within a whisker of saying this technology is indistiguishable from magic.

If any sf writers out there know any more hi-tech axioms, mottos, cliches or old chestnuts, Mr. Neil wants to hear from you.

(10) Last month Kevin Standlee posted on the Hugo Awards web site a clip from a BBC documentary about the 1979 Worldcon showing the culmination of the Hugo Awards ceremony. It was Vonda McIntyre’s night of triumph.

(11)  After ten years of writing reviews and commentary for his online zine SciFiDimensions, John Snider decided it was time to move onto new projects — like writing sf stories of his own.

I’d rather think of this not as an end to my involvement with the genre community, but rather the beginning of a new phase.  The last ten years have been incredibly rewarding.  I’ve met hundreds (thousands?) of people I might not otherwise have met, and I’ve been very gratified at the response of my fellow fans.

Best wishes for continued success!

[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus,Andrew Porter, Kevin Standlee and James Hay.]