Gagging on Google

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It wasn’t so long ago that people’s only thought after seeing the Google name was “There’s a company with a fabulous search engine.” Period.

A little later, people envied the fun Google employees had thinking up more cool ways to organize and distribute information. Like digitizing all the books in the world. Or photographing all the streets in the world.

But once Google actually did these projects, fun wasn’t the first word to come to people’s minds.

Instead, it was “Lawsuit,” or the latest controversy over the Google Book Search Settlement.

And “Spies.” In a small English town a photographer for Google Street View was suspected of having exactly the same kind of “fun” enjoyed by agents of the KGB, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times:

The good folk of Broughton don’t take kindly to being photographed without permission. Just ask Google.

When the search-engine giant sent one of its specially equipped cars to take pictures of the village for its Street View feature, residents swung into action. They stopped the car in its tracks, called the police and quizzed the bewildered driver for nearly two hours before letting him go.

Many Swiss have complained too. No wonder:

In one image, a married Swiss politician was photographed with a blond who was not his wife, which forced him to explain publicly that the woman was his secretary. In another case, a Street View image was reprinted in a newspaper, and “as a result, a restaurant owner had to explain how he was photographed in a known drug-dealing area,” said [Hanspeter Thuer, the Swiss federal data-protection commissioner].

The way Google has handled this inevitably makes it sound quite sinister. Yet if Google handled things a bit differently I bet the tide would turn in its favor.

What if, instead of surreptitiously driving through towns taking photographs, Google Street View advertised its route in advance? People endure all kinds of abuse on reality shows so they can say “Hey Ma, I’m on TV!” Allow people to snatch a little piece of fame with no more inconvenience than standing in their front yard at a certain time and the number who’ll be pleased by the arrangement will swamp the few who object — particularly because anyone who is someplace he shouldn’t be will be warned to duck out of sight when the camera rolls by.

Vonda McIntyre’s Superluminal at BookViewCafe

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Hugo and Nebula-award winning author Vonda N. McIntyre has released her novel Superluminal as an ebook at BookViewCafe.com. Read it free as a serial, one chapter per week, or buy the complete novel as a downloadable ebook for $4.99.

Superluminal was originally published in 1983 by Houghton Mifflin.

Other titles from McIntyre available at BookViewCafe.com include the award-winning Dreamsnake and The Moon and the Sun, as well as a number of her short stories.

Still Celebrating Ray

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 Gene Beley, robot and Ray Bradbury

Gene Beley and Ray Bradbury pose with a show robot built by Gene in 1979. The photo was probably taken not long after the robot was built.

Gene Beley attended Ray Bradbury’s 89th birthday party, celebrated at Mystery and Imagination Bookstore on August 22, and wrote about it in an article that’s just been published in the Stockton (CA) Record. Gene believes in the message Ray has consistently delivered to audiences throughout the years:  

He preached that the secret to life was finding that lifetime love in a spouse and occupation – something to jump out of bed each morning and be excited about doing.

“If you haven’t found it yet, by God, keep trying until you find it!” he’d yell at college students. Today, he keeps repeating, “It’s all about love.” That love has been returned many fold from students who have since become film producers, writers and directors. Some have even hired Bradbury, or collaborated with him on projects.

I feel lucky to be in that club, having met Ray in 1968 when I was a young reporter for the Ventura Star-Free Press, and I published a biography about him in 2006, Ray Bradbury Uncensored.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Halloween the 13th, Part 1965

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With any luck, LASFS will never celebrate another Halloween the way it did in 1965. An assailant outside the building fired three shots into the party. No one was struck by the bullets, but Dian Crayne was cut by flying debris. She writes:

Yes, I remember that incident VERY well. Bill Rotsler and I were sitting in a window seat, talking, and the bullet went between us. I had wood splinters in my cheek, Bill remarked later that he thought momentarily that for some reason one of my earrings had exploded. (He used to say later on that we had been “under fire together.”) Of course, everyone in the room hit the deck, and I remember calling out to Bruce [Pelz], “Don’t get excited, but I think I’ve been hit.” Only splinters, though.

[At the time] I was pregnant with Cecy and she was born in March of 1966.

As for the location, it was wherever Don Simpson and his house mates were living at the time. Don dug the bullet out of the woodwork and I talked him into giving it to me. Alas, I lost it during one of our moves.

The surmise was that the shooter was one of a small group of people who had tried party-crashing earlier in the evening and been ejected. The police came and took statements, but no one was ever picked up for it.

LASFS Website Posts Moffatt Photos

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Rick Sneary, Roy Tackett, Takumi Shibano, Sachiko Shibano 

Above: Rick Sneary, Roy Tackett, Takumi Shibano and Sachiko Shibano enjoying the 1968 Worldcon.

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society website now boasts dozens of fanhistorically important photos from the collection of Len and June Moffatt. What a trip in the Wayback Machine!

These photos from the end of the Sixties are a window into cons and events people were still talking about when I joined LASFS in 1970. Some are pictures of fans who made themselves unforgettable in ways good and bad but I only heard about because they vanished from the club before I arrived.

For example, they were still taking about the club’s  1965 Halloween Party. Not that you’d know it from the pictures, but this infamous party was interrupted by gunshots fired from outside into the building. Dian Pelz (later Crayne) was slightly hurt by flying wood splinters. One bullet passed between Dian and Bill Rotsler as they sat talking. A possible cause is that two crashers had been evicted from the party earlier in the evening. Police came and took down information, but no arrests ever made.

Here you can see the highlights of FunCon I in 1968 (which I recently mentioned in co-chair Chuck Crayne’s obituary.) They include a rare photo of Flieg Hollander, whose claim to fame includes mathematically proving Larry Niven’s Ringworld is unstable (the launching point for a sequel).

And there are a lot of interesting photos of well-known fans from back in the day. He’s a fannish legend, but have you ever seen a picture of the late Elmer Perdue? Or Locus’ Charles N. Brown, Marsha Elkin Brown and Elliott Shorter in their prime?

Here’s a photo of Ray Bradbury talking to Leigh Brackett.

And this is probably the fuzziest, pinkest photo ever taken of Fuzzy Pink Niven.

There are shots of fans paying tribute to Star Trek at the 1966 Worldcon (Tricon), and of William Shatner mingling.

There are photos from any number of Westercons: the 1965 Westercon, 1966 Westercon, 1967 Westercon, 1969 Westercon, 1970 Westercon, and 1972 Westercon. Why no pictures from a 1968 Westercon? Because after winning their 1968 Westercon bid the same group successfully bid for the Worldcon and held a single con to satisfy both, BayCon, the 1968 Worldcon. From that Worldcon: Void Boys Ted White and Greg Benford;  Bob Bloch, Betty Farmer, and John W. Campbell, Jr. having cocktails; and from the masquerade, Cory Seidman (later Panshin) as a Corflu Bottle

There are quite a few pictures documenting the LASFS’ efforts to buy its first clubhouse. Bruce Pelz led the LASFS to reorganize as a nonprofit corporation as a step in acquiring a clubhouse. These pictures were taken at the first LASFS Board of Directors Meeting in 1972, held in Milt Stevens’ apartment. (I was there!)

LASFS bought its first clubhouse the following year, a property on Ventura Boulevard. Most of these shots are of fans refurbishing it.

[Thanks to Lee Gold for the story.]

Google Settlement Dealt Fatal Blow?

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U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters torched the Google Book Search Settlement in testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee on September 10, reports Publishers Weekly:

In a blistering assessment of the deal, Peters told lawmakers that the settlement is in essence a compulsory license that would give Google the ability to engage in activities, such as text display and sale of downloads, that are “indisputable acts of copyright infringement.” 

Most damaging, however, was Peters’s insistence that only Congress-not the courts-could enact such licenses, and her repeated assessments that the settlement deprived Congress of its role. “By permitting Google to engage in a wide array of new uses of most books in existence the settlement would alter the landscape of copyright law,” Peters said. “That is the role of Congress, not the courts.” She said that by allowing out-of-print works to be swept into the settlement, the deal “makes a mockery of Article I of the Constitution.” Only Congress, she stressed, after a full public debate, can set such new rules.

And so Francis Hamit declares: “Marybeth Peters just killed the Google settlement. You know, I always liked her.”

Tim Marion Zines Available

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The other day Tim Marion says he “passed a black-and-white Verizon pick-up truck which had, emblazoned on it side, ‘KING of Fandom!’ And I wasn’t even in the truck! (How did they know I would be passing by at that point?)”

Wasn’t it in your fanzine, Tim? All knowledge is in fanzines, as you know.

Anyone can tap into Tim’s kingly wisdom by reading his zines Terminal Eyes or So It Goes. He has over a dozen copies of recent issues for sale at $10@ ($16 outside of North America). 

So It Goes #17 has a portfolio of serious (rather than cartoony) art by Bill Rotsler and also has the first-ever 3-D  cover on a fanzine.

So It Goes #18  has much rare, reprinted art by Steve Fabian and Marcus Boas, as well as an overview of Robert E. Howard fanzines. The issue also boasts reprints of Aljo Svoboda articles from the early Seventies (a fanwriter well worth remembering), and Michael Shoemaker’s first letter of comment to a fanzine in years. Names to reckon with, I tell you!

To arrange purchase, contact Tim via e-mail — timothy.marion (at) rocketmail (dot) com

Google Maps Monpoly

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In Monopoly City Streets, a new massive multi-player online game,  players will be allowed to purchase almost any street in the world. Hasbro claims it will be “the biggest game of Monopoly of all time…”

David Klaus sent the story along with a few “innocent” questions: “How much do you think 11513 Burbank Blvd., N. Hollywood* would be worth? I’m thinking of buying it…. What’s the address of Marty Cantor’s apartment building these days?”

*Address of the LASFS clubhouse…