1930’s Fan Bob Madle and the slightly younger Fan Curt Phillips; May 1, 2019.
Bob Madle, turns 99 today. A founder of First Fandom, Bob attended the 1936 event in Philadelphia considered by some the first sf convention, went to the first Worldcon in 1939, co-founded the Philadelphia SF Society, was a finalist for the 1956 Best Feature Writer Hugo, won TAFF in 1957, and was Suncon’s (1977) Fan GoH.
By Curt Phillips: I visited Bob at his home
two weeks ago just before Corflu 37, which was held in Rockville, MD this
year. Bob is doing very well, and in spite of some health issues over the
past couple of years is active, sharp as a tack, and still loving science
fiction and fandom as much as ever. He’s still selling rare science
fiction books and magazines too and during my visit I parted with a few hard
earned dollars to buy some Wonder Stories
and some other magazines that I’d been looking for, but the best part of my
visit was to simply sit in Bob’s enormous pulp warehouse and talk about early
science fiction with him. He’s known everybody
in science fiction and fandom over the decades and has fascinating stories to
tell. I only had a few hours to visit, but I could have stayed for
days.
First Fandom founder, WWII veteran, science fiction’s master
bookseller; Robert A. “Bob” Madle. He was there at Fandom’s
beginnings and he’s with us still.
By John L. Coker
III: Lottie Levin Robins, who was happily married for 66 years to Jack
Robins (a member of the Futurians, First Fandom and N3F) died peacefully on
November 18, 2018.
Lottie was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, on September 18,
1915 to immigrant parents from the Ukraine – the last of five children. She graduated high school in 1932. Wrote her first play at age 9 and wanted to
be a writer from that day on. From age
11 to 18 Lottie was published every Saturday in the Winnipeg Free Press Young
Authors pages: letters, essays and a novel.
At 17 she won first prize in a Young Zionist essay contest. At 19, first prize coast-to-coast in the same
contest. At 22, in charge of music and
drama and wrote a daily newsletter and was Assistant Director at an 8-week camp
for 500 children. During that time she
wrote a weekly column for a three provincial Anglo-Jewish newspaper and read
every book in the library about writing.
She also was secretary for her attorney brother, social worker for a
Children’s Bureau and a student nurse at a children’s hospital for a year.
Jack Robins in 1946
Lottie and Jack Robins newly engaged (1949)
In 1945, Lottie left for Brooklyn where she worked as a medical
assistant for a doctor’s office for 4 years until she met Jack. They
immediately found common interests: writing, photography, classical music and
politics. After dating for only 5 weeks,
they became engaged and were married on December 25, 1949. In 1956, when their children were 3 and 5,
Jack went back to college full-time, attending Brooklyn Polytechnical Institute
on a fellowship where he received his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry.
After she and Jack started to take weekly college courses, Lottie was
invited to be an instructor in Adult Education for 5 years, teaching
non-fiction and writing memoirs. She
eventually published in Guideposts,
Writer’s Digest, The Writer, Canadian Writer’s Journal, Saturday Evening Post,
Jack and Jill, McCalls, the New York Times,
and many others. She was Executive
Editor of a two-language magazine, transliterated Yiddish and English for Rodel
Press, and wrote 400 columns for Canadian and USA newspapers.
She had many other interests, including photography, embroidery,
sewing, making dolls, quilting and Persian rugs.
Science Fiction was such an important part of their marriage and
they got to know many of the people who became famous, including Don and Elsie
Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, Fred Pohl, Damon Knight, Sam Moskowitz and others. Jack was the photographer at the SF functions
that they attended, so he was not in many of the pictures. Together, they attended three World SF
Conventions. At one SF conference in
Philadelphia, Jack and Lottie wrote and performed a humorous skit in honor of Don
Wollheim’s retiring.
Lottie and Jack Robins in 2015.
Lottie celebrated her 103rd birthday last year. She thought of Jack as her loving husband,
encyclopedia, editor and best friend.
When asked about her secret for having lived so long, Lottie would often
replay that Jack was wonderful to live with and they had such an interesting
life together.
Lottie is survived by her daughter Lohrainne Janell; her son
Arthur Robins; three grandchildren (Alisa, Amy and Leila); and, three
great-grandchildren (Jordon, Fionah and Jaxon).
(Adapted from
an article in First Fandom Annual, 2018,
ed. by John L. Coker III and Jon D. Swartz)
The 2018 First Fandom Annual has just been published: Remembering Jack Robins (1919-2015), Edited by John L. Coker III and Jon D. Swartz.
This periodical showcases new articles and photographs, as well as a long interview with Jack Robins recalling the good old days, an article by Lottie about her family, and two of Jack’s SF-themed plays: “The Ivory Tower” and “The Trials and Tribulations of Publishing.”
Here are first-hand accounts of some early adventures of SF fans from the 1930s, including Donald A. Wollheim, John B. Michel, Leslie Perri, Richard Wilson, Fred Pohl, David A. Kyle, William S. Sykora, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Robert W. Lowndes, Isaac Asimov, and Damon Knight.
Also presented are a selection of Jack’s poetry and several of his historic SF photographs.
Also featured, a Jack Robins bibliography prepared by Christopher M. O’Brien.
90 pages, limited edition (50 copies); Laser printed on good quality paper; B&W photos and interior illustrations; Gloss covers, 8½ x 11, saddle-stitched.
This will soon be out-of-print, so order your copy today by sending a check or money order for $30 (payable to John L. Coker III) to John at 4813 Lighthouse Road, Orlando, FL – 32808.
By John Coker III: The 2018 First Fandom Awards and the Big Heart Award were presented during Opening Ceremonies at Worldcon76. Steve Francis was the Master of Ceremonies.
Distinguished First Fandom member Erle M. Korshak presented the Hall of Fame Award to Robert Silverberg.
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg has been a professional writer since 1955, the year before he graduated from Columbia University, and has published more than a hundred books and close to a thousand short stories. He is a many-time winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, was GoH at the Worldcon in Heidelberg, Germany in 1970, was named to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 2004 was named a Grand Master by the SFWA, of which he is a past president. Silverberg was born in New York City, but he and his wife Karen and an assortment of cats have lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
John Hertz inducted Len and June Moffatt into the First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame, and the Award was accepted on their behalf by Bob Konigsberg.
Len and June Moffatt
Len and June Moffatt were longtime dedicated fans, SF and Mystery readers, authors, fanzine publishers, editors, correspondents, convention organizers and associate members of First Fandom. They joined LASFS in the later-1940s. They published the FAPAzine Moonshine, published in APA-L, and were founding members in the fanzine 5X5. Len was one of the organizers of the 1958 Worldcon. Len and June were co-founders of the Bouchercon, and were the 1973 TAFF Delegates. They were Fan Guests of Honor at Loscon 8 (1981) and BoucherCon (1985), and recipient of the Evans-Freehafer Trophy (1994) and the Anthony Award (1999). They are being honored as a couple for their tireless service to others over the course of their lifetimes.
The Sam Moskowitz Archive Award is presented for excellence in collecting. This year, First Fandom recognizes the important scholarly work that has been done by Hal W. Hall while he was curator of the SF and Fantasy Research Collection of the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University.
Hal W. Hall
In 1970, Hall W. Hall started indexing SF and fantasy book reviews, ending that effort 25 years later with a bibliography of some 79,000 citations. In the late-1970s, he started collecting citations to articles and books about SF and fantasy, first in book form and then online. That material resides in the SF and Fantasy Research Database, now approaching 115,000 items. In 2017, Hall published Sam Moskowitz: A Bibliography and Guide (221 pages, listing 1,489 items).
(1) THUMB ON THE SCALES. The Fourth of July was the day Vicksburg fell and the day after the South lost the Battle of Gettysburg. On our timeline, anyway. The war had a different outcome at Dinosaur Kingdom II — a theme park in Virginia where dinosaurs and an assortment of other creatures helped the Confederates defeat the Union. Or so goes the pitch from Vice News: “Inside the weird dinosaur park where Confederates defeat the Union army”).
The owner claims not to be quite the Confederate apologist you might suppose: “That war had to have happened, because the fact that you and I can own somebody is just totally outrageous… and so that had to change.” And after watching a video tour of the park I was left wondering if Vice is selling the dino Lost Cause angle a lot harder than the attraction’s owner….
(2) BRAND NEW. Jeff VanderMeer has allowed the Last Exit To Nowhere company to make Southern Reach T-shirts. He told them that they needed to donate a portion of the profits to St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge and notes that the zip code on the shirt is the zip code for the refuge.
An official T-shirt approved by the author, Jeff VanderMeer. The inspiration for the novel was a 14-mile hike through St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Florida. Many of the animals and vegetation that VanderMeer has seen on this hike over the past 17 years appear in the novel. A proportion of the profits for this T-shirt goes to Friends of St. Marks Wildlife Refuge. A single colour design, using a glow-in-the-dark ink hand screen printed on a regular fit 100% cotton military olive T-shirt.
(3) BOB MADLE RECOVERING FROM STROKE. Bob Madle, 98, one of the two remaining fans who attended the first Worldcon (1939) suffered a stroke last month reports Curt Phillips” “I’ve been given permission by his daughter Jane to report that First Fandom Founder, TAFF Delegate, SF Bookseller, long time SF fan and all-around good guy Bob Madle is back at home now and doing very well after a stroke suffered during the second week of June.”
According to Jane:
My Dad is home from rehab and doing very well. His speech, which was the main thing impacted, is improving every day. He’s continuing to get therapy at home. He said he’s fine with letting others know about the stroke.
Phillips filled in the timeframe:
I had gone to Rockville just over a week ago to do some preparatory work for a convention – Corflu 36 – and naturally had tried to call Bob to arrange a visit with my fellow First Fandom member and pulpfan. It was quite alarming when my several phone calls over multiple days failed to be answered, something which had never happened before when calling Bob. I left messages and while driving home to Abingdon the next day I received a phone call from Stephen Haffner who told me about Bob’s stroke and that he was still in the hospital. Subsequent emails with Jane filled in the picture and I learned that Bob was headed for rehab the following week, which has now been successfully completed. Bob is, at this hour, back at home, no doubt watching a baseball game on tv.
Stephen and I lacked permission from Bob or his family to share this news until now, probably for concerns of Bob being overtaxed with phone calls and so forth, but Jane now tells me that he’s improving steadily, to my great relief. Keep up the good progress, Bob! I’ll come to see you next time I’m in town to share a beer, watch a ball game with you, and maybe even buy a pulp magazine or two!
They used 800 observations of the system spanning over six years, using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the William E. Gordon telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico….
The researchers [Ingrid Stairs and Anne Archibald] could measure this behavior based on the pulsing behavior of the spinning neutron star. The observations revealed that the white dwarf and the pulsar seemed to behave exactly the same way in response to the other white dwarf’s gravity. General relativity wins again….
[Mandelbaum] also asked Archibald and Stairs whether they’d read The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Stairs hadn’t, and Archibald is halfway through. “One of the themes of the book is fundamental physics… if you do the same experiment in two places, physics doesn’t depend on where. It’s this universal fundamental physics you can get at with careful experimentation. [Liu] asks, what happens if physics doesn’t work that way?” she said. “I’m testing that at a fundamental level.”
(5) A PERSISTENT VISITOR. JJ says be sure you read the thread down to the poem. The thread starts here.
This is Tater. Tater has been secretly eating my garden for weeks. Don't be like Tater. pic.twitter.com/kk25YmfjRo
— William C. Tracy @wctracy.bsky.social (@wctracy) July 3, 2018
(6) AI SPREADS HOAX DEATH REPORT. While io9 headlines “Siri Erroneously Told People That Stan Lee Was Dead” as a Siri/Apple story (and it certainly is that), the underlying story is that a troll changed a Wikidata.org page to falsely say Stan Lee was dead. (Wikidata is a sister project to the better-known Wikipedia, which latter is reportedly one of the sources used by Alexa ) Siri (and a number of other digital assistants) pull info from various sources — some of which can be edited by the public — when asked questions. In this case, Siri would be in error on Stan Lee until another Wikidata editor reverted the change less than an hour later. That window, though, was clearly enough to cause some alarm.
Quoting the article:
In a post on CinemaBlend, writer Sean O’Connell described a moment where he and his teenage son were driving home from an Ant-Man and the Wasp screening on Wednesday, to have his son ask Apple’s digital assistant Siri how old Stan Lee was. The response? “Stan Lee died on July 2, 2018.” They were concerned and checked the internet for news, but there was none… because it wasn’t true. But we were curious why Siri would share this specific information.
The io9 article concludes:
The troublesome user (“&beer&love”) who started the bad data cascade had been kicked off Wikidata before and reportedly has now been kicked off again. Sadly, as long as there are trolls and as long as we collectively depend on data sources that can be corrupted by them, there will be such problems.
(7) MULLER OBIT. Robert Muller (1940-2018): Dutch cinematographer, died July 3, aged 78. Worked on Repo Man (1984) and Until the End of the World (1991).
An international team of scientists has discovered a young planet — just 5 or 6 million years old — forging its own path through space and likely growing along the way.
The scientists captured a photograph, which they say is the very first direct image of the birth of a planet still forming around a star.
It’s a major finding for those of us on Earth, a 4.5-billion-year-old planet.
The newly discovered planet may be young, but it’s huge: many times the size of Jupiter, which could fit 1,300 planet Earths inside.
Scientists think they can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by tweaking the food that cows eat. A recent experiment from the University of California, Davis suggests that adding seaweed to cattle feed can dramatically decrease their emissions of the potent gas methane.
Livestock is a major source of greenhouse gases worldwide. About quarter of the methane emissions due to human activity in the U.S. can be chalked up to gas released from these animals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
(11) HARD TO BE HUMBLE WHEN YOU’RE REALLY A GENIUS. Chuck Tingle proves love again.
HAVE YOU EVER WANTED TO TAKE A DEEP DIVE INTO THE TINGLEVERSE AND HELP A CHARITY PLUS GET AN EXCLUSIVE TINGLER AND PODCAST EPISODE? NOW IS YOUR CHANCE BUCKAROO https://t.co/Pnk4S0jqMnpic.twitter.com/wnskkF74PF
I think it is fair to say that Ant-man & The Wasp is the most inconsequential Marvel movie for some time. No new superheroes are introduced, no new approaches to the genre are taken, there is little impact on the other MCU films, there are no big or deep themes to discuss. It is the first MCU film to have the name of a female Avenger in the title but that’s about it.
But it is a fun, often silly film….
(13) FLASH AND THEY’RE GONE. People who love LibertyCon really love it. Rev. Bob brings word that the con sold out its 2019 memberships today, the first day they were available online.
To be more precise, they opened online registration today and sold all 750 memberships in just under six hours. (“5 hours, 52 minutes, and 50 seconds!” per one source.) This is according to multiple Facebook posts by associated individuals, as well as the official convention Facebook page.
It is worth noting that, according to those same sources, no 2019 memberships were sold at the convention itself. In addition, hotel room reservations have not yet opened; that won’t happen until sometime in September.
(14) ALREADY SPOILED. Remember that spoiler-filled Batman news item I warned you about so strenuously in the July 1 Scroll? Well, genre news sites have splattered the spoiler everywhere and the comic issues in question have hit the stands. It’s up to you – skip the next paragraph if you want to preserve the surprise.
Superhero romance is … fraught. Marriage doubly so…
Wenz casually reels off nearly a dozen different ways that marriages have failed to happen or fallen apart in just the first few paragraphs of his article. The most recent Marvel and DC will-they/won’t-they/oh-Great-Gnu-what-just-happened stories are examined in how they fit into these patterns.
On Comicbook.com, Patrick Cavanaugh talks to Batman writer Tom King to get his view on What Just Happened. King point out that this issue (#50) is just halfway through a planned 100-issue arc so the readers don’t know how the overall story will end. King is quoted as saying,
We’re halfway through that journey. It’s a long story, a long journey. It could have a happy ending or a sad ending. You’re halfway through the movie now. You’re in the middle of Empire Strikes Back and Vader just showed up and took Han’s gun.
(15) A BUTTLOAD OF CATS. Martin Morse Wooster would hate for anyone to miss Rachel Bloom’s musical salute to SJW credentials, performed on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
This is the cleaned-up version, although to my ear “buttload” fits the meter better than “fuckton” anyway.
[Thanks to Steve Green, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Rev. Bob, Steven H Silver, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Iphinome.]
By Jon D. Swartz and John L. Coker III: Born in May 1916, Norm Stanley was a science fiction (SF) fan from Maine who was very active in fandom in the 1940s. He was a member of the famous Stranger Club, and was one of the club members who attended Noreascon 3 as a Fan Guest of Honor.
Norm was also tangentially involved in the Skowhegan Junior Astronomical and Rocket Society, the kind of fan club that combined both science and SF activities and was common in this country in the 1930s and 1940s. He was generous with his fellow club members, and let them borrow from his seventy bound-volumes of SF prozines.
He attended early conventions such as Philcon, as well as some of the early Boskones. He also participated in Mainecon Jr, a “conference” in the language of the times, in 1943, with his friend Jim Avery and the visiting Claude Degler. He gave Degler some fanzines, and got along well with him. This generosity of his, plus the “conference” they had had with Avery, apparently qualified him to be a member of Degler’s legendary Cosmic Circle. Norm was still active in fan matters in the late 1940s, and attended the 1948 Torcon where he participated in a roundtable discussion on the probable date of the arrival of interplanetary travel.
Norm’s major fanzine was Fan-Tods, which ran for nineteen issues. He also published Beyond with Roscoe E. Wright. Fan-Tods was a SF fanzine that was subtitled “The Magazine for the Tod Fan.” It appeared in the 1940s-1950s, and was edited and published by Norm from his home in Rockland, Maine. This fanzine was mimeographed using blue ink. Issue #1 appeared in December, 1942; with #2 appearing in Spring, 1943; #7 in Summer, 1944; and then following a regular quarterly schedule until issue #18 in 1949 — after which there was a three-year break; and then Issue #19 was published in the Fall of 1952, and was the last issue. Fan-Tods was an apazine, distributed through FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Association), and then VAPA (Vanguard Amateur Press Association). Cover illustrations were by Wright, among others. By issue #7, Wright had become a co-editor. SF historian Harry Warner once described Norm as “a power force in FAPA.”
Jack Speer’s 1944 poll of the top SF fans found Fan-Tods to be among the nation’s top five fanzines. On the other hand, in 1947 – in his fanzine Matters of Opinion — Speer wrote an article, “The People vs. Norman F. Stanley,” that was very critical of the 16th issue of Fan-Tods.
In the 1940s, Norm was very much a member of the “sense of wonder” camp of SF. According to Warner’s All Our Yesterdays, when Norm’s mother told him about atomic bombs and Hiroshima he remembered thinking: “I confess my first reaction was one of elation, which even the obvious misgivings couldn’t quench. ‘Geez, we might blow up the whole planet,’ I thought, ‘but it’s still wonderful.’ ”
In addition to his fanzine work, Norm wrote for the SF prozines, including several letters to Astounding Science Fiction. Three of his letters were published in 1938, two in 1939, and one in 1940. In addition, he had an essay (“The Theory of Thing Things”) published in the 1948 Torcon Report.
Norm was one of the original members of First Fandom; and he was elected to the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2013.
Norman and Eleanor
Norman F. Stanley passed away on October 22, 2016, at the Sussman House, Rockport, Maine, with his family in attendance. He was 100 years of age. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Eleanor, their two children, a granddaughter, and four children of a nephew.
When Jules Verne created gentleman adventurer Phileas Fogg in his 1873 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, he had no way of imagining the bizarre turn his character’s chronicles would take a century later. When Philip Jose Farmer added The Other Log of Phileas Fogg to his Wold Newton Family series in 1973, he had no way of imagining that four decades later there would exist a Wold Newton specialty publisher to continue the esoteric literary exploits of some of the last two centuries’ most fantastic characters.
(3) HOW THIS YEAR’S HUGO BASES WERE MADE. Read artist Sara Felix’s Facebook post about creating the bases. And there’s an Instagram from the company that did the fabrication.
It was nothing personal, though. In fact, it had little to do with de Castell at all. De Castell was at the annual celebration of science fiction and fantasy writing/fandom because he had made the Hugo shortlist for best new writer. De Castell figured he would lose to Andy Weir of The Martian fame — he was correct in this prediction — and he assumed Martin believed the same thing.
But Martin was also reacting to the fact that de Castell had been nominated in part because of the efforts of two fan voting blocs: the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies. The Puppies groups have caused chaos in the Hugo Awards and the broader sci-fi and fantasy communities lately by trying to fight what they see as the takeover of the awards by “social justice warriors” who vote for politically correct works at the expense of good writing and storytelling. Both the Sad Puppies, created by bestselling author Larry Correia, and the Rabid Puppies, launched by right-wing writer Vox Day, have put forward slates of suggested writers and works to vote for, and de Castell wound up on just such a list much to his surprise.
Sebastien de Castell elaborated in this Reddit thread: As Peter [reporter Peter Darbyshire] noted in the article, George R.R. Martin wasn’t being hurtful towards me at all–he was simply calling it as he saw it and, of course, was completely correct in his assessment. My mature, adult self understood that there was nothing ungracious on his part in our very brief encounter. My eight year-old inner self, of course, had quite reasonably been expecting his first words to me to be, “What? Sebastien de Castell? By Jove, chap, I’ve been looking all over for you in order to praise your works as the finest in a generation. Also, because I’d love your thoughts on the final books in A Song of Ice & Fire…I happen to have some early pages here if you’d like to read them?”
That’s what Peter and I were discussing in that portion of the interview–the gap for me between feeling like a “big time author” and coming face-to-face with the reality of being a guy who’s really still very much in the early stages of his career.
The most interesting thing about WorldCon (MidAmericon II) for me was how kind people were to me overall. I was very cognizant that my presence on the Campbell shortlist was controversial and likely painful to a lot of people within that community. They had every reason to suspicious and even dismissive of me, but in fact folks were generous and welcoming. David Gerrold gave me some excellent advice on completing the final book in the Greatcoats series, Alyssa Wong was terrific and fun to hang out with (we were the only two Campbell nominees in attendance so our official photos got pretty silly), and I got to spend some time chatting with the brilliant Michael Swanwick.
(5) DC EXPLORING 2024 WORLDCON BID. Their polished website suggests a group that is doing more than just thinking about it, however, they say DC in 2024 is still in the exploratory stage.
We’re back to explore the possibility of hosting the 82nd Worldcon in 2024. Washington, DC is still a super location for a World Science Fiction Convention and we believe it’s time Worldcon returned to DC for the third time. The year 2024 will be the 50th anniversary of Discon II, the last DC Worldcon.
We are still very early in the planning stage. Please check back for information on supporting our bid and our future activities. Our social media links are also still under construction.
They’re exploring right now – but I expect they’ll find they’re bidding if they keeping looking.
(6) WEINBERG OBIT. SF Site News reports Robert Weinberg (1946-2016) passed away today.
Author Robert Weinberg (b.1946) died on September 25. Weinberg began publishing fiction in 1967 and from 1970 to 1981 edited the fanzine Pulp about pulp magazines. He wrote for Marvel Comics and was known for his art collection. Weinberg also ran a mail order book business until 1997. Weinberg received a special committee award at Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon.
Here is the citation that was read at Chicon 7 when Weinberg was presented with his Special Committee Award.
Each year, the Worldcon committee is entitled to recognize someone who has made a difference in our community. Someone who has made science fiction fandom a better place. This can be a fan, an author, a bookseller, a collector, a con-runner, or someone who fits into all those and more. This year, Chicon 7 is pleased to recognize someone who fits into all of those categories.
Robert Weinberg attended his first meeting of the Eastern SF Association in 1963, discovered the club offered something he liked, and became active, eventually becoming the club’s president in 1968. Maintaining an interest in the pulp magazines which formed so much of the basis for what we read today, Bob published fourteen issues of the fanzine, Pulp, from 1974 through 1980.
In 1968, Bob began publishing readers guides to the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, eventually expanding both to book length and publishing additional guides and books about the pulp magazines and the authors who wrote for them. 1973 saw his publication of WT50, an anniversary tribute to Weird Tales, a magazine to which Bob would acquire the rights in 1979 and help revive.
Bob is a collector of science fiction and fantasy art from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, working to preserve art which otherwise might have been lost. His interest in art collection also led to him writing A Biographical Dictionary of SF & Fantasy Artists, which served as a basis for Chicon 7’s Guest of Honor Jane Frank’s own A Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists.
Beginning in 1976, Bob began serving as the co-chairman of the Chicago Comicon, then the second largest comic book convention in the United States. He continued in that position for twenty years before it was sold to Wizard Entertainment. During that time, Bob also chaired the World Fantasy Convention when it came to Chicago on two different occasions and in 1978 he co-chaired the first major Doctor Who convention in the United States.
Bob has also written his own books, both non-fiction and fiction.. His first novel, The Devil’s Auction, was published in 1988 with more than a dozen novels and collections to follow. He worked with Martin H. Greenberg to edit and publish numerous anthologies beginning in the 1980s.
Not content to write his own books and monographs, run conventions, and collect art, Bob also, for several years, ran the mail-order Weinberg Books. Bob offered advice to Alice Bentley when she was setting up The Stars Our Destination, a science fiction specialty bookstore in Chicago from 1988 through 2003. In 1997, Bob sold his mail order business to Alice.
Bob’s long career as a fan, author, bookseller, collector, and con-runner has helped make science fiction the genre, and the community, it is today. Chicon 7 would like to recognize Robert Weinberg for his years of service and devotion given to advancing the field of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
(7) PETERSON OBIT. First Fandom member Robert C. Peterson (1921-2016) died August 15. John Coker III wrote the following appreciation:
Robert C. Peterson
Bob Peterson and Jack Williamson
Robert C. Peterson (May 30, 1921 – August 15, 2016)
Robert Constant Peterson passed away on August 15 after a brief illness. He is survived by his four sons, John, James, Alan, and Douglas, and his grandchildren, Katherine, Eric, Diana, and Jay.
Robert was preceded in death by his wife of over 50 years, Winifred.
Robert graduated in 1942 from the University of Wyoming and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was an avid hiker and was an active member of the Colorado Mountain Club. He led hikes for the club until just before he turned 80. He met his wife, Winifred, on a mountain club hike.
Robert was an early fan of science fiction. In 1994 he was elected to the First Fandom Hall of Fame, and in 2008 he received the Sam Moskowitz Archive Award in recognition of his SF collection.
Robert and Winifred were lifelong members of the Washington Park United Church of Christ and were strong supporters of social justice. They supported Winifred’s sister Gretchen in her work at the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in Japan. Robert and Winifred travelled extensively in the U.S. and throughout the world.
In lieu of flowers contributions can be made to the American Friends of the ARI (http://www.friends-ari.org/).
(8) GARMAN OBIT. Jack Garman (1944-2016), credited with a judgment call that saved the first moon landing, died September 20 at the age of 72.
On July 20, 1969, moments after mission control in Houston had given the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, the O.K. to begin its descent to the moon, a yellow warning light flashed on the cockpit instrument panel. “Program alarm,” the commander, Neil Armstrong, radioed. “It’s a 1202.”
The alarm appeared to indicate a computer systems overload, raising the specter of a breakdown. With only a few minutes left before touchdown on the moon, Steve Bales, the guidance officer in mission control, had to make a decision: Let the module continue to descend, or abort the mission and send the module rocketing back to the command ship, Columbia.
By intercom, Mr. Bales quickly consulted Jack Garman, a 24-year-old engineer who was overseeing the software support group from a back-room console. Mr. Garman had painstakingly prepared himself for just this contingency — the possibility of a false alarm.
“So I said,” he remembered, “on this backup room voice loop that no one can hear, ‘As long as it doesn’t reoccur, it’s fine.’”
At 4:18 p.m., with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining for the descent, Mr. Armstrong radioed: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
Mr. Garman, whose self-assurance and honed judgment effectively saved mankind’s first lunar landing, died on Tuesday outside Houston. He was 72. His wife, Susan, said the cause was complications of bone marrow cancer.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
September 25, 1959 — Hammer’s The Mummy, seen for the first time in the UK on this day.
(12) CULTURAL APPROPRIATION DEBATE. Kaitlyn Greenidge makes some trenchant comments in “Who Gets To Write What?” for the New York Times.
…Claudia Rankine, when awarded the MacArthur genius grant this past week, noted that the prize was “the culture saying: We have an investment in dismantling white dominance in our culture. If you’re trying to do that, we’re going to help you.” For some, this sounds exciting. For others, this reads as a threat — at best, a suggestion to catch up and engage with a subject, race, that for a long time has been thought of as not “universal,” not “deep” enough for fiction. The panic around all of this is driving these outbursts.
It must feel like a reversal of fate to those who have not been paying attention. The other, who has been relegated to the background character, wise outcast, dash of magic, or terror or cool or symbolism, or more simply emotional or physical whore, is expected to be the main event, and some writers suspect that they may not be up for that challenge.
A writer has the right to inhabit any character she pleases — she’s always had it and will continue to have it. The complaint seems to be less that some people ask writers to think about cultural appropriation, and more that a writer wishes her work not to be critiqued for doing so, that instead she get a gold star for trying.
Whenever I hear this complaint, I am reminded of Toni Morrison’s cool assessment of “anti-P.C. backlash” more than 20 years ago: “What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
This debate, or rather, this level of the debate, is had over and over again, primarily because of an unwillingness on one side to consider history or even entertain a long line of arguments in response. Instead, what often happens is a writer or artist acts as though she is taking some brave stand by declaring to be against political correctness. As if our entire culture is not already centered on a very particular version of whiteness that many white people don’t even inhabit anymore. And so, someone makes a comment or a statement without nuance or sense of history, only with an implicit insistence that writing and publishing magically exist outside the structures of power that dominate every other aspect of our daily lives.
Imagine the better, stronger fiction that could be produced if writers took this challenge to stretch and grow one’s imagination, to afford the same depth of humanity and interest and nuance to characters who look like them as characters who don’t, to take those stories seriously and actually think about power when writing — how much further fiction could go as an art.
We got up very early, so early that it was pretty much a toss of the coin as to whether I’d just stay up all night or not, and made the drive to Lausanne, Switzerland, where we met our friends with whom we were doing the run. We changed in the parking lot, where it was much appreciated how my multicolored tutu nicely matched the colorful logo of the t-shirts we were provided. It was rather cold, which inspired Spacebunny to deliver an equally colorful soliloquy in appreciation for the generosity of the donors who were the reason she was wearing nothing but a bikini under her tutu.
Which, of course, was not as pretty as mine, as hers was only yellow. I pointed out that she would probably be glad to not be wearing very much in the way of clothing once we started running and the sun rose a bit higher in the sky, an intelligent observation that impressed her to such an extent that she expressed a keen wish to feel my teeth in her flesh, a sentiment that she managed to phrase in an admirably succinct manner. She was also delighted to discover that while there were people wearing everything from unicorn suits to dragon outfits, she was the only runner in a bikini.
The Color Run happens in hundreds of town internationally in the course of a year:
The Color Run is a five-kilometer, un-timed event in which thousands of participants, or “Color Runners”, are doused from head to toe in different colors at each kilometer. With only two rules, the idea is easy to follow:
1Wear white at the starting line!
2Finish plastered in color!
After Color Runners complete the race, the fun continues with an unforgettable Finish Festival. This larger than life party is equipped with music, dancing and massive color throws, which create millions of vivid color combinations. Trust us, this is the best post-5k party on the planet!
Peter Capaldi will be appearing in the first episode of Class! The show announced the good news via its social media accounts.
We also know that the show’s first two episodes will premiere in the UK on October 22nd. The Twitter account also announced the titles of the first two episodes: “For Tonight We Might Die” and “The Coach With the Dragon Tattoo.” Whoa. That first one is dark and that second one really does sound like it could be a Buffyepisode….
Sadly, we don’t yet have an official trailer for Class,though we do have an amazing fanmade one that is pretty brilliant in showing a potential tone of the show and put it into context within the larger Doctor Whouniverse. It gives a sense of just how ingrained the Coal Hill School has been in the Doctor Whoworld.
[Thanks to Steven H Silver, Bartimaeus, Andrew Porter, JJ, Cat Rambo, A wee Green Man, and John King Tarpinian, for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor IanP.]
The First Fandom Awards for 2016 were given during the Retro Hugo Awards Ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City on Thursday , August 18.
(1) RAMBO REPORT. “SFWA is Many Things, But Not a Gelatinous Cube” insists Cat Rambo, the organization’s President, in a 3,800 word update published halfway through her two-year term in office.
I was looking at Twitter the other day and reading through mentions of the Nebula Conference Weekend, including celebration of our new Grandmaster C.J. Cherryh, when I hit a tweet saying something along the lines of, “I hope SFWA doesn’t think this excuses the choice of picking (another author) in the past”. The way the sentence struck me got me thinking about the sort of perception that allows that particular construction.
No, SFWA, aka the organization known as The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America doesn’t think that. Because SFWA isn’t a person. It doesn’t think. Sometimes I like to imagine that SFWA. It lives in a basement somewhere and looks much like a pale green gelatinous cube, covered with lint and cat hair, and various unguessable things lurk in its murky depths, like discarded typewriter ribbons, empty Johnny Walker Black Label bottles, and that phone charging cable you lost a few weeks ago.
In actuality, SFWA — at least in the sense they’re thinking of — is an entity that changes from year to year, most notably through the leadership, but also through the overall composition of the 200+ volunteers and handful of staff that keep it running. The President makes a lot of choices for the organization; others are made for them. The President gets to pick the next Grandmaster, for example, although every living past President weighs in on the choice, as well as things like the Service to SFWA Award and the recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. ….
I have worked to facilitate the amazing and hard work that CFO Bud Sparhawk and comptroller Oz Drummond have been doing behind the scenes wherever I can, but I cannot take credit for any of that. Nonetheless, SFWA is moving towards a scrupulously-maintained financial state that can go beyond just sustaining itself, but can allow it to grow at a slow but steady pace. When I came on board we were highly dependent on a revenue source that is rapidly diminishing; I’m pleased to say that we are recovering from that and will not be similarly dependent in the future. I hope to replenish what was taken from the reserves within the next few years….
Via the efforts of volunteer wrangler Derek Künsken, volunteers are finding roles where they can use and expand existing skills, acquire new ones, and know that they are working to benefit SFWA. At the same time that we’re using more volunteers, we’re being much better about acknowledging their efforts. A few weekends ago I was at the volunteer breakfast at the Nebulas, passing out certificates of appreciation (created by Heather MacDougal) for the second year in a row, and we are making that event an integral part of our annual celebration from now on. When I came onboard, the volunteer situation was bad enough that we were losing members because of it — again, no malice, no intent to hurt people’s feelings or make them feel unvalued, only good desires and intentions that got overwhelmed due to a lack of communication and a team to back up the volunteer coordinator.
The SFWA Bulletin, that notoriously troubled and erratic entity, is back on schedule and rapidly proving itself capable of representing SFWA’s mission to the world at large. Editor Neil Clarke has been working to create covers and content that reflect the professional nature of the organization and which are useful to working writers. Among other things, we’ve got writers guidelines up for both it and the SFWA blog, and some members have covered their fees via a couple of blog posts or a Bulletin article. Jaym Gates, John Klima, and Tansy Rayner Roberts did the initial work of digging what seemed like a mortally-wounded Bulletin out from under a pile of criticism and ill-feeling, and deserve much praise for performing that rescue. Both Bulletin and the Blog have writers guidelines available online for what I believe is the first time….
SFWA exists for professional F&SF writers. We can talk about the mission to inform, defend, advocate for and all of that, but it boils down to this: if you are a professional genre writer, you should be able to join the organization and know that you are getting your money’s worth. Recently while researching, I counted ten ways SFWA can help a member promote their work; half of those were created in the past two years. ….
(2) WARNING. Kameron Hurley didn’t set out to write this in an especially tearjerking style. Just get your tissues ready anyway: “Drake the Dog has Passed Away”
As two people with chronic problems, my spouse and I know that you can’t always save everyone. But after dealing with the things we have in our lives, we sure as hell were going to try. Drake put up an incredible effort, and we shuffled our entire lives around his care, but Drake could never catch a break. Not once. Like so many things in life, it was wickedly unfair and cruel in the way that only life can be. You always think hey, if we can just be great caregivers, and come up with the money for the drugs and surgeries, we can save him. But the infection was stronger than us, and stronger than Drake, and it makes me incredibly angry and sad to type that, because it’s an admission that the world is bigger and scarier than we are, and sometimes when the train is moving, you can’t stop it.
(3) FIRST FANDOM NEWS. Steve Francis and Keith W. Stokes will present the Hall of Fame and Moskowitz Awards on August 18th as part of the Retro Hugo Awards
The Museum itself, along with many other landmarks, is a “PokeStop” within the game — a place where players can get free in-game items. In fact, there are actually three different PokeStops associated with various parts of the museum.
“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism,” Andrew Hollinger, the museum’s communications director, told The Post in an interview. “We are trying to find out if we can get the museum excluded from the game.”
The Holocaust Museum’s plight highlights how apps that layer a digital world on top of the real one, or so-called augmented reality games, can come with unforeseen consequences and raises questions about how much control the physical owner of a space can exert as those two worlds intersect.
My family and I just got back from England, where we spent two weeks touring Cornwall and Wales. We saw Doc Martin’s village, Tintagel Castle, Dartmoor, Tintern Abbey, the shop of the Tailor of Gloucester, and lots of other fascinating things, which I hope to be writing posts about in coming weeks….
Malcolm Merlyn will pop up in all of The CW’s shows
It certainly seems as though The CW is doing its best to bring their various shows together. Now that Supergirlis officially part of the Network’s small-screen superhero universe, much of the buzz surrounding the upcoming new seasons has centred around crossovers – or the potential for them. To this end, the first seeds seem to have been sown, with John Barrowman (aka Malcolm Merlyn in Arrow) signing a multi-show deal at The CW.
Following in the footsteps of studio co-star Wentworth Miller (aka Leonard Snart/Captain Cold), the deal will in theory see him appear in CW stablemates The Flashand Legends Of Tomorrow, as well as new addition Supergirl. Quite how Barrowman will fit in remains to be seen, but we’re sure that whatever he has planned isn’t good. He has burned his bridges with pretty much every character he’s come across since debuting in Arrow’s first season, so it’ll be interesting to see how he bounces off his counterparts in other shows. We’re particularly intrigued to see an encounter with Supergirl‘s Maxwell Lord.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
July 12, 1923 – James E. Gunn,
July 12, 1912 — Joseph Mugnaini
(8) SCI-FI INK. Get yer Temporary Literary Tattoos. In the sf/f department they’ve got slogans from Peter S. Beagle, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells and Franz Kafka.
This weekend I was at LibertyCon, and I ran into one of the organizers of the Dragon Awards. He said that he was kind of surprised that he hadn’t seen me talk about them online much. I told him that was because of Sad Puppies, I’m a controversial figure, there are just too many bitter harpies and poo flingers from fandom’s inbred pustulent under-choad who automatically flip out about anything I do, so I didn’t want to rock the boat for them.
But his response? Screw that. This award is for ALL FANS. And you have fans. So GO BUG THEM! We want so many people voting in this thing that no little clique or faction can sway it. The more fans involved, the better.
(10) IQ MARKET REPORT. Camestros Felapton was in another dogfight (well, Timothy wasn’t involved) with the Red Baron: “@voxday gets it wrong on IQ (again)”.
The other day Vox was disparaging about the value of scientific evidence. I’m not entirely sure if he is clear himself about what he means but when it comes to IQ he is happy to post anything that he feels supports his case.
This time, it is a pair of studies that point to a 4 point decline in IQ in France in a 9-10 year period. Vox quotes a second study that was an analysis of the first. This second study was an attempt to discern the cause of the decline by looking at the magnitude of the changes at a subtest level. This second paper concluded that the decline ‘likely has a primarily biological cause’. Vox declares it was due to immigration.
This is a very good example of studies that, while not necessarily wrong, aren’t really saying much at all. To see why you have to track back from Vox’s claim (immigrants somehow making whole countries less intelligent), to what the actual paper he quoted said, to the original paper that the second paper analysed and from there to what the actual original study was.
This behavior is so predictable that I not infrequently find myself able to correctly anticipate when a previously wounded Gamma is going to think he sees an opening and launch what I am coming to think of as a restorative rebuttal. However, I did not see this one coming; I did not think that Camestros Felapton was dumb enough to launch what is either his third or his fourth attempt to repair his delusion bubble since being so publicly humiliated about his lack of knowledge concerning rhetoric in Of Enthymemes and False Erudition. Apparently the sting of his repeated defeats at my hands has become more than he can bear, because he is really grasping at straws now.
Running out of brickbats to throw, Vox even resorted to sharing his score from an online vocabulary rating test.
Being a Phi (770) I couldn’t refuse the implicit challenge and rushed off to take the same quiz.
I got an identical score and wondered is that as high as it goes? I only had to guess once, so I either got a perfect score, or missed just one.
Vox Day shared notes. It seems we each missed one – the same one, in fact, both having got “avulse” wrong.
“Considering that neither paper addresses the USA at all, it would be absolutely remarkable if either of them had.”
Sorry Vox but the first paper does discuss the USA – it is the second paper that doesn’t. Lynn & Dutton discuss the US saying “However, there remains the problem that phenotypic intelligence has continued to increase in recent years in the United States (Flynn, 2012, Table A11i, p.238), despite evidence for dysgenic fertility reviewed in Lynn (2011) and confirmed by Meisenberg (2014). This inconsistency remains one of a number of un- resolved problems.” and cite the gains in WISC-III and WISC-IV scores in table 1 (IQ gains in USA and Britain).
So, where the researchers find a decline it isn’t attributable to immigration because of the relatively small impact immigration could have and where immigration could have a larger impact the ‘declines’ are more ambiguous (or possibly rises).
Meanwhile, the brilliant counter-argument from Vox is him posting an estimate of his vocabulary size from a free internet quiz.
So, only one story from this long list of stories I considered – less than I might have hoped. But easily explained – this is clearly the category Vox Day chose to make a mockery of. His nomination choices in the longer fiction categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette), were actually all readable stories, and some quite plausible Hugo nominees. That’s not at all the case in Short Story. And, indeed, the only good story on the list was only added after one of the original nominees withdrew.
Earlier this year at the Emerald City Comicon, I was on a panel with my fellow Angry Robot authors Peter Tieryas, Danielle Jensen, Patrick Tomlinson, and K.C. Alexander. As the panel wound down, K.C. turned to me and asked, “How do you write a realistic woman, being a male author?” I did the only sensible thing: I ducked under the table and curled up into a fetal ball.
Now, in my defense, it was the last panel of the last day of the con, and I’d been on my feet for most of that time. A question like this was one that required care and thoughtfulness, and I was in limited supply of both. If I gave any answer, I would not be doing K.C.’s question justice. Also: I am a gigantic wimp.
However, I’ve had a full night’s sleep and a bunch of tacos, so I feel comfortable and confident enough to say this: I fake it and hope I got it right.
It helps that I have a lot of kickass women in my life. I married a woman who grew up in four different countries, went overseas on her own to make her fortune, and now tells people who run companies how to act in a way that won’t make their shareholders panic (which, considering how fragile the economy is these days, is a really important job). Oh, and she also runs triathlons and skis black diamonds and scuba dives. I married an action hero, so it wasn’t too hard to write about one….
Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced today that it will publish two story collections and a special illustrated edition of the Earthsea novels with exclusive new material by legendary science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin.
Titles publishing in Fall 2016 include The Found and the Lost, a group of novellas collected for the first time; and The Unreal and the Real, a selection of short stories. A boxed set of both collections will also be available.
For the first time, the complete novels and short stories of Earthsea will be compiled in one volume titled The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition. Stories will include the new, never-before-published in print Earthsea story “The Daughter of Odren,” along with the novels A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind, in addition to the stories “The Word of Unbinding” and “The Rule of Names.” This omnibus will also include a new introduction by Le Guin as well as the essay “Earthsea Revisioned.” With color and black-and-white illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charles Vess, The Books of Earthsea will publish in Fall 2018 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A Wizard of Earthsea.
Bartimaeus sent this news with a note, “I’d like to add that ‘The Daughter of Odren’ isn’t a new story – it was e-published in 2014. Also, I’m particularly happy that they’re including all the shorts – this is the first time all 8 Earthsea shorts will be collected in one volume.” The eight stories are: “The Rule of Names” (1964), “The Word of Unbinding” (1964), the 5 shorts in Tales from Earthsea (1998 – 2001) and “The Daughter of Odren” (2014).
Each item makes four copies of itself (so one item is now five). Each of these new items then also replicates making four more items. You might think this would be an awesome way to get rich, but the amount of items increases rapidly. I assume the goal is for the explosion of treasure to kill any potential robbers by drowning and crushing them.
You probably know what is going to happen next. I’m going to try to model this treasure replication trap. Yes, that’s what I will do.
The link comes with Bartimaeus’ comment – “But they seem to have forgotten that the coins burn you on touch, so you’d actually die sooner.”
[Thanks to Bartimaeus, Janice Gelb, Martin Morse Wooster, Robert Whitaker Sirignano, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John King Tarpinian.]
By John Hertz: [Reprinted by permission from Scientifiction, the First Fandom newsletter.]
This year’s Worldcon was Sasquan (sasquatch + convention), the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, August 19-23, 2015, Spokane, Washington. President Coker telephoned inquiring if I would attend. Yes, I said, how can I help you? He asked me to accept on behalf of Julian May her election to the First Fandom Hall of Fame. She herself although living in the area could not attend. Certainly, I said; it will be an honor. It was and I did.
Julian May.
On Hugo Night after the photos and Go in peace I stayed in white tie for the round of parties and, as is customary, carried the plaque. Some folks didn’t know what First Fandom was, or the emblem, or Papa Gernsback’s word Scientifiction. I explained.
She has always spelled her name Julian, and although after marrying T.E. Dikty (1920-1991, elected posthumously in 2013) she sometimes declared copyright as Julian May Dikty, she continued to write under the name Julian May — among others, including, I’m told, Wolfgang Amadeus Futslogg, by which I dare not address her.
Her fanzine was Interim Newsletter, rendering her to some extent a surrogate for all of us. Her story “Dune Roller” was in the December 1951 issue of Campbell’s Astounding, with four interiors by herself (it was made into a 1972 film, credited to her as Judy Dikty). Eight months later she chaired Chicon II, at the age of twenty-one.
As it happened my hotel roommate at Sasquan was Tom Veal, chair of Chicon VI, her successor. Chicon II tried to call itself “TASFiC” (Tenth Annual Science Fiction Convention), and Chicon VI tried to call itself “Chicon 2000”, but that trick never works. Being a lawyer I could call Veal her mediate successor, but I won’t.
She had a career of writing short plain things that fed interest. Thousands of science encyclopedia articles for three publishers. Hundreds of books, many suitable for children and many illustrated with photos or drawings, about sports, science, celebrities including Quanah and Sitting Bull, and apartheid in South Africa.
The Triple Crown (1976) tells the stories, plenty dramatic, of all the winners through Secretariat, and you know who owned Count Fleet, don’t you? Rockets (1967) ends “Someday it might be possible for almost anyone to leave the earth and visit another planet.” She (as Ian Thorne) did book treatments of e.g. It Came From Outer Space, the 1953 movie from a Ray Bradbury story, the 1982 book with nine photos including the cover credited to Forrest J Ackerman which I find people are still reading today.
By 1985 Dikty needed 66 pages for The Work of Julian May.
I saw her in the Masquerade at Westercon XXIX (1976), coruscating with gems, not in competition as I recall. Only later I learned she made it and put it on to help her understand who would wear such clothing. She was thinking of writing about them. Beethoven once wrote out a Mozart string quartet by hand to help him grasp what Mozart was doing.
Lucas’ Star Wars is in fact set in the past, long ago in a galaxy far away. May wrote science fiction set in the past, not one million years B.C. but six times further back, four novels starting with The Many-Colored Land (1981) which are only the beginning of a series of eight about a Galactic Milieu through Magnificat (1996) — and there is a Diamond Mask (1994), or half-mask. John Clute says the narrative is increasingly charged with metaphysical intonations, linked to a sustaining concern with the attractive theme of psychic evolution, but I don’t write like that.
I used to wonder what the trillium was until it occurred to me Black Trillium (1990) had three co-authors, May and Marion Zimmer Bradley (who likewise never spelled her name Marian) and Andre Norton (who never spelled her name Alice). May wrote two more, Bradley and Norton one each.
That could bring us to the Rampart Worlds, and the Boreal Moon (most recently Sorcerer’s Moon, 2006). But this, from the 1F point of view anyhow, is recent history.
I’m a hopeful man, and I hope for more. I know very few authors with whom it’s not wholly out of bounds to ask How’s your new book coming? If they feel like it they’ll tell. I’d not mind even a revision to include American Pharoah (another typo that stuck).
Just about none of this came out of my mouth when I accepted the award. I had written to ask her if there was anything she wished me to say. She answered “A simple ‘Thank you’ to the members of First Fandom will suffice.” So I said Thank you. She also told me she’d mount her plaque next to Dikty’s. People die. Art lives.
Chicon II. L-R: Unknown, Bob Bloch, Hugo Gernsback (at lectern), Julian May, T.E. Dikty, and Sprague de Camp.
In a letter to First Fandom, Julian May recalled the 1952 Worldcon:
Local fans and pros who elected me to the con chairman job right after my “Dune Roller” novelette was published in Astounding got a signal surprise when I ran the con expertly.
The Tenth Convention was not only the best attended, it also included the big New York publishers of SF and fantasy taking booths for the first time, attracted most of the important professional authors and editors, had Hugo Gernsback as Guest of Honor, and sweet old Doc Smith as Moon Commissioner.
