The Carl Brandon Society is reinstituting
the Carl Brandon Brandon Parallax and Kindred Awards. These two literary
awards are given annually to outstanding works of speculative fiction. Nominations
are now open.
The Carl Brandon Parallax Award goes to the best speculative fiction created by a person of color in the preceding calendar year.
The Carl Brandon Kindred Award goes to the work of speculative that best explores and expands our understanding of race in the preceding calendar year; its creator may be of any racial or ethnic background.
Each award includes an award plaque, a check for US$1000, and the opportunity to participate in the award ceremony.
Nominations for works to be considered for the 2019 Parallax and Kindred Awards are open as of March 6, 2020, and they close April 15, 2020. Nomination forms are electronic only, and are available via a link on the organization’s website or directly at https://forms.gle/rK3nuYspyL3gn2Ur8.
The first Carl Brandon Parallax and Kindred Awards were presented 2006 for Walter Mosley’s novel 47 and Susan Vaught’s novel Stormwitch, respectively. The Awards continued through 2011; for a complete history, please visit the Society website.
Founded in 1999, the Carl Brandon Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction. We administer the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund and operate a list serve supporting the growing presence of People of Color in the imaginative genres.
The Carl Brandon Society Steering
Committee members are K. Tempest Bradford, Maurice Broaddus, Candra K.
Gill, Jaymee Goh, Victor J. Raymond, Kate Schaefer, and Nisi Shawl.
You recently completed the Hugo Award-nominated Machineries of Empire trilogy. Did you know how the trilogy would end when you began writing the first book? Are you more of a planner, or more of a pantser?
I didn’t know it was going to be a trilogy! I originally intended Ninefox Gambit to be a standalone. But after I finished drafting it, I had an idea for a sequel. And after I committed to Raven Stratagem, I had another idea, and that became Revenant Gun. I plan individual novels because I’m not smart enough to figure out the plots on the fly. But on the series level…well, I didn’t plan to write a trilogy. It just happened.
Thailand might not seem the most probable point of origin for a new opera about the Holocaust, but on January 16, the world premiere of “Helena Citrónová” by the composer Somtow Sucharitkul, 67, will be staged in Bangkok.
It is about a real-life Auschwitz survivor of Slovak Jewish origin who at a trial in 1972, testified that a Nazi officer had fallen in love with her and thereafter, saved her and her sister. Despite testimony from others attesting to his crimes, the Nazi was allowed to go free due to a statute of limitations.
It inspired a controversial romance novel about a Jewish prisoner at a Nazi concentration camp whose love for a Nazi commandant redeems him. As The Forward reported in August 2015, this book sparked objections, notably from Katherine Locke, a Jewish writer based in Philadelphia.
Far from Auschwitz and Philadelphia, Somtow Sucharitkul, who writes and composes under the name S.P. Somtow, published his libretto for Helena Citrónová in 2018….
Last October, you tweeted a response to those who wonder why you chose the subject of Helena Citrónová by citing lines from Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar,” about Nazi atrocities in the USSR: “Today, I am as old/ As the entire Jewish race itself,” adding “This story belongs to all of us.” What did you mean by that?
Somtow Sucharitkul: People ask me all the time why should I talk about these things as if I were somehow schnorring in on someone else’s life. I was born in Thailand, but left when I was six months old and lived in Europe for most of my childhood, so it feels like more of my past than what happened in Asian countries. The reason I started getting involved in Jewish issues in Thailand were that none of my students here knew whether Thailand had won or lost the Second World War. I was in the Terminal 21 Shopping Mall [in Bangkok] and saw a statue of Hitler dressed as Ronald McDonald. No one meant anything by it, but it was a terrible moment of disjunction, and I felt that I should explain to young people around me and those in a wider range.
You posted on Facebook in October that in the opera’s final scene, when you set the heroine’s words, “My father told me once, never forget you’re a Jew,” you chose to rework a melody from Wagner’s “Die Walküre.” You add that this was done “unconsciously,” but using the notorious anti-Semite Wagner’s music in this context was an “allusion so cogent and so trenchant that my unconscious must have intended it.” So was it intentional or unconscious?
I imagine it was unconsciously intentional. At the time I wrote those notes, I thought to myself, this is Wagner, but I couldn’t place it. That was an odd moment, I have to admit….
(3) A COMPLETE TRIUMPH. Edgar Allan Poe’s “William
Wilson” is Library of America’s “Story of the Week.” It’s preceded by
a long and interesting note about its reception.
Since returning from Europe in 1832, Irving had done much to help younger American writers, and he responded without hesitation as soon as the letter reached him at his home in Tarrytown. “I have read your little tale of ‘William Wilson’ with much pleasure,” Irving wrote. “It is managed in a highly picturesque style, and the singular and mysterious interest is well sustained throughout. . . . I cannot but think a series of articles of like style and merit would be extremely well received by the public.” Irving added that he much preferred this new work over Poe’s previous story in the magazine, which suffered from “too much coloring.” (That tale, incidentally, was “The Fall of the House of Usher.”) While the endorsement might seem somewhat equivocal, Poe boasted to one editor that Irving’s support represented “a complete triumph over those little critics who would endeavor to put me down by raising hue and cry of exaggeration in style, of Germanism & such twaddle.” The quote from Irving was featured prominently in publicity for Poe’s new book, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
Nisi's starting by talking about the unmarked state, the traits that people don't mention in writing because they're assumed. For example: white, physically abled, cis, straight, Christian-ish (not a fervent believer.) pic.twitter.com/jrzZKn3l3t
(5) AN ALLUSION, In The Village Voice, Thulani Davis recounts how “Black Women Writers Reclaim Their Past”. Tagline: “Like a number of other black women writers, I have made it a point to speak of our ‘tradition,’ yet I know that no such tradition is assumed by the rest of the world, primarily because our books have not been read or taught”
…Imagine a John Coltrane who had only heard one 78 by Charlie Parker, one LP by Billie Holiday. Imagine a Cecil Taylor who did not grow up with the sounds of Art Tatum and Duke Ellington, and you have some idea how amazing it is that we have writers like Lorraine Hansberry and Toni Morrison.
Each generation of black women has certainly taken ideas from known forms, yet in the matter of content — the telling of black women’s stories — the same impulses appear time and again, with little revision over the decades. Only lately have we seen work that makes conscious nods to the past. And no wonder: Morrison, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Naylor, Sherley Anne Williams, Ntozake Shange, and others are the first generation to have a body of work on the black woman’s condition readily at hand.
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.
January 12, 1932 – In Mexico, Doctor X premiered. A pre-Code film, it was directed by Michael Curtiz and was headlined by Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. Because it was pre-Code, murder, rape, cannibalism, and prostitution were part of the story. It’s based on the play titled “The Terror” (New York, February 9, 1931) by Howard W. Comstock and Allen C. Miller. It was well received both by critics and at did very well at the box office. Warner Bros. followed up with Mystery of the Wax Museum, another pre-Code film. Critics at Rotten Tomatoes rate it considerably higher (75%) than reviewers do (48%).
January 12, 1940 — The Invisible Man Returns, the sequel to The Invisible Man, premiered. Directed by John May and produced by Ken Goldsmith, it starred Vincent Price in the title role. The screenplay was written by Lester Cole and Curt Siodmak (as Kurt Siodmak). Its success led to a third film, The Invisible Woman, a comedy billed as a sequel. Critics at Rotten Tomatoes love it giving a 82% rating while reviewers give a not so bad 58% rating.
January 12, 1966 — Batman made its television debut.
January 12, 1967 – Star Trek’s “The Squire of Gothos” first aired on CBS. Starring William Campbell as Trelane, it was written by Paul Schneider, and directed by Don McDougall. Trelane Is considered by many Trekkies to be a possible Q. Critics loved it giving such comments as “one of TOS’s most deservedly iconic hours” and voting the William Campbell performance as Trelane, as the fifth best guest star of the Trek series.
January 12, 2018 — Amazon dropped Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams unto the public for viewing. The first episode of the first season was titled “The Hood Maker”. It was originally published in the June 1955 issue of Imagination hich was born in the Fifties and ceased publishing in the the Fifties as well.The screenplay was by Matthew Graham.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 12, 1916 — House Peters Jr. Though he’s best remembered as Mr. Clean in the Procter and Gamble commercials of the Fifties and Sixties, he did appear in a fair amount of SFF including Flash Gordon, Batman and Robin, King of the Rocket Men, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Red Planet Mars, Target Earth and The Twilight Zone. (Died 2008.)
Born January 12, 1937 — Shirley Eaton, 83. Bond Girl Jill Masterson in Goldfinger, and yes, she got painted gold in it. She also shows up as the title character in The Million Eyes of Sumuru, the Sax Rohmer based film we just discussed. Her other significant role would be as Dr. Margaret E. ‘Maggie’ Hanford in Around the World Under the Sea. She retired from acting in 1969.
Born January 12, 1948 — Tim Underwood, 72. Bibliographer with such works as Fantasy and Science Fiction by Jack Vance (done with Jack Miller), Shameless Art: Paintings of Dames, Dolls, Pin-ups, and Bad Girls (genre adjacent at the very least) and Stephen King Spills the Beans: Career-Spanning Interviews with America’s Bestselling Author.
Born January 12, 1951 — Kirstie Alley, 69. She’s here for being Saavik on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was, errr, interesting reading the various rumors why this was her only Trek film. Her SFF experience otherwise was brief limited to being an uncredited handmaiden on Quark, and being in the Village of the Damned as Dr. Susan Verner.
Born January 12, 1952 — Walter Mosley, 68. An odd one as I have read his most excellent Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins series but hadn’t been aware that he wrote SF of which he has four novels to date, Blue Light, Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent Future, The Wave, and 47. There’s a Jack Kirby art book called Maximum Fantastic Four that was conceived of and orchestrated by him. Interestingly enough, he’s got a writing credit for episode of Masters of Science Fiction called “Little Brother” where Stephen Hawking is the Host according to IMdB.
Born January 12, 1952 — Rockne S. O’Bannon, 68. He’s The genius behind Farscape, SeaQuest 2032, the Alien Nation series and Defiance. Only the latter couldn’t I get interested in.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
The ideal reading experience, for me, is wholly induced by the text, with a complete lack of interruption. My most memorable adult experience of this remains my initial reading of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” which I began in the cab, in Vancouver, on my way to the airport, in 1991 or so, for my first visit to Berlin. I remember nothing of the journey, between my door in Vancouver and the hotel room in which I finished the book. Just the Judge and I, here to there. Leaving him (as much as any receptive reader ever can) I stepped to the window, blinking out at this city, whenever and wherever it was. I was late getting to the Kunsthalle, to greet Samuel Delany and Wim Wenders, though I was able to later.
Europe’s novel wind-measuring satellite, Aeolus, has reached a key milestone in its mission.
The space laser’s data is now being used in operational weather forecasts.
Aeolus monitors the wind by firing an ultraviolet beam down into the atmosphere and catching the light’s reflection as it scatters off molecules and particles carried along in the air
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts says the information is now robust enough for routine use.
The Reading, UK-based organisation is ingesting the data into its numerical models that look from one to several days ahead.
Forecast improvements are most apparent for the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere.
…The European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite is regarded as a breakthrough concept.
Wind measurements have traditionally been very patchy.
You can get data from anemometers, weather balloons and aeroplanes – and even from satellites that infer air movements from the way clouds track across the sky or from how rough the sea surface appears at different locations.
But these are all limited indications that tell us what is happening in particular places or at particular heights.
Aeolus on the other hand gathers its wind data across the entire Earth, from the ground to the stratosphere (30km) above thick clouds.
Ketty Maisonrouge has waited 15 years for a trip that she knows will be out of this world.
The 61-year-old business school professor signed up back in 2005 for the promise of five minutes in zero-gravity, paying $250,000 (£190,500) to travel beyond the earth’s atmosphere.
Now the company that sold her the ticket, Virgin Galactic, says it will finally begin flights this year. Its founder, Sir Richard Branson, will be on the first trip, and Mrs Maisonrouge won’t be far behind.
“Hopefully it will be as amazing as I think,” says Mrs Maisonrouge.
If all goes to plan, Virgin Galactic will be the first private company to take tourists into space. The company says 600 people have already purchased tickets, including celebrities like Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio.
But rival firms are close behind. Blue Origin, started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has also starting speaking to possible passengers for trips it hopes to start this year, while SpaceX, founded by Tesla’s Elon Musk, announced in 2019 that a Japanese billionaire would be its first passenger for a trip around the moon.
(10) ANOTHER HITCHHIKER. Martin Plimmer lets us share a
ride “In
Roald Dahl’s Car” in his essay for the New York Times.
…I told him I was a reporter on the local paper, The Bucks Herald. I needed to get back for work the next day. My first task every Monday morning, as the most junior reporter on the paper, was to call on the town’s undertakers and compile a list of people who had died over the weekend. Then I had to phone or visit the next of kin. It was my job to populate the newspaper’s obituary column.
He chuckled. “Sounds grim,” he said.
“It’s not really,” I said. “Well, the undertakers are grim, but people are actually very happy to be approached for an obituary. And they’re good stories too. Obituaries celebrate whole lives. It would be hard not to find a couple hundred interesting words to write about someone’s whole life.”
“I can see that,” he said. “I also do a bit of writing.”
I’d had a feeling this was coming. In my experience of conversations with people who stopped to give me lifts, it was quite common to be told that they were also “writers.” Sometimes it would be a couple of articles in the parish magazine, or a half-finished novel in a bedroom drawer, or, more commonly, they would claim to have easily a book’s worth of fascinating ideas in their heads, just itching to become a best seller. This man had the look of a gentleman tinkerer, someone who might do a bit of scribbling in his spare time. “What sort of writing?” I asked.
“Oh, plays, film screenplays, some TV. Children’s novels seem to be taking up a lot of my time just lately. I suppose, though, that I’m best known for short stories. Stories with a macabre element — I’ve written quite a lot of them.”
His answer surprised me. I asked him his name.
“Roald Dahl,” he said.
It meant nothing to me. “I haven’t come across your work,” I said. “So … ‘a macabre element’ — are these horror stories?”
“Not exactly,” he said, “though, unlike your jolly obituaries, they can be pretty horrible. They don’t always end well; there’s often a twist in the tail. Actually, I think I’m writing funny stories, because they can be very comical. There’s such a narrow line between the macabre and laughter.” I could sense him smiling as he said it….
(11) LONG REMEMBERED THUNDER. In “Samuel
R. Delany: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Super-Nova”, Jeet Heer rediscovers
that the field’s reception of this new author had its bright spots, too,
despite the resistance of editors John W. Campbell and Michael Moorcock.
…It was only after his appearance at the 24th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Cleveland in 1966, that Delany’s existence was recognized, which led to the quick consensus that he was a leading figure in the field. In 1967, the contentious editor Harlan Ellison wrote that Delany gave “an indefinable but commanding impression that this was a young man with great work in him.” The following year, Algis Budrys, a respected novelist and at the time the sharpest critic in science fiction, hailed Nova by saying the novel proved that “right now, as of this book” Delany is “the best science-fiction writer in the world, at a time when competition for that status is intense.” Delany was all of twenty-six years old when he earned that accolade.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock,
Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some
of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest
Bradford, administrators of Writing the Other online classes, have announced
that their scholarship program, initiated in 2016, is being retitled the Vonda N. McIntyre
Sentient Squid Scholarship. The name change, in honor of the award-winning
and beloved science fiction and fantasy novelist who passed away in April 2019,
comes about not only because Vonda was a friend and mentor to both Shawl and
Bradford, but also because without her there would be no scholarship fund.
In
2016 Vonda offered to pay for a registration in an upcoming Writing the Other
class so writers who couldn’t afford to take it could benefit. When announced,
her donation–which she insisted should be anonymous to the public–inspired
others to donate as well, covering all or part of the enrollment fees for two
additional students. Enough donations came in afterwards that Writing the Other
was able to establish a small scholarship fund. Though Vonda didn’t want public
credit, Nisi suggested naming the scholarship “Sentient Squid” in
secret honor of a character in her Starfarer book series, the
“squidmoth” Nemo.
“Donating
anonymously was very Vonda-like,” Nisi Shawl said. “I’ve called her a
‘behind-the-scenes powerhouse’ because those who knew her mainly as the author
of five Star Trek novels aren’t automatically aware that she founded the
Clarion West Writers Workshop as well as Book View Café. She was generous with
her funds and donated money in support of many feminist and other
social-justice causes: the James Tiptree Jr. literary awards; the Octavia E.
Butler Scholarship Fund; the ACLU; Planned Parenthood.”
“When
she offered to pay for a registration in our classes, she did so
unprompted,” K. Tempest Bradford said. “She was part of a
conversation on Facebook where I talked about balancing the affordability of
our classes with our need to make a living. I had never considered asking
others to help out with this, and then Vonda just did it. In doing so she
opened up the possibility to me that other people would be willing to
contribute as well.”
Over
the years Vonda gave to the scholarship fund on multiple occasions, always
without wanting credit, and promoted the program whenever there was a
fundraising drive. Because of her support and example, Writing the Other has
been able to offer scholarship spots in every course and make classes more
financially accessible. To date, the Sentient Squid Scholarship has provided
over $15,000 in financial aid to a wide range of deserving applicants.
Approximately 20% of alumni have benefited directly from scholarship funds.
Because of how vital she was to making all this happen, Shawl and Bradford
decided that renaming the scholarship was one of the best ways they could honor
her memory.
Currently,
the Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship provides both full and partial
scholarships for students in all Writing the Other online courses, including
Core Classes, Master Classes, and Workshops. For 2020 offerings, Shawl and
Bradford hope to reach $10,000 in direct donations or $1,200 a month in support
via Patreon so that they can set aside at least a quarter of spots in their
classes for writers who need financial aid. Donors can visit http://writingtheother.com/donate-scholarship/
to contribute, learn more, or to contact Writing the Other for more
information.
Student
Testimonials:
Receiving the Sentient Squid Scholarship both instilled further confidence in me as a writer and enabled me to grow in ways I wouldn’t have been able to without taking the Description Deep Dive class. Receiving the scholarship has had long-term effects on my writing that I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.
—
James Henry Feeman
The Sentient Squid scholarship allowed me to take my first ever writing workshop. I’m an older working mom who’s managing various health challenges–both my own & my kids. Until I won this scholarship, I thought writing workshops were just a dream for me. A “one day” thing. Now I’m aware of accessible options available.
—Dianne
McNeill
As a financially struggling trans man, I don’t have the means to attend classes for professional development, despite how much I want to and how much I know it would improve my work. I was lucky enough to receive a Sentient Squid Scholarship which removed that financial burden. The course changed the way I look at world building and the scholarship gave me the space I needed to expand my knowledge and grow as a writer.
—
Luke Tolvaj
The Sentient Squid Scholarship was a unique opportunity for me, and I’m thankful for it. I’m from Brazil, and we don’t have many creative writing classes here and classes about “writing the other” are nonexistent. It gave me the chance to learn how to write better and to rethink the way I write, while it also taught me how to tell my own experience better.
—
Jordana
About
Writing the Other: Writing
the Other offers online and in-person classes that draw on the work of Nisi
Shawl and Cynthia Ward, authors of the acclaimed reference Writing the
Other: A Practical Approach. Through live courses and on-demand webinars,
Shawl and co-administrator author K. Tempest Bradford, along with a deep bench
of guest instructors, hope to help writers and creators from all backgrounds
develop the skill and sensitivity to portray difference in fiction, games, and
other media as well as allay anxieties about getting it wrong.
The
impetus for the original book came during Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s
attendance at the 1992 Clarion West writing workshop, when one of their
classmates announced that it is a mistake to write about people of backgrounds
different from your own because you might get it wrong, and so it is better to
not even try. This opinion, commonplace among published as well as aspiring
writers, struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an
essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial
and ethnic differences. She then collaborated with Ward to develop a workshop
to address these problems, which became the basis for the book.
World Fantasy Convention 2021, to be held in Montreal, Canada, has named its Guests of Honor: Author GoH: Nisi Shawl; Artist GoH: John Picacio; Editor GoH: André-François Ruaud; and Special Guests: Owl Goingback, and Yves Meynard, The Toastmaster is Christine Taylor-Butler.
The con, chaired by Diane Lacey, will be held November 4–7,
2021 at the Hotel Montreal Bonaventure.
The convention theme will be “Fantasy, Imagination, and the
Dreams of Youth.”
Attending memberships are currently $150 USD/$200 Cdn. Rates will be going up December 1st to $200 in US dollars and $270 in Canadian dollars.
(1) A MATTER OF RESPECT. Edmund Schluessel has returned
from Fantasticon
2019, in Copenhagen, Denmark with a burden: “I attended as a Special Guest this
weekend in Copenhagen. There has been discussion within the Nordic countries’
fan community about the event’s poster and some other issues of insensitivity
and I discuss those here.” — “Saints
and people who do not think like us (Fantasticon 2019)”.
…Nisi [Shawl] was talking about altruism. They talked about being a saint. They talked about sacrifice, even putting yourself in harm’s way to protect someone who would do harm to you.
The Chair gave an impromptu speech just afterward. The poster was excellent, he told us all, and complaints about it all came from “people who do not think like us.”
Then started the filk sing-a-long. Only quick action by an observant program participant kept the projector screen from telling the whole banquet room that we’d be singing along to the tune of “The Darkies’ Sunday School.” That quick action did not prevent the flippant reference to rape in the lyrics. “It was like something from the ’70s,” that quick intervenor said later.
Why am I amped up to 11 about all this? At a fundamental level, fandom is about storytelling. And something I’ve seen in every single fan community I’ve interacted with, going back something like 25 years now, is that the story fandom always tells best is when it’s telling itself “we are tolerant, we are open, we accept everyone.” Too often that story is a myth.
The Afrofuturist authors whose work and ideas this convention we’re supposed to be celebrating — if we won’t listen to their message, are they “people who do not think like us”? The convention members who saw something wrong with the poster, whether or not they could clearly articulate it — are they not part of “us”? Am I not part of “us”? You put my name on the damned poster!
(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Where do you go for a Javanese
dinner? For Lisa Tuttle and interviewer Scott Edelman the answer was: Dublin. Join
them in Episode
105 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Lisa Tuttle
My guest this time around is the award-winning writer Lisa Tuttle, who I caught up with one night after she was done with a 7:30 p.m. reading, which meant that by the time we began our meal it was a later than usual dinner (for me, at least). We hopped in a cab and took off for at Chameleon, an Indonesian restaurant I’d found via Eater’s list of 38 essential Dublin restaurants. The restaurant offers set menus from various regions, including Sumatra and Bali. We decided to go with Java, but added to that some pork bell bao, and the 10-hour Javanese anise short rib of beef, a signature dish of theirs which turned out to be my favorite thing eaten all weekend.
Lisa and I both had wonderful experiences 45 years ago at the 1974 Worldcon in Washington, D.C., me because it was my first Worldcon, she because of winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She’s accomplished a lot in the 4-1/2 decades since, including being awarded the 1982 Nebula for Best Short Story for “The Bone Flute.” She’s published seven short story collections, starting with A Nest of Nightmares in 1986 and most recently Objects in Dream in 2012, plus more than a dozen novels, the first of which was Windhaven (1981), written in collaboration with George R. R. Martin, who was my guest back in Episode 43. She was nominated for an Arthur C. Clarke award for her novel Lost Futures. She edited the pivotal anthology Skin of the Soul: New Horror Stories by Women (1990) as well as Crossing the Border: Tales of Erotic Ambiguity (1998).
We discussed the amusing series of mishaps which prevented her from learning she’d won the 1974 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best New Writer as early as she should have, the first thing Harlan Ellison ever said to her, how the all-male table of contents for a major horror anthology inspired her to edit her classic female horror anthology Skin of the Soul, the way emigrating from the U.S. to the UK affected her writing, why an editor said of one of her submitted novels, “I love this book, but I could no more publish it than I could jump out the window and fly,” how she and George R. R. Martin were able to collaborate early in their careers without killing each other, what she’d do if she were just starting out now as a writer, the reasons contemporary acknowledgements sections of novels should be shortened — and so much more.
“Seventy years ago, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier,” said Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus Helicopters. “We’re trying to break the cost barrier. It cannot be ‘speed at any cost.'”
The 96-year-old Yeager wasn’t happy. Last week, he filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing that Airbus had infringed his rights by using his name without permission.
“By using Yeager’s name, identity, and likeness and federal registered trademarks in the infringing material, Airbus impaired the ability of General Yeager to receive his established earning potential,” Yeager’s lawyers wrote.
Yeager says that he visited Airbus in 2008 and told Airbus it would cost at least $1 million to use his name and likeness in promotional materials. Airbus refused his offer.
(4) VISUAL CONREPORT. Roberto Quaglia shares some great views in his video “Glimpses of an Irish Worldcon – Dublin 2019.”
(5) HARD SF. Here’s Rocket Stack Rank’s annual “Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2018” with 27
stories that were that were finalists for major SF/F awards, included in
“year’s best” SF/F anthologies, or recommended by prolific reviewers
in short fiction.
Included are some observations obtained from highlighting specific recommenders and pivoting the table by publication, author, awards, year’s best anthologies, and reviewers.
Among publications, it should be no surprise that Analog has the most hard SF stories here with 9 stories (33%), followed by the anthology “Twelve Tomorrows” with 4 stories.
Hard SF stories seem under-represented (8%) among SF/F awards with only 8 stories (and only 3 stories for major awards like Locus and Sturgeon) out of 101 total award-nominated stories from the 2018 Best SF/F. The only winner was “Bubble and Squeak” for the magazine-specific Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Award.
As for RSR, we recommended 13 stories (3 award worthy), were neutral on 11 stories, and only recommended against 3 stories (view by RSR rating).
(6) NOT ALL TROLLS. “Neil
Gaiman On The Good Kind of Trolls” at Literary Hub is his introduction to The Complete and
Original Norwegian Folk Tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe in which Gaiman discusses his
love of Norway and Norwegian folklore.
You will meet youngest sons and foolish farmers, clever women and lost princesses, adventurers and fools, just as in any collection of folk stories from anywhere in Northern Europe. But the Norwegian Folktales come with trolls, and if Asbjørnsen and Moe did not see them, as Kittelsen did, then they got their stories from people who had, people who had seen the trolls walking in the mist at dawn.
(7) EMMY REMEMBRANCES. The 2019 Primetime Emmys included an
Memoriam segment. Some of the names of genre interest: Jan-Michael Vincent,
James Frawley, Ron Miller, Cameron Boyce, Rutger Hauer, Stan Lee, and Rip Torn.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
September 23, 1846 — Planet Neptune was discovered.
September 23, 1962 — The Jetsons debuted its very first episode, “Rosey the Robot”. The series which was produced by Hanna-Barbera would run for three seasons.
September 23, 1968 — Charly was released, starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom. Based on “Flowers for Algernon” which is a sf short story and a novel by Daniel Keyes. The short story, written in 1958 and first published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1960. The novel was published in 1966 and was joint winner of that year’s Nebula Award for Best Novel with Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born September 23, 1897 — Walter Pidgeon. He’s mostly remembered for his role in the classic Forbidden Planet as Dr. Morbius, but he’s done some other genre work being in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as Adm. Harriman Nelson, and in The Neptune Factor as Dr. Samuel Andrews. (Died 1984.)
Born September 23, 1908 — Wilmar House Shiras. Her story “In Hiding” was submitted in 1948 to Astounding Science Fiction, where it was published. She published two sequels in the magazine: “Opening Doors”, and “New Foundations”. The three stories would become the first three chapters in the novel, Children of the Atom. Other than a handful of short fiction, I think it’s her only work. Neither iBooks or Kindle carry anything by her. (Died 1990.)
Born September 23, 1920 — Richard Wilson. Not a writer of much genre fiction at all. His really major contribution to fandom and to Syracuse University where he worked as the director of the Syracuse University News Bureau was in successfully recruiting the donation of papers from many prominent science fiction writers to the Syracuse University’s George Arents Research Library. The list of those writers includes Piers Anthony, Hal Clement, Keith Laumer, Larry Niven and Frederik Pohl. And, of course, himself. It has been called the “most important collection of science fiction manuscripts and papers in the world.” (Died 1987.)
Born September 23, 1944 — Anne Randall, 75. She was Daphne, a servant girl in the original Westworld which if memory serves me correctly also had Yul Brynner in it. She’ll show also in Night Gallery in the “Tell David” episode as Julie.
Born September 23, 1956 — Peter David, 63. Did you know that his first assignment for the Philadelphia Bulletin was covering Discon II? I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read by him was Legions of Fire, Book 1—The Long Night of Centauri Prime but he’s also done a number of comics I’ve read including runs of Captain Marvel , Wolverine and Young Justice.
Born September 23, 1959 — Frank Cottrell-Boyce, 60. Definitely not here for his sequels to Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. (Horrors!) He is here for such writing endeavors as Goodbye Christopher Robin, his Doctor Who stories, “In the Forest of the Night” and “Smile”, both Twelfth Doctor affairs, and the animated Captain Star series in which he voiced Captain Jim Star. The series sounds like the absolute antithesis of classic Trek.
Born September 23, 1963 — Alexander Proyas, 56. Australian director, screenwriter, and producer. He’s best known for directing The Crow (which is superb), Dark City, I, Robot (nor so superb) and Gods of Egypt. His first, shot in Australia of course, was Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds. It’s genre. Has anyone seen it?
Born September 23, 1957 — Rosalind Chao, 61. She was the recurring character of Keiko O’Brien with a total of twenty-seven appearances on Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. In 2010, a preliminary casting memo for Next Gen from 1987 was published, revealing that Chao was originally considered for the part of Enterprise security chief Tasha Yar.
(10) BURNING COLD. The second official trailer for Frozen
2 dropped today.
Take, for example, the 2017 flop Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Luc Besson’s film, which is itself based on comics originating in the 1960s, spends way too much time explaining stuff that never becomes relevant. The eponymous City of a Thousand Planets is a space station broken down into multiple districts, as the exposition explains, but the action of the film barely takes place in any of them.
Flash Gordon, meanwhile, understands that drama is built between characters and then focuses on them. Everyone in the movie, from Flash to Ming to Flash’s larger-than-life ally Prince Vultan, has their own distinct wants, and the story emerges from these characters interacting and trying to reconcile these wants. This movie gets at the humanity behind these characters, even if they happen to be aliens
(12) ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Pursuing a thought experiment
inspired by a list of 21st Century books, Peace Is My Middle Name started a hypothetical
list of “100 best books of the Twentieth Century” as if it had been compiled in
1919. Their titles
are in a comment and ought to have been mentioned yesterday, except the
comment landed in the spam and wasn’t spotted for hours. Well worth your time.
(13) FOR YOUR EARS. Several episodes of a reading of
Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments are available for listening at the BBC.
In this brilliant and long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalised readers for decades. In The Testaments, set fifteen years after the events of her dystopian masterpiece, the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. Now the testimonies of three different women bring the story to a dramatic conclusion. Today we hear from the infamous Aunt Lydia, and Agnes, a young girl who has only known life in Gilead.
With the digital equivalent of trowels and shovels, archaeologists are digging into the code of early video games to uncover long forgotten secrets that could have relevance today.
“You and your team of archaeologists have fallen into the ‘catacombs of the zombies’.” A miserable situation, to be sure. But this was the chilling trial that faced players of Entombed, an Atari 2600 game, according to the instruction manual.
The catacombs were an unforgiving place. A downward-scrolling, two-dimensional maze that players had to navigate expertly in order to evade the “clammy, deadly grip” of their zombie foes. An archaeologist’s nightmare.
Released in 1982, Entombed was far from a best-seller and today it’s largely forgotten. But recently, a computer scientist and a digital archaeologist decided to pull apart the game’s source code to investigate how it was made.
…Like intrepid explorers of catacombs, Aycock and Copplestone sought curious relics inside Entombed. But they got more than they bargained for: they found a mystery bit of code they couldn’t explain. It seems the logic behind it has been lost forever.
Into the labyrinth
Maze-navigating games were very common back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the method used to generate a maze varied, depending on the programmer. In the age of Atari, games had to be designed with incredible skill because the computer systems that ran them were so limited. (Read more about the mind of a maze-builder.)
Although the blocky, two dimensional mazes from entombed might look simple by the standards of today’s computer graphics, in 1982 you couldn’t just design a set of mazes, store them in the game and later display them on-screen – there wasn’t enough memory on the game cartridges for something like that. In many cases, mazes were generated “procedurally” – in other words, the game created them randomly on the fly, so players never actually traversed the same maze twice.
But how do you do get a computer program to avoid churning out a useless maze with too many walls, or an otherwise impenetrable floorplan?
(16) SNOWPIERCER
BACKSTORY. On September 24, Titan Comics will release Snowpiercer The
Prequel: Part 1: Extinction, a brand-new prequel graphic novel set before
the extinction incident that led to the events of the original Snowpiercer
graphic novel trilogy. It’s written by Matz (Triggerman, The Assignment),
with art by the original Snowpiercer graphic novel artist Jean-Marc
Rochette, shown in this promotional video creating an iconic scene from the book.
[Thanks to bill, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster,
John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Edmund
Schluessel ,Eric Wong, and Andrew
Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing
editor of the day OGH.]
2019
Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award Winner Nisi Shawl will be teaching a workshop on
“Inclusive Dialogue: Writing in Dialect and Representing Nonstandard Speech” at
the 2019 Summer
Fishtrap Gathering of Writers: Steering the Craft at Wallowa Lake Lodge on July 8-14. The
workshop focuses on techniques using phonetic spelling, italics, and slang
words and phrases through discussion, examples, and exercises. Other strategies
include code-switching, rhythmic emphasis, and cultural references.
Summer Fishtrap is a week-long writer’s conference located in the heart of Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains at the south end of Wallowa Lake – with workshops in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoir, and special workshops just for youth. Classes are limited to no more than 13 students which gives every writer the chance to share their work in an intimate and supportive environment.
The 2019 Summer Fishtrap Gathering
is part of Fishtrap’s year-long tribute to Ursula K. LeGuin, who was a
long-term advisor and instructor.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA, Inc.) will
present its Kate Wilhelm Solstice Awards to Nisi Shawl and Neil Clarke at the 54th Annual Nebula Conference.
The Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award is given by SFWA for
distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community. Shawl
and Clarke join the ranks of previous winners, including Octavia E. Butler,
James Tiptree, Jr., Tom Doherty, Carl Sagan, and Sheila Williams. The award
ceremony will be a part of the SFWA Nebula Conference taking place at the
Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills, CA on May 16-19.
Nisi Shawl
Nisi Shawl
In addition to her own writing, including the novel Everfair
and the stories collected in Filter House and Something More and More, Nisi Shawl has been active in
teaching science fiction and promoting a wide range of diverse voices through
the Carl Brandon Society. Her editorial work included guest editing the issue People of
Color Take Over Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and the
anthologies Bloodchildren:
Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars and Stories for
Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, the latter a collaboration
with Bill Campbell. Shawl was one of the founders of the Carl Brandon Society
in 1999, which not only presents the Carl Brandon Parallax Award and the
Kindred Award to promote authors of color and works which focus on issues of
race and ethnicity, but also works to make attendance and conventions more
affordable for people of color by provided scholarships.
SFWA President Cat Rambo noted, “Nisi Shawl’s work
with the Carl Brandon Society has, as the society’s mission statement says,
fostered dialogue about issues of race, ethnicity and culture, raised
awareness both inside and outside the fantastical fiction communities, promoted
inclusivity in publication/production, and celebrated the accomplishments of
people of color in science fiction, fantasy and horror. She’s worked to provide
writers with the tools they need, including Writing the Other, co-written with Cynthia Ward, as
well as classes based on the book. And she’s pushed steampunk into new lands
with her critically acclaimed novel Everfair. She exemplifies the spirit of the Kate
Wilhelm Solstice Award.”
Neil Clarke
Neil Clarke
Invested in the community for decades through various
publishing and book-selling ventures, Clarke launched the Hugo and World
Fantasy Award winning online publication, Clarkesworld Magazine in 2006. Over the ten-plus years
since its inception, he has published a wide range of new and established
writers, including a large number of non-Anglophone authors in
translation.
Instrumental in the transition from paper-only submissions to
online systems, the software he first developed for Clarkesworld is still
in use at several magazines. Clarke founded Wyrm Publishing in 2007, Forever
Magazine in 2015, and the translation imprint, Clarkesworld Books,
in 2019. He also currently serves as the editor of the SFWA Bulletin.
In recent years, he’s taken on the task of finding The Best Science Fiction of
Year–an anthology series currently in its fourth year of publication–and has
edited multiple, successful anthologies with Night Shade Books.
SFWA President Cat Rambo has noted about Clarke, “Over
the years, Neil has grown Clarkesworld Magazine into one of the powerhouses
among online magazines, excelling in its treatment of writers, including one of
the highest per words rate coupled with one of the fastest reply rates in the
business. At the same time, he’s encouraged international voices through
translation and outreach, while consistently publishing some of the finest
fantasy and science fiction around. He well merits recognition in the form of
the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award.”
The Nebula Awards, which will be presented during the
annual SFWA Nebula Conference, include four fiction awards, a game writing
award, the Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, the Andre
Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book. SFWA
also administers the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Awards, the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr.
Service to SFWA Award, and the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
The first installment of Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe Sequence, Europe in Autumn will be published soon in Hungary. Years ago I read that one and the two sequels, and now I wanted to know what Mr. Hutchinson think about the future of Europe, and how he came to create a spy, who is in fact a chef.
Europe in Autumn was published only three years ago, but the near-future you imagined with a fractured Europe could be the present soon. Independence movements are booming, Brexit in talks… Do you think the world you created for the books can become reality?
It’s been kind of horrifying to watch world events over the past few years – I started writing Autumn sometime in the very late 1990s and back then the idea of a fractured Europe really was a thing of fiction, although independence movements and micronations are nothing new. Now, it seems a lot more plausible. I’d like to say that I hope the world of the books doesn’t come about; I’m a big fan of the EU ideal and of Schengen. On the other hand, Rudi’s world has always seemed to me to be vibrant and full of possibility. I’ve heard it described as a dystopia, but I don’t think it is – certainly it wasn’t intended that way. I think it would be a very interesting place to live. Whether it will actually happen, I don’t think anyone can predict that. We seem to have gone from the old black-and-white certainties of the Cold War to something a lot more uncertain and fluid, with only a very brief period of hope between them.
Yes, it’s time again for Some Stuff I Have Read and Liked Recently. As always–I am not a reviewer or any sort of critic, and I’m not going to try to be one.
Ever since I heard that Nisi was not only working on a steampunk novel set in the Belgian Congo, but that she had gone and sold that novel to Tor, I’ve been eager to read this. I finally got around to it, and I highly recommend it. It’s pretty epic, really, it covers a couple decades in time, from the POVs of a wide variety of characters. Seriously, check this out if you haven’t already….
It’s no secret Hollywood has a problem with women aging. There are fewer leading roles for women over the age of 40, and the supporting ones tend to be underdeveloped and fall into the category of mother, wife, woman sad because she’s old, or villain (sad because she’s old). …
[Discovery’s Admiral Cornwell] is experienced and she’s accomplished, and she’s Lorca’s peer, and also his superior. She couldn’t be that at twenty-seven, or thirty-six. Moreover, she’s a woman over fifty, whose eye crinkles and grey hairs have not been erased, who is presented on screen as attractive and desirable. Admiral Cornwell is not beautiful despite her age, she’s beautiful and powerful because of it.
We made it! The donations raised through our Facebook fundraiser plus the donations through the Tiptree website total more than $2400! The Tiptree Award will receive all the matching funds available to us! With the help of all who have donated and shared our fundraising message and matched the donations, we’ve raised more than $4800, half of our annual budget. Thank you all for your help. This award wouldn’t be possible without you!
Of course, it’s never too late to add your support to this successful effort. With your donations, you make possible our efforts to encourage the creation of speculative fiction that explores and expands our understanding of gender. And since the Tiptree Award is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, all donations are tax-deductible. https://tiptree.org/support-us/donate
(6) LE GUIN FELLOWSHIP. Applications are being taken for the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship, sponsored by the University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) and the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS). The deadline to apply is January 5, 2018. Full guidelines here.
Purpose: The intention of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is to encourage research within collections in the area of feminist science fiction. The UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) houses the papers of authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, and Jessica Salmonson, along with Damon Knight. SCUA is also in the process of acquiring the papers of other key feminist science fiction authors.
Fellowship description: This award supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, the papers of feminist science fiction authors housed in SCUA. These short-term research fellowships are open to undergraduates, master’s and doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in feminist science fiction. In 2018, $2,000 will be awarded to conduct research within these collections. The fellowship selection committee will include representatives from the UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) and the Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS).
(7) NAME THAT TUNE. By George, I think he’s got it.
"I totally want to join this special club of people I think I might dislike so I can pretend they're threatening me; it's the only way to get attention!" https://t.co/NlMCeutTos
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) December 21, 2017
(8) FEAT IN SEARCH OF AN AWARD. Not sure what category this deserves to win. Since he got it right the first time does that rule out editing?
Spelled dilapidated correctly on the first try! Where's my Hugo Award for THAT?
(9) LAST JEDI. If reading articles about The Last Jedi now leaves me feeling jaded, then you probably started feeling that way two days ago (or fill in your own number). However, a critic for The Hollywood Reporter hooked me with the pop culture insights in “New ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy Is Failing Galactic Politics 101”. YMMV. Also, BEWARE SPOILERS.
And that’s where we left off before the start of this new trilogy of Star Wars films. After decades of theorizing, fan fiction and “Legacy” stories, The Force Awakens had the exciting task of updating fans of the series about what happened in the decades since we last saw our favorite characters and rooted for the Rebellion. Would we see a New Republic and what would it be like? Who would be the enemy of that Republic and what would our character’s places be in it? The opportunities were endless, with the possibility of giving audiences a brand-new vision for the series, but would also require a deft touch. Yes, the series would have to build on viewers’ knowledge of Star Wars history, but it could also do what A New Hope did: thrust us into a new scenario and slowly give us more information about what transpired to get us here.
As a huge fan of the series, looking back on the new films after the opening weekend of The Last Jedi, I have to admit an incredible frustration and disappointment in the result. While walking through my local Target, I could not help but feel like The Force Awakens had failed what I’m now dubbing the “toy test”: I couldn’t pick up a Star Wars toy and tell you who each character was and their political standings in the newest round of wars, as depicted in the films.
(10) FAUX SHOW. And hey, this is sweet! The absolutely fake Disney/Pixar’s X-Wings Movie Trailer.
Its audience score of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes (that’s the proportion of users who have rated it 3.5/5 or higher) is the lowest of any Star Wars film, including the much-maligned prequels (The Phantom Menace has 59%).
But something else is going on too – while fans are divided, film critics were largely in agreement.
The Last Jedi has a critics’ score of 93% – that’s the proportion of writers who gave it a positive review – putting it level with A New Hope and The Force Awakens, and just 1% behind The Empire Strikes Back.
That puts The Last Jedi at number 49 on Rotten Tomatoes’ all-time list. And of the all-time top 100 films, The Last Jedi has by far the biggest gap between the critics’ score and the audience score.
(12) TODAY IN HISTORY
December 21, 1937 — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood, California
December 21, 1968 — Apollo 8, the first manned mission to visit the moon, is launched from Cape Canaveral.
December 21, 1979 — C.H.O.M.P.S. and The Black Hole both premiered on this day.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY JEDI
Born December 21, 1948 — Jedi Master Samuel L. Jackson
(14) COMICS SECTION.
Mike Kennedy has never seen this on a football field – In the Bleachers.
…Sure, I went to see The Last Jedi this week like everyone else with the inclination and ability to do so, and it was wonderful. But it felt like, well, a box of popcorn in nutritional terms compared to the hearty vegetable stew of series below. So in no particular order, here is a very personal, haphazard list of series I have been amazed by. Whilst they don’t all quite fit into the classic Nerds Of A Feather, Flock Together genre areas, all share a spirit and flavour with the incredible works highlighted on these pages…
(1) Halt and Catch Fire (AMC)
Originally feeling like a compelling yet shallow computer nerd version of Mad Men (all mysterious arrogant male protagonist dipped in retro nostalgia), this series became, long before this astonishing forth and final season, one of the most accomplished and daring dramas of this decade, and culminated in the best conclusion to a series I’ve seen since possibly Six Feet Under (a work to which this owes much debt). Nothing else this year matched the emotional impact of seeing these five colleagues and friends arrive at a finish line that for once was allowed to be set with purpose and patience by the creators. The setting and subject became less and less relevant (though no less enjoyable) as the masterplan of the writers emerged – that this, like all the greatest tales, was about emotional connections and the rewards that they bring, and the tolls they take. The last three episodes made my smile and cry more than any film, book or other show this year. Exemplary acting, music, sound, cinematography, dialogue to wallow in… superb.
(16) HEERE’S RAY. A wise friend of mine hinted that there hasn’t been enough Bradbury in these pages lately. Let’s drop in Ray’s appearance with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show on March 1, 1978:
A very special episode of the Ray Harryhausen podcast, as we explore the Ray’s lifelong friendship with legendary author Ray Bradbury.
Phil Nichols from The Centre for Ray Bradbury Studies joins us for an in depth discussion on a relationship which was to span 8 decades. After meeting in the mid-1930s, the two became best friends, and would speak on at least a monthly basis for the rest of their lives. We explore the circumstances that would lead both men to become legends within their own fields of interest, and the early influences which inspired them both to greatness. Both Rays left an incredible archive of their own, and so we examine the parallels between the collection of the Centre for Ray Bradbury Studies, and the Foundation’s own archive.
The show also contains a never-heard-before interview with Ray Bradbury’s daughter Susan, recorded at Ray Harryhausen’s memorial in 2013, where she shares her memories of ‘Uncle Ray’ and their enduring friendship.
(18) HORTON ON SHORT SFF. One of the field’s grandmasters has added a prime story to his resume: “Rich Horton Reviews Short Fiction’ at Locus Online. (Covers F&SF 9-10/17, Analog 9-10/17, Beneath Ceaseless Skies 8/17/17, Lightspeed 10/17, Tor.com 9/6/17.)
The most exciting short fiction news this month is surely the appearance in the September/October F&SF of a new story by Samuel R. Delany. Even better, “The Hermit of Houston” is exceptional work! It’s set some time in a strange future and is hard to get a grip on (the best kind). From one angle it seems a sort of pastoral utopia, from other angles utterly horrifying. It’s mostly about the narrator’s long-time lover, an older man named Cellibrex (sometimes), and about the hints he lets drop of some of the true nature of this future. There is extremely interesting treatment of gender, politics, law, custom, and memory – and I don’t get everything that’s going on in the story, in a good way. One of the stories of the year, I think.
(19) DEVELOPING FIELD. The Washington Posts’s Rachel Rackza, in “In young-adult novels, queer love stories have begun to feel mainstream”, discusses how teenage LGBT readers have read novels by Cassandra Clare, Audrey Coulthurst, and Anna-Marie McLemore and found comfort in reading YA fantasy with gay characters.
For Mackenzi Lee’s whip-smart “The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue,” the author wanted to showcase an authentically positive representation of queer identity in centuries past. “I wanted so badly with this book to say to queer teenagers: ‘You have always existed even before there were words or vocabulary or acceptance,’ ” she said. “I wanted them to know they have not only existed, but they thrived and had fulfilled romantic and sexual lives with people they love.”
An international team of astronomers has concluded that when it comes to theories about colliding neutron stars, Einstein got it right. Everybody else, not so much.
A neutron star is what’s left when a star burns out and collapses in on itself, leaving a small, incredibly dense ball.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted that when two neutron stars collide, they would generate a gravitational wave, a ripple in space time.
That’s exactly what physicists saw for the first time last summer with LIGO, the new gravitational wave observatory.
“There was nothing in the rules to say you couldn’t send people”, Mr Taft said.
In 1909 two suffragettes, Miss Solomon and Miss McLellan, used the Royal Mail’s same-day courier service to post themselves to 10 Downing Street so they could deliver their message personally to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.
But a Downing Street official refused to sign for them and the delivery boy had to return the women and explain to his bosses why he had failed to make the delivery.
Yet Miss Solomon and Miss McLellan were not the UK’s first “human letters”.
W Reginald Bray, an accountant from Forest Hill in south-east London, claimed to hold that honour having posted himself successfully in 1900, then again in 1903 and for a last time in 1932
This is way different than when I grew up, when we kept renting a wobbly VHS of A New Hope from the library, and then my dad brought home The Empire Strikes Back and suddenly we realized that they had made more of these movies, oh my God.
So the Large Son is absolutely drowning in genre exposure. He lives in an age of abundance that I was utterly denied. But does he take advantage of it? Does he religiously memorize all of the various planets, as well as the types of ships?
No. He does not. For a whole damned year he called Darth Vader “Star Vader,” and he still calls Boba Fett “Bobo Fett,” and he calls every kind of land transport an “AT-AT,” which is just abysmally fucking wrong in every kind of way. I created a spreadsheet for him but I am fairly sure he only gave it a cursory glance. Perhaps the most galling thing about it all is that, incredibly, despite having never actually watched a Star Wars movie in the six years of his life (he says they are “too loud,” which, okay, sure), he somehow already knows that Vader is Luke’s father, and he’s just utterly fucking blasé about it, too.
Santa gestured for one of his elves to start the PowerPoint slide show.
“As you can see, this reality is much like ours, but their timeline diverged in the 1980s. Because of the misguided actions of their less militant Christmas Ghosts, they were deprived of the greatest Christmas movie ever made.”
“The Firefly Christmas Special?” asked the elf running the computer.
“Oh no, very few lucky universes got that.” Santa chuckled, as he thought about the heartwarming scene where Jayne’s mom had knitted him a Santa hat, which he’d later used to strangle a reaver. “Besides, that was a two hour TV special that aired during Firefly’s fifth season. I’m talking about how this world was deprived of the greatest Christmas movie ever made… Die Hard.”
There were gasps around the conference table. That was inconceivable. And only boring losers and communists didn’t think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie.
“I know, right? Christmas there is dull and lame now. So we’re going to use the Christmas Noun to send Tim back to 1988, so he can make sure Die Hard actually happens like it’s supposed to.”
“I don’t know, Santa… Since this crosses into another alternate universe’s jurisdiction, isn’t this a job for Tom Stranger?”
Santa shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately, since Larry Correia first started writing the Christmas Noun stories, Audible.com came along and offered him large sums of money to write Tom Stranger stories exclusively for them, so I doubt Tom will show up here. This is up to us and Tim and any other characters who we still own the rights for!”
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Olav Rokne, John King Tarpinian, Bence Pinter, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]
SFWA President Cat Rambo, in “Talking About Fireside Fiction’s #BlackSpecFic Reports, Part 1 of 2”, is joined by Steven Barnes, Maurice Broaddus, Tananarive Due, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Tonya Liburd, and Nisi Shawl for a roundtable discussion of Fireside Fiction’s reports on blacks in speculative fiction and what the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America might take away from it as action items. Listen to the recording at Soundcloud.
Here is the central fact they present. Black writers are underrepresented in fantasy and science fiction short fiction magazines. The 2015 figures: 2039 stories in 63 magazines, of which 38 stories were by black authors, in 2015….
For the sake of very broad comparison, American demographics as of July 2016 (according to Wikipedia) were 13.3% African American, 17.8% Latino/Hispanic, and 61.3% white. Like the magazines when it comes to publishing black writers, SFWA’s population skews much whiter than figures might lead one to assume.
Rambo plans to follow the up the two-part discussion with a post about her own takeaway, and how SFWA can respond.
This was a terrific conversation. I was scribbling notes down throughout most of it. In a day or two I’ll post those notes and action items, along with an account of what’s happened so far, but today the focus should be that discussion.
