(1) GORINSKY OUT AT EREWHON. Erewhon Books announced today that its founder, Liz Gorinsky, is stepping down as Publisher.
We are grateful for Liz’s incredible work and vision as our Publisher and Founder, and we wish Liz the very best in all future endeavors.
Senior Editor Sarah Guan will continue to guide Erewhon’s editorial program while leading the expansion of the editorial team in coming months.
Cassandra Farrin, (Director of Publishing and Production) and Martin Cahill (Marketing and Publicity Manager) will continue in their roles.
Erewhon Books would like to take this time to recognize several new additions to the team:
Viengsamai Fetters (they/them) has joined the team as our new Editorial Assistant.
Kasie Griffitts (she/her) has joined as our new Sales Associate.
Gorinsky tweeted:
Gorinsky also tweeted today:
(2) WRITER BEWARE HAS MOVED. Victoria Strauss explains the reason there is “A New Home For the Writer Beware Blog”.
… After many years on the Blogger platform, we have finally transitioned to WordPress, which offers much greater flexibility in terms of design, control, and ease of use.
We also have a new, easy to remember web address: writerbeware.blog.
I’ve been dissatisfied with Blogger for a while now. I’m not a web developer, but I’m not helpless, either; I maintain the Writer Beware website on the SFWA site, and I built and maintain two additional websites, my own and another for an organization my husband is part of. But every time I thought about moving to a new platform, the size of the challenge just seemed too daunting. How would I transfer hundreds of posts, not to mention the thousands of comments and images that go with them? What about all the non-working inbound links the move would create? Links wouldn’t be a problem if I just started fresh on a brand-new WordPress site–but then the blog would exist on two platforms, with two different web addresses. And what about WB’s thousands of followers and subscribers?
The turning point came last summer, when the only email subscription widget supported by Blogger discontinued service. If people couldn’t subscribe to the WB blog, there was just no reason to remain on Blogger….
(3) RESISTANCE. Eugen Bacon discusses the process of “Finding Me: Towards Self-Actualization in Writing” at the SFWA Blog.
I read Maurice Broaddus’s “Black Joy and Afrofuturism for Young Readers,” which heartens us to be present, fully and joyfully, not just for ourselves but for our children, our new adults, and our future generations. He dares that we find unapology for being, that ours becomes an everyday commitment to a joyful resistance against carefully charted devices of oppression.
That reading nudged an inward gaze at my own writing, and I saw its trajectory:
- Please, let me…
- I am Black…
- I am here.
(4) SANDERSON KICKSTARTER. Checked the ticker on the Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter today. It is still spinning like mad, and flew past $31,759,250 while I was copying the number. Still nine days to go: “Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson by Dragonsteel Entertainment”.
(5) TAFF ITINERARY TENTATIVELY JELLING. Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey will finally get his Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund trip this year. This is what he’s mapped out so far:
It looks like (unlike the “lost voyage” of 2020) Spain will not be part of my 2020/2022 TAFF delegate voyage. So:
Starting at the Eurocon/Luxcon, popping over to Poland for visits in a couple of places (Warsaw and Silesia), to England for Eastercon/Reclamation, from there to visit Sverifans in Uppsala and Malmö. If I haven’t overstayed my welcome in the U.K., I could return from Sweden and spend a few days in the U.K., maybe actually SEE Scotland and Scotfen in their native habitat? I don’t HAVE to be back in the States until 6 a.m. May 2….
(6) AIDING UKRAINE. Sales of Building a Better Future, edited by David Flin, will help raise money for charity. Contributing author Alex Wallace explains: “I am proud to say that a group of online alternate history fans (myself included) came together to put together an anthology, Building a Better Future, all proceeds of which go the British charity Disaster Emergency Commission’s Ukraine Humanitarian Aid Appeal. My short story Our Lady of Guidance, is among the stories therein.”
Following the start of the tragic events in Ukraine, a group of historical writers on an Internet forum discussed what they could do to help. The feeling of helplessness in the face of the man-made tragedy was palpable. We considered many options, each less practical than the previous one.
Then, someone had an idea. We were writers. We should write a book, an anthology, with proceeds going to help with the rebuilding of Ukraine.
From that, things flowed quickly. The theme of rebuilding became adopted: “Building a Better Future.”
That’s what you’re holding in your hands. The product of a group of historical writers trying to do something to help the people of Ukraine.
(7) WHAT WAS YOUR NEXT IDEA? James Davis Nicoll ticks off “Five SFF Stories In Which the Best-Laid Plans Are Thwarted” at Tor.com.
Who among us has not been betrayed by the failure of a simple plan that should have worked? One sets out to collect firewood, only to be suddenly concussed; one tries to kill time with a round of cards, only to crush four of one’s own phalanges; one seeks the comfort of restful sleep, only wake with a mysterious deep incision down one’s abdomen. It’s not just me—this seems to be a perverse tendency of the universe: I see it in the news and I see it in what I read. Consider these five SFF tales in which plans are thwarted, foiled, and frustrated by circumstance…
(8) STAR TREK, THE NEXT REGENERATION. Another fun read, this time about how the sausage gets made: “‘Is This a Joke?’ How a Classic ‘Star Trek’ Episode Broke the Rules of the Franchise” in The Hollywood Reporter.
… Unfortunately, Braga was largely on his own when it came to the second most difficult thing about writing the episode: The briefing room scene. Here, Geordi (LeVar Burton) explains to his shipmates that they are caught in a very Trek-ian “temporal causality loop.” Ironically, Braga found himself in a time loop of his own, rewriting the scene over and over again.
“It was my first big ‘technobabble’ scene, so it couldn’t just sound cool. It had to sound plausible. It had to resolve all the clues that had been accumulating,” says Braga. “In addition to all the explaining, you have to bring your own voice to it, too. You try to pepper in some cool or shocking moments, like when Picard asks how long we have been in the loop and Geordi responds with something like ‘it could be years.’ But Piller had me rewrite that scene so many times. I remember over Christmas break of that year, I was working on that scene.”…
(9) I CAN TELL BY YOUR OUTFIT. At CrimeReads Matthew Lyons recommends horror novels set in the American West: “Black Sunset: New Essential Horror Reads from the American West”.
…Stories about the American West have always been rife with scares and horrors sure to delight and repulse even the most hardened of horror fans, from pulpy matinee fare like Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula to literary classics like Blood Meridian, but by taking what works and leaving what doesn’t, writers today are riding into the sunset with some of the most breathtaking and terrifying fiction in recent memory….
(10) WILLIAM A. JOHNSON (1956-2022.) Writing as Bill Johnson, he won a Hugo Award in 1998 for his novella, “We Will Drink a Fish Together” which was also a Nebula nominee. His stories were published in The Year’s Best Science Fiction several times. The family obituary is here.
(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1995 – [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-seven years ago on FOX, the Sliders series first aired on this evening. Created by Tracy Tormé and Robert K. Weiss, it would air on that network for three years before moving to Sci Fi for another two years. As a consequence of that it was first produced in Vancouver before being finally being so done in Los Angeles.
Befitting a cross-time series, it had an expansive cast led by the brothers of Jerry and Charlie O’Connell along with Cleavant Derricks, Sabrina Lloyd, John Rhys-Davies, Kari Wuhrer, Robert Floyd and Tembi Locke with Derricks being the only cast member to stay with the series throughout its entire run.
There has also been gossip among Martin fans that this series was inspired by George R.R. Martin’s 1992 ABC pilot Doorways but everyone involved said that was not true.
So how was the reception at the time? Not good. The Los Angeles Time was typical when it said “Now comes ‘Sliders,’ a banal bore of a mishmash adventure series starring Jerry O’Connell as a genius grad student named Quinn Mallory, who discovers a way to visit parallel Earths by whooshing himself through a space portal known as a ‘wormhole.’ It beats studying.”
It does get a rather excellent sixty-four percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born March 22, 1911 — Raymond Z. Gallun. An early SF pulp writer who helped the genre to become popular. “Old Faithful” published in Astounding (December 1934) was his first story and led to a series of that name. “The Menace from Mercury,” a story published in the Summer 1932 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, was penned from a suggestion by Futurian John Michel and is considered famous among fans. His first published novel, People Minus X, didn’t appeared until 1957, followed by The Planet Strappers four years later. You can get all of his fiction at the usual suspects. (Died 1994.)
- Born March 22, 1930 — Stephen Sondheim. Several of his works were of a fantastical nature including Into The Woods which mines deeply both Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault for its source material. And there’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street which is damn fun even if it isn’t genre. (Died 2021.)
- Born March 22, 1931 — William Shatner, 91. Happy Birthday Bill! Ok that was short. We all know he was Captain Kirk, but how many of us watched him as Jeff Cable on the rather fun Barbary Coast series? I did. It was really, really bad acting on his part though. Or that he was The Storyteller in children’s series called A Twist of The Tale? I was I surprised to discover that T.J. Hooker ran for ninety episodes!
- Born March 22, 1946 — Rudy Rucker, 76. He’s certainly best known for the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which, Software and Wetware, each won the Philip K. Dick Award. Though not genre, I do recommend As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel.
- Born March 22, 1950 — Mary Tamm. She’s remembered for her role as Romana as the Companion to the Fourth Doctor in “The Key to Time” storyline. It seemed liked she was there longer only because another actress, Lalla Ward, played her in the following season and she looked a lot like her. Ward was soon to be married to Tom Baker. She also appears briefly in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors through the reuse of footage from the uncompleted story Shada that Douglas Adams wrote. Tamm had only one other genre gig as Ginny in the “Luau” story part of the Tales That Witness Madness film. (Died 2012.)
- Born March 22, 1969 — Alex Irvine, 53. I strongly recommend One King, One Soldier, his offbeat Arthurian novel, and The Narrows, about a WW II Detroit golem factory where fantasy tropes get a severe trouncing. A Scattering of Jades, which won a International Horror Guild Award, is well worth reading. He also wrote The Vertigo Encyclopedia which was an in-house project so, as he told me back then, DC delivered him one copy of every Vertigo title they had sitting in the warehouse which was a lot. For research purposes, of course. It came in a very, very large crate. And he’s written a fair number of comics, major and minor houses alike. His newest novel, Anthropocene Rag, sounds very intriguing. Has anyone read it?
(13) HE SAYS IT’S BUNK. “Hugh Who? Grant dismisses reports he will be the next Doctor” reports the Guardian.
… Grant had played the Doctor in a Comic Relief special in 1999. He was offered the role in 2004, but turned it down.
Whittaker announced in 2021 that she would not play the Doctor again after three special episodes due to air later this year, meaning a vacancy has arisen.
However, in response to a Guardian article about his potential new role, Grant tweeted: “Nothing against Dr W but I’m not. No idea where the story came from.”…
Filers were not shocked to learn that a news item that first appeared in the Mirror was cracked.
(14) THE GIRL WHO WASN’T WEDNESDAY. Entertainment Weekly reports “Christina Ricci joins Addams Family show Wednesday as new character”.
Immortal souls (and mortal ones too), rejoice! Christina Ricci has joined the cast of Wednesday, Netflix’s upcoming live-action series based on the beloved Addams Family character.
The actress, who played Wednesday Addams in the 1991 Addams Family film and its 1993 sequel, will portray an “exciting new character” this time around — in other words, not a grown-up Wednesday. Details are being kept under wraps, though we know Ricci will be a series regular….
(15) PORTAL OPENING AT PRIME. SlashFilm’s B.J. Colangelo marks her calendar: “J.K. Simmons-Led Sci-Fi Series Night Sky Sets May Release Date On Prime Video”.
After spending the last two years mostly staring at the same four walls and continuing to carve out a perfect bottom-shaped dent in my living room couch, there are few things that sound more appealing than getting the opportunity to explore the limitless possibilities of time and space. Starring J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek, Prime Video’s “Night Sky” (formerly known as “Lightyears”) features the duo as Franklin and Irene York, a couple who discover a passageway in their backyard that leads to a distant planet. The Yorks have enjoyed their secret for years, but when a mysterious young man (Chai Hansen of “The Newsreader” fame) arrives out of nowhere, the Yorks realize that their unexplainable passageway may be part of an even bigger mystery than they ever thought fathomable.
The new eight-part series will hit the Prime Video streaming platform globally on Friday, May 20, 2022. All eight episodes will be available simultaneously, so we can all spend our weekend binging J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek’s adventures through time and space….
(16) CONTINUED NEXT UNIVERSE. Guardian reviewer Charles Bramesco shares his mixed verdict on Michelle Yeoh’s new movie: “Everything Everywhere All At Once review – ambitious, exhausting trip to the multiverse”.
… Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh, unstoppable), a Chinese American immigrant/laundromat owner/last hope for all existence, slingshots between realities with the raw kinetic energy of a boulder launched by a trebuchet. Sometimes, she need only open a door to find herself in another iteration of her life, or walk backward through bushes, or tap the Bluetooth-earpiece-looking gizmos an ally gives her. …
(17) ON STAGE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Suzi Feay reviews After The End by Dennis Kelly, a post-apocalyptic play performed at the Stratford East Theatre (“After The End” – Stratford East) through March 26.
“Very strong language, nudity…violence and sexual violence”–since there are only two characters in Dennis Kelly’s After The End, the caveats constitute spoilers. Louise regains consciousness after a nuclear explosion to find herself safe in an underground bunker belonging to Mark, a work colleague. Outside, she was popular and ambitious, and he was the office dolt: dull, friendless, and pedantic. No one more sociable would have built a fallout shelter to begin with. They have two weeks to ensure each other before it’s safe to emerge.
Sweary Louise (a pugnacious Amaka Okafor) has never checked her social privilege; being forced to get along with someone she has hitherto despised may prove character-building. Mark (Nick Blood), thrilled at his unexpected access to the office princess, chivalrously takes the top bunk but his obsequiousness turns sour over a fraught game of Dungeons and Dragons. Locked within four oppressive walls, their makeshift alliance of hobbit and elf disintegrates into a battle for control.
(18) SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST. Jeff Foust reviews “Space films at SXSW” for The Space Review.
…This year’s SXSW saw space make its way into the film festival as well. Several films screened at SXSW had links to space, from documentaries to movies that took some inspiration from spaceflight.
The most prominent of those movies was Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, directed by Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise, Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, among others.) The movie is a semi-autobiographical account of Linklater’s own childhood in Houston, not far from NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) in the summer of 1969. The film uses rotoscope animation, like some of Linklater’s previous movies, making it appear like some hybrid of reality and imagination….
(19) C’EST OINK. ToughPigs asks “Did ‘Muppets TV’ Save The Muppets?”
…In 2005 French comedian Sébastien Cauet and French television network TF1 made a deal with The Walt Disney Company which would allow Cauet to write and produce his own version of The Muppet Show, as well as supply the voice of Kermit the Frog for the series. Rather than send the puppeteers to France, the puppets themselves were instead packed up and shipped off, and a team of French puppeteers would perform them instead, later being dubbed by voice actors.
Yeah. They made that. And not just a one episode thing, this abomination lasted TEN EPISODES! That’s way more than the three that Little Muppet Monsters got on the air!
Thanks to YouTube, we have a few clips of Muppets TV available, which I’ll admit I oddly enjoyed, even though I don’t speak the language (besides saying Bonjour and singing the theme song to ‘Madeline’)….
(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Horizon Forbidden West,” Fandom Games, in a spoiler-filled episode, says that gamers have to complete “the usual Excel sheet of objectives” for a game that’s ultimately “a child’s fantasy about robot dinosaurs.” “At least they get robots in their apocalypse,” the narrator complains. “What do we get? Twitter!”
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Will R., Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Cathy Green, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]
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First!
I’m growing a banana tree here. I don’t think that’s particularly science fictional but it’s fun to watch it double its size in the last week. It’s only supposed to get only four or so feet tall but it will bear fruit though they will be smallish.
(12) Stephen Sondheim died last year at the age of 91.
12) This is your annual reminder that the short-lived BBC series Crime Traveller was quite definitely genre (there was a time machine in it), and Mary Tamm guest-starred in one episode of that.
(2) So “‘Writer Beware’ Be Elsewhere” ?
Steve Wright says This is your annual reminder that the short-lived BBC series Crime Traveller was quite definitely genre (there was a time machine in it), and Mary Tamm guest-starred in one episode of that.
I believe I actually wrote Crime Traveller up as a media birthday last year.
And remember that I never said that these are all-inclusive of what a given individual has done. That’s why I count on y’all telling me on what I didn’t put into a given Birthday.
I really do want to see Crime Traveller at some point as it sounds really interesting.
Judge Magney says Stephen Sondheim died last year at the age of 91.
Thanks, he’s now a decomposer. (Not my pun as OGH came up with it.)
(10) May his memory be a blessing.
5) Should this be tagged TAFF as well?
It is now.
(2) I can’t wait to see Victoria’s new digs! I don’t know what’s up with Blogger, but I don’t blame her for moving to WordPress.
(4) Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter is like the Energy Bunny. In fact, so is Brandon Sanderson.
I wrote a belated article about the Kickstarter on Medium tonight. I would have written it earlier, but I’ve been editing articles about electrical engineering and computers — and brushing up on MathType. (Yikes!)
(12) I just started imagining William Shatner singing songs from “Sweeney Todd.” Help?!
Head both splitting a d spinning. Going to seek darkness and quiet.
12) Sweeney Todd can’t be very much less genre adjacent than Jack the Ripper.
12bis) I never thought Ward and Tamm looked that much alike.
13) But was it crack’s from side to side?
(My name/email got blanked, but that could be because it’s a new iPad I’m using. do a quite good job of transferring the old device’s state to the new one, but nothing’s ever 100%…)
Also: second twelfth!
10) Sorry to hear Bill Johnson passed away. He and I both belonged to a fanac-by-mail group in the early 70s as I recall, and I was impressed by one of his early pro stories (remember it appeared in ANALOG, but don’t recall the stories title for sure now) that introduced a concept new to me (colonizing distant planets via transmitting data across the light years to where slowboat-delivered machines could build a duplicate of your body and mind, while the original you continued to live its regular life on Earth). Got to finally meet him in person (a Bubonicon, I think?) around the time his “We Will Drink A Fish Together” was up for a Hugo; a nice guy.
11) SLIDERS had a charming cast, but the scripts tended to be on the unimpressive side. Think I watched the first season, but never felt inclined to continue. From reports I heard from others, the later seasons didn’t improve.
(I remember reading some of the script pitches for GRRM’s passed-over DOORWAYS series; the stories for that seemed much more ambitious and advanced. Shame it never came to fruition.)
yay, tile credits 🙂
(12) Mary Tamm did not appear in The Five Doctors. Lalla Ward who played the second Romana did. She did appear in Big FInish Audio Gallifrey series as Pandora. She did 7 Big Finish episodes as Romana with Tom Baker playing the Doctor.
Meredith moment: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife which won a Retro Hugo at Dublin 2019 and was made intO two films, Weird Women and Witches Brew, plus as an episode of the Sixties Moment of Fear series as “Conjure Wife”, is available from the usual suspects for a buck ninety nine. Some sources list the “Conjure Wife” episode as a third film.
Did Leiber do a lot of fan writing? I see his second Retro Hugo at CoNZealand was for that.
@bruce arthurs strongly agree in re Sliders. I remember watching it as a kid and being knocked sideways by the concept- a multiverse?!? -and the cast was very good with the material they were given. Looking back, it was pretty lousy material. Also, I had a huge crush on Sabrina Lloyd which I’m sure colored my perception of the show.
(12) “a story published in the Summer 1932 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, was penned from a suggestion by Futurian John Michel ”
The Futurians weren’t yet a thing in 1932, so wouldn’t John Michel have been a Future Futurian? < grin>
“It was really, really bad acting on [Shatner’s] part though. ”
Shatner acting isn’t bad or good — it’s on a different plane altogether, not measurable by regular thespian standards. (and I do remember Barbary Coast)
@Cat Eldridge: I saw one of those movies as “Night of the Eagle”. Generally well done, but they copped out on the book’s truly terrifying moment.* Much of the action in the novel happens inside Norman Saylor’s thoughts, so it’s not a natural fit for the screen.
Leiber corresponded extensively, with Lovecraft and others, and wrote innumerable essays on topics that interested him. I’m not sure how many of those found their way into fanzines, or what the CoNZealand voters were thinking of.
* Gur qrzba gung Fnlybe qvfcngpurf gb oevat uvf jvsr onpx gb uvz ergheaf jvgu gur pybfrfg guvat vg pbhyq svaq, ure whfg-qebjarq obql. Juvpu gura fcrnxf gb uvz.
Denny Crane!
Filers might like to read about the results of the Fanzine Activity Achievement Awards (I hosted this even on Zoom on March 20, 2022). There were sixty six voters this year. Camestros, “Debarkle” did get some votes. Here’s a link to Nic Farey’s “The Incompleat Register,” with winners and detailed voting results.
https://efanzines.com/TIR/Incompleat2022results.pdf
Also the Big Giant Head.
Jerry Kaufman: I just used to overlook Nic’s attention-seeking efforts like calling Worldcon “WorldThing” and arguing that the Hugo-winning zines by Chris Garcia and James Bacon were not up to whatever his standards are, but when he and Rich Lynch spent part of an issue of Nic’s fanzine This Here egging each other on about the notion that File 770‘s Best Fanzine Hugos were actually illegal that hurt and I thought I could do with rather less Nic Farey in my life after that.
Jerry K: The results are also available in summary form on the main FAAn page at the Corflu website: https://corflu.org/history/faan.html#Y2022
I see from the history there that the winner of the FAAn Award for “Best Fanzine Single Issue” in 1980 was Scientifriction 11, Mike Glyer, editor.
Thanks for the info! (and thank you to those people who voted for Debarkle 🙂 )
OGH: “I thought I could do with rather less Nic Farey in my life after that.”
Nic Farey has certainly irritated a lot of people, myself included; but not covering a long-standing fan award in the usual F770 news roundup seems a little … petty? As though you were to omit the Worldcon site selection results because of some personal quarrel with Kevin Standlee.
“Night of the Eagle” was indeed adapted from Leiber’s “Conjure Wife,” but it is neither of the films mentioned in the original post. Instead, it is an early 1960s British film released in the US as “Burn, Witch, Burn” despite being unconnected to the Merritt novel. (Nor is the American Horror Story episode of the same title a Merritt adaptation, nor is a very recent Canadian short.)
Summary: Conjure Wife, made into three different films under four titles, none the original. Burn Witch Burn, never adapted (to my knowledge), but used as a title for at least three films/tv episodes.
Judge Magney, my basis for that note was IMDB which is what I use as the Gold Standard for film information. Your take is completely confusing and contradictory to what is stated there. What are you trying to say?
@Judge Magney: I remembered there were multiple titles and so assumed there was overlap.
@Cat Eldridge: IMDB lists Night of the Eagle as based on a story by Fritz Leiber, Jr. They don’t say which story, but it’s clearly Conjure Wife. Screenplay credits are Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson.
Jim Jamey says IMDB lists Night of the Eagle as based on a story by Fritz Leiber, Jr. They don’t say which story, but it’s clearly Conjure Wife. Screenplay credits are Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson.
It could well be but I don’t, Iike any good researcher, state something as a given when it’s actually stated as such. Or it could be that they riffed a similar idea. It’s odd that it’s not stated that it’s based off the novel.
And of course I meant to say when it’s not actually stated as such. Damn edit window closed when the phone rang and I answered. I trying to schedule some neurological lab work right now.
David Langford: Did you know that Ansible does not have an online comment forum? Where are people supposed to post the news items you refuse to cover? Like the last 35 years’ worth of Writers of the Future Contest winners announced since you and Author Services’ Fred Harris threw drinks on each other at the ’87 Worldcon? Fred Harris’ bad behavior was sufficient justification for you to permanently skip an activity that literally hundreds of professional sf writers have been involved in by now. It’s your zine. What you report is your choice.
At this time Nic Farey controls the FAAn Awards — because if not for his efforts they would already be dead. Several years ago Nic started having me (and others, of course) help him publicize FAAn Award voting. Being a fanzine fan, I said sure — notwithstanding that both my publication and my writing are somehow classified as not a fanzine and not fan writing under its rules — because I reacted a little like Thaddeus Stevens in the movie Lincoln when he told his colleagues they must “retain their capacity for astonishment.”
However, running an award I am not eligible for is a very different thing from saying toxic and false things about my history. I don’t owe Nic space. He’s not welcome to my hospitality here.
Second 12) Just played through Horizon Forbidden West and I disliked quite a lot more than the first. Mostly it was the gameplay that had turned really annoying, mostly about skills and crafting.
The first Horizon game had a kind of simple and easy to understand system. This time they tried to, complicate absolutely everything that could. Instead of one bow, you needed one new for every type of arrow and the same for all types of weapons. You suddenly got three type of traps for every element. Skills got an annoying skill tree with combinations and all kinds of shots that you couldn’t be bothered to remember. To do upgrade your gear you needed to do run back and forth for days.
Effect was that I skipped out on everything I liked in the first game. Skipped upgrades. Skipped buying stuff. Skipped out on almost all types of weapons. They weren’t worth the bother.
Even the missions and quests often felt bloated with NPC:s talking absolutely for ever. Nothing got better when the MC suddenly had turned from friendly and compassionate to arrogant and abusive, ghosting her friends and trying to get rid of them (she got better after a while).
For the first days, I would have given it 2/5. I ended up with 3/5. A bit of a disappointment, given how much I had liked the first one. Will most likely not bother playing again.
You could fill several (thick?) books with Leiber’s writings for fanzines.
He published his own fanzine “New Purpose” in the late 1940s.
He published numerous articles in the emergent Lovecraft/horror related fanzines, collected in “Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark”.
He was a regular contributor of little pieces to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society fanzines “Shangri-La” and “Shangri L’Affaires” in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, he contributed some long thought-pieces to “PITFCS”, and Karen Anderson’s “Vorpal Glass”. He wrote some lengthy essays on individual books and fantasists for “Amra” throughout the 60s. He wrote pieces for Robert E Howard and Burroughs fanzines. For about 4 years he wrote some really long essays for “Fantasy Newsletter” in the early 80s. And for about the last decade of his life he wrote a monthly column for Locus, which I leave to others to distinguish between fanzine and prozine-writing.
And that’s just trying to create an impression of order, as there lots of other little pieces scattered in fanzines, besides his near-compulsion to produce little memoirs and autobiographically inflected writings.
@Cat: IMDB’s entry for Night of the Eagle is itself pretty confusing. However, there’s no question that the film, which was released by AIP in the USA under the title Burn, Witch, Burn (which is the title I saw it under), is an adaptation of Conjure Wife, as stated by Judge Magney. The setting has been moved to England and the main characters are now Norman and Tansy Taylor instead of Saylor, but the main storyline is mostly the same (although as Jim Janney noted, they left out the most terrifying moment in the novel).
The trivia section of the IMDB page describes Night of the Eagle/Burn, Witch, Burn as the second of three film versions of Conjure Wife, without attribution. The more informative BFI page for the film includes an image of the Berkeley Medallion paperback reprint of Conjure Wife tied-in to the release of Burn, Witch, Burn.
Matthew Davis says And that’s just trying to create an impression of order, as there lots of other little pieces scattered in fanzines, besides his near-compulsion to produce little memoirs and autobiographically inflected writings.
Thanks as that helped immensely.
I just finished listening to The Big Time. As always, it’s an amazing piece of writing to experience. It certainly deserved the Hugo that it received.
Matt Davis got there before me and in much greater detail, but the 1945 Retro Hugo nomination and win were mainly for Fritz Leiber’s contributions to The Acolyte, though he wrote for many other fanzines before and after, including coining the term sword and sorcery in the pages of Ancalgon in 1961.
ora Buhlert says Matt Davis got there before me and in much greater detail, but the 1945 Retro Hugo nomination and win were mainly for Fritz Leiber’s contributions to The Acolyte, though he wrote for many other fanzines before and after, including coining the term sword and sorcery in the pages of Ancalgon in 1961.
Thanks for that clarification. If I dug deep enough on one of my my iPads, I probably still got the the material from CoNZeanland nominations still on it somewhere. Where of course is the question
Moderator’s Note: I am not going to host sophistries from trolls who pretend not to understand that the meaning of the word “control” encompasses the full range of influence used to dominate something, which can range from running the thing themselves, to making other people who run it so miserable by incessant criticism and well-poisoning that hardly anyone else has the intestinal fortitude to try to run it, to personally rounding up many of the voters who participate (with quite understandable side effects on what wins.)
“…personally rounding up many of the voters…”? No wonder I’m so tired…
Head ’em up and move ’em out. Rawhide!
Indeed, it would be quite the chore if it was something I ever actually did in the terms you wickedly imply. If you’re dancing around actually saying outright that the awards are a fixed fit-up, then I think you should say that clearly, and of course some evidence would be a nice added touch, I would think, evidence that suggests something other than simple publicity and broad awareness efforts which, gratifyingly, many are happy to participate in (although no longer you, I must now assume).
It’s rather a shame that the FAAns are mocked in here and denigrated as an unwelcome vestige, especially this year when Camestros Felapton’s ‘Debarkle’ received voter attention from some aware people (its very inclusion in the TIR listings having been enthusiastically prompted by a correspondent, and of course I was happy to include it, not having been aware of the publication), resulting in a gracious “thank you” posting from that author in response to Jerry Kaufman’s mention. Just think what might have happened if voters had been “rounded up” in Debarkle’s favor? Not that anyone here would do that, right?
It’s obvious to me, and to anyone without an axe to grind, that wide publicity and encouragement to participate is no sane way to fix an award. Suppression is, though…
It does also occur that some numbers might be relevant:
2018 FAAn awards: 78 ballots
2019 : 19 ballots
2020 : 26 ballots
2021 : 49 ballots
2022 : 66 ballots
Can you guess the three I administered? It’s not a trick question…
Nic Farey: Take your straw man home with you.
Saying that people win an award illegally is your act, it’s what you did to me, or do you need to be reminded.
On the other hand, I have been a fanzine fan for many years. Been around to see fanzines run their own popularity polls. Which those fanzines invariably won. Because when the voters are primarily people who already participate in a fanzine’s community, it’s no surprise that they think it’s a terrific fanzine. Your fanzine is pivotal to turning out the FAAn Award vote, keeping it from falling back to low level it had been at. Nothing corrupt about that. No reason for you to pretend I’ve said there is.
Reporting news is an act of curation. It does not obligate someone to turn themself into a doormat for the sake of someone who has been abusive and used their platform to promote nasty smears about their fannish work and achievements.
Mike: Never have I said that File770 “illegally” won any award. You keep saying that, but don’t cite the specifics, it’s just your interpretation of a conversation had with Rich Lynch about Hugo admin decisions.
As you’re well aware, I’ve conversely praised this blog for being a valuable resource and frankly admired the effort that goes into it.
Yes, of course my own fanzine includes a great deal of discussion on the FAAn awards, since it’s a subject I’m highly engaged with, and the circulation includes a lot of that constituency. So what?
20% of this year’s FAAn voters aren’t on This Here…’s mailing list, and two-thirds of that list didn’t vote at all, so I’d suggest you’re overestimating my alleged influence, as well as my ability to essentially pick voters who will fill out ballots I like. Questioning my probity on the recording of ballots which may (and do) include people and publications I might not personally care for is an outrageous slur,
So, Meredith, if you want to use the accusational terms of “abusive” and “promoting nasty smears”, Mike’s comments are your exemplar.
I’ve said all I’m going to say (until tomorrow’s fanzine)…
That’s an unexpected departure — Nic Farey refusing to own his plainly expressed opinion.
From This Here #46:
In 2011, Rich Lynch secured first passage of an amendment to the WSFS Constitution, the effect of which was described in the business meeting minutes:
In 2012, when Lynch’s amendment was up for ratification, the deleted phrase was restored. And the effect of restoring that phrase as clearly understood by all present including Lynch was recorded in the minutes:
And that’s what the “fuckin’ rule” is that you’re ignorantly telling people the Hugo Administrators didn’t enforce against me.
And nowhere does any of that say that I state the phrase “illegally awarded”. Try harder…
Nic Farey: That’s pretty ripe after you’ve left several comments attributing opinions to me which are unsupported by any quote. Although in my case I don’t hold the opinion you impute to me either.
If what you believe is that I won those awards legally, you can say so and clear things up.
Again, I’ve never said otherwise. Clear enough?