The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) have announced the creation of the Infinity Award, with its inaugural presentation honoring the works and career of Octavia E. Butler(1947–2006) at the 58th Annual Nebula Awards® Ceremony on May 14.
The SFWA Board voted to create the Infinity Award to posthumously honor acclaimed creators who passed away before they could be considered for a Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. This new award aims to recognize that even though those celebrated worldbuilders, storytellers, and weavers of words are no longer with us, their legacies will continue to inspire.
Upon its creation, it was also unanimously agreed that Octavia E. Butler would be our first recipient. Beginning with her perseverance in the face of the prejudice she encountered early on in her career, including claims that African American writers – especially African American women writers – could not write science fiction, Butler ultimately went on to earn a MacArthur Grant and a PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award. Butler did more than prove such naysayers wrong. Her works offered prescient critiques of societal issues and visions of what might be possible in different and future worlds. They are now being taught in over 200 colleges and universities nationwide.
SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy remarked, “Establishing this new award is very important to me. Over the years, so many creators have been passed over for the Grand Master nod, for one reason or another. Some died tragically early. Others were not recognized for their work during their lifetimes because of cultural prejudices and blind spots. Others were simply ahead of their time. When we look back at the nearly sixty years of SFWA celebrating SFF creators, there are some who stand out as ones we deeply wish had been given our highest awards. Being able to recognize Octavia E. Butler as our first recipient of the Infinity Award is an inspiring and gratifying first step toward correcting past omissions.”
Courtesy of the Octavia E. Butler Estate
Butler wrote sixteen novels and novellas, multiple collections and chapbooks, and many published essays. Her award-winning work during her lifetime includes “Bloodchild,” “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” and Parable of the Talents. After her death, the #1 New York Times best-selling graphic novel adaptation of her book Kindred, created by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, received the Eisner Award for Best Adaptation.
In addition to the recent FX production of Kindred, projects in development and pre-production based on Butler’s work include Parable of the Sower with Peter Chernin, Garrett Bradley and A24 Films; Fledgling with Issa Rae and JJ Abrams; Wild Seed with Viola Davis and JuVee Productions; and BloodChild with Natalie Portman and Ari Aster.
Jules Jackson, directing manager of the Octavia E. Butler Estate, shared the following remarks: “For those who have chosen to pay attention, there is one thing that has become clear and apparent…. Octavia Estelle Butler, the mother of Afrofuturism, has literally written herself into history. And now the Estate is tasked with the honor of archiving, diagramming, and extending the reach of Octavia Estelle Butler’s cherished body of work. Octavia taught her readers to imagine relentlessly, our collective figures…Octavia painted the ‘least respected of us’ into the center of every narrative, re-framing a genre…I am beyond excited to accept this inaugural Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association award, for and on behalf of Octavia Butler, The Octavia E. Butler Estate, and all of the incredible storytellers who are, and continue to be inspired and those who follow in Octavia Estelle Butler’s prescient wake.”
Jackson will receive the award on Butler’s behalf at the Nebula Awards Ceremony. The award will be presented by Chinaka Hodge, writer and showrunner of the upcoming Wild Seeds television series.
Rather than a physical award, SFWA will make a donation to a cause that an Infinity Award honoree supported or that their loved ones’ request. For this first award, and in future years when a specific charity is not requested, that donation will go to the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship to the Clarion West workshop, which is administered by the Carl Brandon Society.
[Based on a press release.]
Update 05/06/2023: The SFWA press release has been corrected with current information on the media projects based on Octavia E. Butler’s work that are in development and pre-production. It names Jules Jackson, the directing manager of the Butler estate, as an executive director on those projects. The paragraph on those productions in SFWA’s release dated April 27, 2023, contained out-of-date information.
Paul Basile, a member of the UMass Science Fiction Society at UMass Amherst from 1966 to 1970, reports the group is flourishing but still has no space for its 9000-volume library two years after the university took away the offices they were using. File 770 signal boosted news of the eviction in 2021. The Daily Hampshire Gazette covered it, too, in “Storied sci-fi library lost without a space at UMass”, with response quotes from University spokespeople, and statements by other affected student groups.
Basile recently contacted NESFA and several fan news outlets to mourn that the state of affairs has remained unchanged since 2021, and ask fans to help by contacting the University, signing a petition at Change.org, or sending e-mails to the RSO asking them to reconsider.
Basile’s recent email reminded readers: “Two years ago the Office of Registered Student Organizations threw the club out of their offices where they maintained a library of over 9000 science fiction books. They were forced to put them in storage. These materials were available to the entire University community and the town of Amherst. I have been in contact with the group and have written many e-mails to the RSO office and the president of the University. They have done and will do nothing to help. The group has all its books in storage where they do no good for anybody. I have also contacted some former members of the club and the local TV stations as well as the Daily Hampshire Gazette, but no one seems able to change the RSO’s mind.”
The winners of these awards will be selected at the next general meeting of the ESFS, which will take place at Konflikt, the 2023 Eurocon, June 8-11 in Uppsala, Sweden.
For the fortieth anniversary of Nicholas Meyer’s romantic fantasy masterpiece, released September 28th, 1979, here is a look back at the soundtrack release of the brilliant motion picture classic, Time After Time, and its legendary score by Miklos Rozsa.
The film, which suggested an entirely imaginary friendship between writer H.G. Wells and Jack The Ripper, follows the exploits of the famed science fiction author as he courageously chases the infamous murderer through time and space in a fabulous device of his own making.
His journey to prevent future bloodshed is the intoxicating premise of this sublime science fiction thriller for which three-time Oscar winning composer Miklos Rozsa fabricated one of his most exquisite romantic scores.
Produced by Lukas Kendall for his wonderful succession of soundtrack releases at Film Score Monthly, Rozsa’s inspired score is a musical journey worth taking … Time After Time.
By Steve Vertlieb: Toward the end of a summer cluttered with loud, virtually indistinguishable motion picture fare, a small cinematic miracle called Time After Time emerged quietly amidst the visual noise. Released by Warner Bros. on August 31, 1979, Nicholas Meyer’s tender fantasy was a ray of radiant sunshine spilling over a cloud covered, obediently commercial horizon. Based upon a novel by author Karl Alexander, from a story idea by Alexander along with Steven Hayes, the story found its inspiration unashamedly in the pages of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, in which a resurrected Sherlock Holmes battles his arch nemesis once more on paper and on film. Rather than pit the master detective against crime and punishment, however, Alexander decided to extract H.G. Wells from Victorian England and have him impersonate Holmes while trailing Jack the Ripper through portals of time. Nicholas Meyer, both flattered and intrigued by this updated tribute to his own work, decided that the novel might make an interesting film and, when approached by Karl Alexander, determined to option the novel with Warner Bros. for the screen rights.
Meyer wished to helm the picture himself and, as a novice director, wanted to fashion a retro sense about his introductory screen effort. He envisioned the traditional Max Steiner logo sequence opening the film, a concept that didn’t particularly excite Warner Bros, as the Forties intro hadn’t been used by the studio in years. He cast Malcolm McDowell as his hero, a courageous reversal of type casting since the actor had largely portrayed only villains and sleazy anti-heroes thus far in his career. It was an interesting choice, considering that Wells would be enacted as a sweet, innocent idealist with little worldly background or sophistication. For the music, Meyer wanted to have an old fashioned Hollywood score as the blanket caressing his lost protagonists. He chose one of his favorite composers, the legendary Miklos Rozsa, to create the magical score for his fantastic voyage.
Rozsa, for his part, was in the process of winding down his motion picture career and had been called upon only sporadically in the past twenty years by a film industry jaded, cynical, and blithely ignorant of its musical past. After winning his third and final Oscar for MGM’s 1959 epic Ben Hur, the composer found his talents ill used in a growing climate of slavish adoration to youthful demands, and insistence upon popular song score compilations. Except for a precious handful of worthwhile offers, such as Billy Wilder’s unforgettable The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in 1970, Rozsa remained content to write music solely for the concert stage. All of that was about to change in 1975 with Jaws and, more importantly in 1977, with Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The rising popularity of composer John Williams, coupled with the spectacular sci-fi/fantasy epics of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, had returned symphonic film music to its former glory. With increasing, renewed demand for dramatic, full blown orchestral scoring, both Williams and Jerry Goldsmith leaped to the forefront of a new musical renaissance in Hollywood. While each rose admirably to the occasion, neither composer had either the time or the opportunity to score every new film on the drawing boards. Out of respect for their remembered legacy, a daring handful of youthful directors reached back into time to utilize the talents of the few remaining composers from filmdom’s fabled golden age.
Nicholas Meyer and Steve Vertlieb.
Time After Time was all the more remarkable for its Victorian sensibilities, and tender sensitivity in the midst of global narcissism, and cultural disdain. Both the screenplay, and its direction by Nicholas Meyer, seemed to embrace a painful longing for values long since replaced by worldly cynicism and ridicule. Vibrant in its infectious enthusiasm, the film seemed to hit a nerve with a small, yet influential segment of the film going population, quickly elevating the tiny “motion picture that could” to cult status and artistic reverie. Time After Time functioned comfortably on a variety of conceptual levels. It was an old-fashioned thriller in which author H.G. Wells, a Victorian novelist and unabashed idealist, chases the very personification of ancient evil through time, and the painful evolution of modern society.
It worked as a lovely comedy in which the now archaic Puritanism of nineteenth century England finds awkward reconciliation upon the mean streets of twentieth century San Francisco. It works equally well as pure storybook romanticism in which the handsome prince from another reality steals away the beleaguered heroine of a cruel and unforgiving kingdom, from which love and compassion have grown sublimated by callous cruelty, and emotional detachment.
For his part, composer Miklos Rozsa found comfort and creative reassurance in his own distinguished background and breeding, for Meyer’s cultural homage enveloped the world weary musician in a vaporous world that had long since vanished from experience. While only two film assignments remained in his future after completion of Nicholas Meyer’s romantic thriller, this haunting tale of poetic fate and synchronicity led Rozsa to compose a rich, brilliant score that has come to be regarded as a final masterwork by one of cinema’s most gifted artists. Rozsa’s music, like the cautionary loss of innocence articulated in Meyer’s fantasy, symbolizes a lush, passionate, deeply reflective longing for a world that has disappeared from the Earth that sired it. It is the bittersweet search for peace of mind and of heart that have gone with the wind, lost in the angry cynicism of societal maturity, and intellectual detachment. H.G. Wells has grown lost, a displaced “stranger in a strange land” trying to find home and, with its attainment, a return to simplicity and moral civility. Rozsa, himself adrift as a composer in a “brave new world” of noise and shallow contemplation, must have found a chord of artistic recollection and redemption within this sensitive visual remembrance, for his score is merely sublime.
Steve Vertlieb with Miklos Rozsa.
The score for Time After Time has long been considered among the richest of Rozsa’s symphonic career. It is a dazzling musical tour de force, capturing every imaginative nuance of both character and characterization with complexity and radiant vitality. Rozsa paints his symphonic canvas with the expressive brush strokes of a great artist. He is a master of emotional interpretation, conveying each subtle nuance of character reflection and vulnerability in brilliant musical strokes and terminology. Whether illustrating thrilling chases through valleys and corridors of time or finding, in moments of quiet desperation, love’s passion lost and found, this cultural icon from cinema’s beginnings and roots, has invested ageless enthusiasm into a final portal of grace and cinematic eloquence.
The score for Meyer’s precious gem of a motion picture had been released on both album and compact disc in 1979 when Rozsa entered the studio one more time to re-record his music for Entr’acte Records. That excellent recording has stood well the proverbial test of time for the past thirty years. In an age, however, of archival restoration, Lukas Kendall and his brave army of preservationists have returned this brilliant score to its original stereophonic splendor with their spectacular release of the complete, original soundtrack on their Film Score Monthly label. Co-produced and issued through Craig Spaulding and his exhaustive Screen Archives Entertainment resource, the magnificent music for this timeless enterprise has now come full circle with a new and definitive representation of a glorious score. With the participation of Nicholas Meyer, original orchestrations by the late Christopher Palmer, and a handsome accompanying booklet with both literate and informative liner notes by Jeff Bond and Frank DeWald, this spectacular production is a joy to hear and to behold.
In its final moments, as Wells and Amy Catherine Robbins reach out their hands to one another, lonely souls conjoined across a sea of time and space, the sheer poetic grace of Meyer’s and Alexander’s tender science fiction fantasy reaches romantic crescendo. The heartbreaking passion of Rozsa’s orchestral rhapsody finds the summit of its power in the final chords of a brilliant career. Miklos Rozsa found his voice once more, as he had on so many occasions during a life in film spanning forty-five years…as he had done Time After Time.
(1) WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION. One of the three longlisted works of genre interest has survived to make the 2023 Women’s Prize shortlist which was announced today.
Pod by Laline Paull is that book:
Ea has always felt like an outsider. She suffers from a type of deafness that means she cannot master the spinning rituals that unite her pod of spinner dolphins. When tragedy strikes her family and Ea feels she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave.
As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. But just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life.
In her terrifying, propulsive novel, Laline Paull explores the true meaning of family, belonging, sacrifice – the harmony and tragedy of the pod – within an ocean that is no longer the sanctuary it once was, and which reflects a world all too recognisable to our own.
China said on Tuesday that it would no longer require travelers entering the country to show a negative P.C.R. test for the coronavirus, another step toward reopening after a long period of pandemic-era isolation.
But it was not clear whether testing requirements would be abolished altogether. A spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry said only that, beginning on Saturday, people going to China “can” take an antigen test to “replace” the previously mandated P.C.R. test within 48 hours before boarding their flight.
Airlines will not check test results before boarding, the spokeswoman, Mao Ning, added at a regularly scheduled news briefing. She did not say whether others, such as immigration officials, would check.
Notices by Chinese embassies overseas said that travelers arriving in China would still need to fill out a health declaration form, and that customs officials would conduct unspecified spot checks.
For three years, China imposed the world’s strictest coronavirus restrictions, requiring lockdowns and regular mass testing in the name of “zero Covid.” Then the government abruptly abandoned those rules in December as the economy sagged, the virus spread widely and protests broke out across the country. Beijing has since declared that it is open to the world, and tried to woo foreign businesspeople and diplomats….
You’ve been wondering. You’ve been waiting. You’ve been warned. The sixth season of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is BACK. The most unpredictable, unclassifiable and unexpected season yet is arriving in June on NETFLIX.
(4) MIXED BAG IN NINTH CIRCUIT RULING. “Apple Largely Prevails in Appeal of Epic Games’ App Store Suit” but they didn’t sweep the board says the New York Times. “A Ninth Circuit panel did agree with Epic that Apple was violating California law by barring app developers from directing customers to outside payment methods.”
A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that Apple does not have a monopoly in the mobile games market, siding with a lower court’s 2021 ruling that largely gave the tech giant a victory in a lawsuit brought by Epic Games.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that Apple’s tight control of its App Store did not violate federal antitrust law. Some app developers have said the multibillion-dollar business’s strict policies stifle competition and eat into their profits.
“There is a lively and important debate about the role played in our economy and democracy by online transaction platforms with market power,” the judges wrote in their 91-page decision, which largely maintained the status quo. “Our job as a federal Court of Appeals, however, is not to resolve that debate — nor could we even attempt to do so.”
While siding with Apple on a majority of Epic’s claims, the judges also agreed with the lower court that Apple was violating California’s Unfair Competition Law by prohibiting app developers from directing their customers to payment methods outside the App Store, which charges a 30 percent fee. Apple suggested that it could further appeal that ruling….
(5) KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. AND LEFTS. Moid Moidelhoff gets Cory Doctorow to explain what a “copy left troll” is in “The Big Interview” at Media Death Cult.
Steven Spielberg has criticised the idea that older films should be re-edited to appease modern sensibilities.
Speaking at Time’s 100 Summit in New York City, the 76-year-old film-maker expressed regret over taking out guns from a later release of his 1982 sci-fi blockbuster ET: The Extra Terrestrial. In the 20th anniversary edition, agents saw their firearms replaced with walkie-talkies.
“That was a mistake,” he said on stage. “I never should have done that. ET is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through.”
In 2011, Spielberg had already explained that the guns would be returning for the 30th anniversary release, explaining that he was “disappointed” in himself….
Futuramafans are eagerly waiting for the Hulu revival because the show has become a sci-fi staple. The series’ engagement with the hypothetical nature of science fiction makes it stand out. There’s an explorative spirit that concentrates more on the “what-if” and “imagine that” aspects and is more interested in the realm of possibility than world-building or even keeping its own continuity. Futurama‘s ability to carry the torch for old science fiction programs like The Twilight Zone, Lost in Space and Star Trek: The Original Series makes the show critical to the genre’s survival.
Over multiple episodes — and multiple cancellations — Futurama acknowledged the gone-by era of sci-fi. The show became one of the last bastions of true speculative fiction by including “The Scary Door,” Futurama‘s answer to Rod Serling and his conjectural narration, as well as other homages. Moreover, the installments containing these parodies often utilized retrofuturistic motifs typical of the golden age of science fiction, keeping it alive for a new generation….
…But perhaps Belafonte’s strangest but most distinctive role came in the 1959 post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy The World, The Flesh and The Devil in which he is Burton, the mining engineer trapped miles below the surface of the earth after a calamitous cave-in. But he has escaped the effects of an atomic catastrophe and when he finally scrambles to the surface, Burton finds that he is apparently the only human left alive – except for one white woman and one white man, with whom he finally has a surreal but gripping contest for the woman’s affections.’…
(9) MEMORY LANE.
1984 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Lucius Shepard’s “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” is a remarkable work of fiction. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in their December 1984 issue.
Some twenty-five years ago, our writer created a fascinating world, a world separated from our own, as he said, “by the thinnest margin of possibility.”
Spoilers are coming next. Really they are. Just skip the following paragraph.
There, in the mythical Carbonales Valley, he found the setting for “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule”, the classic account of an artist—Meric Cattanay—and his decades long effort to paint—and kill—a dormant, not quite dead dragon measuring 6,000 feet from end to end. The story was nominated for multiple awards and is now known as one of its author’s most outstanding works.
Now you can come back as we are now have the Beginning of this story…
Other than the Sichi Collection, Cattanay’s only surviving works are to be found in the Municipal Gallery at Regensburg, a group of eight oils-on-canvas, most notable among them being Woman with Oranges. These paintings constitute his portion of a student exhibition hung some weeks after he had left the city of his birth and traveled south to Teocinte, there to present his proposal to the city fathers; it is unlikely he ever learned of the disposition of his work, and even more unlikely that he was aware of the general critical indifference with which it was received. Perhaps the most interesting of the group to modern scholars, the most indicative as to Cattanay’s later preoccupations, is the Self-Portrait, painted at the age of twenty-eight, a year before his departure.
The majority of the canvas is a richly varnished black in which the vague shapes of floorboards are presented, barely visible. Two irregular slashes of gold cross the blackness, and within these we can see a section of the artist’s thin features and the shoulder panel of his shirt. The perspective given is that we are looking down at the artist, perhaps through a tear in the roof, and that he is looking up at us, squinting into the light, his mouth distorted by a grimace born of intense concentration. On first viewing the painting, I was struck by the atmosphere of tension that radiated from it. It seemed I was spying upon a man imprisoned within a shadow having two golden bars, tormented by the possibilities of light beyond the walls. And though this may be the reaction of the art historian, not the less knowledgeable and therefore more trustworthy response of the gallery-goer, it also seemed that this imprisonment was self-imposed, that he could have easily escaped his confine; but that he had realized a feeling of stricture was an essential fuel to his ambition, and so had chained himself to this arduous and thoroughly unreasonable chore of perception…
—FROM MERIC CATTANAY: THE POLITICS OF CONCEPTION BY READE HOLLAND, PH.D.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 26, 1564 — William Shakespeare. World’s greatest playwright and perhaps one of our earliest fantasy writers was born today. Possibly. Or just baptized today. Opinions differ. Siri says just April 1564. Smart girl, she is. What I do know is that the supernatural is a commonplace thing in his plays from ghosts to fairies. So which fantasy-tinged work by him do you like the best? I go for “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”. (Died 1616.)
Born April 26, 1912 — A. E. van Vogt. What I liked particularly was Slan, The Voyage of the Space Beagle and The Weapon Makers. I am fascinated by the wiki page that claimed Damon Knight took a strong dislike to his writing whereas Philip K. Dick and Paul Di Filippo defended him strongly. What do y’all think of him? And is that claim true? And the Science Fiction Writers of America named him their 14th Grand Master in 1995. No Hugos (his best work was published before the award was created) and only one Retro Hugo at MidAmericaCon for Slan though he’s had myriad Retro Hugo nominations. He picked up a SFWA Grand Master Award (1995), and was inducted to the SF Hall of Fame (1996). (Died 2000.)
Born April 26, 1914 — H. L. Gold. Best known for launching Galaxy Science Fiction in 1950, which was soon followed by its companion magazine, Beyond Fantasy Fiction which lasted but several years. He was not a prolific writer having published but two novels, None but Lucifer with L. Sprague de Camp and A Matter of Form, plus a generous number of short stories. None but Lucifer didn’t see printing in novel form until 2002. (Died 1996.)
Born April 26, 1943 — Bill Warren. American film historian, critic, and one of the leading authorities on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films. He co-wrote the script for the murder mystery Fandom is a Way of Death set at the 42nd World Science Fiction Convention which was hosted by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society which he and his wife Beverly were very much involved in. His 1968 short story “Death Is a Lonely Place” would be printed in the first issue of the magazine Worlds of Fantasy. During the Seventies, he also wrote scripts for Warren Publishing’s black-and-white comic books Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. His film reference guide Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties would be revised and expanded several times. (Died 2016.)
Born April 26, 1948 — Marta Randall, 75. First woman president of SFWA. With Robert Silverberg, Randall edited two volumes of the New Dimensions series, the eleventh and twelfth volumes. I’ve not read her novels but I do remember the New Dimensions series fondly.
Born April 26, 1955 — Brad W. Foster, 68. From 1987 to 1991 he was a regular contributing illustrator to the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. In 2008 he began producing illustrations for the newsletter Ansible, creating a full color version for the on-line edition, and a different black-and-white version for the print edition. He won an amazing eight Hugo Awards for Best Fan Artist!
Born April 26, 1978 — Marie Bilodeau, 45. Canadian writer nominated for an amazing fifteen Aurora Awards. She’s won two, one with Derek Künsken as the 2019 co-chair of Can-Con, and another the next year with him for again hosting that Con. Who here has read her fiction?
… When presenting a script to your illustrator, you want to make sure you tell them any specifics on how your characters look. If your artist doesn’t have anything to work with, they may struggle to develop the designs.
You don’t have to draw to have image references! Go onto Pinterest and search for something simple like ‘girl with braids’ – you’ll get a lot of different results and can pick something close to what you’re thinking of.
References are also important if you’ve got an idea of how a certain scene should be laid out. While words are great, everyone has a completely different interpretation of them, so having a picture on the Word document next to the script’s scene can make a huge difference. Character expressions, designs, scene layouts, and color schemes all benefit hugely from a united vision, and as the writer, you can help that along. You can usually find something close to what you’re looking for online, but don’t be afraid to do a five-second sketch or take a photo of yourself in a pose! It might even earn you a laugh from the artist.
Chances it will still look a little different depending on your illustrator’s style, but that can be a great thing! References are important, but you also have to be open to the artist’s ideas. Welcome input; this is a collaboration with another person who likely has fantastic ideas and perspectives of their own….
(13) MARVEL’S WHAT IF? Marvel launches new line of What If? stories in July. For more information, visit Marvel.com.
WHAT IF LOKI WIELDED MJOLNIR?
In WHAT IF…? DARK: LOKI #1, Walter Simonson returns to the world of THOR alongside artist Scot Eaton…but this time, Loki’s in charge! A tale of one of Asgard’s worst days – and one of Loki’s best.
WHAT IF GWEN STACY DIDN’T DIE ON THE BRIDGE THAT DAY, BUT SPIDER-MAN DID?
Spider-Legend Gerry Conway returns to his most famous Spider-Story for WHAT IF…? DARK: SPIDER-GWEN #1 along with co-writer Jody Houser and artist Ramon Bachs! ‘Nuff said!
WHAT IF BEN GRIMM BECAME VENOM?
When Ben Grimm returns to Earth after his exploration of space post-SECRET WARS, he finds that the Fantastic Four has trapped a helpless Klyntar symbiote in Reed’s lab! But is that symbiote really helpless? Or is it truly one of the most dangerous symbiotes in the galaxy? Witness the birth of a brand-new VENOM in WHAT IF…? DARK: VENOM #1 by writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Jethro Morales!
WHAT IF MOON KNIGHT DID NOT SURVIVE HIS BATTLE WITH BUSHMAN?
When Khonshu’s avatar is slain, a different god empowers their own surprising new champion. From the darkness, emerges a new force to light the way…Luminary! But will her quest for revenge against Moon Knight’s killer result in her own downfall? Find out in WHAT IF…? DARK: MOON KNIGHT #1 by writer Erica Schultz and artist Edgar Salazar!
(14) TWO OPPOSABLE THUMBS UP. At Galactic Journey, Fiona Moore, Victoria Silverwolf, and Jason Sacks discuss the latest (in 1968!) milestone in sf cinema, 2001. Two of them give it five stars out of five, the other just three: “[April 26, 1968] 2001: A Space Odyssey: Three Views”. Fiona Moore starts off —
People who don’t like trippy, confusing endings for their movies are in for a bad time of it these days. The ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey at least makes more sense than the ending of The Prisoner (the filming of which series overlapped with 2001 at Borehamwood Studios, meaning Alexis Kanner had to share his dressing room with a leopard). The question is, does this make it a better piece of SF visual art?…
And Jason Sacks starts his segment by telling how thrilled he is to see another sf movie with apes —
…I loved Planet of the Apes. Just two weeks ago in the pages of this very magazine, I praised the film’s restrained story, its tremendous special effects, its lovely cinematography and its spectacular use of music. Heck, I thought POTA was perhaps the finest science fiction movie in years. It’s a thrilling, delightful sci fi masterpiece.
But 2001, man, wow, it’s transcendent….
(15) “EVERYTHING CHANGES”. The Witcher Season 3 begins on June 29 on Netflix. From The Hollywood Reporter:
…Netflix also released this description of the season three, which is based on author Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series and game adaptations: “As monarchs, mages and beasts of the Continent compete to capture her, Geralt takes Ciri (Freya Allan) into hiding, determined to protect his newly-reunited family against those who threaten to destroy it. Entrusted with Ciri’s magical training, Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) leads them to the protected fortress of Aretuza, where they hope to uncover more about the girl’s untapped powers; instead, they discover they’ve landed in a battlefield of political corruption, dark magic, and treachery. They must fight back, put everything on the line — or risk losing each other forever.”…
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Steven French, Daniel Dern, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
The 2023 finalists for the Roswell Award, and the winner of the New Suns Climate Fiction Award, have been announced.
Both are international short science fiction story competitions for writers age 17 and older. The Roswell Award seeks stories that explore and connect themes such as social justice, feminism, identity, inequity, environmental sustainability, ethics, and technology. The New Suns Climate Fiction Award is for original short science fiction that reimagines new ways of living and depicts humanity exploring and overcoming today’s climate and biodiversity crises.
The top-ranking entries and the award winners will be announced during a virtual ceremony on May 21. Register to watch it free here. (Note: The year shown in the plaques below is a typo, and should be 2023.)
The Roswell Award – Finalists
“The Ripples Read Outward” by Karin Hullati (Michigan, USA) “First Plantings” by Elizabeth King (Utah, USA) “Philanthropy” by Cecilia Evans (Thailand) “Breathing for Two” by Rich Larson (Canada) “You’re Hired” by Lexus Ndiwe (United Kingdom) “Plastic Dragon” by Lucy Zhang (California, USA)
New Suns Climate Fiction Award – Winner
“Desert Rain” by Natalie Click (Arizona, USA)
The Roswell Award – Honorable Mentions
“The Fading Colour of Tea Leaves” by Mof Afdhall (Sri Lanka) “The Last Violin” by Sam Bohlken-Hern (Canada) “Curved” by David Krasky (Florida, USA) “Jane” by Lee Nash (France) “Northbound Highway 101: Slow Traffic” by Lis Chi Siegel (Nevada, USA)
New Suns Climate Fiction Award – Honorable Mentions
“Survivor: Ecosystem” by Liz Hufford (Arizona, USA) “Less Like a Robot” by Aishwarya Kharkhanis (India) “The Flow of Water” by Mersades Lodge (Montana, USA) “Seasons of Sugar and Blue” by Nadine Tabing (Washington, USA) “Paint by Numbers” by Neille Williams (Australia)
By Skye Kingsbury:Lindt Lindor White Chocolate truffles
1) Opening the bag: The odor is sweet, creamy, with slight fruity overtones. Perhaps a hint of vanilla? As the bag sat open, the scent disappeared.
2) The truffles were individually wrapped in gold paper. Unwrapping is easy.
3) Unwrapped, the truffle is very smooth, with the texture of a small rubber bouncy ball.
4) The outer shell is very smooth and melts on your tongue. It breaks, like a snap between your teeth. The taste is smooth, very creamy, coats the tongue. Definitely vanilla-flavored. There is a chocolate undertone, but very mild.
5) The truffle center gives way immediately to teeth and tongue. It’s overwhelmingly sweet to the point of being cloying. It tastes fake. Not vanilla, not chocolate. Just sweet but not in a good way.
6) The shell is great! The truffle center is not great. It’s like eating sweet shortening. Very Crisco-y. I’d eat the shells and avoid the truffle center. It coats the mouth like honey but leaves a burning sensation in the back of my throat. The shell’s taste doesn’t linger. The truffle center does.
7) I would not eat these again.
8) Dimitri sniffed suspiciously, then spurned the truffle. We wouldn’t have let him eat it. We just wanted to see what he thought.
(1) HUGO NOMINATIONS 101. For the benefit of people who haven’t had a lot of experience with the Hugos, Tarvalon has written “Demystifying the Hugo Award Nomination Process” at Reddit’s r/fantasy forum. And an interesting dialog between Tarvalon and Django Wexler continues in the comments.
… But because this is exactly the kind of nerd I am, I want to spend a little bit more time talking about the E Pluribus Hugo scoring system and its practical effects on crafting a nominating ballot. If you don’t care about the details, just nominate some things and let the math do what it does. If you’re curious, read on. And if you’re curious about the practical effects but not the voting mechanics, skip the next couple paragraphs and pick back up in the following section….
You’ll have to let us know how convincing you find Tarvalon’s ideas about how to do the most to help your favorites. (Another hat Tarvalon wears is being a judge in the Self-Published Science Fiction Book Competition.)
(2) VIEW THE ROSWELL AWARD CEREMONY. There will be a virtual celebration of the 2023 Roswell Award and New Suns Climate Fiction Award honorees on Sunday, May 21, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Free; Register here.
Free; Registration Required In an epic performance honoring planet Earth’s emerging sci-fi writers, celebrity guests deliver dramatic original short story readings! The Roswell Award and New Suns Climate Fiction Award: Virtual Readings & Honors recognizes outstanding new works of science fiction by emerging writers from across the United States and worldwide, including the winner of this year’s climate themed sci-fi story. This lively show will feature dramatic readings by celebrity guests (to be announced) from some of today’s hottest sci-fi and fantasy shows and movies. Following the readings, the authors will be honored for their writing.
Science fiction author John Scalzi stopped by the Los Angeles Times photo and video studio at the Festival of Books to tell us what his favorite kaiju is and answer other very important questions.
In addition to answering Very Important Questions at the link, I also tell the story about the first time I met George RR Martin.https://t.co/CeQKH2O7mV
(4) NEWEST ADDITION TO TAFF EBOOKS. Jacq Monahan’s report of her 2012 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund trip, Same Planet Different World, is now a free download at the TAFF Ebooks page. (Though don’t let that discourage you from making a little donation to the fund while you’re clicking.) Here’s an excerpt from Jacq’s arrival at Heathrow where she discovered that customs officials’ idea of “humor” is universal.
…Instead he motioned me toward a chair and said we’d have to have a little interview because it was a different matter if I was going to be paid in some capacity to be in the UK. He started writing something down, and I started thinking in desperate expletives.
I learned later from someone in the know that if I was to be employed in the UK I had to have a “silver thing” in the back of my passport that showed I had the proper permission. It’s always good to know the technical term.
Once I understood that my words misled the agent (because his questions had misled me (she maintains) I interjected hastily, “No, no! I’m not working. I won a fan fund!” I then braced for the worst. How could I explain TAFF to a mundane? And a mundane official? And a mundane official with the keys to my British kingdom? I’d had a hard enough time trying to explain the fan fund to anyone, family or non-fan friend, employer – anyone. And now, here was bureaucracy standing firmly between me and clotted cream.
To my surprise he stopped writing and crossed out what he had already written. He believed me! I couldn’t believe me, my good luck, that is. But then, a warning. “I want you to know that I’ll be attending that convention, and if I see you working in any capacity, I’ll have you arrested!” I trotted away as quickly as possible and found a restroom. Relief was palpable in a few ways, and I used the plastic toothbrush to restore a smile….
(5) RESEARCHING FAN HISTORY. Fanac.org has made the videos available of its two-part “Researching Science Fiction FanHistory” Zoom panel.
Researching Science Fiction FanHistory (Pt1 of 2) – Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson & Joe Siclari
The first fan history was written by Jack Speer in 1939, and the most recent is the crowd-sourced Fancyclopedia.org, updated as of yesterday. The fan historians on our panel each focus in a very different way on fan history…Rob Hansen, author of “Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK”, brings a UK centered perspective to global fandom, and Andy Hooper has deeply researched the first World Science Fiction convention, both publishing in the traditional way.
Mark Olson and Joe Siclari are part of the FANAC Fan History project – Mark is chief editor of the crowd-sourced online Fancyclopedia.org, and Joe is the chairman behind the Fan History project, and in particular the driving force behind FANACs digital archive (FANAC.org)…
In this Part 1 video, the panelists talk about how they became interested in fandom and fan history in particular, and the different approaches they have taken to recording and interpreting fan history. You’ll hear about the creation of the first timeline of UK fan history, the nude figure with a dagger in each hand, and the tenuous but possible connection of fandom to the Zodiac killer. Perhaps most engrossing are the stories of contacts from non-fans, relatives of fans long gone. Some of these have no real understanding of what fandom was and is, but are seeking to learn about their relatives. There’s even an anecdote about Warren Fitzgerald, the African-American fan who was the founding president of the Scienceers, the first first regularly meeting sf fan club which was started in 1929.
Researching Science Fiction FanHistory (Pt2 of 2) – Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson & Joe Siclari
In this Part 2 video, discussion ranges from academia to our panelists’ investigative techniques. When the primary resources are fanzines, researchers deal with first person accounts where “accuracy is not their primary virtue”, although how different that is from other histories is questionable. Unsurprisingly, panelists share stories and findings, more sometimes with each other than the audience. Spoiler alert: John W. Campbell’s mother was not an identical twin!…Particularly interesting is a segment on the place of anecdote in fan history, and for those interested in learning more, there’s a “starter list” of readings. Audience Q&A forms the last portion of the recording, and with many of the audience experts in their own right, the questions (and answers) are first-rate.
I’m surprised to learn from a line in the announcement – “There’s even an anecdote about Warren Fitzgerald, the African-American fan who was the founding president of the Scienceers” – that the panel might be unaware of the extensive research some fans have done to put to the test Fitzgerald’s specific identification as an African-American. After I made the same assertion three years ago we had quite a donnybrook in the comments of the December 11, 2020 Scroll, and heard from people who have done a lot of research on Ancestry, through the census, etc.
(6) WHAT’S UP WITH THE SOCIETY FOR CREATIVE ANACHRONISM? If you find the prospect of reading 42 pages of legal analysis about SCA kerfuffles irresistible, then “A Tale of 6 Sanctions” is for you. I did, of course, read it. Your mileage may vary. This is the introduction to the paper’s author:
In the SCA I am Aeron Harper, OL, OD, premier Society A&S Deputy for Historical Combat, and other awards and titles. My name is still on the society’s A&S rules for historical combat study, and on a number of kingdom’s C&T rules.
Mundanely, I am David Biggs, Attorney, U.S. Diplomat, and foreign policy advisor for the U.S. State Department. My day job includes interpreting, defining, and applying U.S. policies, which often involves ensuring they don’t contradict U.S. law. It also includes negotiating and implementing international agreements with foreign countries on behalf of the United States. I graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, and was an editor on the Minnesota Law Review. All that to say, I know a little bit about researching, writing, interpreting, and applying laws and rules….
“Twilight Zone” is often viewed as the first television series to showcase fantasy on the small screen. The Rod Serling program that ran from 1959 to 1964 is an oft-repeated TV classic with many memorable episodes but it wasn’t the first show to bring science fiction to television viewers.
“Captain Video and His Video Rangers” became the world’s first science fiction TV series when it went on the air in 1949 on the now defunct DuMont Television Network, said Alan Morton, author of “The Golden Age of Telefantasy,” a guide to sci-fi, fantasy and horror TV shows of the 1940s and 1950s.
Television was in its infancy in the 1950s with many of the earliest shows (like “Captain Video”) transmitted live. Most of these early sci-fi programs were aimed at kids, said Morton, citing entries such as “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” (1950-55), “Space Patrol” (1950-55), “Captain Z-Ro” (1951-56) and “Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers” (aired from 1953 to 1954 with a young Cliff Robertson as Ranger Rod Brown)….
(8) HARRY BELAFONTE (1927-2023). Singer Harry Belafonte died April 25 at the age of 96. His sff credis including guesting on The Muppets, and appearing in the Fifties doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil, and the Nineties alternate America movie White Man’s Burden.
(9) MEMORY LANE.
1989 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Pat Murphy’s The City, Not Long After is a magical novel, one of those works that I reread regularly.
Published thirty-four years ago by Doubleday, it’s set in San Francisco and much of the wonderfulness of the novel is indeed its setting (no spoiler there I’d say). Though the characters are interesting as well.
It was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.
And now our Beginning…
THE EARLY MORNING BREEZE BLEW through the vegetable garden in Union Square, shaking the leaves of the bean plants and the lacy carrot tops. The city of San Francisco was asleep. The city was dreaming.
In the Saint Francis Hotel, just off the Square, Danny-boy was dreaming of the color blue. With a paint roller on a long pole, he painted the sky. He had been at work for many hours. At least half of the expanse above him was smeared with paint of a thousand different shades: royal blue, navy, turquoise, baby blue, teal, the fragile hue of robins’ eggs, the treacherous blue-gray of the ocean at dusk. Toward the horizon, where Danny-boy’s roller had not yet reached, the blues faded to misty gray. But overhead, luminous colors swirled and flowed like the water in a river.
In the middle of the changing pattern, two patches of blue-gray coalesced. Bright eyes watched Danny-boy from the center of the sky. Dark blue shadows defined the angles of a face, the curves of a woman’s body. As Danny-boy stared upward, a young woman stepped out of the sky, looking more than a little confused.
The city slept, and its dreams drifted through the minds of its inhabitants, twisting and changing their thoughts.
“The man who called himself The Machine dozed on a narrow cot at the back of his workshop. In his dream, he was constructing an angel from objects he had gathered. The angel’s bones were pipes from the plumbing of an old Victorian mansion; its muscles were masses of copper wire, torn from the cables that ran beneath the city streets. On the angel’s massive wings, thousands of polished bottlecaps overlapped, making a pattern of scallops like the scales on a fish.
The Machine welded the last bottlecap to the wing and stepped back to admire his work. As he gazed up at the angel, he realized suddenly that his creation was not complete. Its chest was hollow: it had no heart.
“He heard footsteps and glanced behind him. A woman was walking toward him, carrying something in her cupped hands. He could not see what she carried, but he could hear the steady pounding of a heartbeat, keeping time with her footsteps.
“Dawn broke in the city: gray light shone on the gray stone buildings that surrounded the Civic Center Plaza. The statues on the facade of the public library showed signs of neglect. Over the years, pigeons had adorned the statues’ heads with streaks of white and deposited a clutter of feathers and broken nests at their feet.
In a tree that grew in the Plaza, a gray-muzzled monkey, one of the oldest of the troop that lived in the city, dreamed of the Himalayas. Icicles hanging from the eaves of a temple roof melted in the morning sun. Drops of falling water struck a bell, and the metal rang with a musical note. The water trickled away, whispering and crackling softly as it melted a path through the snow. The monkey stirred in its sleep. Changes were coming.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 25, 1897 — Fletcher Pratt. Pratt is best known for his collaborations with de Camp, the most well-known of which is the Harold Shea series which is collected as The Complete Enchanter. His solo fantasy novels The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star are also superb. Pratt established the literary dining club known as the Trap Door Spiders in 1944. The club would later fictionalized as the Black Widowers in a series of mystery stories by Asimov. Pratt would be fictionalized in one story, “To the Barest”, as the Widowers’ founder, Ralph Ottur. (Died 1956.)
Born April 25, 1907 — Michael Harrison. English writer of both detective and sff fiction. He wrote pastiches of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. His most remembered work is In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, The London of Sherlock Holmes and The World of Sherlock Holmes. He was also a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar, being a member of both the Baker Street Irregulars of New York, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. He wrote three genre novels — The Bride of Frankenstein, Higher Things and The Brain. (Died 1991.)
Born April 25, 1915 — Mort Weisinger. Comic book editor best known for editing Superman during the Silver Age of comic books. He also served as story editor for the Adventures of Superman series. Before that he was one of the earliest active sf fans, working on fanzines like The Planet (1931) and The Time Traveller (1932) and attending the New York area fan club known as The Scienceers. (Died 1978.)
Born April 25, 1925 — Richard Deming. Ok, I think that all of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. novellas, or in this case the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novellas, in the digest-sized Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, were listed under the house name of Robert Hart Davis. Deming was only one of a very long list of writers (I know of Richard Curtis, Richard Deming, I. G. Edmonds, John Jakes, Frank Belknap Long, Dennis Lynds, Talmage Powell, Bill Pronzini, Charles Ventura and Harry Whittington) that were the writers who penned novellas in the twin U.N.C.L.E. series. (Died 1983.)
Born April 25, 1929 — Robert A. Collins. Scholar of science fiction who founded the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. Editor of the Fantasy Newsletter & Fantasy Review from 1978 to 1987, and editor of the IAFA Newsletterfrom 1988 to 1993. Editor, The Scope of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the First International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film and Modes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Twelfth Annual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. (Died 2009.)
Born April 25, 1939 — Rex Miller. Horror writer with a hand in many pies, bloody ones at that. (Sorry couldn’t resist.) The Chaingang series featured Daniel Bunkowski, a half-ton killing-machine. Definitely genre. He contributed to some thirty anthologies including Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror, Frankenstein: The Monster Wakes, Dick Tracy: The Secret Files and The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams. The last are amazingly outstanding. (Died 2004.)
Born April 25, 1981 — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 42. She’s the publisher of Innmouths Free Press, an imprint devoted to weird fiction. Not surprisingly, for the Press she co-edited with Paula R. Stiles the Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft anthologies. She won a World Fantasy Award for the She Walks in Shadows anthology, also on Innsmouth Free Press. She was a finalist for the Nebula Award in the Best Novel category for her Gods of Jade and Shadow novel, which won a Sunburst and Ignyte Award. And finally with Lavie Tidhar, she edits the Jewish Mexican Literary Review. Not genre, but sort of genre adjacent. Canadian of Mexican descent.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
Bizarro shows what the medieval marketplace is calling for.
Cartoons and animated features have been delighting fans since the very beginnings of motion film. As a medium they allow creators to pull an audience into a realm of pure storytelling without limitations. Among all the beloved titles, it can be hard to choose a favorite. So, in the space of the small screen, we endeavor to ask the question, what are best cartoon series of all time?
A lot of nostalgia is associated with popping on your favorite kids’ movie. One recent article describes, “There’s something about watching your favorite animated film and seeing that Magic Kingdom logo that brings back some of the best childhood feelings and memories.” Although some people may automatically associate cartoons with children and humor, the best cartoons move past this stereotype to become a vehicle for storytelling. Slapstick, violence, and impossible situations are all the hallmarks of iconic animated shows….
Timothée Chalamet has assumed his rightful place as Muad’Dib, prophet of the Fremen in the first trailer for “Dune: Part Two.”
“In the first movie Paul Atredis is a student…we really see Paul Atreides become a leader here,” Chalamet said at CinemaCon on Tuesday, teasing a first look at the sci-fi epic….
“Dune: Part Two,” which is produced by Legendary and Warner Bros., is set to be released on November 3, 2023. Warner Bros. showed the footage during its presentation to theater owners. It also shared footage and trailers from “Barbie,” “The Flash” and sequels to “Aquaman” and “The Nun.”
Images from the UAE’s Hope mission suggest that the moonlet’s composition is similar to that of the red planet’s surface.
The United Arab Emirates’ space probe Hope has taken the first high-resolution images of the farside of Mars’s moonlet Deimos. The observations add weight to the theory that Deimos formed together with Mars, rather than as an asteroid that was captured in the planet’s orbit, mission scientists say.
A Japanese lunar lander, carrying a rover developed in the United Arab Emirates, attempted to find its footing on the moon’s surface Tuesday — and potentially mark the world’s first lunar landing for a commercially developed spacecraft. But flight controllers on the ground were not immediately able to regain contact, prompting the company to presume the spacecraft was lost.
The lander,built by Japanese firm Ispace, launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on December 11. The spacecraft then made a three-month trek to enter orbit around the moon, which lies about 239,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) from Earth, using a low-energy trajectory. Overall, the journey took the lander about 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) through space.
Touchdown was expected to occur Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. ET, which is Wednesday at 1:40 a.m. Japan Standard Time….
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, David Langford, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Spade is determined to stay far away from Unity Con, a convention run by people he loathes, who have no conrunning experience, whom he is convinced will make a disaster for all of fandom if well-known conrunners are seen to be involved. Then he gets a call from Paladin, telling him about a disaster that’s going to damage fandom anyway, unless she and Spade can prevent it. And Spade can’t say no to Paladin.
Unity Con (A Spade/Paladin Conundrum), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch WMG Publishing, November 2021
Review by Lis Carey: Spade is in Garland, TX, hanging out with people he likes instead of going to Unity Con, a convention he has sworn not to attend, because it’s been organized by a group, or rather two groups, of people at the heart of a major brouhaha around the Hugo Awards a few years ago. They’ve now decided to start a new convention, uniting fandom — and they’re all sf pros, not the fans these two groups look down on as mere amateurs. It isn’t just that Spade doesn’t like most of these people. It’s that he sees a disaster that could create problems for all convention-running fandom if they have anything to do with it.
Spade is staying away. Far away.
Then he gets a call from Paladin, who is at Unity Con.
There’s been a murder.
One of the major organizers of the con, a man Spade met and immediately clashed with years ago when the organizer was a young man just entering fandom, is dead. Paladin has only just managed to secure the scene and get the police called, and this is really important, because in addition to the man being dead, the funds raised to pay the property where they’re holding the con has vanished out of the account. This isn’t just a murder. It’s a murder, and embezzlement that could wreck organized fandom for years to come. It’s Spade’s worst nightmare, and he wants to stay far away from it. And Paladin is asking him to come. He can’t say no to Paladin.
He’s also by far the best forensic accountant in fandom.
Coincidentally, Unity Con is held at the ranch where Justice Antonin Scalia previously died. There’s a short-lived attempt to cover up the death at Unity Con the same way Scalia’s death avoided a real investigation. Spade is soon at the ranch uncovering alarming secrets, and becoming more and more convinced he was right about what a terrible idea Unity Con was.
It’s a fun story, although, like Spade, I wouldn’t have wanted to attend Unity Con.
By Steve Vertlieb: There is a contemptuously lazy notion that Silents in theaters are anything but golden, and that black and white cinematography is somehow impotent and ineffectual. Contemporary audiences, jaded by three dimensional, digital technology and a ravenous appetite for fast paced action, have callously abandoned nuance and subtlety in favor of instant, if mindless, gratification. It’s somehow more comforting to dismiss films lacking modern sensibilities and technology than to place one’s self in the cultural context of the time in which they were conceived and filmed. The concept is as plausible as dismissing historical events and psychology because they occurred in a distant context. Art is no less valid because it was created in a “foreign” culture. What passes for shock value in present day entertainment may well become valueless five years down the road. Time doesn’t necessarily diminish the import of art’s original power or significance, nor should it. Hitchcock’s Psycho was a groundbreaking shocker upon its initial release, and remains a masterpiece of subtle horror. However, it isn’t uncommon for jaded collegiate audiences to jeer and ridicule sequences that, after nearly half a century, have understandably become copied, imitated and clichéd. That shouldn’t diminish the film’s importance or contribution to the popular culture and mystique.
The Black Cat, filmed prior to the advent of the infamous Hollywood Production Code was, for its time, a lurid and perverse cinematic revelation. That this macabre melodrama continues to fascinate modern audiences after nearly ninety years is a tribute to its hypnotic treatment and charm. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, who seemingly did little else of serious consequence in his career, Cat is a sublime experience and remains among a small handful of the most noteworthy horror films of the period. Along with MGM’s The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Black Cat is a delirious excursion into sadism, satanism and drooling sensuality. It’s also a supreme surrender to the prurient fantasies of a sexually repressed and frustrated American populace, drowning in the Victorian niceties of naïve drama and extraordinarily silly comedies proliferating during the period.
The Black Cat is a dark, Germanic descent into torture, depravity and virgin sacrifice that, except for a brief and unfortunate comedic interlude that Universal felt somehow compelled to insert midway into the picture, perhaps to lighten the intensity of its surrounding sequences, remains one of the most unforgettable horror films of the golden era. It is also the single most effective pairing of the studio’s acclaimed titans of terror…Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. As in the aforementioned Mask of Fu Manchu, Karloff subtly conveys the brooding intensity of evil he so ably mastered throughout the decade. Like his brilliant portrayal of Ardeth Bey in The Mummy two years earlier, his demonic Hjalmar Poelzig is a cold, calculating instrument of devilish determination, a vile, vicious sociopath whose obsessive lust for domination enslaves everyone within his demented sphere of demonic influence. Without the slightest hint of guilt, conscience or remorse, he imprisons his once closest friend…steals and marries his bride…beds and weds their innocent child and, later, cruelly murders her when his friend returns from years of incarceration, discovering the unholy deception. His smile, upon welcoming unwelcome guests to his chateau, is bone chilling…a thinly masked sadistic anticipation, darkly reminiscent of a carnivorous spider, awaiting unwitting insects entering his veiled and deadly web. Poelzig is an unrepentant hedonist, a grinning cobra slithering across a corrupted paradise, whose personal desires, gratification and pleasures come at the expense of all who tragically stand in his way.
Bela Lugosi, still at the height of his all too brief success, convincingly offers one of his finest, most passionate and dramatically intense performances as Dr. Vitus Werdegast, a deeply scarred and broken being returning from the graves of his martyred comrades…a walking skeleton obsessed by thoughts of revenge against the maniacal martinet who betrayed his people. He is a grim, yet pathetic soul…a vengeful somnambulist whose one remaining goal in life is to eradicate from the Earth the monstrous machinations of the Judas priest of the black arts who murdered his heart. His anguish at discovering the murder of his daughter is nearly too painful to watch. While Lugosi’s performance is among his best, one cannot help comparing the career paths taken by these titans of terror from the golden age. Lugosi gives it his all, and yet his performance seems to foreshadow the unfortunate series of choices and events that would soon diminish his stature and popularity. His was a raw talent that, perhaps, needed nurturing from better agents and directors than he encountered, while Karloff seemed to better understand and underplay his own gifts as an actor. Subtlety of performance may have been the key to Karloff’s longevity, while Lugosi’s flame blew, unrestrained, in its raging intensity until, at last, both the actor and his artistry had been consumed and dethroned. Lugosi’s artistry quickly lapsed in self parody and humiliation before he fully understood the rapid, unalterable decline of his once proud reputation and career.
The Black Cat, while loosely based upon a premise by Edgar Allan Poe has, of course, little to do with that author’s work or imagination. Like the Roger Corman/Vincent Price collaborations that followed decades later, this is an original work merely attempting to capitalize on Poe’s reputation and persona. Having said that, the film is nonetheless a revelation, and as fresh today as when it was filmed in 1934. The supporting players have little to do other than stand around and react to the sublime hysteria of their imposing co-stars. David Manners offers a characteristically bland performance, a dramatic counterpoint comparable to the comedic, yet clueless Margaret Dumont in the Marx Bros. pictures. Perhaps it was Ulmer’s instruction to simply get out of their way, but Manners seems mere window dressing to the drama and characters unfolding frantically about him. Jacqueline Wells, later Julie Bishop, fares somewhat better as Manners’ wife, and the sensual object of Karloff’s lust and carnal desires but she, too, is ultimately consigned to mere set decoration. Both the camera and direction are focused obsessively upon the ensuing battle of wills brewing between Karloff and Lugosi, representing damnation and hope.
The Black Cat’s startling freshness is also due, at least in part, to the astonishing set decoration by Art Director Charles D. Hall. The Art Deco structure built by Engineer Poelzig upon the bloody foundation of the fortress he commanded and betrayed, Fort Marmaros, is eerily reflective of the ultra modernist architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Satanist’s castle is a wondrous amalgamation of light and shadow; on its surface a bright, visionary world’s fair of excitation and imagination while, below the bright promise of tomorrow lies the deadly, intricate catacombs of a darker world adorned with cells and heinous chambers of torture and depravity. Lights in the upper structure appear to come to life as if by will alone, as in Karloff’s startling introduction, rising methodically from sleep, much as “Nosferatu” rose from his coffin in Murnau’s 1922 UFA production of Dracula, aboard the vessel transporting him back to England to feed. He is a vile, predatory creature, feline by nature, accursed by circumstance and fate, stalking unwary innocents as a hungry rodent creeping along the cobwebbed catacombs of his grotesque chambers of torture and damnation.
As in many of Universal’s early horror films, music plays an intense, integral part in the calculated gloom gradually intensifying the brooding production. The studio borrowed heavily from Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Franz Lizst. The film is frequently swallowed by wall to wall music, drowning its victims in somber sacrament, while its overpowering adaptations add immeasurably to the suspense, moodiness and frenetic flow of its bizarre climactic sequences. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony morosely illustrates Poelzig’s tour of the catacombs for his former friend, while Lizst’s Piano Sonata in B Minor accompanies the breathtaking, roller coaster action that thrillingly paints the Grand Guignol finale. The lower catacombs are littered with magician’s tubes encasing the preserved remains of Poelzig’s former lovers, lifelike and morbidly displayed as part of a proud fetishist’s carnival sideshow…the sacrificial victims, perhaps, of his unholy cult, encased forever in fluorescent embalming tombs.
But now the moon has risen and Herr Poelzig has once again summoned the believers to his black church to offer another unfortunate bride to Satan in ritualistic defiance of civility and law. The remaining moments of the film are among the most insatiable of the period as Werdegast and his ineffectual compatriot (Manners) conspire to save his wife, presumably from a fate worse than death. Poelzig is carried to the torture chambers beneath the main structure of the honey combed castle by Werdegast’s loyal manservant where he is flayed alive on his own embalming rack. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you now, Hjalmar,” asks Werdegast in nearly sexual excitation. “I’m going to tear the skin from your body…BIT BY BIT.” Photographed in disturbing, brightly lit silhouette, Werdegast’s insane laughter splinters the soundtrack as Poelzig’s agonized writhing can be observed upon the opposing wall of the chamber. Frighteningly animalistic to the end, Poelzig’s death cries are more like a savaged panther than a human being in mortal torment. He is a decadent creature of the night, a cunning and ravenous vulture avenged by the contemptuous conspiring of his own deceit and debauchery.
Part of the thoroughgoing depravity of The Black Cat is that while the secondary players add little to the structure of the film, the characters that they play mean even less to their malevolent hosts. Although Werdegast offers a hint of scarred nobility in sacrificing himself, allowing his young companions to escape, his compelling obsession for revenge against the man who wronged him is his dominant, obsessively consuming concern. Peter and Joan Alison are merely an annoying diversion. He cares no more for their plight than Poelzig. Indeed, when Poelzig and Werdegast engage in a deadly game of chess which will, ultimately, determine whether young Alison and his bride survive the evening, neither foe is particularly interested in the bland conversation awkwardly devised by Peter. The Alisons are as meaningless to their adversaries as the pawns adorning their antique chessboard. Peter and Joan are truly inconsequential chess pieces, for all of this is ultimately a game to both Poelzig and Werdegast. When Peter attempts to use the telephone in order to call for a cab to transport them out of their Wagnerian dungeon he discovers, to virtually no one’s surprise, that the phone is dead. “Did you hear that, Vitos?” Poelzig leers with contemptuous delight. “The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead.”
There is more than a hint of Poelzig’s inner depravity, so brilliantly expressed by the subtleties of evil, masterfully conveyed in Karloff’s finely etched portrayal. His face is a treacherous mask, vaguely suggesting the quiet sadism and sexual perversion lurking menacingly beneath the surface of his grotesquely mocking smile. It’s astonishing, even by modern standards, to imagine the intensity of evil so devilishly consuming this dark, Faustian figure. Karloff, a genuinely kind and gentle soul away from the camera, possessed an uncanny ability to convert Jekyll into Hyde, summoning the inner demons slumbering beneath the mannered goodness awash within the human soul. In performance after performance, either as a malicious mummy awakened in modern Egypt, or as the deliciously vile Dr. Fu Manchu, Karloff could wrench an uncanny malevolence from the cultured pretense of mannered civility, and hide beneath its cloak before the rolling cameras. It is no mere accident that his name remains synonymous with cinematic evil so many years after his time, and passage, despite his own personal gentility and almost legendary kindness.
The Black Cat today continues to thrill and fascinate adoring admirers of both the film and its stars. It was an anachronism in its time, a bizarre transplant provocatively out of step with the tenor of the period in which it was filmed. Its brooding sadism, and perverse sexuality, have elevated the film from a standard assembly line potboiler to cult status among critics and adoring fans of the popular genre. With its frenetic pacing, breathtaking set design, haunting performances and boundless excitement, The Black Cat has admirably survived and surpassed its ambitions, becoming an exuberant and remarkably abstract artifact of cinematic antiquity.
