The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) announced that The Ballad of Perilious Graves (Redhook Books/Orbit) by Alex Jennings has won the 2023 Compton Crook Award for best debut SF/Fantasy/horror novel, a prize worth $1,000. Alex Jennings is the 41st winner of the award.
Since 1983, BSFS has given the Compton Crook Award for best first novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. The other finalists were:
Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot (Angry Robot)
The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller (Tor)
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (Harper Voyager)
The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang (Tor)
Obsidian by Sarah J. Daley (Angry Robot)
Judging for the award has two parts. First, members of BSFS picked six finalists by reading and rating debut novels published between Nov 1, 2021 and October 31, 2022. Then, in the finalist round, club members picked a winner.
The award includes a framed award document and, for the novel’s author, a check for $1,000 and an invitation to be the Compton Crook Guest of Honor at Balticon (the BSFS annual convention) for two years. Balticon is held in Baltimore over Memorial Day weekend, May 26-29th in 2023.
Other winners of the award have included Donald Kingsbury, Elizabeth Moon, Michael Flynn, Wen Spencer, Maria Snyder, Naomi Novik, Paolo Bacigalupi, Myke Cole, Charles Gannon, Fran Wilde, Ada Palmer, R.F. Kuang, and Arkady Martine. Last year’s winner was P. Djèlí Clark for his novel A Master of Djinn.
The Award was named in memory of Towson State College Professor of Natural Sciences Compton Crook, who wrote under the name Stephen Tall and died in 1981. Professor Crook was active for many years in the Baltimore Science Fiction Society and was a staunch champion of new works in the fields eligible for the award. For more details visit the award website. Reading and rating books for the 2024 award will begin this summer. For more information contact [email protected].
BSFS is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, charitable, literary and educational organization, dedicated to the promotion of, and an appreciation for, science fiction in all of its many forms. The Baltimore Science Fiction Society was launched on January 5, 1963 and has been holding Balticon since 1967.
The Doc Weir Award for service to fandom was voted to Claire Brialey during Conversation, Eastercon 2023, this past weekend. Last year’s winner, James Shields, made the announcement. Brialey was not in attendance.
eFanzine’s complete history of the Doc Weir Award begins:
The Doc Weir Award was set up in 1963 in memory of fan Arthur Rose (Doc) Weir, who had died two years previously. Weir was a relative newcomer to fandom, he discovered it late in life – but in the short time of his involvement he was active in a number of fannish areas. In recognition of this, the Award is sometimes seen as the “Good Guy” Award; something for “The Unsung Heroes”.
The award, voted by attending members of Eastercon and presented at the convention, is a silver cup which each winner keeps for a year. It is engraved with the earliest winners’ names, and since space on the cup itself ran out other names have been engraved on silver plates mounted on the cup’s storage box.
(1) FRENCH SFF SCHOLAR COMING TO KANSAS. The Gunn Center for the Study of SF is welcoming 2023 Hall Center International Scholar, Simon Bréan. Professor Simon Bréan (U. of Paris-Sorbonne), a world-renowned a scholar and specialist in science fiction, will visit the University of Kansas in April 2023 as the Hall Center for the Humanities 2023 International Scholar and a guest of the Department of French, Francophone & Italian Studies, Center of Excellence, KU Libraries, and the Gunn Center for the Study of SF. Professor Bréan will be visiting from Wednesday April 26 to Thursday, April 27, 2023.
On July 11, 2001, Harlan Coben was at home in Ridgewood, N.J., when his publisher called to share the happy news that his 10th novel, “Tell No One,” was a best seller. “That’s the first time I hit the New York Times list,” he said in a phone interview. “It was also the day my fourth and youngest child was born. Things changed a lot after that.”
Not only was the author swarmed by small people — the oldest Coben kid was 7 — he suddenly attracted crowds to bookstores. Gone was the awkwardness he immortalized in a 2014 Op-Ed about a slow afternoon at Waldenbooks: “During the first hour of my signing, a grand total of four people approached me. Two asked me where the bathroom was. The third explained his conspiracy theory linking the J.F.K. assassination with the decision by General Mills to add Crunch Berries to Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal. The fourth asked me if we had a copy of the new Stephen King.”
Maybe this memory explains why Coben declined to issue a single substantive complaint about the toll of recent professional obligations.
(3) NERO FIDDLES, VULCAN BURNS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] We may be living in some offshoot of the Star Trek alternate timeline where Nero destroys Vulcan.
Back in 2018 it was announced an exoplanet (“super-Earth” sized) had been discovered at 40 Eridani which was, of course, popularly referred to as Vulcan after Mr. Spock‘s home planet orbiting there in the Star Trek universe.
Well, reanalysis of the data has lead to the conclusion that, sadly, that announcement was in error. Though, the door isn’t completely closed as current data isn’t sensitive enough to rule out other, smaller, planets in the system.
… The trouble is, after a reanalysis, the new team found the discovery was likely a mistake. That’s right: They couldn’t just let Spock live long and prosper in a real world. They had to go and wipe out his home planet from existence.
“We apologize for that,” Burt told Mashable. “We’ll find other cool planets.”…
… Despite their findings, the search for Spock’s home can continue, Laliotis said. Though they may not have a starship Enterprise to seek it out, more sensitive instruments and detection methods in the near future may make it possible to find another smaller exoplanet in that star system — perhaps one that is more Earth-like — to rename Vulcan.
After all, if 40 Eri b’s detection were correct, it would be much too hot for life as we know it.
“There is still hope that there might be a Vulcan there,” she said. “This actually is maybe promising that there might be a better Vulcan there.”
… Boston police had an intergalactic encounter after a report about a person carrying a long rifle led them to someone dressed up in a Boba Fett costume.
Transit police with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority received a call about a person armed with a long rifle at the Back Bay train station on Friday around 6 pm ET, according to a tweet from the agency’s official account.
But the rifle in question wasn’t real at all, said police…
(5) AL JAFFEE (1921-2023). Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee died April 10 at the age of 102 reports SFGate.com.
Al Jaffee, Mad magazine’s award-winning cartoonist and ageless wise guy who delighted millions of kids with the sneaky fun of the Fold-In and the snark of “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” has died. He was 102.
Jaffee died Monday in Manhattan from multiple organ failure, according to his granddaughter, Fani Thomson. He had retired at the age of 99.
…The [initial fold-in] idea was so popular that Mad editor Al Feldstein wanted a follow-up. Jaffee devised a picture of 1964 GOP presidential contenders Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater that, when collapsed, became an image of Richard Nixon.
“That one really set the tone for what the cleverness of the Fold-Ins has to be,” Jaffee told the Boston Phoenix in 2010. “It couldn’t just be bringing someone from the left to kiss someone on the right.”
…Jaffee received numerous awards, and in 2013 was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the ceremony taking place at San Diego Comic-Con International. In 2010, he contributed illustrations to Mary-Lou Weisman’s “Al Jaffee’s Mad Life: A Biography.” The following year, Chronicle Books published “The MAD Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010.”
The Hollywood Reporternotes that Jaffee began his comics career after graduating high school in 1940, and at age 20 he made his first sale to Will Eisner, who bought his parody of Superman called Inferior Man. He went on to work for soon-to-be Marvel legend Stan Lee at Timely Comics, a forerunner of Marvel Comics. He did his first work for Mad Magazine in 1955.
(6) NORMAN REYNOLDS (1934-2023). Production designer and art director Norman Reynolds died April 6, and Lucasfilm has a lengthy tribute.
Reynolds shared the 1978 Academy Award for Best Production Design with three colleagues for their work on the first Star Wars movie.
…Reynolds was an art director on Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). He worked closely with John Barry, the film’s overall production designer, to help establish the core design philosophy behind Star Wars architecture and construction. They joined art director Leslie Dilley and set decorator Roger Christian as winners of the Academy Award for Art Direction in 1978. For Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Reynolds was elevated into the production designer role as Barry pursued directing (sadly, he would pass away while working as a consultant on Empire)….
He won another Academy Award for Art Direction 1982, shared with two colleagues, for their work on Raiders of the Lost Ark.
…When Steven Spielberg partnered with Lucasfilm to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reynolds became production designer, helping establish the Indiana Jones style from the ground-up. This even included sculpting the iconic golden idol that Indy attempts to procure during the film’s memorable opening. Reynolds used an Incan fertility sculpture that he’d collected during his travels overseas….
Of course, Raiders wouldn’t be complete without Indy’s close call with a giant boulder as it rolls down a temple passage. “I didn’t know it was gonna look as good as it did until the day Norman Reynolds showed me that he had actually made a boulder that was something like 22 feet in circumference,” Steven Spielberg would explain. As Reynolds explained, it was Spielberg himself who kept asking for it to be bigger! Raiders would earn Reynolds his second Academy Award for Art Direction in 1982 alongside art director Leslie Dilley and set decorator Michael Ford….
(7) MICHAEL LERNER (1941-2023). Actor Michael Lerner has died at the age of 81. The Yahoo! profile mentions many genre roles.
…With an Academy Award nod under his belt [for Barton Fink], Lerner became a familiar face for moviegoers through the ’90s, with notable credits including “Newsies,” “Blank Check,” “No Escape” and “Celebrity.” In Roland Emmerich’s 1998 “Godzilla,” he played the overwhelmed, pompous New York leader deemed Mayor Ebert, a flagrant lampoon of premier film critic Roger Ebert. Lerner was styled to resemble the “At the Movies” co-host in the disaster blockbuster. (Ebert ended up panning the film with a 1.5 star review, though he praised Lerner for a “gamely played” performance.)
Lerner continued regular work after the turn of the century. He played the severe boss to James Caan’s grumpy publishing company exec in the 2003 holiday comedy “Elf,” as well as a mutant-weary U.S. Senator in the 2014 blockbuster “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
(8) MEMORY LANE.
1888 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Our Beginning is both that of Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet and of the best known consulting detective to ever grace the pages of fiction, Sherlock Holmes.
The November 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual published Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet which showed us for the first time Sherlock Holmes and his friend Watson. Only eleven known copies of this issue are known to exist.
It would be published in book form in 1888 by Ward, Lock & Co.
It’s hard to believe there’s a single soul here who doesn’t know the story of these characters but I’m playing by our established rules, so no spoilers. So let’s go to our Beginning.
MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES
IN the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the 5th Northumberland Fusilier as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it the second Afghan f war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment and at once entered upon my new duties.
The campaign brought honors and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.
Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawur. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was standing at the Criterion bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Bart’s. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.
“Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked, in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets.
“You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”
I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.
“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”
“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”
“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.
“And who was the first?” I asked.
“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital.
He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get some one to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.”
“By Jove!” I cried; “if he really wants some one to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.”
Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass.
“You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,” he said; “perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.”
“Why, what is there against him?”
“Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas—an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know, he is a decent fellow enough.”
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 10, 1897 — Eric Knight. Decidedly better known for his 1940 Lassie Come-Home novel which introduced Lassie who I cannot stretch to be even genre adjacent for the soul of me, but he had one genre undertaking according to ISFDB, the Sam Small series. I’ve never heard of them, nor are they available in digital form though Lassie Come-Home of course is. Anyone read them? (Died 1943.)
Born April 10, 1921 — Chuck Connors. His first genre role was as Senator Robert Fraser in Captain Nemo and the Underwater City followed by being Tab Fielding in Soylent Green. He’s Captain McCloud in Virus, a Japanese horror film, and he had one-offs in The Adventures of Superman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantasy Island and a recurring role as Captain Janos Skorzenyn in Werewolf. (Died 1992.)
Born April 10, 1929 — Max von Sydow. He played Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Never Say Never Again and Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon. He shows up in the Exorcist II: The Heretic as Father Lankester Merrin while being King Osric in Conan the Barbarian. Dreamscape sees him being Doctor Paul Novotny while he’s Liet-Kynes the Imperial Planetologist in Dune. He was Judge Fargo in Judge Dredd (and yes I still like it), in Minority Report as Director Lamar Burgess, Sir Walter Loxley in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood and finally in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Lor San Tekka. (Died 2020.)
Born April 10, 1953 — David Langford, 70. And how long have you been reading Ansible? If he’s not noted for that singular enterprise, he should be noted for assisting in producing the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, not to mention hundreds of thousands of words as a principal editor of the third (online) edition of the publication, and some eighty thousand words of articles to the most excellent Encyclopedia of Fantasy as well. And let’s not forget his genre writing as well that earned him a Best Short Story Hugo at the Millennium Philcon for “Different Kinds of Darkness”. And he has won 28 other Hugos for his fan writing, for Ansible, and his work on the third edition of EoSF.
Born April 10, 1955 — Pat Murphy, 68. I think that her most brilliant work is The City, Not Long After which I’ve read myriad times. If you’ve not read this novel, do so now. The Max Merriwell series is excellent and Murphy’s ‘explanation’ of the authorial attributions is fascinating. And The Falling Woman by her is an amazing read as well. She’s reasonably well stocked at the usual suspects.
Born April 10, 1957 — John M. Ford, 1957 – 2006 Damn, he died far too young! Popular at At Minicon and other cons where he would be Dr. Mike and give silly answers to questions posed to him while wearing a lab coat before a whiteboard. His most interesting novel I think is The Last Hot Time, an urban fantasy set in Chicago that might have been part of Terri Windling’s Bordertown series but wasn’t. Possibly. (And no, the Suck Fairy hasn’t gotten near when I last read it.) The Dragon Waiting is also excellent and his Trek novels are among the best in that area of writing. He’s finally back into print after a very long time. (Died 2006.)
Born April 10, 1992 — Daisy Ridley, 31. Obviously she played the role of Rey in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. She will reprise her role as Rey in an yet untitled Star Wars film set that is after The Rise of Skywalker. She was also in Scrawl, a horror film as well as voicing Cotton Rabbit in Peter Rabbit. Though stretching to even call it genre adjacent even, she was Mary Debenham in Murder on The Orient Express.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Heart of the City shows us an episode of what Filers might call SJW Credential Court TV. (Hint: this is cat humor.)
(11) STRONG SALES PITCH. Charlie Jane Anders makes some pretty wild promises in the “Here’s What I’ll Do If You Buy My New Book!” section of her latest Happy Dancing newsletter. Here’s just the first of many:
…But regardless of where and how you purchase Promises Stronger Than Darkness, here are all the things I will do for you, because I love you and appreciate your support.
I will ship you, by zeroeth class mail, a portable ambient sexifier, which for 24 hours after activation, will render every inanimate object in your vicinity thirty-nine percent sexier. Your drapes will billow sexily. The cracks in the sidewalk will wink salaciously. Newspaper articles about the impending mulchification of civilization will appear diaphanous. The uneaten crusts of your morning toast will salute you….
A monastic brewery in East Germany says it’s created the first powdered beer. Just add water, and it’ll froth up, complete with a foamy head and full flavor. The result promises massive savings on transport, because it can be shipped at 10% of the weight.
Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle worked together with “technology partners” and used funding from BMWi to create its first powdered product, a dextrin-rich zero-alcohol beer which has been brewed using conventional methods, then “processed and prepared into a water-soluble beer powder/granulate.”…
Audiences said let’s go to the movie theater for “ The Super Mario Bros. Movie ” this weekend. The animated offering from Universal and Illumination powered up with $204.6 million in its first five days in 4,343 North American theaters, including $146.4 million over the weekend, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
With an estimated $173 million in international earnings and a global total of $377 million, “Mario” broke records for video game adaptations (passing “Warcraft’s” $210 million) and animated films (“Frozen 2’s” $358 million).
Its global total makes it the biggest opening of 2023 and the second biggest three-day domestic animated opening (behind “Finding Dory”). It’s also a record for Illumination, the animation shop behind successful franchises like “Minions,” which has made over $5 billion from its 13 films….
(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by N.] Animated fantasy series The Owl House received a final season that was truncated to only three hour-long episodes, despite the outcry of both the creator and its fanbase. In the face of that challenge the show has given viewers arguably its best episodes. The final episode has been uploaded to YouTube in full for free (as the previous two were), bringing The Owl House to a close after three years. “The Owl House Season 3 Final Episode”.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Gary Farber, P. J. Evans, Daniel Dern, N., Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
Belfast, Northern Ireland is the voters’ choice for the site of the 2025 UK Eastercon, the first time the convention will be held in Ireland. Reconnect, will take place April 18-21, 2025.
Reconnect’s venue is within half a mile of the city center: the Belfast International Conference Centre and connected Hilton Lanyon Place.
Deputy Chair Jo Zebedee said “We are delighted to be bringing the Eastercon to Belfast, and look forward to welcoming hundreds of fans to a city full of exciting literary and cultural elements”.
Two bids for 2025 were submitted, Catastrophe! and Reconnect (Belfast). Catastrophe! was, of course, a spoof bid but very humorous in content says Dave Lally, who reports in the end it did actually receive some votes.
Reconnect’s guests of honour will be Lauren Beukes, Rebecca Roanhorse, Jeannette Ng, Derek Landy, Will Simpson and Bar Friendly Ian McDonald.
Co-Chair James Bacon said, “We are thrilled to be able to welcome such an illustrious and fabulous range of guests of honour to Reconnect. We hope that we can share our passion for the fantastic as we welcome fans to a new venue for Reconnect and welcome new fans to their first Eastercon.”
Co-Chair Tommy Ferguson noted: “We have a long history of fandom in Belfast, be it Walt Willis, James White and Bob Shaw with their groundbreaking fanzines in the 40’s and 50’s up to our local convention scene which has been vibrant, and we want to reconnect fandom to Northern Ireland and with one another as we celebrate science fiction, fantasy and horror in all its forms in person.”
Traveling fan Dave Lally also notes that Northern Ireland’s tourist attractions include “the obvious Game of Thrones locations; and there are also C S Lewis (Narnia etc.) connections in Belfast. Already offered on the Easter Friday morning (and just pre-Con opening) is a fan arranged visit to the award-winning Titanic Centre in Belfast. This is right beside where the doomed liner was built, before its tragic end in April 1912 in the cold, still, waters of the Atlantic.”
And in the neighboring Republic of Ireland, Malin Head, County Donegal (Star Wars), and the charms of Ireland’s capital city, Dublin, (the express Belfast-Dublin train is called “The Enterprise” — 2 hours journey time-between the two Irish cities, and that service leaves from the main Belfast Lanyon Place Station (just ~300m from the Con itself).)
[NOTE: Eastercon 2024/“Levitation” is already approved. Location: Telford (just north of Birmingham) Dates: March 29-April 1, 2024.]
The British Science Fiction Association announced the winners of the 2022 BSFA Awards at Eastercon on April 9.
The awards are voted on by members of the British Science Fiction Association and by the members of the year’s Eastercon, the national science fiction convention, held since 1955.
The BSFA Awards have been presented annually since 1970.
NOVEL
City Of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky
SHORT FICTION
Of Charms Ghosts and Grievances by Aliette de Bodard
ARTWORK
Cover of The Red Scholar’s Wake by Alyssa Winans
NON FICTION
Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes by Rob Wilkins
[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA. Find her in her virtual home at coldwildeyes.com. Wipe your feet before entering.]
AN ANGST OF WRITERS
Hello All, Melanie here!
Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Easter, Pesach, or Eostre, in whatever way you celebrate!
Without further ado…
Subject: Mediocre Writer
Dear Gladys,
I would be a world famous writer by now if it weren’t for the TRAFFIC. I really feel like the whole world is conspiring against my happiness this week!!!!
As you know, I returned to work after recovering from my Riverdancing Accident and a small side quest getting Tryxy reinstated at his school. While I am possibly the greatest custom tractor salesperson of ALL TIME, it doesn’t change the fact that I have to juggle TWO JOBs: tractor salesperson by day, EPIF FANTASY WRITER BY NIGHT.
Yes, if you give me three minutes, I can take an ordinary farmer on the market for your standard green John Deere 5310 and convince her to fit it out with a glitter coat, subwoofer, and spinning tractor rims, but EVERY MINUTE I’m not at work is PRECIOUS WRITING TIME!!!!
I ALSO HAVE A LOT OF CATCHING UP TO DO IN WRITING GLADYS. OH LOOK, MY CAPSLOCK IS ON.
Fixed it.
But now that they’re building that HUGE MYSTERIOUS COMPLEX next to the town green, the construction has really cut into my commute!!!!! Why this morning alone I planned to think up PLOT IDEAS between 8:43 a.m. and 8:47 a.m., but thanks to the construction, I was stuck in TRAFFIC behind a drunk goose, a zombie rabbit, a VW school bus with a snow plow attached, and a gray SUV with an UNREADABLE BUMPER STICKER.
I spent the entirety of the TRAFFIC JAM trying to decipher that bumper sticker!!! Once upon a time it was cornflower blue with white letters but years of sun and snow had degraded it so that it resembled TV static. Now I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty sure the bumper sticker used to say A Smug of Writers.
I assume that’s the collective noun for a group of writers which, as it happens, is entirely appropriate as I am heading to the first meeting of my writing critique group since NaNoNostril Hair.
Even though our writing group requires that writers wregularly write to maintain membership, I’ve have been doing a lot of WRITING ADJACENT activities and that SHOULD COUNT TOO, Gladys!!!
Shouldn’t it??? We’re supposed to share our last four months of writing accomplishments. In the group text Ravenhair Silkenwind mentioned that he’s halfway through his epic fantasy novel about dark elves BUT WHAT HAVE I GOT TO SHOW FOR FOUR MONTHS OF NOT WRITING????
Gladys, I need you to be moderately—but not completely honest with me. Actually, if you need an exact number, I need you to be about 2/17ths honest. I’ve written exactly one short story since this time last year AND IT WAS A PIECE OF FLASH FICTION. Am I a mediocre writer???? What am I supposed to tell the other fantasy writers at the Ink Black Coffee Club???
I had better go. I have less than an hour before I must share my work with the other members of our smug of writers and I need to produce four months of fantasy writing in the next forty minutes!!!!
How am I supposed to concentrate on writing when I don’t know if I’m mediocre????
If only that STUPID Flash ficgtion contest would pick my story as a winner, I wouldn’t be so down in the dumpS!!!
WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’RE BUILDING IN THAT MYSTERIOUS COMPLEX??? DO YOU THINK IT’S ONE OF THOSE LUXURY GYMS??? OR MAYBE IT’S ANOTHER CULT.
CAPSLOCK IS ON AGAIN!!!!
xox,
X
Subject: WORST WRITER EVER
Dear Gladys,
I’m writing to inform you that I will no longer be sending you pages. I know that you LIVE to read my epic fantasy works in progress, but I need you to summon all your strength and never bring up my writing EVER AGAIN. And though you’re probably dying to know what’s happening in my stories, you are going to have to suffer in silence.
After what happened at tonight’s critique group meet up, I can never show my face again.
Not only has the group informed me that traveling through time to pick up Ursula Le Guin from a cosmic train flying through space and dropping her off at her new apartment in our library DOESN’T COUNT AS WRITING, it turns out that I AM NOT EVEN A PUBLISHED WRITER!!!!
I was sweating bullets when I arrived. All I’d managed to write in the last hour were three words on a greasy napkin and two of them were the name Keith. I was going to need to think of something to save face!!!
THe meeting began nicely with small talk. I saw my opportunity and dragged it out. An artful conversation saboteur can take eight minutes of small talk and turn it into three hours!!!! The trick is to ask questions that lead you further and further away from anything remotely relevant!!
We each talked about whether it will snow again after Easter, this got them all going pretty good. And when that conversation was about to die, I asked everyone where they keep their shovels and that started another round. Ravenhair was just about to put his dark elf manuscript on the table when I thought quickly and ASKED ABOUT THE CONSTRUCTION.
That was a stroke of sheer brilliance, Gladys!!! Each of us mused about what was being built in the mysterious new complex by the town green. Bevvy Hart thought that it was a new kind of condominium for people who keep exotic birds due to the big dome and she’d always imagined that people who keep birds would love to live together in a big, birdie commune.
Edwina Tómas was pretty certain its a new cult moving into town, after all, it’s been a while since we had a cult move to town. Marjorie agreed it could be a cult but that it was more likely another Timeshare Entity corporation coming to town. That’s when Ravenhair Silkenwind dropped a bomb on the whole speculation operation by saying he’d heard from a friend who heard from a friend that a movie production studio is setting up shop. Not only did it end the conversation with everyone going “huh, well that’s interesting”, it was a silly thing to say!!!
Obviously it’s a new cult.
That’s when it all went straight to HADES, GALYDS!!!
Ravenhair cleared his throat and shuffled his pages and looked like he was going to ask everyone about their writing and I panicked. The first thing that came to mind was THAT STUPID UNREADABLE BUMPER STICKER!!!!
I referred to our group as a smug of writers. Things immediately got testy. Edwina huffed and said that I was categorically wrong and that a group of writers is called an Angst. Ravenhair corrected her and said that an Angst of writers exclusively refers to literary fiction writers but that we were probably called a Misgiving of Writers. Then Bevvy blew it all to pieces by announcing that we were all totally wrong and that the correct collective noun for writers is a Pedantry and then said, “Since we’re on the subject of writing, how about we get to everyone’s accomplishments for the last four months.”
It all went downhill from there. Everyone smugly announced they had written 20,000 words here, and 15,000 words there and I was left with no choice but to play my trump card. I announced that I had been published.
Instead of singing my praises and agreeing that I was the next big epic fantasy writer of all time, the table went suddenly silent. Bevvy squinted at me a long time and then she said two horrible words that should NEVER BE SAID.
She said, “Published where?”
And I told her.
And then she said, “I’ve never heard of them.” Then she whips out her phone and while everyone finally manages to say “congratulations” and “be sure to share your story!” Bevvy is busy looking up the website of the publication that put out my short story and says, “X…did you pay them money to publish your short story?”
OF COURSE I PAID THEM MONEY, GLADYS!!!! That’s what they said to do on the website!!!! Well now it turns out that when publishers charge you money to publish your story people don’t say “congratulations” they say things like “that’s a VANITY press” and “Haven’t you ever heard of Writers Warning Dot Com?”
HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS GLADYS???? Is my whole writing life a lie???
I was so angry and embarrassed driving home that I almost hit a duck.
Anyhoo Gladys, if you’re looking for me, you can find me crying in Tryxy’s abyss. How am I ever supposed to come back from this????
No. There will be no pages next week, Gladys.
xox,
X
Subject: EAT THAT WORLD!!!!!!!
DEAR GLADYS,
I WON THE CRADENSBURG FLASH FICTION CONTEST!!!!! I JUST GOT THE EMAIL TONIGHT!!!!
EAT THAT TRAFFIC JAM!!! EAT THAT UNREADABLE BUMPER STICKER!!!! EAT THAT VANITY PRESS!!!!! EAT THAT KEITH!!!!!
I AM THE NEXT BIG EPIC FANTASY WRITER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!
Have to go to the computer store and get that capslock key fixed.
….HadithGPT, for instance, uses hadiths or the narrations of the sayings and life of the Prophet Muhammad to answer questions about Islam. Its responses come with a disclaimer: the answers are AI-generated and may not be accurate, it says. “Islam is passed down from heart to heart and it is important to learn and consult real Islamic scholars for more accurate information.”
Even with this disclaimer, an average person may not have access to an actual scholar they can consult, making it easier to rely exclusively on Sheikh Google or services like HadithGPT, Turk says. The source material is also missing a lot of context typically considered when answering Islamic questions, he added. That includes the human layer of analysis of the hadiths and consideration of other texts such as the Qur’an, as well as scholarly opinions and Islamic jurisprudence. Different schools of thought also give weight to different customs and traditions, he said.
“The hadith are silent on a lot of questions that are more contemporary in nature, Turk said. “It’s much more complicated than just what do the hadiths say in a black and white fashion.”
In other faiths like Buddhism, many practitioners are less text and more practice-centric, making the religion “uniquely situated to shrug” the proliferation of chatbots off, according to the Rev Angel Kyodo Williams, Roshi a Zen Buddhist priest in California.
“There’s a practice centricity that takes all of the text and sets them aside and says, it doesn’t matter how much you read, doesn’t matter what you get out of a chatbot,” Williams said. “That’s not the answer. The answer is in your life: do you feel the truth of those words that you speak? And if you don’t, that’s really the only measure.”…
(3) WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL. Some well-known genre figures will be part of The PEN America World Voices Festival, to be held May 10-13. The event will be led by festival chair Ayad Akhtar and guest chairs Marlon James and Ottessa Moshfegh. Ta-Nehisi Coates will deliver the Arthur Miller lecture which will be livestreamed. Speakers include John Irving, Roxane Gay, Reza Aslan, Min Jin Lee, Sarah Polley, Amor Towles, Padma Lakshmi, Masha Gessen, Jelani Cobb, Ben Okri, Han Kang, Imani Perry and so many more. The festival takes place on May 10-13 both in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Los Angeles with selected events available online.
(4) A MODEST PROPOSAL. SF2 Concatenation tweeted a link to an advance post of its forthcoming seasonal edition’s news page editorial, and they’d love for you to click through and read the whole thing. Here’s the teaser:
With the Worldcon coming to Britain for the first time in roughly a decade, the mainly British-based SF2 Concatenation has a possible suggestion for the committee’s choice of special Hugo Award category.
What special Hugo Award category for the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon? In addition to the set Hugo Award categories, such as Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, Best Short Story, Best Novel etc., each year that year’s committee organising the Worldcon gets the right to choose a category of their own. Past such Hugo categories have included things like Best Game or Best Art Book. Not all committee-proposed special categories in the past garnered sufficient nomination interest for them to appear on the Hugo Short-List ballot. So really the trick is to come up with a special category that will engage with Hugo Award voters (Worldcon Attending registrants). Here we have an idea…
(5) IT CAUGHT ON IN A FLASH. Space Cowboy Books will host a “Flash Science Fiction Night Online Event” on Tuesday April 25 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register for free here.
Online Flash Science Fiction Reading. Join us online for an evening of short science fiction readings (1000 words or less) with authors Susan Rukeyser, Todd Sullivan, and Tara Campbell. Flash Science Fiction Night’s run 30 minutes or less, and are a fun and great way to learn about new authors from around the world.
Most of the time, when a beloved book is adapted into a film, or even into a television show, a form with a little more elbow room, shall we say, the magic doesn’t quite translate. Which isn’t to say the adaptations aren’t themselves good—it’s just that the books are usually better. Even very very good adaptations, like The Talented Mr. Ripley, can often only manage to be second fiddle to their source material.
But not always. Sometimes the movie really is better than the book. Below, the Lit Hub staff will argue the case for 13 adaptations which (in our humble/expert/individual opinions) manage to eclipse the books they’re based on. Add your own—or tell us why we’re wrong—in the comments….
Sci-fi movies take scientific ideas and theories and make them fun, and in some cases even drive innovation. However, many sci-fi concepts are also flawed from the start. Indeed, many of the genre’s favorite tropes simply don’t comport with what scientists know about the universe….
5. Explosions in Space
Many science fiction movies feature battles between ultra-fast starfighters and enormous starships, with the requisite explosions fans have come to expect. Star Wars was the first franchise to prominently feature deep-space explosions, introducing the trope to its millions of fans.
However, this kind of fiery explosion is impossible outside of an oxygen-rich atmosphere (via Science ABC). It’s satisfying when an evil space station explodes, signaling a dramatic victory for the heroes, and spaceships should carry a substantial amount of oxygen for their air-breathing crew. However, most of the exploding starships fans have learned to accept over the years look nothing like actual explosions in a vacuum. If an exploding ship was moving at high speed, the explosion itself would continue to move at the same speed, and without gravity or friction, it would be much larger than the contained blasts viewers associate with violent deep space justice.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
2006 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Now let’s talk about two volumes of stories that are among the best ones ever done. Catherynne Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, and that is where this Beginning is from, and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice are some of most delightfully female centered tales that pass the Bechdel test continuously.
Bantam Spectra published The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden seventeen years ago as lavishly illustrated by Michael Kaluta who of course would illustrate In the Cities of Coin and Spice too. It would win both an Otherwise Award and the Mythopoeic Award as well as being nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
Observing Valente riffing off the much older A Thousand and One Nights with Scheherazade is a sheer delight. Not saying anything explicit about them, they are connected but they are such that they stand on their own rather well too.
Though they are available as digital publications, I recommend purchasing the two trade paper editions. They make most excellent reading. Really they do.
ONCE THERE WAS A CHILD WHOSE FACE WAS LIKE THE NEW MOON SHINING on cypress trees and the feathers of waterbirds. She was a strange child, full of secrets. She would sit alone in the great Palace Garden on winter nights, pressing her hands into the snow and watching it melt under her heat. She wore a crown of garlic greens and wisteria; she drank from the silver fountains studded with lapis; she ate cold pears under a canopy of pines on rainy afternoons.
Now this child had a strange and wonderful birthmark, in that her eyelids and the flesh around her eyes were stained a deep indigo-black, like ink pooled in china pots. It gave her the mysterious, taciturn look of an owl on ivory rafters, or a raccoon drinking from the swift-flowing river. It colored her eyes such that when she was grown she would never have to smoke her eyelashes with kohl.
For this mark she was feared, and from her earliest days, the girl was abandoned to wander the Garden around the many-towered Palace. Her parents regarded her with trepidation and terror, wondering if her deformity reflected poorly on their virtue. The other nobles firmly believed she was a demon, sent to destroy the glittering court. Their children, who often roamed the Garden like a flock of wild geese, kept away from her, lest she curse them with her terrible powers. The Sultan could not decide—after all, if she were a demon, it would not do to offend her infernal kin by doing away with her like so much cut grass. In the end, all preferred that she simply remain silent and far away, so that none would have to confront the dilemma.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 9, 1911 — George O. Smith. His early prolific writings on Astounding Science Fiction in the 1940s which ended when Campbell’s wife left him for Smith whom she married. Later stories were on Thrilling Wonder Stories, Galaxy, Super Science Stories and Fantastic to name but four such outlets. He was given First Fandom Hall of Fame Award just before he passed on. Interestingly his novels are available from the usual digital sources but his short stories are not. (Died 1981.)
Born April 9, 1913 — George F. Lowther. He was writer, producer, director in the earliest days of radio and television. He wrote scripts for both Captain Video and His Video Rangers and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. (Died 1975.)
Born April 9, 1937 — Marty Krofft, 86. Along with with Sid, a Canadian sibling team of television creators and puppeteers. Through Sid & Marty Krofft Pictures, they have made numerous series including the superb H.R. Pufnstuf which I still remember fondly all these years later not to forget Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.
Born April 9, 1949 — Stephen Hickman, born 1949, aged seventy four years. Illustrator who has done over three hundred and fifty genre covers such as Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer and Nancy Springer’s Rowan Hood, Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest. His most widely known effort is his space fantasy postage stamps done for the U.S. Postal Service which won a Hugo for Best Original Artwork at ConAndian in 1994. (Died 2021.)
Born April 9, 1954 — Dennis Quaid, 68. I’m reasonably sure that his first genre role (but as always I stand by to be cheerfully corrected if I’m wrong) was in Dreamscape as Alex Gardner followed immediately by the superb role of Willis Davidge in Enemy Mine followed by completing a trifecta with Innerspace and the character of Lt. Tuck Pendleton. And then there’s the sweet film of Dragonheart and him as Bowen. Anyone hear of The Day After Tomorrow in which he was Jack Hall? I hadn’t a clue about it.
Born April 9, 1972 — Neve McIntosh, 51. During time of the Eleventh Doctor, she played Alaya and Restac, two Silurian reptilian sisters who have been disturbed under the earth, one captured by humans and the other demanding vengeance. Her second appearance on Doctor Who is Madame Vastra in “A Good Man Goes to War”. Also a Silurian, she’s a Victorian crime fighter. She’s back in the 2012 Christmas special, and in the episodes “The Crimson Horror” and “The Name of the Doctor”. She’s Madame Vastra, who along with her wife, Jenny Flint, and Strax, a former Sontaran warrior, who together form an private investigator team. Big Finish gave them their own line of audio adventures which I really should listen to soon.
Born April 9, 1990 — Kristen Stewart, 33. She first shows up in our area of interest in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas as a Ring Toss Girl (ok, it wasn’t that bad a film). Zathura: A Space Adventure based off the Chris Van Allsburg book has her playing Lisa Budwing. Jumper based off the Stephen Gould novel of the same name had her in a minor role as Sophie. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend Snow White and the Huntsman which has her in the title role of Snow White. It’s a really great popcorn film. Finally she’s got a gig in The Twilight Saga franchise as Bella Cullen.
(10) FRANK ARNOLD REMEMBERED. Rob Hansen made a discovery that prompted him to remind readers that the first free ebook he put together for the TAFF site was The Frank Arnold Papersin 2017.
I edited this together from Frank’s papers, which had been passed to me after being saved from consignment to a dumpster 30 years earlier and had been gathering dust in my cellar ever since. Though Frank was a minor writer this was reasonably well received and I even had several requests from chums for the apocrypha, the material I hadn’t included in that volume. Needless to say, THE FRANK ARNOLD PAPERS is as close to an autobiography as we’re ever going to see.
Hansen says he’s now discovered there’s also a biography, a long article by Dave Rowe in Outworlds #65 beginning on page 13. It includes details of Frank’s life that you’re unlikely to find elsewhere.
He was the last regular link with the original London Circle. He was the keeper of the visitors’ book. He was a methuselahic Peter Pan, a pint-sized Mister Micawber. Practically everyone who had passed through The Globe’s and The One Tun’s portals on each months first Thursday night had known him and his radiantly pert smile, yet to quote Arthur 0. Clarke he was also “the most invisible person I ever met!” and Ted (E.C.) Tubb recalled “he was a very lonely person who was unable to allow people into his private world. In other words a typical fan of his time—as are many of his generation.” The number who knew him ‘at home’ could be counted on the fingers of two hands. To visit him there was like stepping into a living time-capsule. Time had ended in the fifties…
… Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy shared some disappointing news regarding the future of Obi-Wan Kenobi at Saturday’s Star Wars Celebration in London.
Season 2 of the Disney+ series starring Ewan McGregor “is not an active development,” Kennedy told our sister site Variety, before adding, “But I never say never, because there’s always the possibility. That show was so well-received and [director] Deborah Chow did such a spectacular job. Ewan McGregor really wants to do another….
On March 23, sky observers marveled at a gorgeous display of northern and southern lights. It was a reminder that when our Sun gets active, it can spark a phenomenon called “space weather.” Aurorae are among the most benign effects of this phenomenon.
At the other end of the space weather spectrum are solar storms that can knock out satellites. The folks at Starlink found that out the hard way in February 2022. On January 29 that year, the Sun belched out a class M 1.1 flare and related coronal mass ejection. Material from the Sun traveled out on the solar wind and arrived at Earth a few days later. On February 3, Starlink launched a group of 49 satellites to an altitude only 130 miles above Earth’s surface. They didn’t last long, and now solar physicists know why….
In 2011, nomads roaming the western Sahara encountered precious time capsules from Mars: coal-black chunks of a meteorite, strewn across the dunes. “Black Beauty,” as the parent body came to be known, captivated scientists and collectors because it contained crystals that formed on Mars more than 4.4 billion years ago, making it older than any native rock on Earth. Jérôme Gattacceca, a paleo-magnetist at the European Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geo-sciences, hoped it might harbor a secret message, imprinted by the now-defunct martian magnetic field—which is thought to have helped the planet sustain an atmosphere, water, and possibly even life. But when Gattacceca obtained a piece of Black Beauty and tried to decode its magnetic inscription, he found its memory had been wiped—Men in Black style—and replaced by a stronger signal. He instantly knew the culprit. Somewhere along its journey from Moroccan desert to street dealers to laboratory, the rock had been touched by strong hand magnets, a widely used technique for identifying meteorites.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Cliff, Hampus Eckerman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]
The Endeavour Award for books published in 2021 was presented at Norwescon 45 on April 8.
How to Get to Apocalypse by Erica L. Satifka (Fairwood Press)
The award encourages the growth of literature in the field and recognize works of excellence. It is named for H.M. Bark Endeavour, the ship of Northwest explorer Capt. James Cook. It is accompanied by a grant of $1,000 to the winner.
The winning book was one of five finalists selected by a group of preliminary readers. The others included Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee (Orbit), Calculated Risks by Seanan McGuire (Daw), Blood of the Chosen by Django Wexler (Orbit), and On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu (Erewhon).
The award winner was determined from the finalists by a panel of judges consisting of Catherine Asaro, Andy Duncan, and Fran Wilde.
In combined remarks, the judges said: “We congratulate all the writers on this impressive shortlist, and salute our latest Endeavour Award winner, Erica L. Satifka.”
Regarding the winner, they said: “We are delighted to help shine an eerie phantasmagorical glow of regard onto a book of such spiky originality as this. Satifka’s How To Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters is a fractal triumph that works on every level, from individual sentences and stories to the splendidly counterintuitive jigsaw of the whole. Rather than forming a seamless sameness, they constitute a fully interlocking kaleidoscope of moods and modes. These 23 stories take a gorgeously broad view of the genre, jacking especially into the cyberpunk mainframe, while exploring 21st-century concerns in language that raises a shower of sparks on every page. One juror compared this book to classic collections by Avram Davidson and R.A. Lafferty, which is the same as saying it’s basically incomparable; another juror summed up by saying, simply: ‘I’m very impressed.’ We also must honor the chutzpah of a book that identifies all the stories therein as disastrous.”
The Endeavour Award recognizes science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. Eligibility for nominees remains the same. The author or authors must have been living [maintaining legal or physical residence] in the Pacific Northwest [Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia] when the publisher accepted the book, and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. The books must have been published in the United States or in Canada.
Erica Satifka (photo credits: Patrick Swenson, Fairwood Press)
Update 04/10/23: Added information from a press release.04/11/2023: Added photos.
The Filk Hall of Fame honors those who have contributed to filk over the years as performers, organizers, and facilitators. New inductees are announced annually during FilKONtario.
Dave Hayman, founder and administrator of the Filk Hall of Fame, reports the inductees for 2023 are:
David Alway
Catherine (Cat) Faber
Chris Weber & Karen Willson
The website will soon be adding citations and photos.
Joseph Wrzos in 1998 at I-Con 17 Long-Island, NY. Photograph by John L. Coker III
By John L. Coker III: U.S. teacher and editor Joseph [Henry] Wrzos of Saddle River, New Jersey (born in Newark, New Jersey on September 9, 1929) aka Joseph Ross, died on April 7, 2023.
Yesterday afternoon I received an e-mail message from Ken Wrzos. He wrote: “Hello, John. I’m sorry to inform you that my dad, Joseph Wrzos, passed away today, April 7, 2023.”
BACKGROUND. Joseph Wrzos received his B.A. (cum laude) in 1952 from Rutgers University, joined Phi Beta Kappa and was a graduate student at Columbia University. During 1953-54 Joe was Assistant Editor at Gnome Press in New York. For the next several years he was high school librarian in Roselle Park, NJ. During 1957-95, Joe was an English teacher at Millburn Senior High School, Millburn, NJ, and chairman of the English Department during 1969-72. He was a member of the National Education Association and the New Jersey Education Association.
FROM THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA.
“He was the Managing Editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic 1965-1967. He edited The Best of Amazing (anth 1967), selecting only stories from before he became editor; and Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration (graph coll 2012). His influence on the field has not been well publicized. He helped Sam Moskowitz with his Robert Duncan Milne collection – Into the Sun and Other Stories: Science Fiction in Old San Francisco, Volume II (coll 1980) – and wrote an article about it in the Winter 1982 Fantasy Commentator. He helped Peter Ruber with most of his projects at Arkham House but may only be formally co-credited on the Seabury Quinn collection Night Creatures (coll 2003). He also compiled the August Derleth collection In Lovecraft’s Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August W Derleth (coll 1998) to which he contributed the introduction. Derleth’s final sf anthology, New Horizons (anth 1998), was put into its final shape by Ross, who again provided the introduction. He was a consulting editor on the newly revamped (from 2012) Amazing Stories. In 2009, Joseph Wrzos received the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award from First Fandom and he was elected to the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2016.”
BY JOHN L. COKER III. There are quite a few members of fandom who knew Joseph Wrzos for more than fifty years, a lot longer than me. I met Joe Wrzos in 1998 at I-Con 17, Stony Brook University, Long Island, NY. For the next 25 years, we maintained a written correspondence and worked together on several book projects. I learned a lot about writing from Professor Wrzos.
I got to know Joe as someone who was cordial, smart, knowledgeable, intelligent and bright, caring, industrious, a person who sought the highest results. He was a gentleman, a teacher, a mentor, and a friend to many. He earned and maintained his excellent reputation.
Joseph Wrzos enjoyed living the life he chose. For decades, he was in academia, imparting wisdom in his teaching and in his writing. He embraced the fields of science fiction and fantasy literature. He was an avid reader and collector, someone who developed genuine expertise in many areas. He set the highest standards for his personal work and established those same expectations with students and collaborators. During his long career, he got to work with many big-name fans and pros of the highest caliber, producing a large body of meaningful material for the genre magazines and books. He seemed happy, finding real love with Helen de la Ree, someone who shared his many interests, and a dear person who worked hard to achieve the very best for both of them.
Joseph Wrzos and Helen de la Ree (I-Con 17, Long Island, NY, 1998). Photograph by John L. Coker III.
FAMILY HISTORY AND FORMAL ARRANGEMENTS. The family obituary says:
He was predeceased by: his former wife Anita Wrzos; and his siblings, Mae Gaborski, Chester Wrzos and Dolly Wiley. He is survived by: his wife Helen; his sons, Michael Ross (Eiko) and Kenneth Wrzos (Michelle Llado-Wrzos); his grandchildren, Philip Ross (Jillian), Nina Ross, Rachel Ross, and Emily Wrzos; and his great grandchild Harlan Ross.
Visitation will be held on Wednesday, April 12th 2023 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the Dancy Memorial (9 Smull Avenue, Caldwell, NJ 07006). A funeral mass will be held on Thursday, April 13th 2023 at 10:30 AM at the St. Aloysius Church (219 Bloomfield Ave, Caldwell, NJ 07006). A burial will be held on Thursday, April 13th 2023 at the Prospect Hill Cemetery (326 Bloomfield Avenue, Caldwell, NJ 07006).”
In lieu of flowers, please donate in Joseph’s name to the American Heart Association.
