A Quarter Century of Snapshots

Snapshots #25 presents fifteen developments of interest to fans.

(1) Paired heroes and villains selected from the American Film Institute’s 50 Top Heroes and Villains are matched in a fight to the death! Batman vs. Hans Gruber. Lassie vs. Cruella de Ville. Marge Gunderson vs. Count Dracula! Did good or evil win over all?

(2) Bill Warren of the Dawn Patrol has written a filk song about Wilson “Bob” Tucker. Bill’s tribute is posted at YouTube.

(3) Steve Silver’s Art of the Con theme issue of Argentus includes articles on con-running by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Lisa Hertel, Randy Kaempen, Mary Kay Kare, Deb Kosiba, Priscilla Olson, Baron DavE Romm, Bill Roper, Sabel Schechter, Susan Shwartz, Steven H Silver, Kevin Standlee, Ann Totusek, Patty Wells, and Ben Yalow.

(4) “When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news. His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.”

(5) Web Urbanist has a list of 173 Radical Retrofuturistic Directions in Design & Technology, ranging from vehicles to clothing to the apocalypse.

(6) HarperCollins’ earnings decreased 20% for the quarter ending March 31. The two disparate books doing the most to keep the company afloat during the quarter were  Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

(7) Drew Shiel at Quilldragon analyzed all five Best Novel nominees and determined… they all deserve a Hugo. Well, that’s better than the alternative. (No, the alternative is not that they would all deserve the Nebula.)

(8) An unknown Scottish actress has been cast as new Doctor Who Matt Smith’s companion.

(9) Every website wrestles with rowdy commenters. But I don’t know if an sf blogger would dare imitate the way Dave from BlazersEdge lays down the law to his fellow basketball fans: “If you call someone a moron or uninformed you will be banned. If you say a post is a waste of space or time you will be banned. If your post includes the words, ‘You must not watch much basketball’ you will be banned. If you say, ‘This should be a fanshot’ you will be banned. If you snidely correct someone’s grammar you will be banned.” My gosh, if sf blogs banned everyone who snidely corrected other fans’ grammar, there woule be no one left to read the posts.

(10) Learn more about the inner workings of the Wikipedia and the Church of Scientology in this Guardian article:

In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates. Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.

(11) A Tintin museum will open in Belgium.

(12) Angelique Trouvere’s ancient Star Trek convention photos made it into Newsweek.

(13) James D. Keeline compiled a spreadsheet listing of 3,200 time travel novels, stories, and children’s books, and in 2000 he built a searchable database of this material. He says, “Had I the time, I could probably add another 1,000 titles but perhaps it will be useful to someone…”

(14) Tom Swift Conventions in Hammondsport, NY (2009) and San Diego (2010)

(15) Following the death of Tom Deitz, a fan has set up a Deitz tribute website.

[Thanks go to Andrew Porter, David Klaus, Roger Tener, Francis Hamit James Hay and Michael J. Walsh for some of the links included in this post.]

Update 6/14/2009: Corrected country where Tintin museum is located. And it’s not even Tuesday.

2 thoughts on “A Quarter Century of Snapshots

  1. I thought Tucker was Immortal, a secret member of the Howard Families.

    It’s been almost three years, yet I still have trouble with the concept that he’s gone.

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