Snapshots 32 Snub-Nosed

Here are 8 developments of interest to fans:

(1) Morgan Holmes attended from the first Edmond Hamilton Day in Kinsman, Ohio on July 18, 2009:

I learned quite a bit about the personalities of both Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett including what cars they drove. The 1964 Corvette for example was Brackett’s and not Hamiltons. She also did the driving.

Stephen Haffner also circulated this link to a Flickr gallery of photos taken at the event.

(2) Gary Farber’s “wacky round-up of that ‘sci-fi’ news the kids today are so into!” has a lot to say about Wil Wheaton’s appearance on Big Bang Theory.   

David Klaus looked at a photo of Wheaton in character for the episode, captioned “Nerrrrddd!!!”, and asked: “Is it just me, or has young Mr. Wheaton managed to channel Dan Alderson?”

Dan was a long-time LASFSian who worked at JPL and kicked around science fictional ideas with Jerry Pournelle, such as the space drive given his name in Pournelle’s CoDominium series. David is quite right  – Wheaton in character could be Alderson’s twin from the days when Dan was fresh from Cal Tech.

(3) Farber also asks: “Hey, Mike, could they have used a rail gun in the trailer for the 1951 Raiders of the Lost Ark to destroy stuff built by Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication? You know you want to find out, and click the electric-powered videos!”

I’m touched by his confidence that a link here will drive tons of traffic to his posts. Such faith deserves a reward, so I encourage all 29 of you regular readers to visit.  

(4) Wendy McElroy may not have an alibi, but Robert Sawyer will.

(5) David Klaus treasured his Father’s Day present, the biography of DeForest Kelley From Sawdust to Stardust by Terry Lee Rioux:

I’ve asked a question of Leonard Nimoy from an audience; I’ve had one-on-one in-person conversations with James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Grace Lee Whitney; and once had a telephone conversation with William Shatner. Gene Roddenberry came over and introduced himself to me to ease a potentially awkward social situation and graciously keep me from embarrassment. But I never met DeForest Kelley. Yet as much as I love them all, and I do, he was the one I loved most.

Click on the link to find out why.

(6) Terry Pratchett has given a new interview to the UK Telegraph.

However, I’m being quite truthful when I tell him later on that if I didn’t know he had PCA, I would never have guessed.

‘That’s because I talk,’ he says. ‘I can turn a phrase and actually I can turn a phrase bloody well when I want to. But if I took off this shirt and you threw it on the floor and perhaps pulled a sleeve inside out, I would be able to put it back on again, but you would see the celebration happening afterwards. It’s all to do with one’s apprehension of the world.

(7) Fox plans a “Western with a sci-fi twist” that will “revolve around ‘a gunslinger caught between worlds’ and will feature a nod to Planet of the Apes.  

David Klaus is not sanguine about its chances: “Considering the Fox bastards ‘burned the land and boiled the sea’ from under Firefly, and have now also cancelled making more episodes of Saving Grace even though TNT wants to buy them (!), it’ll be interesting to see what happens here. The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr. was on Fox, and got cancelled in only one season, too. SF + Western = Murdoch’s Fox screws it up.”

(8) It’s animals with light sabers. I never knew those things worked underwater…

[Thanks for the links included in this post go to David Klaus, Gary Farber and Andrew Porter.]

Update 09/30/2009: Corrected link to David Klaus’ LJ per his comment.

One thought on “Snapshots 32 Snub-Nosed

  1. Believe it or not, individual LiveJournal entry links are case-sensitive. The link you give to my entry is broken because you have the letters “html” in capitals instead of small-case.

    I don’t know why this is, it just is.

    Regardless, thank you for linking to it, and for publishing so many of the things I send you. I like to think I’m doing a service to fandom this way, just as you do but on a smaller scale, by helping spread news of Interesting Stuff.

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