(0) SCROLL LITE. Still full of symptoms, but a bit more energetic than yesterday. Yay!
(1) WHAT DO YOU KNOW? You can catch up on the results of two genre-oriented trivia events at LearnedLeague.
The One-Day Special quiz for The Last Unicorn has now concluded, and the questions can be seen by the general public. Here’s a link to it. Filer David Goldfarb got 10/12 right, ranking 36th out of 247 players.
Here’s another LearnedLeague quiz, about Octavia Butler. You can find it by following this link. Goldfarb got 11/12 on that one, ranking 14th out of 356.
(2) MEMORY LANE.
2019 — [By Cat Eldridge.] In Dublin 2019 which was forty-nine years after she got her first Hugo at Heicon ‘70 for The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin would receive her final Hugo for The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition. It came on the 50th anniversary of first publication of A Wizard of Earthsea.
The original novels that comprise this lovely work, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan, (1970) and The Farthest Shore (1972), were amazingly, at least to my thinking, not nominated for Hugos.
I’ve got a copy and I can say that is is indeed a stellar work. There’s an introduction done by her for this edition also It also includes Tehanu, The Other Wind, “The Daughter of Odren” novelette, the Tales From Earthsea collection and two short stories, “The Rule of Names” and The Word of Unbinding”. It also “Earthsea Revisioned: A Lecture at Oxford University”, her lecture there.
There were among fans online complaints about its price. Really? You got five novels plus other goodies in an oversized lavishly illustrated volume that was immediately a collectors item and you’re complaining? Proof that some fans are born kvetchers.
It was not awarded a Best Novel Hugo but instead was awarded Best Art Book with its illustrations being by Charles Vess who won Best Professional Artist that same year. Vess has illustrated a lot of the work of Charles de Lint including A Circle of Cats and The Cats of Tanglewood Forest.
(3) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born November 2, 1913 — Burt Lancaster. Certainly being Dr. Paul Moreau on The Island of Doctor Moreau was his most genre-ish role but I like him as General James Mattoon Scott in Seven Days in May. And, of course, he’s really great as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams. (Died 1994.)
- Born November 2, 1927 — Steve Ditko. Illustrator who began his career working in the studio of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby during which he began his long association with Charlton Comics and which led to his creating the Captain Atom character. Did I mention DC absorbed that company as it did so many others? Now he’s best known as the artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. For Charlton and also DC itself, including a complete redesign of Blue Beetle, and creating or co-creating The Question, The Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, and Hawk and Dove. He’s been inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. (Died 2018.)
- Born November 2, 1941 — Ed Gorman. He’d be here if only for writing the script for the Batman: I, Werewolf series in which Batman meets a werewolf. Very cool. More straight SFF is his Star Precinct trilogy with Kevin Randle which is quite excellent, and I’m fond of his short fiction which fortunately is showing up in digital form at the usual spots. (Died 2016.)
- Born November 2, 1942 — Stefanie Powers, 80. April Dancer, the lead in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. which lasted just one season. Did you know Ian Fleming contributed concepts to this series and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well? She would play Shalon in the crossover that started on The Six-Million Man and concluded on The Bionic Woman called “The Return of Bigfoot”.
- Born November 2, 1942 — Carol Resnick. 80. Wife of that Resnick who credited her according to several sources with being a co-writer on many of his novels. He also credited her as being a co-author on two movie scripts that they’ve sold, based on his novels Santiago and The Widowmaker. And she’s responsible for the costumes in which she and Mike appeared in five Worldcon masquerades in the Seventies, winning awards four times.
- Born November 2, 1949 — Lois McMaster Bujold, 73. First let’s note she’s won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein’s record, not counting his Retro Hugo. Quite impressive that. Bujold’s works largely comprises three separate book series: the Vorkosigan Saga, the Chalion series, and the Sharing Knife series. She joined the Central Ohio Science Fiction Society, and co-published with Lillian Stewart Carl StarDate, a Trek fanzine in which a story of hers appeared under the byline Lois McMaster.
- Born November 2, 1959 — Peter Mullan, 63. Actor and Filmmaker from Scotland whose first genre role is in FairyTale: A True Story, which is based very loosely based on the story of the Cottingley Fairies (and which makes for interesting reading, if you have the time). He played Corban Yaxley in both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and is currently in a recurring role on the Westworld series as the James Delos character.
(4) COMICS SECTION.
- The Far Side presents a controversial theory.
(5) THE CHASE. This is the best thing I’ve seen today!
(6) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Alasdair Beckett-King dropped this Lovecraft parody on Saturday.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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(3) Happy Birthday Lois!
Thanks for the title credit, Mike. Keep feeling better.
Happy b’day to Lois, and to Carol.
The Books of Earthsea has a much better cover than the original of the first book, which IIRC, the art director changed the hero from dark-skinned to white, and possibly blond.
Looks like Netflix has given the go-ahead for another season of “Sandman”
https://twitter.com/Netflix_Sandman/status/1587961576316801024
And mark says The Books of Earthsea has a much better cover than the original of the first book, which IIRC, the art director changed the hero from dark-skinned to white, and possibly blond.
If you mean the edition that preceded the Ace edition which was done by Parnassus Press, yes. The Ace edition cover art was a masterpiece in WTF imagery art in my opinion.
Puffin went back to a blonde haired version a few years later.
@Mike: The editing is a little messed up on item 1. At first glance it looks like you were the one who placed 36th on the Last Unicorn quiz.
(I mean, if you are interested in playing LearnedLeague and being eligible to compete in quizzes like these, I’d be overjoyed to give you a referral. But that certainly hasn’t happened yet.)
I eat some cheese this time of night because my newest anti-seizure meds, Lamotrigine, must be taken with food.
At Market Basket last week, I picked up a cheese called Huntsman from the UK which was double Gloucester layered with Blue Stilton. I’m a sucker for interesting cheeses.
I just sampled this cheese. It was simply stellar. Creamy with a sharp, complex taste that was wonderful. And it had lots of active culture, errr, veins of mold growing in it. Nice!
David Goldfarb: That’s fixed now. I wanted to report your achievement, not appropriate it!
(2) That is a gorgeous edition. I came thisclose to buying it a couple of months ago, but I was worried I would have a hard time finding the best shelf to place it on. It does look as if it would be hard to read in that format. 🙁 It reminds me of the time my father bought an enormous anatomy book at the store, so he made himself a custom wooden book holder just so he could read that book.
(3) A great batch of birthdays. I’m particularly biased toward Lois McMaster Bujold! 🙂
Note: Welp. Now I know that the drain in the floor of the laundry room is called a backwater valve. Guess how I know that? 🙁 Let’s hope the County can fix the sewer backup so that we can flush again.
@Cat Eldridge: Huntsman has been one of my favorites for many years now! Unfortunately, the local shop which imported it did not survive the pandemic, so it’s been a while since I had any. Enjoy some for me! 🙂
@Mike: Glad to hear you’re feeling a little better! Slow news days are fine, but I’d prefer the reason not be such a distressing one.
Just finished the latest October Daye book, and I’d like to warn people that it’s the first proper cliff-hanger of the series! It’s good, but those who hate cliff-hangers may want to wait for the next book to come out, which shouldn’t take long, given how prolific Seanan is. (Hopefully the series isn’t going into cliff-hanger mode.)
Glad you’re feeling better, Mike.
2) I love that edition in theory, but in practice I think I’d want it to come with a lectern or something. I’ve always been partial to the 1970s Pauline Ellison covers (inaccurate though they may be), not least because those were the versions I initially read.
Mike, I’m glad you’re doing better.
Currently reading Eye of Cat/Isle of the Dead, by Zelazny.
Xtifr says Huntsman has been one of my favorites for many years now! Unfortunately, the local shop which imported it did not survive the pandemic, so it’s been a while since I had any. Enjoy some for me!
Sorry that you lost your local shop that imported it. Market Basket, which Lis can no doubt tell you is excellent, is a New England only chain created by a Greek family and now own solely by Arthur T. Demoulas and his sisters after a really nasty family fight. It’s beloved both by its staff and its customers.
2) Cat, THANK YOU for the information on the Earthsea deluxe collection! I’d somehow overlooked that in the past.
I just ordered a copy from Amazon, who had discounted it to around $40. Original price was $60, and from your note about some fen kvetching about the price, I figured it would be somewhere north of $80-90–which I would gladly have paid. New HCs are $30 and up; the price for three HCs (a trilogy, remember) would have been at least $90.
Otherwise known as, full impulse at the trading post, Mr. Chekov!
In my collection are Gail’s old mass-market paperbacks from the 1970s–I don’t want to open them unnecessarily. She was a great fan of Earthsea, and I liked the series a lot, too.
(3) Incidentally, Charles Vess has a novel of his own out this September, Queen of Summer’s Twilight
Meredith Moment: The Best of Richard Matheson, a collection from Random Penguin, is $2.99 at the usual suspects.
Hello. I would like to report that I am in New Orleans on the eve of the World Fantasy Convention, and that I attended a most enjoyable reading and signing at Octavia’s uptown. Among those reading and signing was A Certain Wombat, reading from What Moves the Dead and sharing stories about the ideas behind it, and also about the impossibility of convincing anyone that The Seventh Bride was a kid’s book.
And now I must collapse. Good night!
Thanks for letting us share a view of the scene with you!
(3)
The series are actually named The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. (I used to watch both.)
5) Nature’s laser pointer.
3) I’m going to be an outlier and say that one of my favorite Bujold books was Falling Free, because it showed off her worldbuilding efforts beautifully, never mind chock-full of science lessons!
@Sean: Falling Free is great. I love the scene in which Leo shows the faked weld-scan to his students: “This is the most evil object you will ever see” (or words to that effect).
The Earthsea omnibus is best read in a recliner, supported by a pillow in your lap. I think I bought my copy after getting a kill fee check for a time-dependent conference report from a lit mag. I like reading it in winter, when things are snowy here in Northeastern Oregon and I’ve finished my writing work for the day.
Speaking of books that need lecterns, I got my Taschen Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland yesterday (which I believe had been recommended by somebody here?) and it is gorgeous and unwieldy in equal parts.
Yeah, the only reason I might not list Falling Free as one of my favorites is that Bujold has so many other great books! It is definitely an excellent book, and I cannot fault the taste of someone who does call it a favorite! 🙂
Following on from the Elvish and Dwarvish keycaps & keyboards, Drop are now also offering a Black Speech variant …