Amazon.com is selling this as the Lord’s Prayer Arabic Men’s Ring.
The product may be selling for only $19.95 but don’t miss the comments — they’re priceless.
[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the story.]
Monthly Archives: February 2014
Blue Petal (1950-2014)
Blue Petal in 2007. Photo by Baron Dave Romm.
Minneapolis fan Blue Petal (originally Louis Fallert) died February 16 from central nervous system lymphoma first diagnosed following his stroke on December 29.
Blue Petal joined Minn-Stf, the Minneapolis sf club, in the late Sixties.
He started Lou’s Apa in 1968 — changed to Blue’s Apa with the second distribution, after he renamed himself for the Vaughn Bodé character Blue Petal.
He transferred allegiance to Minneapa when it was founded in the early Seventies. (In this photo of Minneapans from 1974 he’s in the second row on the right.)
I was also a member of Minneapa in its early days, a mesmerizing window on Minneapolis faannishness. I learned about many things – such as Spiderism, the fannish religion originated by John Kusske, Al Kuhfeld, and Blue Petal. (As you know, Bob, The Great Spider eats peoples’ souls when they die, unless they have bribed one of the priests of the Great Spider.) They provided Minneapans with copies of a trifold brochure with a voracious spider on the front and contents explaining the faith, which they claimed to be handing to evangelists who came to their door. Fans were invited to order copies and follow their example.
Blue Petal provided leadership for two early Minicons. He chaired Minicon 5, the second Minicon in 1971 and a relaxacon-style convention (no GoH, less programming than Minicons held in the spring) and co-chaired Minicon 7 in 1973.
Local gamers revered him for initiating them to Dungeon-style games:
In February of 1974, a Minneapolis science-fiction fan named Louis Fallert (better known as Blue Petal) began running a game called “Castle Keep” which he based on his experiences playing in dungeon adventures with the MMSA (Fallert wrote a blurb about this for Alarums & Excursions #3). While it seems likely that Fallert himself was vaguely aware of Dungeons & Dragons, he presented “Castle Keep” to local science-fiction fans as a game of his own invention. Much as Gygax ran Blackmoor with Arneson and then largely implemented his own rules from his experience, so did Fallert build a system for dungeoneering that followed his own subjective impressions as a player.
By the summer of 1974, the Minneapolis area featured 9 dungeon campaigns that traced their roots to his “Castle Keep” game.
Blue Petal also was appreciated for his music and songwriting.
Many old photos of Blue Petal appear on his Caring Bridge page and in David Dyer-Bennet’s archives. Amazing Stories blog also features a remarkable shot of a very young Blue Petal at the 1969 Worldcon taken by Fred A. Levy Haskell
[Thanks to John Purcell for the story.]
Greenberg Death Revealed
Fans recently learned that Gnome Press co-publisher Martin Greenberg died in Medford, NY on October 20, 2013.
(Not the same person as anthologist Martin H. Greenberg, no relation, who died in 2011.)
He and Dave Kyle co-founded Gnome Press in 1948. Together they published dozens of volumes of classic sf in hardcover for the first time.
According to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia Greenberg edited seven anthologies for Gnome, of which Coming Attractions (1957) consisted of SF-related nonfiction articles. The others were Men Against the Stars (1950), Travelers of Space (1951), Journey to Infinity (1951), Five Science Fiction Novels (1952), The Robot and the Man (1953) and All About the Future (1955).
Gnome Press went under in 1962.
Andrew Porter recalls that after years away from the sf community Greenberg, then living on Long Island, returned to attend some SF conventions in the 1990s.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
Clarke Center To Celebrate Galileo’s Birthday
Today is the 450th birthday of Galileo Galilei. The man known variously as the “father of modern observational astronomy,” the “father of modern physics,” and “the father of modern science” was born in 1564.
Because Americans are spending this weekend celebrating the father of their country, the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination has scheduled its celebration of Galileo for Friday, February 21.
Galileo and the Music of the Spheres at UCSD’s Atkinson Auditorium will have historical, astronomical and musical components.
Galileo in the Original: Dr. Jay Pasachoff of Williams College has been working with a rare-book librarian and a NASA visualization specialist to in an effort to duplicate Galileo’s 1609 discovery of mountains on the moon and identify the first lunar mountains he saw. Pasachoff will also have replica first editions of Galileo’s 1610 Sidereus Nuncius and his 1632 Dialogo.
Seeing the Universe through Galileo’s Lenses: Dr. Brian Keating of UCSD, noting that the refracting telescope, first used in astronomy by Galileo in 1609, continues to revolutionize our understanding of the universe, will describe the small group of refracting telescopes in continuous operation at the South Pole in Antarctica since 2005 that have helped astrophysicists glimpse the Big Bang from the bottom of the world.
Galileo in His Time: Dr. Renee Raphael of UC Irvine will relate what Galileo’s friends, students, and readers across Europe thought and wrote about him, his scientific discoveries, and his condemnation by the Catholic Church in the 17th century.
Music, Periodicity and Galileo’s Pendulum: Dr. Shlomo Dubnov of UCSD says Galileo as a young man discovered periodic motion by observing a pendulum and measuring it with his pulse. The mechanistic nature of the pendulum had inspired modern composers to create musical works that explore processes of repetitions. Dubnov promises, “In the talk I will describe some of these pieces and discuss aspects of rhythm perception and entrainment that are used for composing music with computers.”
These presentations will run from 2-4 p.m. A reception follows. The evening ends with a one-hour performance by The Musicians In Ordinary for the Lutes and Voices, performers of early solo song and vocal chamber music.
Something For Everyone
SFWA has found an interesting way to mark the end of a week of strife between the opponents of Political Correctness and the critics of sexism in the Bulletin.
SFWA has selected Frank Robinson, author of The Glass Inferno and the Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated History, to be a Special Guest for its Nebula 2014 Weekend in San Jose.
Robinson, on one hand, once ran Playboy’s Advisor column.
On the other, he once was Harvey Milk’s speechwriter.
Can we all just get along?
Happy Birthday Dave Kyle
Dave Kyle
The legendary Dave Kyle is 95 today. History has been kind to him for the same reason as Churchill – because he has written it (mostly for Mimosa.)
One cannot fail to be impressed by the realization that a fanpolitician who has been in as much mischief as Dave nevertheless was made a Knight of The Order of Saint Fantony, won the Big Heart Award, and became Worldcon fan guest of honor (1983).
What mischief is that? Here are a few examples —
He attended the 1936 meeting of New York and Philly fans which decided to dub itself the first science fiction convention in advance of the Leeds event announced for 1937.
He wrote the “Yellow Pamphlet” that helped inspire the “The Great Exclusion Act of 1939” but, unlike his fellow Futurians, was not kicked out of the First Worldcon. As Joe Siclari explains —
Some bitter feuding between the Moskowitz-led convention leadership and the New York Futurian group led by Donald A. Wollheim, who had originally been tasked with running the convention. This erupted in an argument at the convention which led to the first great “Exclusion Act.” Wollheim, Fred Pohl, John Michel, Robert W. Lowndes, Cyril Kornbluth, and Jack Gillespie were ejected from the convention for distributing a brochure titled: A Warning. The booklet had been published by Kyle. He told me he stashed the copies behind a radiator where Michel found them. Michel and the other Futurians were giving it out when Moskowitz and Sykora found out about it and banned them from the convention. Meanwhile, Kyle was inside, blissfully attending the proceedings.
Arthur C. Clarke receives Hugo Award from chairman Dave Kyle at the 1956 Worldcon, NyCon II.
In 1956 when Kyle got to chair a Worldcon he enhanced his legend by awarding Hugos made with Oldsmobile hood ornaments, and having banquet speech freeloaders run off with the ever-after famous message “Dave Kyle says you can’t sit here.”
At about the same time he also got involved as a director of WSFS Inc. In the falling-out among its founders Kyle sued some of the others for damage to his reputation.
Yet time does heal all wounds. Three decades later Dave’s reputation was greater than it had ever been – to the degree that in 1985 Starlog Magazine listed him among the 100 Most Important People in Science Fiction/Fantasy alongside Heinlein, Tolkien, Shatner and Nimoy.
Well, there’s greatness and then there’s greatness…
He Says He’s Not Dead
Could it be rumors of Yutu’s death are greatly exaggerated?
Chinese state media announced Thursday that the Jade Rabbit moon rover survived the extremely cold lunar night but is still malfunctioning.
Someone even felt confident enough to post “Hi, is anybody there?” on the rover’s Weibo account on Thursday.
According to an Al-Jazeera report —
After the rover’s awakening this week, Pei Zhaoyu, a spokesman for the lunar probe program, said it was still not functioning properly.
“It’s awake. We have a signal. But the problem still hasn’t been resolved,” Pei said, but gave no further details.
Experts are still working to fix the rover, the state-controlled Xinhua news agency said.
[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the story.]
Mall Cops Give Steampunks Bum’s Rush
Over 40 folks in steampunk attire planning to enjoy the merry-go-round at Carlsbad’s Westfield Plaza were turned away by mall security on February 9 reports the San Diego Reader. Security told them they were breaking a rule in the mall’s code of conduct against “wearing apparel that disguises, obscures or conceals the face.”
Sandra Deakins
Spokespersons for the group denied the outfits they had on did any such thing.
Lisa Vaca, one of those costumed, stated, “Since none of us had any part of our faces obscured, we respectfully pointed it out to the three security guards, and then their new reason for asking us to leave was a mix of ‘this is private property so we can refuse entrance to anyone,’ and ‘a group of this number needs to call ahead first to get permission,’ and, our favorite, ‘recently we had a big problem with a vampire group who showed up here….’
Vaca further went on to state, “When they told us to leave, they didn’t even give us the option to ‘Please remove your hats and other costume-type items if you want to stay.’ They just walked up to a couple of our wonderfully dressed women and said, ‘You have to leave!’”
Kim Keeline as Zombie Conductor in 2012.
Sandra Deakins told reporter Mercy Baron she felt “corralled” and given the “ushering effect.” Three Oceanside police patrol cars and three police officers responding to a call from security stood by as the group streamed out of the mall.
Steampunk Kim Keeline said, “We were told it was to keep out the riffraff. In various conversations with the security and the police, this was variously described as gangs, people in vampire costumes, a group that tried to come ride the carousel last week while wearing horsehead masks, and other such riffraff.”
After their harrowing experience the group reconvened at Doctor Watson’s Steampunk Odditorium in Oceanside.
Lisa Vaca
Sid Caesar (1922-2014)
Legendary comedian Sid Caesar died February 12. He was 91.
A pioneer of network television, Caesar’s first series, Admiral Broadway Revue (1949) with Imogene Coca ironically was so popular that the sponsor, a TV set manufacturer, couldn’t keep up with orders and dropped the show. Caesar moved on to Your Show of Shows (1950-1954) and Caesar’s Hour (1954).
In later years he also appeared in movies — Silent Movie, History of the World, Part I, Airport 1975, and the 1998 production of Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.
Caesar inspired the Alan Brady character in the Dick Van Dyke series and “King” Kaiser in My Favorite Year.
Ink For The Dead
Photo of Shirley Temple from the Shirley Temple’s Storybook episode “The Princess and the Goblins”.
I am interested to see File 770 is not the only sf/fantasy news outlet to pass on reporting Shirley Temple Black’s death this week. As of this writing, Locus, Ansible and SF Site News have had nothing to say about it either.
I wonder what readers of SF Site News and File 770, in particular, think about this omission? Our two sites habitually jump to report the passing of far more obscure Hollywood types who once worked on a $200,000 horror movie or had bit parts in genre TV shows.
Shirley Temple movies were rich in fantasy in the psychological sense, some even had dream scenes and exotic costumes, but they didn’t contain fantasy elements like witches, wizards, dwarves, supernatural magic and the like. Her studio refused to loan out the child actress to make The Wizard of Oz. She never made a signature fantasy film of her own.
However, as an adult she hosted Shirley Temple’s Storybook (1958-1961), and Random House published four collections of fairy stories branded with her name. I watched those shows as a kid! And when did I ever need any more excuse than that to mention someone?
I confess there’s no rocket science involved in File 770’s editorial decisions about whose obituaries are run.