By John Hertz: It’s the death-anniversary of Fritz Leiber (1910-1992). He wrote both fantasy and science fiction – all strange; if I may quote a Robert Louis Stevenson story, “Desire of strange things swept him on” (“The Isle of Voices”, 1893). Actually that’s not fair. I keep objecting when someone attributes what authors write to what they want. Leiber’s writing sweeps us on.
Two of my favorites among his science fiction are The Big Time (1958) and The Wanderer (1964). Both won Hugos.
Recently I hear people complaining when attitudes of characters in a story published in the past are other than what we’d aspire to now. I’m partly with this and partly not. I think the first look is at how authors treat their characters. A Filer said the other day I’d not call that book misogynistic. The character is, but the text clearly shows he’s an idiot. Then, as another Filer said, Of course it seems laughable to us now. Isn’t that a gratifying sign of how far we’ve come since then? There’s more, and Our Gracious Host has encouraged me to explore it, but I’m going to stop there for the moment.
We discussed The Big Time at Denvention III (66th Worldcon) in a set of SF Classics which I called “Wonders of 1958”. See this Eddie Jones cover of a German edition.
I wrote,
Spiders are the good guys, and our hero is a woman. The first Hero was a woman too, go look up Leander. Indeed this is a very classical book; it preserves the unities of time, place, and persons, which is mighty strange, considering. There’s slashing drama, and if you’ve never been a party girl, it might not be what you think.
We discussed The Wanderer at Renovation (which I always pronounce “Reno-vation”; 69th Worldcon). See this Allison cover of an Italian edition.
I wrote,
Here are a host of viewpoints, a first contact with aliens story as we learn a third of the way in, a look at some favorite notions like “Rovers are free and good” and “Love conquers all”, and a breathtaking exercise in climax and perspective.
By John Hertz: (reprinted from Vanamonde 1410) I hadn’t read Mencius for a while, so was glad to find in a used-book shop the 1970 translation by D.C. Lau for Penguin Classics. Dr. Lau (1921-2010) writes,
Only two Chinese philosophers have the distinction of being known consistently in the West by a latinized name. The first is Confucius. The second is Mencius…. second only to Confucius … in the Confucian tradition … officially recognized in China for over a thousand years [p. 7]…. [one of] the Four Books which, until the present century, were read and memorized by every schoolboy in his first years [p. 8]…. Mencius, besides being one of the greatest thinkers, happens to be one of the greatest stylists in the whole history of Chinese literature [p. 222].
Mencius, living a hundred years after Confucius i.e. 2,300 years ago (372-289 B.C.E. – roughly contemporary with Plato), as Dr. Lau says is called the Second Sage i.e. after Confucius himself. His power as a stylist is as might be expected hard to render in translation.
Education based on committing texts to memory is so strange to us – perhaps rightly – that it is hard to grasp. We know it has too often meant rigidity and blind acceptance.
Yet Mencius said (Bk. VII, pt. B, sec. 2) Chin hsin, tse pu-ju wu.
{Note 1: This piece from Vanamonde had to be re-formatted because Our Gracious Host’s software won’t allow some characters I could use in Van. I’ll indicate as I go.
{Note 2: As some of you know, I prefer the Wade-Giles system of romanization to the p‘in-yin system so loved in Mainland China. I’ll say something about that at the end.
{Note 3: The Vanamonde piece used both parentheses ( ) and brackets [ ]. I’ll use braces { } here to show what I’ve had to do for reprinting by OGH.
{Now back to what I had in Vanamonde – jh.}
The p‘in-yin romanization favored on the mainland would write this Jìn xìn, zé bùrú wú.
In Mencius’ literary Chinese – sometimes called “classical Chinese” – the word shu “book” is implied: Chin hsin [shu], tse pu-ru [shu].
I confess that while I prefer the Wade-Giles romanization, or transliteration if you like, its use of j is confusing to readers of English. W-G hs for the sound p‘in-yin writes as x isn’t bad, but the r of p‘in-yin is less misleading than W-G’s j.
Also I confess that the four diacritical marks p‘in-yin uses for the Four Tones are more helpful to readers of English than W-G’s superscripts i.e. chin4hsin4 [shu1], tse2pu4–ju2wu2 [shu1]. {But not all those diacritical marks are allowed by OGH’s software, while the superscripts come through just fine!}
Literary Chinese is terse. Not only does Mencius omit the Chinese word shu, he expects readers to know from the context what book he means: the Book of History.
Wikipedia on Mencius, rendering the original’s six words, apparently misses some of what they imply, resulting in an exaggeration: “One who believes all of a book would be better off without books”.
Dr. Lau (p. 194) makes it “If one believed everything in the Book of History, it would have been better for the Book not to have existed at all”.
I call to your attention that this – from the Second Sage – is a healthful splash of water on our notion of a memorizer: the Book of History was almost revered, and thought to have been compiled by Confucius.
Here’s some more Mencius.
The organs of sight and hearing are unable to think and can be misled by external things. When one thing acts on another, all it does is to attract it. The organ of the heart can think. But it will find the answer only if it does think [Mencius IV:A:15, Lau p. 168].
Benevolence overcomes cruelty just as water overcomes fire [IV:A:18, p. 169].
The Way is like a wide road. It is not at all difficult to find. The trouble with people is simply that they do not look for it [VI:B:2, p. 172].
To feed a man without showing him love is to treat him like a pig; to love him without showing him respect is to keep him like a domestic animal…. Respect that is without reality will not take a gentleman in merely by its empty show [VII: A:37, p. 190].
Wishing you the same.
B.C.E. = Before the Common Era, used by many who do not care for dates stated according to divinity in Jesus.
The Four Books were canonized by Chu Hsi (1130-1200 i.e. the Sung Dynasty): the Great Learning which he took from the Book of Rites (this English word is often used, but decorum might be better; to Confucius is attributed “Of all things to which people owe their lives, the Rites are the most important”; recorded in the Chou Dynasty 1122-221 B.C.E.), the Doctrine of the Mean another part of the Rites, the Analects of Confucius, and Mencius.
Gentleman has been the usual translation of chün tzu {with Wade-Giles superscripts, chün1 tzu3; the First Tone is shown by a macron in p‘in-yin, the Third by a caron, but since I can’t do either of those here, I’ll write jûnzï: in p‘in-yin an i is used here for the unstressed central vowel, like “a” in English “about”}, “either a man of moral excellence or a man in authority”, Lau p. 49 note 3.
This is not what we in the U.S. today call a class distinction, i.e. not hereditary, but a condition of being, to which any can aspire, which any can achieve – to which Confucianism directs us.
As for me, while I aspire to moral excellence, and think it engenders authority, I’m not a Confucian (nor am I big on memorizing); but I don’t read books to be agreed with.
{Here’s the further note on Wade-Giles which I promised above.
{The sign ‘ is used in Wade-Giles for Chinese aspirated consonants, so e.g. p‘in means an aspirated consonant, pin would mean an unaspirated one; in the mainland’s system, those two consonants are written pin and bin.
{Also, Wade-Giles uses a hyphen to show connected words, while in the mainland’s system they are run together, like writing in English “used-book shop” or “usedbook shop”.
{Thus in Wade-Giles p‘in-yin but in the mainland’s system pinyin.
{Wade-Giles writes the unaspirated consonant ts which the mainland’s system writes z. Wade-Giles writes chin where the mainland’s system writes jin.
{As to whether Wade-Giles might actually be preferable for readers of English, I’ll quote the translator Red Pine: “I continue to find Mainland China’s p‘in-yin romanization system too cruel to use on uninitiated readers . . . [I] romanize all Chinese words according to the more traditional and somewhat less bizarre Wade-Giles system”.
{To give you something you can find electronically, I quote his 2004 edition of the Buddhist “Heart” Sûtra, p. 161.}
Ellen Datlow has been editing horror, fantasy, and science fiction short stories and novellas for over forty years. She’s won numerous awards and accolades for her work and has edited numerous best of anthologies along with short stories for magazine and book publishers. Subterranean Press is releasing a book on some of the best stories she’s edited. I spoke to Ellen about her work as an editor, about genre fiction, and about the business in general.
0:32: Ellen talks about how she got into editing and editing anthologies….
For the last couple of years, I’ve been visiting Steve Saling in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he lives in a residence he designed for himself and a couple dozen other people, a mix of stunning “smart home” technology and human care that he created to arrive in time for his body’s big changes. Steve got a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in his late 30s. He’s 51 now. More than a dozen years into his condition, he has said repeatedly that his life is worth living—and that technology, in the absence of medicine, is “the cure.” Maybe that sounds like one more instance of overhyped claims for Silicon Valley—I would have thought so upon first hearing—but, over time, I came to understand what he meant.
In the architecture of the life that Steve created, I saw a kind of “anticipatory design”—to repurpose a term of Buckminster Fuller’s. At Saling House, the residence that bears Steve’s name, there are impressive digital devices that act, in one sense, as treatment: a whole array of ingenious software and hardware made to maximize his independence even as his body gradually changes. The sheer novelty of the engineering is impressive. But more impressive by far are the ideas packed into all his designed gear and services for life with little mobility—ideas about help, about needfulness. About assistance itself in every life. On my afternoons with him, my perspective and my vocabulary about giving and receiving help changed. Steve taught me to think differently about the plain fact of human needfulness and its role in a desirable life….
(3) EXCELLENT. We’ve recently seen what a John Scalzi 1990s movie review looks like – here’s your chance to see one from 2020: “Movie Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music”
I enjoyed Bill & Ted Face the Music quite a bit, which is utterly unsurprising as I am both Gen-X, i.e., the generation of Bill and/or Ted, and also I used to live in San Dimas, home of Bill and Ted and the town in which almost all of this film takes place (fictionally; it doesn’t look like they did a whole lot of filming in actual San Dimas this time around). Also I am the fan of the first two films, particularly Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the first film in history to successfully reference both Ingmar Bergman and the glam band Poison. What was surprising to me was that I teared up a bit at the end of this one. I know why, and I’ll tell you in a bit.
…In Dungeons & Dragons,everything pretty much goes as planned.
In the real world, the pressing themes—pandemic, climate change, state-sanctioned brutality, the government’s emphatic disinterest in functioning properly—lend themselves to a darker, more surreal plot. It is serious. We’re holed up in our homes. The absence of bars, physical workspaces, and cheap baseball tickets from our lives creates a sense of confused inertia. Are we a tenth of the way through the pandemic or halfway? Are we actually getting anywhere, or are we stuck in the last season of Lost? There is endless horizon in every direction—we’re measuring our time in hair growth, if at all.
D&D, on the other hand, is full of clear lines and brighter absurdities. I’m on my 18th session; I live in a tower on the outskirts of a village called Goosetown. Like real life, much of what goes on isn’t scripted. But, unlike reality, it’s safely self-contained. In a session of D&D, the cocktail of youth nostalgia and fantasy otherworldliness could give rise to almost anything—as long as it abides by the game’s few rules. It isn’t the leap into unbounded fantasy that appeals; it’s the lines, the structure, the finitude (with a sort of community working within them).
(5) DON’T FIRE THE RETROS. Cora Buhlert takes up the challenge of explaining “Why the Retro Hugos Have Value” – of which this excerpt is just part of the introduction.
…Now no one is obliged to care about the Retro Hugos. However, if you didn’t nominate and vote, you don’t get complain about the results. I also understand the frustration that Retro Hugo voters keep voting for familiar names like John W. Campbell and weak early stories by future stars of the genre over better works, because I share it. However, unlike many other folks, I didn’t complain, but decided to do something about it, so I started the Retro Hugo Recommendation Spreadsheet and Retro Science Fiction Reviews to help potential Retro Hugo nominators and voters make more informed choices. Because I believe that it’s better to try and fix something than destroy or abolish something that some people enjoy.
And while I understand why Worldcons are reluctant to give out Retro Hugos due to the work and expense involved, I really don’t understand the intense hatred they engender in some fans. There are a lot of things going on at Worldcons that I personally don’t care about, but that doesn’t mean I want to take those things away from the people who do enjoy them. I simply focus on the things that give me joy and ignore the rest.
However, the current campaign against the Retro Hugos is part of a larger trend to dismiss the past of our genre as racist, sexist and irrelevant. Also witness the recent debate about the SFF canon, what it is and whether it is relevant with contributions by John Scalzi (here and here), Nina Allan, Camestros Felapton (here and here), the Hugo Book Club, Font Folly, Steve Davidson,Doris V. Sutherland, Aidan Moher and others. The canon discussion is mostly civil (and the only uncivil are the usual idiots I haven’t linked here) and also makes a lot of good points, such as that there is no one fixed SFF canon, but that individual people have different works which are important to them, that canons can be abused as a form of gatekeeping, that it’s not necessary to read classic SFF works, unless you enjoy them or want to write an academic work about SFF. However, pretty much everybody who is interested in older SFF has experienced hostility about this interest, even if we don’t go around and tell people that they’re not “real fans” (TM), unless they have read the entire output of Heinlein, Asimov, Lovecraft, etc… (and in that case, I wouldn’t be a “real fan” (TM) either). Witness Jason Sanford saying that the Retro Hugo voters are “a small group of people stuck in the past giving today’s genre the middle finger”, never mind that most Retro Hugo voters are Hugo voters as well. Or the person who called me a Nazi on Twitter for tweeting about the Retro Hugo winners, until I blocked them.
As I said before, no one has to care about older SFF and no one has to read it, if they don’t want to. But attacking people for being interested in older SFF and enjoying the Retro Hugos is not okay. Nor is everybody who’s interested in older SFF a reactionary fascist, even if received wisdom claims that the SFF of the golden age was all racist and sexist stories about straight white American men in space, lorded over by the twin spectres of Campbell and Lovecraft.
… It appears that we are now entering into a new phase of celebrity signature products, one that combines the scarcity of a limited-edition booze or sneaker, with the massive scale of something everybody loves.
Welcome to celebrity ice cream.
This week two very different arbiters of cool dropped their very own frozen treat collaborations. First up was pop star Selena Gomez, who managed a double dip collaboration, first on a song called . . . yep . . . “Ice Cream” made with K-pop stars Blackpink, and spinning that into her very own flavor for specialty ice-cream brand and chain Serendipity. It’s called Cookies & Cream Remix, and it’s pink vanilla ice cream with crunchy cookie bites and fudge bits.
(7) GARCIAGATE GOFUNDME. The “GarciaGatePenguins Fire Relief” GoFundMe has raised $11,115 (the original goal was $10K) and is still taking donations. Chris Garcia, Vanessa Applegate and the boys had to evacuate from their Northern California home because of the fires. So far their house has survived, but there’s no telling when they will be able to return. Til then, they’re in hotels.
(8) BOSEMAN OBIT. Actor Chadwick Boseman died August 28 reports Yahoo! News.
Chadwick Boseman, who played Black American icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown with searing intensity before inspiring audiences worldwide as the regal Black Panther in Marvel’s blockbuster movie franchise, died Friday of cancer. He was 43.
…Boseman was diagnosed with colon cancer four years ago, his family said in a statement.
“A true fighter, Chadwick persevered through it all, and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much,” his family said. “From Marshall to Da 5 Bloods, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and several more – all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy. It was the honor of his career to bring King T’Challa to life in Black Panther.”
Boseman had not spoken publicly about his diagnosis. He is survived by his wife and a parent and had no children, Fioravante said.
August 29, 1957 — X Minus One’s “Volpla” was first broadcast. Based on a story by Wyman Guin who first gained noticed with his “Beyond Bedlam” novella in Galaxy Science Fiction in August 1951. (In 2013, he would receive the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.) His story in “Volpla” is that an individual creates small creatures and teaches them to say they are aliens. Ernest Kinoy as usual wrote the radio script. Nelson Olmstead, Adele Newton and Sarah Fussell were the cast. You can listen to it here.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born August 29, 1905 – Don Wilcox. Five novels for us, ninety shorter stories; detective and Western stories; plays; paintings. Some Captain Video for television. For a while with Amazing and Fantastic under Palmer, averaged 40,000 words a month. Best of DW vol. 1 appeared 2016; vol. 2, 2017. (Died 2000) [JH]
Born August 29, 1926 – Thomas N. Scortia. Chemist. Worked in aerospace. Six novels for us (some with Frank Robinson), fifty shorter stories. The Glass Inferno (with FR) became The Towering Inferno (I. Allen dir. 1974). With Dalton Trumbo, The Endangered Species. Collection Caution! Inflammable! has an introduction by Theodore Sturgeon. (Died 1986) [JH]
Born August 29, 1942 – Dian Crayne. Three novels, eight shorter stories (one with Larry Niven), a few interiors; The Game of Fandom. Married to Bruce Pelz 1964-1970 (their divorce party inspired LN’s “What Can You Say About Chocolate-Covered Manhole Covers?”; a chocolate-covered manhole cover has been part of the L.A. Science Fantasy Soc, Gift Exchange every December since), to Chuck Crayne 1972-2009 (he and BP co-chaired L.A.Con the 30th Worldcon, co-founded the North America SF Con held when the Worldcon is overseas). Here she is at Pacificon II (22nd Worldcon) as Thuvia, Maid of Mars, BP at her left. (Died 2017) [JH]
August 29, 1942 — Gottfried John. He’s likely best-known as General Arkady Orumov on GoldenEye but I actually best remember him as Colonel Erich Weiss on the extremely short-lived Space Rangers. He was Josef Heim in the “The Hand of Saint Sebastian” episode of the Millennium series, and played König Gustav in the German version of Rumpelstilzchen as written by the Brothers Grimm. (Died 2014.) (CE)
Born August 29, 1946 – Robert Weinberg. A dozen novels, fifty shorter stories; five dozen anthologies; Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists; The Art of the Pulps (with D. Ellis, H. Hulse), The Collectors’ Book of Virgil Finlay (with D. Ellis, R. Garcia). Letters, essays, editorials in Collecting Fantasy, The Diversifier, ERB-dom (E.R. Burroughs), Fantasy Newsletter, Horrorstruck, The “Weird Tales” Collector, Windy City Pulp Stories. Co-chaired Chicago Comiccon 1976-1996; 9th and 16th World Fantasy Cons. Sam Moskowitz Archive Award (excellence in collecting). Chicon 7 (70th Worldcon) Special Award for service. (Died 2016). [JH]
August 29, 1951 — Janeen Webb, 69. Dreaming Down-Under which she co-edited with Jack Dann is an amazing anthology of Australian genre fiction which won a World Fantasy Award. If you’ve not read it, go do so. The Silken Road to Samarkand by her is a wonderful novel that I also wholeheartedly recommend. Death at the Blue Elephant, the first collection of her ever so excellent short stories, is available at iBooks and Kindle though Dreaming Down-Under is alas not. (CE)
August 29, 1953 — Nancy Holder, 67. She’s an impressive four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. I’m not much of a horror fan so I can’t judge her horror novels for you but I’ve read a number of her Buffyverse novels and I must say that she’s captured the feel of the series quite well. If you are to read but one, make it Halloween Rain. (CE)
August 29, 1954 — Michael P. Kube-McDowell, 66. A filker which gets major points in my book (filker link: “Back in Black” .) And yes, I’m stalling while I try to remember what of his I’ve read. I’m reasonably sure I’ve read both of his Isaac Asimov’s Robot City novels, and now I can recall reading Alternities as well. God, it’s been twenty years since I read him. I’m getting old. (CE)
August 29, 1959 — Rebecca de Mornay, 61. May I note she made a deliciously evil Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers? She’s Clair Dupin in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wendy Torrance in The Shining miniseries (no, I never heard of it) and Penelope Decker in several episodes of Lucifer. Oh, and she was Dorothy Walker in Marvel’s Jessica Jones series. (CE)
Born August 29, 1970 – Jenn Reese, 50. Five novels; Tales of the Chinese Zodiac, twelve shorter stories 2005 adding in 2006 a carp, a mantis, an owl; Alphabet Quartet perhaps inevitably became 26 flash-fiction stories “Arthur” – “Zoom” (with G. van Eekhout, T. Pratt, H. Shaw); two dozen other short stories; nine covers. Here is Mitigated Futures. Here is Do Better. Currently a graphic designer in Portland where she can revel in the rain. [JH]
Born August 29, 1977 – Renée Carter Hall, 43. One novel, thirty shorter stories. Limestone Circle (poetry) 1999-2002. Cóyotl Award. Co-authored a story in 8th Grade with two friends which reached Steven Spielberg and was used in Tiny Toon Adventures with all three friends as cartoon characters. Website here. [JH]
August 29, 1989 — Charlotte Ritchie, 31. Like so many British performers, she’s had a role on Doctor Who playing Lin in the Thirteenth Doctor story, “Resolution “. Her first genre role was an uncredited one in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I see she was Alison in the first season of Dead Pixels, and another Alison in Ghosts, a truly haunting series. (CE)
… Kalima Desuze, owner of Cafe con Libros in Brooklyn, New York, describes recent business as both “lucrative” and “bittersweet.”
“Many folks are buying books, but may not have a home to dialogue about it,” she says. “This work cannot be done in isolation; we all need community. I’m tired of solidarity with Black folks only coming after death when some of us have spent our lives talking about and organizing against systemic racism… So, while I definitely appreciate the support, it’s been hard to profit off the bodies of fictive kin.”
It should also be remembered that independent book stores owned by African Americans have been around for decades. The first in the country was Oakland, California’s Marcus Books, which opened its doors in 1960 and is still in business today. There are now 119 other Black-owned establishments in the country, and though they make up just 6% of indie bookselling companies in the U.S., they’re home to powerful works that serve to educate and amplify vital voices.
“The stories have always been there, and the experiences have always been there, but not everybody was comfortable talking about them,” says La’Nae Robinson, who co-owns Bliss Books & Wine in Kansas City with her sister, La’Nesha Frazier. “So I think now that it’s more in the spotlight, it’s creating more conversations, and people are open to having conversations—and they’re actually holding them in their hands and educating themselves on topics that they just didn’t think about.”
Joining us on the 5th of September will be those who plan and execute the marketing of legends. – Dave Farland will join us to discuss his plan with Scholastic for making Harry Potter big. – Ed Elbert will discuss the advertising of Star Wars. – Craig Miller will share the stories of fandom and community outreach for Star Wars. – Brian Meeks will bring us to 2020 with a discussion of self-publishing.
One pen to rule them all. Our tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved trilogy is made with a level of craftsmanship to rival the great Elven-smiths of Eregion. The Lord of the Rings Limited Edition is a magical creation of lostwax casting that celebrates imagination, creativity and heroic journeys at their finest.
…Armaments and regalia belonging to the Fellowship of the Ring make up the elements of the barrel. Gandalf’s staff, Aragorn’s sword and Gimli’s axe are just some of the icons contained within a structure crowned by a cubic zirconia set in the emblem of the White Tree of Gondor.
The cap’s major features are a hand-enamelled Eye of Sauron suspended in the Tower of Barad-dûr, and a clip resembling Frodo’s Elvish blade, Sting. In place of a conventional capband sits a removable replica of the One Ring, inscribed with Tengwar script and plated in gold.
A sci-fi legend is making the case for the new U.S. Space Force to use naval ranks. In an Military Times op-ed, Star Trek‘s William Shatner argues—with prodigious use of emoji—the long history of naval ranks in science fiction makes it appropriate for the burgeoning Space Force to follow suit.
Although Shatner’s argument is tongue in cheek, there’s actually a more practical reason why the Space Force might emulate the U.S. Navy—not the U.S. Air Force.
…Shatner writes:
“Star Trek” has borrowed so much of its iconic rank symbols from the U.S. military and NASA. When you unveiled the Space Force logo, many immediately saw it as an homage to “Star Trek” (even though our Delta was an homage to the previous military space insignias). Why not borrow back from “Star Trek” and adopt our ranks as well? We took them from the Navy for good reason, even though Gene Roddenberry was a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps. They made better sense when talking about a (space) ship.
In a practical sense, there is some rationale for using naval ranks. Spaceships are a lot like submarines: enclosed vessels traveling through a void-like medium on long treks. Like subs, spaceships handle hull pressures, though they must deal with pressure on the inside and outside.
Naval forces have deep experience with planning and conducting voyages that could take weeks or months, while most Air Force missions last several hours at the most. When the Space Force finally operates spaceships, it might find itself more culturally aligned with the Navy than the Air Force….
…Sure, we know as well as you do that the transition to online events has been 50 shades of awkward for most organizations. But if any group should be prepared for a transition to the digital plane, it’s fans of speculative fiction, who have been immersed in synthetic lifeforms, alien worlds, next-wave tech, and cyber-realms for years. No need to be skeptical about ArmadilloCon 42’s virtual nature; these folks are hardwired for it.
More importantly, the ArmadilloCon team is still inspired by the same spirit of community and love of the genre that was shared by the 300 or so fans who gathered at the Villa Capri Hotel in May of 1979 for the first con. That means not just celebrating the futures of the past – those imagined by Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, and their peers – but also the futures of the future: those being conjured by writers breaking into the field. The con’s 42-year mission, to borrow a phrase, has always been to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new writers and new speculative fiction, to boldly go with them where no fan has gone before. You can count on ArmadilloCon to continue that mission online in the same way it always has IRL.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Bill, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John Hertz, Gadi Evron, Cat Eldridge, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to contributing editor of the day Peer.]
Roberta Pournelle left our stage on August 3rd (1935-2020). She survived her husband Jerry (1933-2017) by three years.
There was no public church service. Interment was at Forest Lawn on the 14th. Forest Lawn said “We’ll provide ten chairs. Don’t bring any more people than that.” I said I’d not go. There were plenty who had a better claim.
Christened Roberta Jane Isdell at her birth in Victoria, Idaho, she was reared in Seattle by a family of readers and singers. She put herself through Univ. Washington working as a secretary at Boeing. She met Jerry in 1958. Their romance included aerospace, fencing, philosophy, plays, religion, science fiction, writing.
Jerry had several careers, some of them simultaneous. To name two sometimes neglected, he was was board chairman of the Seattle Civic Playhouse, and founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. He eventually earned fame with science fiction and user’s tests of computer hardware and software.
With these, and four children, and visitors, and dogs, he came to call the Pournelles’ house in Los Angeles (Studio City neighborhood) Chaos Manor. It may not be fair to say Roberta was Lady of the Lake – there was a swimming pool – nor was it plain who captivated or restored whom – but anyway mistress of the manor. At the end a woman who’d known her for decades said she was queenly, the kind you felt glad to be with.
Meanwhile Roberta taught English for thirty years at the Kirby Center for Delinquent Minors, twenty miles southeast in Commerce, California. When I last looked she and Jerry went to St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church, Sherman Oaks. She sang in the choir.
Stories abound of Roberta and Jerry’s different styles. Waiting in what seemed an endlessly slow line to be seated at a ceremonial banquet, you might hear Jerry bellow “Donner, party of 16!” – then after more waiting, “Donner, party of 15!” You might also see Roberta quietly finding the shyest contest winner and engaging in conversation for ten or fifteen minutes, then quietly finding the next-shyest and doing it again.
The electronic may see the very moving eulogy by Jennifer Pournelle, Ph.D., [here]. She is Jerry’s daughter by a previous marriage. As it happens I was the lawyer who arranged her adult adoption some years ago.
My appreciation of Jerry can be seen [here]. As I just now wrote to a friend – whose politics I have never asked about –
James Blish in his novel Doctor Mirabilis (1964) about Roger Bacon (1220-1292) has a character observe that we human beings are part honey, part aloes. Exploring whatever agreements and disagreements I may have had with Roberta seems immaterial to me now.
R.I.P.
The Donner-Reed party was a band of migrants to California snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846-1847. Their sufferings were terrible. Some resorted to cannibalism.
By John Hertz: It’s not that I have nothing to do (sing rickety-tickety-tin). But I thought you might like these. Our Gracious Host once said I had the heart of a poet – yes, I know the Bob Bloch joke.
* * *
The clouds floating by,
Slowly, it seems, remind me
They are big, but far.
* * *
For Bjo Trimble’s birthday
Birthing new ideas,
Juno to many of us;
Old and young she sparks.
* * *
Dance, so much with time,
Rhythm its flowing blood, yet
Independently
Nourished, nourishing, opens
All it touches to depths, heights.
The first two are in unrhymed 5-7-5-syllable lines, somewhat like Japanese haiku. The third is in unrhymed 5-7-5-7-7-syllable lines, somewhat like Japanese tanka. The last two are acrostic (read down the first letters of each line). The third is a birthday present for a woman I know through another hobby.
Bjo’s name is properly spelled with a circumflex over the “j”, an Esperantism indicating pronunciation “bee-joe”, but OGH’s software won’t allow it.
By John Hertz: I’ve been trying to give Cat Eldridge a hand with birthday notices. As an SF character whose name rhymes with grok used to say, fascinating.
A few weeks ago was the birthday of a graphic artist who gave us Cheech Wizard and lizards.
What a genius.
What was his name?
How should we pronounce it? How should we write it?
How did he?
Another man who strained our orthoepy promised to teach us about his own name at a Lunacon once. For a while I was able to attend this New York convention (hosted by local club the Lunarians) so regularly that some thought I lived in New York. I had, but not then. I was obliged to say I do not have that honor. I was even Fan Guest of Honor one year.
Anyhow, at Lunacon XXXVIII Poul Anderson was Writer Guest of Honor. Our Gracious Host was Fan Guest of Honor. Mark Blackman, who now and then appears here, was Chairman. As he has elsewhere remarked, this year silvers the memory of that weekend.
Mr. Anderson (or in Danish Hr. for Herre), addressing a crowd of us, graciously said “I’ll teach you all how to pronounce my name.”
We waited eagerly.
He said, slowly and distinctly, “ANN-der-son.”
Some time after I met the Wizard and lizards I happened to be re-reading Heinlein’s Space Cadet. I was told, as its readers are, of Tex Jarman’s Uncle Bodie. Must be the same name! I thought.
The spelling was different. That happens in English, particularly with names.
I still didn’t know what to say.
The unassisted letters for this Wizard artist are VAUGHN BODE. I felt sure his surname was bisyllabic; it didn’t rhyme with showed or hoed or Mr. Toad.
In a birthday notice here I wrote Bodé and explained,
The equipment won’t show his name as he wrote it; over the “e” shouldn’t be an accent acute (which is what you see), but a macron (horizontal line), i.e. indicating a long vowel, not emphasis: it doesn’t rhyme with “okay”. I never heard him say it; I spent years thinking it was like body, but maybe it’s like Commando Cody.
You probably know Wikipedia, the great and terrible, says
As explained by Bod?’s friend Fred A. Levy Haskell, in the collection Vaughn Bod?’s Poem Toons (Tundra Publishing, 1989),”the line over the ‘e’ in Vaughn’s signature is not an acute accent, it is a long mark. That is, it is not part of the family name, and is not pronounced as if it were a long ‘a’ – he added it to his signature to indicate that you are supposed to pronounce the long ‘e’ at the end of his name.”
I wrote to Fred today by real mail before I saw your comment.
Maybe we’ll all learn something.
Here’s what Fred said.
Vaughn’s legal surname. It is my understanding and recollection that it is “Bode”, without accent or other marking, pronounced “Boh-dee”, and that “Bod?” (with, as you say, a macron) is the form he settled on for signing his art; although he had experimented with a number of different forms before settling on that. I believe he told me once that it was because he got tired of people calling him “Baahd” and “Bohd”.
Wikipedia cites me? Li’l ol’ me? Gawrsh.
Those, as a friend of my father’s used to say, are the conditions that prevail.
(2) FAN FUNDS AUCTION. Alison Scott announced that today’s CoNZealand Fan Funds auction raised 2190$NZD for GUFF, TAFF, DUFF and FFANZ.
(3) YOU GOT YOUR POLITICS IN MY FICTION! This happened to a CoNZealand panel participant yesterday.
To be clear, the WSFS rules only prevent WSFS from using its resources to support political candidates or influence legislation. An individual member making a blanket statement doesn't break this rule in any way. It's equivalent to my wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it. 2/5
— ????Edmund Schluessel???? (@spacecurves) July 29, 2020
Moreover "#CoNZealand is committed to working towards a decolonised, oppression-free society," says the Code of Conduct, so it's reasonable to think the CoC and I are on the same side of history. 3/5
— ????Edmund Schluessel???? (@spacecurves) July 29, 2020
— ????Edmund Schluessel???? (@spacecurves) July 29, 2020
We sincerely apologise. CoNZealand has an official policy of not policing backgrounds that are not in violation of our Code of Conduct. We have no issue with your Zoom background. The individual staff member acted independently and has since quit our staff.
Schluessel also reports getting dinged for having a Black Lives Matter background. Which is pretty bizarre, because there’s a Black Lives Matter banner in CoNZealand’s virtual Exhibit Hall, as seen in the screencap below. However, Schluessel says “CoNZealand has extended me a full apology, which I have accepted.”
(4) ROTSLER AWARD EXHIBIT. CoNZealand’s virtual exhibit hall includes many things, such as the Rotsler Award exhibit (membership required to access) with artwork from each year’s award winner. Click the link, select “Boldy Go,” select Exhibits, and once there, click on Displays. The Rotsler link is last on the bottom right.
(5) PLEASE UNSIGN THEM. When she saw her sff group’s name listed as a signer of the Open Letter to WSFS about the Saudi Arabia Worldcon bid, Fran Dowd, “Sofa” of the Sheffield Science Fiction and Fantasy society posted a denial on the group’s Facebook page.
I’d like to put it on record that I have no idea how this group appeared as a signatory to the Jeddah letter. Whatever our personal feelings might be, I would not expect anyone to sign such a statement on our behalf without consultation at the least.
I have spent this morning, when I would actually rather be at the current Worldcon, trying to spread the word. Apologies have been given to the NZ Chairs and to Kevin Standlee. Given the spread of social media, getting a retraction would be meaningless.
I apologise to any members of the group who have been dragged into this. If it is of any help, please point people to this statement.
Signed by me in my capacity as Chair When We Need One.
The 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Novelette goes to “City” by Clifford D. Simak. This isn’t a huge surprise, because the City cycle is well regarded, still in print and Clifford D. Simak was one of the best writers of the Golden Age. “City” is a pretty good story, too, though not the best City story of 1944 or even the best City novelette, because “Census”, which didn’t make the ballot, is better.
That said, this was not the category I wanted to see Simak win. In fact, I was hoping that C.L. Moore, either with or without Henry Kuttner, would win Best Novelette, because both “No Woman Born” (which finished second) and “The Children’s Hour” (which finished unfairly in sixth place) are great stories.
Though I’m glad that “Arena” by Fredric Brown was its “Genocide is good” message didn’t win, because I feared that it might.
(7) MORE OR LESS RETRO-HUGOS? Charles Stross thinks pausing the Retro-Hugos for about a quarter century might address some of the competing values now in conflict. Thread starts here.
Alasdair Stuart laments the Campbell and Lovecraft Retro wins. Thread starts here.
Like Campbell he's changed what we're able to see as good. Like Campbell, he's shifted the Overton Window of what's 'real' horror and like Campbell, he's holding onto it with a death grip.
The US space agency’s Perseverance robot has left Earth on a mission to try to detect life on Mars.
The one-tonne, six-wheeled rover was launched out of Florida by an Atlas rocket on a path to intercept the Red Planet in February next year.
When it lands, the Nasa robot will also gather rock and soil samples to be sent home later this decade.
Perseverance is the third mission despatched to Mars inside 11 days, after launches by the UAE and China.
Lift-off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station occurred at 07:50 local time (12:50 BST; 11:50 GMT).
Nasa made this mission one of its absolute priorities when the coronavirus crisis struck, establishing special work practices to ensure Perseverance met its launch deadline.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s a challenge, it’s very stressful, but look – the teams made it happen and I’ll tell you, we could not be more proud of what this integrated team was able to pull off here, so it’s very, very exciting,” Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters.
…BRENDAN BYRNE, BYLINE: When the Perseverance rover lands on Mars in February, it will unpack a suite of scientific experiments to help uncover ancient signs of life on the red planet – high-tech cameras, spectrometers, sensors and…
ROGER WIENS: This is the voice of Roger Wiens speaking to you through the Mars microphone on SuperCam.
BYRNE: Roger Wiens is the principal investigator of the rover SuperCam, a slew of instruments, including a camera, laser and spectrometer, that will examine the rocks and soil of Mars for organic compounds, a hint that there might be further evidence of past life. Tucked away inside the SuperCam is the Mars microphone.
WIENS: And so it is there to listen to anything interesting, first of all, on Mars. And so we should hear wind sounds. We should hear sounds of the rover. We might hear things that we never expected to hear. And so that’s going to be interesting to find out.
BYRNE: The mic will also listen as Perseverance’s onboard laser blasts nearby rocks.
ADDIE DOVE: You might think we’re going to hear, like, pew pew, but we probably won’t.
BYRNE: University of Central Florida planetary scientist Addie Dove says the sounds of Martian rock blasts will help scientists determine if they might contain organic material, evidence of life on Mars. But it will actually sound more like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROCK BLASTS)
(10) JOSE SARAMAGO NEWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the July 24 Financial Times, Sarah Hemming discusses a new adaptation of Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago’s sf novel Blindness at the Donmar Warehouse in London (donmarwarehouse.com). Donmar’s director, Michael Longhurst says the production will be a hybrid of theatre and “sound installation” that will let the theatre hold four shows a day. I can’t tell from the review how much actual theatre there is in the production. The only Donmar production I’ve seen was an all-female Julius Caesar on PBS that had an impressive performance by Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus.
Lockdown has emphasised the importance of sound for many of us from that early experience of hearing birdsong in unusually quiet city centres, to a keener awareness, prompted by physical separation, of the way we listen. And several online drama offerings, such as Simon McBurney’s The Encounter and Sound&Fury’s wartime meditation Charlie Ward At Home, have used sophisticated recording to steep their homebound audiences in other worlds and prompt reflection.
Blindness, in a sense, builds on that (there will be a digital download for those unable to get to the theatre). So why attend in person? Longhurst suggests the very act of being in a space will change the quality of listening–and reflect the way we have all had individual journeys through the collective experience of lockdown. And while this is a one-off piece about a society in an epidemic, created for an industry in a pandemic, that physical presence marks a move towards full performance.
(11) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
July 1987 — Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks was published by Ace Books. This urban fantasy would get its own trailer courtesy of Will Shetterly who financed it instead of running for Governor. You’ll no doubt recognize many of the performers here. Decades later, it was scheduled to have a hardcover edition from Tor Books but it got canceled after the books were printed. And the music in War for The Oaks would later be done by Cats Laughing, a band that includes Emma Bull and other members of Minneapolis fandom.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born July 30, 1800 – Aleksandr Veltman. Order of St. Vladimir (bravery) while in the Russian army, eventually Director of the Museum of Armaments. Poetry praised by Pushkin, second wife’s novel praised by Gorky. The Wanderer in an imaginary journey parodies travel notes. Koshchei the Deathless parodies historical adventures. The Year 3448 is supposedly by Martin Zadek (who also finds his way into Pushkin and Zamyatin). The Forebears of Kalimeros has time-travel (by riding a hippogriff; “Kalimeros”, a nudge at Napoleon, is the Greek equivalent of Buonaparte) to meet Alexander and Aristotle. Tolstoy and Dostoevskyapplauded AV too. (Died 1870) [JH]
Born July 30, 1873 – Curtis Senf. Four dozen covers and hundreds of interiors for Weird Tales, after which what the Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists modestly calls “a more lucrative career as a commercial artist in the Chicago advertising industry”. Here is the Oct 27 WT; here is the Jan 30; here is the Mar 32. (Died 1949) [JH]
Born July 30, 1911 — Reginald Bretnor. Author of many genre short stories involving Ferdinand Feghoot, a comical figure indeed. It looks like all of these are available in digital form on iBooks and Kindle. He was a consummate SJW. He translated Les Chats, the first known book about cats which was written by Augustin Paradis de Moncrif in 1727. He also wrote myriad articles about cats, was of course a companion to cats, and considered himself to have a psychic connection to cats. Of course most of us do. (Did 1992.) (CE)
Born July 30, 1927 — Victor Wong. I remember him best as the Chinese sorcerer Egg Shen in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. He was also The Old Man in The Golden Child, Walter Chang in Tremors, Dr. Wong in the “China Moon” episode of the Beauty and the Beast series and Lee Tzin-Soong in the “Fox Spirit” episode of Poltergeist: The Legacy. (Died 2001.) (CE)
Born July 30, 1947 – John Stith, 73. Eight novels, a dozen shorter stories, translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian. Wrote about John Kennedy (i.e. our JK; indeed John R.; 1945-2009) in 1992 (for the limited ed’n of “Nova in a Bottle” bound with “Encore”), interviewed by him in 1993 (SF Chronicle 164). Did his own cover for a reprinting of Death Tolls. [JH]
Born July 30, 1948 — Carel Struycken, 72. I remember him best as the gong ringing Mr. Holm on Next Gen, companion to Deanna Troi’s mother. He was also Lurch in The Addams Family, Addams Family Values and the Addams Family Reunion. He’s listed as being Fidel in The Witches of Eastwick but I’ll be damned if I remembered his role in that film. And he’s in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor which I’ve never seen… (CE)
Born July 30, 1961 — Laurence Fishburne, 59. In The Matrix films. His voice work as Thrax in Osmosis Jones on the other hand is outstanding as is his role as Bill Foster in Ant-Man. (CE)
Born July 30, 1966 — Jess Nevins, 54. Author of the superlative Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victorian and the equally great Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which is far better than the film ever could be. I didn’t know he was an author ‘til now but he has two genre novels, The Road to Prester John and The Datong Incident. (CE)
Born July 30, 1967 – Ann Brashares, 53. Famous for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (that’s the U.S. meaning of “pants”, in this case a magical pair of blue jeans), a NY Times Best-Seller, and its sequels, films, companions. Two more novels for us, one other. Indies Choice Book Award, Quill Award. Philosophy major (yay!) at Barnard, 1989. [JH]
Born July 30, 1971 – Kristie Cook, 49. Nine novels, a dozen shorter stories (some with co-authors; publishes Havenwood Falls shared-world stories, some wholly by others). Loves cheese, chocolate, coffee, husband, sons, motorcycle. “No, I’m not crazy. I’m just a writer.” [JH]
Born July 30, 1974 – Jacek Dukaj, 46. Ten novels, half a dozen shorter stories, translated into Bulgarian, Czech, English (he’s a Pole), German, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Russian, Slovak. Six Zajdel Awards. EU Prize for Literature. Another writer with a Philosophy degree, from Jagiellonian University even. His Culture.plpage (in English) is here. [JH]
Born July 30, 1975 — Cherie Priest, 45. Her southern gothic Eden Moore series is kickass good and Clockwork Universe series isa refreshing take on steampunk which has been turned into full cast audiobooks by GraphicAudio. I’ve not read Cheshire Red Reports novels so have no idea how they are. Anyone read these? (CE)
(13) NOW WITH MORE MASK. Ray’s playing it safe, I see. Incidentally, the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum is accepting RSVP’s here for entry during RBEM’s Ray Bradbury Centennial Celebration on August 22, 2020.
(14) OOPS. Marc Zicree has issued a video “Apology to the Science Fiction Writers of America,” for using their membership list to publicize Space Command.
(15) A DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER. And not only that, we line up for the opportunity!
I swear people who have never written a book or fixed a toilet won't tell a plumber how to do their job but they will tell an author how to write and sell books like they are goddamn Max Perkins I am sick of it.
— Matt Wallace is Updates Only (@MattFnWallace) July 30, 2020
(16) BACURAU. The Criterior Channel’s August lineup includes Bacurau on August 20, an exclusive streaming premiere, featuring an interview with directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles.
A blistering sci-fi thriller streaked with antiracist and anticolonialist rage, the new film from Kleber Mendonça Filho, codirected with Juliano Dornelles, is an audacious, furiously entertaining model of genre art as a vehicle for political resistance. pic.twitter.com/BaRhWiLFnP
— Criterion Channel (@criterionchannl) July 30, 2020
… After all, who doesn’t periodically yearn to flee the nightmarish world we now live in? A persistent feeling of helplessness, frustration, anger and mild despair has emerged as the “New Normal” — which is one reason my recent reviews and essays tend to emphasize escapism, often into books from the past. A similar impulse lies behind the pruning of my basement hoard. Going through my many boxes, I am no longer the plaything of forces beyond my control. I have, to use a vogue term, agency. I alone decide which books to keep, which to let go.
However, making these decisions has turned out to be harder than I expected.
Here’s an example of what I mean. I’m fond of a slightly overwritten travel book called “A Time of Gifts” by English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. It recounts in striking detail a walk across half of Europe undertaken by the young Leigh Fermor in 1933. Somehow, I possess four copies of this minor classic: a Penguin paperback that I read and marked up, an elegant Folio Society edition bought at the Friends of the Montgomery County Library bookstore, a later issue of the original John Murray hardback, and a first American edition in a very good dust jacket acquired for a bargain price at the Second Story Books warehouse. Given the space-saving principle of eliminating duplicates, I should keep just one copy. Which one?
You draw seven cards. You look at your hand. It would be perfect if you had that one card.
Too bad it costs $50. And your local game store is closed anyway.
Depending on where you lie on the nerd spectrum, you may or may not have heard of Magic: The Gathering. It’s a trading card game that’s been in production for almost three decades. Even if you haven’t heard of it or played it, you probably know someone who has. It’s one of the most popular trading card games of all time, and that isn’t an exaggeration; there are millions of Magic: The Gathering players worldwide.
…Before COVID-19 hit the Magic community, players packed into local game stores to sling spells and blow off steam. Now, as players move toward the online versions, there are additional financial hurdles to clear.
There’s a reason it’s called Magic: The Gathering. Most of the fun comes from squaring off against other players, catching the clandestine tells of your opponent as they draw powerful spells. Game stores across the country offer opportunities to play; they host tournaments, stock up on new cards and teach new wizards how to play.
But even if veteran players and shop owners welcome new Planeswalkers with open arms, how accessible is Magic: The Gathering?
Players can craft a variety of decks, and if they’re playing the more common formats of the game, a deck can cost anywhere from about $275 to $834 or more. Not only are full decks expensive, but so are individual cards. The card Thoughtseize, for instance, has a current value of around $25 per copy. If a deck contains four copies of a single card (the maximum), just that one card would bring the price of a deck up by $100. And there are much more expensive cards on the market.
…There is an online version of the game, but Magic Online isn’t cheap either. And while it isn’t as expensive as its cardboard counterpart, a player still has to buy new digital versions of physical cards they already own. On top of that, a Magic Online account costs $10 just to set up. And while a Magic veteran might jump at the opportunity to play online, a new player may feel less inclined to pay the fee when there are other online deck-building games, like Hearthstone, that are free to try.
In 2018, Magic’s publisher Wizards of the Coast released a free, digital version of the game called Magic: The Gathering Arena. It’s a more kid-friendly online option for new Planeswalkers, but it still has the same Magic charm for older players. Arena does include in-game purchases, but players can obtain better cards by grinding out a lot of games instead of spending extra money. And while Arena can be a great way to introduce a new player to the online format, if they don’t want to empty their wallets, they’ll have to get used to losing for a while.
[Thanks to John Hertz, N., Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Jeffrey Smith, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
By John Hertz: WOOF is the Worldcon Order Of Faneditors. It’s been associated with the World Science Fiction Convention since 1976.
WOOF is an apa – amateur press, or publishing, association. Apas have been part of the science fiction community since 1937. We adopted them from the amateur journalism (“ayjay”) hobby.
Amateur journalism emerged in the 19th Century. People printed and published their own journals. Some folks who did this decided to combine, everyone in the association sending their journals to a central officer who collated and distributed them. Wikipedia article here. In the United States there has long been a Nat’l Am. Press Ass’n; its Website here.
The first SF apa was FAPA the Fantasy Amateur Press Ass’n, founded 1937, still ongoing. FAPA is collated and distributed quarterly (Fancyclopedia 3 article here).
The Worldcon is annual (Fancyclopedia 3 article here) and so is WOOF (Fancyclopedia 3 article here).
Perhaps it should be said that Websites, Fancyclopedia 3 articles, Wikipedia articles, and indeed what you’re reading now, are as complete and conclusive as other projects of human beings, which is to say somewhat; should be better; who’s going to improve it – how about you? and have to start somewhere.
The central (and only) officer of WOOF is the Official Editor (“Official Collator” might be a better name, but isn’t used). Some people, men and women, have served as OE for years; some haven’t. WOOF is not formally a part of the Worldcon, but happens anyway. It seems the fannish thing to do.
The site of each Worldcon is chosen by bidding and vote, currently two years in advance (list of Worldcons here). There is an overall World Science Fiction Society, but each Worldcon is run independently (official Website here).
The 2020 Worldcon will be the 78th, voted in 2018: 29 July – 3 August, Wellington, New Zealand. Some Worldcons get names; this one is “CoNZealand” (Website here). If you’ve noticed that puts zeal in its name, there’s nothing to be done about it.
In response to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic (COVID-19 Website of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control here), New Zealand restricted travel into and out of the country. CoNZealand decided to operate electronically. Some people can be physically present. That will be managed.
The OE for the 2020 WOOF will be Guy H. Lillian III, of Merritt Island, Florida, U.S.A. He explains how to contribute, electronically or on paper, here.
Contributions are to be received by midnight EDT (Eastern Daylight Time; Wellington is 16 hours ahead) 6 Aug 20 – after the Worldcon. The customary at-con collation will not be practical. You can put Worldcon adventures in your WOOFzine if you like.
Each year’s WOOF has had some long-time contributors, some first-timers, some who appear now and then. There should be and usually are WOOFzines from around the world.
WOOFing electronically this year will be convenient, maybe even delightful, for some. Sending contributions by paper mail will please others.
But international postal service from New Zealand to Florida can be awkward just now.
Despite or because of all this there should be an actual New Zealander involved. There is.
WOOF’s man in Wellington will be Daniel Spector, long-time fan and member of the CoNZealand committee. His paper-mail address is public:
Daniel Spector 12 Harrold St. Highbury, Wellington 6012 New Zealand
WOOFzines on paper can be mailed to him; only one copy; he will send it to GHL III; it should be suitable for electronic scanning (no zines on slices of bologna, please). Arrange with DS how this year’s WOOF distribution will be sent to you.
If you are among the few, the happy few attending CoNZealand in person, you should be able to find him easily there and hand him your WOOFzine.
So he assures me. I’ve known him long and drunk Rayne-Vigneau with him (no offense meant, Yasser Bahjatt; we’ve drunk coffee too – and as you know, and you too, Dave Doering, I’m a friend to those who maintain there’s more – to life, the universe, and everything – than drink).
What have I to do with all this – I whose first Worldcon was before WOOF, and who have never WOOFed even once?
If you know me, you know my interest in William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. He was once applauded as a pillar of the Church. But he was not in Holy Orders. He said “I don’t think I can be that. Perhaps I am a buttress of the Church. I support it from outside.”
My paper-mail address and telephone number are public too, 236 S. Coronado St., No. 409, Los Angeles, CA 90057, U.S.A., (213)384-6622.
There’s still time to host a fan table or fan party at the first ever Virtual Worldcon, and we encourage you to apply- but don’t delay, as the registration deadline is 15th July at midnight NZT. This is to give our tech team time to make the plans they need to.
Fan tables will happen on Discord, and fan parties will be hosted via Zoom.
The first Digital WorldCon masquerade is a unique event celebrating costumes from all over the world. The Masquerade has always been a space that welcomes every kind of costuming.
…Take inspiration from how technology has connected us, socially, for work, for school, how theatre has reimagined works, and to embrace any limitations as creativity.
… The theme that has emerged from the Hugo-voter’s collective intelligence this year is fan writers as connections between worlds. The most apparent aspect of that in James’s work is his Young People Read Old SFF project (http://youngpeoplereadoldsff.com/) which puts classic science fiction stories in front of young people (or sometimes current science fiction in front of old people). As a project it is a fascinating example of how ‘fan writing’ exceed simple definition. The posts show how reading is a conversation with texts and with others reading those texts. James’s role is to facilitate the process but by doing so the whole project turns the process of review into a deeper form of literary criticism.
(3) VIRTUAL MILEHICON. Denver’s MileHiCon 52 has joined the ranks of virtual conventions.
Because we are going Virtual, we will not be able to provide all of the types of programs that we have had in the past. The art show, vendors room, and Authors Row will be available but in a totally different format. Panel discussions, presentations, readings and demonstrations will still be offered. There may also be some totally new types of programming. We will be announcing more information about the program schedule at later dates. Scroll down form more information.
(4) DIVE, DIVE! In “Subplots: What Are They Good For?” Kay Kenyon and Cat Rambo discuss subplots and how to use them. Kenyon will be teaching the “Mapping the Labyrinth: Plotting Your Novel” class on August 2 online at the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. Registration and scholarship info at the link.
An outline is one of your best tools for writing a novel, but how do you figure what happens, when, where, and to whom? How do you deal with plots when they go astray and how do you weave multiple plotlines together? With series, what can you leave for future books — and how do you set events up for those books?
… For most of “Starship Troopers,” humanity, in every possible facet, gets its ass kicked. A culture that reveres and communicates exclusively through violence—a culture very much like one that responds to peaceful protests with indiscriminate police brutality, or whose pandemic strategy is to “dominate” an unreasoning virus—keeps running up against its own self-imposed limitations. Once again, the present has caught up to Verhoeven’s acid vision of the future. It’s not a realization that anyone in the film can articulate, or seemingly even process, but the failure is plain: their society has left itself a single solution to every problem, and it doesn’t work….
(6) LOOKITTHAT MOUNT TBR. Buzz Dixon says David Gerrold’s new book is fun: “That’s A HELLA Story”.
…But the best monsters in the book aren’t human but rather the megasized fauna of Hella (an old South Park joke carried to its logical conclusion, much like Niven’s Mt. Lookitthat). This is the most joyous part of the story, really evocative of the grand old space opera traditions.
But it also explores territory that, if not exactly new to science fiction, certainly isn’t commonplace, either….
(7) DANIELS OBIT. [Item by Danny Sichel.] Country singer Charlie Daniels — who wrote “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, which one could very easily argue is a fantasy short story — has died at the age of 83.
There’s also an argument to be made that, golden fiddle or no, Jonny lost his soul the second he agreed to participate in the contest.
…Mr. Morricone scored many popular films of the past 40 years: Édouard Molinaro’s “La Cage aux Folles” (1978), Mr. Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), Mr. De Palma’s “The Untouchables” (1987), Roman Polanski’s “Frantic” (1988), Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso” (1988), Wolfgang Petersen’s “In the Line of Fire” (1993), and Mr. Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” (2015).
In 2016, Mr. Morricone won his first competitive Academy Award for his score for “The Hateful Eight,” an American western mystery thriller for which he also won a Golden Globe. In a career showered with honors, he had previously won an Oscar for lifetime achievement (2007) and was nominated for five other Academy Awards, and had won two Golden Globes, four Grammys and dozens of international awards.
(9) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
July 1976 — Gordon R. Dickson’s The Dragon and the George was published by the Science Fiction Book Club. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the September 1957 issue, as the novella “St. Dragon and the George”. It would be the first in a series that would eventually reach nine titles. The Dragon and the George would win the BFA George August Derleth Fantasy Award, and was loosely adapted into the 1982 animated The Flight of Dragons, a Rankin/Bass production.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born July 6, 1755 – John Flaxman. Sculptor and draftsman (he wrote draughtsman); began by working for Wedgwood. We can claim his illustrations of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Dante; some of his sculpture. For our purposes we needn’t care whether angels, or the Greek gods, exist or in what sense: portrayal of them by human beings is fantastic. Here is Homer invoking the Muse. Here is Sleep escaping from the wrath of Jupiter (I wish JF had said Zeus, but he didn’t). Here is Apollo with four Muses. Here is the Archangel Michael overpowering Satan. (Died 1826) [JH]
Born July 6, 1916 — Donald R. Christensen. Animator, cartoonist, illustrator, writer. He worked briefly at Warner Bros. studio, primarily as a storyboard artist for Bob Clampett’s animation unit. After that, he worked for Dell, Gold Key and Western Publishing comic books, as well as Hanna Barbera, Walter Lantz Productions and other cartoon studios. He wrote and provided illustrations for such comic book titles as Magnus, Robot Fighter, Donald Duck, and Uncle Scrooge. (Died 2006.) (CE)
Born July 6, 1927 – Rick Sneary. We liked what we thought his idiosyncratic spelling, and preserved it; few knew, few imagined, he was largely self-taught and wished we’d correct it. One of his fanzines was Gripes & Growns – see? President of the N3F (Nat’l Fantasy Fan Fed’n), chaired its board of directors; President of FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Ass’n) – by mail. Locally, co-founded the Petards, who took turns as Hoist; the Outlanders, who could not always attend LASFS (L.A. Science Fantasy Soc.) meetings. Living in South Gate, he did much for the South Gate in ’58 Worldcon bid; it won; physically it had to be in Los Angeles, but by proclamation of both mayors was technically in South Gate; at the end he carried a sign “South Gate Again in 2010”; this came to pass, see File 770 153 p. 20 (PDF). He won the LASFS Evans-Freehafer service award, wretched health and all. Afterward June & Len Moffatt and I co-edited the memorial fanzine Button-Tack. His name rhymed with very. (Died 1990) [JH]
Born July 6, 1935 – Ditmar, 85. Full name Martin James Ditmar Jenssen. Outstanding and distinctive fanartist, most often seen on covers of Bruce Gillespie zines because BG has the tech to do him justice; see here (The Metaphysical Review), here (Scratch Pad), here (SF Commentary). Others too, like this (PDF). The Australian SF Awards are named Ditmars after him. Won the Rotsler Award. [JH]
Born July 6, 1945 – Rodney Matthews, 75. Illustrator and conceptual designer, famous for record album covers (130 of them), calendars, jigsaw puzzles, snowboards, T-shirts. Lavender Castle, a children’s animation series. Computer games. Lyrics and drums for a Christmas CD. A Michael Moorcock calendar and two of his own. Two RM Portfolios. Five dozen book & magazine covers, six dozen interiors: here is one for Vortex; here is Rocannon’s World (in Serbo-Croatian); here is his vision of Alice in Wonderland. [JH]
Born July 6, 1945 — Burt Ward, 75. Robin in that Batman series. He reprise the role in voicing the character in The New Adventures of Batman and Legends of the Superheroes , and two recent films, Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders and Batman vs. Two-Face. The latter are the last work done by Adam West before his death. (CE)
Born July 6, 1951 — Rick Sternbach, 69. Best-known for his work in the Trek verse starting with ST: TMP where he designed control panel layouts and signage for the Enterprise. He’s next hired for Next Gen where communicator badge, phasers, PADDs and tricorders are all based on his designs. These designs will also be used on DS9 and Voyager. He also pretty much designed every starship during that time from the Cardassian and Klingon to the Voyager itself. He would win the Best Professional Artist Hugo at SunCon and IguanaCon II. (CE)
Born July 6, 1946 — Sylvester Stallone, 74. Although I think Stallone made a far-less-than-perfect Dredd, I think the look and feel of the first film was spot which was something the second film, which had a perfect Dredd in Karl Urban, utterly lacked. And Demolition Man and him as Sergeant John Spartan were just perfect. (CE)
Born July 6, 1966 – Beth Harbison, 54. Writes fiction and cookbooks; twoscore all told. Shoe Addicts Anonymous was a New York Times Best-Seller. If I Could Turn Back Time and Every Time You Go Away are ours. The title Met the Wrong Man, Gave Him the Wrong Finger should give us all, as the French say, furiously to think. [JH]
Born July 6, 1978 – Tamera & Tia Mowry, 42. Identical twins. Together four Twintuition novels for us; two television shows, Sister, Sister (both women won the NAACP Image Award, three Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, Nickelodeon Hall of Fame) and Tia & Tamera. Tamera, the elder (two minutes apart), won a Daytime Emmy and two NAACP Image Awards as a talk-show host on The Real; two films and two dozen other TV shows. Tia has done eight films, thirty other TV shows; is the head coach of the Entertainment Basketball League celebrity team. [JH]
Born July 6, 1980 — Eva Green, 40. First crosses our paths in Casino Royale as Vesper Lynd followed by Serafina Pekkala in The Golden Compass, and then Angelique Bouchard Collins in Dark Shadows. Ava Lord in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (weird films those definitely are) with a decided move sideways into being Miss Alma Peregrine for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. And she was Colette Marchant in Dumbo. She’s got two series roles to her credit, Morgan Pendragon in Camelot and Vanessa Ives in Penny Dreadful. (CE)
Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study (n = 310) tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant media fictions, including horror and pandemic films, was associated with greater preparedness for and psychological resilience toward the pandemic. Since morbid curiosity has previously been associated with horror
I like fantasy well enough, but what warms the cockles of my heart is science fiction. Preferably with rockets. Brobdinagian space battles (or at least the potential for same) are also a plus.
Here are a few recent novels that scratch that old-fashioned itch….
(13) DISCOVERY OF THE DAY. Apparently it’s been online for years — but it’s news to me! A Goodreads list of the sff classics John Hertz has led discussions about at conventions: “Hertz Led Science Fiction Classics Discussed”.
At a number of Worldcons and other science fiction conventions, John Hertz has organized a discussion of science fiction classics.
By his definition, “A classic is a story which survives its time which, after the currents change which might have buoyed it, is seen to be valuable in itself.” He explicitly is not interested in the idea of a classic as needing to be either influential or popular. To be fair that definition may not be his personal definition, but it was the guiding principle for the discussion at sasquan in 2015.
This list is for the books that were discussed at Worldcons and other science fiction conventions as picked by John Hertz. If a book that is from that list is missing on this one, please add it. Otherwise books that can’t be substantiated as being part of that process will be removed
…Equitable casting “is being demanded to the point where people are giving up their jobs they’ve had for 20 years,” Baker says. “In a sense, I think it’s a great thing to have opportunity for diversity to come into place and be the norm. Why? Because it reflects the world. The world isn’t just one-sided.”
Baker co-founded the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences as a means of training, mentoring and advocating for her peers. Diversity and inclusion, mentioned in the organization’s mission statement, are central to what Baker refers to as her “journey of a lifetime.” White people continue to run the industry, she says. It’s always been cost-effective to hire actors like Mel Blanc, nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” to play multiple characters. The overarching goal isn’t to take away from these talented white actors, but to ensure that equally equipped people of color have a substantial “piece of the pie.”
…Rest assured that, no, Big Boy has not done anything wrong, or been canceled for bad behavior. Rather, the switch to a female face is a pre-planned promotional move tied to an on-trend new menu item.
“We are rolling out a brand-new chicken sandwich,” Frank Alessandrini, Big Boy’s director of training, said according to Michigan’s WOOD TV, based in the company’s home state. “Dolly has been with Big Boy since as far as we can go back with our comic books […] we decided that she’s going to be the star of this sandwich as Big Boy was the star of his double decker sandwich.”
Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google and Telegram have all said they are “pausing” co-operation with requests for user information from the Hong Kong police.
Several countries have criticised China for imposing a new security law, which they say threatens the territory’s long-standing autonomy.
The announcements are likely to put pressure on Apple to do likewise.
While the others’ services are blocked in mainland China, Apple’s are not.
However, Facebook, Google and Twitter do generate revenue from selling advertising to Chinese clients.
Apple complied with the majority of requests it received from Hong Kong’s government between January and June, before the new law came into effect, according to the firm’s latest transparency report.
Microsoft – which has also previously handed over data about its users to Hong Kong’s authorities, and maintains a significant presence in mainland China – has not announced a change in policy either.
What happens when an African grey parrot goes head-to-head with 21 Harvard students in a test measuring a type of visual memory? Put simply: The parrot moves to the head of the class.
Harvard researchers compared how 21 human adults and 21 6- to 8-year-old children stacked up against an African grey parrot named Griffin in a complex version of the classic shell game.
It worked like this: Tiny colored pom-poms were covered with cups and then shuffled, so participants had to track which object was under which cup. The experimenter then showed them a pom-pom that matched one of the same color hidden under one of the cups and asked them to point at the cup. (Griffin, of course, used his beak to point.) The participants were tested on tracking two, three, and four different-colored pom-poms. The position of the cups were swapped zero to four times for each of those combinations. Griffin and the students did 120 trials; the children did 36.
The game tests the brain’s ability to retain memory of items that are no longer in view, and then updating when faced with new information, like a change in location. This cognitive system is known as visual working memory and is the one of the foundations for intelligent behavior.
So how did the parrot fare? Griffin outperformed the 6- to 8-year-olds across all levels on average, and he performed either as well as or slightly better than the 21 Harvard undergraduates on 12 of the 14 of trial types.
That’s not bad at all for a so-called bird brain.
(18) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. Uh, yeah, that sounds logical.
Do not????name ????your child???? Hugo????if they????were not????conceived or born???? in Hugoslavia????
— Poupon, The Incredibly Normal™ (@formetopoupon) July 4, 2020
(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. On the off chance that you have 22 minutes to spare, you might also appreciate the opportunity to see excerpts from a 1977 interview with Philip K. Dick in Metz, France.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Danny SIchel, Todd Mason, Cat Eldridge, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]
By John Hertz: Bob Madle lived to see his 100th birthday. SaM did not; he left the stage in 1997. It would have been today. Let us salute him.
Here they both are at Philadelphia in 1937. Standing, left to right: Donald A. Wollheim, Madle, Richard Wilson, SaM, Dave Kyle, Daniel Burford, Julie Schwartz, Leon Burg. Kneeling: Robert G. Thompson, Edward Landberg, Jack Gillespie, James V. Taurasi, Oswald Train.
This photo appears on Page 89 of The Immortal Storm (rev. 1954), SaM’s history of fandom’s earliest days – which you can read here.
This book has been praised and pilloried. Both those perspectives are pure.
Author photo of Sam Moskowitz from The Immortal Storm (1954).
SaM’s endless care and endless vigor deserve applause. His more than occasional errors deserve – well, I’ll quote again a brilliant law professor I was lucky to have and often disagreed with: he was speaking of a greater man in history, with whom he disagreed powerfully – There’s a sense in which a genius can’t be wrong.
SaM chaired the first Worldcon. That convention may have been the bravest thing we ever did – except for the second Worldcon.
For Noreascon 3 the 47th Worldcon he wrote profiles of the 1st, 9th, 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 22nd.
He wrote for Locus and SF Chronicle.
He edited a score of anthologies. He edited Fantasy Times and the 1973 revival of Weird Tales. He reviewed books for SF Plus and Fantastic Novels. While Cele Goldsmith was the editor of Amazing he wrote two dozen profiles of SF authors, including Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, Moore.
He published a dozen short stories, one of which was translated into Dutch, French, German, Portuguese.
Near the end Jeffrey Elliot interviewed him by mail and Fred Lerner edited the correspondence into After All These Years (1991).
He was an unsurpassed collector, equaled perhaps only by Forry Ackerman.
He was given the Big Heart, our highest service award. He was given the SF Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to science fiction and fantasy scholarship.
You could do worse than read Peter Nicholls & John Clute’s 2018 appreciation of him in the Clute-Langford-Nicholls-Sleight Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
