It’s a great event. I really enjoyed it. Book dealers fill the exhibit hall, and at a row of tables next to the stage waves of writers and artists autograph their works for fans, free, throughout the day. Some of the people signing when I first arrived were Karen Anderson, Barbara Hambly, and Tim Kirk. Joe Lansdale and his daughter, Kasey, were at one of the dealers tables.
Kasey Lansdale and her father Joe Lansdale.
On the way in I met Tim and Serena Powers. Tim said he looks in on the File 770 blog, which was nice to hear. I had a long conversation with Marc Schirmeister, who I last saw at Sasquan.
I met artist Tony Gleeson for the first time – an artist often mentioned here in news stories — and he in turn introduced me to author Odie Hawkins.
Quite a few LASFS members were present — Matthew Tepper, Michelle Pincus, Karl Lembke – in addition to the member/authors who were signing. I hear Robert J. Sawyer visited the Loscon table later, after I had gone.
Robert J. Sawyer. Photo by Michelle Pincus.
While touring the dealer tables I saw lots of classic old stuff — but got a giggle out of seeing a copy of Zotz! Among the precious wares in a glass case. That’s the book which became a (negative) legend and running joke in the LASFS Xmas Gift Exchange — even though it’s a hardcover, you couldn’t get credit for contributing ZOTZ! as a gift unless you included with it something else that was worth the minimum. One year I unwrapped a copy which came with a $5 bill…
The event staff were doing a really good job — seemed to have an eye open for everything, and treated people very nicely.
I can’t end without mentioning the Civic Auditorium’s rather odd parking structure. The property is built into a hillside. You enter the structure on the bottom level, as you would expect, however, to exit you have to drive all the way up to the roof — which puts you on a level with another driveway to the street.
(1) ABCD16 AWARDS. Ben Summers’ cover design for Lavie Tidhar’s novel A Man Lies Dreaming has won an Academy of British Cover Design Award in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category.
The complete shortlist with images of all the covers is at ABCD16 Shortlist and Winners. There are more sf/fantasy books among the finalists in other marketing categories.
(2) MAC II LEADERSHIP REORGANIZES. The 2016 Worldcon decided its communications will be better with a single voice at the top and replaced its three-co-chair structure (“Team LOL”) with a single chairperson, Ruth Lichtwardt.
Diane Lacey, another of the co-chairs, will become a Vice-Chair, and the third, Jeff Orth, is said to be deciding among several options for continuing his work on the con. The decision was shared with the division heads at a meeting last weekend.
(3) AMAZING CELE. Mike Ashley chronicles the reign of Amazing editor Cele Goldsmith in “The AMAZING Story: The Sixties – The Goose-Flesh Factor”. Pulpfest is serializing Ashley’s history of the magazine, first published in its pages in 1992.
[Cele] Goldsmith chose all the material, edited everything, selected the title and blurb typefaces and dummied the monthly magazines by herself. [Norman] Lobsenz, who arrived for an editorial conference usually once a week, penned the editorials, read her choices, and wrote the blurbs for the stories. They did cover blurbs together, and Goldsmith assigned both interior and cover art.
Goldsmith had no scientific background but had a sound judgment of story content and development, and this was the key to her success. She accepted stories on their value as fiction rather than as science fiction. “When I read something I didn’t understand, but intuitively knew was good,” she said, “I’d get ‘goose flesh’ and never doubt we had a winner.” That “goose flesh” was transmitted to the readers. I know when I encountered the Goldsmith AMAZING and FANTASTIC in the early 1960s,I got goose flesh because of the power and originality of their content. As I look now at the 150 or more total issues of those two magazines that Cele Goldsmith edited, that thrill is still there.
(4) JAR JAR JERSEYS. The Altoona Curve minor league baseball team will host another Star Wars night – if the team isn’t too embarrassed to take the field….
Last year, the team wore these beautiful Jabba the Hutt jerseys. For our Star Wars Night, we’re following that up with a jersey featuring another controversial Star Wars character, Jar Jar Binks. Like last season, we will have appearances by the Garrison Cardida of the 501st Legion.
(5) GREAT POWERS. An interview with Tim Powers conducted by Nick Givers has been posted at PS Publishing.
NICK GEVERS: In your new novel, Medusa’s Web, you set out a very interesting and mesmerizingly complex metaphysical scheme, of spider images that draw human minds up and down the corridors of time. What first suggested this scenario to you?
TIM POWERS: I thought it would be fun to play around with two-dimensional adversaries after reading Cordwainer Smith’s short story, “The Game of Rat and Dragon.” I decided that since such creatures would be dimensionally handicapped by definition, why not have them be fourth-dimensionally handicapped too? I.e. they don’t perceive time, and therefore every encounter these creatures have with humans is, from the creature’s point of view, the same event. So by riding along on the point of view of one of them, you can briefly inhabit whatever other encounters it’s had with humans, regardless of when those encounters happened or will happen.
This seemed like an opportunity for lots of dramatic developments, and even one very intriguing paradox for our protagonist to blunder through.
(6) A MOVIE RECOMMENDATION. Zootopia is getting a lot of buzz, and Max Florschutz agrees it’s a winner in a review at Unusual Things.
First, a quick summary for those of you who just want the yay or nay: Zootopia is an excellent, wonderful film with a lot of heart, a lot of adventure, and a wonderful moral at its core that wraps up everything in a fantastic way. Put it on your list.
In Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the latest fantasy from director Tim Burton, Asa Butterfield plays Jake, a 16-year-old plagued by nightmares following a family tragedy.
On the advice of his therapist, the teen embarks on an overseas journey to find the abandoned orphanage where his late grandfather claims to have once lived. Not only does the place turn out to be real, it also serves as the gateway to an alternate realm where children with strange powers are looked after by a magical guardian (Penny Dreadful star Eva Green) and time moves of its own accord.
Max Barry’s second novel is a fantastic satire of globalized trade and the deregulation of industry. In this alternate future, the United States has taken over much of north and south America, with government and its services privatized. Citizens take on the names of their employers, and the titular Jennifer Government is an agent tasked with tracking down the perpetrators of a series of murders . The crime turns out to be an attempt by Nike to drum up notoriety for a new line of shoes, but the plot quickly escalated beyond what anyone planned. It’s a ridiculous, often funny book that shows off a very different, but scarily plausible, hyper-commercial world.
(9) ONCE MORE INTO THE SPEECH. MD Jackson touts favorite examples of “The Rousing Speech” at Amazing Stories.
There’s always a rousing speech.
When the odds are against you, when the forces of darkness, or the alien invaders, or the giant lizards have gathered and your pitifully small band of heroes stand against them, the single vanguard against annihilation, what does your leader do?
Well, if he’s any kind of leader he starts talking.
Motivational speeches keep your team together and focused. Rousing speeches keep your smallish army from losing soldiers due to desertion rather than the upcoming decimation. And it’s got to be a doozy of a speech in order to make otherwise sensible men and women stand with you against almost certain death….
One of my favorite rousing speeches comes from an episode of Star Trek. In Return to Tomorrow, a second season episode from 1968, William Shatner throws all the weight of his dramatic acting into a rousing speech: The infamous “Risk is our business…” speech. It doesn’t come before a battle, but before three of the crew, including Kirk, decide to have ancient powerful aliens take over their bodies. Despite the context and the odd placement of the speech which doesn’t really further the plot, the speech has become iconic for its application to the entire Star Trek universe through all the series and movies. It kind of sums up what Star Trek is all about.
Risk. Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.
And with Shatner`s just-shy-of-bombast delivery, the speech is kind of powerful.
(10) TONY DYSON OBIT. The builder of the original R2-D2, Tony Dyson, died March 4 reports the BBC.
The 68-year-old Briton was found by police after a neighbour called them, concerned his door was open.
He is thought to have died of natural causes. A post-mortem is being carried out to determine cause of death.
Dyson was commissioned to make eight R2-D2 robots for the film series. He said working on it was “one of the most exciting periods of my life”.
The look of R2-D2 was created by the conceptual designer Ralph McQuarrie who also created Darth Vader, Chewbacca and C-3PO.
Prof Dyson, who owned The White Horse Toy Company, was commissioned to make eight models plus the master moulds and an additional head.
He made four remote control units – two units for the actor Kenny Baker to sit in with a seat fitted inside and two throw away units to be used in a bog scene in Empire Strikes Back where a monster spits out the droid onto dry land, from the middle of the swamp.
(11) TODAY IN HISTORY
March 4, 1967 — Neal Hefti won a Grammy for our favorite song, the “Batman Theme.”
(12) YO, GROOT! According to the Daily News, Sylvester Stallone has joined the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Who might Stallone be playing? Perhaps, Peter Quill’s (Pratt) father. We know that coveted role will appear in the sequel. However, most people assume Kurt Russell already snagged that part and a source for the Daily News says Stallone’s role is just a cameo.
Avert your eyes, Superman, because according to news out of Poland this morning, a team of chemists just got awfully close to actually creating the fictional substance of kryptonite. Don’t sweat too much though, Clark — the scientists were only able to bond the element of krypton with oxygen (as opposed to nitrogen) which wound up creating krypton monoxide. Inability to create real kryptonite notwithstanding, the fact the chemists successfully bonded krypton with anything is a revelatory achievement for an element previously known to be entirely unreactive. In light of the success, krypton (which is a noble gas like helium and neon) is no longer considered inert.
Conducted at the Polish Academy of Sciences, a team of chemists ran krypton through a series of various tests to build off a previous study positing that the chemical may react with hydrogen or carbon under extreme conditions. What they discovered — and subsequently published in Scientific Reports — was that krypton, while under severe pressure, also has the ability to form krypton oxides after bonding with oxygen. Thing is, the chemists didn’t actually see the reaction happen, but rather, used genetic algorithms to theorize its likelihood.
Photocopied zines are making a comeback, with some young self-publishers keen to escape the attention of online trolls.
While the internet has democratised publishing, allowing anyone to potentially reach a global audience with the click of a button, vitriolic internet comments are pushing some writers back to a medium last popular in the 1990s.
Zines, or fanzines, are self-published, handmade magazines usually produced in short runs on photocopiers or home printers.
Thomas Blatchford volunteers at Melbourne zine store Sticky Institute, which is preparing for its annual Festival of the Photocopier later this month….
While unsure of the exact reason for the resurgence of zines, Mr Blatchford said it was more than just a “weird nostalgia thing”.
He said some zine-makers had been scared away from online publishing because of unkind comments from people on the internet.
Some of you may be aware of the existential battle that Wil Wheaton and I are currently engaged in, involving burritos. I am of the opinion that anything you place into a tortilla, if it is then folded into a burrito shape, is a burrito of some description; Wil, on the other hand, maintains that if it is not a “traditional” burrito, with ingredients prepared as they were in the burrito’s ancestral home of Mexico, is merely a “wrap.”
Expect someone to write a post soon complaining that Scalzi is doing to Mexican food what he did to sf, by which I mean someone longing for the days when you could tell what you were buying by looking at the tortilla cover…
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Brian Z., Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
Nobody’s Home by Tim Powers returns to the 19th century London warrens of The Anubis Gates and features one of the novel’s characters. His new 80-page story has just been sent to the printer by Subterranean Press and is expected to ship around year-end.
Tracking the murderer of her fiancee through 19th century London’s darkest warrens, Jacky Snapp has disguised herself as a boy—but the disguise fails when, trying to save a girl from the ghost of her jealous husband, Jacky finds that she has made herself visible to the ghosts that cluster around the Thames–
—And one of them is the ghost of her fiancee, who was poisoned and physically transformed by his murderer but unwittingly shot dead by Jacky herself.
Jacky and the girl she rescued, united in the need to banish their pursuing ghosts, learn that their only hope is to flee upriver to the barge known as Nobody’s Home—where the exorcist whose name is Nobody charges an intolerable price.
Midnight was long past, and the London streets were quiet except for the occasional rattle of a carriage and horses, or a distant bell from out on the river. Jacky had spent the evening tracking down a beggar who was rumored to have fur growing all over him like an ape, but when she had cornered the man in the basement of an old pub off Fleet Street, her hand tense on the flintlock pistol under her coat, he had turned out to be only a very hairy old fellow with a prodigious beard—not the half-legendary man she had devoted her life to finding and killing.
J. K. Potter has copiously illustrated the book, which is printed in two colors throughout.
A stage adaptation of Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates will receive its world premiere at Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon.
Current Theatrics, a theatre company based in Las Vegas and New York, will bring 15 characters and a 400-page time travel novel to life — ancient Egyptian wizards, modern American magnates, holes in the river of time, Horrabin the Clown’s puppet show, werewolf-like creatures, cheeky urchins, and California literature professors, not to mention famous Romantic poets Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Ashbless.
Formed in 2010 by Ruth Pe Palileo and Thomas Costello of New York, Current Theatrics specializes in travelling theatre, and has previously brought French absurdist classic The Chairs to Las Vegas, seven new Irish plays to Cleveland, and a gender-swapped Merry Wives of Windsor to Pittsburgh. Pe Palileo has previously produced and directed stage adaptations of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog and Neil Gaiman’s Troll Bridge.
The Las Vegas-based cast have been in rehearsal since Tim Powers approved the project in December 2013. The six-member cast comprises Erik Amblad, JJ Gatesman, Brandon Oliver Jones, Johnny Miles, Ariana Helaine, and Geo Nikols, all of whom are playing several roles—a task made easier by the novel’s story line, which involves body switching.
What is the history of Steampunk?
The term “steam-punk” was originally coined in the 1980s by K.W. Jeter who was trying to find a general way to describe the books coming from the Powers/Blaylock/Jeter camp. While influences and other seminal works came from the 60s and 70s it wasn’t until these three pioneers took the reigns that the genre really took off. Now the growth and influence is exponential.
The Festival takes place September 21-22 at Chapman University in Orange (CA). Admission is free.
Another sf/fantasy figure of note appearing later Saturday is Leslie S. Klinger, an authority on Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and an officer of the Horror Writers Association.
Come on the first day, too, if you don’t want to miss Mary Badham, who played “Scout” in the movie To Kill a Mockingbird and received an Oscar nomination:
Mary maintains a busy schedule lecturing to audiences internationally about the book and the film. Her interest is in expanding knowledge about the film’s message of social injustice and to ensure that each generation of students can experience the film’s impact.
Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society moved into its new clubhouse a year ago. They’ll be celebrating at the Science Fiction Showcase on September 23 where the following distinguished local sf personalities will speak:
Scientist Dr. James Busby
Film Maker Mike Donahue
Author David Gerrold
Author SP Hendrick
Emperor Charles Lee Jackson II
Author Larry Niven
Author / BNF: Fred Patten
Author Jerry Pournelle
Author Tim Powers
Humorist and Writer Phil Proctor
The event runs from 2:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at 6012 Tyrone Avenue in Van Nuys. Admission is $10.
By John King Tarpinian: On Sunday March 25th I got to play the Author Wrangler for the 33rd Annual Vintage Paperback Collectors Show & Sale in Los Angeles. The show has two major draws, first, the ability to buy vintage dime novels, pulps, comics and magazines. Second, you have the chance to meet some of your favorite authors and get them to sign your books. I am told that there are only two other shows of this type, one in New York and another in the UK.
There were forty-seven dealers selling and forty-four authors greeting their fans and signing books. If you were unable to attend I am sure a goodly number of the books signed are already for sale on eBay.
It is always fun to be able to talk to these authors but I will only highlight a few. We have a couple authors who seem to be connected at the hip. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. A close third would be buddies Tim Powers and James Blaylock. Tim has a new book out just last week. Nobody came in Steampunk costume to visit with Blaylock.
One of the nicest men you’ll ever meet in the print world or the TV world is Earl Hamner, Jr. (Think Twilight Zone, The Waltons and Falcon Crest) Another jovial man is Peter Atkins, you’d never know he wrote the script and books for the some of Hellraiser series for his buddy Clive Barker. Or Dennis Etchison who wrote the scripts for Halloween II and Halloween III. If you are in the need of an Encyclopedia on Halloween there is the sweet Lisa Morton. Lastly, I’ll highlight Harry Turtledove who is great to joke around with.
We were afraid that most people in the other part of the world call drizzle but us Angelinos call a StormWatch would keep people away but it was the largest turnout recorded.
Letting the cat out of the cellophane bag, the Village Voice reports that the Church of Scientology has a handle on the Writers of the Future Contest. It’s unlikely anybody in sf will be surprised at the connection being documented.
People in the sf field engaged with the WoTF contest, now in its 29th year, have long expressed satisfaction with the divide between the contest and the Church.
Here’s what Tim Powers told the reporter:
“When the winners get there, they get to attend how-to-write lectures from people like Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Orson Scott Card. It’s a hell of a lineup,” Powers says. “They maintain very deliberately a solid firewall between Scientology and the contest. There was even a time when a winner asked about Scientology and he was told, ‘Not this week.'”
Powers admits that in his years of involvement, he’s “never looked behind the scenes — I don’t know what the logistics of it are,” he says. But the effort that Author Services puts into keeping things separate is something he appreciates.
“I like the firewall. As a Catholic, I’d have to quit if it turned into proselytizing,” Powers says.
Frank Wu’s favorable account of his experience with the WoTF’s counterpart Illustrators of the Future Contest is quoted in the article, too.
I forwarded the link to Jerry Pournelle for his response and he answered:
I’ve seen it. I got into the contest because AJ Budrys, an old friend since 1960 (his father was an official in the Lithuanian exile government and I worked with them when I was part of the Captive Nations Committee back when I was active in politics) invited me and assured me there was no connection with Scientology; it was something Hubbard wanted to do for writers. So far as I am concerned the contest is a good thing. It tends to glorify Hubbard, of course, but I have never heard any mention of Scientology in any of the lectures, awards, ceremonies, or indeed anything else connected with the contest. As to glorifying the founder, I seem to remember a man named Smithson…
Although the relationship between WoTF and various pros, and its organized presence at Loscon, was defined ages ago, I wonder if the news reports might lead people to reconsider lending their names to the event? In addition to this Village Voice article, sf novelist Deirdre Saoirse Moen, a former Church member and staff member, posted in February about harassment she personally experienced. Is the “firewall” proof against such heightened scrutiny?
Like many fans I can recite all too many lines from Monty Python sketches or Firesign Theatre albums but am indifferent to memorizing verse or literature. For example, Diana is still waiting for me to memorize the St. Crispin’s speech from Henry V, an ambition I mention to her whenever I see Kenneth Branagh’s movie.
That’s why I am a little surprised to discover I do know by heart a line from Christopher Marlowe’s “The Tragical History of Dr. Faust” — “From infernal Dis we do ascend to view the subjects of our majesty.”
Now, I’ve never read Marlowe’s “Tragical History.” The reason I know the line is because Tim Powers quoted it in Expiration Date. Ever since I read his novel it has stuck in my memory.
Realizing why I know even a single line of a Marlowe play has set me to thinking how many more examples of art, music and literature I have been introduced to by science fiction writers.
When Valentine Michael Smith needed a national anthem for Mars, in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, he was prompted to choose the Mars movement of Holst’s Planet Symphony. Reading that piqued my curiosity to listen to the symphony for the first time, and over the years I’ve enjoyed its music again and again. The same Heinlein novel also led me to appreciate the sculpture of Rodin — who can forget Jubal Harshaw’s critique of Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone?
Nor have I forgotten how Harlan Ellison challenged anyone in the audience of his appearance at the 1975 NASFiC to tell him why the dog in A Boy and His Dog was named “Blood.” No, it wasn’t to foreshadow the story’s surprise ending. It’s a reference to a Housman poem: “Clay lies still / but blood’s a rover; / Breath’s a ware that will not keep.”
I wonder if any of you have cherished memories of cultural landmarks discovered in the pages of science fiction?
“Teaching SF,” a workshop on how to use science fiction as a teaching tool, will be held in conjunction with the 2011 Worldcon. Full attending members of Renovation may attend at no cost, others may enroll for a fee — but all must sign up in advance as space is limited.
Speakers will include Worldcon Guest of Honor Tim Powers, Peadar Ó Guilín, Mary Robinette Kowal, John DeChancie, Daniel M. Kimmel, Gary K. Wolfe, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. and G. David Nordley. The workshop is a collaborative effort, organized and presented by Reading for the Future, Inc, from a proposal by AboutSF at the University of Kansas.
The workshop will be held in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center on Wednesday, August 17 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
