Monthly Archives: October 2012

NYRSF Readings for 10/22

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The New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series provides performances from some of the best writers in science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction. Appearing on October 22 will be —

Terry McGarry, author of the Tor fantasy novels Illumination, The Binder’s Road, and Triad, who also has published short fiction in over 40 magazines and anthologies. She has been a freelance copyeditor since 1987, specializing in science fiction and fantasy, and she worked at The New Yorker magazine for 15 years. A New York City native, she has also been a bartender on Wall Street, an English major at Princeton, and a street trader in Ireland; she holds a third-level belt in Krav Maga and plays Irish traditional music at gigs and pub sessions in the city and on Long Island, where she currently lives. She’s on the web at terrymcgarry.com.

Veronica Schanoes’ short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and she has a story forthcoming in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. She also is an assistant professor of English at Queens College-CUNY who specializes in children’s literature and speculative fiction. Schanoes is particularly interested in children’s literature, women’s writing, and fantastic literature. Her publications include such intriguing topics as “Fearless Children and Fabulous Monsters: Lewis Carroll, Angela Carter, and Beastly Girls” (Marvels and Tales) and “Book as Mirror, Mirror as Book: The Significance of the Looking-glass in Contemporary Revisions of Fairy Tales” (Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.)

The full press release follows the jump.

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Unwrapping the Presents

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Rusty Hevelin’s collection of pulps, fanzines and books went to the University of Iowa after his death. Now the librarians are sharing what they’re discovering as they open the boxes. You’ll find these snapshots from the history of science fiction at Tumblr — http://hevelincollection.tumblr.com

Highlights so far include:

  • A 1941 issue of The Fantasite, the Minneapolis Fantasy Society zine, with material by Rusty (“Rustebar”) and Bob Tucker;
  • Science Fiction Echo #21, edited by Ed Connor (1974), with a Tim Kirk cover and letters by Robert Bloch and Ursula K. Le Guin; and
  • Two fanzines notable for their material by Ray Bradbury — an issue of The Damn Thing featuring Ray’s cover art and a short story, and a copy of Ray’s own Futuria Fantasia with a Hannes Bok cover.

Why Some Publishers Are Forgotten

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Can you imagine Mary Shelley getting a rejection slip for Frankenstein?

The University of Iowa Special Collections has posted the note Percy Shelley added to one of his wife’s letters saying, “Poor Mary’s book has come back with a refusal which has put me in rather ill spirits.”

Frankenstein was rejected not once but twice — Percy Shelley’s and Lord Byron’s publishers both passed — before being accepted.

View the letter online here.

Follow That Starship!

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Mother Jones features an interview with “George Takei, the Best Driver in the Galaxy” timed to promote Allegiance, the musical based on his WWII internment camp experience.

MJ: Did you feel a sense of responsibiity as the rare Asian face on television?

GT:Yes. Up until the time I was cast in Star Trek, the roles were pretty shallow — thin, stereotyped, one-dimensional roles. I knew this character was a breakthrough role certainly for me as an individual actor but also for the image of an Asian character: no accent, a member of the elite leadership team. I was supposed to be the best helmsman in the Starfleet, No. 1 graduate in the Starfleet Academy. At that time there was the horrible stereotype about Asians being bad drivers. I was the best driver in the galaxy!

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]

Snapshots 92

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Here are 6 developments of interest to fans.

(1) Captain Picard characteristically tugs on his Starfleet uniform blouse after rising or sitting… or breathing — or practically anything, because, my gosh he does it a lot! Someone has edited a tribute montage showing every single instance in the entire course of the ST:TNG series.

Can anybody tell me — Did Locutus of the Borg do this, too, or did he have a better-fitting uniform?

(2) Grantland is attached to the ESPN.com sports franchise, but it also delivers a great sidestream of pop culture commentary. Consider Career Arc: Tim Burton. How did it all go so wrong so fast? by Alex Pappademas:

Hey, here’s a question: When, exactly, are we as a society going to review Johnny Depp’s membership in the One Of Our Finest Actors club? He’s probably a chill bro to split a bottle of red wine and a carton of cigarettes with, and Rango is the best American Western of the last decade that isn’t Deadwood, but come on — when he’s not taking pirate-booty gigs far beneath a man who already owns a fucking private island or sleepwalking through classy dreck like The Tourist or sewing fresh neck bolts onto the corpus of Hunter S. Thompson, he’s donning funny hats and goon wigs in bad movie after bad movie for Burton, channeling Brando’s perversion through Jerry Lewis’s good taste. At this point his collaboration with Burton post–Ed Wood is such a study in diminishing returns that the only logical next step for them is a 3-D adaptation of Zeno’s paradox with Depp as the voice of the arrow.

(3) Roger Ebert, at the end of his review of Argo reveals a couple of projects Ben Affleck is thinking about directing:

Another possibility: Stephen King’s adaptation of his own mammoth sci-fi story “The Stand,” which could run as long as “Lord of the Rings.” Make no little plans.

(4) Laurel Anne Hill, author of Heroes Arise, has created a book trailer for Shanghai Steam [YouTube], the Steampunk-Wuxia anthology which includes her short story “Moon-Flame Woman.” Her argument for spending the time? “This is so much more fun than managing underground storage tanks and hazardous chemicals.” I daresay.

From ancient China to a future Mars, from the British Empire to the Old West, 19 authors show you worlds with alcohol-fueled dragons, philosophical automatons, and Qi-powered machines. SHANGHAI STEAM is a unique mashup of steampunk and the Chinese literary genre known as Wuxia.

(5) James Nicoll ran a poll asking “What would you say the worst frequently anthologized short works of F&SF are?”

I immediately thought “The Cold Equations.” So did the first two commenters. Vindicated!

(6) Researchers told the Wall Street Journal that many things findable with blood tests might potentially be detected with a breath test. [Online article available free for 7 days.]

Scientists are identifying thousands of chemical compounds that create those telltale odors. Tools called mass spectrometers can detect them in quantities as minute as parts per trillion, the equivalent of finding a single ping-pong ball in a thousand baseball fields filled with ping-pong balls…

“The Holy Grail is the Star Trek Tricorder concept, where you would breathe into a device and a sign would pop up saying what health problems you have,” says Cristina Davis, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Davis, who is co-chairing an international conference on breath analysis later this month.

Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a highway patrolman…

[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus.]

Enter the Facts

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I didn’t know we were keeping it secret from SFWA that fans attend the Worldcon.

So how come there’s someone writing for the SFWA Blog who sounds unaware of this?

In Jaym Gates’ guest post, Enter the Dragon*con, she rhapsodizes about the audience for her panel at the Atlanta con:

These were fans, people who maybe were just starting to write or be published and readers. They are the people the authors and publishers started out as, and the ones who will be deciding the future of the industry. After a few years of attending conventions mostly populated by writers, it was a refreshing change of pace to hear from a larger crowd.

“Mostly populated by writers.” What conventions are those?

Conventions like WorldCon and World Fantasy are wonderful. It’s a chance to catch up with peers and talk about work, to drink in the bar with your fellows. But it’s a relatively closed system.

Do writers dominate the World Fantasy Con? I suppose that’s possible. WFC has a strict membership limit – just 1000 in 2010.

On the other hand, I’ve never heard anyone characterize the Worldcon as “mostly populated by writers” for a very good reason — it’s not.

In fact, outside of Jaym Gates’ word processor, it’s pretty well known that the Worldcon is a good place to find a few thousand enthusiastic book buyers.

But conventions like Dragon*Con, ComiCon and GenCon offer the opportunity to reconnect with the people we should really be paying attention to.

I’d like to think SFWAns realize anywhere a large group of fans is interested in hearing from an sf/fantasy writer is a good place to make that connection.

Space Auction Boasts Unique Items

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Ed White’s West Point ring.

Rare artifacts going on the block at the Space Exploration Auction on November 2 include astronaut Ed White II’s prized personal West Point class ring:

The NASA image of him in the ocean waiting to be lifted out of the Gemini 4 spacecraft clearly shows this ring on his hand. He had worn it on the mission and during America’s first spacewalk. It was returned to the family after his tragic death in the Apollo 1 launch pad accident. His son has handwritten a letter of authenticity. Included with it are ten tiny mustard seeds that he had carried in his spacesuit pocket during his Gemini 4 EVA as a sign of his religious faith.

The balance of material in the auction comes from all fields of space collecting: autographs, flown material & equipment, Robbins & Fliteline medallions, hardware, history, original art, signed art prints, coins, currency, and stamps.

Bits of the Moon itself will be up for bid at a different auction October 14 at the Fletcher Sinclair Mansion in New York City. The headliner of this stellar event is a four pound lunar specimen — the largest piece of the Moon ever to be auctioned. It’s expected to bring $340,000+.

According to a Heritage Auctions consultant, only 135 pounds of the Moon is available to the public, excluding Apollo mission material.

Moon-Based Supercomputer Proposed

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The old chums would have titled this paper: “Let’s Put a Dinkum Thinkum on Luna.”

Earth’s Deep Space Network of giant antennas used to gather data and talk to spacecraft is already overloaded, and the demand for bandwidth will only go up. Ouliang Chang, a grad student from my alma mater, USC, recently presented his solution at a space conference (Wired.com, “Why We Need a Supercomputer on the Moon.”) —

The plan is to bury a massive machine in a deep dark crater, on the side of the moon that’s facing away from Earth and all of its electromagnetic chatter. Nuclear-powered, it would process data for space missions and slingshot Earth’s Deep Space Network into a brand new moon-centric era.

Factoring in the cost of launching components into space, he estimates the project would cost between $10-$20 billion.

That’s before we start hiring the specialists. Keep an eye open for this classified ad:

Wanted: one-armed computer tech to spend his time explaining which jokes are funny…

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

Stuart James Byrne (1913-2011)

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William Lundigan in Men Into Space.

Stuart James Byrne died September 23, 2011 according to the Social Security Administration, although so far as Andrew Porter can tell this is just now coming to the attention of fandom.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Byrne’s stories were published in Science Stories, Amazing Stories, Imagination, and Other Worlds. In the mid-1950s he wrote a novel called Tarzan on Mars that the Burroughs estate would not authorize to be published, a minor controversy stoked by Ray Palmer, Other Worlds’ editor. In the 1970s, Byrne also worked as a translator on the Perry Rhodan series from German to English.

What especially caught my eye in Byrne’s Wikipedia entry is that he wrote for Men Into Space, which aspired to be a realistic weekly drama about near-future space exploration. It aired in 1959 and 1960 – my 7-year-old self watched it the same season The Flintstones premiered (see Yabba Dabba Doo Time from the other day.)

What would I think of it today? Impossible to guess, though from an effects and design standpoint the show’s producers seem to have invested a lot of effort, using Navy pressure suits in the premiere, taking inspiration from Von Braun’s proposed spacecraft, and hiring Chesley Bonestell to contribute some of the imagery.

Byrne wrote the series’ episode entitled “Quarantine” (1959) and the story for “Contraband” (1960).

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]