Paramount has optioned Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.
The Hollywood Reporter story says John Davis will produce. His company, David Entertainment, has Gulliver’s Travels, Marmaduke and Predator on its resume.
Martian Chronicles was an NBC miniseries in 1980, written by Richard Matheson and featuring Rock Hudson. Since then Steven Spielberg and several others have had turns trying to get it filmed.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
For the third year in a row Worldcon members cast a record-breaking number of Hugo nominating ballots. Renovation received 1006 votes, far in excess of the records set by Aussiecon 4 in 2010 (864) and Anticipation in 2009 (799). There were nominations made by fans in 21 countries on 6 continents.
And who was nominated?
That will be revealed Easter Sunday, April 24, starting at 2:00 PM PDT, during simultaneous ceremonies at Norwescon 34 and Illustrious, the British National Science Fiction Convention (Eastercon).
The Worldcon’s press release says fans around the world will be able to follow the announcement live but nothing specific was said about how they might do that. I checked Cheryl Morgan’s website which says she and Kevin Standlee will attempt to provide live coverage. When I see something specific from them, on the official Hugo website, or from anyone else I will post the news.
The full press release follows the jump.
I’ll never see again the VCR thieves took from my old apartment in Van Nuys – though if I do, it certainly won’t have gone up in value.
So let me say that actor Nicholas Cage is doubly lucky that his copy of Action Comics #1, stolen in 2000, has turned up in an abandoned storage locker in LA. And the comic’s value has grown by leaps and bounds since he last saw it — one sold not long ago for $1.5 million.
Cage’s copy was discovered by the person who purchased the abandoned storage locker at auction. Never can tell what you’ll find in those. I know Marty Cantor once discovered a carefully-wrapped murder victim in one of those lockers, while he was working for U-Haul.
[Thanks to Bill Higgins for the story.]
Joe Haldeman is scheduled to be on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” with Neal Conan on April 14. Gay Haldeman’s announcement says Joe will be talking about the effect his experience in the Army has had on the rest of his life.
The program’s website will let you research the show’s schedule on your local station. It also offers podcasts of the show after it’s aired.
[Thanks to Joel Zakem for the story.]
Sidney Lumet, noted American film director, died Saturday April 9th. He was 86. His work on Fail-Safe (1964) did not earn a nod from the Academy, but his work on four other movies earned Best Director nominations. Lumet never won an Academy Award in competition, however, he received an honorary Oscar in 2005.
[Thanks to Steve Green for the story.]
Here are 7 developments of interest to fans:
(1) On the fifth anniversary of the first Twitter message, the BBC News Magazine ran down the first message sent using various technologies:
Telegram message, 1844: “What hath God wrought”
Telephone, 1876: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.”
Wireless communication over open sea, 1897: “Are you ready?”
E-mail, 1971: Qwertyuiop [probable]
Text message, 1992: “Merry Christmas”
Google, Jan 1996: no record of first search term, it says
Facebook, Feb 2004: no record of first post
YouTube, 2005: Video called “Me at the zoo”, with first words: “”Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants”
We should be able to easily answer “What was first line a fanzine?” – after, say, 25 years of theological debate about what was the first fanzine. Was it a publication started under the influence of Amazing Stories? Inspired by some other prozine’s letter column? Does it predate traditional fandom, produced by Lovecraft fans or someone in a mundane amateur press association?
Also, though Google says it doesn’t have a record of the first search, why wouldn’t it have been the user searching for hits on his own name: isn’t that everyone’s first search?
Douglas Adams
(2) A novelization of Douglas Adams “lost” Doctor Who serial “Shada” will be published next year:
[Douglas] Adams wrote three series of Doctor Who in the late 1970s, when he was in his twenties and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first airing as a BBC radio comedy. Shada was intended as a six-part drama to finish off the 17th season, with Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor.
The story features the Time Lord coming to Earth with assistant Romana (Lalla Ward) to visit Professor Chronotis, who has absconded from Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home planet, and now lives quietly at Cambridge college St Cedd’s…
Chronotis has brought with him the most powerful book in the universe, The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey – which, in a typical touch of Adams bathos, turns out to have been borrowed from his study by a student.
The production was interrupted by a labor action and shooting was never completed.
(3) Another recently recovered stfnal treasure is the “ConAdian Internet Information Desk”, the first Worldcon information website, created by Brian Lucas for the 1994 Worldcon, held in Winnipeg. It was originally hosted on a University of Manitoba server. In March, Chaz Boston Baden discovered he possessed a zipfile of the site — at 100K, far too big to e-mail in ye olde days — on a 5 1/4″ floppy found while he was clearing out obsolete media.
(4) There are sf fans and sports fans, but probably not very many sf sports fans. (Rollerball, anyone?) But somebody has spent hours of his life he’ll never get back compiling the box score from the movie Space Jam:
Both teams shot an extraordinary percentage from the field, due in large part to the vast majority of field goals scored by dunk. In fact, only one field goal was missed during the action in the film — Bupkus was thwarted by the initiative of one Wile E. Coyote and his timely detonation of a small cache of explosives strategically placed around the hoop.
(5) One reviewer says Adam Wallacavage’s Lovecraftian lighting fixtures “appeal to the wild-at-heart seeking a life less ordinary” –
His colorful, iconic octopus pieces are so playfully energetic it is easy to imagine them squirming to life and wrapping a charming tentacle over one’s shoulders.
Yes indeed. In fact, they may produce unexpected savings on the electric bill by frightening people out of turning on the lights.
(6) Doug Ellis and John Gunnison sounded pretty happy about the expanded dealers rool for their Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, running April 15-17:
Due to the number of people we had on the waitlist for tables, we’ve been negotiating with our hotel and have been able to take additional space. As a result, we’re expanding the size of our dealer room (all dealers will be in one room, it involved opening up some removable walls). We now have 140 tables sold — making it our largest dealer room ever!
When I go to a con I’m always pleased to see a wide variety of dealers on hand. Yet as a conrunner I wonder how happy the dealers were to read the news. When there isn’t enough customer traffic to go around because the ratio of members to tables is too low, the dealers have a hard time making money.
(7) Plenty of members here… “Four Days at Dragon*Con”, a Public Broadcasting Atlanta Documentary Special, is available for airing on local PBS stations. The official trailer is here [YouTube].
Featuring interviews with fans, staff, performers, artists, stars and would-be superheroes, the documentary examines the sense of community and acceptance that forms among this often ridiculed and marginalized subculture. FOUR DAYS AT DRAGON*CON captures the heart and soul of this quirky and fascinating annual event with footage of the Dragon*Con parade and a stirring climax centered around an ambitious attempt to break the world record for dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Times have changed, but what exactly has changed? Does fandom now attract that many people who can dance? Or did fashion change and make fans’ uncoordinated zombie-like gyrations the height of terpsichorean artistry?
[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus, Isaac Alexander, Chaz Boston Baden and Andrew Porter.]
John O’Halloran, Helen Montgomery Leane Verhulst, and Chris O’Halloran, ready for business on Day One.
By the Science Fiction Outreach Project Team – James Bacon, Chris Garcia and Helen Montgomery
It was an incredibly brilliant experience. We benefitted hugely from teamwork and generosity of fans.
Between a variety of book drives, donations and even people turning up at WonderCon (April 1-3) with small bags, we had between 5,500 to 6,000 books. Borderlands, Berkshire Books, Locus Magazine, and Half Price Books (in both the Bay Area and the Chicagoland Area) also donated books.
We had boxes of Locus and SF and F to give away as well.
We had bookmarks made, and every book had one inserted prior to shelving.
We were able to shelve around 1400 books at a time in the space we had, and had stacks of flyers for other cons on both tables, promoting a wide variety of cons as well as progress reports for Renovation.
We set up on Thursday, after spending Monday through Wednesday sorting books, picking up books, and then loading a truck, etc.
On Wednesday after loading the truck, we popped into the Moscone Convention Center, and this was fortuitous as we got our badges and met our contacts, and they were real nice.
Thursday we built our shelving, the Freeman move-in experience was a good one, as was the whole set up.
Friday — well it was interesting, we were all set up and within minutes of opening our booth area had about 6 people in it, and from then till close we never had less, and frequently had too many. This was the pattern for the rest of the weekend as well.
A continual information dump from the team (we had 7 on hand at opening and this increased throughout the weekend) to the attendees, and then longer time taken to explain what cons are (I know, but wow – you should have seen their faces when they realized what else is out there!), what Reno is, what Worldcon is and what we were doing meant at all times we were busy.
There was much interest, and people from the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Reno especially interested in the World Science Fiction Con coming to somewhere nearby or Westercon or Loscon, while folks from further afield were pointed at cons in their states and generally anyone who wanted to know about something local to them was satisfied.
The diversity of people calling into the booth was much more varied than our experience at book conventions, and yet all folks wanted to do was talk about books, get recommendations or talk about these “book conventions” that we were promoting. Everyone was super friendly (well, the books were free) but the interest in the overall hobby was noticeable.
Also, the knowledge of people was superb, many of these people were genuine SF readers – who just are not aware of what’s going on in the SF fannish community.
Friday we cleared the bookshelves, and on Saturday and Sunday both days we refilled throughout the day and managed the books well, and so by Sunday night we ended up with only 80 books not taken.
It was real hard work, it was an incredibly fun thing to engage with people about books and our wider hobby and we are pretty sure we can call it a success.
Helping out the core team were: Dave Gallaher, Dave Clark, Mike Ward, John O’Halloran, Chris O’Halloran, Kevin Standlee (who brought a Hugo statue for us to display!), Steve Libbey, Tom Becker, Lynda Wentzelberger, “Hitgirl” (a random attendee who decided what we were doing was cool and started to help), Jo Mead, and Leane Verhulst.
We would also like to thank Kimm Antell and Meredith Branstad for helping to design bookmarks and postcards and banners for us.
We really, really, really want to thank Colin Harris for updating our Facebook page throughout the weekend (despite us being on the Pacific coast, and him being in London, England!), which got us some great comments from folks who were there, found us, and went to find us on FB later! (Have you “liked” us on FB yet? We are “Science Fiction Outreach Project – USA”)
Highlights for us included:
It was quite honestly one of the most amazing experiences some of us have ever had in fandom.
WonderCon is only just over – but we’re already gearing up for what comes next! We have a few ideas of what we would like to do, and will keep the readers of File 770 updated as we go.
We cannot thank you all enough for your support, it was a great weekend. I truly believe we got our message out and in a good way, and that fandom will benefit from this for sure.
Many thanks,
The Science Fiction Outreach Project Team (James, Chris, and Helen)
Day Two, with Hugo rocket.
Saturday at 3:30 p.m.
The final remains on Day Three.
Carol Emshwiller
A pair of celebrations marking Carol Emshwiller’s 90th birthday will be presented by the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings and the Wold Newton Reading Extravaganza.
The NYRSF Reading event takes place on Carol’s birthday, April 12 at the usual venue in SoHo. The second event will be on April 18 at WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and include a performance by comedy magician Magic Brian, then the main event, an interview of Emshwiller by sf scholar Matt Cheney.
The full press release follows the jump.
[Thanks to Jim Freund for the story.]
David Cake and Paula McGrath are the 2011 Down Under Fan Fund nominees. Voting will be open through May 31, and the chosen delegate will attend this year’s Worldcon, Renovation, August 17-21.
Dave Cake was nominated by Randy Byers, Colin Hinz, Sue Ann Barber, Damien Warman, and Grant Watson. Paula McGrath was nominated by Sue & Steve Francis, Melissa Morman, Perry Middlemiss, Rose Mitchell, and Julian Warner.
Anyone active in fandom by January 1, 2011 may vote. Ballots must be received by May 31, accompanied by a donation of at least $5 Australian, Canadian, United States, or $6 New Zealand. Payment instructions are given in the ballot. Payment and voting may be done via PayPal or by snail mail.
A copy of the form is here: DUFF ballot 2011 [PDF file].
[Thanks to John Hertz and Marty Cantor for the story.]
For Harlan Ellison it never rains but it pours. Lucky for him it’s raining honors this week.
He learned from the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle that he’ll be inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame this June.
His editor at IDW greeted him with the news that his hardcover graphic book Phoenix Without Ashes entered the New York Times Bestseller List at #6 in its first week of publication – Harlan’s first-ever appearance on that list.
And the Encyclopaedia Britannica has created an entry about him. According to Harlan, “I am right next to Ralph Ellison, just following Ellis Island. What a wonderful thing.” Call it a story of requited love. Harlan has been irresistibly attracted to the encyclopedia since he was a kid.
When he accepted the 1970 Forry Award Harlan told those of us at the banquet about his times as a young fan in Cleveland. Harlan joined the first local sf club (Andre Norton was also a member). He started collecting. Then… “I went into the phase I called ‘liberating’ volumes from my high school library. I stole the first 23 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They never suspected a thing. But then I got greedy, and they finally caught me when I tried to stuff both the Index and the World Gazetteer under my jacket…” So now the circle has closed in a way his high school librarian would not have predicted. It’s a well-deserved accolade.
Locus reports that the full list of 2011 inductees to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame includes Ellison, Vincent Di Fate, Moebius, and Gardner Dozois.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame was founded in 1996 by the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (KCSFFS) in conjunction with the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. Four individuals are added each year, chosen on the basis of their continued excellence and long-time contribution to the science fiction field.
