(1) SPECIAL DINO DELIVERY. Royal Mail’s “The Age of the Dinosaurs” special issue features eight new stamps showing different prehistoric species and their habitats. The stamps are in collaboration with the Natural History Museum and also celebrate 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning. (Click for larger images.)
(2) WICKED WORLD’S FAIR MELTDOWN. Stephen Beale, editor of The Steampunk Explorer, offers an “Inside Look: What Happened at Wicked World’s Fair?” The post first appeared on March 7 and has been updated half a dozen times with additional sources. Beale provided this synopsis of the post for File 770:
The event, Wicked World’s Fair, took place in February in Pennsylvania.
The organizer (Jeff Mach) is a highly controversial figure who previously ran the Steampunk World’s Fair, which was one of the largest steampunk events in the U.S. It collapsed in 2018 following misconduct allegations. The Daily Beast had a story about it.
The short version of this latest event is that he significantly overbooked vendor spots, so they ended up in spaces intended for panels and other non-vendor activities.
The sound crew for concert performances walked out due to non-payment.
There was a $35-per-head tea party, for which he sold 88 tickets, but due to overcrowding of vendors, there wasn’t enough capacity for all the ticketholders.
Requests for refunds via Eventbrite were declined. He’s blaming Eventbrite, but it appears that he just didn’t have the funds to cover his expenses.
My sources for the story include the former vendor coordinator and the former operations manager, both of whom worked as volunteers.
Some widely circulated videos show a confrontation between Mach and the vendors. One has 1.2 million views on Facebook. In some videos, one of his associates is seen standing in front of a vendor and reaching for a sword.
Since the event, vendors formed a private Facebook group called Disgruntled Wicked Vendors. It has around 100 members, though not all were actual vendors.
Following the SPWF collapse, many steampunk vendors, performers, etc. have vowed to avoid participating in Jeff Mach events. It appears that many vendors at WWF were not aware of this history. They’re trying to raise awareness of him so others are forewarned.
The vendor complaints were also covered by LehighValleyLive.com in “Bethlehem area steampunk convention ends contentiously. Vendors claim organizer running scam.”
(3) GODZILLA MINUS MORE THAN ONE COUNTRY. GeekTyrant says Japan is getting discs in May – no word when there will be a U.S. release. “Godzilla Minus One Blu-ray is Coming and Toho Shared a First Look”.
Godzilla Minus One had an incredibly strong box office run at the movie theaters and fans flocked to the cinemas to watch it. That theatrical run has ended and now Toho is teasing the upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of the film.
The home video teased below will be made available for Japanese consumers, but I think it’s safe to say that the United States will get something very similar.
The movie will be released in both its color and Black and White versions. The home release of Godzilla Minus One is set to hit shelves in Japan on May 1st. There’s no word on when the movie will hit home video in the United States….
(4) FAREWELL, MY DARLING, NEVER. Philip Athans is determined to keep them alive! “Don’t Kill Your Darlings” at Fantasy Author’s Handbook.
There’s good writing advice, interesting writing advice, iffy writing advice, and then there’s terrible, awful, spirit- and creativity-destroying writing advice, and the worst example of the latter category is “Kill your darlings.” What makes this nonsense so bad is how often and irresponsibly it’s repeated.
Often attributed to Dylan Thomas, sometimes William Faulkner (who, if he followed this advice himself would have killed The Sound and the Fury in its entirety), and then repeated by other teachers and authors including Stephen King. In reality the concept seems to have first been belched forth by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in a series of Cambridge Lectures about 110 years ago. Never heard of him? Neither have I. Maybe that’s because of his darling-free writing.
Whoever started it, it goes something like this:
“If you find you’ve written something you just love, that makes you feel as though you were born to do this, that you’ve found the heart and soul of it, delete that immediately and without further consideration because if you love it that much it can only be self-indulgent crap that no one else but you will like.”
What a spectacular load of bullshit….
(5) PROPSTORE. Craig Miller told about his evening at the Propstore auction on Facebook.
Propstore is an auction house based in London with an office here in Los Angeles. Their specialty is, as their name suggests, props from movies and television. Though, of course, they go well beyond that. (They’re the main auction house I’ve used to sell some of my collectibles.)
Last night was a reception and preview for their current auction, held on the penthouse level of the Peterson Automotive Museum in the Miracle Mile section of Los Angeles. (The auction starts today and goes for a total of three days and around 1500 items.) Herewith a few photos.
I have just a couple items in this auction. Alas, none of the really high-ticket items. I think solely a couple of pre-production paintings from “Return to Oz”. They weren’t on display.
What was on display were items including a Stormtrooper helmet from “Return of the Jedi”, an iconic dress worn by Lucille Ball on “I Love Lucy”, the Ten Commandments tablets from Cecil B. DeMille’s epic of the same name, and so much more. You can see a bunch on the Propstore Facebook page or on their webpage, where the auction is carried live (with on-line bidding, of course).
Propstore does these previews once a year and I frequently run into friends at them. Last night was no exception. It was nice to chat and spend a little time with Melissa Kurtz, Shawn Crosby, Chris Bartlett, among several others.
Perhaps best of all, because it’s been so long since I’ve seen or spoken to them, also present were Howard Kazanjian, producer of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Return of the Jedi”, and Anthony Daniels, known the world over for being the man inside C-3PO….
(6) AND IF YOU HAVE ANY MONEY LEFT OVER. Heritage Auctions’ “March 20 – 24 Treasures from Planet Hollywood” event is hawking stuff formerly on display at Planet Hollywood restaurants.
…Though Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis were the star investors best associated with the restaurant, Planet Hollywood was THE biggest star of them all. Millions would flock there to see items appearing on the silver screen, and sometimes even see one of Hollywood’s A-list coming to open the restaurant. Before emails and cell phones, before digital effects and Instagram, it was the closest we could get to being close to the movies we all know and love….
Here’s an iconic example of the wares: “Jurassic Park (Universal, 1993), Wayne Knight “Dennis Nedry” Hero”.
Designed to hold and preserve dinosaur embryos for 36 hours, the can is highly visible early in the film as Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) meets with his Biosyn contact, Lewis Dodgson (Cameron Thor), who gives him the can and explains its features while devising a plan to steal dinosaur DNA samples from John Hammond’s (Richard Attenborough) InGen. Later in the film, Nedry uses the can as he infiltrates the cold storage facility on Isla Nubar and secures the DNA samples. The can is ultimately lost as it falls from Nedry’s jeep, washed away in churning mud when the deceitful computer programmer meets his demise in the jaws of a Dilophosaurus. Chosen by Art Director John Bell, the Barbasol brand can was a perfect fit for its aesthetics and instant recognizability which would help it stick out in its scenes and draw the audiences’ eyes. Since the film’s 1993 release, Barbasol, and their can’s classic design, have become synonymous with the Jurassic Park franchise. Exhibits production and display wear with scuffing to the finish, oxidation across the metal components, color fading, and adhesive loosening to the vial’s labels. Vials contain remnants of the clear yellowish liquid used to fill them during production, with the “PR-2.012” vial missing its cap. Comes with a COA from Heritage Auctions.
Even more irresistible is this diminuitive costume: “Muppet Treasure Island (Buena Vista, 1996), Kermit the Frog”.
Muppet Treasure Island (Buena Vista, 1996), Kermit the Frog “Captain Abraham Smollett” Ensemble. Original (11) piece ensemble including (1) black frock-style coat with gold stitching, (1) ivory waistcoat with gold stitching, (1) pair of black breeches, and (1) long-sleeved ivory shirt with ruffled cuffs. The accessories included are: (1) black tricorn hat with gold stitching, (1) pair of ivory boots with button and buckle closures, (1) black cravat-style necktie, (1) black and red striped waist tie, (1) brown leather belt, (1) 19th century-style gray wig with ponytail and black bow, and (1) Kermit-sized sword with gold basket hilt that has some green coating from oxidation. This outfit is worn by Captain Abraham Smollett (Kermit) throughout the film as he captains the ship, “Hispaniola.” Ensemble displays some production wear. Obtained from Jim Henson Productions. Comes with a COA from Heritage Auctions.
(7) PANDAS AND SANDWORMS BECOME CASH COWS. Variety verified it by watching the ticket booth: “Box Office: Kung Fu Panda 4 Leads, Dune 2 Stays Strong”.
Universal and DreamWork’s animated adventure “Kung Fu Panda 4” topped the domestic box office, earning a solid $58.3 million from 4,035 theaters in its opening weekend.
It marks the biggest debut of the franchise since the original, 2008’s “Kung Fu Panda” ($60 million), overtaking the start of the two prior entries, 2016’s “Kung Fu Panda 3” ($41 million) and 2011’s “Kung Fu Panda 2” ($47.6 million), not adjusted for inflation….
…Although “Dune: Part Two” relinquished its box office crown to “Panda,” the sci-fi sequel had another strong outing with $46 million from 4,074 venues. It marks a 44% decline in ticket sales from its debut (an impressive hold for a blockbuster of this scale) and brings the film’s North American total to $157 million. Globally, the big-budget follow-up has generated $367.5 million.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 12, 1925 — Harry Harrison. (Died 2012.) So let’s talk about Harry Harrison who I’d say is best known for his extraordinarily excellent Stainless Steel Rat series. James Bolivar diGriz, aka “Slippery Jim” and “The Stainless Steel Rat” is one of the most interesting characters I ever had the pleasure to read.
The Stainless Steel Rat showed up, not surprisingly in a story called “The Stainless Steel Rat” sixty-seven years ago in Astounding in their August issue.
There are 12 works in the Stainless Steel Rat series, of which I’m absolutely certain that I’ve read and immensely enjoyed the first one, The Stainless Steel Rat, and after that is where it gets complicated. I’m looking now on the other iPad at the list of the novel titles and I can’t say that I remember any of them. I know that I’ve read at three or four of them, and liked reading them, but can’t tell you which, but I’m betting that they were the earlier ones.
I do know that I read all of three of the Deathworld series with Jason dinAlt, a professional gambler, as the central character. They’re fun SF pulp, all three originally written as serials in the Sixties. A fourth, Return to Deathworld, for the Russian market was co-written with two Russian authors and hasn’t been translated into English.
His third series, Bill, the Galactic Hero, first appeared in the “Starsloggers” novella in sixty years ago in the December issue of Galaxy. Bill the character is among the silliest that I’ve ever read about. I’m really fond of truly silly SF, however, though I read the first one I didn’t go beyond that.
Of course, worth noting is that Alex Cox directed an animated version of Bill, the Galactic Hero which was created with his students at the University of Colorado at Boulder, completed and released a decade ago. You can see it here.
Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! became Soylent Green with Charlton Heston. I’ll confess I’ve not read the novel, nor ever seen the film. I see the film was nominated first a Hugo at Discon II and won a Nebula for the film.
I’m only going to note two other Awards, one is Sidewise Award for Best Long Alternative History, the Hammer and the Cross trilogy, and a Grand Master Nebula.
I’ll admit I’ve not read enough of his shorter works to form an informed opinion, so I’ll let y’all tell me about that aspect of his fiction.
(9) BRAND X? “’Calling them X-Men is so 1960s’: Chris Claremont weighs in on the X-Men name change debate (and his idea for a replacement)” at Popverse.
Should the X-Men change their name? Ove the past few years, there has been some discourse around the name of Marvel’s iconic mutant team. The name has been around since the team’s first appearance in X-Men #1 (1963), but the world has changed since the 60s. Why does the team have a male-centric name when some of their most iconic members are female?
Chris Claremont, a writer famous for his 16-year X-Men run, has some thoughts on the discussion. During a discussion at the Uncanny Experience event, Claremont mused about the topic. “Calling them X-Men is so 1960s,” Claremont said, after referring to the team as the X-Group.
Claremont circled back to the topic during a question-and-answer session later in the discussion. When he was asked about changing the name, the writer revealed that it had been on his mind for years. “I tried that,” Claremont said. “I spent about 10 years referring to them as the X. The X being the unknown. It was pointed out to me that X-Men is trademarked, which apparently is a whole different kettle of fish. You can’t argue with legal people. When I came to work for Marvel, it was one or two guys, Apparently the Mouse House has much more than that. There are some fights you can’t win.”…
(10) LAUGHS OF THE CENTURY. Charlie Jane Anders makes excitement contagious about “My Favorite Comedy Films of the 2020s (So Far)” at Happy Dancing. Here’s one of her picks.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
This film finally made me a convert to the Chris Pine fan club. I know, I’m very late. Honestly, the whole cast is great, with Michelle Rodriguez getting better material than she usually gets and Justice Smith proving that he is an utterly brilliant actor. Not to mention Hugh Grant as a wonderfully oily villain. Like a lot of the other comedies on this list, Dungeons & Dragons manages to go way over the top while still having a lot of sympathy and respect for its characters, which is a tough balancing act. I appreciate any comedy whose characters seem to be genuinely trying to be better people, while screwing up over and over again. Also, the CGI monsters and other effects help tell the story instead of being a gaudy distraction!
(11) EMISSION POSSIBLE. [Item by Steven French.] Beautiful but deadly? No, not really! “The Collectors Who Hunt Down Radioactive Glassware” at Gastro Obscura.
IN JANUARY OF 2021, A New Jersey teenager brought a piece of an antique Fiestaware plate to a high-school science class. The student had received a Geiger counter, an instrument used to measure radiation, for Christmas, and wanted to do an experiment. When the plate registered as radioactive, someone at the school panicked and called in a hazmat team. The entire school was evacuated, and those in the nuclear science field were aghast….
…Prior to World War II, and well before its potential for energy or weaponry was recognized, uranium was commonly used as a coloring agent in everything from plates, glasses, and punch bowls to vases, candlesticks, and beads. Uranium glass mosaics existed as early as 79 AD.
Also known as canary or vaseline glass, uranium glass is typically yellow or green in color and glows bright green under a black light. Shades can range from a translucent canary yellow to an opaque milky white depending on how much uranium is added to the glass, from just a trace to upwards of 25 percent. Uranium was also used in the glaze of orange-red Fiestaware, also known as “radioactive red,” prior to 1944, and was once a common sight in American kitchens.
Although uranium glassware does register on a handheld Geiger counter, the radiation amounts are considered negligible and on par with radiation emitted from other everyday items such as smoke detectors and cell phones….
(12) FANCY A BEER? IT’LL KILL YOU. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Isaac Arthur departs from his usual Futurism for one of his “Sci-fi Sundays.”
This time it’s a shorter-than-usual edition at just 15 minutes because it is an impromptu one. This time the SFnal topic is of alien beer, specifically Alien Beer To Die For.
Now of course, I myself am unlikely to ever sample alien beer for the simple, factual reason that I live in Brit Cit, and have roots in Cal Hab and the Caledonian rad wastes, and am close to many of the best real ale hostelries in the spiral arm.
(Neat, huh? See some of you in Cal Hab this summer.)
A look at the possible effects of alien food, drink, and microbes on us or our ecosystem.
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Godzilla takes girl on date and it’s adorable” – here, let Dexerto spoil it all for you.
…The 138-second short starts with said girl losing her mind when Godzilla (or perhaps more accurately, someone in a Godzilla costume) shows up at her door. She hits the deck, starts hyperventilating, and becomes hysterical. Which isn’t traditionally how a great date starts. But then it all becomes rather lovely.
They go shopping. Then have a picnic in the park, before a trip to the beach where this decidedly odd couple wrestle on the sand. The date ends with them kissing each other as the sun sets (well, mainly her kissing Godzilla as the monster’s mouth can’t move)….
[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Todd Mason, Stephen Beale, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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6) “What, no menthol?” 😉
(9) BRAND X?
“X-Men”, though dated, has a lot of name recognition built over decades. It is also distinctive enough that one won’t confuse it with anything else.
‘X’ is insufficiently distinctive, and additionally these days is likely to be confused with the entity formerly known as Twitter…
(8) Harrison’s Star-smashers of the Galaxy Rangers parodies Campbell’s Arcot, Morey and Wade books
(4) Yes, “If writing gives you pleasure you’re doing it wrong” is terrible advice.
(0) Great title! Kudos to Daniel Dern.
(2) Be sure to go to the link to learn what happened to the … ceiling tiles?!
(4) “Kill Your Darlings” is a weird piece of writing advice. It’s too general, so it’s easy to misinterpret. Too easy for the wrong editors to use it to coerce writers into removing what makes their stories fun.
(8) A book containing “The Stainless Steel Rat and The Misplaced Battleship” is just 99 cents on Kindle. However, it’s just 39 pages. Does anyone know if the entire first book is available on Kindle?
My favorite writing advice is “Writing is not hard work, it’s hard play.”
I was there when Harry Harrison got his Grand Master and I got to talk to him for a few minutes. I told him my favorite work of his was a short story called “The Pad,” and the look of shock he sported… one of my fave memories.
Typo Harry Harrison passed away in 2012 not 2022.
Anne Marble asks A book containing “The Stainless Steel Rat and The Misplaced Battleship” is just 99 cents on Kindle. However, it’s just 39 pages. Does anyone know if the entire first book is available on Kindle?
It’s in Harry Harrison: Collected Works.
The blurb for it says “Sharp Ink presents to you this unique and meticulously edited Sci-Fi collection: Deathworld The Stainless Steel Rat Planet of the Damned The Repairman The Misplaced Battleship The Ethical Engineer Toy Shop Arm of the Law The Velvet Glove The K-Factor Navy Day.”
They obviously had a shortage of commas…
(1) But there’s no feathers on the dinosaurs!
(2) Couldn’t read the story. No, I will not disable my adblockers.
(3) I know what’s going to happen. Until the early nineties, Rocky Horror was not permitted to be distributed on tape in any country but Japan. Therefore, there were fifty gazillion hot copies made. Of course I have one… and I really can’t see it any other way. I mean, in English, with Japanese subtitles, just adds so much to the je ne se quais…
(4) No, no, that’s what honest beta readers are for. And editors.
Birthday – and so much of what he wrote was parody and satire.
(9) Um, Brand X? That was a movie around ’69-’70, that showed on college campuses. Years before The Kentucky Fried Movie, and other parodies of daily tv. Yes, of course it was X rated.
(10) Maybe I’ll have to see that.
(12) Alien beer? 200 proof only? hah (pulls up Tom Smith’s 307 Ale). Beat that.
(13) Um, er, ahh… the cover of issue 1 of Phil Foglio’s Xxxenophile (the cover is SFW) https://lastgasp.com/products/xxxenophile-no-1-first-printing-cover-scuffs
@Cat Eldridge
Thanks! (click)
At one job, we edited instructional manuals from writers in the U.K. and from writers in Toronto. My co-worker joked that she wanted to pack up the extra commas from the Canadian authors and ship them to the U.K. authors.
(4) I have heard of Quiller-Couch…he’s mostly remembered now for the “Oxford Book of English Poetry” – up to 1918.
(11) I knew Fiestaware was not to be trusted. Just look at those colors!
(9) The male-centric part of “X-Men” is not the X, obviously, and a change to the other part would be good if they do it well.
I have survived the several hours this building was without heat and hot water, so that they could fix things that could have caused a more serious, and also unscheduled, outage on a significantly colder day.
(2) I first met Jeff Mach when he was an undergrad and I was a grad student. He claimed he had cracked the way to write A papers in Rutgers’s freshman composition course, which I (along with about 300 other people) was teaching at the time. “My going rate is $200 a paper, higher if it’s last minute,” he said. This seemed to me a strange thing to say to a person one was meeting for the first time. He also claimed that he entertained himself by driving down to Princeton, half an hour away, and telling the grad students there that he was writing a dissertation on the use of the word “don’t” in the works of George Bernard Shaw — which would not have been a viable dissertation topic anywhere. To this day, I’m not sure whether he was just trying to get my goat, or if he actually did those things. Either way, he was lying to somebody.
Some years later, he invited me to read at the third (?) Wicked Faire from a novella I was promoting. When I got there, I discovered that the upside was I’d be reading at the biggest stage, rather than in some small panel room. On the downside, the act right before me was a burlesque troupe. I’ve had to follow some great writers at convention readings over the years, but nobody else has asked me to follow burlesque dancers. You will not be surprised that I sold zero copies of my book at that event.
I didn’t know Jeff very well, but our social circles overlapped a lot. We were guests at several of the same weddings, that kind of thing. One of the friendly jokes at his expense, after several years of Wicked Faires, was that he would sell tickets to his own wedding. And when he got engaged, that’s exactly what he did. I got an invitation, as I think all the thousands of people on the Wicked Faire’s email list did. At that point, I was immersed in parenting my kids, who were a toddler and a preschooler, so I have no idea how Jeff’s wedding went.
When things first started falling apart in his Wicked/Steampunk event empire, I looked back at our interactions over the years and figured the allegations were plausible. I hadn’t witnessed the things that were alleged, but no part of me was shocked to hear those claims.
(8) Harry Harrison. He did write some most excellent short fiction. Here are my recommendations (I have not read all of his short fiction, so there could be more great stuff).
1. “The Streets of Ashkelon”, a short story, New Worlds Science Fiction, #122 September, rated 4.1/5, or “Superlative”.
2. “Roommates”, a novelette, from “The Ruins of Earth”, Thomas M. Disch editor, 1971, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, rated 4.1/5. (This was inspired by “Make Room! “Make Room!”)
3. “The Misplaced Battleship”, Astounding/Analog Science Fact & Fiction April 1960, rated 3.7/5, or “Very good”. This is the second Slippery Jim diGraz story, I think.
4. “The Stainless Steel Rat”, a short story, Astounding August 1957, rated 3.8/5, or “Great”, and the first Slippery Jim diGraz story.
It’s also with noting that he and Brian W. Aldiss edited the most Excellent “Year’s Best” (Best SF:XX) series from 1967 to 1975. He did other anthologies with Aldiss, and a number of anthologies on his own.
8) Growing up, I read my share of Harrison — primarily the Stainless Steel Rat (a paperback omnibus of the first three novels), Bill the Galactic Hero (which at that point was a standalone), Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (always a favorite) and Technicolor Time Machine. Later, I read the West of Eden trilogy, which weren’t necessarily what I expected from the cover, but which I remember being good. Never did get around to Deathworld, presumably because it wasn’t on the public library paperback spinners.
(4) Never heard of Arthur Quiller-Couch? Never heard of Rumpole of the Bailey either, I expect. He was fond of Q’s Oxford Book of English Verse. I have the 1939 edition because of him (though whether that would have been the formative edition for Rumpole, I don’t know).
Sadly, Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers doesn’t seem to be available as a ebook (outside of Australia) and my ancient Berkeley paperback is crumbling into unreadability. But I will never forget the loathesome Lortonai or the hideous Garnishee. The Stainless Steel Rat stories have a nice manic energy.
2) As a conrunner i had the experience of helping Jeff Mach at one of the early iterations of SteamPunk World’s Fair in Piscataway NJ (oddly enough, the current location of Heliosphere). He contacted me in a mild pre-con panic as his attendance numbers had swelled beyond expectations and he needed help running a second hotel next door to the primary site. It was promised to be a low-key liaison gig because it was just an auxiliary sleeping accommodation and not the main function venue. All quiet on the southern front: no Con-Ops, just second-string Hotel Liaising.
So, you can imagine my surprise when Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band wove their way through the hotel’s indoor atrium at 11pm on Saturday night. Those fans who weren’t at the main hotel were greatly amused.
Hotel management was not.
It was that event when i understood why JM always, ALWAYS, had his lawyer in tow.
Filers, i did not work with him again and i’m not surprised by the current allegations.
(8) Harry Harrison
The man’s work influenced me as a teenager and got me on the road to becoming an environmental scientist. Back then I never thought I’d get to meet him (a number of times).
http://www.science-com.concatenation.org/news/news11~12.html#harry
Another one sadly missed.
The first Harry Harrison work I read that made me remember his name was his collection of matter transmitter stories One Step From Earth. Later I became a big fan of Bill, the Galactic Hero — having by then read much of the sf he was satirizing. After that I found his Deathworld story while reading old issues of Astounding/ Analog.
4) I, too, have heard of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. The famous quotation reads:-
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings,
No one piece of writing advice works for everyone, of course, but I’ve always thought that one was directed, not so much at “things you’re passionate about”, as at “look at me, I’m being Literary now! This is Booker Prize material for sure!” writing – much of which is well worth murdering, in my opinion
Put it this way: if you write a scene, and at the end of it you say to yourself, “yes, that worked well, the setting is vivid, the action is clear, the characters are showing their essential natures,” then you have a darling there that probably deserves to live. If, on the other hand, you say to yourself, “yes, that worked well, critics will love the clever alliteration and the metonymy, and the call-out to
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens will delight the classicists,” then it may be time to reach for the pruning shears.
8) Harry Harrison was a prolific writer with a great deal of range; I’ve got a fondness for his robot stories, collected under the rather naff title War with the Robots, and his teleportation stories, collected in One Step from Earth. He was also a passionate Esperantist, and it shows, While he’s possibly best known for his lighter works, he wrote any number of more serious pieces, most of which are worth looking for.
9) If they change the name of the team, would that make them the ex-X-Men?
8). I met Harry Harrison back in the 80’s when he was a guest at Aggiecon. I starred in a performance of a one-act play he wrote, about the last two humans (and frozen sheep) on the last chunk of the Earth after an alien attack. Harry and I told some wonderful NSFW frozen sheep jokes.
(9) X-Folks? X-Peeps? (They could go back to the old yellow uniforms if they went as X-Peeps.)
I remember reading Harrison’s “A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!” serialized in Analog in the 1970s (later published as “Tunnel Through the Deeps,” or something similar). Alternate history, where America lost the Revolution, about a descendant of George Washington building the titular tunnel. Had guest appearances by Arthur C. Clarke and also a detective named Richard Tracy. Not sure if it holds up, but I remember it fondly.
4) It goes back at least as far as Dr Johnson: “I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils:’Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.'”
I strongly recommend Harry Harrison’s memoir (Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!), which gives a sense of the man and the writer and a peripatetic life. He got around a lot and met a lot of people in the SF world and wrote well about it all.
(1) I was struck by how similar the dinosaur stamps feel to these 1989 US dinosaur stamps.
Jim writes
SF Gateway edition available on the UK and possibly other places
https://www.sfgateway.com/titles/harry-harrison/star-smashers-of-the-galaxy-rangers/9780575115811/
Steve Wright on March 13, 2024 at 6:01 am said:
That sounds better, but I suspect that if Gene Wolfe had taken that advice, his much-loved and -awarded Book of the New Sun series would have never reached the public. 🙂
Which bring us back to: there may not actually be any universal piece of good writing advice. I’m tempted to say, “be grammatical, outside of dialog”, but then you have to deal with the fact that so many people believe in pseudo-grammatical rules (no split infinitives, etc., etc.) that they can sound awkward and stilted whenever they try to write with “good grammar”.
As a reader–a non-expert, but I know what I like–my only advice to writers would be: if you’re going to break a rule, break it good and hard! 🙂
9) Well, the original title Stan Lee had in mind was “Merry Mutants.” They can always go back to that classic haha. Also, reminds me of Ex-Heroes – a severely underappreciated series by Peter Clines, wherein superheroes fight slow zombies while protecting the last surviving humans at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Yeah, it’s just as fun as it sounds. 🙂
@JohnC: Transatlantic Tunnel has a doozy of a continuity glitch (more apparent when you read it as a novel than as a serial probably): early in the novel there’s talk about Spanish colonies in North America, while late in the novel it’s established that Iberia was conquered by the Muslims and there isn’t (and never has been) a nation called “Spain”
(4) I’ve never heard “Kill your darlings” recommended in terms anything like those. It’s understood to mean that you have to be ready to remove passages that don’t work, no matter how much you love them. But it’s too easily misunderstood (just like “Show, don’t tell”), so it’s not great advice to give without a lot of explanation to go with it.
@Nickpheas: none of their buy-here links work in the U.S., alas, but thanks for the heads up. (I’m trying to imagine someone at Hachette saying “we don’t want your filthy dollars here”, but that doesn’t sound like publishing as we generally know it.)
(4) It should be borne in mind that the piece of advice in question, quoted more fully and accurately by Steve Wright above, is but one sentence from a series of lectures given in 1913–14 and published as the 200-page book On the Art of Writing in 1916. As always, advice should be read in context and not isolated and blown up into supposed stern imperatives.
Arthur Quiller-Couch (b. 1863, d. 1944), often bylined as “Q”, was both popular as a novelist and eminent as a critic in his time, over the course of several decades. That Philip Athans has never heard of him says more about Athans than about Quiller-Couch.
11) My wife has a collection of uranium glassware. We had the new neighbours around for cheese and wine a couple of nights ago and they were asking about it. Her comparison was that it’s the same order of radiation as you get from cat litter.
(8) Harry Harrison
I remember reading bunches of his sf novels serialized in the mags; no clear memory whether I also got any as library books. A quick library search shows lots of his books (inc singles and digital-collections/megapacks) (many also on Proj.Guternberg, I see — ), inc his biography (great title! – already noted above by Russell Letson), a book he co-wrote with Marvin Minsky, and many DeathWorlds.
@Ann Marble:
(8) A book containing “The Stainless Steel Rat and The Misplaced Battleship” is just 99 cents on Kindle. However, it’s just 39 pages. Does anyone know if the entire first book is available on Kindle?
Among other places, including one noted in a prior comment, there’s this free-library-loan on Hoopla
@Jim Janney
Sadly, Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers doesn’t seem to be available as a ebook (outside of Australia)
Perhaps in one of the collections/aggregations on Hoopla, etc? (I haven’t skimmed all the ToCs)
Cliff: Radiation from cat litter? Um, is that before or after use? — Asking for a friend. (Named Tim… Maybe it’s only nuclear powered cats who talk?)
“Radiation from cat litter?”
Applied Radiation and Isotopes Volume 66, Issue 9, September 2008, “Signatures for several types of naturally occurring radioactive materials”