a jaunt to THERE and NOW

This panel featured Jeanne Cavelos , Joy Marchand , David Nurenberg , Allan Steele and GOH Gardner Dozois , who discussed the relationship between writer and editor in the SF field and how the situation has changed.

In their opening remarks, Cavelos related her experience as a senior editor in New York, where she found that the interest editors take in nurturing new authors from unknowns into big names has fallen victim to the push for blockbusters.  Today, if an editor is not advocating for a bestseller to the senior editors, to her peers, to the sales division, to the assistant editors and designers she’ll be out of a job.  Allen Steele pointed out that short fiction editors still manage to read the submissions they find interesting, and they’ll take the time to send comments back to the author or ask for changes.   “Short fiction editors still edit,” said Dozois, ” but at the major publishing houses, who’s in charge?  In fact, it’s the sales people who end up canceling book deals.”  Nurenberg emphasized how incredibly valuable the feedback he received from games publisher White Wolf was to his career, “like water to a drowning man…“  As that analogy didn’t make much sense, he said, “I mean to a thirsty.”  Somehow the object of the verb got lost, but we get the idea!

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[photo by Sean Molloy]

At my first Arisia, I found myself weaving through crowds of strangely-coiffed pirates, rocketeers, and gamers; wondering at what point my own personality would intersect with one of those cliques and, at the same time, idly speculating as to which clique it would be.  Twisting, turning, and meandering, I wondered if there was any cipher concealed for me in my conversations with Freemasons, swordsmen, and zombies, or a secret buried somewhere in the depths of a prominent decolletage.  In the end I was left with an exhilarating sense that something interesting had transpired, and though I could list any number of particulars of the fun things I did, I wasn’t quite sure how it all added up.   This year, at my second Arisia, I was more accustomed to the casual ebb and flow, the meaningless randomness of who one might meet at any given moment, and I was more attuned to simply enjoy the dance.  Indeed, some of the most startling appearances in 2009 — the stilt-walking woman in tights and razor claws, the body-gloved Harley Quin, and the immaculately nuanced Steampunk ensembles — returned.  They were all conspicuously different from last year, but instead of novelty they radiated a pleasant warmth of familiarity.  Oh that mischievous stilt-woman!  Always scratching and snarling at the Muggles as they float up behind the glass of the atrium elevator!  And Harley, the little minx, does one ever tire of contemplating the poses she strikes while strapped into that saucy leather corset, black boots and ragged stockings?

[photos by Sean Molloy - http://www.flickr.com/photos/falconn67/]

It was equally reassuring to see pieces of last year’s favorites, if not ramped up to full energy, at least lying about here and there like fragments left over from an archaeological dig.  The skull-bracketed rocket pack that was flamboyantly posing with a team of rocketeers in ‘09, was this year merely glimpsed abandoned on a table, straps dangling idly alongside.  It certainly would have been fun if somebody rushed out of the con-suite, strapped on the skull-pack, and flamed up across the atrium space to a party upstairs! And yes, there were pirates, there were faeries, and furries, and a few storm trooper types.  You could say that it was the same rich stew of individuals at Arisia 2010, but there were definitely higher concentrations of bare feet, of blood-drenched nurses, blue-green body paint (though only a few of them Navi, as fas as I could tell), and really pervasive wearing of kilts.   Sure, some people I expect to see wearing a kilt (since that’s pretty common around the office…okay, it is Cambridge!), but it seemed like every time I turned around there was another  utilikilt wrapped around some smiling, bearded dude.  Which means that this year’s Arisia (officially sub-titled “the future and the past”) has been informally dubbed by Yunchtime as the “barefoot techno-fantasy fest, in a kilt.”

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Happy New Year, and welcome to the same old story…   At least in the comic pages sixty years ago, the standards of line art were fantastic, such as the panel above in Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby.    Nowadays, not only do we have to put up with degrading and meaningless searches, but the comics that are “fit to print” look about as sophisticated as Cathy Guisewite.  Yuck!

Anyway, let’s enjoy this incredible profile from Alex Raymond’s incomparable brush, and aspire to something better!

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.

The excellent description on secure multi-site Drupal installation by Justin Hileman worked like a charm. However, for my own records, it’s a good idea to save the exact procedure that I used on my Centos 5.3 system. Hopefully it might help someone else who wants a complete rundown.  So, if you dare to unleash another hydra-headed monster on your website, here you go, Nick!

Scenario: using one database instance, I wanted to run multiple Drupal sites by using the same core modules and the same contributed modules. The plan was to first install Drupal core, and then to use CVS to get contributed modules, allowing for fairly simple CVS updates of new contributed modules. (Of course, you could do the same to obtain Drupal core, if you want.) Each Drupal site would live in its own folder below the webroot, while the actual core installation and multisites existed above the webroot in an area secure from casual intruders.

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If only we could… but the beach is either thousands of miles, or many months away right now.    Pretending the subway is a beach just doesn’t do it for me.   In Japan, maybe this subway maneuver works, but in Boston all we have these days are a bunch of  Homeland Security workers blowing “perfectly safe” gases and particulates through the tunnels.    No need to be alarmed, says the Boston Globe.   Which is enough to make me worry that this testing will “go live,”   and then I’ll be diving to get out of the train…

Missed the premiere broadcast of Lloyd Dangle’s live streaming video feed last week, but somehow managed to tune in to the wrap up of this week’s “Big Ass Sarah Palin Episode.”    And well worth it!

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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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The recent opening of a group show at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in L.A. took me by surprise, because the “cover” painting of the group show is an amazing canvas by Kent Williams, called Mother and Daughter.

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It was really, really tough… but somehow Sophia and I dragged ourselves away from the perfect crystal blue waters of Maui and came back to Massachusetts.   We were only there for six days, but those fresh breezes from the sea and gorgeous sunny days seem to be still with us.   And it’s not just the splotches of peeling skin from sunburn, and the occasional shake of sand out of my clothes, but a genuine balm of paradise that came back with us, refreshing, calming, and healing…

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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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What a curious thread unraveled from reading the scanned issue of Telepath #1 on eFanzines this weekend. The fanzine, originally published by Arthur Haddon in Dec 1951, provided some tidbits of information about Australia’s first (if short-lived) SF pulp, Thrills Incorporated. This pulp was created by Stanley Horowitz’ Transport Publications following the the success of the weird mystery pulp, Scientific Thriller which appeared in 1948. Thrills Incorporated appeared in March 1950 and lasted for a total of 23 issues, ending in June 1952.

In the pages of Telepath, one of the Sydney Futurian Society fans, Vol Molesworth (1924-1964), interviewed the editor of Thrills Inc which helped to “clear up a number of points that fans in Australia and abroad had been debating.” This may have been a reference to a series of plagiarisations that took place in the first year of Thrills issues. As the editor, Alister Innes, confessed to Molesworth, “In the early issues we were hoodwinked by certain unscrupulous writers who plagiarised American SF stories without our knowledge. As soon as this was pointed out by our readers, we sacked those writers. Our present day policy is to give an author a title and an illustration and get him to write a story around them.”

What a curious way to run a magazine!   On the other hand, there might have been no way for the editors to have known that the stories were plagiarized.   According to Garry Dalrymple (via email), foreign science fiction magazines were treated as contraband in Australia between 1940 and 1950.   As prohibited imports,  issues of SF mags were discovered during routine inspection of the mails, and returned to sender.  This quarantine resulted in a market for locally printed SF pulps of questionable quality.    At that time, said Dalrymple, just about the only new stuff getting through to Sydney (and the Sydney Futurians) were gifts from Forry Ackerman!

On the quality of production that went into those opportunistic Australian SF pulps,  one author put it this way:  “Very often, when the editor (Innes) was running to a tight schedule he would have the artwork already done and hand you a picture, saying ‘Three thousand worlds and a title, old boy, and I do need them by Friday.” One picture he gave me didn’t allow a lot of scope as far as the title was concerned, I thought, so I called it ‘Jet-Bees of Planet J’. He took another look at the picture when I brought in the manuscript, then looked at the title again ‘See what you mean, old boy’. He nodded approval. “Sort of self-propelled by their own farts.’

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Took a little drive to Pickety Place in N.H., thanks to a gift certificate for lunch from Jesse and Angelica.  Thanks, guys!   This strange business is based on the illustrations of Grandma’s House in the 1948 edition of Little Red Riding Hood, drawn by Elizabeth Orton Jones.   Indeed, the illustrations look just like the actual building and the amazing old tree looming right alongside. [Read more →]

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]