Monthly Archives: October 2011

China Miéville on Comics

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James Bacon says he was surprised as anyone to discover a French section of London. That’s where he was sent to report about the Bande Dessinée and Comics Passion festival for Forbidden Planet: 

I am here for the inaugural event, a conversation between China Miéville and Paul Gravett. The weekend is billed as a series of ‘happenings’ by Gravett and a key difference is the nature of the staged encounters between French and British creators, who share a adoration of the medium of sequential art in all its forms. Gravett has rightly amassed a reputation for being a man who adores the subject and works so damnably hard at making events happen. Whether it be South London small press guys or academics or someone like me, just a fan, we all love his efforts and open, inclusive, intelligent style.

Back to the Future Auction

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Profiles in History will run the “Icons of Hollywood” auction December 15-17, featuring items from Back to the Future and a pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.

A DeLorean auto from Back to the Future III will be on the block:

One of seven DeLoreans used on-screen in the Back to the Future trilogy, this particular car was used in the 1955 drive-in movie scene when Michael J. Fox drives it into the past and lands in 1885 to find Doc. It was built completely for off road use. Of the seven DeLoreans, only three have survived since filming, and this is one of those three – the only one in private hands.

And of course we have to keep track of the ruby slipper market:

There are four pairs of screen used Ruby Slippers known to have survived the seventy years since the making of The Wizard of Oz. One pair is the center piece of the Icons of American Culture exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and is one of the most asked about artifacts at the museum. So viewed are these slippers that the carpet in front of them has had to be replaced numerous times due to the crush of shoes that have brought visitors from all over the world to see their glimmer. Another pair was unfortunately stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and will likely never be recovered. The third pair is in private hands and will not be reaching the market any time soon.

The final fourth pair up for auction are marked on the inside lining, “#7 Judy Garland” and the leather soles are painted red on the bottom. The lack of felt, in addition to light, circular scuffs evident on the soles indicate their use in the extra-close-up or “insert” shots when Judy Garland taps her heels together at the film’s climax. Their condition is near mint and it is also believed that this “beauty” pair was placed on the protruding feet of the Wicked Witch of the East after she was squashed by Dorothy’s house since they exhibit slightly higher heels and the bottoms of the shoes were exposed to the camera.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

100 Year Starship Con

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Jeff Foust’s inside report on The 100 Year Starship Study Symposium is posted at The Space Review. Sf writers named in the article — several of them scientists, too — are the Benford brothers, Charles Stross, Geoffrey Landis, and director and special effects creator Douglas Trumbull.

James Benford:

Given the difficulty we have today traveling in the solar system—or even just getting into Earth orbit—what hope is there to going to going another star? “If we cannot do that,” said physicist James Benford, who chaired the propulsion track of the symposium, “the other questions are moot.”

Geoffrey Landis:

 “If we are going to go to the stars, we are going to need to use the resources of the solar system,” said Geoffrey Landis, a scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center who is also a science fiction author. “The nuclear thermal rocket will probably not be the system that takes us all the way to Alpha Centauri, but it is going to be the pickup truck that can drive us around the solar system.”

Lou Friedman, Gregory Benford:

“The biggest thing the interstellar flight community has to do to advance interstellar flight is to get rid of the humans,” concluded Lou Friedman, the former executive director of The Planetary Society. Technologies such as beamed power “lightsails” and miniaturization can make interstellar spacecraft affordable, he said, but that means leaving humans behind, at least for now. “As long as continue to think of this as a human activity, sending heavy people in big spacecraft, it’s going to be a subject of science fiction.”

“The first starship doesn’t have to be manned,” said science fiction author Gregory Benford. Small beamed-power starships, like the ones Friedman advocated, could be the first spacecraft to go to another star, and in the relatively near future. “We could be launching those easily in less than a century because all the technologies needed are readily available now.”

Charles Stross:

“One of the things that’s bugged me about this whole conference is the terminology of ‘starship,’” said science fiction author Charles Stross. The “ship” part of the term “comes with an awful lot of cultural baggage attached,” he said, including the need for a crew, a destination, and the fact that a ship generally returns from that destination.

“What we were actually talking about here seems to break down into two types of vehicles, neither of which is a ship,” he said. One kind of vessel is a robotic probe, while the other is a crewed vessel, but one that’s likely a generational ship that takes many decades or centuries to reach its destination, with no plans to return. “You have to be very careful about how the language you use biases your ideas about what we’re talking about.”

Wooster: Amy Paul Passes Away

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By Martin Morse Wooster: Long-time Baltimore fan Amy Paul died on October 4 from lymphoma.  She was 54.  She was active in Baltimore fandom since the mid-1980s, when she came to Baltimore after getting a minority scholarship (for white people) to Morgan State, a historically black university.  She had some Cherokee background, and was very interested in American Indian culture and spirituality and regularly attended Ecumenicon, a convention for people interested in alternative religions.  She often used the fannish name Reverend Blessing Bird, although I don’t know who ordained her as a minister.

One story I heard about her involved when she lived in the Baltimore slanshack Fandom Republic in the mid-1980s.  She showed up with a single bed, and legendary Baltimore fan Lee Smoire asked how she was going to have sex in such a small bed.  Paul responded that she intended to postpone sex until marriage.  Smoire was shocked and appalled.

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society is going to have a memorial party for Amy Paul in early November.

Tom Shippey on Margaret Atwood

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Tom Shippey’s latest article for the Wall Street Journal discusses Margaret Atwood’s book In Other Worlds and takes on the perennial question “What is sci-fi”? 

Most people here would follow a distinction made by Ms. Le Guin. Things we think are impossible, magic and dragons, that’s fantasy. Things we’re not sure about yet, that’s sci-fi. So we might challenge Ms. Atwood’s insistence that her books are “speculative” and not sci-fi. All the same, she may well be right, but for a deeper reason.

What slipstreamers seem to like in sci-fi is the scenarios, usually utopian or dystopian. Yet what’s missing in Ms. Atwood’s own speculative fictions is what sci-fi fans really like: explanation and analysis. Sci-fi futures need to show not just when and what but also how.

The comments have already begun to accrue from fans who wish Shipped had asked “What is science fiction?” That’s not my issue, though if it was I couldn’t imagine any point in lecturing Shippey about it — someone with his unassailable knowledge of the fantasy field cannot be presumed to have used “sci-fi” unaware of the tempest-in-a-teapot that follows when Ackerman’s term is preferred.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Monahan on The Thing

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When TAFF candidate Jacqueline Monahan puts on her film critic’s hat, her motto is “Snark but no Spoilers.” Visit Cineholics and read her review of The Thing.

The third thing to be discovered in ice-covered Antarctica is actually supposed to be a prequel to the 1982 (second and best) iteration of the three. It’s been hell on ice since John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There? appeared in Astounding Stories, forming the basis for three cinematic variations on the cold war – the one where man battles space alien in a harsh climate that’s deadly in itself.

This latest version takes place in 1982 before the events that comprise the actual 1982 John Carpenter story. That makes it a prequel and the message is driven home with the first shot of paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead0 listening to Men at Work’s Who Can it Be Now? with dated earphones.

Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) recruits Kate to help with an icy retrieval of an alien life form found alongside its massive spacecraft in an underground ice cavern. He speculates that the thing could have been there for 100,000 years. Kate drops everything to fly 10,000 miles to the Norwegian camp in Antarctica….

[Thanks to Alan White for the link.]

Ed Green in Air Disaster

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Wait, wait – Ed’s fine, Air Disaster is the name of the movie he’s in! From the same folks who brought you Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Mega Piranha, Titanic II, and Zombie Apocalypse:

When a solar storm wipes out the air traffic control system, Air Force One and a passenger jet liner are locked on a collision course in the skies above the midwest.

Air Disaster stars Robert Carradine, Jordan Ladd, Gerald Webb, and Andy Clemence. And in the mix is our own Ed Green —

I play a passenger on the passenger aircraft that’s on a collision course for Air Force One. I have lines! I have a death scene! I have a crappy flight all around!

The movie’s announced release date is March 2012, although it may be picked up by Syfy.

Peter Beagle Getting Paid

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Peter S. Beagle and Connor Cochran, who in August announced a settlement of the 8-year fight over rights to the movie The Last Unicorn, have issued an e-mail discussing the resolution in detail. Conlan Press also has announced some new projects made possible by that development.

Q: What was the problem, exactly?

A: Peter wasn’t getting paid. The animated version of The Last Unicorn was making millions of dollars around the world from VHS sales, DVD sales, cable distribution, and satellite broadcasts — but despite having a contract, Peter wasn’t getting his due share of that money from Granada Media, the English company that owned the film. In fact, he basically wasn’t getting any money from the film at all. For example, between January 2001 and January 2011 over 2.5 million copies of The Last Unicorn sold through North American retail video outlets, and the royalty Peter got from all those sales was exactly zero.

Q: Was anybody doing anything about this?

A: Certain people were trying. Connor Cochran took up the cause in 2003, when he read a news article in The Hollywood Reporter announcing all kinds of new international media business with the film. Since Connor is Peter’s business manager, he immediately got on the phone to England and tried to get Peter the money he was owed. Granada Media responded by claiming they didn’t owe anything…and what followed was an eight-year conflict over which side was right. It wasn’t a constant battle — sometimes things would be incredibly intense, and other times months would go by without anything shifting — but there were many twists and turns along the way, and the fight took lots of time, energy, and money. A bunch of Peter’s fans made direct donations which helped defray some of the legal expenses, while many others helped with the costs by purchasing things from Peter at conventions, or through Conlan Press. More than a thousand fans, from 55 different countries, posted messages of support on a public website. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Peter got additional important assistance from friends like David Roudebush and Terri Kempton, and from his attorney, Charles E. Petit. But despite all this effort, between 2003 and 2010 there really wasn’t anything that could be called progress. Just a frustrating and expensive game of corporate Whack-A-Mole.

Q: What changed?

A: In spring 2010, Peter and Connor decided to take Granada Media to court. After some research they picked the law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen for the job (because they had offices in LA, San Francisco, and London) and settled on attorney Richard J. Mooney to handle the case. Then, during prep for the filing, Connor noticed something which wound up making all the difference in the world.

Q: What was that?

A: All along, Peter and Connor had known that Granada Media was a subsidiary of a much bigger company — a huge European media conglomerate called ITV. What Connor noticed was that ITV had recently gotten a new CEO, a man named Adam Crozier, who came in from outside the company and had a mandate to pretty much completely clean house: get rid of things that weren’t working, make marginal properties more profitable, etc. To put it bluntly, this new CEO had no reason to cover up for anyone’s past bad judgment or mistakes and every incentive to make good new business happen. So, after some internal discussion, Connor sent a letter directly to Adam Crozier himself. The person at ITV who was tasked with responding was the company’s Group Legal Director and Corporate Secretary, Andrew Garard. Andrew really took the situation seriously. He dug in, did his research, met with Peter and Connor and Richard Mooney in New York City last November, and ultimately came to the conclusion that we were was right — (a) Peter wasn’t getting his due, and (b) if we stopped fighting and started working together, The Last Unicorn could be even more successful than it already was. Settlement details were worked out at a second meeting, this time in Los Angeles, and finally, last August, the settlement paperwork was signed.

Q: What does this mean for Peter?

A: First, from now on he will get his contractually-due share of Last Unicorn earnings. If the movie is shown on cable TV in Kuala Lumpur, or a Blu-ray sells in Joplin, Missouri, Peter will get his proper piece. Second, over time he’ll get a series of payments that will make him whole for all the years he wasn’t be paid.

Q: What does this mean for Connor?

A: He gets to stop putting time and resources into this problem, and will finally be able to catch up on some long-delayed Peter S. Beagle/Conlan Press projects. (Hooray!)

Q: What does it mean for ITV?

A: Adam Crozier and Andrew Garard and ITV proper all get a big round of richly-deserved applause for doing the right thing, and the company eventually winds up making more money as all the new business gets worked out.

Q: What does it mean for Last Unicorn fans?

A: A lot of exciting things, we hope. That’s the new business part. The original 1978 animated film contract divided up rights in the property in ways which didn’t make a lot of sense (even at the time), but which are flat-out ludicrous in today’s media world. The third part of the Peter S. Beagle/ITV deal was an agreement to work out a way to put those scattered rights back together in a powerful unified package. It’s going to take a while to figure out all the details, but we’ve begun, and already a bunch of things which weren’t legally possible before are about to happen.

Q: For years there’s been talk of a live-action Last Unicorn film. Does the settlement mean that there will finally be one?

A: The live-action film is a separate issue. A small London-based company called Continent Films currently has the exclusive right to do a remake of The Last Unicorn, and they will own that right until February 2015. Maybe they’ll get a movie off the ground before they lose the rights, maybe they won’t: we don’t know. All we can say is that Peter hopes they won’t get anything made, because he doesn’t trust them to do a good job.

The settlement deal means Conlan Press can finally do real Last Unicorn merchandising and licensing, using original development/production art from the animated film and brand new art based on it. See the items here.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Frank Harwood Passes Away

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Frank Harwood, a founding member of Las Vegas Fandom, died October 2 at the age of 59 after a series of medical problems. Arnie Katz reports in Glitter #32:

Frank Harwood was one of the few who responded to Alex Borders’ flyer about a meeting at the Clark County Library in late 1990. A week later, he took part in the much larger meeting at the home of Ken and Aileen Forman.

A huge, friendly man, Frank Harwood was a regular at SNAFFU meetings and the monthly Socials in the early and mid 1990’s. Illness had prevented his participation in local fan events in recent years.