Monthly Archives: February 2013

Springer’s Science/SF Initiative

Posted on by

Springer, a leading science publisher, is seeking titles for a new series that will explore the “narrow frontier” between science and science fiction —

A unique new book series.In many respects the intellectual challenges of discovering new science and creating plausible new fictional worlds are two sides of the same coin. They both demand an understanding of the way the world is and, based on this, an ability to imagine how it might be.

The characteristics Springer’s looking for are books that:

  • Indulge in science speculation – describing, in accessible manner, interesting, plausible yet unproven ideas
  • Exploit science fiction for teaching purposes and as a means of promoting critical thinking
  • Analyze the interplay of science and science fiction – throughout the history of the genre and looking ahead
  • Publish essays on related topics, probably with a philosophical tenor
  • Publish short works of fiction where (i) the scientific content is a major component and (ii) the text is supplemented by a substantial summary of the science underlying the plot

Gregory Benford is a member of the editorial and advisory board. I asked him what existing works might be considered examples of what Springer hopes to publish. Benford says:

They cited Beyond Human that I did with Elisabeth Malartre, and Deep Time from 1999… plus some writings of Zebrowski and Asimov and Clarke’s Profiles of the Future, much Dyson, Rees Our Final Hour, Time Travel by Gott, Nahin’s Time Machines, a lot of Paul Davies — a wide range on the mutual inspirations of science and sf.

The Editorial and Advisory Board is loaded with prestigious scientists and writers.

Mark Alpert, author of Final Theory, The Omega Theory, and Extinction, is a contributing editor at Scientific American.

Philip Ball worked at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences (for which his brief extended from biochemistry to quantum physics and materials science) and then as a Consultant Editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology to the future of molecular biology. Ball’s latest is Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything (Bodley Head, 2012)

Gregory Benford, in addition to being one of our most honored sf writers and the author of over 20 novels, is a professor of physics at UC Irvine. He conducts research in plasma turbulence theory and experiment, and in astrophysics. He has published over a hundred papers on topics including condensed matter, particle physics, plasmas and mathematical physics, and biological conservation.

Michael Brotherton, an astronomer on the faculty at University of Wyoming, studies the supermassive black holes in the centers of  galaxies. He is also the author of Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008), and founder of the NASA-funded Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, which brings a dozen award-winning professional writers to Wyoming every summer.

Victor.Callaghan credits his love of “SciFi” for drawing him into “Science and Engineering and, ultimately, to teaching and researching in a university …. the best job in the world.” Callaghan and his colleagues have made many contributions, a couple examples being the development of a novel real-time self-programming fuzzy-logic based genetic algorithm for robot control, and the development of the world’s first network camera (NetCam – a spinoff of robotics work).

Amnon Eden is a computer scientist and the co-editor of a forthcoming collection of essays on the singularity hypothesis.

Geoffrey Landis is a NASA scientist who works on Mars missions and developing advanced concepts and technology for future space missions. His sf has won two Best Short Story Hugos and a Nebula, and as a poet he has won a Rhysling Award.

Rudy Rucker is a mathematician who worked for twenty years as a computer science professor. He’s the author of 30 published fiction and nonfiction books, including 2 Philip K. Dick Award winners.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch’s researchs the interaction of microbes with their natural geological environment in an aqueous medium. He is interested in the presence of liquid-rich environments on other planets and moons inside and outside of our Solar System and how these environments can serve as a potential habitat for microbial life.

Rudy Vaas is editor of Beyond The Big Bang: Competing Scenarios for an Eternal Universe and cod-editor of The Arrows of Time: A Debate in Cosmology.  

Ulrich Walter is a physicist/engineer and a former DFVLR astronaut and a professor of astronautics.

Stephen Webb has written on such cosmological subjects as If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.

Summing up the project, Benford says: “I hope this can be a new vehicle for such approaches. Plainly as we accelerate into this turbulent century, facing unprecedented problems like climate change and the population/resource crunch (see The Windup Girl), we need all the thinking we can get.”

Dragon*Con Addresses Kramer Connection

Posted on by

Dragon*Con’s management has responded on Facebook to the storm over its continued financial connection to Ed Kramer.

The controversy was energized by Kramer’s extradition from Connecticut to Georgia, where he has been facing child molestation charges since 2000, and a recent article in an Atlanta monthly that raised fans’ awareness that Kramer remains a stockholder in Dragon*Con’s parent corporation and gets dividends from the con’s profits.

Nancy Collins has called for a Dragon*Con boycott and some have answered, notably Kaja and Phil Foglio.

Dragon*Con’s response begins:

There has been a great deal of discussion as of late in the community regarding our continued financial connection to Edward Kramer. Please know that we are as troubled by this circumstance as anyone else, but please also know that there is no simple, legal, solution to this matter…if there were, it would have been resolved long ago.

For the record, Edward Kramer resigned from the Dragon*Con convention in the year 2000. Since that time, he has had no role in the direction or management of the convention; however, he remains a stockholder despite our desires otherwise.

Since Edward Kramer’s arrest in 2000, we have made multiple attempts to sever all ties between Edward Kramer and Dragon*Con including several efforts to buy Edward Kramer’s stock shares. Unfortunately, Edward Kramer’s response to our buyout efforts was repeated litigation against Dragon*Con…th­us our buyout efforts have been stalled. The idea proposed of dissolving the company and reincorporating­ has been thoroughly investigated and is not possible at this point. Legally, we can’t just take away his shares. We are unfortunately limited in our options and responses as we remain in active litigation.

They deny generally the “current flood of ‘information’” sourced in Kramer’s multiple lawsuits against Dragon*Con, claiming “much of this misinformation is being quoted as pure fact despite the reality that a court of law determined that many of the facts and figures provided by Mr. Kramer in his law suits were false, inaccurate or completely fictitious.”

The statement also emphasizes that since 2000, Dragon Con has been managed by three of the original co-founders, Chairman Pat Henry and board members Dave Cody and Robert Dennis. Which is to say – not Ed Kramer.

Regardless whether Dragon*Con management is legally helpless, or just unwilling to do anything that might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, one fact is clear. People who don’t want to be making a financial contribution to Ed Kramer must find their own solutions. Not giving Dragon*Con any of their money is one.

Collins, the Foglios any many others consider the boycott a necessity to cut off the funds Kramer uses for his legal defense. I make no doubt that Ed uses his Dragon*Con income to pay his lawyers, but let’s not forget that in our system he’s entitled to a defense. If he was broke, the government would have to appoint him a public defender. I won’t characterize it as a problem that he’s defending himself, frustrated as I may be that the charges have lingered unresolved for almost 13 years.

It’s the prosecutors and courts in Georgia I’ve felt should be held accountable for letting Ed scam them into infinite delays, arguing he was unable to assist in his own defense. Quotes from people who saw Kramer out and about prior to his arrest in Connecticut show he considers himself able to work on a film. Why wasn’t anyone in Georgia law enforcement able to bring similar information to light over the years?

[Thanks to James Bacon for the link.]

Snapshots 103 Ice Truck Killer

Posted on by

Here are 8 developments of interest to fans.

(1) William Shatner calls J. J. Abrams a “pig” for directing movies in both the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises. Then he asks for a job. What could be more Hollywood?

“I think of him as a buddy of mine. I’ve taken him out for sushi. I think it’s time for J.J. and I to have another sushi and let me put him straight about two of the largest franchises and not employing me in either one of them is just foolhardy,”  

(2) And what could be more Florida – if your impression of Florida comes from Serge A. Storms novels – than somebody named Johnnie Blade getting busted for swinging a bat’leth around in public?

The man was “wildly swinging” the four-foot long sword and “proudly displaying” it to passing motorists.

“This sword…is known to loyal Star Trek fans as traditional Klingon ‘Bat’leth’ or ‘Sword of Honor,’ said the Broward Sheriff’s Office report on the matter.

Blade was charged with improper exhibition of a dangerous weapon, disorderly intoxication in a public place that caused a disturbance, resisting an officer without violence and drug possession.

(3) A U.S. District Court judge has ruled “it’s clear that the Batmobile is a copyrighted character”, granting Warner Brothers summary judgment in its lawsuit against Mark Towle, a California resident who operates Gotham Garage, a specialist in customizing replicas of automobiles featured in various films and TV shows. The Hollywood Reporter quotes the judge —

“Thus, the Batmobile’s usefulness is a construct…. Additionally, Defendant’s argument that Batman is merely a car wholly fails to capture the creativity and fantastical elements that stand apart from the fact that the Batmobile also happens to look like a car.”

The judge also went into the particulars of the Batmobile to single out what’s conceptually separable such as the “Batmobile’s entire frame, consisting of the rear exaggerated, sculpted bat-fin and the mandibular front,” which he says “can stand on its own without the underlying vehicle.”

(4) Fans knew from the beginning Fredric Wertham’s anti-comics views in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) were nonsense. Now Carol Tilley has shown what a cheat his scholarship really was:

Wertham’s personal archives…show that the doctor revised children’s ages, distorted their quotes, omitted other causal factors and in general “played fast and loose with the data he gathered on comics,” according to an article by Carol Tilley, published in a recent issue of Information and Culture: A Journal of History.

“Lots of people have suspected for years that Wertham fudged his so-called clinical evidence in arguing against comics, but there’s been no proof,” Tilley said. “My research is the first definitive indication that he misrepresented and altered children’s own words about comics.”

Scholars didn’t have an opportunity to study the original data until Wertham’s archives at the Library of Congress were made widely available to researchers in 2010.

(4) Ray Bradbury Square is an official Google Map site. But there seems to be a difference of opinion between the submitter and the site editor over whether Bradbury Square is of Historic Interest or just a name for an intersection. Puh-leeze!

(5) Can’t tell your Elves without a scorecard? Another graphic from the LoTR blog makes the connections between different groups of Elves in Tolkien’s works a little easier to understand.

(6) James Bacon has done a great job reporting the “Heroes & Villains: The Comic Book Art of Alex Ross” exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum for Forbidden Planet. Lots of cool images posted, too.

Ross created an illustration of Norman Rockwell, a superhero of a different sort. Instead of a cape, he holds the American flag over his shoulder, otherwise looking very normal, but the viewer knows that Rockwell was indeed a hero amongst illustrators. Ross also illustrated an image of Andy Warhol flying into the sky amongst swans, again showing an artistic colleague in a different light.

The exhibition in Stockbridge, MA is open through February 24.

Alex Ross, “Norman Rockwell”, 2012, courtesy of the artist, ©Alex
Ross. Used with permission.

(7) A girl blasted her Hello Kitty doll into space for a school science project. “Now if we could just send the rest of them there,” quips James Hay.

(8) Amazon is entertaining the idea of using an Amazon currency in its store. Presently, Amazon Coins work in the Amazon app store. According to TechCrunch:

In their press release announcing Amazon Coins, the company makes it clear that they are going to give away (not sell) tens of millions of dollars worth of Amazon Coins in the coming quarters. The only rational reason to give away tens of millions of dollars of virtual currency that has real-world value is to juice the market and get people who have Kindles spending more money on apps and in-app purchases. It will be great for developers who have apps live in the store and for consumers looking to get more free stuff.

TechCrunch speculates that the goal is to drive more customers to Amazon who can only use the money there. On the other hand, Amazon’s implacable foe the Canadian Booksellers Association says it may be the first sign that Amazon is becoming a full-blown nation state…

[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, James Bacon and John Mansfield.]

2013 World Fantasy Award Opens Nominations

Posted on by

World Fantasy Con 2013 announced in Progress Report #10 that nominations are now open for the World Fantasy Awards. Details about the awards and an electronic version of the ballot can be found here.

All registered members of the 2011 World Fantasy Convention in California, the 2012 World Fantasy Convention in Canada and the 2013 event in Brighton are eligible to nominate.

The nine award categories are Life Achievement, Novel, Novella, Short Fiction, Anthology, Collection, Artist, Special Award – Professional, and Special Award – Non-Professional.

Nominated material must have been published in 2012 or have a 2012 cover date. Only living persons may be nominated.

Voting will close May 31, 2013.

The final ballot will list the two items receiving the most nominations (except for those ineligible) and the rest of the candidates will be added by the judges.

The judges for the 2013 World Fantasy Awards are Holly Black, Tom Clegg, Marc Laidlaw, Stephen Laws and Stephanie Smith.

The awards will be presented on November 3 at the World Fantasy Con in Brighton, UK.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

Amateur Martian Photo Analysis

Posted on by

Years ago someone claimed the Viking mission had taken pictures of a Face on Mars, proving with geometric logic it was a monument created by sentient beings. NASA eventually got a new batch of photos that showed it was merely a natural formation. But now we have a new body part to speculate about – the robotic finger of Mars!

And is there anyone left who believes there were canals on Mars? Then you should talk to Taral. He knows where all the water went —

Did I mention that I’ve discovered a bath drain on Mars? There’s the plug, over on the right. Somebody must have taken the chain.

Bradbury’s Back!

Posted on by

Ray speaks to his fans once again on February 19 — for one night only! — in “The Red Planet: An Evening With Ray Bradbury” created by Charlie Mount and Jeff G. Rack.

THE RED PLANET: An Evening With Ray Bradbury features the character of Ray Bradbury on stage, talking about his inspirations and formulas for writing. Watch as he creates several stories out of thin air. It’s a unique look at the creative process of Ray Bradbury.

Ray’s dialogue is adapted from his actual writings and interviews, and the stories are adapted from four of his Martian stories: The Strawberry Window, The Blue Bottle, The Messiah, and Night Call, Collect.

The performance at Theatre 40 starts at 7:30 p.m. – and it’s free.

Theatre 40 is Located in the Reuben Cordova Theatre on the Campus of Beverly Hills High School, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90212

 [Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Won’t Take No For An Answer

Posted on by

See, here’s what Kickstarter should be used for — raising money to build the Death Star. Someone has posted an appeal for £543 quadrillion to fund the project – which The Register reports is coincidentally the same cost estimated by the White House when it rejected an online petition asking Obama to build the spacecraft.

And there are incentives!

Those who pledge more than ten pounds will receive “your name etched onto the underneath of one of the MSE-6-series repair droids used on the finished station” and is promised for delivery in December 2015. Those who pledge lesser amounts will receive only “Our thanks and the knowledge that we’re one step towards a safer planet.”

1,734 backers have pledged £254,607 so far.

No, this is not a joke! (By the way, the funding period closes April 1.)

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

Guests for 2013 LA Paperback Show

Posted on by

Over 40 authors and illustrators will sign books for free at the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Collectors Show in Mission Hills, CA on Sunday April 7. Admission is $5.

The event runs from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., at the Valley Inn and Conference Center, 10621 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills, CA91345. There is no charge for parking.

The scheduled guests at this writing are —

Karen Anderson 10-11 a.m., Peter Atkins 12-1 p.m., Victor Banis 2-3 p.m., Peter Beagle 11-1 p.m., James Blaylock 11-1 p.m., Louis Charbonneau 2-3 p.m., John DeChancie 10-11 a.m., L.J. Dopp 2-3 p.m., Dennis Etchison 1-2 p.m., Laura Freas 1-2 p.m., Brian Garfield 12-2 p.m., Bill George 11-12 p.m., David Gerrold 11-12 p.m., Gary Gianni 10-12 p.m., Mel Gilden 11-12 p.m., James C. Glass 10-11 a.m., Tony Gleeson 2-3 p.m., Donald Glut 1-2 p.m., Cody Goodfellow 10-11 a.m., Barbara Hambly 10-11 a.m., Denise Hamilton 10-11 a.m., Earl Hamner 1-2 p.m., Odie Hawkins 1-2 p.m., Glen Hirshberg 12-1 p.m., George Clayton Johnson 11-12 p.m., Earl Kemp 12-1 p.m., Bruce Kimmel 11-12 p.m., Tim Kirk 10-11 a.m., Dani & Eytan Kollin 2-3 p.m., Michael Kurland 12-1 p.m., Terrill Lankford 2-3 p.m., Gary Lovisi all day Richard Lupoff 12-1 p.m., Ib Melchior 1-2 p.m., Lisa Morton 10-11 a.m., Larry Niven 2-3 p.m., William F. Nolan 11-1 p.m., Charles Neutzel 1-2 p.m., Gary Phillips 2-3 p.m., Felice Picano 1-2 p.m., Jerry Pournelle 2-3 p.m., Tim Powers 11-1 p.m., Robert Reginald 10-11 a.m., John Skipp 10-11 a.m., Harry Turtledove 1-2 p.m., Stephen Woodworth 2-3 p.m.,

The Twice-Invented Hugos

Posted on by

How the Hugo Awards were created by the Philadelphia Worldcon committee of 1953, skipped by the 1954 committee, then put back on track by Ben Jason and the Cleveland committee of 1955, is an oft-discussed bit of fanhistory.

We usually look at this with a powerful hindsight, focusing on how the advocates of a fledgling award overcame the potentially fatal indifference of the 1954 committee to preserve an important fannish tradition.

And that’s not wrong. However, like Lincoln’s success in preserving the Union, Clevention’s revival of the Hugo Awards resulted in something with many differences from the original.

The 1953 Hugo Awards had seven categories. Five of them were not repeated in 1955!

Only two of the 1955 Hugo Awards’ six categories were identical to those used the founding year — Best Novel and Best Professional Magazine.

Dropped were Best Cover Artist, Best Interior Illustrator, Excellence in Fact Articles, Best New SF Author or Artist and #1 Fan Personality.

The 1955 Hugos recognized three lengths of fiction (Novel, Novelette, Short Story) instead of just one, while settling for a single “professional artist” category rather than separate ones for covers and interiors. And a category recognizing fanzines took the place of one for an individual fan personality.

Clevention’s Hugo format heavily influenced future committees and the writers of the original WSFS Constitution (1962-1963).

Clevention also redesigned the Hugo Award trophy, though only out of necessity. Chairman Ben Jason wrote and asked Jack McKnight to reprise his role as maker of the little rockets. Getting no answer, he commissioned a pattern based on his own design. From then on, the Hugo no longer looked like the rocket on Bonestell’s cover for Willy Ley’s 1949 book, The Conquest of Space, but like the logo from the trunk lid of a 1955 Oldsmobile “Rocket 88.”