Harlan Ellison had good news for readers of his forum this afternoon (October 27) —
HARLAN ELLISON – Monday, October 27 2014 17:31:12
…
I’M OUT OF HOSPITAL & HOME
Further updates when the information becomes available.
Monthly Archives: October 2014
Alan Rodgers’ Books Will Be Re-Released
Alan Rodgers in 1990.Photo by and copyright © Andrew Porter.
Plans are in the works to re-release the horror novels of Alan Rodgers, who died March 8. Amy Sterling Casil, founder of Chameleon Media, of which Alan Rodgers Books is now a part, says the new publishing company will bring them out as ebooks and in print editions. She adds:
We will also be doing his two short fiction collections [New Life for the Dead and Ghosts Who Cannot Sleep], and at least three books he wrote prior to his death, including two young adult horror books and Smoke, a previously unpublished adult supernatural horror book that is similar to, and we think even stronger than Bone Music, his highly-acclaimed novel. We also discovered a sequel story to “The Boy Who Came Back From the Dead,” his Bram Stoker Award story and are working on publishing that as well.
Chameleon Media’s associates include Laurie DeGange, Alan’s sister, and Scott Rodgers, Alan’s younger brother.
In addition to the works already mentioned, Rodgers was known for Blood of the Children, a 1990 Bram Stoker nominee for Best First Novel, Pandora, Fire, Night, The Bear Who Found Christmas, Her Misbegotten Son, Alien Love, The River of Our Destiny, Angel of Our Mercy, and Light.
Tolkien’s Translation of Jonah Finally Escapes the Belly of the Estate
J. R. R. Tolkien in 1972.
Brendan N. Wolfe’s article “Tolkien’s Translation of Jonah” in the current issue of the Journal of Inklings Studies makes available for the first time the original version of the translation of Jonah he produced for the Jersualem Bible. (Subscription required.)
An earlier plan to publish the original translation in 2009 was canceled for reasons unknown.
Published in 1966 just after the Second Vatican Council, the Jerusalem Bible was a translation of the Holy Scriptures created for Roman Catholics. And as the Journal’s editor Dr. Judith Wolfe explains, Tolkien’s contribution was subjected to editing before it saw print:
The version of Tolkien’s translation that was eventually published in the Jerusalem Bible was not the author’s original submission, but a collaborative effort, heavily edited by a style editor who had been employed to standardize the grammar and vocabulary of the various translators who had contributed to the Jerusalem Bible.
With kind permission of Tolkien’s Estate, the Journal of Inklings Studies is now able to make available Tolkien’s original translation from Bodleian Manuscript. A research article by Brendan Wolfe on the history and features of the translation will accompany the text.
Contrary to what I would have expected, Tolkien did not translate Jonah from an ancient language but from French, according to J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment edited by Michael D.C. Drout.
Because of time, Tolkien accepted the book of Jonah, which he then seems to have translated from French. [Father Anthony Jones, head of the translation project] then checked it against the Hebrew and Green and revised it. Jones’s initial invitation assures Tolkien more than once that knowledge of the languages was not necessary…. Jones makes it clear that he was inviting Tolkien onto the board because of Tolkien’s expertise in English philology and because Jones was taken with The Lord of the Rings, not because of any supposed expertise in Hebrew on Tolkien’s part.
It will be interesting to discover what Brendan N. Wolfe has to say on that score.
Readers have long known that the Jerusalem Bible’s version of Jonah makes no reference to a whale. The text reads:
2:1 Yahweh had arranged that a great fish should be there to swallow Jonah, and Jonah remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
This, at least, matches the interpretation Tolkien discussed with his son Michael in a 1957 letter:
Incidentally, if you look at Jonah you’ll find that the ‘whale’ – it is not really said to be a whale, but a big fish – is quite unimportant. The real point is that God is much more merciful than ‘prophets’, is easily moved by penitence, and won’t be dictated to even by high ecclesiastics whom he has himself appointed.
Tolkien’s other work on the Jerusalem Bible included revisions of the English translation of Job done by Andrew Keeney. However, Tolkien insisted in a letter that Father Jones gave him too much credit overall for his role in the project.
Naming me among the ‘principal collaborators’ was an undeserved courtesy on the part of the editor of the Jerusalem Bible. I was consulted on one or two points of style, and criticized some contributions of others. I was originally assigned a large amount of text to translate, but after doing some necessary preliminary work I was obliged to resign owing to pressure of other work, and only completed ‘Jonah’, one of the shortest books.
The Shirt Off Hollywood’s Back
The most iconic costumes of Hollywood’s Golden Age and from the rest of the world of cinema are currently on display in Los Angeles as part of The Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences exhibition Hollywood Costume. The ticketed exhibit opened October 2 and runs through March 12 in the Wilshire May Company Building, the future location of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
The exhibition of more than 150 costumes includes many from genre pictures (designer’s name in parentheses) — like Darth Vader’s armor from The Empire Strikes Back (John Mollo, 1980), Indiana Jones’ leather jacket and fedora from Raiders of the Lost Ark (Deborah Nadoolman, 1981), plus items from The Hunger Games (Judianna Makovsky, 2012), Mary Poppins (Tony Walton, 1964), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Deborah Nadoolman, 1981), Man of Steel (James Acheson and Michael Wilkinson, 2013), The Addams Family (Ruth Myers, 1991), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Jany Temime, 2009), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Tish Monaghan, 2009), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (April Ferry, 2003) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Eiko Ishioka, 1992).
The story of costume design from early Charlie Chaplin (The Tramp, 1912) to the present day is told through montages, animation, film clips, and projections, and a musical score by British composer Julian Scott. Among the other classics represented are Morocco, Titanic, Malcolm X, and L.A. Confidential.
One part explores key director/designer pairings, among them Alfred Hitchcock and Edith Head, who worked together on 11 films including The Birds (1963), and Tim Burton and Colleen Atwood, whose collaborations include Edward Scissorhands (1990) to Dark Shadows (2012).
Another shows how costume design is considered in animation, such as Joanna Johnston’s design for Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and films integrating motion-capture like Avatar (Mayes C. Rubio, Deborah L. Scott, 2009).
In addition, Hollywood Costume showcases the Academy’s pair of the most famous shoes in the world – the original ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (Adrian, 1939) shown with Dorothy’s blue and white gingham pinafore dress.
The most famous shoes in the world were made in 1938 for a Kansas farm girl named Dorothy. It is not known how many pairs were created, but it is believed that four pairs used in the film still exist today. The surviving pairs were made in sizes 5C, 5.5 and 6B to accommodate actress Judy Garland, her stand-in and stunt double. The slippers began as white silk pumps made by the Innes Shoe Company in Los Angeles and they were later dyed red at MGM Studios before being covered with fabric that had been hand-sewn with approximately 2,300 sequins. Each red leather bow, designed especially by Adrian, sparkles with red glass stones and bugle beads. The Academy’s nearly pristine pair, known as the “Witch’s Shoes,” are widely believed to be the slippers Garland wore in close ups and insert shots, most famously when Dorothy clicks her heels three times to return to Kansas. For Adrian, designing the iconic costumes for The Wizard of Oz was “The greatest fun I have ever had.”
The exhibition is open every day except Wednesday. Admission: $20 Adults; $15 Seniors (62+); $10 for students with ID and children under 13
Third Hobbit-Themed Safety Video
Takes Flight
Air New Zealand, the official airline of Middle-earth, is promoting its tie-in to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies with “The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made.” Corresponding to the third film in the trilogy, the four-minute video is the sequel to Air New Zealand’s “An Unexpected Briefing” (2012) and “Just Another Day in Middle-Earth” (2013).
As two passengers decked out in gear from The Hobbit hurry to make their flight they sprint past the unlikeliest tribute ever to sport fishing in New Zealand and soon are aboard a flight with Sir Peter Jackson and Elijah Wood, listening to safety instructions from a variety of Elvish and wizardly personnel.
There are cameos by Sylvester McCoy (Radagast), Dean O’Gorman (Fili), Weta Workshop co-founder Sir Richard Taylor, the video’s director Taika Waititi and Japanese baseball player Naoyuki Shimizu.
The new video also makes the most ambitious use of locations to date, shot all over New Zealand, including the set of Hobbiton, and it features armies of costumed and CGI orcs and elves, as well as a giant eagle.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the link.]
Cox and Traylor Honored at PulpFest
J. Randolph Cox
J. Barry Traylor
The Munsey and Hevelin Awards for achievement in the pulp collecting field were presented at PulpFest in August.
The Munsey Award is named for Frank A. Munsey, publisher of the first all-fiction pulp magazine, is presented to a deserving person who has contributed to “the betterment of the pulp community.”
The 2014 Munsey Award went to J. Randolph Cox, editor-publisher of Dime Novel Round-Up for over 20 years. He has also produced invaluable research such as the bibliography, Man of Magic & Mystery: A Guide to the Work of Walter B. Gibson, about the man who created The Shadow; Flashgun Casey: Crime Photographer, co-authored with David S. Siegel, about the character originally created for Black Mask by George Harmon Coxe; Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography; and The Dime Novel Companion: A Source Book.
Cox recently donated his collection of comic books and newspaper strips, fanzines, pulps, and other materials to the University of Minnesota Libraries, and his extensive collection of Walter Gibson books and Shadow pulps and comics to Gibson’s alma mater, Colgate University.
The Rusty Hevelin Service Award, named for the guiding light behindPulpcon,the convention that helped to keep the memory of the pulps alive for many years, recognizes individuals who have worked long and hard for the pulp community with little thought for individual recognition.
The 2014 Rusty went to J. Barry Traylor who has been organizing convention auctions for 25 years. He does a wide variety of “grunt work”– contacting comic shops and book stores to help with promotion activities; and managing the links on the PulpFest website.
Monstrous Crowd at the Alex
Here’s a snapshot of the line waiting to get into Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA on October 25. Tough crowd!
John King Tarpinian was on hand not just to see the movie, but to flash his replica of the Dracula ring Lugosi wore in the film. You all know how hard it is to find social occasions to wear your finery.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello join forces with Universal’s menagerie of famous monsters… a perfect blending of classic comedy and terror. The boys were never funnier, combining verbal routines with their best slapstick gags. A top-notch supporting cast plays it absolutely straight, with Bela Lugosi as Dracula for only the second time, Lon Chaney Jr. making his full moon change into The Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange stalking the boys as Frankenstein’s Monster. Even Vincent Price gets a cameo as The Invisible man. This top grosser for Universal still holds all its charm.
Harlan Speaks From The Hospital
On Friday HarlanEllisonBooks.com released a recorded message of Ellison speaking from his hospital room.
Harlan, practicing the Always Be Closing mantra, finishes by saying – “Please buy books.”
Harlan Ellison Books editor Jason Davis also reported Ellison has progressed so far he is working again.
In the two weeks since “the episode,” he’s nearly recovered the full use of the affected limbs and–as of my visit on Thursday, the 23rd of October–has set up his portable typewriter and returned to work. I’ve visited Harlan four times and found his dexterity much improved on each subsequent visit.
Jeanne Gomoll Resigns from WisCon
Ending a 38 year association with WisCon, Jeanne Gomoll resigned from the convention committee and the board of its parent organization, SF3, on October 5. “Leaving it has broken my heart,” she wrote.
Gomoll was chair of WisCon 20 (1996) and 30 (2006), and served as President of SF3 from 1992 to 1994 and 2010 to 2013.
Gomoll made the announcement on WisCon’s Facebook page and also sent a copy for use by File 770. After an introductory paragraph paraphrased above, the rest of her statement says:
2014 has been a strange year. In August I was honored by Loncon 3 as a guest of honor at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, in part for my work on WisCon’s concom. But during the con, a part of me was thinking about the situation back home and sometimes I felt a bit as if I was attending worldcon using a secret identity.
Through the summer and early Fall of 2014 a complicated, painful, and very intense conversation raged about how we should deal with fellow members who caused damage to the con. A number of people resigned from the concom in the midst of the conversation, including three past chairs and several others who have held major responsibilities. The surviving concom has done a remarkable job recently in recruiting to fill open positions and I frankly regret that I will not get the chance to work with some of the new folks. But the loss of both experienced hands and institutional knowledge will make it a difficult year.
I will not engage in discussion about the substance of our disagreement here. I have always felt that in any volunteer organization, the people who do the work have the right to choose the process for that work. So I will leave the discussion to those who it most affects now. In brief, I disagreed with the process that was chosen by the majority of the concom and so I felt I had to resign.
Working on the concom is a very different thing than attending WisCon. The two are intimately connected of course. But my resignation from the concom does not affect my support of WisCon. I will be forever proud of my work on WisCon and for the space it offers the feminist science fiction community and its allies. I count myself lucky to have worked on WisCon for as long as I have, and hope that it continues for many more years. I plan to attend WisCon 39 in 2015 and many future WisCons.
Internet Dumpster Diving
Suddenly I’m getting dozens of hits on a post I withdrew last week mere hours after it appeared because Jason Sanford put up a link to the Google cache file. Well, I knew people were going to look at that — Google guarantees our words have those seven-league boots we were warned about. Therefore I made a point of annoucing that I’d withdrawn it at the same time I deleted the post.
Jason Sanford’s supposed to be a smart guy. Why does he insist on repeating my mistake?
Yes, Jason, it had occurred to me, too, that Andrew Porter was secretary of NyCon 3 and might have a basis for his claim. But once Ted White, convention chair and the person featured in Porter’s claim, denied the story I decided that kind of story couldn’t remain without corroboration.
If Sanford wants he can tell his readers “I’m Jason Sanford. I stand behind Andrew Porter’s story one hundred percent.” But he hasn’t done that. His approach is, “I pulled this story out of Mike Glyer’s dumpster, so this somehow excuses me from any responsibility for its truthfulness.”
Please do better than that Jason.