Category — HUMAN BEINGS

Here’s a new resource to augment the Science Fiction Artists Database:  the first version of a mind map about Art Editors who worked for Science Fiction Magazines and Book Publishers.   The clickable version includes sources and links to online references.   If you would like to contribute, see the contact link at the top of the mind map and send us some more info on your favorite Art Editors!

**LINK** Science Fiction Art Editors (mind map) Version 1 [15 May 2010]

Just received a copy of The New Visions, A Collection of Modern Science Fiction Art published in 1981.  I was was surprised and delighted to find one of the 23 artists featured to be Carlos Ochagavia, and to see not only his self-portrait sketch (below), but also his amazing SF Book Club edition cover painting for Niven and Barnes book, Dream Park.

In Ochagavia’s painting (below the fold), what a fantastic and amusingly surreal dragon the anonymous hero is fighting!

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Born in Alabama, the photographer Charles Moore closely followed the civil rights movement with his camera and an open mind.    It’s been said that the photos taken by this former Marine helped shaped the public consciousness of the civil rights movement.   With a keen sense of dramatic moments loaded with iconic significance, Moore laid bare the injustices of his time for all to see.    Moore passed away last week at the age of 79.  Wish we had more like him.  The true definition of the right stuff!

Reading a fascinating conversation between Fred Pohl and Alfred Bester, that took place in Newcastle upon Tyne, 26 June 1978, (published in Rob Jackson’s Inca 5), and was amused by their comments on John Campbell during his Dianetics phase.   Right after that they had a brief exchange on a psychological study of SF writers:

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Fred Pohl: Some years ago two  psychologists decided they wanted to find out what  science fiction writers were like.  They sent out a  questionnaire to a bunch of science fiction writers  and asked them to answer the sort of questions  you get on psychological testing papers.  How do  you feel about your mother and this and that.  And  from these they prepared a group psychological  profile of science fiction writers.  They compared it  with a similar group profile for some other kind of  writers and for a third group of people.  They  found out that the science fiction writers were in  many ways similar to most human beings! There  were a couple of differences, and one was in what  is called “aggressive” versus “withdrawn”  cyclothymia.

Alfred Bester:  What is cyclothymia?

Fred Pohl: It’s a kind of lunacy.   But the question was not whether you had it, but if you had it which way you  would go.  Withdrawn cyclothymic people are  more or less passive and tend to let things go, and  overlook something that is wrong.  The people who  tend the other way are stubborn and won’t take nothing from nobody, and have their own opinions which you’re not going to change with an axe!  And  science fiction writers were like that – the  stubbornest, most difficult human beings alive!

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This dialog reminded me of a joke piece that I wrote for CusFussing in 1979 called Science Fiction Brains.  You can see the published illustration for that article above.  I distinctly remember drawing it on a scrap of greenish colored bond paper that I found somebody’s office in Phoenix that summer.   But never before published is a related sketch (complete with characteristic coffee stain), and an explanation of the “lobes of the brain,” which was probably the idea behind the story if the first place.   Somehow the explanation of the lobes got lost in both the inked version of the sketch and the story.  But here it is, for posterity.

As the new year arrives, I found that the fascinating annotated bibliography for truth-seekers, compiled by the late R. T. Gault has vanished from the web.   Therefore, as both tribute to compiler and hopeful olive-branch extended to the next generation, I am resurrecting most of Gault’s website, including the entire Absolute Elsewhere section and research bibiographies.   Fortunately, I took the precaution of saving them all several years ago, and only had to move them from the secret magneto-crystal vaults in the ice-caves over to the public website.   So take a word from the old wrinkled alien qi-gong master, and reject all negative influences you have involuntarily recieved!  Further, do what thou wilt and enjoy the knowledge transmitted from your inadvertant gurus!

**LINK**

(As time allows I will try to piece together the Order of the Twilight Star Pages from Wayback Machine.)

see also:

Retorno de los brujos (Morning of the Magicians) en español.

One thing that has baffled me for many years is the identity of the artist who painted the original covers of the Illuminatus! paperbacks, which were published by Dell in 1975.   The signature, clear as day, reads:  “Carlos Victor“, but I have never encountered any artist of that name in any reference.  Wikipedia credits all the paintings to this mysterious artist.

So let me say it first here:  the identity of Carlos Victor is almost certainly the wonderful painter Carlos Ochagavia!

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At first glance the dark palettes and almost monochrome scenes painted by Lou Feck seem rather low key.  Compared to the startling palettes of his contemporaries in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you’d think that Feck was either taking a lot of downers or painting with deliberate understatement.  Yet the more I look at his cover paintings, the more I am convinced that Feck was using a masterful and subtle style.

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Completely gobsmacked by this painting up for auction at Heritage, I wondered who the artist was.  None other than Irving Sinclar (1895-1969), who was apparently a well-known portrait and commercial artist beginning in the 1930s.  According to the SF Chronicle (24 Feb 1969):

“Born in British Columbia on March 5, 1895. After settling in San Francisco in 1917, Sinclair worked as a billboard artist for Foster & Kleiser, and in the 1920s was art director for Fox West Coast Theatres. In 1939 he studied in New York under Wayman Adams. San Francisco remained his adopted home where he painted Mayors Rossi, Robinson, and Christopher. He became well known for portraits of Hollywood stars and other famous Americans including F. D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Summers were often spent in Canada in his Galiano Island studio. Sinclair died in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 1969.”

With such an interesting resumé, I thought that there should be plenty of material online about the artist.  However, if Google is to be believed, Sinclair is primarily known for this realistic painting called “The Poker Game.”

It’s a nice painting, to be sure, though it might have been done by Norman Rockwell, who could never have painted the bold figurative portraits in the Heritage lot.   Where the Poker Game excels in muted detail, the portrait thrives in electric, almost psychedelic colors…if you view the large resolution version at the Heritage link (above), you will see the bold, effortless brushwork.  As if dashed off in a hurry, the portrait sings with fervent, nervous energy…I’m gobsmacked by that blue and orange, I tell you!

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It was at a Boskone panel two years ago that Howard Waldrop and George Zebrowski turned me on to the works of Chad Oliver.  I’m just getting around to reading an old copy of Shadows in the Sun (Ballantine Edition, 1954) which is literally disintegrating page by page as I read it.  What an amazing story this is!  I can certainly see why Zebrowski picked this title for Crown Book’s Classics in Modern Science Fiction series.  The strangely out-of-tune Jefferson Springs, Texas, at first seems to resonate with menace, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Jack Finney’s novel which was being serialized in Collier’s magazine later the same year, Nov - Dec 1954).  But then the story veers into unexpected directions, and though Oliver’s prose is at times poetic, it is always clear and to the point.   For example, here is the protagonist, Paul Ellery, reflecting on the human tendency towards urbanization:

What sane man would prefer to live in the shrieking chaos of a city, stacked in like sardines with his neighbors in the smoke and the dirt and the sweat? What sane man would voluntarily leave the sunshine and the green fields and the quiet companionship of home for a factory and a tenement and the grinding of machinery?

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If, like me, you can’t make it up to Montreal for Worldcon 2009, you can at least graze on the feeds and photostreams.   Enjoy vicariously!

Voyageur, official Anticipation Newsletter

Stross - Krugman dialog [MP3 on Stross blog]  [transcript!]

tweets:

Chris [Drink Tank] Garcia on Twitter

#anticipationsf  #worldcon09 feeds aggregated

some blogs with Worldcon heavy posts:

Irene Gallo [photos]

Lionel Davoust [en francais]

Kate Baker [Sofanaut Podcasts]

Cheryl [Emerald City] Morgan

Amy H. Sturgis [photos on Flickr]

Jenny Rappaport

Kyle Cassidy [photos!]

John [Whatever] Scalzi

yonmei

Cory Doctorow  [Flickr photos]

How is it that my brother, Po, marooned out in the wilds of the high desert at Canyon Blanco is first one to tell me about the synthetic brain news?    Here I am, wired up to the ears with wireless routers zapping me and servers buzzing underfoot…only a beer cap toss from a major data center…and as far as I knew I had a unique and unreplaceable hunk of gray matter floating in my skull.   Sure it’s a little frayed around the edges, has its foibles, is a beast when it comes to  cold starts on a winter morning, but still–after all it’s been through–it seemed a right decent old brain, as far as I was concerned.  But now we know that these dweebs over at Blue Brain Project have already concocted a rat’s brain, and are madly tuning their skills to create a human brain within ten years.  **BBC Story**

Is it just me, or does that seem like it might not work out according to plan?

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Reading the MOMA Book on Rodchenko, I was struck by Rodchenko’s diary entry about the early aviator Aleksandr Vasiliev.  What must a barnstorming demonstration have been like at Kazan in the year 1912?   At a time when the world was being transformed by new technology, here was a living vision of speed, of man’s ascent to the skies, of futurism come knocking at the skulls of old consciousness, and the dawning of a new age of man.    According to Rodchenko, on Sunday, June 3rd, 1912:

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This beautiful illustration for the cover of Daughter of IS (1978), by Mikal D. Huber, is a wonderful example of the science fiction art of Carlos Ochagavia.  The background is rendered in a light, airy tone that fades away, with major features that become transparent (in this case, a moon) .  The main figure is also somewhat soft — a woman rising up in cloud — while the most tangible figure in the painting (a hand on fire!) is disembodied.   In the middle distance are Ochagavia’s characteristic space-vehicles, usually saucers standing on chunky legs, and arcing behind the scene is a jet that leaves a visible trail.   The image, as a whole, is strangely ethereal; is it a realistic painting, softened at the edges?  Or a surrealistic painting, with a few concrete objects for our gaze to anchor upon?   Ochagavia tantalizes us to find out…but often as not, the books being illustrated hold few clues as to what the artist was thinking.

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The wonderful Muzafar Bhaid is riding his bicycle for peace across Pakistan!  From the highest mountains of the world in Hunza region, the intrepid Muzafar is taking annual stages on his way to Islamabad.  Is this fellow wonderfully awesome, or what?

As our government sends in a fascist whacko to launch commando raids, Muzafar is biking along the steepest grades and the dustiest highways of the world…   My hat is off to you, Muzafar, brother!   Ride on all peace-loving people, we will get there someday.

Check out the two stages of Mazafar’s route so far:   last year from Gojal (shown on map as Ghulmit) to Gilghit,  then this year from Gilgit to Abbotabad.   Amazing!

There is something strangely futuristic about the fashions of the 2009 Estetika and Wellness Fair, held this week in Bucharest, Romania.  A set of photos is floating around, depicting the weird loops and cascades of hair on display during the stylist contest.  Reuters blog snarks “Very 17th Century Brothel, Honey!” but it reminds me more of an SFnal flashback to the 70s and 80s.