Saturday, July 11, 2015
Patrick Rothfuss Confirms Bidding War For The Name of the Wind
Earlier today the book appeared on the "11 Best Fantasy Series You've Probably Never Heard Of" post. Apparently Hollywood has heard of it: Patrick Rothfuss Confirms Bidding War For The Name of the Wind
BOLO for Margaret Hamilton
SFGate: GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. (AP) — An anonymous donor has offered a $1 million reward for credible information leading to the pair of Judy Garland's sequined, ruby red slippers stolen from a museum in her Minnesota hometown.
Hat tip to Art Scott.
Hat tip to Art Scott.
A Message from eBay
Or not. I think this one just might be spam:
Dear eBay customer,
we've got some problems with our database so we would like you to verify your identity.
To do that click on the attachment below, fill out the formular and click on "Verify".
Dear eBay customer,
we've got some problems with our database so we would like you to verify your identity.
To do that click on the attachment below, fill out the formular and click on "Verify".
Roger Rees, R. I. P.
Deadline: Roger Rees, who won Olivier and Tony awards in the early 1980s for his performance as the title character in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, died Friday in New York. The Welsh-born actor, widely known for his recurring roles on Cheers and The West Wing, was 71. He had worked until just weeks ago, when declining health forced him to withdraw from his final role opposite Chita Rivera on Broadway in John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical The Visit. Cause of death has not been reported other than to say that it came after a brief illness.
Friday, July 10, 2015
First It was the Thin Mints Melee
Woman pulls knife on teenagers outside a Taco Bell: We're told Amber Henson recently became upset inside a Taco Bell, because their Wi-Fi wasn't working.
Omar Sharif, R. I. P.
News from The Associated Press: CAIRO (AP) -- Omar Sharif, the Egyptian-born actor who soared to international stardom in two David Lean epics, "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago," has died. He was 83.
In That Case, Sir, You Are Free to Go
US MARSHALS EMPLOYEE CAUGHT HAVING SEX ON COURTHOUSE ROOF: Pane said the Marshals Service is confident that the security integrity of the courthouse is intact.
FFB: Star Science Fiction No. 2 -- Fredrik Pohl, Editor
I picked up this 1953 anthology to read a story or two and found myself zipping right through it. It's the Good Old Stuff, as you can see from the names of the authors on the cover. I'll put the complete ToC down below.You're probably familiar with some of the stories already, certainly with "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby, which became more famous as a Twilight Zone episode than it did as a story.
Alfred Bester's "Disappearing Act" could have been written last week, it seems to me. It's a commentary on war and security that would fit right into today's world.
Theodore Sturgeon's "The Clinic" is about love, as are a lot of Sturgeon's stories, and as in many of them, it's a somewhat different kind of love. I may have said before that of all the authors we met at various conventions, the one who impressed Judy the most was Sturgeon. She must have seen in him something of the quality of stories like this.
I'm not going to say more about these stories, except that they range from the competent to the very good. Nothing classic, but everything entertaining and professional. I'll just mention that Richard Wilson's story reminded me very much of Clifford D. Simak, and if someone had told me that Simak wrote it, I'd probably have believed it.
Pohl's introductions to the stories are just as interesting as the stories themselves, and nearly every one of them told me something I didn't know about the author. If you run across a copy of this book, grab it. Or buy a copy. Cheap ones abound on the Internet.
Disappearing Act by Alfred Bester
The Clinic by Theodore Sturgeon
The Congruent People by Algis Budrys
Critical Factor by Hal Clement
It's a Good Life by Jerome Bixby
A Pound of Cure by Lester del Rey
The Purple Fields by Robert Crane
F Y I by James Blish
Conquest by Anthony Boucher
Hormones by Fletcher Pratt
The Odor of Thought by Robert Sheckley
The Happiest Creature by Jack Williamson
The Remorseful by C.M. Kornbluth
Friend of the Family by Richard Wilson
Thursday, July 09, 2015
Ken Stabler, R. I. P.
Ultimate Texans: Ken Stabler, who led the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl victory and was the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in 1974, has died as a result of complications from colon cancer. He was 69.
Paradise Sky -- Joe R. Lansdale
Once upon a time, back in the early '80s, a group of us at AggieCon would sit on some uncomfortable couches in a second-floor hallway in the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University and talk into the wee hours of the morning. We were a lot younger then. The group wasn't always the same, but a hardy few were nearly always there: Judy and I, Joe Lansdale, Scott Cupp, Neal Barrett, Jr., Henry Melton, Lewis Shiner, Tom Knowles, and others I'm probably forgetting. We talked about books and writing and writers and movies and TV shows and anything else that came to mind. One night Joe mentioned that he'd really like to write a book about Deadwood Dick.
Now and then he'd mention that idea again over the years, and he even got to the point of suggesting it to editors, who weren't enamored of the idea. Now, however, thirty years or so on down the road, Joe's in the position of being able to sell pretty much whatever he writes, and he's produced an epic-length novel on the topic that's been dear to his heart for so long, the tale of how a young black man named Willie Jackson became Deadwood Dick, the legendary shootist and hero of a series of pulp novels that stretched the truth a might.
What we get in Paradise Sky is supposedly the true story, as told by Deadwood Dick, himself. Or as told by him as filtered through the imagination of Joe R. Lansdale, which probably makes it a better tale.
Willie Jackson has to leave home suddenly because he makes the mistake of looking at a white woman's fully clothed behind as she's hanging out the wash. Her husband takes offense, and before long Willie's father and a pig are killed, the house is burned, and Willie's on the run. He's taken in by a kindly man who doesn't mind that Willie's black, and he learns a lot before his nemesis comes calling again. And in fact, that's the overarching story in the novel. Throughout his many adventures (in the army, fighting Indians, living in Deadwood, becoming a marshal and working with Hanging Judge Parker, falling in love, and so on), Willie's never free of the threat from the man who's out to kill him.
Everything that Willie (aka Nat Love, aka Deadwood Dick) relates is replete with Lansdale's usual storytelling zest and energy, and as always in a Lansdale novel there are laughs and violence, often on the same page. There are bits that are pure Lansdale. For example when a preacher is listing his sins for Willie, he says that "I actually did service a goat once." Nat responds, "Did you and the goat write?" The preacher says, "No. But we parted friends." Great stuff.
No Comment Department
The A.V. Club: PewDiePie, a YouTube star who records his reactions to playing video games for a living, made about $7.4 million in revenue last year. So, let’s all take a moment and congratulate ourselves on all the years of hard work we’ve put into our careers, because PewDiePie took a nap today, played some Arkham Knight, and likely raked in more from that than we will all year.
Direct-to-Video Movie Quiz
Direct-to-Video Movie Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of the Direct-to-Video Vehicles of Yesterday’s Movie Stars!
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
“‘Black Rock:’ The Making and Unmaking of the Social World”
“‘Black Rock:’ The Making and Unmaking of the Social World” by Steven Gore | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Yesterday EQMM’s August 2015 issue went on sale. It contains the first EQMM story by Steven Gore, private investigator, short-story writer, and author of six crime novels (the most recent of which is February 2015’s Night Is the Hunter). Steven posted on this site on March 11, 2015. He returns today with some ideas related to “Black Rock,” his new EQMM story.—Janet Hutchings
First It was the Thin Mints Melee
KOMO News: King County prosecutors claim Michael Langley stabbed at another man after his friend lost a $1 bet on a street corner rock-paper-scissors match.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
Gator Update (When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Edition )
Houston Chronicle: ORANGE - A customer at a marina here who only identified himself as "Bear," on Monday said he shot and killed an 11-foot alligator he believed was involved in Friday's deadly attack on an Orange man.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Return to Pal-ul-don -- Will Murray
Having enjoyed Will Murray's novels that continue the adventures of Doc Savage, I was pretty sure I couldn't go wrong with his new Tarzan adventure, Return to Pal-ul-don. And I was right. It's been a long time since I read Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible, and I didn't reread the former in preparation for this book, like James Reasoner did, but that turned out to be okay. You don't really have to remember the earlier stories about Pal-ul-don to appreciate this one. Besides, it's surprising how some of the old memories come back as soon as you read the words "Ho-don" and "Waz-don."[Nostalgic aside: I read the Tarzan books in the old wartime G&D editions, passed on to me by my cousins Crider King and Billy King, without their dust jackets. The paper in those editions was some of the most acidic ever produced, and now (yes, I still have them) the pages are so dark that it's hard to read the text.]
In Return to Pal-ul-don, set during WWII, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, is given the job of locating a missing British spy who has information vital to the cause. The spy is missing in Africa, and Clayton must locate the missing agent, code-named Ilex. Piloting a P-40 Tomahawk, Clayton is knocked out of the air after a fight with several pteranodons and finds himself once more in the mysterious Pal-ul-don, where evolution hasn't operated as it has in the rest of the world. Right away he gets into a fight with a croc, which naturally sold me on the book right there, and before long John Clayton becomes once again Tarzan the Terrible, as he must in order to survive.
Also stuck in the valley is a perfectly normal Tantor, the elephant, whose life Tarzan saves from the croc. As a result of his encounter, Tantor is named Torn Ear and becomes an entertaining character in his own right. Another being Tarzan encounters is the furry Mu-bu-tan, a human-like member of the tailed Waz-ho-don. The villains are the spider people, who are out to capture and/or kill just about everybody.
This is a capture/escape/pursuit novel, and James Reasoner mentions this pattern as being prominent in Tarzan the Untamed. There's a bit too much of that here for my taste, but there's adventure aplenty, no question of that.
I've read a number of Tarzan pastiches, including books by Joe Lansdale (working from a Burroughs fragment), Philip Jose Farmer, and Fritz Leiber. Of that group, Murray does the best job of capturing the Burroughs style, or so it seems to me after all these years. There were many reminders of familiar phrases and characters. You can be the judge of that for yourself if you read the book, and I certainly recommend it for fans of Tarzan. You get non-stop action, interesting new twists on the inhabitants of Pal-ul-don, and a fully realized Tarzan the Terrible. What's not to like?
John A. Williams, R. I. P.
he New York Times: John A. Williams, a writer whose exploration of black identity, notably in the 1967 novel “The Man Who Cried I Am,” established him as one of the bright lights in what he liked to call “the second Harlem Renaissance,” and who caused a furor with an unflattering biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Friday in a veterans’ home in Paramus, N.J. He was 89.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Overlooked Movies -- Destination Moon
This little essay first appeared in a somewhat different form back in February 2011.
I've written before about how and when I became an SF fan, but it's something I've never been able to pin down exactly. I do know for sure that Destination Moon had a lot to do with it. The movie came out when I nine years old, and I'd been tremendously excited about it for a good while before it finally made it to the big screen of the Mexia Theatre about two-and-a-half months after its release.
One reason for my excitement must have been photographs published in Life. My grandmother was a subscriber to Life, and since she lived only a couple of blocks away, I visited her several times a week. One thing I always did was read the latest issue of the magazine, and the photos from Destination Moon got me all worked up. I could hardly wait for the movie to appear. When It finally did show up, I was there, and I went back to see it again before it left town.
Another reason I was eager to see it was the tie-in comic book, the cover of which is up top on the left. You can read the whole comic book, which has some B&W stills from the movie, right here. This movie was much talked about in my family, and my brother, who would have been about four at the time of its release, had trouble pronouncing the title. I think he believed it was Damnation Moon, but he couldn't say that, either. He pronounced it something like Daminigion Moon.
Robert A. Heinlein contributed to the script, as you'll see if you check out the comic book, though I didn't know who he was at the time and didn't find out until a few years later (1952 or '53), when I read Rocketship Galileo, a novel that has some similarities to the movie.
Even 60 years later, I have vivid memories of the movie itself and of specific scenes. An audience today would probably think it was corny (and it was), but I'd probably still love it. If you want to see the whole thing, it's available on YouTube.
Monday, July 06, 2015
Amanda Peterson, R. I. P.
NY Daily News: “Can’t Buy Me Love” star Amanda Peterson was found dead in her Colorado home Sunday, a tragic end for a former actress once considered a major up-and-comer in Hollywood, TMZ is reporting.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
I For One Welcome Our New Ursine Overlords
StarTribune.com: A grizzly bear at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley picked up a basketball-sized rock with both front paws Monday morning and repeatedly slammed it into a pane of glass, shattering the barrier as startled patrons stood on the other side.
Hat tip to Steve Stilwell.
Hat tip to Steve Stilwell.
Jerry Weintraub, R. I. P.
Variety: Jerry Weintraub, the colorful and controversial producer whose films included “Nashville,” “Diner,” “The Karate Kid” and the trio of “Ocean’s Eleven” films, died Monday in Palm Springs. He was 77. He had been in poor health recently.
Selena -- Greg Barth
Selena says she's five feet, four inches tall and weighs 98 pounds. She's whore and a functional alcoholic. After one wild night she picks up what she thinks is a CD because she likes the artist. It's not a CD, though, and as a result of her picking it up, some very bad men do some very bad things to her.This, as it turns out, is a very bad mistake. After Selena reconnects with her father and picks up a couple of shotguns, revenge happens. Not the mild kind of revenge. The extra-violent kind. The shotguns and machetes kind.
Selena is a novel composed of three connected novellas, and it's as sex-filled, blood-soaked, and violent as anything I've read long time. It's like the wildest of the men's adventure novels of the '70s, updated for the new millennium. Definitely not for the faint of heart.
Publishers Weekly Review of Between the Living and the Dead
Burt Shavitz, R. I. P.
Daily Mail Online: The reclusive beekeeper who co-founded Burt's Bees - and whose face and wild beard appeared on labels for the natural cosmetics - died on Sunday at the age of 80.
Forgotten Books and Magazines
The Omnibus Volumes of James H. Schmitz
And don't miss this Retro Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1952: A Retro-Review
Or this review of a classic Keith Laumer novel: Vintage Treasures: Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer
And don't miss this Retro Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1952: A Retro-Review
Or this review of a classic Keith Laumer novel: Vintage Treasures: Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer
Sunday, July 05, 2015
Good News for Texas
The Texas Tribune: The San Antonio Missions, the Alamo and other historic Texas shrines, have attained the status of other internationally recognized landmarks such as the Taj Mahal and the Great Barrier Reef.
. . . .
The Texas shrines are the twenty-third World Historic Site in the United States, including landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall. In addition to the Alamo, the shrines include missions at Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan and Espada, all in San Antonio.
. . . .
The Texas shrines are the twenty-third World Historic Site in the United States, including landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall. In addition to the Alamo, the shrines include missions at Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan and Espada, all in San Antonio.
The Great Texas Treasury Raid
The Great Texas Treasury Raid: Rebel bandits steal millions during the post-Civil War havoc.
Southern Discomfort: Tumultuous Literature set in the American South.
AbeBooks: Southern Discomfort: Tumultuous Literature set in the American South.: The American South offers famous food, memorable music and honest hospitality, but why do so many authors dwell on the dark side of this region? Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston, Alex Haley’s Roots and The Color Purple by Alice Walker are acclaimed, but harrowing. Discrimination of all kinds, voodoo and other black arts, violence and murder, incest and rape – you will find them all prominently featured in Southern-themed literature.
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