The New England Science Fiction Association has voted to spend over $20,000 to cover the front of its clubhouse with James Hardie sheeting. The minutes of the August 5 meeting frankly state —
People question the value of this project. However, our front is uninviting; it looks abandoned.
Google Maps’ snapshot of the property doesn’t show much, but if the Clerk of the NESFA says it’s so, who’s going to argue?
Strange to think I’ve never visited there. I must add put that on my bucket list.
Artist Randy W. Clark, a past member of the Albuquerque SF Society, died June 28 from complications of spinal stenosis. He was 48. Clark helped organize the Bubonicon art show in the 1980s and 1990s.
Clark drew for Alpha Centura Communicator, Marty Cantor’s Holier Than Thou, Craig Chrissinger’s Desert Sun, and other fanzines. His artistic talent led to pro assignments inking pages for The Badger (First Comics), created by Mike Baron, and a Parts Unknown mini-series (Eclipse) with writer Beau Smith. He also worked on storyboards for two episodes of The Real Ghostbusters.
The onset of spinal stenosis ended his art career about half a dozen years ago. Then, in 2008, as the result of a fall he was paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair.
Clark is survived by two older brothers and an older sister.
[Via ASFACTS.]
The Century 16 theater in Aurora, CO has been vacant ever since a gunman killed 12 people in the audience of a new Batman movie last month, a large fence blocking off much of its parking lot.
Now the city of Aurora is surveying the community for their opinions about the future of the theater at the request of the corporate owner Cinemark. Responses are being accepted through August 31. The comments will be considered in the decision-making process.
[Via the Denver Post.]
Amazon would like it all. But Random House has decided it will have some too. And so will Macmillan.
Amazon generates $48 billion in revenue and has 63 percent of the eBook market, reports The Globe and Mail. It has already moved into book publishing. And now its Amazon Studios will be making movies, with 15 film projects in development.
Random House started its own film arm in 2005, and is joining with FremantleMedia (known for American Idol and The X Factor) to create Random House Television, reports the Toronto Star. Random House Television will develop shows from the publisher’s books and tap some of its leading writers for original content.
Macmillan hasn’t been left behind. It has a film division, too, and will be expanding into television, perhaps with a TV spinoff for supernatural military novel SEAL Team 666.
[Thanks to John Mansfield for the story.]
Martin Morse Wooster asks, “Did you know that there is a dying mall in Reading, UK (Dave Langford’s home town) that is SO DECREPIT that a company has leased out the entire mall so that gamers can run around pretending they are killing zombies?”
Experience a realistic ‘Zombie Survival Horror’ experience day. This is not a five minute ghost train or haunted house, this is an adrenaline filled , blood soaked zombie survival event. In this realistic zombie role play, have you got what it takes to survive?
***
This is more than just shooting the zombies, this is a game of survival. As a survivor you will need nerves of steel, brain power, work in a team and form tactics to fight, complete missions and survive your way through the hordes of zombies. How your day will go depends on how the story would end. Will you save the world or die trying?
Based in the Friars Walk shopping centre in the heart of Reading, Berkshire, First & Only Airsoft offers an unparalleled Airsoft gaming experience. The site is an entire self contained mall spread across 3 levels with over 250,000sq Ft of shop space, walkways, stair cases, lower ground storage rooms, service corridors and loading bays. Whether you like your action up close and personal or over bigger areas with lots of sneaky play, ‘The Mall’ has everything.
Martin, I don’t know that I’m a very promising candidate if you’re looking for someone to tease Dave about his home town. You may have overlooked that in my home town they don’t use just one mall but the entire city as the location for anything from Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D to Zombieland, not to mention films shot in the suburbs like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Just added to Mystery & Imagination Bookshop’s August 26 Tripleheader is a “Ray Bradbury Raffle” of Bradbury memorabilia from the estate of Forrest J Ackerman.
The bookstore is hosting three events on Sunday, August 26 from 1:00-4:00 p.m. – (1) a Devil’s Coattails signing party, (2) “Ray Bradbury: A Celebration of Life” and (3) a simultaneous signing party for The Nefertiti-Tut Express, the last book of Bradbury’s to appear before he left us.
Mystery & Imagination is located at 238 N. Brand Bl., Glendale, CA 91204.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
[From the press release by James Shields]: GUFF is the Going Under (or Get Up and Over) Fan Fund which transports SF fans from Europe to Australasia (and vice versa). Nominations are now open for the southbound race, to transport a European fan (or fans) to Conflux, the 2013 Australian National Convention (NatCon), to be held at the Rydges Capital Hill in Barton, Canberra, on 25th to 28th April 2013. Depending on the length of trip they’re able to make, the winner could also consider attending Swancon in Perth (29th March to 1st April) and/or Au Contraire 2 in Wellington (12th to 14th July). The winner will also be required to take over the administration of the fund for the next northbound and southbound races.
If you wish to stand, please contact us at the postal or email address below. You will then need three European and two Australasian nominators (who will each need to confirm their nominations), a 100-word platform to appear on the ballot, and a bond of £15/€20/AU$25 guaranteeing to attend the 2013 Natcon if you win. If you wish to stand and are unsure about how to go about getting any of these things, what the fund pays for, or the duties of a GUFF delegate and administrator, then feel free to contact us in confidence.
Nominations are open until Thursday 11th October 2012, and candidates will be announced on Saturday 23th October at Octocon in Dublin. Voting will then run until Monday 7th January 2013, with the winner announced at GenghisCon in Perth, Western Australia on 13th January.
Nominations should be sent to [email protected] or James Shields, 7 The Way, Highlands, Drogheda, IRELAND; or kylie_ding@hotmail.com, or Kylie Ding, 80A Forrest Street, FREMANTLE WA 6160, AUSTRALIA.
Please disseminate widely.
The FAQ follows the jump.
Richard Thompson is ending “Cul de Sac”, a comic strip distributed to 250 newspapers on September 23. The syndicator, Universal Uclick, announced:
The last year has been a struggle for Richard. Parkinson’s disease, first diagnosed in 2009, has so weakened him that he is unable to meet the demands of a comic strip. For a time, he worked with another artist, but the deadlines became too much of a task.
Thompson said about his illness:
At first it didn’t affect my drawing, but that’s gradually changed. Last winter, I got an excellent cartoonist, Stacy Curtis, to ink my roughs, which was a great help. But now I’ve gotten too unreliable to produce a daily strip.
Thompson came out of fanzine fandom. Many of his cartoons appeared in the 1980s and 1990s in such fanzines as Stephen Brown and Dan Steffan’s Science Fiction Eye, Ted White and Dan Steffan’s Blat! and the Disclave program book.
Since Thompson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2009 friends and fans have been encouraging and supporting him through Team Cul De Sac.
In June, an auction of art by his friends raised $50,000 – among the items an oil painting by Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”) of “Cul de Sac’s” Petey Otterloop. Watterson explained, “I thought it might be funny to paint Petey ‘seriously,’ as if this were the actual boy Richard hired as a model for his character.”
There’s also been a fundraising comic-art book, “Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson’s”, published by Andrews McMeel and coordinated with the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The book features contributions from about 150 artists, among them Watterson, Garry Trudeau, Sergio Aragones, Jim Davis, Lynn Johnston, Pat Oliphant, Matt Wuerker and Nick Galifianakis.
Michael Cavna, who writes the Comic Riffs blog for the Washington Post, interviewed Thompson about ending his strip:
MICHAEL CAVNA: How did you come to this decision now, Richard? Was there a moment that this choice became clear, or has this been a long and gradual decision — perhaps one that had a tipping point?
RICHARD THOMPSON: I’ve known for a year or more that I was working on borrowed time. My lettering had begun to wander off in 2009, but that could be fixed easily enough. But when Alice’s and Dill’s heads began to look under-inflated last winter, I figured I was losing control of the drawing, too. When I needed help with the inking (the hardest but most satisfying part of drawing the strip),well that was probably a tipping point. Parkinson’s disease is horribly selfish and demanding. A daily comic strip is too and I can only deal with one at a time. So it was a long, gradual, sudden decision.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]
Forty years ago this coming Labor Day Weekend, L.A.con co-chair Bruce Pelz made a few dollars on the side putting one of those newfangled electronic game machines in the con suite and allowing the readily hypnotized nerds to feed quarters into its yellow metal-flake console for the privilege of playing Pong for a couple of minutes.
Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon, plans to hold its own celebration of electronic games. Star Wars Arcade will provide historic arcade games like Space Invaders, Missle Command and Robotron, while infinitely more modern BattleTech Cockpit Simulator Pods will be available for play on convention concourse.
Historic games will be provided through Star Worlds Arcade (www.starworldsarcade.com) of DeKalb, Illinois. Star Worlds is widely recognized as one of the last arcades with coin-operated games in the US, and takes particular pride in maintaining and refurbishing historic arcade games from the 1980s. Star Worlds will be bringing no fewer than 15 of these machines to the Chicon 7 concourse for exclusive use by Chicon 7 members throughout the convention. Games on offer are expected to include such classics as Space Invaders, Missile Command and Robotron.
Showing the huge developments in arcade games of the last 30 years, the concourse will also host six BattleTech Cockpit Simulator Pods. These cockpits, created by Virtual World Entertainment, are fully enclosed military style simulators that feature seven displays (one primary and six secondary) and a full set of 90 controls (footpedals, throttle, joystick and numerous buttons). When seated in the pod, the player pilots one of a selection of BattleMechs onto one of 25 landscapes to compete for battlefield superiority with those seated in surrounding cockpits. The BattleTech pods were invented in Chicago, so Chicon 7 is doubly pleased to offer its members the chance to try them out.
I can’t say that what Chicon 7 will be doing with its historic games is exactly in the spirit of Bruce Pelz – he would not have understood the free part – however, it does bring back the memories.
The full press release follows the jump.
Just 10 days before the con begins, Chicon 7 has lost the head of its logistics department, Ken Hunt. SF Site reports he died August 20 of heart problems.
Hunt has been an active conrunner in the Chicago area for years, and served as the head of operations for Windycon.
[Via SF Site.]