Bring Lyn McConchie to NatCon 50

Lyn McConchie

The 2011 Australian National Convention (Swancon 36/Natcon 50) will be held at Easter, only a few weeks after the 20th anniversary of Lyn McConchie’s first professionally published short story, “The Sar Shan Kelpie” which appeared in the March 1991 issue of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.

Lyn lives in New Zealand and fans would like to bring her to Australia for this year’s NatCon. With Lyn’s permission Jean Weber has been raising funds to pay Lyn’s travel expenses.

Now is the time to push the McConchie fund over the top. Easter isn’t that far away when you’re waiting to make definite plans and secure travel reservations.

 For more info and to contribute, click here.

Len Moffatt Memorial

More than 60 fans attended the LASFS’ memorial for Len Moffatt on Saturday, January 22 at the clubhouse.

June Moffatt and her daughter Caty Konigsberg were there from the family.  Charles Lee Jackson II served as MC, introducing participants. Arlene Satin, LASFS President, and Karl Lembke, Chairman of the Board, were among the club officers who spoke.  

Ed Green said, “Len Moffatt was by any measure a great man.” Milt Stevens, who met Len at the first LASFS meeting he attended in 1960, when Milt was 17, noted while many fans got into feuds over the years, Len didn’t — he was laid back. Another fan added that when difficulties broke out Len would be the peacemaker.  

During the program Barry and Lee Gold led everyone in singing a filk song written by Len Moffatt, “The Old Fannish Trail” (to the tune of “The Old Chisholm Trail” [YouTube]). The verses contain many in-references, so the Golds added a page of footnotes to the lyric sheet. One of the more self-explanatory reads:

You can blame Claude Degler
For the Superfan plan
And you can blame “sci-fi”
On the Ackerman

The Golds also had us sing Lee’s composition about beloved LASFSians who have passed away, “When the (Patron) Saints Come Marching In” (to the obvious tune). In LASFS lore “patron saints” are members who have contributed a significant amount (originally $500) to the club building fund. The first verse goes:

Oh, when we’re at the LASFS Club
There are people we don’t see.
But Death did not Release them.
hey are ours eternally

 – playing on LASFS’ rule that once a member always a member because “Death does not release you, even if you die.”

David Gerrold’s tribute to Len, posted on Facebook while the memorial was under way, was read aloud by Karl Lembke. 

Barbara Harmon remembered when she and her late husband, Jim, double-dated with Len and June.

June Moffatt, who wore her Loscon propeller beanie to the event, spoke briefly. Then John Hertz, also wearing his beanie, was called up to pose with her. Hertz smiled, “I can think of few people who I am happier to bear a family resemblance.”

For the occasion Marty Cantor published a special collection of Len’s Califania Tales, nine autobiographical articles that originally ran in Marty’s No Award. There was a free copy for everyone there. It’s quite a well-designed zine. Len would have appreciated all the Rotsler cartoons adorning his work.

Some of the other fans present were Leigh Strother-Vien, Francis Hamit, Matthew Tepper, Hare Hobbs, Bill and Jane Ellern, Bill and Beverly Warren, Don Fitch, Woody Dodge, Marc Schirmeister, Stan Burns, Roger Hill, Gavin Claypool, Frank Waller, Joyce Sperling, Jerry Pournelle, Cathy Beckstead, John DeChancie, Tom Locke, Regina Reynante, and Connor Freff Cochran.

Update 01/24/2011: Corrected name of Marty Cantor’s fanzine.

Don’t Stop the Presses

Have you heard? Rather than being pushed to the edge of extinction by trends in electronic publishing, English-language printed books have an unlimited future — in India:

“Books matter more in India than anywhere else we publish them,” added Makinson, whose Penguin Group is one of the world’s largest English-language publishers.

While book sales slip in most western countries, the non-academic book market in India is currently growing at a rate of 15 to 18 percent annually, as rapid economic growth swells literacy rates and adds millions to the middle class every year.

[Source: Reuters. Thanks to David Klaus for the link.]

All Glory Is Fleeting

The latest installment of PBS’ Pioneers of Television about three moguls of 1960s science fiction television, Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry and Irwin Allen, drew this quirky criticism from syndicated columnist Kevin McDonough:

…Serling’s timeless “Twilight Zone,” [was] an anthology series drawing on some of the finest sci-fi writers of its time. While “Pioneers” mentions their contribution to “Zone,” it implies that most “Star Trek” episodes were written by Roddenberry, when in fact that series also reflected stories and ideas by notable writers, including Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison.

Just one problem: if you’re going to stand up for the unsung science fiction writers who helped make Star Trek a success, it would be best to name ones who actually wrote for the series — which Ray Bradbury never did.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Roger Hill’s Appreciation of Jerry Weist

Jerry Weist

Well worth reading is Roger Hill’s long reminiscence about Jerry Weist, excerpted on Scoop. Hill and Weist, then teenagers, first met in 1963 at Forry Ackerman’s meet-and-greet in Wichita during his cross-country tour to publicize Famous Monsters. Hill and another local collector later helped Weist start the EC Comics fanzine Squa Tront (which, in case you wonder, is Venusian exclamation in EC science fiction stories meaning “Good Lord!”).

Here’s a sample of Hill’s colorful telling of his friendship with Weist:

Over these many years Jerry became specialized in buying and selling original comic art, science fiction art, comic books, rare paperbacks and pulp magazines, Edgar Rice Burroughs books and collectibles, Arkham House and fantasy books, rare first editions, science fiction movie posters and other related memorabilia. His quarterly eBay auctions were some of the most popular events to surface in the collectibles’ market in recent years. His experience and vast knowledge of the many different fields he specialized in brought him into contact with hundreds of other professional authors, artists, dealers and collectors.

Jerry’s friend Harlan Ellison once said: “The landscape of genuinely reliable reference guides is an ugly, arid junkyard. Mostly lit by the dim bulbs of the amateur, the slovenly, the jumped-up fans stealing from each other’s inept, error-riddled trashbooks. Jerry Weist towers, like the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, casting a knowledgeable, insightful beacon. He can be trusted because he be so savvy.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the link.]

Ursula Le Guin Confesses

Richard Curtis wrote on E-reads that HarperCollins contracts now include a “morals clause” allowing the publisher to terminate the agreement if an “Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or if Author commits a crime or any other act that will tend to bring Author into serious contempt, and such behavior would materially damage the Work’s reputation or sales.”

Immediately upon reading Curtis’ post, HarperCollins author Ursula K. Le Guin felt an overwhelming urge to confess to everything. (Scroll down to “A Riff on the Harper Contract”):

Dear Mr Rupert Murdoch,

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Because I did not read my contract with your wonderful publishing house HarperCollins carefully, I did not realise my moral obligations.

There is nothing for it now but to confess everything. Before I wrote my book Emily Brontë and the Vampires of Lustbaden, which you published this fall and which has been on the Times Best Seller List for five straight months, I committed bad behavior and said bad words in public that brought me into serious contempt in my home town of Blitzen, Oregon. In fact the people there found me so seriously contemptible that I am now living in Maine under the name of Trespassers W…

And it gets better.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter and David Klaus for the links. David Klaus had part via Ansible Links.]

Stand By For Moos!

Wendy Palmer is the new editor of Australian SF Bullsheet, taking over from Edwina Harvey and Ted Scribner who put the zine on hiatus last August after publishing their 101st issue.

Palmer’s first issue will come out in February. Thereafter issues will appear on the first Sunday of the month. Check the website for electronic subscription options – Edwina says they will not be transferring over the old subscriber list for privacy reasons. (And the zine has a Twitter feed, too — @sfbullsheet.)

Hear Your 2011 TAFF Candidates

Jim Mowatt has posted a TAFF podcast featuring  interviews with all four candidates.

Elsewhere, Graham Charnock’s campaign has gone into artistic overdrive with new poster designs. Click the link for his Special TAFF Offer of 4 laminated badges and an A3 campaign poster, yours for £3.00/$5.00 cheques made payable to TAFF (or via PayPal to stevegreen (at) livejournal (dot) com)

I sure hope my nominee Paul Treadway has some ideas for keeping pace with the dread Charnock Machine!

[Thanks to Steve Green for the story.]