Monthly Archives: August 2011

Earl Kemp to Retire Zine “eI”

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Earl Kemp recently published eI57 with the collected “Letters from Jail” by Ted White. Twenty-five years Ted ago was arrested for dealing drugs out of his home in Falls Church and served a term in jail. He wrote a compelling series of 21 letters to his friends about these experiences. Since his friends were also fanzine editors the letters soon saw print, however, their Eighties zines now are rarities.

Kemp, who published his own prison letters in eI10 (2003) in “I’ve Got Some Friends Inside,” had the vision to do the same with Ted’s letters, collecting them in a single issue, handsomely illustrated by Dan Steffan.

Kemp announced in the same issue that he will shut down his prolific fanhistory zine at the end of this year. Two more regular issues will appear, then Kemp’s last one, eI60, will contain an Index to the entire run. eI will definitely be missed.

New Pulp Magazine Website

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The Pulp Magazines Project is a new website whose creators are building an open-access digital archive for the study of all-fiction pulp magazines.

Eventually, the archive will feature a broad range of pre-1923 titles, post-1923 titles where copyright has lapsed, and full volume runs of select titles from 1896 to 1946.

The members of the Editorial Board are David M. Earle, Assistant Professor of English and Foreign Languages at the University of West Florida, author of Recovering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks, and the Prejudice of Form (2009), and Patrick Scott Belk, a Ph.D. candidate and former book review editor of the James Joyce Quarterly.

There’s also an Advisory Board that features Mike Ashley, editor of the four-volume History of the Science Fiction Magazine, J. Matthew Huculak, a post-doctoral fellow with Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC) at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Stephen Donovan, a lecturer in English at Uppsala University, Sweden

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

I, Canada

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R. Graeme Cameron, the Dean (or at least Boys Vice-Principal) of Canadian fanzine fandom has unilaterally created “The Canadian Fanzine Fanac Awards” (nicknamed the “Faneds”).

There will be awards in five categories: (1) Best Fanzine, (2) Best Fan Artist, (3) Best Fan Writer (editorials, columns, articles, etc.), (4) Best LocHack (letters of comment writer), and (5) Hall of Fame (lifetime achievement).

He plans to present them annually at VCON beginning this year.

The Graeme explains in Auroran Lights #5:

Let’s get something straight here. This is not a big deal. As far as general fandom is concerned, it is of marginal interest. It’s basically a promotional stunt, a publicity ploy, a gimmick to stimulate interest in the fanzine niche fandom.

But also, I admit, an effort to awaken awareness of the “Best Fan Publication” category of the Aurora Awards.

Cameron would know how badly that is needed, for he is a director of the association that runs the Prix Aurora Awards. The award, though, is his own personal project.

There’s precedent for this sort of thing. In the Seventies, Sheryl Birkhead made her own set of awards – dog biscuits in Lucite – and sent them to faneds whose zines she appreciated. I was lucky enough to get one.

However, Cameron has something more traditional in mind for his “Faneds.” He’s already enlisted Taral to design a certificate and hopes to find someone to design a figure that can be cast from a mold for a physical award.

The first time around – for this year’s VCON — Cameron will select the winners himself from “a few obvious choices.” In 2012 they’ll be picked with the help of “peer consultation and suggestion” and by 2013 he hopes to institute a formal vote by Canadian fans.

Shiffman Page Added to Rotsler Award Site

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Stu Shiffman’s artwork is celebrated on a new page at the Rotsler Award website.

Not only are there examples of the 2010 winner’s fanzine art, John Hertz has accepted the challenge of decoding the references in Shiffman’s Mimosa #12 cover.

John’s meticulous research even included a quest to learn the identity of the couple aboard the flying mimeo. They weren’t Mimosa’s editors Rich and Nicki Lynch, so who were they? Looking at those sensitive fannish faces John Hertz and I just knew they were drawn from life. I thought I recognized Hank Luttrell but the woman didn’t look like Lesleigh. John guessed at the woman but couldn’t name her male counterpart.

At last we resorted to the journalistically responsible (if fannishly unusual) choice of asking the artist himself. Stu replied, “The figures are solely fictional from my imagination.” What, there’s no mystery after all? That will never do…

[Thanks to John Hertz for the story.]

Be On The Lookout

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Almost 200 pages of original drawings were stolen from a car belonging to pro comic book artist Brent Anderson the day after Comic-Con ended. Anderson is best known for Astro City.

While Anderson was visiting the San Diego Zoo a thief broke into his Honda Civic and took a black zippered slipcase containing four portfolios of art. He theorizes on his blog:

I don’t believe it was anyone from the recently ended Comic-con who stole my artwork. I believe it was an opportunistic smash-and-grab by someone looking for money or jewelry, not comics art. (They stole our luggage containing our dirty clothes and toiletries.) The thieves left behind three of the Itoya portfolios of art which were in plain sight right next to where the stolen slipcase was. If they’d specifically wanted the art, they would have taken those, too.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Weist Comic Art Price Guide Released

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Jerry Weist’s The Comic Art Price Guide: Illustrated Guide with Price Range Values, Third Edition is now available from Ivy Press of Dallas.

The guide contains more than 500 pages of art reproductions, price range values and artist bios. It was one of Weist’s last projects before he passed away in January 2011.

Many fans regard this as the most authoritative guide to original artwork for comic strips and comic books, also sf, pulp and fantasy art. Harlan Ellison said about an earlier edition:

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 story.]

Skykill

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Developing alternate sources of energy was supposed to help the environment. Now that wind energy is a viable business it’s a threat to the environment? The LA Times reports:

Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a federal official familiar with the investigations…

The eagles — and plenty of smaller birds — get killed flying through the windturbine blades.

Does anyone remember Norman Spinrad’s “Holy War on 34th Street” about a brawl between the competing sects’ street evangelists? Maybe this news article will inspire Spinrad to write a sequel that ends with a standoff between the Department of Energy SWAT Team and the Wildlife Service.

LA Banks (1959-2011)

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LA Banks

Leslie Esdaile Banks – LA Banks as the author was known to fans of her Crimson Moon and Vampire Huntress novels – passed away August 2 after a struggle with a rare form of adrenal cancer.

A New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, Banks wrote over 40 novels and 21 novellas in a variety of genres that included fantasy, horror, crime, thriller, and romance.

She once told a group of Atlanta high school students the reasons she became a full-time writer:

She had to quit her job because her daughter was hurt and she needed to stay home and take care of her, but her job wouldn’t allow it.  So, she began freelancing and wrote for an Essence magazine short story contest.  What she wrote was so good that her friends started sending her story to publishers without her knowledge.

The Liars Club, a Philadelphia writer’s group to which Banks belonged, will host a fundraising event August 6 to help her young daughter.

[Via William Wagner and Andrew Porter.]

F&SF on Kindle

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Kindle customers who subscribe can receive all of F&SF’s editorial content and one short story at no cost. This includes editor’s recommendations, “Curiosities” (odd books of enduring interest), film reviews, book reviews, cartoons and humor, and “Coming Attractions” (highlights of each issue).

The complete content of each issue is available for $12 a year — with everything in the digest edition plus several additional short stories and novelettes. Individual issues of the extended edition are available for $2.99. F&SF publishes six times a year.

Stephen King, in his capacity as a long-time fan of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, applauded the arrangement: “This is the best fiction magazine in America. Kindle readers are in luck.”

[Thanks to Michael Walsh for the link.]

Something Else to Vote For

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NPR has winnowed thousands of suggestions for the best SF and fantasy ever written and posted a list of finalists for everyone to vote on. Participants get to vote for their top 10 favorites.

The balance of old classics and popular recent works is appropriate to one of these summertime radio countdowns, the kind where The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” ends up losing to the Number One Hit of three weeks ago. Will N. K. Jemison’s Inheritance Trilogy similarly run ahead of The Lensman Series and The Martian Chronicles?

There are lots of entries by other women, too — Lois McMaster Bujold, Ellen Kushner, Ursula K. LeGuin, Joanna Russ, Sheri S. Tepper, and Connie Willis to begin with. Margaret Atwood has books on the list because it’s the readers, not the writers, getting the final say about what is genre fiction. Surprisingly, J.K. Rowling is not a finalist — if that is explained someplace, I didn’t see it, although in the comments several people said the reason is that all YA books were excluded. 

As for me, I’ll be happily clicking on Simak’s Way Station, Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, The Vorkosigan Saga, Doomsday Book and other favorites from a lifetime reading sf.

NPR had help from an expert panel of John Clute, Farah Mendelsohn and Gary K. Wolfe. Going by the not-exactly-infallible litmus test of whether everything I want to vote for is on the list I’d say they did a fine job.

[Thanks to Michael Walsh for the link.]