Two light bulbs: Joseph Swan’s 1878 version (left) and Thomas Edison of 1879.
October 21, 1879: Thomas Edison successfully tested for the first time a carbon-filament incandescent light bulb.
A citation that avoids the sticky problem of deciding who to credit for inventing the light bulb, who may have been the fellow who successfully sued him, or another whose patent authorities ruled Edison took ideas from.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
For a limited time the PBS documentary Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle can be viewed free online.
Hosted and narrated by Liev Schreiber, SUPERHEROES features more than fifty new interviews, from pioneers such as Stan Lee, Joe Simon, and Jerry Robinson to contemporary creators including Mark Ward and Grant Morrison, from commentators such as Michael Chabon and Jules Feiffer to iconic actors like Adam West and Lynda Carter. Dazzling graphics and remarkable stories illuminate an up-to-the-minute history of the superhero, from the comic strip adventurers of the Great Depression up to the blockbuster CGI movie superstars of the 21st century.
The three episodes are:
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
Bela Lugosi, who gained Hollywood immortality as Dracula, was born October 20, 1882.
The true first edition is this paperback.
By John King Tarpinian: October 19, 1953. On this day in history one of the most read science fiction novels was published. One of the few, if not only, novels of sci-fi on the majority of middle and high school reading lists.
Fahrenheit 451 is one of three books that as a young man made me think about stuff outside of my comfortable life. The other two were Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. The three making up a trio of books that woke up my little brain.
Fahrenheit 451 was made into a movie by the French director, François Truffaut. It was his first movie in color and his only English-language film. Remember the French guy in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? That was Truffaut.
Flatscreen TVs were in this book. Bluetooth was in this book. Most people know that Ray never drove a car, remember that in the book Clarisse was killed by a speeding car. Montag was a brand of paper; Faber was a brand of pencil. Beatty was named for the lion tamer, Clyde Beatty.
Bradbury’s book rails against censorship, in any form.
Lastly, Ray’s headstone reads “Author of Fahrenheit 451.”
(Use this link to see a parade of Fahrenheit 451 book covers from over the years.)
Carnegie Library in Waukegan
Free guided walking tours that tell the story of native son Ray Bradbury are offered by The Waukegan History Museum on October 19 and 26.
Walk the streets of the author’s “Green Town” on a guided tour of downtown Waukegan. The places, people, and events from Bradbury’s fictional Green Town (Waukegan) books “Dandelion Wine,” “Farewell Summer,” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” as well as some of short stories, will be highlighted.
Waukegan’s Carnegie Library will be featured on the Ray Bradbury’s Green Town Guided Walking Tour. It is where young Bradbury first fell in love with books, and is used as a setting in his novel Something Wicked this Way Comes.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]
Lou Scheimer of Filmation.
Lou Scheimer, co-founder and president of Filmation Associates, has passed away at the age of 84.
Filmation produced animated and live-action programming from 1963 to 1989, including the Emmy-winning Star Trek: The Animated Series, which featured most of the original cast and included scripts by well-known sf writers.
Scheimer studied art at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh after the end of World War II – in fact, he used to walk to school with Andy Warhol.
In a 1979 interview conducted by his daughter he waxed nostalgic about early TV animation and its appeal to him as an artist —
I remember, in the early 1950’s, starting to see some animated films that were so unique, so daring, and so unlike anything that anyone had ever done, that I became intrigued with animation. The studio called UPA, which no longer really exists, was just beginning then. They did the “Gerald McBoing Boing” things, the “Magoo” stuff and the Thurber films. Each one of those was like a little moving painting and when you saw those, they were just marvelous. You said to yourself, “Wow, look at what people are doing out there. They are making art move!” These were all classical animation, I mean, they were not stop motion. This was people drawing paintings. They did wonderful graphic things.
— Which is rather ironic when you consider the cost-cutting animation techniques Filmation became known for.
But it’s not as if in the beginning Filmation had any choice. The studio had two employees, Scheimer and Hal Sutherland, and put a mannequin out in front as a secretary because they couldn’t afford anything else.
They were rescued when Fred Silverman, then a newcomer at CBS, asked DC Comics for a Superman animated show to air on Saturday mornings. Norm Prescott, who would join the business, helped them get the work. A prerequisite was to give a DC Comics rep a tour of their studio. Which basically didn’t exist. Scheimer stalled for two days while he packed the studio for the visit.
So I called the guy; his name was Whitney Elsworth. It was like a Friday or a Monday. I said, “I’m sorry Mr. Elsworth, but we really don’t have visitors here during the working day. It’s just too difficult. People can’t concentrate. If you could come next Wednesday lunch, we’ll show you through the studio and show you what we are doing.” So I had like two days. I called everybody I knew. I called Ted Knight. I got him to come down. I called Kim Wong, an assistant animator I knew. I called a guy who had a fan mail service named Jack Mock. I called a couple of animators from Hanna Barbera who could only come down at lunchtime. I called a guy across the street whose name was Harold Alpert who was an accountant. Thank God he did not show up because it turned out that Whitney Elsworth knew him. If he had seen Alpert sitting there pretending to be an animator that would have blown the whole thing.
Elsworth walked in, and I had the place packed. Don Peters was in there pretending to paint backgrounds. We had passed out scenes from “Oz” to all the people. We borrowed a moviola to make it look like we really had an editorial department. I had done this once before when we tried to get a “Lone Ranger” to do, so I had experience in packing the studio. This was the second run through. I told the damned Ted Knight not to say anything because he had a tendency to overact. I said to him, “The guy knows something about our business. If he asks you any questions, just tell him, ‘I’m sorry I can’t talk to you right now, there’s some trouble at the lab.’ Just pretend you’re on the phone or something.”
Well, Elsworth comes in and the studio is humming. We even had the mannequin out there, but the mannequin looked O.K. We had like twenty people in there. Everybody was furiously at work, but it was twelve o’clock. Half of the guyshad to take off soon to get back to work. We showed Elsworth some of the stuff from “Oz.” We were sitting in our little office that Hal and I had, well it was really a pretty big office, discussing things. There was a knock on the door. It was George Rowley, and I knew that George had to get back to Hanna Barbera. George opens up the door and comes in. He said, “Lou, I got this tooth ache. Do you mind if I take off and go to the dentist?” I said it was O.K. So George left. I turn around to Hal and said, “Make sure you dock that son of a bitch!” Then all of a sudden we hear, “There’s trouble at the lab, trouble at the lab, tro…” in twenty different voices. Ted Knight is running around pretending he’s a lot of different guys, yelling that there’s trouble at the lab. Elsworth said, “What the hell is going on. You guys must have an awful lot of work for there to be that many guys involved with trouble at the lab.”
Whitney left. He called back to New York and said, “It’s a little studio, but they seem to run a pretty tight ship down there.” So this guy who’s running DC Comics, Jack Libowitz, trusted us without a completion bond or anything. He gave us the job to do. It was our first network show.
Three years later, in 1968, Filmation enjoyed its greatest success, a cartoon series based on the comic strip Archie, with musical segments produced by Don Kirshner. The crowning glory of the show was The Archies’ musical hit “Sugar, Sugar,” the second-highest selling record of the 1960s, its sales surpassed only by the Beatles.
Nevertheless, Scheimer said the most satisfying series he ever worked on was Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, where subject material was approved by a panel of educators, child psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists, who also met with the scriptwriters, all working together.
Filmation made live-action shows, too — Space Academy, its spin-off Jason of Star Command, Ark II, Shazam!, The Ghost Busters, and The Secrets of Isis.
See Comic Book Resoures’ Greg Hatcher’s heavily-illustrated tribute here.
By James H. Burns: This may be old news but it was new to me last night when long-time Doctor Who fan George Downes told me that the majority of two “lost” Patrick Troughton story arcs had been discovered, and were already available on Itunes — “Enemy of the World” and “Web of Fear.”
(The first may be particularly notable, in that Troughton plays the dual role of a dictator…)
Long have I believed that Troughton was one of the great actors in genre productions, with his role in Jason and the Argonauts as the Greek besieged by the harpies a particular standout. (There have indeed been times in my life when I’ve looked toward the heavens, and paraphrased, “Lord knows I’ve sinned, but I did not sin every day…”)
I only came to the Troughton Whos about seven years ago, and they quickly became a particular joy, so this is welcome information.
George also mentioned that there’s a rumor that these episodes may well be part of a larger trove of missing BBC material…
(And, as long as we’re stepping into the Tardis, mention should probably be made that George Downes is sort of a nice footnote to New York area fandom history; From about 1987 to 1994, George ran a series of collectibles shows throughout New Jersey, in Long Island, and even a few in Manhattan. Today, he’s an insurance broker.)
Here is the trailer for the recently discovered missing episodes release of Doctor Who “The Enemy Of The World” on iTunes.
Chris Barkley has started a Facebook discussion page for the Young Adult Book Hugo Award Proposal where he calls on fans to contact Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon, and ask the committee to exercise its right under the WSFS rules to create a one-time Best YA Book Hugo Award.
Barkley’s appeal reads —
Please tell the Loncon Three Committee how is vitally important that the viability of this category should be tested (as the Graphic Story and Podcast Hugo awards were before their inceptions as regular categories) and that authors, editors and that publishers of young adult fantasy and science fiction should be recognized and honored on an annual basis by one the premiere awards in genre literature.
He also reminds readers that the 2013 Worldcon Business Meeting appointed a YA Hugo study committee with Dave McCarty as Chair scheduled to make recommendations at Loncon 3.
You may still be waiting for your flying car but Samsung wants you to know your smartwatch is already here. This commercial for the Galaxy is a montage of stfnal TV and cartoon characters using wrist communication devices.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the link.]