Monthly Archives: April 2012

Further Pixel Clippings
About The Hugo Awards

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Rose Fox at Genreville emphasizes gender head-counting in her list of highlights:

Firsts: Michelle “Vixy” Dockrey points out that Seanan McGuire is the first woman to ever appear on the Hugo ballot four times in one year (twice under her own name, twice as Mira Grant). I’m pretty sure this is the first time a Hugo acceptance speech has been nominated for a Hugo award. It may also be the first time an April Fool’s joke has been nominated. Kevin Sonney says Ursula Vernon is the first woman to get a solo nomination for Best Graphic Story. And if this isn’t the first time the novella ballot has had five women on it I will be very surprised. For that matter, is this the first time any Hugo category finalist slate has contained no white men?

James Nicoll begins his comment about the Best Fan Writer nominees in ”Again with the Hugos” –

I would just like to say even I was shocked at how quickly my sense of entitlement set in and I am me so am pretty familiar with how I think.

You and me both! I’m embarrassed to admit I feel like Captain Hook’s crocodile, expecting the next bite to be right around the corner.

Cheryl Morgan confesses in “Nominee Time” how hard it supposedly was to keep from following the example of Christopher Priest:

As I noted on Twitter, not one of my nominees made it to the Best Novel short list. NOT ONE! I am totally outraged and will now go off and get very drunk, after which I will write a lengthy rant about how the Hugo Jury has failed in its duty and should be taken out and shot. But, being mildly sensible, even when drunk, I won’t post it.

Cheryl can also show you on a map where the center of the world is so far as the Hugo Awards are concerned –

My friends at BASFA have done very well. Chris Garcia is all over the ballot, but congratulations are also due to Spring Schoenhuth and Maurine Starkey who get their first and second ever nominations respectively in Fan Artist.

Finally, Cheryl’s ”Further Hugo Thoughts” reveals this news story —

There was apparently an error in the embargoed press release sent out by Chicon 7 that led to Brad Foster being left off the Fan Artist nominees in many announcements. This was another of those “tie for 5th place” issues, and somehow one of the six nominees got dropped.

One more reason to be happy I don’t get a copy of the embargoed press release.  Kevin Standlee supplied the first reason, telling readers of his LiveJournal how he received a copy to use in his work on The Hugo Awards official website and Kevin become so nervous about honoring the deadline that he made all his preparations on a computer that was disconnected from the web.

And I gave myself a panic attack anyway. When the press release popped into my in-box on Saturday I posted it as quick as I could. Then I drove off to do an errand. In the car I suddenly wondered – that wasn’t an embargoed copy, was it? I pulled over and used my Kindle to check. Whew! It was marked “For Immediate Release.”

Thanks For Playing

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Shaun Duke’s fame is spreading across the internet today thanks to his post “2012 Hugo Nominations: Preliminary Thoughts”, replete with gems of wisdom like —

StarShipSofa is not a fancast.  It is an audio fiction magazine like EscapePod, etc.  It does not produce fan content.  It produces magazine content.  Stop putting it alongside podcasts which actually produce fan content…

I love reading someone adamantly declare a nominee is ineligible for the Hugo category deliberately created to house it.

Craig Miller said it best: “A lack of actual information has frequently not hindered fans from holding and expressing strong opinions on a subject.”

A Boy And His Dog Screening

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Harlan Ellison will take questions about A Boy And His Dog after the screening at the Egyptian Theatre on April 19. Josh Olson will serve as moderator. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $11.

The first time I saw A Boy And His Dog was when Ellison and director L.Q. Jones showed a rough cut at Discon II, the 1974 Worldcon. Next year the finished movie was played for members of the 1975 NASFiC in Los Angeles (where Ellison was GoH.) Both conventions rented two 35 mm projectors so the film could be shown without interruption — but both times one of the projectors crapped out and the audience was forced to wait for reel changes anyway. How do I know? Lucky me — I sat through both showings!

Presumably that won’t happen at the Egyptian on April 19 — if only because I won’t be there to jinx things. (I have to speak somewhere that night.)

James Bacon: 2013 Eastercon Adopts
Gender Parity Policy

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By James Bacon: 8squared, the 2013 Eastercon Bid, announced they would be going for panel [gender] parity. Simon Bradshaw in charge of programme also advocated avoiding having all/majority moderators being male while achieving this. 

Meanwhile Satellite, the 2014 Eastercon bid, said they would prefer to follow what they normally do, so if four  women are the best speakers they’d be on the panel. After reviewing previous Satellites (local cons) they did well previously. When pressed they said they would not follow panel [gender] parity and one committee member subsequently said they want the best participants regardless of gender. This seemed a popular approach, but passions ran high at this stage from those who see that attitude as failing to enable gender parity. 

Both conventions were voted in. 

The question of  Panel Parity appears alive. One national con, here in the U.K., has embraced it.

2012 Hugo Nominations: Instant Analysis

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Chris Garcia and James Bacon venture into Resnick territory with four Hugo nominations in a single year — in Best Fanzine (twice), Best Fan Writer, and Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). I haven’t made an exhaustive search, but Mike Resnick is the only other person I’ve spotted with a four-nomination year. (Ellison, Silverberg, and Willis had some three-nomination years.) That is impressive.

For the dynamic duo to get two zines nominated in the Best Fanzine category in the same year not only is unprecedented, to achieve that with real fanzines amidst the clamoring for people to nominate blogs defies all expectations.

All that said, I wish they had turned down the nomination for their 2011 Hugo acceptance. It’s impossible to deny that anything taking place on a stage must be eligible as a dramatic presentation if people decide to nominate it. But in their shoes I’d have said, “That was a glorious moment of my life. I don’t want people thinking of it as a performance.”

One undisputed blog, SF Signal, did break through in the Best Fanzine category. I know what I’m about to say will be considered heresy by some of my fellow fanzine editors, but we should all be striving to match the quality and consistency of SF Signal. I admire their incredible range and expertise. They cover all the big media sf and fantasy stuff and books and authors, graphic novels, some comics here and there, sercon sf material (their Mind Meld is unsurpassed). They have fun with multimedia. They do a lot of creative community-building. If the Hugo Administrator is fine with having a blog in the Best Fanzine category, then SF Signal is what I’d choose first.

SF Signal’s podcast also received a nomination in the Best Fancast category, fulfilling the prediction that a podcast might get on the final ballot in more than one category this year. Strangely enough this doesn’t violate any rule, thus the reason for the warning. Some of you will say it’s apples-and-oranges to compare a podcast to a blog (or you may even say fanzine, you heathens…) And yet many SF Signal readers presumably download the podcast from a link on that site – it is part of the content of the SF Signal entity also nominated for Best Fanzine. Should any individual nominee be allowed two bites of the apple? (Or orange?)

2012 Hugo Nominations

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The 2012 Hugo Award and John W. Campbell Award nominees have been announced. The Chicon 7 committee reports 1101 valid nominating ballots were received and counted.

Best Novel (932 ballots)

Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Bantam Spectra)
Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit)
Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan / Del Rey)
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Orbit)

Best Novella (473 ballots)

Countdown by Mira Grant (Orbit)
The Ice Owl by Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction November/December 2011)
Kiss Me Twice by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s June 2011)
The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s September/October 2011)
The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary by Ken Liu (Panverse 3)
Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA)

Best Novelette (499 ballots)

“The Copenhagen Interpretation” by Paul Cornell (Asimov’s July 2011)
“Fields of Gold” by Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse Four)
“Ray of Light” by Brad R. Torgersen (Analog December 2011)
“Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)
“What We Found” by Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2011)

Best Short Story (593 ballots)

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld April 2011)
“The Homecoming” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s April/May 2011)
“Movement” by Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s March 2011)
“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2011)
“Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” by John Scalzi (Tor.com)

Best Related Work (461 ballots)

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight (Gollancz)
Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies by Daniel M. Kimmel (Fantastic Books)
The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature by Jeff VanderMeer and S. J. Chambers (Abrams Image)
Wicked Girls by Seanan McGuire
Writing Excuses, Season 6 by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Jordan Sanderson

Best Graphic Story (339 ballots)

Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)
Fables Vol 15: Rose Red by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham (Vertigo)
Locke & Key Volume 4, Keys to the Kingdom written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)
Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication written and illustrated by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (The Tayler Corporation)
The Unwritten (Volume 4): Leviathan created by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) (592 ballots)

Captain America: The First Avenger, screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephan McFeely, directed by Joe Johnston (Marvel)
Game of Thrones (Season 1), created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss; written by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, Jane Espenson, and George R. R. Martin; directed by Brian Kirk, Daniel Minahan, Tim van Patten, and Alan Taylor (HBO)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, screenplay by Steve Kloves; directed by David Yates (Warner Bros.)
Hugo, screenplay by John Logan; directed by Martin Scorsese (Paramount)
Source Code, screenplay by Ben Ripley; directed by Duncan Jones (Vendome Pictures)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) (512 ballots)

“The Doctor’s Wife” (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman; directed by Richard Clark (BBC Wales)
“The Drink Tank’s Hugo Acceptance Speech,” Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon (Renovation)
“The Girl Who Waited” (Doctor Who), written by Tom MacRae; directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
“A Good Man Goes to War” (Doctor Who), written by Steven Moffat; directed by Peter Hoar (BBC Wales)
“Remedial Chaos Theory” (Community), written by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna; directed by Jeff Melman (NBC)

Best Semiprozine (357 ballots)

Apex Magazine edited by Catherynne M. Valente, Lynne M. Thomas, and Jason Sizemore
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Lightspeed edited by John Joseph Adams
Locus edited by Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, et al.
New York Review of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell, Kevin J. Maroney, Kris Dikeman, and Avram Grumer

Best Fanzine (322 ballots)

Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
The Drink Tank edited by James Bacon and Christopher J Garcia
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Christopher J Garcia, et al.
SF Signal edited by John DeNardo

Best Fancast (326 ballots)

The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts (presenters) and Andrew Finch (producer)
SF Signal Podcast, John DeNardo and JP Frantz, produced by Patrick Hester
SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente
StarShip Sofa, Tony C. Smith

Best Professional Editor — Long Form (358 ballots)

Lou Anders
Liz Gorinsky
Anne Lesley Groell
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Betsy Wollheim

Best Professional Editor — Short Form (512 ballots)

John Joseph Adams
Neil Clarke
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Sheila Williams

Best Professional Artist (399 ballots)

Dan dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Michael Komarck
Stephan Martiniere
John Picacio

Best Fan Artist (216 ballots)

Brad W. Foster
Randall Munroe
Spring Schoenhuth
Maurine Starkey
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

Best Fan Writer (360 ballots)

James Bacon
Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
Jim C. Hines
Steven H Silver

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (396 ballots)

Award for the best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of 2010 or 2011, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo Award).

Mur Lafferty
Stina Leicht
Karen Lord *
Brad R. Torgersen *
E. Lily Yu

*2nd year of eligibility

 The full press release follows the jump.

Continue reading →

Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012)

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James Gurney (left) and Thomas Kinkade (right) at work on Ralph Bakshi's "Fire and Ice."

Thomas Kinkade, “The Painter of Light,” died at home in Los Gatos, California on April 6. He was 54. A family spokesman said death was apparently due to natural causes.

Kinkade was among the most commercially successful artists in the history of America, selling his work in malls and earning tens of millions of dollars. Nothing in his work suggests his career ever intersected with the sf & fantasy genres – yet not only did it intersect, his brief work in the genre had a big impact on the success that followed.

Kinkade and James Gurney, of Dinotopia fame, roomed together as freshmen at UC Berkeley in 1976. Both later attended the Art Center College of Design in Southern California. And in 1982 they were hired together to paint backgrounds for Ralph Bakshi’s animated movie Fire and Ice.

In between, the two spent a summer crossing the country on freight trains, paying their way by making sketches of bar patrons and doing house portraits for $10.

They would stop by pubs and start out by sketching the bartender. Thom would give the sketch to the barkeep and ask if he could paint the patrons that came in. The bartenders usually said yes and Thom would set-up at the end of the bar with a jar and a sign that read, “Sketches – $2.00”. People enjoyed the sketches so much that Thom and Jim thought it would be a great idea to teach people how to sketch. So they said, “Let’s write a book”. One night they spent hours on the pier above the Hudson River and banged out what became “The Artist’s Guide to Sketching”.

Having finished the book, the two applied for jobs at Bakshi Studios. They made “hundreds of scenes of jungles, volcanoes, swamps, and forests in which the rotoscope cel-animated characters” performed. These all had to match the style of artist Frank Frazetta, the movie’s co-producer.

Kinkade’s web biography says “This intensive period of work for the movie business may well have been the genesis of Kinkade’s mastery of pictorial lighting effects.”

Can you imagine? The Artist of Light got his inspiration from working for the artist of Conan.

[Thanks to Michael Walsh for the story.]

Westercon 66 Hotel Picked

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In July 2011, Westercon site selection voters rejected a Portland bid in favor of a rival bid for (*wink* *wink*) Granzella’s Inn in the olive country of California. (See John Hertz’ post “Wild, Wild Westercon”.)

Nine months later the winking is over. The 2013 Westercon really will be held in Sacramento at the Hilton Arden West. Room rates are $109 per night, parking is free.

The facility hosted Eclecticon in the early 1990s, reports Kevin Standlee. And it’s in the same fanhistoric neighborhood as the site of Sacramento’s two previous Westercons, the (now-renamed ) Red Lion.

What the Heinleins Told the 1940 Census

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On April 26, 1940 Arthur Harrell rang the bell at 8777 Lookout Mountain, a house on a winding street in the hills above Laurel Canyon. A woman answered the door. Harrell displayed his Certificate of Appointment as a U.S. Census enumerator and explained the purpose of his visit. Then Harrell took a fresh form out of his portfolio and began to ask the now-familiar questions.

That’s how the encounter with my test subject began, according to 1940 U.S. Census records and related documents made available for the first time on April 2.

To learn how to use this new resource I decided to look up Robert Heinlein’s census information. He was an LA local in 1940, and knowing the ground is a big help when working with this archive. Certainly, you’re more interested in Heinlein than in my relatives. Best of all, every science fiction fan knows where the author of “– And He Built a Crooked House –“ lived in those days. (Or thinks he does. At 8775 Lookout Mountain, the house in the story would have been Heinlein’s next door neighbor.)

Public demand for 1940 census information overwhelmed the government website with tens of millions of hits in the opening hours — initially, I couldn’t get into the archive at all. Over the next two days service was upgraded and I’ve experienced no problems since then.

Users may download or view online scans of the handwritten census forms in JPG format. Because these records aren’t searchable by name, although that will come in time, searches must be done geographically — by county, city, and street name. Research is time-intensive even when you know exactly where your subject was living in 1940.

Robert and Leslyn Heinlein bought the 8777 Lookout Mountain property in June 1935. By 1940 they were able to pay off the mortgage using the proceeds from Robert’s fiction sales. That was the year several of his most brilliant stories saw print — “The Roads Must Roll” (later selected for inclusion in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One), “If This Goes On —,” “Coventry,” and Blowups Happen.

However, it’s evident that Arthur Harrell, the census taker, was not a science fiction fan and he knew nothing about the occupants when he arrived. Nor was he any better informed when he left, which is the truly bizarre part of the story.

  • The census forms report that the woman who answered the door gave her name as Sigred Heinlein. She lived at 8777 with her husband, Richard Heinlein, and their 4-year-old son, Rolf.
  • Richard and Sigred both were born in Germany. They had become naturalized U.S. citizens. Their 4-year-old son had been born in California.
  • Richard worked as an artist in the motion picture business. He worked year-round, 30 hours a week, and made $4,200 a year. They owned this house, worth about $4,500.

Was that truly Leslyn Heinlein at the door? Did she tell the 1940 census taker a story? Why? Kind of makes my head spin.

Perhaps a better title for this post is “Leslyn Baffles the Busies.” Busies is something Robert Heinlein liked to call people who felt entitled to poke their noses into others’ business. Maybe Leslyn, in the true libertarian spirit, decided to slap some perjury on this bureaucrat and send him on his way.

If it was a prank, it was successful. Before drawing that conclusion, however, two questions deserve to be asked. (1) Could this be a mistake, some kind of mix-up? Maybe some other family named Heinlein lived there? Robert and Leslyn weren’t the only folks in town with that surname. (2) How could she get away with it?

The possibility of a mistake seems remote. William Patterson’s Hugo-nominated biography shows the Heinleins at this address in 1940. Two contemporary directories confirm it as well. The 1939 Los Angeles City Directory shows this condensed entry – “ [Heinlein] Robt A (Leslyn M) USN h8777 Lookout Mountain av. The same address appears in the Los Angeles Extended Area Telephone Directory, Southern California Telephone Company, 1939, which lists Robert at 8777, and Rex I at another Hollywood address (likely his brother; the father was in the VA hospital, though both were in LA at the time), plus several more unrelated Heinleins – none named Richard, Sigred or Rolf.

As for getting away with it? In 1940 a census taker wrote down whatever people told him. Proof of identity was not requested. No verification was requested. All that was required by the Instructions for Enumerators [PDF file] was to get the information from an adult, not a child or servant. They were to mark an “X” beside the name of the household member who gave the answers. (Which was “Sigred” at 8777.) In a pinch, a neighbor could be asked for the information and the source’s name would be noted. Everybody was expected to be honest and answering in good faith.

In respect to the real couple at 8777, Robert and Leslyn, the only accurate answer on the form is that they had lived at the same place on April 1, 1935. Enumerators wrote “same place” if the people had lived in the same city in 1935 or “same house” if that applied. The Heinleins purchased the Lookout Mountain property in June 1935. In April 1935 they had been living down the hill in what is now West Hollywood. Therefore “same place” was the right answer.

Whatever personal details about the Heinleins anyone dreamed of discovering in these unsealed records – forget about it. The Heinleins always liked their privacy and even the 1940 U.S. Census did not penetrate it.

Note: The Heinlein record is in E.D. 60-173. If you download the set of files, the image you want is m-t0627-00404-00111. Viewing online page-by-page, that ought to correspond to page 11 but I guarantee nothing….

Google Glasses

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Yes, I said Google Glasses. Says a New York Times blogger —

The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby.

Sign me up. I need help like this to avoid embarrassing myself when I run into friends away from science fiction conventions and can’t resort to scanning their name badges.

What you see is being called a “Terminator-style display,” after the visuals used in the movie to simulate what happens in Ah-nold’s head when the robot is faced with a decision.

For a demonstration, view the preview video from “Project Glass”  on the Washington Post website.

John W. Campbell loved it when his writers fully extrapolated the consequences of their science fictional ideas and would have applauded how the Google development team is thinking about the social and legal implications of their new technology. For example – shouldn’t people be alerted when they are recorded by someone wearing a pair of Google Glasses with a built-in camera?

My first suggestion: Equip the glasses with an inflatable device that deploys like a comic-strip thought balloon and says “I am taking video of you.”

Speaking of fully extrapolating the use of technology, sounds like this commenter on 9to5google has met the Google folks before —

The first time I see an advertisement pop in front of my google goggles I’ll throw them off a cliff.

Incidentally, when Google first came along I only associated the name with the sound-alike large number (googol, with 100 zeros). Nor was that a mistake, since the company’s name derives from the number, mispelled.

I wasn’t sufficiently ancient to have thought of other possibilities, like the 1923 hit tune “Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)” and the comic strip that inspired it, whose title character, in the words of comics historian Bill Blackbeard, was a “goggle-eyed, moustached, gloved and top-hatted, bulbous-nosed, cigar-chomping shrimp.”

But I expect to think of Barney more often from now on.