Monthly Archives: December 2013

Gaiman Wins Book of the Year 2013

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Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane was crowned Specsavers Book of the Year 2013 by a public vote.

Gaiman finished ahead by a considerable margin, beating other category winners including Malala Yousafzai, Robert Harris, Kate Atkinson and David Walliams.

Gaiman was shortlisted in three of the award’s 10 categories — National Book Tokens Children’s Book of the Year for Fortunately The Milk, Waterstones UK Author of the Year, and Audible Audiobook of the Year for The Ocean at the End of the Lane which won the latter category, and went forward to the Specsavers Book of the Year public vote.

[Via Locus Online.]

Robert Butler at UCLA on 1/24

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"THe Cage" -- Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. Leonard Nimoy as Spock.

“The Cage” — Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. Leonard Nimoy as Spock.

“An Evening With Robert Butler” – January 24 at the UCLA Film & Television Archive — honors the director of the pilot episodes of landmark TV series like Batman, Hogan’s Heroes, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman – and Star Trek.

Butler directed “The Cage” in 1965 with Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike — although two decades passed before it was broadcast in its original form, the footage initially given a new framing story (“The Menagerie”) with Shatner as Captain Kirk.

Butler’s vast resume includes two episodes of The Twilight Zone, and episodes of Gene Roddenberry’s first series The Lieutenant.

“The Cage” and an episode of Columbo with Peter Falk and Jack Cassidy will be shown that evening, and there will be a conversation with the director.

Admission to the Butler tribute is free. It begins at 7:30 pm in the Billy Wilder Theater.

A Stocking Stuffer for Gamers

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Get a head start on next year’s Christmas shopping at Eric C. Harshbarger’s site. All kinds of goodies for the game and puzzle-loving fan there, not least of which are his Twelve Days of Christmas 12-sided dice —

This was a set of dice I had wanted to do for a long time, but I was never sure if I could make detailed enough artwork. Well, I finally got around to creating some images, and yes, the designs came out fantastic. I’m not exactly sure why you need a twelve-sided die with “… 8 maids-a-milking, 7 swans-a-swimming, 6 geese-a-laying…” and so forth; but if you do, I’ve got one for you.

Harshbarger based his designs for the images on artwork originally done by Xavier Romero-Frias under Creative Commons license.

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Free Benford Story at Lightspeed

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Gregory Benford’s “Leaving Night” at Lightspeedmagazine.com is an impressive thought experiment that weaves together cosmology and theology.

Very quietly, in the dark of night, people began disappearing. Later research showed that they vanished while in their deepest sleep. The few available videos of sleeping people revealed that the air around them shimmered for a few seconds amid a soft humming sound….

Keeping Track of Santa

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Santa Claus is already aloft and making his way around the world, leaving gifts for good boys and girls. My daughter Sierra is following him on the internet — I don’t know which site she’s using, but here is Google’s Santa Tracker.

When she told me Santa is in Turkey I reminded her I’d been to Turkey myself, where Saint Nicholas is from. It seemed more in the spirit of the season to leave out that I saw his relics displayed in the Antalya Museum. This seems to have been a doubly good decision — while searching for a link to include here I learned that shortly after I visited in 2004 experts determined the bones I saw in Antalya are fakes. The real ones have been in Italy for almost a thousand years.

Ruth Speer (1923-2013)

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Ruth Speer died December 11 at the age of 90. While primarily known to fandom through her spouse of 57 years, Jack, who died in 2008, she led a remarkable life in her own right.

Born in Nova Scotia, she grew up in Vermont and Maine. She served with the WAVES in World War II. A certified pilot who flew cargo planes, she assisted in searching for lost aircraft and become one of the first female air traffic controllers.

Her son, Ed, and daughter, Margaret Ann, both spoke at her funeral. Ed’s remarks offer a little window into his fannish upbringing —

Both my parents were gracious enough not to try to discourage me from doing things I really wanted to do. I’m sure Mom would have been much happier if I’d taken up tennis instead of medieval sword fighting, but she sewed my costume and helped me find a source of obsolete road signs for building my armor.

In addition to her son and daughter, Ruth is survived by her brother, Robert, and four grandchildren.

[Thanks to Patricia Rogers for the story.]

Nancy Kemp Passes Away

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Earl and Nancy Kemp in 1970.

Earl and Nancy Kemp in 1970.

Nancy Kemp, as she was known when she participated in her husband Earl’s Who Killed Science Fiction?, a Best Fanzine Hugo winner in 1961, passed away December 22 of uterine cancer.

Earl Kemp shared the news on several fannish e-mail lists:

My ex-wife [Nancy] died. We were divorced over 40 years ago and she’s outlived two husbands after me, but she was still the mother of my children. For over a year she had been fighting uterine cancer and it was touch and go all those months.

From the early ’50s to the early ’70s she was active in SF fandom, especially the Midwest area, attending conventions, playing hostess, making costumes, etc. It was an awful way to go, very painful, slowly shutting down but the worst is now over and she is at last at peace.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]