Tag: science fiction

2010
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ARTS

Controversy Erupts at Science Fiction World in China

Trouble at China’s largest (okay, the world’s largest) circulation SF magazine, where the editors have united to publish an “Open Letter of protest” against the editor in chief. Here’s the original:   Open Letter (in Chinese). I’ve translated the Youth Daily news article below: ** “Science Fiction World“ turns into a “pseudo-science farce” as editor’s collective seeks to “overthrow the president”** by: Li Fan  (Youth Daily) 2010-3-23 translated by Lex Berman China’s largest science fiction magazine Science Fiction World, has recently become wracked by infighting. On March 21, the magazine’s entire editorial staff published an open letter on the Internet accusing the publication’s editor-in-chief, Li Chang, of various offenses and seeking his removal from office.  Yesterday, it was learned from relevant channels that the unit in charge of  Science Fiction World (the Sichuan Province Science and Technology Association) has dispatched a team to investigate the sitation. The open letter claims to be written under the “duress of the last banner that can be raised before Science Fiction World ceases to exist.”  Among the accusations leveled at Li Chang were that after taking office he dropped relations with various authors and instead forced the magazine editors to write the stories themselves; he then demanded that the foreign language editors take on the task of translations into Chinese; and went so far as to make the art editors create the illustrations instead of hiring artists.  Also, for example, he interfered with the advertising to the point of replacing the magazine’s cover with an advertisement for a school.

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HUMAN BEINGS

Profiles of Science Fiction Brains

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

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ARTS

You lose track of time...

Yes, it’s been a strange week! But thanks to the Mr. Door Tree and his nice posting of Basil Wolverton classics, I think I’ve got my brain back in place.

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ARTS

New Sketches for Art Show 2010

Having fun preparing for this year’s Boskone Art Show. Of course it’s crazy to hang my crummy sketches alongside the great artists you will see there, but hey let’s face it, I’m not going to be quit

2009
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ARTS

The Illuminatus! Mystery of Carlos Victor

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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ARTS

The Moody Palettes of Lou Feck

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, yo

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ARTS

Thrills Down Under

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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ARTS

Clearing the Minefields of Self-Indoctrination

Clearing the Minefields of Self-Indoctrination 2009-08-06 Pleasantly surprised to discover Indoctrinaire, the first novel by Christopher Priest, a tale of strange foreboding and paranoia, wrapped up in altered states of consciousness and alternate realities. The protagonist, Dr. Wentik, finds himself forcibly recruited from his scientific research post beneath the South Pole, and whisked away to the Planalto District of Mato Grosso in Brazil. Both of these places are so far off the beaten track and outside of the ordinary world of human affairs that the novel begins with an eerie sense of dislocation, which is only accelerated into total disorientation as soon as Wentik begins to trek into the strangely deforested zone of Planalto. His guide, a tight-lipped man named Musgrove, shows signs of mental illness as the story progresses and Wentik finds himself an occupant of “the jail,” under interrogation by an equally opaque antagonist named Astourde.

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COSMOS

Readercon 2009: Apollo 11 and Science Fiction

Did SF become irrelevant after the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969? This panel explored the relationship between the Apollo program and SF, and the ways in which SF did or didn’t live up to its visionary potentials after manned space flight became a reality. Paul De Fillippo kicked things off by asking to what extent SF inspired the space program? And to what extent did the eventual breakdown of the manned space program affect SF?