Click the link to see the winners in all categories: Non-Fiction, Memoir/Biography, Fiction, Romance, Erotic Fiction, Speculative Fiction [Sci-fi/ Bi-fi/ Fantasy/ Paranormal/ Horror/ Etc.], Teen/Young Adult, Mystery, Poetry; plus two special categories: Publisher of the Year and Bi Writer of the Year.
Rebecca Kim Wells won the Speculative Fiction category and was a finalist for Bi Writer of the Year. Carmen Maria Machado won the Memoir/Biography category.
The categories with finalists of genre interest are listed below. The winners are in boldface.
(1) YOU ARE NUMBER SIX — ACROSS. Robert Sawyer discovered his book is the first clue in today’s Sunday Mirror (UK) “Quizword and Crossword” puzzle.
(2) GENE WOLFE. Thomas Mirus’The Catholic Culture Podcast devoted a recent episode to “Gene Wolfe, Catholic Sci-Fi Legend”. Sandra Miesel (a three-time Hugo nominated fanwriter in the Seventies) and Fr, Brendon Laroche weigh in.
After much popular demand, Thomas pays tribute to legendary Catholic sci-fi writer Gene Wolfe, who passed away last year. Though not known to the general public, Wolfe is a sci-fi author’s sci-fi author—a number of his contemporaries considered him not only the best in the genre, but in American fiction at the time (Ursula Le Guin said “Wolfe is our Melville”). Among today’s writers, one of his biggest fans is Neil Gaiman.
One critic described Wolfe’s magnum opus, The Book of the New Sun, as “a Star Wars–style space opera penned by G. K. Chesterton in the throes of a religious conversion.”
Wolfe also held the patent on the machine that makes Pringles. That’s his face on the can.
In this episode, Fr. Brendon Laroche comments on Wolfe’s works, while Wolfe’s friend, Catholic historian and sci-fi expert Sandra Miesel, shares personal reminiscences.
… Already we can see the wheels beginning to come off. Are these stories by Sturgeon, Heinlein, Leiber, and Clarke really the best these writers wrote in the pre-1965 period? Do A Martian Odyssey and Twilight really belong in the same list as Flowers for Algernon or Nightfall?
The selection procedure becomes even more muddled as editor Silverberg bodges his way through the rest of the list: Arthur Clarke’s The Star is in the top fifteen but is bumped by The Nine Billion Names of God; one writer (Bradbury, I assume) has four stories on the original ballot but none in the top twenty, so Silverberg includes Mars is Heaven, “the story that the writer himself wished to see included in the book” (this, rather than the more obvious There Will Come Soft Rains or The Sound of Thunder)3; another writer’s stories “made the second fifteen, one vote apart; but the story with the higher number of votes was not the story that the writer himself wished to see included in the book” (presumably that is why the middling Huddling Place is here rather than the slam-dunk Desertion).
Definitive? I think not, and this will become even more apparent when we look at the stories themselves….
This footnote is a masterpiece of subversion:
2. The SFWA has, at various times in its history, been as dodgy an electorate as any other—as one can see from the high correlation of peculiar winners to individuals holding office in the organisation (who conveniently had access to the mailing list of members)—and that’s before you factor in the tendency for a group of professionals to engage in “Buggins’ Turn” (see the Wikipedia article).
Let us also not forget that roughly the same set of voters made sure that the 1971 Nebula Award short story result was “No Award” so that none of the “New Wave” nominees would win, a partisan act that led to the mortifying scene where Isaac Asimov announced Gene Wolfe’s The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories as the winner at the Nebula Awards before having to correct himself.
(4) TODAY IN HISTORY.
June 21, 1985 — Cocoon premiered. Directed by Ron Howard, it was produced by David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck. The screenplay was written by Tom Benedek off a story by David Saperstein. It starred Don Ameche, Wilford Brimle, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Brian Dennehy, Jack Gilford, Steve Guttenberg, Maureen Stapleton, Gwen Verdon, Herta Ware and Tahnee Welch. Music was by James Horner who did the same for The Wrath of Khan and Avatar. The film was overwhelmingly positively received, did very well at the box office and currently holds a rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes of 67%.
(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born June 21, 1839 – Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Called the greatest writer of Latin America; the greatest black literary figure. Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas – i.e. written after the grave – has been translated into Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English, Esperanto, French. Two dozen shorter stories; recent English collections in 2018, 2019. (Died 1908) [JH]
Born June 21, 1882 – Rockwell Kent. “I don’t want petty self-expression,” he said; “I want to paint the rhythm of eternity.” Illustrated Moby-Dick. Here is Peace Oath. Here is a bookplate. His jazz-age-humorist side was signed “Hogarth, Jr.” in the original Vanity Fair and Life magazines. Memoirs, This Is My Own and It’s Me, O Lord. (Died 1971) [JH]
Born June 21, 1938 — Mary Wickizer Burgess, 81. I noticed sometime back when searching iBooks for genre fiction that there was something called Megapacks showing up more and more such as The 25th Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack, The Randall Garrett Megapack and The Occult Detective Megapack. They were big, generally around five hundred pages in length, and cheap, mostly around five dollars, but occasionally as little as ninety cents, in digital form! Starting in 1976, Mary and her husband, the now late Robert Reginald founded Borgo Press which has published hundreds in the past forty years. By the turn of the century, they’d already published three hundred Megapacks. I bought them for the purpose of getting as little as one story I wanted to read. (CE)
Born June 21, 1938 — Ron Ely, 82. Doc Savage in Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, a film I saw a long time ago and remember little about. He was also, fittingly enough, Tarzan in that NBC late Sixties series. Somewhere Philip Jose Farmer is linking the two characters… other notable genre roles included being a retired Superman from an alternate reality in a two-part episode “The Road to Hell” of the Superboy series, and playing five different characters on the original Fantasy Island which may or may not be a record. (CE)
Born June 21, 1944 – Hori Akira. His Solar Wind Node won the 1980 Nihon SF Taisho Award; Babylonian Wave won the 1989 Seiun. A dozen shorter stories, translated into English, German, Hungarian; “Open Up” is in Speculative Japan 2 (i.e. in English). Non-fiction, Two People’s Trip on the SF Road (with Musashi Kanbe). [JH]
Born June 21, 1947 — Michael Gross, 73. Ok, I’ll admit that I’ve a fondness for the Tremors franchise in which he plays the extremely well-armed graboid hunter Burt Gummer. Other than the Tremors franchise, he hasn’t done a lot of genre work as I see just an episode of The Outer Limits where he was Professor Stan Hurst in “Inconstant Moon” (wasn’t that a Niven story?) and voicing a few Batman Beyond and Batman: The Animated Series characters. (CE)
Born June 21, 1948 – Sally Syrjala. Active particularly in the Nat’l Fantasy Fan Fed’n; edited Tightbeam, Kaymar Award, President 2008-2009. Elsewhere in fanzines e.g. Lan’s Lantern, LASFAPA (L.A. Scientifiction Fans’ Amateur Press Ass’n), indeed a regular correspondent of Vanamonde. High school valedictorian. Chaired the Friends of Cape Cod Museum of Art, trustee of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. Her File 770 appreciation is here. (Died 2010) [JH]
Born June 21, 1955 – Sue Burke. Translator (four books so far of Amadís de Gaula), fan, pro. Recent novels Semiosis, Interference; two dozen shorter stories, poems, in Abyss & Apex, Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Broad Spectrum, Clarkesworld, Interzone, Slate. Alicia Gordon Award. Milwaukee, Austin, Madrid, Chicago. Her Website is here.
Born June 21, 1957 — Berkeley Breathed, 63. ISFDB on the basis of a chapbook called Mars Needs Moms is willing to include him as genre but I’d argue that Bloom County which includes a talking penguin is genre as they are fantastic creatures. And he contributed three cartoons to the ConFederation Program Book. (CE)
Born June 21, 1964 — David Morrissey, 56. His most well known role is playing The Governor on The Walking Dead (which is a series that I’ve not seen and have no interest of seeing as I don’t do zombies) but I saw his brilliant performance as Jackson Lake, the man who who believed he was The Doctor in “The Next Doctor”, a Tenth Doctor adventure which was an amazing story. He was also Theseus in The Storyteller: Greek Myths, and played Tyador Borlú in the BBC adaption of China Mieville’s The City & The City. I’ll admit that I’m very ambivalent about seeing it as I’ve listened the novel at least a half dozen times and have my own mental image of what it should be. He has also shows up in Good Omens as Captain Vincent. (CE)
Born June 21, 1965 — Steve Niles, 55. Writer best-known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Simon Dark and Batman: Gotham County Line. I’ve read his Criminal Macabre: The Complete Cal McDonald Stories and the the graphic novel — great bit of horror! Sam Raimi adapted 30 Days of Night into a film. (CE)
Born June 21, 1984 – Theresa Hannig. Steffan Lübbe Prize. Seraph Prize for The Optimizers; next novel The Imperfect. Just now a panelist at First Virtual Book Fair of the Saar (19-21 June). Has been a project manager for solar-power plants. [JH]
[Kris Vyas-Myall and Cora Buhlert team up to cover two of the better Ace Doubles to have come out in a while. Enjoy!]
The Ballad of Beta-2, by Samuel R. Delany, and Alpha, Yes! Terra, no!, by Emil Petaja (Ace Double M-121)
I have generally been disappointed by the Ace Doubles so far this year. Those I have read have seemed to me to be quite old fashioned and I had been wondering if they were going to be heading into a more conservative route with them this year. Thankfully, this new Double I have found has been one of their best…
(7) THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY. The Library of America’s “Story of the Week” is Ambrose Bierce’s “Working for an Empress”. The explanation of how this story came to be is rather involved. Part of it is —
…Captured during the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III was deposed in September 1870 and lived in exile with the Empress and their entourage at Camden Place, a palatial country house in Kent, until his death in January 1873. James Mortimer, an American who served in France as an imperial private secretary, followed Louis-Napoleon and Eugénie to England and, with their financial support, established the London Figaro, the weekly that hired Bierce to write a column. In the spring of 1874, when Bierce had been in England for two years, Mortimer wrote him with a strange proposal: to edit and write a new publication called The Lantern, which was to be modeled after the seditious French journal published years earlier by Rochefort. Because Mortimer’s patron and friend, the Empress Eugénie, regarded the just-escaped Rochefort as “a menace and a terror,” Bierce was puzzled and discomfited by the offer. But his qualms were mostly overcome when was also told that the new magazine, like its predecessor, should be “irritatingly disrespectful of existing institutions and exalted personages”—a prospect that “delighted” Bierce. Still, the purpose of the new enterprise mystified him.
…When asked by a customer why larger 400g squeezy jars were hard to get hold of at the moment, the firm replied: “Due to brewers yeast being in short supply (one of the main ingredients in Marmite) Supplies of Marmite have been affected. As a temporary measure we have stopped production of all sizes apart from our 250g size jar which is available in most major retailers.”
Brewers slowed and stalled production when pubs were forced to shut in an attempt to slow the Covid-19 pandemic.
[Thanks to John Hertz, Thomas Mirus, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]
CoNZealand is scheduling a one-hour moderated session on June 28, 06:00 NZT where members can hear each 2022 Worldcon bid make a presentation and respond to questions asked by one of the moderators. The link has not yet been distributed.
CoNZealand attending members can submit questions to be asked of the bids via this form. Submissions will be anonymous. The committee adds:
All submitted questions will be edited to remove any personal attacks. We will encourage questions to be hard, but we will not permit them to be insulting.
We will follow the general format that has been used recently….
15 minutes will be allotted for each presentation and there will be a 30 minute questioning period of both bids to follow.
Responses the two bids have already made to Frequently Asked Questions can be read online:
Guidelines for voting in 2022 Site Selection are here. The deadline for CoNZealand to receive postal mailed ballots is July 13, and the deadline for email ballots is July 29 at 12:00n New Zealand time.
Carmine Treanni, Sulla Luna. A 50 anni dallo sbarco, un viaggio tra scienza e fantascienza, Cento Autori
Romanzo di autore italiano – Fantascienza /Science fiction novel
Davide Del Popolo Riolo, Übermensch, Delos Digital
Romanzo di autore italiano – Fantasy / Fantasy novel
Milena Debenedetti, Il popolo spezzato, Delos Digital
Antologia / Anthology
Franco Forte, Strani mondi, Urania Millemondi – Mondadori
Racconto di autore italiano su pubblicazione professionale / Story by an Italian Author in a Professional Publication
Alessandro Vietti, Essere ovale, Strani Mondi, Urania Millemondi – Mondadori
Racconto di autore italiano su pubblicazione amatoriale / Story by an Italian Author in an Amateur Publication
Giovanni De Matteo, Red Dust, Club Ghost https://www.clubghost.it/portale/2019/05/16/red-dust-di-giovanni-de-matteo/
Articolo su pubblicazione professionale / Article in a Professional Publication
Silvio Sosio, L’età dell’oro della fantascienza italiana, Strani Mondi, Urania Millemondi – Mondadori
Articolo su pubblicazione amatoriale / Article in an Amateur Publication
Giulia Abbate e Elena Di Fazio, La tesi dell’apostolo cattivo: il nuovo adattamento di Evangelion e il traduttore camaleonte, Lezioni sul domani https://lezionisuldomani.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/la-tesi-dellapostolo-cattivo-il-nuovo-adattamento-di-evangelion-e-il-traduttore-camaleonte/
Romanzo internazionale / International sf novel
China Miéville, L’uomo del censimento, [The Census-Taker] Zona 42
Fumetto di autore italiano / Comic by an Italian Author
Carlo Recagno, Antonio Sforza, L’Uomo che scoprì il segreto di Leonardo, Storie da Altrove – Sergio Bonelli Editore
Fumetto di autore internazionale / Comic by an International Author
Cullen Bunn, Peter Milligan, Adan Gorham, Robert Gill, Punk Mambo, Star Comics
Film fantastico (premio non ufficiale) / Fantastic Film (unofficial prize)
Joker
Serie televisiva (premio non ufficiale) / TV Series (unofficial prize)
(1) ARISIA’S LATEST REFORMS. Boston’s Arisia conrunning group is taking steps to create “A More Welcoming Arisia”. The post begins:
Black Lives Matter. While we don’t have a time machine to prevent the injustices of the past, we certainly have the power and the duty to correct present injustices and prevent future injustices in the spaces we are responsible for creating. Actions speak louder than words, and we are determined that our actions will reflect our resolve to make Arisia a more diverse, more welcoming space.
Changes have been made to the Arisia Code of Conduct:
We have replaced some language that has been weaponized against BIPoC or used to police their behavior. In particular, we strive to avoid coded words like “intimidating” and “civilized”. We can and will continue to clarify our expectations of Arisia attendees, but we will do it in ways that do not alienate fans of color.
We have added “display of hateful iconography” to the list of behavior the Code of Conduct explicitly forbids, with reference to the iconography listed on the SPLC and ADL websites.
In light of our knowledge of endemic police racism and brutality in interactions with BIPoC, we have removed suggestions that Arisia would involve the police, either reactively in response to prohibited behavior, or proactively by encouraging a police presence. In the past, we have sometimes paid for Boston Police Department details during the convention, but we commit to ending this practice.
We have clarified the protected classes, including race, to which our harassment policy pertains.
They have retired the “Lens” logo.
This artwork too closely resembles a modern police badge, which has become a symbol of oppression.
It is being replaced with Lee Moyer’s winged-A logo designed for Arisia 2017.
They have formed an Anti-Racism Committee “dedicated to educating ourselves about the injustices suffered by BIPoC and how to become actively anti-racist.” They also are “re-committing to supporting the convention’s Diversity Committee, which exists to make the Arisia convention a safer, more welcoming space for fans of color.”
(2) PROGRESS REPORT. Good news from DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis: “We have achieved a proper glass door! Now we even look open. Noon-6, Monday-Saturday.”
And on June 17, publisher Catherine Lundoff spoke at DreamHaven Books about owning and operating a small press. The title of the the talk was “The Return of Running a Small Press: It’s an Adventure” and it also featured a live Q&A on Facebook.
(3) FREE READS FROM SOMTOW. Somtow Sucharitkul is giving away three free ebooks on Amazon THIS WEEKEND ONLY — from now till 23:59 Sunday night.
Somtow in a mask.
The Vampire’s Beautiful Daughter • A book for young adults, this was a Junior Literary Guild selection as well as a Science Fiction Book Club selection. It’s about a half Jewish, half Lakota boy with some cultural identity issues who befriends a girl in school whose problem leaves his in the dust: she’s half human and half vampire. And she has to pick a side before she turns sixteen.…
Light on the Sound • the first volume of a series set in a galactic empire of incredible beauty and brutality. Of this series, reviewers said:
“He can create a world with less apparent effort than some writers devote to creating a small room … yet these tales are intricately wrought as those handcarved oriental balls within balls” — The Washington Post
“His multicultural viewpoint may yet give us the best SF novel of all time” — Analog
After a twenty year silence, I’ve added a fifth book to the series, and am working on a sixth, so this book is by way of introduction.
The final free book is Sounding Brass. It is an autobiographical memoir about the time I spent as a student ghost-writing music that was presented as the work of a cabinet minister during the Vietnam War. It’s definitely a worm’s eye view of “the swamp” with major political figures making cameo appearances, but although it’s definitely a funny book it also asks some questions about what “being an artist” really means.
To get these books for free, please make sure you order them from Amazon during the window of Saturday the 20th – Sunday the 21st, Pacific Standard Time.
Please enjoy the books and, if you so desire, visit my website (www.somtow.com) and sign up for the newsletter, and you’ll receive news and the occasional free ebook.
(4) IN PRAISE OF VIRTUAL CONS. Polish fan Marcin Klak discusses “Online Conventions and Where to Find Them” at Fandom Rover. His post is a great window on what’s been done in this line in Europe.
… All in all, I found the conventing online is really rewarding. The feeling is different than the one at the in-person cons but it has also some similarities. The most important aspect is that it allows me to socialize with fellow fans. I do hope that sooner rather than later in-person cons will be possible, but even then I think I would like to find some time for the online events. They have their own certain value not only as a “replacement” but also as events worth spending time on even in the “regular” times.
(5) UFO #8. Alex Shvartsman has released the Unidentified Funny Objects 8 table of contents. He expects the book to be released by early October.
Foreword by Alex Shvartsman
“The 10:40 Appointment at the NYC Department of Superhero Registration” by Chris Hepler
“Soul Trade” by Galen Westlake
“A.I., M.D.” by Kurt Pankau
“The Fellowship of the Mangled Scepter” by James Wesley Rogers
“When the “Martians” Return” by David Gerrold
“Welcome Home” by Simon R. Green
“The Unwelcome Mat” by J. J. Litke
“Get Me to the Firg-<click><cough>-xulb On Time” by Laura Resnick
“Black Note, in His Transition to a Supreme State of Wokeness” by James Beamon
“The Other Ted” by Wendy Mass and Rob Dircks
“C.A.T. Squad” by Gini Koch
“Ambrose Starkisser” by Jordan Chase-Young
“Gommy” Amy Lynwander
“Journey to Perfection” by Larry Hodges
“Fifteen Minutes” by Mike Morgan
“Zaznar the Great’s Fifty-Sixth Proposal to the Council for Urban Investment” by Jared Oliver Adams
“Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal” by Illimani Ferreira
“Couch Quest” by Eric D. Leavitt
“Pet Care for the Modern Mad Scientist” by Michael M. Jones
“The Punctuation Factory” by Beth Goder
“One Born Every Minute” by C. Flynt
“Shy and Retiring” by Esther Friesner
“Suburban Deer” by Jamie Lackey
“Body Double” by Jody Lynn Nye
(6) PAWS FOR ENJOYMENT. I’ve learned you can support George R.R. Martin’s Jean Cocteau Theater in Santa Fe by accessing the “Quarantine Cat Film Festival” (mentioned in yesterday’s Scroll) with a virtual ticket purchased through their site. The link will take you there.
…Jean Cocteau Cinema presents Quarantine Cat Film Festival. Amateur filmmakers from around the world filmed their beloved cats during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. This compilation reel brings together the cutest, funniest, brave stand most loving of these videos, exclusively filmed during the pandemic.
(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
June 1997 — Will Shetterly’s Dogland was published by Tor Books. The Chopping Block was listed as the cover artist. Shetterly has said it’s the novel that he’s most proud of. The story is based on his own childhood and a business that his parents owned called Dog Land. In 2007 Shetterly published a sequel, The Gospel of the Knife. Reviewers including Faren Miller, Ellen Kushner, Gahan Wilson and Peter Crowther praised both the characters and the setting. (CE)
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born June 20, 1897 — Donald Keyhoe. Early pulp writer whose works included the entire contents of all three published issues of the Dr. Yen Sin zine. The novels were The Mystery of the Dragon’s Shadow, The Mystery of the Golden Skull and The Mystery of the Singing Mummies. He would create two pulp characters, one with ESP who was a daredevil pilot and one who was blind that could see none-the-less in the dark. He’s best remembered today for being one of the early believers in UFOs and being very active in that community. (Died 1988.) (CE)
Born June 20, 1913 — Lilian Jackson Braun. Author of The Cat Who… series which really may or may not be genre. The two cats in it are delightful and one, Koko, certainly has a sixth sense, but the author never suggests this is psychic. The first, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, was published in 1966. She’d publish twenty-nine more novels plus three collections of The Cat Who… shorter tales over the next forty years. Good popcorn reading. (Died 2011.) (CE)
Born June 20, 1919 – Kees Kelfkens. A dozen covers for Dutch translations. Here is The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym. Here is The Two Towers. Here is Nineteen Eighty-Four. (Died 1986) [JH]
Born June 20, 1920 – Lloyd Eshbach. Fan, pro, church publisher and Evangelical Congregational minister. First sold SF 1930 to Scientific Detective Monthly; thirty more short stories. Founded Fantasy Press and helped other small presses; edited Of Worlds Beyond about pro writing. Pro Guest of Honor at Cinvention the 7th Worldcon (Cincinnati); reminiscences of the 1st, 6th, 7th, 10th, 39th, 41st, for the 47th (Noreascon III Program Book). Last novel 1990, The Scroll of Lucifer. (Died 2003) [JH]
Born June 20, 1941 – Pamela Zoline. Illustrated several stories for New Worlds, see e.g. this for “Camp Concentration”. Her most famous story “The Heat Death of the Universe” has been translated into Croatian, German, Japanese, Polish; five more. You can read “Heat Death” here [PDF]. In 1984, with husband John Lifton and five others, founded the Telluride Institute at Telluride, Colorado; in 2006, she and JL founded the Centre for the Future at Slavonice, Czech Republic. [JH]
Born June 20, 1950 – Bruce Dane. Attended L.A.Con the 30th Worldcon; first President of the Central Arizona Speculative Fiction Society; after Los Angeles and Phoenix, Colorado Springs. A filker; at his death Bill Mills sang “Don’t Bury Me in the Cold Cold Ground” to which you could once and might still get access here [PDF]; the File 770 report is here. (Died 2008) [JH]
Born June 20, 1951 — Tress MacNeille, 69. Voice artist extraordinaire. Favorite roles? Dot Warner on The Animaniacs, herself as the angry anchorwoman in Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Babs Bunny on Tiny Toons and Hello Nurse on Pinky and The Brain. (CE)
Born June 20, 1947 — Candy Clark, 73. Mary Lou in The Man Who Fell to Earth which of course featured Bowie. She also was in Amityville 3-D, Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye, and The Blob in the role of Francine Hewitt. That’s the remake obviously, not the original. Oh, and she’s Buffy’s mom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Wiki being Wiki lists that as non-canon because it’s not the Whedon Buffy. (CE)
Born June 20, 1962 – David Clink. As he says, poet, poker player, punster (e.g. “The Valet of the Shadow of Death”). Fourteen dozen poems, e.g. in the 2019 Rhysling Anthology; four collections, recently The Role of Lightning in Evolution. A poetry editor for Amazing. His Website is here; it has his 2013 biography here. [JH]
Born June 20, 1967 — Nicole Kidman, 53. Batman Forever was her first foray into the genre but she has done a number of genre films down the years: Practical Magic, The Stepford Wives, Bewitched (I liked it), The Invasion (never heard of it), The Golden Compass (not nearly as good as the novel was), the splendid Paddington and her latest was as Queen Atlanna in the rather good Aquaman. (CE)
Born June 20, 1968 — Robert Rodriguez, 52. I’ll single out the vastly different Sin City and Spy Kids franchises as his best work, though the From Dusk till Dawn has considerable charms as well. ISFDB notes that he’s written two novels with Chris Roberson riffing off his The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D film, The Day Dreamer and Return to Planet Droll. (CE)
Born June 20, 1971 – Wu Ming-yi, Ph.D. Professor of Chinese at Nat’l Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. Two novels for us, The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle; six others, short stories, essays; known for nature writing, or as some would have it, ecological literature; translated into Czech, English, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish. Designed and illustrated his non-fiction Book of Lost Butterflies and The Dao of Butterflies. [JH]
(9) COMICS SECTION.
All glory is fleeting: Wondermark,”In which a Visitor proves a Nuisance, Part 2.”
(10) LIVE LONG. Gothamist ran this Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock image of Dr. Fauci street art on the Lower East Side. Andrew Porter adds, “Note The Pigeon of Truth on his shoulder!”
(11) MARTIAN HOP. The art students at Liverpool John Moores University couldn’t have their senior exhibits because of the pandemic. So they used NASA’s 3D Scans to hold a “Degree Show on Mars”.
The planet is currently broken. We are doing our degree show on Mars.
The trajectory of the LJMU Fine Art Degree show has been charted. We proceed at full-throttle and we are on schedule. This final journey into the unknown for our graduating students is not a pared back simulation of what might have been, it is a voyage that seeks to collectively establish new relevance and understanding for their individual endeavours, amid the stasis the world is currently experiencing.
Artists respond to the world as they find it, they reflect it and help to build an understanding of what we are experiencing. The Degree Show on Mars is not simply showcasing the extraordinary originality and resilience of our graduating artists. It is a means by which we can document and understand the crisis through the eyes of artists who are emerging into a world very different to that which they had anticipated.
A small, coruscating delight: I have made a series of face masks featuring wondrous centuries-old astronomical art and natural history illustrations I have restored and digitized from various archival sources over the years….
(13) ABOUT POE. At CrimeReads, Sarah Weinman asks “Can You Really Separate Edgar Allan Poe’s Work From His Life?” Weinman wrote the introduction for a reissue of Julian Symons’ Poe biography The Tell-Tale Heart, originally published in 1978, which has been out of print for decades.
…But the audacity of Symons’ project makes more than a bit of sense: because, he rightly argues in The Tell-Tale Heart, so much of what we think we know about Edgar Allan Poe is rooted in grudges, hearsay, rumor, and mystery, and of intuiting too much personal meaning from his successful, written-for-the-money mystery stories and from the poems that were closer to Poe’s heart and spirit.
(14) LAST AT BATS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Yahoo! Entertainment story “Holy Bat-feuds! Revisiting the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding ‘Batman Forever’ 25 years later”, Ethan Alter argues that Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever “might arguably be worse” than Schumacher’s widely reviled Batman & Robin, and lists the many feuds surrounding the film, including Michael Keaton turning down $15 million to get in the bat-suit because the script for the film “sucked,” Val Kilmer regretting he replaced Keaton in the bat-suit, and villians Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey wanting to stick knives in each other.
…Schumacher and Kilmer were all smiles during the Batman Forever publicity tour, but it turns out that was just really good acting. Interviewed by Entertainment Weekly in 1996 — one year removed from the film’s release — the director described a tense on-set relationship that culminated in an actual pushing match. “He was being irrational and ballistic with the first AD, the cameraman, the costume people,” Schumacher said. “He was badly behaved, he was rude and inappropriate. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me, but it was bliss.” Speaking with Vulture in 2019, Schumacher was even more pointed: “I didn’t say Val [Kilmer] was difficult to work with on Batman Forever. I said he was psychotic.”
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Neil Gaiman–Is Writing For Children Tougher Than Writing for Adults?” on YouTube is a 2013 video by Bloomsbury Publishing where Gaiman explains that when writing for children, he has to be more precise than writing for adults.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, John King Tarpinian, John A Arkansawyer, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Toman, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
“Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.” — Maya Angelou
On this, the 155th anniversary of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston Texas, the one word that is uppermost in my mind is…endurance.
Endurance can be the only word that can be applied to my African ancestors, brought here involuntarily, the Native Americans of this continent, and all those others who have migrated or immigrated here from other lands.
For we have endured despite the numerous and myriad attempts by, let’s just say, other, richer, less melanin enhanced Americans, who have done their damnedest to dominate, assimilate, and commit waves of genocidal acts and otherwise erase us from history.
And, for long stretches of our mutual history, they succeeded. But the funny thing about history is that it can never completely be erased or forgotten, especially by those who are the ones being oppressed.
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Liberation Day and Jubilee Day, started out as a regional celebration in Texas state holiday. Though it was somewhat eclipsed by the Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s, the celebration began anew in the 70’s, particularly in the American South.
I first became acquainted with Juneteenth in the 1990’s when National Public Radio’s All Things Considered did a lengthy feature story about it. Having grown up in a Catholic grade and high school, I was never taught about the contributions of people of color to American History, with one single exception, the death of Crispus Attucks, an African-American stevedore who was killed by British troops at the Boston Massacre of 1770. He is widely regarded as the very first casualty of the American Revolution.
As I progressed through high school and into college, I discovered even more tidbits of hidden Black History, explorers like Matt Henson, journalist Ida B. Wells, scientists and engineers such as George Washington Carver, Granville Woods, and Willie Hobbs Moore. This was during a time when the hidden figures of Black History were being rediscovered and elevated by revisionist historians at universities all over America.
This was also the era when I discovered sf fandom.
I had been reading sf authors like Bradbury and Asimov since the eighth grade and had discovered the first two volumes of The Hugo Winners (the book club edition) when it was first published during my sophomore year in high school.
As I recounted in File 770 over twenty years ago, I was puzzled by the mention of conventions where the Hugo were given out but there were practically no information on how to attend them. Little did I know that I was living in one of the hotbeds of sf fandom at the time, Cincinnati, Ohio.
When I came across a notice of Cincinnati’s annual convention, Midwestcon, in an issue of Analog in the summer of 1976, I persuaded my best friend and neighbor, Michaele Jordan, to come with me to a small hotel less than five miles from our homes.
It just so happened that Midwestcon 27 had a rather high number of professional writers and fans attending that weekend. I not only found myself surrounded by writers whose books I had read, I also were with people, for the very first time in my life, who did not judge me by the color of my skin but by the content of my character.
In the forty-four years since that joyous weekend, I have been to nearly two hundred conventions (YES, I saved ALL of my badges) including twenty-nine Worldcons.
I did notice that unlike today, there were not a lot of African Americans attending conventions in those days. As I made my way around the east coast conventions I did encounter three African-Americans I looked up to and admired from afar.
Samuel R. Delany. Photo from SFWA website.
Samuel R. “Chip” Delany still walks among us. We met in 1986 when I chaired and organized a one-shot sf convention, Cinclave, which was done in conjunction with the University of Cincinnati. Despite my best efforts, the convention was a financial disaster for me but Chip Delany was a delight to converse with and he graciously signed all of my books. I recently made it a priority to spend some of my COVID-19 stimulus cash on acquiring all of his most essential works. You know them; Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection, Dhalgren, Triton, Nova, Distant Stars. A tremendous writer, he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2014.
Elliot K. Shorter (April 2, 1939 — October 1, 2013) was an impressive looking man; an ex-marine MP, he stood at 6’4” he was easy to spot. He won a TAFF race against Charles N. Brown and Bill Rotsler and was the Fan Guest of Honor at Heicon in West Germany, the first Worldcon held on mainland Europe. He was a regular conrunner at many east coast conventions and very active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. When I found out who he was and how accomplished he was, I wanted to be just like him.
D Potter (who died October 25, 2017) was a very tall, funny and effusive soul, who ALWAYS seemed to be having a good time wherever she was. She was an avid and prolific fanzine writer and apazine editor. I never got to know her very well and that was my loss. But I remember her vividly as a welcoming and good soul.
My time in fandom, has, for the most part, been a very good journey. It has not been without a few controversial moments and bruised toes but overall, there are very few things that I regret doing or experiencing.
My first volunteer effort was a brief stint in the Iguanacon Art Show in 1978. I started appearing regularly on Worldcon panels starting at Noreascon 2 in 1980. I have mostly been either staffing or running Worldcon Press Offices starting with ConStellation in 1983 to MidAmericon 2 in 2016.
In addition, there was the twenty-year odyssey at the Worldcon Business Meetings, wherein I labored to persuade members to change, modify or create new Hugo Award categories. Although I have been the subject of derision and abject scrutiny because of my efforts, I am quite proud of the work I and the like-minded fans who either supported these efforts and gave up their precious time at various Worldcons to come and vote on measures, motions and amendments.
So, where does fandom stand today?
Goodness knows we can safely say, we are in VERY INTERESTING TIMES. Most cons have been either canceled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and there is no end in sight.
Add on the uncertain and unsteady leadership in our government, the economic crisis that came as a result of the disease and the incredible social upheaval in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, every branch of fandom has reason to worry about their future endeavors.
Which brings me back to that word.
Endurance.
Fandom has been here before. In 1968. In 1972. In 1980. In 2001. In 2016.
Oh yes, we have been here before and we will endure, as we have always have.
Fandom has never been more diverse, more aware and as WOKE as ever.
On this Juneteenth, I may be wary of what may lie over the horizon but I do know that we, as fans, writers, editors, artists and conrunners are ready to weather almost anything that may be coming.
Right now, our institutions, fan groups and individuals are rallying around the victims of COVID-19, economic distress, police murders and riot damaged businesses. And we didn’t need to be told that Black Lives Matter, we ALWAYS knew that.
More than ever, like the generations of black and other minorities we call our allies and brethren, we cannot be silenced. We will not obey. We will not comply. We will always ask the next question. We will always question authority.
We will endure. No matter what comes next.
“If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” — James Baldwin
(1) FAN HISTORY PROJECT SPOTLIGHT. File 770 is late to pass on the great news, but last October Fanac.org’s Joe Siclari told everyone on his list “that we have received a request from the Library of Congress to archive our site.”
…From the letter: “The Library of Congress preserves important cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them…The Library will make this collection available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement.” They may later make it publicly available as well. We’ve all seen the loss of many websites that showcase the hard work and outstanding accomplishments of fans and historians in our field. This archiving request from the Library of Congress will ensure that the work we’ve been doing with your help will be available, even after the current class of fan historians has bit the dust. Color us ecstatic. We’ll let you know when the process has completed.
The Library of Congress gives an overview of its web archiving program here.
The Library of Congress Web Archive manages, preserves, and provides access to archived web content selected by subject experts from across the Library, so that it will be available for researchers today and in the future. Websites are ephemeral and often considered at-risk born-digital content. New websites form constantly, URLs change, content changes, and websites sometimes disappear entirely. Websites document current events, organizations, public reactions, government information, and cultural and scholarly information on a wide variety of topics. Materials that used to appear in print are increasingly published online.
(2) COMPLETING THE SET. The 2020 Kurd Laßwitz Preis (German SF Award) winners now have all been named following this late selection:
Best German language audio drama first broadcast in 2019
Unser Leben in den Wäldern by Marie Darrieussecq and Gerrit Booms, WDR
….in a new blog post on the official D&D website the development studio detailed what it has been doing to tackle the game’s own history of racist stereotyping, and what will be done going forward to ensure the game tastefully represents its fantasy world.
“Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game—orcs and drow being two of the prime examples—have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated,” the new statement reads in part. “That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary, we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear in the game. We recognize that to live our values, we have to do an even better job in handling these issues. If we make mistakes, our priority is to make things right.”
Going forward, D&D will be making those things right with a six-point plan. Outside of the game itself, these include the use of sensitivity readers on upcoming and current Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks as part of the creative process, and a commitment to “proactively seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists,” a move already made for products set to release in the next year, but a policy being maintained going forward.
…From an editorial standpoint, the D&D team will also go back through material as it is being prepared for reprints, and update them to modify and remove any racially insensitive material. The adventures Tomb of Annihilation and The Curse of Strahd were cited as particular examples, with Curse of Strahd being called out specifically for its use of Romani sterotypes in the background of the Vistani, a nomadic group of travelers that primarily resided in Barovia before the death of Count Strahd von Zarovich. In the editorial process for Strahd’s reprint, as well as two upcoming products, Wizards worked with a Romani consultant to present the Vistani without using reductive tropes.
But some of the points delve into the game itself—for example, the aforementioned ongoing exploration and re-examination of Drow and Orcish cultures in the game’s fiction, beings that were long described as beastly and villainous by nature while also being approximations of non-white cultures….
…But whenever that happens, the public libraries that will emerge from this historic pause will be changed from the ones that closed their doors in March, librarians tell PW, both in the short term, and into the future.
The most pressing issue facing libraries, of course, is how to reopen safely, for both library staff and the public. For most libraries, that means services like curbside pickup or limits on patron visits to start. It means ensuring library workers have appropriate personal protective equipment, and reconfiguring the library space: less furniture, distance between computer stations, more hand sanitizer stations, spit guards, and plexiglass dividers. It means contactless checkout, new cleaning procedures, and 72-hour materials quarantines.
It also means enormous pressure on library staff, including new rules to enforce, such as physical distancing and wearing masks. None of it will be easy. And all of it will be done under the threat of job cuts, a potential second wave of Covid-19 infections, immense budget pressure, and worsening political dysfunction….
(5) NO SMOKING. During last autumn’s round of California wildfires, a Washington Post writer accompanied a salesman for treating houses with fire retardant on a visit to Dean Koontz’ estate. “California will never stop burning”.
…Thirty miles southwest of the 46 Fire, Dean Koontz, the megaselling novelist, was standing outside his enormous new home the morning after Halloween.
“We had friends who wouldn’t move to California because of earthquakes.”
Like other Californians, he has stood on a roof with a garden hose and a stance of defiance.
“They moved to the Gulf Coast and got hit by a hurricane.”
It costs a fortune to insure some homes in California. This is why Koontz invited Moseley and his team for a consultation about a defensive sprinkler system and his SPF3000 spray. Local authorities have challenged the effectiveness and safety of the product, but Moseley has testimonials from grateful clients and documentation of test results.
He also has his on-the-go demonstration. On Koontz’s front stoop, Moseley blowtorches one end of a piece of wood. It ignites, burns, starts to disintegrate. Then he torches the other side, which has been treated with SPF3000. It blackens but does not ignite. Then Moseley scrapes the charred veneer with a car key to reveal intact wood underneath….
“Impressive,” Koontz says. His Tuscan-style villa is in a gated community near Irvine. This is a place of Bentleys and catering trucks, and an air of invincibility. Koontz knows that nothing is invincible. If he were younger, maybe he’d move to a place that wasn’t quaking and conflagrating so much. Arizona, perhaps. But he loves it here.
“None of us live forever,” he says. “And you have to weigh the quality of life with the risk.”
….Born in Barcelona, Ruiz Zafón worked in advertising before he made his debut as an author in 1993 with young adult novel The Prince of Mist. In 2001, he published The Shadow of the Wind, which followed a boy called Daniel who is taken to the Cemetery of Lost Books in Barcelona and becomes fascinated by the author Julian Carax and the shadowy figure trying to eradicate every last copy of Carax’s books. The novel was translated into English by Lucia Graves in 2004, and became an international hit. “If you thought the true gothic novel died with the 19th century, this will change your mind,” said Stephen King in a review. “Shadow is the real deal, a novel full of cheesy splendour and creaking trapdoors, a novel where even the subplots have subplots.”
Ruiz Zafón, who moved to Los Angeles in the 1990s, and divided his time between Spain and the US, has said that while he had written “pretty successful” young adult novels for 10 years, with The Shadow of the Wind he “wanted to create something very special”.
“So what I did was take what for me is very important, which is take all the great ambition in all those 19th-century novels, but try to reconstruct those big novels – the Tolstoy, the Dickens, the Wilkie Collins – but try to reconstruct all of that with all the narrative elements that the 20th century has given us, from the grammar of cinema, from multimedia, from general fiction, from everything that is out there, to create a much more intense reading experience for the readers,” he said.
He followed the bestseller up with three more novels in the series, The Angel’s Game, The Prisoner of Heaven and The Labyrinth of Spirits. Completing the tetralogy, he told Spanish press in 2016 that he had “the feeling of the job done”….
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.
June 19, 1964 — The Twilight Zone finale aired.
“A swimming pool not unlike any other pool, a structure built of tile and cement and money, a backyard toy for the affluent.” — Rod Serling in his opening narration to this episode.
The Twilight Zone series finale: “The Bewitchin’ Pool” was the thirty-sixth episode of the fifth and final season. Earl Hamner, Jr., got the idea for this episode while living in the San Fernando Valley region and witnessing an alarming divorce rate and the effect it had on children. The episode was one of the first shows on television to really address the problem of divorce and bad parenting, and in part it represents wish fulfillment for children in such situations. It was directed by Joseph M. Newman from the script by Earl Hamner, Jr.
It had an unusually large cast: Mary Badham as Sport Sharewood, June Foray as Sport Sharewood (voice, outdoor scenes), Kim Hector as Witt, Dee Hartford as Gloria Sharewood, Jeffrey Byron as Jeb Sharewood, Georgia Simmons as Aunt T and Tod Andrews as Gil Sharewood.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born June 19, 1824 – Henri Hildibrand. Wood engraver for Hetzel, who did so much good and bad for Verne; those editions were lavishly illustrated, anyhow. This cover for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a composite of a Peter Gimbel photo and a de Neuville print Hildibrand engraved. Here is Aronnax studying the giant squid. Here is the underwater destroyed town (note de Neuville’s signature at lower left). (Died 1897) [JH]
Born June 19, 1872 – Sutton Griggs. Son of a slave; Baptist minister; active in the Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People; published and distributed his own books and pamphlets, thirty of them. Imperium in Imperio has a black nation hidden in Texas, outsold many contemporaries to whom he was invisible. (Died 1933) [JH]
Born June 19, 1881 – Maginel Enright. Younger sister of Frank Lloyd Wright (Maginel a contraction of Margaret Ellen). Illustrated Frank Baum’s Twinkle Tales, Policeman Bluejay, Juvenile Speaker; five dozen by others. See here and here and here. Memoir, The Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses. (Died 1966) [JH]
Born June 19, 1915 – Julius Schwartz. Co-published pioneer fanzine The Time Traveller. Helped organize NyCon I the first Worldcon. Co-founded Solar Sales Service, representing Bester, Bloch, Bradbury. In reviving or re-creating the Flash, Green Lantern, and like that, instrumental in opening Silver Age of Comics. Edited Batman, Superman, fifteen years each; dozens more. Memoir Man of Two Worlds subtitled “my life in science fiction and comics”; also he was active as fan and pro; also “Man of Two Worlds” was his creation Adam Strange – in whose stories Alanna’s father Sardath looked like him. Inkpot, Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, Will Eisner Hall of Fame. (Died 2004) [JH]
Born June 19, 1921 — Louis Jourdan. Fear No Evil and Ritual of Evil, two tv horror films in the late Sixties, appear to be his first venture into our realm. He’d play Count Dracula in, errr, Count Dracula a few years later. And then comes the role you most likely remember him for, Dr. Anton Arcane in Swamp Thing which he reprised in The Return of Swamp Thing. Definitely popcorn films at their very best. Oh and let’s not forget he was Kamal Khan, the villain in Octopussy! (Died 2015.) (CE)
Born June 19, 1926 — Josef Nesvadba.A Czech writer, best known in his SF short stories, many of which have appeared in English translation. ISFDB lists a number of stories as appearing in English and two collections of his translated stories were published, In The Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman: Stories of Science and Fantasy and Vampires Ltd.: Stories of Science and Fantasy. Neither’s available in digital format. (Died 2005.) (CE)
Born June 19, 1947 — Salman Rushdie, 73. Everything he does has some elements of magic realism in it. (Let the arguments begin on that statement.) So which of his novels are really genre? I’d say The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Grimus (his first and largely forgotten sf novel), Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. If you’ve not read anything by him, I’d start with The Ground Beneath Her Feet which is by far both one of his best works and one of his most understandable ones as well. (CE)
Born June 19, 1949 – Marilyn Kaye. Taught twenty years at St. John’s University (New York), now lives in Paris. A hundred children’s and young-adult books, four dozen ours. In her Replica series, teenage Amy’s discovering she is a clone, genetically modified for superhuman abilities, is only the beginning. In her Gifted series, each in a small middle-school class has a superhuman ability; an outside group seeks to manipulate them and their abilities for profit; the students dislike their abilities and one another. [JH]
Born June 19, 1953 — Virginia Hey, 67. Best-remembered for her role as Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan in the fabulous Farscape series and playing the Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. She’s also Rubavitch, the mistress of the KGB Head, General Pushkin, in The Living Daylights. She also had a brief appearance as a beautician in The Return of Captain Invincible, an Australian musical comedy superhero film. No, I’ve not seen it. (CE)
Born June 19, 1957 — Jean Rabe, 63. She’s a genre author and editor who has worked on the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Rogue Angel and BattleTech series, as well as many others. Ok I admit to a degree of fascination with such writers as I’m a devotee of the Rogue Angel audiobooks that GraphicAudio does and she’s written according to ISFDB five of the source novels under the house name of Alex Archer. (CE)
June 19, 1963 – Aleksandar Žiljak. A dozen short stories; some covers and interiors, see here (his collection Blind Birds). Co-edited Ad Astra anthology of Croatian SF 1976-2006; co-edits literary SF journal Ubiq. Six SFera Awards: three for Best Story, two for Best Illustration, one (shared) for Ad Astra. The Wayback Machine has this interview. [JH]
Born June 19, 1978 — Zoe Saldana, 42, born with the lovely birth name of Zoë Yadira Saldaña Nazario. First genre role was Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. She’s Nyota Uhura in the new Trek series, and she’s also Neytiri in the Avatar franchise. She portrays Gamora in the MCU, beginning with Guardians of the Galaxy, a truly great film though I’m less impressed with the second film by far. (CE)
(9) COMICS SECTION.
Cul de Sac’s Petey survives a post-apocalyptic world:
There’s a reason why Jack Kirby, co-creator of such iconic comics characters as the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, and Captain America, is called the “King of Comics.” Considered one of the great innovators in the history of American comics, Jack Kirby (1917-1994) is arguably the greatest superhero comic book artist of all time.
In the new graphic biography, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics, comics artist and biographer Tom Scioli pays tribute to Kirby in a vividly illustrated and comprehensively researched examination of Kirby’s life and career from his rough and tumble childhood growing up on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 20th century to his military service in WWII to the transformative comics he created for Marvel and later for DC Comics….
(11) SACKY HACK. This is real thinking outside the box.
We are apparently replacing Confederate monuments with Mothman, so I propose replacing all genocidal explorer statues with what is, objectively, the single greatest sculpture of all time. https://t.co/kjJsORuvNV
(12) MARCH OF TIME. At the LA Review of Books, Aleida Rodriguez’s autobiographical essay “Time Machine”, in addition to Wells and Borges, even mentions Clyde Crashcup from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show.
WHEN I LANDED in the US as a child of nine, I felt I had not only traveled in space but also in time. Though it was 1962, behind me lay a 19th-century world of oil lamps, muddy rutted roads, and horse-drawn carts, while before me flickered a vision so sleek and modern there were no shadows and bright-green lawns sprouted cones of mist.
Time traveler became my invisible identity. Secretly, I searched for mentors in movies like The Time Machine (1960), envying Rod Taylor his ability to go back and forth, to witness and control the passage of time. Propelled and buoyed by a utopian vision of the future, he set off, watching the rising hemline on a mannequin in a shop window, then the shop itself disintegrating to dust in an instant, the surrounding buildings crumbling and disappearing, replaced by insect-like cranes scampering on skyscrapers. His present had succumbed to shattered shards. But by moving a crystal-topped lever sharpened to a point like a pen, he could also reverse direction and return to his intact and cloistered world of waistcoats.
I yearned for that, a trip back — not to Bountiful but to a prelapsarian time, before the rupture in my family caused by the Cuban revolution….
A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays.
The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos – instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded.
Feasting black holes, exploding stars, and searingly hot gas.
The data comes from the eRosita instrument mounted on Spektr-RG.
This orbiting telescope was launched in July last year and despatched to an observing position some 1.5 million km from Earth. Once commissioned and declared fully operational in December, it was left to slowly rotate and scan the depths of space.
eRosita’s first all-sky data-set, represented in the image at the top of this page, was completed only last week. It records over a million sources of X-rays.
“That’s actually pretty much the same number as had been detected in the whole history of X-ray astronomy going back 60 years. We’ve basically doubled the known sources in just six months,” said Kirpal Nandra, who heads the high-energy astrophysics group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany.
(14) QUARANTINE CAT FILM FESTIVAL. This looks promising!
The most purr-fect, a-meow-zing, and totally fur-tastic cat videos anyone has ever seen!
[Thanks to Darrah Chavey, Frank Olynyk, Mike Kennedy, Lise Andreasen, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]
Yaphet Kotto, Sigourney Weaver, and Ian Holm (as Ash) in Alien (1979).
Actor Ian Holm, an iconic figure in many sff movies and television productions, died June 19. His final illness “was Parkinson’s related” his agent told The Guardian. (The BBC tribute is here, and the New York Times obituary here.)
He played the whole range of Shakespearean roles, including the fantasies, and gained fame in other non-genre roles.
But after chronic experience with stage fright drove him from live theater, he turned to TV and film work. His role as Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie in the BBC’s production of The Lost Boys (1978) won him a Royal Television Society award and a Bafta nomination.
In 1979 he made his first major Hollywood appearance, as the sinister android Ash in Alien. “It wasn’t a particularly pleasant film to do,” he later recalled. “It was 16 weeks of bloody hard work down at Shepperton Studios.”
Ian Holm as Bilbo, center, in Fellowship of the Ring (2001).
Time Bandits (1981) brought him back as Napoleon, a character he also played on UK television in the previous decade in the Napoleon and Love miniseries.
That was also the year Holm’s performance in non-genre Chariots of Fire won him a Bafta for best supporting actor, and earned him an Oscar nomination.
And in the same auspicious year, he took the part of Frodo Baggins in BBC Radio 4’s 1981 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
His connection with sff would continue, cast in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), and as Lewis Carroll in Dreamchild (1985), Dennis Potter’s fantasy based on the life of Alice Liddell. He was in the TV miniseries The Borrowers (1992) and Return of the Borrowers (1993) as Pod, one of the fifteen-centimeter-high humans who live in the English hinterland.
He was knighted in 1998 for “services to drama.”
Holm played Bilbo in Peter Jackson’s three-part Lord of the Rings screen adaptation, with filming on The Fellowship of the Ring beginning in 1999. At five-feet five inches he was physically suited to the character, in addition to the acting gifts he brought to the part. Bilbo did not appear in The Two Towers, but Holm returned for the final movie, The Return of the King, as well as the first and third instalments of the Hobbit trilogy (as “Old Bilbo”), which were released in 2012 and 2014 respectively.
The New York Times obituary quoted:
“I’m completely amazed by the reaction that the films have had,” he told the British newspaper The Independent in 2004. “I get a lot of fan mail addressed to Bilbo and sometimes Sir Bilbo,” he said. “It’s hardly ever addressed to Ian Holm.” He made sure to sign replies with his character’s name, he added.
Sadly, unlike Bilbo, Holm could not sail away to the Undying Lands.
He is survived by his fourth wife, Sophie de Stempel; five children; and eight grandchildren.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy for the story, and the next-to-last line.]
Monica Stephens, Steve Jackson’s companion for more than 30 years and an employee of Steve Jackson Games for nearly as long, died June 18 of congestive heart failure as a side effect of chemotherapy. She was 59.
At Nolacon II, the troubled 1988 Worldcon where I ran program, she and Steve co-edited Domino Theory, the daily zine and the equally vital daily “pink sheet” with the correct program schedule (a life-saver, because two other obsolete versions were circulating in the pocket program and on the hotel monitors). It was one of the earliest, if not the first, Worldcon newzine to be created by desktop publishing, and as Jackson says, “Thanks to a huge corps of volunteer reporters and distributors, managed to report on the train wreck without being pulled under it.”
Monica made it to a lot of Worldcons after that, sometimes working as a gopher.
Her other fannish accomplishments included a great deal of activity with FACT (Fandom Association of Central Texas). And she got a proofreader credit in Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management.
She worked in every department that SJ Games ever had, except (possibly) miniatures casting. She started as a typesetter, back when we had our own typesetting equipment. At various times, she also did layout, print buying, editing, playtesting, accounting, convention support and convention booth work, and landscaping – she was the best tree-trimmer we had. And, with Czar Andrew, she had the thankless and ever-growing task of managing the Munchkin database. (She also helped me make up the first Munchkin playtest set, and she was the very first one to tell me that Munchkin was going to be a hit. She was right.)
She liked nature: flowers, trees, frogs, lizards – even spiders (but not snakes). She shared my love of water gardening. She read science fiction and enjoyed conventions.
She is survived by Jackson, and her brother Sid and sister Stephanie.
Spain’s Festival Celsius 232 committee announced the 2020 winners of its Premios Kelvin 505 awards on June 17.
Mejor novela original en castellano publicada por primera vez en España / Best original novel in Spanish published for the first time in Spain
Nuestra parte de la noche, by Mariana Enríquez (Anagrama)
Mejor novela traducida al castellano y publicada por primera vez en España / Best novel translated into Spanish and published for the first time in Spain
El hambre, by Alma Katsu, translated into Spanish by Natalia Cervera (Alianza)
Mejor novela juvenil traducida al castellano y publicada por primera vez en España / Best youth novel translated into Spanish and published for the first time in Spain
Sed, by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman, translated into Spanish by Pilar Ramírez Tello (Nocturna)
Mejor novela juvenil original en castellano publicada por primera vez en España / Best original juvenile novel in Spanish published for the first time in Spain
