J. Michael Straczynski has added a long comment to his Facebook announcement in defense of the decisions he’s made in shaping The Last Dangerous Visions, for example, holding it to 112,000 words to make it attractive to a major publisher.
One thing needs to be pointed out since folks who have never actually seen any of the TLDV stories seem to have very strong opinions about what that book should be, and without seeing what this one is, what it shouldn’t be.
There was no one thing that stands as Harlan’s version of TLDV. It never existed because it was always in a state of flux. It was going to be whatever it was on the day when he finally finished with it. THAT was to be TLDV, not something frozen in amber that only reflected the70s. Which is why he continued buying stories all through the 80s and into the 90s (including from folks like Stephen Dedman) because he saw the book as a living document that would have to grow and change to stay relevant with changing times. It wasn’t supposed to be static until it actually came out…and he was the first to say that some stories would have to be trimmed to make room for ones that were more current.
Further to the point: no publisher in their right mind is going to put out a 700,000 word anthology that follows on books that came out in the 70s. The risk is too great. A reasonable sized book, yes. A behemoth, no. And the whole point of the exercise is to put the work of the best of the original DV writers, and those new voices Harlan wanted to continue to see, out where the mainstream world could see it…not as a limited edition sold to the already-faithful, not as an Ebook or a print-on-demand…but something to be published from a major company that would receive the kind of critical attention in the press that these stories and Harlan’s work deserve.
The only way for that to happen is to follow Harlan’s lead, pare away any stories that are no longer as relevant as they were, or have been supplanted by real-world events, and focus on the very best of the very best…so the book is lean and mean and strong and utterly bulletproof. (And do bear in mind that over half the original inventory was originally pulled and published elsewhere in any event.)
To those out there complaining that every single story should be included…if that were done, the book would never be published and nobody would ever see any of it in any credible form. You can have one or the other but you can’t have both. The modern publishing business doesn’t work that way.
The now-completed Last Dangerous Visions contains the sharpest, most incisive stories by the leading lights of the last 40 years…the stories Harlan believed were the strongest and the best-of-the-best.
So…crazy idea for the internet…how about people wait to see what the book actually *is* and what’s actually *inside* it before deciding what it actually is and what’s actually inside it? And understand that what *you* think the book should be isn’t the point…it’s what Harlan thought the book should be, which was never one particular thing, because it kept changing over the years. This reflects where all of that thinking finally wound up. This is the book that he would have wanted to see out there so that the writers included (all others have had their stories reverted so they can appear anywhere at the discretion of their estates or themselves) can receive the critical attention that those stories deserve.
J. Michael Straczynski told Facebook readers today that The Last Dangerous Visions has been finished.
THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS has at last been completed. The final draft went off to the agency that will be handling the sale about fifteen minutes ago. This has been a massive effort…112,000 words…tracking down the estates of the original writers to be included in the book, and nailing down some newer A List writers; fans of Harlan’s who wanted to be a part of TLDV. (And for the record, Harlan continued to buy stories for the anthology right through the 90s, and stopped only due to illness. He saw TLDV as a living document, and fought to keep it relevant when some stories became less timely or were supplanted by real world events.)
I will have more to say about the contents at a later date, but suffice to say that they include some of the most visionary writers in the science fiction genre over the last 48 years.
[Thanks to JJ and Chris Barkley for the story.]
JMS’ announcement last year. It’s now Summer 2021, so really no delay at all, considering the history of the project…
Plus, one last slot will be opened up for submissions from unknown and unpublished writers, giving “one new voice, one last chance to make it into The Last Dangerous Visions.”
Now Straczynski has now said that on April 30, for one and only one day, the submission window will be open for stories from unpublished writers.
Harlan Ellison was a fierce advocate for new writers. For that reason, one slot in THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS has been set aside for a new, unpublished writer. The submission period will last just 24 hours. One day, one voice, one vision, one new writer who will be included in a volume featuring some of the most respected writers in the science fiction genre.
DANGEROUS VISIONS stories are expected to be top-flight, challenging, new, experimental or otherwise daring in scope and vision. They are nominally SF but there’s some room to play in there. The most essential part is that they’re not about the space battles, or the McGuffin, they’re ultimately about what it is to be human…about what William Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself.” They can address issues of controversy, be political in nature, or deal with gender, identity, privacy, technology…a story that appears in Dangerous Visions generally does so because it couldn’t find a home in more conventional anthologies or magazines. That doesn’t mean having gratuitous sex or violence just for shock value. Shock doesn’t endure. Good storytelling endures.
Take us to the horizon and beyond.
Straczynski’s definition of “unpublished writer” is –
[One] who has not received payment for his or her work, in print or online. If you’ve self-published books that have sold via Amazon or another vendor, that’s publication. If you’ve had stories appear online in non-paying web-magazines, for which you have not received any money, or if you’ve been paid in nonfiction arenas, that counts as being unpublished in fiction.
He also says:
Further to that point, there is no fee for submitting stories. This process is entirely free of cost or obligation. Stories not selected for THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS remain the sole property of their original authors. Payment for the selected story is on par with current leading SF magazines at 10 cents per word. All stories appearing in THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS are exclusive to that book for only a two-year period, after which all the writers shall have the nonexclusive right to resell their stories elsewhere.
(1) WEIMER IS BACK. The sff community rallied around and helped get Paul Weimer’s Twitter account restored after trolls got it shut down. He tells the full background on his Patreon: “The Trolls and the Twitter Ban (PUBLIC)”. Now Paul has a new honorific:
Prince of the Unbanned. I know, right? That just screams for someone to stick it somewhere in their fantasy novel, even if offstage and just a throwaway reference. https://t.co/d7RRrgSfIu
Also obligatory mention that I am nominatable for Best Fan Writer You can find my stuff at @nerds_feather , @tordotcom , @SkiffyandFanty and elsewhere (heck, I've got a piece at @File_770 . I really can be ubiquitous.
(2) LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. Two items of non-Patreon-locked news from Ellison executor J. Michael Straczynski —
Three authors who will have a new story in LDV have been named. The first one is —
As noted, several high-profile writers have stepped up to show support for TLDV by offering to contribute stories. The first was announced Monday exclusively to those on Patreon, and can now be conveyed here: the amazing NEIL GAIMAN!
Also: I’d like to announce another significant contemporary writer who has decided to lend his name to THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS by contributing a story: CORY DOCTOROW, who is known as not just an amazing writer but a pioneer in the realm of electronic rights and privacy and a scholar of the internet.
And of the original writers who contributed stories, “Rundown” by the highly regarded SF and fantasy writer John Morressy has been selected to be included in this volume.
…That announcement included word that a slot would be open for one previously unpublished writer, one new voice, to see their story included in the book alongside some of the most well-regarded writers working in the field of SF and Fantasy over the last 50 years.
Because it will take time for those interested to come up with something appropriate to TLDV, I wanted to get the word out now that submissions will be taken for only 24 hours on Wednesday, March 31st, and must be no longer than 3,500 words. The email address for submissions will be provided the day beforehand, along with a release form. All submitted stories remain the property of the writers responsible for them, and the one chosen for inclusion will be exclusive for just a two-year period, as with all the other stories in the planned volume.
Harlan believed passionately in helping to bring new voices into the field, and I share that conviction. I think if you have any success at all, you have a moral obligation to send down the elevator for the next person. With luck, this will bring a new voice into the world.
The game gets played between writer and reader, for sure, but also among writers, and between all the writers and all the readers. Some words get used again and again, becoming a meta-canonical corpus as allusive as classical haiku. It’s a game so complicated that it’d be nice to know the rules, maybe see the shape of the pieces. That’s where a lexicographical mad scientist named Jesse Sheidlower comes in. His creation, the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction came to life online this week—1,800 entries dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, with not only definitions but the earliest known uses, links to biographical information about the writers, and links to more than 1,600 scans of the original pages where the words appeared. It’s a wormhole into not just one alternate universe but a lexicographic multiverse, where time-traveling canons overlap in unexpected ways with each other and with whatever universe the reader happens to be sitting in. Cool concepts from your favoritemovies turn out to precede those movies by decades; science fiction gets things right before science. It’s a trip, and it might just lead to some answers about what science fiction is and what it means. It’ll definitely start—and finish—some arguments.
… Even without Ewoks, the result is generally both amazing and astonishing. In just a few minutes of reconnaissance, for example, I learned that the first person to pilot a jet car was not, as I hoped, Buckaroo Banzai, but in fact a character in Bryce Walton’s 1946 short story “Prisoner of the Brain Mistress.” I figured that Han Solo wasn’t the first person to make the jump to “hyperspace,” but I didn’t expect the concept to first come up in 1928, in Kirk Meadowcroft’s story “The Invisible Bubble” in the germinal pulp Amazing Stories. Nor did I expect big names like E. E. “Doc” Smith, Isaac Asimov, Samuel Delaney, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and David Brin to have also used the idea. And let’s say you wanted to go back in time and kill the person who came up with the idea of the grandfather paradox. You’d have to assassinate Hugo Gernsback, arguably the coinventor of the modern iteration of the genre, before he published his essay “The Question of Time-Traveling” in Science Wonder Stories in 1929.
The fact that so many of these terms have examples of their use from a dozen different writers across decades of history proves that sometimes writers aren’t neologizing so much as digging into the genre lexicon. Well, newish. “You leverage off of other people’s work, but really you’ve activated decades of associations that other people might or might not be bringing,” [Charles] Yu says. “That’s something really rich about science fiction in general. There’s this overlap, or this tangent point. This dictionary is kind of trying to be placed squarely in that region, the overlap.”
There’s no denying the profound influence that the Star Trek franchise has had on our shared popular culture. But it turns out that some of the best-known terms associated with the series—transporter, warp speed, and the famous Prime Directive—actually predate Star Trek: The Original Series by a decade or more. According to Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer and editor of the newly launched online Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction (HDSF), the first mention of those terms appeared in 1956, 1952, and 1940, respectively.
The entry for each word or phrase includes a brief definition followed by a timeline of its occurrences in literature, film, and criticism, with quotations. For instance, if you’re a US Senator who wants to crow about how the cancellation of his book contract is “Orwellian,” you might be interested to note that the word appeared in a 1949 edition of the St. Alban’s Daily Messenger: “Almost all the Orwellian techniques of a future totalitarianism are found here.” Or if you want to give your endless Zoom meetings some historical context, you can note that in the 1944 book Television, R.E. Lee predicted your current misery in his writing about the “videophone”: “We shall undoubtedly see videophones replacing telephones in common usage.”
After two decades of splashing around in the shallows of success, Monique Roffey was taking no chances with The Mermaid of Black Conch. The novel, which won the Costa book of the year award on Tuesday, is written in a Creole English and uses a patchwork of forms, from poetry to journal entries and an omniscient narrator, and “employs magical realism to the max”. Even its title was against it, she realised. “You’re either going to read a novel about a mermaid or you aren’t.”
Any one of these, she says, would scare away most publishers….
(5) ANNUAL IN MEMORIAM LIST. Steven H Silver’s 2020: In Memoriam article is now on-line at Amazing Stories.
(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
January 27, 1980 — The Saga of a Star World started again when Galactica 1980 aired its very first episode on ABC. The tale picked up years after the events depicted in the original Battlestar Galactica with Commander Adama still in charge as the lead vessel of the Thirteen Colonies finally found way to Earth. It was created by Glen A. Larson, and starred Lorne Greene, Kent McCord, Barry Van Dyke and Richard Lynch. The series would last for ten episodes before it was cancelled due to extremely poor ratings.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born January 27, 1756 – Wolfgang Mozart. When I’ve happened to be teaching on this day, I’ve handed out Mozartkugeln. Please consider you’ve received one virtually. Had WM, a good candidate for greatest composer ever, written only Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, it would have been enough for us. The relations between WM and Salieri in the film Amadeus are (ahem) highly fictionalized. WM may be the best part of Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf, but – I’d better stop. (Died 1791) [JH]
Born January 27, 1832 – Lewis Carroll. Another glorious – differently – illumination of this day. Had LC written only the two Alice books – and I must add The Hunting of the Snark – it would have been enough for us. What’s that?? Do you suppose it might be a boo- [JH]
Born January 27, 1950 — Michaela Roessner, 71. She won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer for Walkabout Woman. Her The Stars Dispose duology is quite excellent. Though not genre, her two historical novels, The Stars Dispose and The Stars Compel, about Catherine de Medici are excellent. ISFDB lists two additional novels of genre status, Walkabout Women and Vanishing Point. None of her fiction is alas available digitally. (CE)
Born January 27, 1956 — Mimi Rogers, 65. Her best known known SFF role is Professor Maureen Robinson in the Lost in Space film which I did see in a theatre I just realized. She’s also Mrs. Marie Kensington in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, and she’s Orianna Volkes in the Penny Dreadful hitchhiker horror film. She’s got one-offs in Tales from The Crypt, The X-Files, Where Are You Scooby Doo? and Ash v. Evil Dead. (CE)
Born January 27, 1957 — Frank Miller, 64. He’s both an artist and writer so I’m not going to untangle which is which here. What’s good by him? Oh I love The Dark Knight Returns, both the original comic series and the animated film, though the same not so true of Sin City where I prefer the original series much more. Hmmm… What else? His runs on Daredevil and Electra of course. That should do. What’s your favorite? Do tell. (CE)
Born January 27, 1966 — Tamlyn Tomita, 55. I’m fairly sure I first saw her in a genre role on the Babylon 5 film The Gathering as Lt. Cmdr. Laurel Takashima. Or it might have been on The Burning Zone as Dr. Kimberly Shiroma. And she had a recurring late on Eureka in Kate Anderson, and Ishi Nakamura on Heroes. She’s been in a number of SFF series in one-off roles including Highlander, Quantum Leap, The Sentinel, Seven Days, FreakyLinks, Stargate SG-1 and a recurring as late as Tamiko Watanabe in The Man in The High Castle. (CE)
Born January 27, 1970 — Irene Gallo, 51. Creative Director for Tor.com and Tor Books. She’s won an amazing thirteen Chelsey Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards, for art director of Tor.com and for the Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction anthology. She also co-wrote Revolution: The Art of Jon Foster with Jon Foster and Cathy & Arnie Fenner. (CE)
(8) WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE GREEN THINGS. Ursula Vernon was briefly tempted by a catalog:
Gardeners supply co has sent me a catalog with these gorgeous indoor grow light setups that are all beautiful and shown on counters or in spacious kitchens and I’m just like “Someone here does not have pets.”
God, it would look like I lived in a greenhouse and I would be so happy for ten minutes and the cats would excavate those pots like Heinrich Schliemann taking apart Troy.
(9) SOMETHING IN THE INK. The Comics Journal reminds fans about “The Strange Case of D. Bruce Berry”, a terrific artist who was once confined to a mental institution, and later in a 38-page rant entitled A Trip To Hell claimed Chicago fan Earl Kemp and science fiction editor and writer Harlan Ellison, wearing masks, had held him up at gunpoint on a Chicago street on Labor Day night, 1958. An extensive history of Berry’s history in SF fandom, with tons of his fanzine and pro artwork.
Bruce Berry is best known as Jack Kirby’s controversial inker, who took over from Mike Royer during Kirby’s ‘70s run at DC. Perhaps Berry suffers in his close proximity to Royer, Kirby’s most faithful and therefore considered by many, his best inker. Conventional wisdom is that Berry worked for decades as an advertising product/mechanical artist before Kirby brought him on board, thus beginning his comics career.
Truth be told, Berry was an often-published pulp and fanzine illustrator, science fiction author and novelist, dating back to the 1940s. He was also a brought to court for threatening others in the science fiction community and had been confined to a mental institution as a result.
…[In] the 1948 Fantasy Annual, published by Forrest J Ackerman, Berry was ranked 3rd in the list of Top Fan Artists.
…Advertising work having dried up in Chicago, Berry relocated to Southern California in the late 1960s. Richard Kyle helped set him up in an apartment and introduced him to professional cartoonists working in the area, which included Mike Royer. Royer had recently begun inking and lettering Jack Kirby’s “Fourth World” series of comics for DC and soon afterward he employed Berry to ink backgrounds to help keep up with the voluminous flow of work. Berry took over the full inking and lettering chores with Kamandi #17 in 1974 and remained as Kirby’s inker for most of the rest of his DC run. According to Berry, “Mike said to me, “You won’t have any problems. Just follow the lines.” Keep in mind I came out of the advertising business. When an art director tells you the way a thing should be done, it’s the rule of the game. Mike said, “follow the lines,” and that is exactly what I did.” (10) Trying to remain faithful to Kirby’s pencils as Royer had been, Berry approached the inks like a schematic, using mechanical pens and tools, which produced a static even line width (unlike Royer who employed brushes for a robust result.) The end result was that he broke Jack’s pencils into shapes and patterns, an earmark of product illustration, to mixed effect. Oddly, none of these techniques are evidenced in Berry’s own artwork.
A UC Berkeley campus building will be stripped of its name because of the legacy of its namesake, an anthropologist whose work included the “immoral and unethical” collection of Native American remains, the university announced Tuesday.
Kroeber Hall, named after Alfred Louis Kroeber, will be stripped of its name in a year’s time and will temporarily be called the Anthropology and Art Practice Building.
The university’s Building Name Review Committee announced the decision Tuesday after unanimously voting to remove the name last fall. Last year, the university renamed two other buildings over their namesakes’ controversial legacies of promoting racist rhetoric and colonialist ideas…
(12) THE HORROR. In “Pee -wee Park – The Full Horror Trailer” on YouTube, Pixel Riot asks what would happen if all the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were replaced with Pee Wee Herman!
[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cora Buhlert, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
(1) MORE ABOUT LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS. Ellison estate executor J. Michael Straczynski announced yesterday that Last Dangerous Visions will be submitted to publishers in 2021. Some of the comments here prompted me to ask him will there be author/story introductions written by Harlan Ellison in the book? Straczynski answered, “More information about specific content will come later.”
… Musk isn’t alone in his love of science fiction. Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has noted that he’s a particular fan of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Star Trek. In Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race, Tim Fernholz notes that Bezos had long been interested in space exploration, saying in his high school valedictorian speech that we could save humanity “by creating permanent human colonies in orbiting space stations while turning the planet into an enormous nature preserve.”
… While science fiction makes for fine inspirational material, it needs to be treated with some level of skepticism. Countless writers and artists have imagined what life in space might look like, but the genre they built got its start at a time when rocketry and space travel were in their earliest stages. They took technological leaps beyond our capabilities to imagine interstellar ships, space stations, intelligent robots, and more, which made for fine storytelling material, but which were also several steps away from reality. That was their job: to imagine fantastical, entertaining adventures, rather than write about what they were seeing around them.
While it’s steeped in a form of realism (depending on how “hard” you want your science fiction), the arts are only a simulacrum for the world around us. Based on what we know now, interstellar empires, travel between star systems, and colonizing other planets are improbable ventures.
In 2015, author Kim Stanley Robinson sought to tackle the long-standing trope of the Generation Ships — a spaceship designed to take hundreds or thousands of years to reach its destination, the descendants of the original crew carrying on the flag of humanity — with his novel Aurora. The result was a bleak outlook for his crew members: riding a starship that had begun to break down because of unforeseen problems and shortages, and a destination that proved to be habitable, but extremely inhospitable for human habitation. Other authors have drawn on recent scholarship to imagine a more plausible universe in which we might end up. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time and its sequel Children of Ruin each take the enormous interstellar distances into account and imagine various survivors of humanity’s ambitions as they seek to terraform the universe to better suit them.
(3) LAT BOOK CLUB FEATURES BUTLER GIVEAWAY. The Los Angeles Times Book Club will host Lynell George, author of A Handful of Dirt, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler on November 18 to discuss Butler’s work and her enduring legacy. The event will be livestreamed on the Times’ Facebook page, YouTube and Twitter. Sign up at Eventbrite — this event is free. And when you register for this event, you can receive a free copy of one of 10 books written by Butler or another sci-fi great — thanks to a generous donation from the author’s estate.
After working as a telemarketer, potato chip inspector and dishwasher, Butler went on to a groundbreaking writing career, publishing 12 novels and several short-story collections. She earned two Nebula and two Hugo awards and became the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “genius” grant….
Butler’s 1993 “Parable of the Sower” envisioned a Los Angeles ravaged by climate change and economic injustice where people are scraping by just to survive. The author died in 2006 but her novel has surged in popularity in recent months. “Parable of the Sower” landedon both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestseller lists this fall.
(4) TAKING THE PAIN OUT OF PAINT. North Hollywood’s Iliad Bookshop had its famous murals vandalized and tagged. They’ve started a GoFundMe — Restore The Iliad Bookshop’s Mural – to raise $4,000 and have it redone. See photos of all the authors on the original murals here.
The Iliad Bookshop was founded by Dan Weinstein in 1987, and moved to its current location at the corner of Chandler and Cahuenga Blvds. in North Hollywood in 2006. Besides its vast inventory of used books and its adorable cats, the Iliad has always been known for its beautiful murals. When we moved to our current location, we hired British artist Paul Dilworth to decorate our walls with murals that depicted dozens of famous authors, musicians, mythological characters, and others. Paul has expanded the mural over the years, and we added custom-made giant books as well.
Our mural was more than a source of pride for the Iliad; we believe it was a valuable part of the local community. Travelers from all over the world admired the art; we’ve had visitors, authors, and even newlyweds pose in front of the mural.
If you’d like to see the mural in its entirety, complete with a list of all the authors who appeared on it, please click here .
On October 23, 2020, we arrived to find that much of the Chandler wall had been vandalized by taggers who painted over a number of author portraits, including Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler. There is a protective coating on the mural, but when the tag is rendered in thick enamel layers there’s no way to remove it. All you can do is paint over it.
Of course it broke our hearts (as if 2020 wasn’t already hard enough on a small independent bookstore), but more importantly, it left many of our customers and neighbors heartbroken and angry. We painted over the graffiti…
…and were tagged again two days later. Once more we painted over the tag.
It’s now been two weeks and we haven’t been tagged again, so we’re ready to think about fixing the mural. Since the original artist, Paul Dilworth, is on lockdown in the U.K. we can’t hire him, but he has recommended a local artist to restore the mural.
(5) $¢REW REALITY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] When it came time for a wrap party, the cast and crew of Matrix 4 decided to abandon reality — the reality of COVID-19 restrictions, that is.TMZ has the story:“‘Matrix 4’ Cast and Crew Throw Secret Wrap Party in Germany”.
The wrap party went down Wednesday in Babelsberg, Germany on a film studio stage, and they reportedly had a cover story — filming a party scene for the movie — and a code name … “Ice Cream Team Event.”
The party included around 200 guests who took rapid COVID tests, and were handed masks. But, as you can see from the pics and vid … most took off their masks once inside. It’s unclear if any of the big stars — Keanu Reeves, Jada Pinkett Smith or Priyanka Chopra — attended the party.
…”Matrix 4″ production moved to Germany back in March when the pandemic hit and was temporarily forced to pause production there as the global health crisis worsened. The release date was also pushed back from May 2021 to April 2022.
Germany implemented a 4-week partial nationwide lockdown that went into effect November 2 … with bars, clubs, restaurants and theaters closing. Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had urged people to stay home to flatten the curve of a recent COVID spike.
(6) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.
Who received Martian Driver License #1?
Ray Bradbury’s Martian driver license
(7) WALKER OBIT. Colorado conrunner John S. Walker died November 8 reports Anime News Network.
The Colorado Anime Fest event revealed on Wednesday that staff member of the Nan Desu Kan (NDK) convention and former president of Denver Anime International John S. Walker passed away on November 8. He was 45.
Colorado Anime Fest also noted that Walker was a frequent panelist of the event, and that he also worked for the Starfest Convention, MileHiCon, and Denver Pop Culture Con. Colorado Anime Fest added, “His legacy will live on through all of Colorado’s conventions and the countless people he helped. But we will greatly miss him.”
(8) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
1980 — Forty years ago, the British Fantasy Society gave the August Derleth Fantasy Award for Best Novel to Tanith Lee’s Death’s Master. It’s the second of her Tales of the Flat Earth series which led off with Night’s Master. It was published the previous year as Daws Books’ Daw Collectors #324. Cover art by by David Schleinkofer, interior art is by Jack Gaughan.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born November 14, 1907 — Astrid Lindgren. Creator of the Pippi Longstocking series and, at least in the States, lesser known Emil i Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children series as well. In January 2017, she was calculated to be the world’s 18th most translated author, and the fourth most translated children’s writer after Enid Blyton, H. C. Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. There have been at least forty video adaptations of her works over the decades mostly in Swedish but Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter was an animated series in Japan recently. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, world’s largest award for children’s and young adult literature, is named for her. (Died 2002.) (CE)
Born November 14, 1932 – Alex Ebel. Thirty covers, forty interiors for us; other illustration including World Book. Known for The Left Hand of Darkness. Did The Dispossessed too. Here is the Winter 54 Fantastic Story. Here is an interior from the Mar 53 Fantasy (Sheckley, “The Demons”). Here is When the Star Kings Die. (Died 2013) [JH]
Born November 14, 1949 – Carol Matas, 71. A dozen novels for us, half again as many with Perry Nodelman. Outside our field a dozen more, and another half dozen contributions to Dear Canada and I Am Canada. Bilson Award, Sydney Taylor Award, Silver Birch. [JH]
Born November 14, 1951 – Moshe Feder, 69. Fan and pro. Co-created the FAAn (Fan Activity Achievement) Awards. Co-author of The Mimeo Man. Chaired Corflu 7 (corflu = mimeo correction fluid; fanziners’ con), Guest of Honor at Corflu 19 (there’s something I’m not telling you about Corflu Guests of Honor); also Ozymandias 2, Minicon 45, Loscon 46. Skylark Award. Consulting editor at Tor. Likes Komodo Dragons, railroads, Coca-Cola, and New York. [JH]
Born November 14, 1951 — Beth Meacham, 69. In 1984, she became an editor for Tor Books, where she rose to the position of editor-in-chief. After her 1989 move to the west coast, she continued working for Tor as an executive editor which she just retired from. She does have one novel, co-written with Tappan King, entitled Nightshade Book One: Terror, Inc. and a handful of short fiction. (CE)
Born November 14, 1959 — Paul McGann, 61. Yes, he only did one film as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who television film, but that role he has reprised in more than eighty audio dramas and the 2013 short film entitled “The Night of the Doctor”. Other genre appearances include The Pit and the Pendulum: A Study in Torture, Alien 3, the excellent FairyTale: A True Story, Queen of the Damned and Lesbian Vampire Killers. (CE)
Born November 14, 1959 – Wolf von Witting, 61. Born in Finland, lives in Italy, has published fanzines in English, German, and Swedish, currently CounterClock (European SF Award for Best Fanzine), about which Teddy Harva asks: Appeltofft Award. [JH]
Born November 14, 1963 – Gail Anderson-Dagatz, 57. Her first novel The Cure for Death by Lightning unfolds partly through narrative and partly through a collection of recipes and household tips belonging to the narrator’s mother; a Canadian best-seller; Ethel Wilson Prize, Betty Trask Award. One more for us; three others and a collection of shorter stories. [JH]
Born November 14, 1963 — Cat Rambo, 57. All-around great person. Really. Recently finished up a term as SWFA President. She was editor of Fantasy Magazine for four years which earned her a 2012 World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional nomination. Her story “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain”, was a Nebula Award finalist. Her first novel, Beasts of Tabat,is the beginning of what I suspect will be an impressive fantasy quartet. Hearts Of Tabat came this year. She also writes amazing short fiction as well. The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers is her long-standing school for writers that provides her excellent assistance in learning proper writing skills both live and on demand as well. You can get details here. (CE)
Born November 14, 1969 — Daniel Abraham, 51. Co-author with Ty Franck of The Expanse series which I really must get back get to having only read the first four volumes. Under the pseudonym M. L. N. Hanover, he is the author of the Black Sun’s Daughter urban fantasy series. He collaborated with George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois to write the Hunter’s Run. A frequent collaborator of Martin, Abraham adapted several of Martin’s works into comic books and graphic novels, such as A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel, and has contributed to several Wild Cards anthologies . (CE)
Born November 14, 1976 — Christopher Demetral, 44. He also played the title character on the oh so excellent The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne series which still isn’t on DVD or streaming services, damn it. He shows up in the “Future Imperfect” episode of Next Gen, and had the recurring role of Jack on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. (CE)
Born November 14, 1995 – Elizabeth Anne McKinney, 25. Two novels for us so far. A Texan (born in Dripping Springs) studying in Virginia who dreams of living in Scotland. [JH]
(10) COMICS SECTION.
We might call this Bliss a Star Wars business idea.
It took losing his collection of Batman comics to make one collector realize, it was time to say goodbye.
Randy Lawrence has spent the better part of his 60 years putting together a legendary collection of high-grade, ultra-rare Batman comics. The CGC-certified “Alfred Pennyworth” collection is known in collecting circles as being the gold standard for Batman comic book collections. “This collection is so beautiful and it’s such a cool high grade,” Lawrence says. “It’s the number one Batman collection on the [CGC] registry.”
The 1,000+ issues are going up for auction in two separate events by Heritage Auctions, the first one of which will take place on Nov. 19-22….
The collection includes gems such as Batman #2, a book that’s sought-after in any condition. But Lawrence’s is a CGC-graded 9.0, an absurdly high-grade copy of a Golden Age book….
Of course, a lot of people learned about the existence of Lawrence’s astonishing collection when it made headlines in January of 2019. Thieves broke into the storage facility in Boca Raton, Florida, where he had kept his collection and stolen nearly 500 of his valuable comics. Being a very careful and organized collector, Lawrence recalls that it was one box that was slightly out of place that made him think something was wrong. “I had only gone there to put some stuff away and inventory some new books that I had gotten. And I didn’t remember touching that box,” he says. “So I pulled the top off the first CGC box and it was empty. And then I ripped off the next one and it was empty and so on. And I remember I let out like, it was a primal scream, like a wounded animal. It was like my whole life had just disappeared.”
…It would take more than a year, but he would recover every single comic that was stolen from the storage facility, except one (and Lawrence says it wasn’t a key book). But after the ordeal, and the fight to get them all back, it made him realize that perhaps it was time to move on from comics. And then, a deal he thought he had to fill one hole in his collection, a high-grade copy of Batman #26, fell through in such a way that soured him on the current state of high-grade collecting. “I said, you know what, between the stress that I went through to get my comics back and now what happened trying to get that Batman issue, I said, ‘it’s time.'”
SpaceX’s first four-astronaut launch for NASA is going to have to wait at least an extra day to get off the ground.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule were slated to launch the astronauts to the International Space Station on Saturday (Nov. 14) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That mission, called Crew-1, will now launch no earlier than Sunday at 7:27 p.m. EST (0027 Nov. 16 GMT) due to weather delays from Tropical Storm Eta that affected SpaceX’s drone ship rocket recovery operations. The launch itself had a promising 70% chance of good weather.
“Fundamentally, this was an issue of getting the drone ship there in time,” Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director for human spaceflight programs, told reporters in a Friday press conference. “The weather was such because of this tropical storm, that we couldn’t get the drone ship to leave in time and get there.”
… Beneath our feet are what at first appear to be just tide-washed sand and stone. Maiklem reaches down and picks up a piece of red clay with a thick lip. It’s a bit of Roman roof.
“They were the first to mass-produce this,” she says, following the invasion of A.D. 43, led by Roman Emperor Claudius, whose legions founded the city Londinium along the shores of the Thames.
There’s so much roofing material that the mudlarks rarely keep a piece, but what Maiklem covets are fragments of tile with a story. She’s found pieces with the impression of a child’s fingers, with cat paw prints, left by those long gone who strayed across the drying clay.
Across the river is the Tate Modern museum and London City Hall and the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. On our side are the ruins of Walbrook Wharf, where a trash barge nests on a pebbly beach.
To Maiklem’s practiced eyes, the foreshore is a midden, filled with Elizabethan pennies from Shakespeare’s day, beads used in Africa as part of the slave trade, and scores of clay pipes. While the pipe bowls are rare, the stems are plentiful, ranging in date from 1580 through the early 1900s. Once Maiklem points out what to look for — short lengths of bone-white stem — I see them all over.
“I love the ones where you can see someone’s teeth marks,” she says….
…Magic Mountain is set to have guests experience eight distinctly different areas throughout the park with millions of twinkling lights choreographed to festive music, characters “decked out” for the holidays, iconic Holiday in the Park decorations, and a drive-by featuring Santa and his elves.
As one of the largest holiday drive-through events in Southern California and the only one inside a theme park, the Holiday in the Park Drive-Thru Experience will include eight immersive, distinctly different areas throughout the 125-acre theme park which will be filled with an exquisite palette of colorful twinkling lights, choreographed to festive music….
Rockin’ Universe in DC Universe features “dancing” lights customized to contemporary holiday music favorites in one of the largest light displays of its kind in Southern California;
Merry Lane, located in Metropolis includes magnificent, larger-than-life 30-foot brilliantly lit ornaments with thousands of twinkling lights synchronized to holiday music;
The Underground, a newly added section of the park this year, will feature several rarely-seen show cars from world-famous West Coast Customs’ vast collection, in a unique setting decked out for the season (car enthusiasts—get your cameras ready!);
Winter Wonderland is the site of beautifully adorned pine trees with red and white lights at Katy’s Kettle, continuing with fanciful “ice” sculptures and tree-filled white lights simulating winter-like conditions along the hilly path toward Viper;
Holiday Square is a kaleidoscope of breath-taking color, featuring falling “snow” and hundreds of thousands of lights on trees and buildings throughout the main gate area;
Snowy Nights will delight guests with its high energy vibe and contemporary tunes while marveling at the magnificent silver and blue décor of the area;
North Pole Plaza located in front of Golden Bear Theatre, is where Mrs. Claus and her merry, mischievous, and bumbling elves will entertain guests from afar; and
Gleampunk District is the largest area of the event and is a journey back in time to the sights and sounds of the 19th century’s industrial revolution, featuring thousands of lights illuminating the tree-lined streets and the steampunk-inspired mechanical sculptures amid the light-blanketed planters. Santa will bid guests a joyous holiday farewell from the safety of his magnificent over-sized sleigh at the conclusion of the Holiday in the Park Drive-Thru Experience.
In what could be viewed as a fitting metaphor for 2020, a new theme park ride in Japan lets guests zipline into the gaping mouth of a massive Godzilla statue.
Part of a new attraction called Godzilla Interception Operation Awaji, it officially opened in October at Nijigen no Mori, a theme park located on Awaji Island, southwest of Kobe and Osaka.
The star of the new attraction is the “life-size” Godzilla, which measures 20 meters (65 feet) high, 25 meters (82 feet) wide and 55 meters (180 feet) long and sits in the heart of the park.
Here’s a video taking you through the whole experience:
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, JJ, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Meredith.]
J. Michael Straczynski dropped the fifth of his attention-grabbing “data packets” this afternoon with the biggest payload of all:
The Last Dangerous Visions, was announced in 1973 and scheduled to appear in 1974, but of course it didn’t. Even now the volume which will bear that name will be quite different from what it would have been like fifty years ago, as Straczynski explains in an open Patreon post.
The Last Dangerous Visions will not republish the stories originally accepted for the anthology that have in the intervening years been withdrawn and published elsewhere.
Some of the remaining stories that “have been overtaken by real-world events, rendering them less relevant or timely” will be omitted. (The rights to those stories will be returned to the authors.)
Of the remaining stories JMS says “many more are as innovative, fresh and, in some ways, even more relevant now than when they were first written. These are rich, compelling stories by some of the best known science fiction and fantasy writers to work in the genre that deserve to be seen by the world.”
Tim Kirk’s artwork commissioned for the original volume will also be included.
Additional stories are being contributed by “some of the most well-known and respected writers working today… Their names will be announced the deeper we go into this process, with more still being added at this time.”
Also, The Last Dangerous Visions “will present stories by a diverse range of young, new writers from around the world who are telling stories that look beyond today’s horizon to what’s on the other side.”
Plus, one last slot will be opened up for submissions from unknown and unpublished writers, giving “one new voice, one last chance to make it into The Last Dangerous Visions.”
The final stories will be organized by topic, interweaving original, heavy-hitter and new writers into a narrative flow.
Adding to the suspense, Straczynski says, “There is one last, significant work by Harlan that has never been published, that has been seen by only a handful of people. A work that ties directly into the reason why The Last Dangerous Visions has taken so long to come to light. That piece will be included in this volume to close off the last of Harlan’s major unpublished works.”
Once all the stories are in place, the book will be taken to market around March/April 2021. Several major publishers have already expressed significant interest in picking up the book upon completion.
The Harlan and Susan Ellison Memorial Library. Straczynski also reports that the Ellison home will become The Harlan and Susan Ellison Memorial Library, “a place where lovers of art, architecture and comics can come in small groups for tours, and academics can study decades of correspondence between Harlan and some of the most famous writers in and out of the SF genre, along with his original manuscripts and drafts. We are also working toward having the house declared a Cultural Landmark, possibly in association with a local university.”
Royalties from The Last Dangerous Visions will go into the Trust that supports the Library.
Patreon. A lot of expenses for the LDV story rights, legal work on the trust, etc., are being fronted by JMS, “tens of thousands of dollars” (see his post for specifics). He invites fans of Harlan’s work or SF in general who would like to help defray some of those costs in return for the exclusive opportunity to see The Last Dangerous Visions come together in real-time to subscribe to his Patreon.
There is a tier here that will only remain online for five months, through April, when the book is slated to be completed.
Patrons will be the first to know the names of the authors contributing to TLDV, first to see partial manuscripts and story excerpts before the book is published, and will be given peeks at Tim Kirk’s amazing art. Beat by beat, they (and other Patrons operating at that level or above) will be a part of the process of finishing one of the most discussed and eagerly anticipated books in the history of modern science fiction.
