The Cream Rises

All five nominees for the 2010 Best Professional Artist Hugo are strutting their stuff at Tor.com this week. Art Director Irene Gallo has lined up screensavers from Shaun Tan, Dan Dos Santos, Stephan Martiniere, John Picacio, and Bob Eggleton. She’s posting one each day.

Gallo led off with Shaun Tan on Monday:

To celebrate AussieCon’s (home of this year’s Hugo ceremony) artist Guest of Honor, Shaun Tan, we decided to kick-off the week with this lovely “Eric” drawing from one of my favorite stories in Shaun’s short story picture-book collection, Tales from Outer Suburbia.

This example makes it easy to understand why the sig line reads: “Irene Gallo is in love with every piece of paper Shaun Tan touches.”

She followed with Dan Dos Santos’ contribution on Tuesday, an incredible portrait of an elf painted during the 2009 Illustration Master Class.

I’m looking forward to seeing more breathtaking art at Tor.com as the week progresses.

Martin Gardner Dies

Famed mathematical puzzle master Martin Gardner died May 22 reports the New York Times. He was 95.

While I was in high school my father subscribed to Scientific American. I always looked forward to Gardner’s latest “Mathematical Games” column, something not easily explained for I spent a summer repeating Algebra 2 never having figured out when the train leaving Baltimore at a given time and speed would collide with the train leaving from New York. His famous column ran from 1956 to 1981. Gardner also wrote a “puzzle” story column for Asimov’s during George Scithers’ tenure as editor.

Gardner had a huge range of interests and many areas of expertise. Two prominent examples were evident in his literary research about the works of Lewis Carroll and his homages to L. Frank Baum.  

His The Annotated Alice, originally published in 1960 and upgraded in two sequels, enjoyed a tremendous word-of-mouth reputation among science fiction fans in the 1970s.

He was a founding member of the International Wizard of Oz Club. He also wrote Visitors from Oz (1998), a collection of stories based on Baum’s creation.

Coincidentally, Gardner was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders which recently lost another member, George Scithers himself.

Last of Lost

Don’t you think a better end to Lost would have been for everyone to emerge through the back door of an Italian restaurant and pass Tony Soprano on the way out?

That would have tied up the loose ends from both series.

Follow Alyson Abramowitz’ Campaign

Alyson Abramowitz, known within fandom as a conrunner and once-upon-a-time fanzine publisher, has also applied her skills to organizing the mundane world as an active member of the Democratic Party.

She enjoyed the best of both in 2004 as the National Chairperson for High Stakes, a Kerry/Edwards fundraising event that connected donors at local parties in a conference call with Joss Whedon.

Just now Alyson is running for one of the six seats on the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee from the 22nd Assembly District. You can follow her campaign on Facebook. Democratic voters will make their choices on June 8.

California’s Democratic Party is governed by the Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC). Members serve two-year terms.

In 2000, Alyson was among the six who won seats on the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee from the 24th Assembly District. In a contested election she finished fifth in a field of nine candidates.

Alyson previously ran for the 22nd Assembly District in 2006 and in 2008, the second time being one of the six selected for the 22nd Assembly District in an uncontested election.

I first met Alyson at the 1974 Worldcon and when an acquaintance is the candidate it’s easier to take an interest in the wealth of political intelligence that can be discovered with Google.

Of course it was no surprise to learn from Huffington Post’s Fundrace 2008 that Alyson contributed to Kerry’s 2004 campaign. After all, she was a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, pledged to Kerry. (And she had been an alternate delegate to the 2000 convention.)

Today she’s a member of the Finance Committee of the California Democratic Party. And Alyson was Chair California Democratic Party Business and Professional Caucus during the 2009 campaign.

I’ll be back with the results on Election Day.

Symphony Plays Queen for a Day

The Virginia Symphony Orchestra will be performing music by Queen in Norfolk on May 28, giving a writer for The Virginian-Pilot all the excuse necessary to reminisce about the time a local artist created an album cover for the supergroup. And who was that artist? You know him well:

Queen’s music has long merged disparate elements. Three decades ago, they sought the artwork of a middle-aged Virginia Beach resident who, up until then, had claimed no kinship to rock. He was Frank Kelly Freas, the legendary science fiction artist who was famous for everything from his work in MAD Magazine to NASA uniforms. Freas won an unprecedented 11 Hugo Awards – the science-fiction world’s equivalent to the Oscar.

His collaboration with Queen began in 1977 when Roger Taylor, the band’s drummer, saw Freas’ work on the cover of a 1953 science fiction magazine. Taylor went wild over a drawing of a robot holding battered people in the palm of its hand.

Queen searched the world for the artist and found Freas at his secluded, cluttered ranch house just south of the Pocaty Creek bridge in Virginia Beach, where he lived for 25 years. It had long been the center of the science-fiction art universe.

[Via Laura Brodian Freas.]

Gaiman Credits Bradbury

Neil Gaiman’s article in Times Online, “Ray Bradbury made me want to write”, reveals his deep admiration and affection for the grandmaster: 

I can imagine all sorts of worlds and places, but I cannot imagine one without Ray Bradbury. Not Bradbury the man (I have met him. Each time I have spent any time with him I have been left the happier for it), but Bradbury the builder of dreams. The man who took an idea of the American Midwest and made it magical and tangible, who took his own childhood and all the people and things in it and used it to shape the world. The man who gave us a future to fear, one without stories, without books. The man who invented Hallowe’en in its modern incarnation.

Bradbury is also the source for several of Gaiman’s heartfelt yearnings, one of them yet to be fulfilled:

It was after reading this story that I resolved that I would one day read Poe, become a writer, find a Scary House, and own a robotic orang-utan that would do my bidding. I have been fortunate in achieving at least three of these goals.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the link.]

Slayage Conference Attracts Whedon Scholars

The fourth Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses will convene June 3-6 at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida.

SC4 is organized by the college in partnership with the Whedon Studies Association. When scholars study a prolific living artist there is barely room to list all the exciting developments that crop up between conferences, as one can tell from the introductory remarks in the conference program (PDF file):

The freshly?minted Whedon Studies Association welcomes you to the fourth biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses . At the first three—in Nashville (Middle Tennessee State University, 2004), Barnesville (Gordon College, 2006), and Arkadelphia (Henderson State University, 2008)—over 400 paper s on the works of Joss Whedon were presented. Last time we met, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog had not yet been webcast and Dollhouse had not yet aired (or been cancelled). So we have much to talk about, including fresh takes on Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Serenity.

The conference’s keynote speakers (and their topics) are Lorna Jowett (Sex and the Slayer), Dale Koontz (Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon), and Steve Halfyard (Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

[Thanks to Richard Gutkes for the story.]

Joy K. Sanderson (1923-2010)

Joy K. Sanderson, an actifan on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1950s, widow of Sandy Sanderson and Vincent Clarke, died April 22. She was last known to reside in Oakdale, NY.

“After Joy and Sandy Sanderson moved from England to the U.S. in the early 1960s,” Andrew Porter wrote online, “they came to some science fiction fan meetings in the New York City area. They also attended the 1963 World SF Convention in Washington, DC, over Labor Day weekend, getting there on Sandy’s motorbike, all the way down the New Jersey Turnpike! I had fallen out of touch with them after that, until Joy resurfaced following the death of Sandy.”

Some of Joy’s photo albums of her time in British SF fandom in the 1950s are posted at eFanzines.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Google Honors Pac-Man 30th Anniversary


It was 30 years ago today that Pac-Man started gobbling your quarters. Google, which regularly features header art celebrating a theme or event, is commemorating the birth of the famous video game with a free interactive version on the Google home page.

Hit the “Insert Coin” button below the search window and the game will begin. You direct Pac-Man where you want him to go by placing your cursor ahead of him and clicking.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Amazing Items in June Auction


What’s featured at Profiles in History’s June 10-12 auction? Just everything dear to the heart of sf and fantasy movie fans.

This is the place to seek the Holy Grail (from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Levar Burton’s “Geordi La Forge” visor and Dean Cain’s Superman costume. There’s also the Wicked Witch of the West’s hat, Johnny Depp’s Scissorhands from Edward Scissorhands and “Jack Sparrow” jacket from Pirates of the Caribbean, Darth Vader’s light saber from Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, Julie Andrews’ carpet bag from Mary Poppins, a screen-used “Jeannie” bottle from I Dream of Jeannie, Bruce Lee’s signature “Kato” hat from The Green Hornet, the Orville Goldner Production Art Archive and Biplane Filming miniature from King Kong, and a huge collection of Star Trek memorabilia.

The auction catalog is here (PDF file).

The full press release follows the jump.

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