(1) The Galactic Journey blog is written as the day-to-day experiences of an sf fan living 55 years ago. Last week The Traveler covered the final Nixon-Kennedy debate and the first episode of The Twilight Zone’s second season.
Today’s post is inspired by a Mack Reynolds story in the “current” November 1960 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Really well done.
Science fiction is not prediction. It is extrapolation. No one can see the future, but a gifted writer can show you, dramatically, what will happen “if this goes on.”
It’s no surprise that science fiction writing has enjoyed a boom since 1950. Never has our world been on the brink of so many exciting and dangerous potentialities. On the positive side: space travel, automation by computers and robots, atomic energy. On the negative side: pollution, global warming, and atomic annihilation….
On the other side of the coin, we have Mack Reynolds’ Russkies Go Home!, which appeared in this month’s (November 1960) Fantasy and Science Fiction. Mr. Reynolds reportedly just returned from a trip behind the Iron Curtain, which explains the multitude of Russia-related stories he’s recently turned out. Clearly, the trip impressed the writer, as the stories all posit a Soviet Union that fulfills Senator Kennedy’s nightmare prophecies by surpassing the United States in prosperity by 1970.
(2) StoryBundle’s 2015 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle includes Book View Café’s own Brewing Fine Fiction anthology, and two additional guides by BVC members: Writing Horses by Judith Tarr and Writing Fight Scenes by Marie Brennan.
- The 2015 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle contains 13 new books on all aspects of writing, from craft, to productivity, to business, to career advice, to specific areas of expertise, designed for novices or experts alike.
- A second-tier bonus: If you beat the total of $25, you can get 25 total books, all put together by curator and bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson.
- When you purchase a bundle you can choose to donate to NaNoWriMo itself.
(3) ‘Tis the season. “Witch wins protective order against warlock in Salem court”.
A judge granted a protective order against a warlock on Wednesday, spelling relief for the Salem witch who accused him of harassment.
The two squared off in court before a Salem District Court judge, who granted the protective order to witch priestess Lori Sforza. She had accused self-proclaimed warlock Christian Day of harassing her over the phone and on social media over the past three years.
(4) Sarah A. Hoyt’s “Swallowing A Fly — #2 How to plot” is useful for NaNoWriMo or any of the other 11 months.
To not lose the plot, I invite you to contemplate the little old lady who swallowed a fly.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, she swallowed a bird to catch the spider, she swallowed a cat to catch the bird etc. Note that starting with the original problem (It might help to know that in regency slang at least to swallow a spider was to go deep into debt you can’t escape) she swallows each animal to catch the last — i.e. to try to solve her problem. And each time her problem gets worse.
Your character, in the same way, starting with a problem on which they act in what has to be a somewhat rational manner (unless it’s one of my refinishing mysteries) and where the result backfires horribly, must engage in attempting ever bigger solutions (to bigger problems) and having them blow up even bigger.
(5) Allen Steele has a comeback for Nancy Fulda’s “What To Expect When You Start An Internet Kerfuffle” at the SFWA Blog.
There is a solution to all this: don’t blog.
Really, you don’t need to do so, regardless of the current conventional wisdom that says a writer must relentlessly promote himself on the web. Quite a few well-established writers don’t, and their literary careers are just fine, thank you. If you visit the bookstore, you won’t find THE COLLECTED BLOGS OF MARK TWAIN or DUNE BLOGGER by Frank Herbert or ASIMOV BLOGS AGAIN, and there may be a reason for this.
And if getting yourself in trouble for your internet posts isn’t reason enough, then consider this: over the years, I’ve noticed that — with very few exceptions — an author’s literary output decreases in inverse proportion with the amount of time and energy he or she spends on the Internet. And no one is going to pay you for what you post on your blog or even care a month or so later…unless it’s something that may adversely effect your literary career.
The Internet is not your friend. So don’t blog.
(6) Today’s Birthday Boy
- Born October 28, 1951 – Joe R. Lansdale, 10-time Bram Stoker Award winner.
(7) Motherboard airs its outrage that “Someone in Alabama sold a priceless lunar rover for scrap metal”.
During the Apollo missions, NASA only made a handful of lunar rovers. Three of them are still sitting on the surface of the moon. One of them is at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. And another was recently smashed into bits in an Alabama junkyard.
According to documents acquired by Motherboard as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, a priceless lunar rover prototype designed for the Apollo missions was sold to a junkyard in Alabama for scrap metal sometime last year. Specific names and details are redacted in the documents, which include internal emails and reports by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General, the agency responsible for investigating and recovering lost and stolen NASA property.
(8) “He had a right to shoot at this drone, and I’m gonna dismiss this charge”, a made-up quote, headlines Eugene Volokh’s latest installment of “The Volokh Conspiracy” for the Washington Post. Kentucky jurisprudence is notorious inside the Beltway, therefore it’s surprising Volokh reaches the end of his column without having made much legal headway against the fellow who shot down a drone flying through his property.
(9) Via Bayou Renaissance Man, another article on model masculinity —
According to Country Life magazine in the UK, a gentleman’s traits include such gems as:
- Is aware that facial hair is temporary, but a tattoo is permanent
- Possesses at least one well-made dark suit, one tweed suit and a dinner jacket
- Avoids lilac socks and polishes his shoes
- Breaks a relationship face to face
- Arrives at a meeting five minutes before the agreed time
- Knows the difference between Glenfiddich and Glenda Jackson
- Would never own a Chihuahua
- Can tie his own bow tie
- Demonstrates that making love is neither a race nor a competition
(10) James H. Burns found a YouTube video of film footage from the costume contest at Phil Seuling’s 1973 Comic Convention, at the Commodore Hotel, in New York. He identified many science fiction friends in the proceedings.
There are just audience shots for the first two minutes, and then footage of the costumed revelers gathered together. That’s the legendary Joan Winston in the midriff baring dress and the star-spangled cape–Joan was the CBS and ABC executive key to helping run the early STAR TREK conventions, who later became an author (and an agent), and also helped contribute to MANY science fiction events. Thomas Anderson, chairman of a Lunacon or two, and a World Fantasy Convention (and another original Trek Con veteran),appears with his girlfriend (were they married yet?) Dana L. Friese (soon to have more fame in fandom as Dana L.F. Anderson) as Elric. Costume con favorite Angelique Trouvere (aka “Destiny”) is there as Vampirella (with Heidi Saha as the young Vampi). Long time film actor, and science fiction fan, Teel James Glenn is there as Flash Gordon (and is that Cortland Hull as Ming?) Soon-to-be-veteran comics pro Jack Harris is Two-Face, Patrick Daniel O’Neill hams it up as Captain Marvel Jr…. (Amazngly, Dave Burd, future cast member the cult TV comedy program THE UNCLE FLOYD SHOW, is also in attendance, as THE T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS’ Dynamo.) The sound kicks in at about 4:05, and then suddenly one is back in July, 1973! I find this particularly amazing, because I would become friends with many of these folks, just two-and-a-half years later! (Heck, I’d be helping to run the programming at some of these comic cons, just a little while after that!) Although I couldn’t spot any familiar faces in the audience, some among the File 770 faithful might be able to recognize someone–and it’s still a great record of just what a comic con crowd often looked like, even during the next d=few seasons. (The Andersons, and Joanie, perform a skit, at around 10:10.) It would be interesting who else can identified here, among the costumed cohorts!
(11) I’ve heard of The 39 Steps, but this is the first time I have heard of The 75 Steps, although I’ve seen The Exorcist.
For Andrew Huff, lover of horror films, the 75 steps in Washington, D.C., where Father Karras plummets to his death in “The Exorcist” are his Lincoln Memorial. “I go to the steps all the time,” he said, “and when visitors come to Washington, I always take them there.”
All that was missing was a special tourist designation. And on Friday, largely through Mr. Huff’s efforts, that oversight will be rectified. The eerie stairway will be commemorated with an official city plaque — even signed by Mayor Muriel Bowser — declaring them “The Exorcist Steps.”
I wonder where you go in that neighborhood for a nice bowl of pea soup.
(12) Ray Bradbury manuscripts going under the hammer! And some nice artwork. You have until tomorrow to bid on these items in the latest Nate D. Sanders auction.
Ray Bradbury typed letter signed, plus two original typed manuscripts, given by Bradbury to Fracisco Porrua, who edited Bradbury’s works for the Spanish language population. Accompanying the typed manuscripts for ”The Women” and ”The Shape of Things”, Bradbury writes to Porrua on 3 March 1964 on his personal stationery: ”…I have no secretary, which means that hundreds of letters which come in during each month must be funneled through my own inadequate hands and sometimes I fall far behind with my correspondence. Forgive me. To help you in your search for stories for R IS FOR ROCKET, I enclose the following science-fantasy stories and weird-fantasy stories…” Bradbury goes on to list 10 stories, including ”The Women” and ”The Shape of Things” and then continues, ”…I believe these stories would give you much to juggle with in reshaping your various titles in the various books…” Bradbury continues, regarding the introduction for ”R Is for Rocket” and writes, ”…I am happy to hear you will soon be making an offer on MACHINERIES OF JOY and THE ANTHEM SPRINTERS…[signed] Ray Bradbury”. Both manuscripts are typed on thin tracing paper which was placed behind regular sheets of paper. ”The Women” is 16 pages and ”The Shape of Things” is 26 pages. Manuscripts and letter measure 8.5” x 11”. Lot is in very good condition.
Minimum Bid: $1,000.
Ink and Watercolor Drawing by E.H. Shepard of Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet
Beautifully rendered watercolor and ink drawing of Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet by E.H. Shepard, the illustrator chosen by A.A. Milne to bring his literary characters to life. Here, Shepard draws Pooh and Piglet upon a letter to his agent, allowing the characters to express his feelings of gratitude and joy. In the autograph letter signed, dated 29 February 1932, Shepard thanks his agent for a letter, writing that he has ”done splendidly” and that ”this view is shared by others”. To emphasize his feelings, Shepard draws Winnie-the-Pooh reaching up and Piglet excitedly jumping at his side. Shepard must have been very pleased with his agent, as he very seldom drew his most famous characters; this drawing, done early in the illustrator’s career and just a few years after the Pooh series, is a rare exception. Single page is written from Long Meadow, Guildford. Light uniform toning and mounted to card. Overall in very good to near fine condition. With provenance from Sotheby’s.
Minimum Bid: $50,000
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, David Doering, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
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Poor rover… Thanks for the writing bundle link I will check that out.
It was sold to the junkers for too little bread.
When the nerds found out, the rover was dead.
🙁
It might have helped Allen Steele’s point if he’d chosen authors who could have actually blogged–someone not dead, maybe?
I also noticed that the only authors Steele used as examples lived when no one blogged. Way to completely screw up a point.
::god stalk::
(change of pace)
Other activities that authors might want to consider giving up in order to further their art include: socializing (a pure distraction), reading (except for research, if you must), having a family, watching television or movies, playing video games, knitting, basket weaving, and, of course, masturbation (the only option you’ll have left after having given up socializing and having a family).
Music may be allowed, but only soothing instrumental music. Studies have shown that music with lyrics, be it rap, rock, or opera, can be distracting.
Honestly, I’m surprised that Steele has such a streak of Luddism, given the gung-ho, go science! attitude of much of his work.
edit: oh, gosh, I’m some number. I guess I should be excited? 🙂
While none of those authors blogged (for the very good reason that blogging didn’t exist while they were alive) I’m almost certain that at least a couple of those were prone to writing letters to and articles for newspapers or zines, which is probably the closest contemporary equivalent.
@meredith: indeed, and literary kerfluffles, which are more-or-less the pre-Internet equivalent of Internet kerfluffles, go back many centuries, and are often preserved in those same letters and such. Which is how we know that they were often as silly in the past as they are today. 🙂
(5) If authors don’t blog, who will generate the kerfluffles?
(9) The original article points out that these are 39 Steps to being a gent, so I suspect tongue is wedged firmly in cheek.
(10) Wow, there’s some spectacular costumes back there in the 70s. Also, the contestants look quite good.
(5) More to the point, if your blogging time reduces your writing time, then you’re likely doing it wrong. There are writers who can manage both (and I expect that’s the more cogent point, how a writer manages their time). For some blogging is something they enjoy doing when not writing.
It is also possible to blog without being a dick (there are a few writers who I’d like to see try that approach).
It’s a bit like the writing advice posts where the writing advice works best (and sometimes only) for the person writing the post. Different strokes and all that…
– The nine and sixty ways of constructing Pixel Scrolls
– Scrolls and the Art of Blog Maintenance
– The 7 Pixels of Highly Effective Scrolls
– Pixelnetics
– How to win friends and influence pixel…
To be fair to Steele, if you’re blogging because you think you have to to maintain your fan base, you may be doing it wrong.
Some writers are social; some aren’t. Readers don’t really seem to mind either way.
Torrential downpour out there.
A list of writers who didn’t blog, consisting entirely of writers who died before blogging was an available Thing To Do, is somewhat less than persuasive.
There are other thoughts floating around, but not coming close enough for me to catch.
Clicky.
An update on the rover story indicates that the rover was not actually scrapped, but the junkyard has it stored.
Charles Dickens would have blogged – and I bet Mark Twain would have.
I’d actually argue that Asimov did blog; he was just clever enough and wrote in so many fields and genres that he got paid for it. For example, his science columns in F&SF often started with a recent personal anecdote. As did his editorials in IASFM. And he often gave his opinion on issues of the day. Certainly I felt I “knew” him as well as any number of today’s blogging authors.
Haha, it was a great Jonah J. Jameson in that Comic Art movie! 😀 Also liked the Mr. Mind.
I read a lot of Asimov essays back in the day, and they did seem to often go from a personal ancedote or point, and jump into the topic. I read them in collection form long before I read F&SF–Asimov on Numbers(my favorite), Asimov on Chemistry, etc.
You’ll have to give that up.
Spurious correlation is spurious, especially since it relates to anecdata.
Sure not everyone is a Scalzi, Wendig or Correia, but this advice is just as wrongheaded as the advice that you must blog to be a successful author.
Selecting an author who relentlessly traveled to give readings and lectures in order to make money and promote his work, not to mention writing all of those articles and letters to newspapers, as an example of why an author shouldn’t blog is extremely weird. I am pretty sure all that travel would have put a much bigger dent into a persons writing time.
I think Mark Twain would have been a rabid blogger, and he probably would have greatly appreciated things like Kickstart later in his life when he went bankrupt.
Blogging is just this era’s means of putting yourself before the public, and writers have always been doing that. (With some exceptions. Kafka, for instance. But having no public exposure didn’t do his career much good while he was, y’know, alive….)
If it wasn’t for blogging, I would literally have sold none of my most recent e-books (as they haven’t hit google yet) whereas *tah dah* I’ve sold 6.
http://www.simonbjones.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/book-news-king-in-yellow-e-book-finally.html
http://www.simonbjones.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/book-news-charles-dickens-martian-notes.html
The alternative is ‘waiting’ for the heffalumps of readers to fall into the heffalump trap of ‘zero publicity’ while walking round and round a tree.
Simon BJ
The lunar rover prototype was not destroyed, and is sitting in the junkyard still all in one piece.
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/10/prototype_lunar_rover_sold_for.html
No doubt.
I suspect Isaac Asimov would have been an avid blogger too. Every time I read a vintage SF magazine from the ’50s or later, it seems to have an essay or a letter to the editor from Asimov in it.
Anyhow, as with all ironclad rules, the rule not to blog is hidebound and inflexible. John Scalzi blogs and is wildly successful. So does Neil Gaiman.
Sure, lots of people whitter away their time blogging and don’t do productive work, but that’s not an argument against blogging. It could be an argument against putting one’s energy to building a social presence *instead* *of* honing one’s craft.
Useless social networking has been sold to people as the path to success probably since before the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and his cocktail party glad-handing.
Blogging to increase visibility is as cruel a chimera, and it undoubtedly leads to a myriad of modern-day Willy Lomans.
But people talking to each other about what they are doing and what they like — that is a very old, very human activity.
Twain’s bankruptcy is rather unusual as he didn’t declare such to get out of his debts but rather because he didn’t like who he was in debt to. Indeed he paid all of his debts in full prior to being getting bankruptcy status.
And unlike many persons who choose bankruptcy, he kept his house and all of his personal possessions.
Was going to make all the points about Steele that everybody else, starting with Meredith, has already made. I also own a copy of The Baghdad Blog, by Salman Pax. Actually, I’m mentioned in it at least once.
I know a couple of authors who started blogging as a way to force themselves to write something, anything, every day.
I hope the rover makes it home!
Twain, Asimov, and Dickens would be prolific bloggers. Oscar Wilde and Twain would both have *millions* of Twitter followers.
All we need is a broken-down garrulous old astronaut-who-never-made-it-into-space to steal the Rover and drive it back to NASA and we’ve got the best movie of the year.
I would go to that movie.
Although I want the broken-down old astronaut to spray his mouth with silver paint while shouting “Witness me!”
I wonder if the junkyard would be willing to sell the rover. And how much they would want for it.
I remember thinking when the first successful Mars rover was running around that NASA was missing a great merchandising opportunity to sell miniature remote controlled rovers to kids and adult space fans.
The follow-on article implied that the junkyard owner was trying to sell it.
He had some worry, though, that NASA would claim that it was still government property (particularly if he let them borrow it).
There were a number of toy versions of the various Mars rovers, but not radio controlled out of the box. You might be able to adapt the Lego version.
Thank you for the recommendation! I’m glad you enjoyed.
The Reynolds story is out of copyright but was hitherto digitally unavailable. I try to make all such stories available as I find them.
The Traveler
Pretty much everything I could think of to say on the “Don’t blog” useless advice (5) has been said. Not blogging is a luxury I can’t afford, given that it’s about the only way anyone outside a very small reader community would know I’ve written books at all.
Xtifr
Don’t forget that writers shouldn’t comment in other’s blogs either. Actually if a writer doesn’t want kefuffling perhaps another career might be a better option
The only reason you can’t find DUNE BLOGGER on the shelves at bookstores is because Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson haven’t finished writing it yet.
Little Lost Rover
Someone write it, pretty please?
FTFY
A gentleman must own a tweed jacket? I don’t think Americans are even allowed to own tweed jackets.
We’ll Go No More A-roving
The Reynolds story is out of copyright but was hitherto digitally unavailable. I try to make all such stories available as I find them.
Are you sure? At the time the story was written copyright protection extended a maximum of 56 years from the date of publication, but the 1976 Copyright Act and the 1988 Copyright Term Extension Act substantially changed this, including grandfathering any existing works that were still protected when they were passed so the copyright of those works became life of the author plus seventy years.
A gentleman must own a tweed jacket? I don’t think Americans are even allowed to own tweed jackets.
I own one.
Of course Dickens would have blogged; while writing his novels and giving public readings, etc., he edited a series of magazines, featuring his own work.
Twain, too – he gave lots of speeches and wrote a range or articles; my favourite is his criticism of James Fennimore Cooper.
I think this tends to lead to problems in longer running series. It’s why Dresden Files has been slipping down my scale of ‘must read new release immediately’ to ‘when/if I get to it’. I think characters need to be challenged in new ways, but that doesn’t necessarily mean bigger problems with bigger solutions and bigger disasters. The Vorkosigan series I think does an excellent job of giving Miles (or any of the characters) problems that grow them as a character. When things go wrong, I don’t think he uses bigger solutions, so much as keeps attempting different approaches. He also often ends up in situations that strip him of his power, which resets the scope of what he can do. Dresden, otoh, keeps gaining magical artifacts of immense power.
I do like the “swallowed a fly” story as a way of remembering that one thing needs to follow directly from another and generally go awry; solutions should cause the next problem.
You know what? I’m not sorry that the “rover” was scrapped. It needs to be noted that this was not an actual rover meant to be sent to the moon. It was not even a replica or working model of an actual rover. It was an early engineering prototype. Some engineers slapped some parts together to test early ideas and then moved on. Is it historically interesting? Sure. And it should be documented appropriately. And then junked.
Because the alternative is a bizarre mandate that everything that NASA ever makes for any reason needs to be kept indefinitely. Which is logistically insane, and also starts to cross the line between respectfully preserving history and fetishization.
How many current, active projects are we willing to give up to free up the storage space and resources to ensure nothing ever gets junked?
Copyright is complicated. I volunteer for Distributed Proofreaders, which is the primary feeder for Project Gutenberg, and we’ve got dedicated volunteers who do nothing but copyright research to make sure Gutenberg only gets actually public domain works. And even they get it wrong once in a while. The only simple think you can say about US copyright is that if something was printed in the US with a copyright notice in 1922 or earlier, it’s out of copyright in the US. Cases later than that require looking at whether or not anybody ever filed a copyright extension on the work, and if they renewed it. So yes, the story may be in the public domain, if F&SF and Reynolds both failed to renew its copyright. Or it might not be.
Ryan H: There’s nothing stopping NASA from adding a tiny bit to its budget by selling it to the collector’s market, though, is there? Surely they’d have gotten more from a rich tech nerd than they got from a junkyard. And then it’s the nerd’s problem to store it.
I still have a tweed suit that I had in high school. It certainly doesn’t fit, but one does not discard tweed.
@Cally
Not SFF at all, but if there’s any way of prompting your people to gutenberg up London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew, then I would love you for it.
Published 1851, author died 1887, so I can’t imagine that it’s under any kind of copyright. It’s a tremendously important book though, and a strange omission.
Mayhew is not available on Gutenberg, but is on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/londonlabourand01mayhgoog.