Hand designed stained glass panels, Bowers Museum (Photo: Arendse Lund)
By Arendse Lund: In a sprawling celebration of the oldest story-telling genre of them all, the British Library’s exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination captures visitors with tales of elves and dragons, actions and consequences, and how humans make sense of the world. First curated and hosted by the British Library (27 October 2023 – 25 February 2024), the exhibition is now on tour, having recently closed out a stint at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana (26 October 2024 – 19 January 2025).
The exhibition comes at an exciting time. According to the trade magazine The Bookseller, sales of science fiction and fantasy novels were up41.3% between 2023-2024, setting a record for the genre. This was largely driven by the popularity of authors such as Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, both of whom have sold millions of books. Demand for stories of faeries and dragons isn’t new, but it is enduring, and that’s what the Fantasy exhibition is here to remind us of.
Walking through the exhibition is akin to celebrity sightseeing, where there’s yet another heavy hitter around each corner. The exhibition stretches temporally and geographically to document the abiding cultural appeal of fantasy literature. Some of the highlights on display include a Persian manuscript of Sinbadnama, the Story of Sinbad, a sketch from Arabian Nights, and Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf.
More recent additions to the fantasy genre include Christina Rossetti’s iconic Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), with an accompanying illustration done in typical Pre-Raphaelite fashion by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. There’s also a copy of the Swedish edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1962), illustrated by Moomin creator Tove Jansson; her giant, troll-like drawing of Gollum upset readers and spurred Tolkien to describe the character as “small” in later editions. There’s even the notebook with Ursula K. Le Guin’s original handwritten draft of A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the novel that introduced a wizarding school to the world — an idea that’s seen great success since then. In contrast to the draft version of Le Guin’s work, there’s a spiraling display of the 16 published books in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings Series (1995-2017), and editions of Fantasy & Science Fiction and other short fiction magazines.
Bilbo: En Hobbits Aventyr, J.R.R. Tolkien, art by Tove Jansson (Photo: Arendse Lund)
These are works that influenced writers and authors across genres, and remind us how expansive the fantasy genre is. After all, books and stories in these rooms have sold nearly countless copies and inspired writers and readers throughout the years. Thanks to this, the Bowers Museum had a lot of room to add their own contributions on top of the objects and themes established by the British Library in the original exhibition. For instance, the Bowers Museum created four hand-designed and printed stained glass panels, in addition to a castle composed of over 500 handmade foam rocks. There was also an Alice in Wonderland card sculpture and a Happily Ever After banner, which all served to establish a fantastical ambiance and set the scene for a journey through a fantasy realm.
However, for a topic that relies so heavily on human creativity, it’s disappointing that, rather than partner with visual artists themselves, the museum decided to generate AI videos and images. The videos, filled with visual inconsistencies typical of AI, felt incongruous next to the beautiful works on display. On one screen, blotchy figures walked past storefronts boasting broken text and down a dubiously Victorian-inspired street made up of fractured tiles. What was the point?
There are numerous, well-known downsides to AI, a technology that is trained off of actual artists’ works and used to regurgitate different shapes of those artworks at the prompting of a user. The U.S. Copyright Office has consistently ruled that art generated by a prompt can’t be copyrighted since it’s not original, even if a user goes through multiple iterations of a work before settling on a final product. There are multiple ongoing lawsuits regarding image generation companies violating copyright, or removing or alternating artists’ copyright management information. Even setting aside these legal and moral minefields, the environmental impact of the technology is also huge. At a time when nearly a quarter of California is battling a severe drought, and wildfires have become an annual and frightening occurrence across the state, there’s no need to rely on a technology that consumes additional fresh water and strains existing grid infrastructures. In fact, thanks to those very same wildfires that swept across Orange County, the Bowers Museum announced an early closure of the Fantasy exhibition to ensure the safety of the art.
So why add AI-generated content to an otherwise well-rounded exhibition? Perhaps the answer is as simple as an enthusiasm for new technology. But all the phenomenal works on display — including the Bowers’ own handmade additions that decorated the exhibition like a theatre — made the contrast with the AI-generated pieces all the sharper.
Susan Hilferty, Emerald City Costume Designed for Wicked (2003)
In many ways, the AI was the only shortcoming to a remarkable exhibition showcasing the breadth and depth of human creativity. For anyone who missed the exhibition (or anyone wanting to go again), we’ll have to hope that the exhibition reopens elsewhere so that visitors can continue to admire the first-edition novels, manuscripts, and costumes that all combine to make the exhibition visually and historically striking.
Arendse Lund is an award-winning author whose fiction and poetry has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Shotgun Honey, Mystery Magazine, and The Fabulist, among others. Her short story, “The Toll Bridge,” won the 2021 Staunch Prize for horror writing. Her world building has been called “vividly imagined and genuinely creepy,” which is the highest praise she can imagine. In 2015, she served as the Writer-in-Residence at Elsewhere, Colorado, and from 2023-2024, at the Seattle Public Library. She is currently a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Arnamagnæan Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Her journal articles and translations have appeared in international publications, including Scandinavica: An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, Alchemy: Journal of Translation, and the volume Law and Literature in Early Medieval England. She earned her doctorate researching medieval manuscripts and the law at University College London. She specializes in the overlap between law and literature throughout the Middle Ages, especially England and Scandinavia. She has taught classes and guest lectured at University College London, NYU, and the Arnamagnæan Institute.
In 2019, she was awarded the Association of British Science Writers’ top award for her work on Researchers in Museums. You can contact her at www.arend.se
Today, Literary Arts announced that the Le Guin family will donate their home to Literary Arts to create the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency. This will be Oregon’s first significant permanent recognition of Le Guin’s 50-year literary legacy since she died in 2018.
Andrew Proctor, executive director of Literary Arts, shared, “Our conversations with Ursula and her family began in 2017. She had a clear vision for her home to become a creative space for writers and a beacon for the broader literary community. With the launch of the public phase of our Campaign for Literary Arts this month, we are closer than ever to making this dream a reality. This campaign will allow us to raise funds to launch the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency and plan for its future. The Le Guin family had many partners to choose from and we are honored that they are entrusting Literary Arts with this cherished cultural treasure.”
Originally built in 1899 from a Sears & Roebuck catalog plan, the three-story house and garden were purchased by Ursula and her husband, Charles, in the early 1960s when Northwest Portland was home to many academics, artists and working-class households. With a view of Mount St. Helens and decorated with her personal collection of rocks and well-loved art and books, Ursula’s corner room evolved throughout the years from a nursery for her children to the place where she wrote some of her best-known work, from novels to her blog. There is still a designated space on her desk for the typewriter on which Ursula would type her final manuscripts. A redwood tree, planted in the 1960s, now towers over that corner of the house, a reminder of Ursula’s Northern California roots.
Once established, the new Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency, to be operated by Literary Arts, will welcome writers from around the world, with a focus on those residing in the western United States.Staying true to the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, the program will invite writers of different genders, races, ages, economic status, education and literary genres to apply for residencies. The writers will be selected by an advisory council made up of literary professionals and a Le Guin family member. Appointed writers will be asked to engage with the local community in a variety of literary activities, such as community-wide readings and workshops. The residency program is currently in the development phase, with plans for future renovations to the home for improved accessibility.
Theo Downes-Le Guin, son of the late author Ursula K. Le Guin, remembers well the second-floor room where his mother worked on some of her most famous novels.
Or at least how it seemed from the outside.
“She was very present and accessible as a parent,” he says. “She was very intent on not burdening her children with her career. … But the times when she was in there to do her writing, we knew that we needed to let her have her privacy.”
[Theo] Downes-Le Guin, who also serves as his mother’s literary executor, now hopes to give contemporary authors access to her old writing space. Literary Arts, a community nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, announced Monday that Le Guin’s family had donated their three-story house for what will become the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency.
…No date has been set for when the residency will begin. Literary Arts has launched a fundraising campaign for maintaining the house and for operating an office in town….
…While writers in residence will be welcome to use her old writing room, the author’s son understands if some might feel “intimidated” to occupy the same space as one the world’s most celebrated authors.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to be in there in this constant state of reverence, which would be against the spirit of the residency,” he says….
(2) TAKE THE TARDIS TO TATTOOINE. Camestros Felapton tells us what all fifteen of them would wear to “Doctor Who’s Star Wars Cosplay Party”. Very funny!
If Doctor Who went to a Star Wars-themed costume party, what costume would they wear? In this clickbaity listicle post, I will give the definitive answers! Yet, as The Doctor is the ultimate space wizard shouldn’t every version of them dress as a Jedi? No, not at all…
(3) PASSIVUM. In case you didn’t get enough discussion of the passive voice yesterday, KW Thomas has some wisdom to contribute. Thread starts here.
OK, so that might be a bit OTT, but I honestly think the advice to avoid passive voice does more harm than good. I see writers tying themselves in knots over it, and there’s really no need.
Fiction writers generally aren’t doing this. They’re writing things in their voice, and their characters’ voices, & most people actually have a decent instinct for when passive voice is appropriate and when it isn’t when they’re not trying too hard to be formal and neutral.
But most fluent speakers of English will, most probably, only be using passive voice when it's actually needed. ("My father was murdered." "I feel like I've been hit by a bus.")
So, fiction authors, if you are worried about passive voice, my advice is just… don’t be ???????
(4) ARGUING WITH ART. Here is the cover of Savannah Mandel’s forthcoming book Ground Control : An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration from Chicago Review Press. It asks, “Is it worth it – socially, politically, and economically – to send humans to space?”
Seeing that tagline reminded Andrew Porter of the posters Frank Kelly Freas did for NASA back in the Seventies, one of which said —
…Martin knew how good he was, and meted out his treasures to lucky editors with a certain lofty care. One of my first calls when I got to Vanity Fair was to ask him to write a piece about a new play by David Hare. His first question was: “Do I have to see it?” I found myself wavering, knowing that whatever he filed would be better than anyone else’s. Over the years, he became graver, more wary perhaps, but unchanged in his satirical glee.
Last February Isabel arranged for me to visit Martin at their home in Brooklyn. They loved each other devotedly, to the death. It hurt to see him so frail, but he was still Martin, undiminished: “I went in to have this special chemo treatment,” he said. “The doctor’s office was full of posters of happy cured people, windsurfing.” The italics dripped with the delighted disgust that Martin reserved for that wishful – and peculiarly American – fraudulence.
Mostly he reflected on “this new stage”, as he called it with an aloof curiosity. “There is absolutely no spiritual dimension to any of this,” he said. “No one writes anything really good after 70, anyway. It feels all right to look back at my life as ‘then’ – the past, belonging to someone else. The only thing I regret is not knowing how all this” – he gestured – “turns out. I’d like to have seen Trump finally finished.”
The truth is that none of us gets to know how it turns out, because it keeps going and we don’t….
(6) BRUSH UP YOUR DRAGON LORE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] I’ve been binge watching HBO’s House of the Dragon series 1; the second season starts June 16.
I found the Wikipedia article, which explains who is what, and has episode guides, useful: House of the Dragon.
(7) PAT SIMS (1937-2024). Past Big Heart Award winner Pat Sims, who served as secretary/treasurer for the Cincinnati Fantasy Group and later as VP of the Orlando Area Science Fiction Society, died June 9 at the age of 87. Deborah Oakes told the Cincinnati Fantasy Group: “She slipped away peacefully last night about 9:30 pm. Her niece Clara was with her in hospice when she passed away. She will be cremated, and her ashes spread at sea with Roger’s ashes, per their wishes.”
Pat first encountered fandom in the early 1960s after she moved to Chicago, where a roommate took her to meetings of the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club. She was recruited to work registration for Chicon 3, the 1962 Worldcon.
The following year she met Roger Sims (1930-2022) at Midwestcon, and they married in 1964. Pat and Roger were active in Detroit fandom for many years, then in Cincinnati. They later moved to Florida.
Pat and Roger Sims at Noreascon One (1971). Photo by Jay Kay Klein.
Together they hosted Ditto 10 (1997), Ditto 17 (2004) and FanHistoriCon 9 (1999).
Roger and Pat also became the 1995 Down Under Fan Fund delegates. Non-fan honors bestowed on them (through fannish connections) included being commissioned as Kentucky Colonels, and being named Honorary Captains of The Belle of Louisville.
Pat received the Big Heart Award in 2002.
Pat and Roger Sims at Midwestcon 40 in 1989. Photo by Mark Olson.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 10, 1952 — Kage Baker. (Died 2010.) Kage Baker was one of those writers that I had a close relationship by email and phone for many years until she passed on. I’m still sad that she died early but relieved that she is no longer in constant pain.
Kage Baker in 2009. Photo by Stepheng3.
Though most knew her as a genre writer, she was very proud of her other life. As Kathleen noted on the site she keeps about her life with Kage, Kathleen, Kage and the Company: “Kage Baker taught Elizabethan English (also known as Language I when we had time for lots of classes) for the performers at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. She taught it for most of 30 years; we team-taught at workshops, she and I, in a spiel I can still recite. Well, I can recite my half – I get stuck pausing for her lines here and there. We had worked out a class recitation that was half improv and half thesaurus.”
Kage told me how they both dressed up on in their best Elizabethan cosplay finery for the Renaissance Pleasure Faires, surely the social highlight of their year from the way she described it way such obvious delight. I know they even took Harry the Space Pirate with them on occasion.
Yes Harry, a most unusual bird. Let’s have her explain: “Well, a Household Bench Mark is approaching — my parrot, Harry Redux, is about to reach his first birthday. Or his twenty-first, as he is the reincarnation of my first parrot, Harry Prime. He is the Dalai Parrot. I rescued Harry Prime from an abusive situation 20 years ago, and he was the love of my life; when he died last year, I decided my middle-aged life had enough tragedy and it was time to invoke Mystic Forces. I made sure of a clutch laid shortly after he entered the Higher Plane, and waited anxiously for his return — the system works for Tibetan religious leaders, and I saw no reason why it would not do so for my evolved dinosaur. Sure enough, this brand new little bird exhibits unnerving knowledge of his past life, including where we hide the McVittie’s Digestive Biscuits in the kitchen. When he gazes dulcetly from his pirate-gold-coin eyes, one must believe that here is an ancient and inhuman soul.”
She baked food a lot. Really she did. Quite a bit, much of it Elizabethan. And then there was Barm Brack: “Barm Brack is a soul cake — traditional Scots recipe calls for a bean or silver coin or some other token to be baked into it and the person getting the winning slice gets fame or good luck or sacrificed or whatever, deciding on how much of The Wicker Man you take seriously. I leave the tokens out of mine, personally. Life is enough of a lottery as it is.” Her recipe is here: “Barm Brack”.
No, I’m not talking about novels here though I liked them so much that we were supposed to do a Concordance for them for Golden Gryphon. I was supposed to draft a series of questions for each of the cyborgs for which she was would play out being that cyborg and answer the questions in detail. Each of these would be in turn become a chapter in the Corcordance. Sadly she got too ill before we could do it.
I’ll miss her a lot. She was a great conversationalist, a fantastic SF writer and she wrote a number of really great reviews for Green Man including this one authored with her sister about a series dear to both of them: “The Two Fat Ladies: The Complete 4 Series”.
(10) FREE COMIC EXPO. The Bowers Museum Comic Art Expo will be held in Santa Ana, CA on June 15-16. Schedule at the link.
This free two-day event promises to be a dynamic gathering for comic enthusiasts, artists, and collectors alike, in celebration of our current exhibit, Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form. The Comic Art Expo will feature a variety of artists, live DJs, and family-friendly activities.
During the Expo, arrive in cosplay* to get FREE General Admission, and gain exclusive access to Asian Comics for just $10! Join us for a season of color, creativity, and community!
Never-before-seen at a museum and making its American debut, Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form presents the largest ever selection of original artworks from Asian comics, displayed alongside their printed, mass-produced forms. This exhibition is a vivid journey through the art of comics and visual storytelling across Asia. From its historical roots to the most recent digital innovations, the exhibition looks to popular Japanese manga and beyond, highlighting key creators, characters, and publications. Explore thriving contemporary comics cultures and traditional graphic narrative artforms from places including:
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.
Visitors to Asian Comics will dive into a kaleidoscope of diverse stories, from fantastical folklore, pivotal historical moments, revealing memoirs, and challenging expressions of freedom. Discover acclaimed and influential creators from Osamu Tezuka, Zao Dao, Morel, Hur Young Man, and Lat, to genre innovators and under-represented artists including Abhishek Singh and Miki Yamamoto. See how their work has influenced cinema, animation, fashion, visual art, music, and videogames, and get creative in the accompanying makerspace that’s fun for all ages….
(11) TAX CREDITS ARE PEACHY. “Jobs IRL: How Georgia makes movie makers”, a podcast at Marketplace, provides a look at Georgia’s film production tax credits and the pipeline for show business jobs.
You ever see that peach as the credits come to an end on screen for shows like “The Walking Dead” or “WandaVision”?
That peach means filmed in Georgia, a state set to surpass California for sound stages by square foot. The names that come before the peach — best boy, gaffer or, in this case, “key rigging grip” — they all come with a paycheck.
“We do things ranging from putting cameras onto dollies and cranes to hanging heavy lights above people’s heads,” said Francis Harlan. He does this for a show called “The Bondsman” being shot here on a set designed to look like a honky-tonk bar. It’s about an undead bounty hunter starring one Kevin Bacon. (Talk about fewer than six degrees.) Blumhouse, the production company, spun up a program to give a trainee his shot….
(12) LINGUA FRANCA. “Young people, especially, are choosing to read in English even if it is not their first language because they want the covers, and the titles, to match what they see on TikTok and other social media,” says the New York Times. “English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu!”
When the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan was in the Netherlands a few years ago promoting her most recent novel, “The Candy House,” she noticed something unexpected. Most of the people who asked her to sign books at author events were not presenting her with copies in Dutch.
“The majority of the books I was selling were in English,” Egan said.
Her impression was right. In the Netherlands, according to her Dutch publisher, De Arbeiderspers, roughly 65 percent of sales for “The Candy House” were in English.
“There was even a sense of a slight apology when people were asking me to sign the Dutch version,” Egan said. “And I was like, ‘No! This is what I’m here to do.’”
As English fluency has increased in Europe, more readers have started buying American and British books in the original language, forgoing the translated versions that are published locally. This is especially true in Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and, increasingly, Germany, which is one of the largest book markets in the world.
Publishers in those countries, as well as agents in the United States and Britain, worry this could undercut the market for translated books, which will mean less money for authors and fewer opportunities for them to publish abroad.
“There is this critical mass,” said Tom Kraushaar, publisher at Klett-Cotta in Germany. “You see in the Netherlands: Now there is a tipping point where things could really collapse.”
The English-language books that are selling abroad are generally cheap paperbacks, printed by American and British publishers as export editions. Those versions are much less expensive than hardcovers available in the United States, for example, and much less expensive than the same books in translation, which have to observe minimum pricing in countries like Germany.
“People should read in whatever language they want,” said Elik Lettinga, publisher of De Arbeiderspers in the Netherlands. But the export editions, she continued, “undercuts on price.”…
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Today is International Women’s Day, and people have been busy celebrating the women in their lives, including their favorite franchise characters. Chewbacca actor Joonas Suotamo wrote a special post in honor of Carrie Fisher, and he’s not the only one to celebrate the women of Star Wars. The official Instagram account for Star Wars also took to social media to share a “Women of the Galaxy” video, which showcases most of the women featured in the original Star Wars trilogy, prequels, sequels, and both live-action and animated series.
(2) SF IN TRANSLATION. Rachel Cordasco posted the “Favorite SFT From 2019
Poll Results” on February 15. (See second and third place finishers at
the link.)
Favorite Novel
Waste Tideby Chen Qiufan, translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu (Tor)
Favorite Collection
Everything is Made of Letters by Sofia Rhei, translated from the Spanish by Sue Burke, James Womack, and the author, with assistance from Ian Whates, Arrate Hidalgo, and Sue Burke (Aqueduct)
Favorite Anthology
Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, edited and translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu (Tor)
Favorite Short Story
“All Saints’ Mountain”by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft (Hazlitt)
It started with my then agent telling me that a Mexican publisher wanted to publish BUG JACK BARRON in a cheap Mexican edition for a small advance. BUG JACK BARRON had been published in Spanish, but not in Mexico, since, like English language rights split between the US and Britain, Spanish language rights are generally split between Spain and Latin America. I shrugged, and said okay, not knowing much more about it, except that it was Paco Taibo, who I knew years ago, was making the deal, and I didn’t think much more about it then.
But then Paco asked me to come to Mexico City for the book launch, which was also going to be the launch of a new collection of the overall publisher, La Fondo de Cultura Economica. What is that ? I asked, and Paco told me the brief version.
La Fondo de Cultura Economica is a non-profit publisher subsidized by the Mexican government which publishes 500 books a year, distributes the books of other publishers in its 140 book stores in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, whose mission is to allow people who otherwise might not be able to afford buy them to buy a wide assortment of books at cut-rate prices.
(4) LEM IN TRANSLATION. The Washington Post’s Scott
Bradfield believes “Stanislaw
Lem has finally gotten the translations his genius deserves”. The Invincible is just one of the books
worth reading that’s available in the U.S. for the first time in a proper
Polish-to-English translation.
Lem’s fiction is filled with haunting, prescient landscapes. In these reissued and newly issued translations — some by the pitch-perfect Lem-o-phile, Michael Kandel — each sentence is as hard, gleaming and unpredictable as the next marvelous invention or plot twist. It’s hard to keep up with Lem’s hyper-drive of an imagination but always fun to try.
(5) BAD ACTORS AT GOODREADS. Camestros Felapton notes that Ersatz
Culture “has been doing some deep data-driven detective work on Goodreads
sockpuppet accounts” and rounds up the related Twitter threads here — “Just
some links to Ersatz Culture’s detective work”. Felapton explains why
the abuse is so easy:
To register an account with Goodreads you have to give an email address BUT unlike most websites these days there is no email verification step i.e. you don’t NEED multiple actual email addresses to set up multiple accounts. The system is wide-open for abuse.
Ersatz Culture says the issue is: “Suspicious Goodreads
accounts giving a slate of books 5-star reviews, and potentially getting
them onto the Goodreads Choice Award as write-in nominees.”
* On a Hugo-related list on Goodreads that Contrarius admins, a few months ago I noticed patterns of user rating that were atypical and (IMHO) suspicious
* I spent a load of time this weekend digging into why this happened. Ultimately it came down to 80+ brand new user accounts created in October and November 2019 all giving 5-star ratings to a slate of 25-35 books (plus a few others)
* The November cohort of these accounts were created in the week when the Goodreads Choice Awards were open to write-in candidates. Quite possibly this is coincidence – there’s no way of proving any connection, that I can see – but two of the books on their slate were successful in getting into the nominations; one of them turns out to be a massive outlier compared to the other nominees in its category when you look at metrics of number of Goodreads users who’d read it etc.
The details are in three long Twitter threads: here, here,
and here.
(6) THE ROARING THIRTIES. First Fandom Experience is
at work on a project to acquaint people with “The
Earliest Bradbury”.
In honor of the upcoming centenary of Ray Bradbury’s birth (August 22, 2020), we’re digging through our archive of 1930s fan material to find the earliest appearances of Ray’s writings — in any form. We hope to publish a compendium of these in the next several weeks.
We’re not talking about the well-known and oft-reproduced works such as Futuria Fantasia, or even the somewhat-known and occasionally-reproduced “Hollerbachen’s Dilemma.” We’re seeking anything that appeared prior to 1940 that has been rarely if ever surfaced, especially as it was originally printed.
A primary source for Ray’s earliest articles is the Los Angeles Science Fiction League’s organ, Imagination! This zine’s first issue was published in October 1937 — the same month that Ray joined the LASFL. It ran for thirteen issues through October 1938. Through years of ardent questing, we’re fortunate to have assembled a complete run.
See pages from those zines at the link.
(7) ALDISS
DRAMATIZATION ONLINE. Brian
Aldiss’ Hothouse is a 5 part audio book series downloadable from BBC
Radio 4 Extra: “Brian
Aldiss – Hothouse” read by Gareth Thomas.
Millions of years from now, a small tribe battles to stay alive in Earth’s dense jungle.
Congratulations on having three novellas come out this year, including two Cormac & Amelia stories, and “Gremlin,” which came out in Asimov’s Science Fiction, about a gremlin partnering with a WWII fighter pilot. What are some of the challenges in writing novella-length fiction?
Thank you! Novellas have actually reduced some of the challenges I’ve been facing recently, as strange as that sounds. Over the last couple of years, I’d been putting a huge amount of pressure on myself to write a “big” novel. Big ideas, big impact, etc. That wasn’t working out so well for various reasons, and novellas gave me a chance to back up and rediscover my creative well, without as much pressure. Novellas have enough space to tell an in-depth story with lots of detail and character development, but without the commitment of writing a full-length novel. I went into my rough drafts folder and found some stories I had abandoned or not really developed because I thought they were supposed to be novels—but it turns out that maybe they were meant to be novellas. I could finally develop them without the pressure to “go big.” “Gremlin” and “Dark Divide” both came out of that effort. So did “The Ghosts of Sherwood,” which will be coming out in June 2020. I’ve found novellas to be more liberating than challenging.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.
March 8, 1978 — The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast 42 years ago today. Tonight BBC Radio 4 Extra has several programs on the Guide starting with Vogon Poetry: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is 42”
To celebrate the 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Dan Mersh and Helen Keen put on their dressing gowns and make themselves a nice hot cup of tea as they introduce all 6 episodes of the 1978 radio series alongside archive programmes and especially made H2G2-related features and interviews.
March 8, 1984 — The comedy musical Voyage of the Rock Aliens premiered. It was directed by James Fargo and Rob Giraldi. It starred Pia Zadora, Jermaine Jackson, Tom Nolan, Ruth Gordon and Craig Sheffer. It was conceived as a B-movie spoof, and you can see if that’s true here.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 8, 1859 — Kenneth Grahame. Author of The Wind in the Willows of course, which it turns out has had seven film adaptations, not all under the name The Wind in the Willows. Did you know A.A. Milne dramatized it for BBC Radio 4 back in the Seventies as Toad of Toad Hall? Oh, and he did write one other fantasy, The Reluctant Dragon which I’ve never heard of. Have any of y’all read it? (Died 1932.)
Born March 8, 1914 — Priscilla Lawson. In 1936, she was cast in the very first Flash Gordon serial as the daughter of Ming the Merciless. Princess Aura’s rivalry with Dale Arden for Flash Gordon’s affection was one of the main plots of the serial and gained Lawson lasting cult figure status. (Died 1958.)
Born March 8, 1921 — Alan Hale Jr. The Skipper on Gilligan’s Island which y’all decided wasgenre, and he did show up in such films as Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl, The Fifth Musketeer and The Giant Spider Invasion which is most decidedly SF, if of a pulpish variety. Series wise, I see he was on The Wild Wild West and Fantasy Island. (Died 1990.)
Born March 8, 1934 — Kurt Mahr. He’s one of the first authors of the Perry Rhodan series which, according to his German Wiki page, is one of “the largest science fiction series of the world.” I’ve not read any Rhodan fiction, so how is it? (Died 1993.)
Born March 8, 1939 — Peter Nicholls. Writer and editor. creator and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction with John Clute. His other publications were Science Fiction at Large, The Science in Science Fiction edited by Nicholls and written by him and David Langford, and Fantastic Cinema. He became the first Administrator of the UK’s Science Fiction Foundation. He was editor of its journal, Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction, from 1974 to 1978. (Died 2018.)
Born March 8, 1950 — Peter McCauley, 70. I remember him best from the most excellent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World series where he played Professor George Challenger. He also showed as Mr. Spilett on Mysterious Island, another series shot in New Zealand and based off Jules Verne’s novel L’Île mystérieuse. Continuing the Verne riff, he was Admiral McCutcheon in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a Nineties TV version of the novel.
Born March 8, 1970 — Jed Rees, 50. Another Galaxy Quest performer, he played Teb, a Thermian. His most recent major genre outing was on Deadpool as Jared / Agent Smith / The Recruiter. He’s had one-offs in Ghost Whisperer, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, The Net, X-Files,Outer Limits,The Sentinel and Sliders.
Born March 8, 1976 — Freddie Prinze Jr., 44. I’m fairly sure his first genre role was in Wing Commander as Lt. Christopher Blair followed by the animated Mass Effect: Paragon Lost in which he voiced Lieutenant James Vega. Speaking of animated endeavors, I’ve got him in Kim Possible: A Sitch In Time voicing Future Jim / Future Tim followed by being in all in all four seasons of the animated Star Wars Rebels as Kanan Jarrus. And that’s a series which I highly recommend as it may well be the best Star Wars fiction ever done.
(11) COMICS SECTION.
Foxtrot’s Jason Fox discovers that role-playing the Witchers may be harder than it seems.
Rhymes with Orange makes it two genre references in row, albeit with an awful pun.
(12) NO SXSW THIS YEAR. Strictly speaking, public health wasn’t the reason it got canceled; every
sponsor wasn’t going to be there. The Hollywood Reporter explains: “SXSW Canceled Due to Coronavirus Outbreak”.
…In communication with The Austin Chronicle late on Friday, SXSW co-founder and managing director Roland Swenson told the outlet that the festival does not have an insurance plan to cover this specific reason for cancellation. “We have a lot of insurance (terrorism, injury, property destruction, weather). However bacterial infections, communicable diseases, viruses and pandemics are not covered.”
The cancellation follows many companies choosing not to participate this year as a safety precaution, including Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, WarnerMedia and Amazon Studios.
In announcing their cancellations, several companies cited concerns over the spread of the virus, which has resulted in 3,000 deaths worldwide and affected over 90,000 people in numerous countries. Though little is known and a vaccine is not currently available, coronavirus causes the virus, which involves flu-like symptoms such as fever, cough and respiratory trouble.
…In an industry not known for its permanence, it is perhaps no surprise that the Great Movie Ride is no more — its replacement, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, opened this week — but Feige’s comments cut to the importance of not only remembering but also safeguarding our past. The value of pop art, and how revered and inspirational it can be to its audience, is arguably directly proportional to the care with which we treat it. At least that’s a core thesis of a new Disney-themed exhibit opening at Orange County’s Bowers Museum, which aims to look not only at Disney’s history but the art of conservancy itself.
For 50 years, the Walt Disney Archives has amassed one of Hollywood’s most extensive corporate histories, a collection that ranges from company memos — the initial contract for the silent 1920s Alice Comedies — to figurines from, yes, the recently retired Great Movie Ride. That Alice Comedies contract, as well as a xenomorph from “Alien,” which was once housed in that Walt Disney World attraction, are part of the expansive “Inside the Walt Disney Archives: 50 Years of Preserving the Magic,” an exhibit opening this weekend and continuing through Aug. 30 at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum.
[Friday] night, SpaceX launched its first generation Dragon capsule on its twentieth — and final — resupply run to the International Space Station.
The launch marks the Dragon’s last mission as the capsule makes way for SpaceX’s updated and improved Dragon 2 capsule, which will begin making resupply runs to the space station in October.
Alongside cargo to resupply the ISS, the Dragon will be bringing along payloads for experimental research aboard the space station. Including an Adidas experiment to see how it can manufacture midsoles in space; a project from the faucet maker, Delta, to see how water droplets form in zero gravity; and Emulate is sending up an organ-on-a-chip to examine how microgravity affects intestinal immune cells and how heart tissue can be cultured in space.
SpaceX launched another cargo mission to the International Space Station Friday, successfully landing the flight’s rocket booster for the 50th time in the last five years, the Associated Press reported.
The rocket lifted off to a countdown and cheers from an audience at SpaceX’s headquarters in California, but the largest cheers came for the successful landing of the rocket’s first-stage booster. After falling away from the Dragon capsule, the “Falcon 9” touched back down on the landing pad, amid flashes of bright light and smoke.
“And the Falcon has landed for the 50th time in SpaceX history!” announced lead engineer Jessica Anderson on a livestream from SpaceX HQ.
A peckish pig who swallowed a pedometer ended up sparking a fire in its pen.
Fire crews were called to a farm near Bramham, Leeds, at about 14:00 GMT on Saturday after copper from the pedometer’s batteries apparently reacted with the pig’s excrement and dry bedding.
The pedometers were being used on pigs to prove they were free-range. No pigs or people were hurt in the fire.
North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said it had gone to “save the bacon”.
(17) THE BAT CAPITAL. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] And here everybody thought Gotham was a stand in for NYC.
Turns out it was London all along. ComicBook.com is there when “Epic Batman Statue Debuts in London”
DC Comics just debuted an epic new Batman statue in Leicester Square. They posted about the monument to the superhero on Facebook with an image of the Caped Crusader looking down on the populace. The detailing on this piece looks very intricate with the muscle work, utility belt, and cowl deserving special shout outs. The post also calls back to Batman Day when the company made Bat-Signals all across the world in different cities. London was on the list of places that got the light show…
A lot of fans have big hopes for Matt Reeves’ The Batman next year. They believe it could give them a fresh take on the character that will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other movie version of the hero.
“It’s very much a point of view-driven, noir Batman tale. It’s told very squarely on his shoulders, and I hope it’s going to be a story that will be thrilling but also emotional,” Reeves said to THR. “It’s more Batman in his detective mode than we’ve seen in the films. The comics have a history of that. He’s supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, and that’s not necessarily been a part of what the movies have been. I’d love this to be one where when we go on that journey of tracking down the criminals and trying to solve a crime, it’s going to allow his character to have an arc so that he can go through a transformation.”
(18) 007 VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse
Wooster.] Saturday Night Live host Daniel Craig of course talked about playing James Bond in the opening
monologue. He also played a purported clip from No Time To Die.
It’s really funny!
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Darrah Chavey, Contrarius, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
