Tagged: SF

Michael A. Burstein and wife welcome twin girls (UPDATED)

Michael A. Burstein and wife welcome twin girls (UPDATED)

Mazel tov! Reprinting the SFScope announcement:

Award-winning science fiction writer (and SF Scope contributor)
Michael A. Burstein and wife Nomi Burstein welcomed two twin children,
their first, to their family today.

The twins are fraternal, and both are girls. The first baby was born at 9:20AM, weighed 5 pounds 8 ounces, and is 17″ long. The second baby was born at 9:21AM,
weighed 5 pounds 3 ounces, and is 19″ long. The twins were delivered by
C-section at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. The attending
physician was Dr. Rafik Mansour. The delivery was originally scheduled
for this Thursday, but was moved up for medical reasons.

As befits a science-fiction couple, the Bursteins are banking the babies’ cord blood for the blood’s stem cells.

Per Modern Orthodox Jewish custom, the babies will not be named
until the parents attend a Torah service at their synagogue,
Kadimah-Toras Moshe in Brighton, which is currently planned for
Saturday 25 July.

Mother and babies are recovering in the hospital.

Congratulations, Bursteins!

UPDATE: Now with pictures!

And yes, that’s a copy of Sci-Fi Baby Names: 500 Out-of-This-World Baby Names from Anakin to Zardoz
.

Charles N. Brown, ‘Locus’ publisher, 1937-2009

Charles N. Brown, ‘Locus’ publisher, 1937-2009

Sadly, and yet appropriately, from Locus itself:

Locus
publisher, editor, and co-founder Charles N. Brown, 72, died peacefully
in his sleep July 12, 2009 on his way home from Readercon.

Charles
Nikki Brown was born June 24, 1937 in Brooklyn NY, where he grew up. He
attended the City College of New York, taking time off from 1956-59 to
serve in the US Navy, and finished his degree (BS in physics and
engineering) at night on the GI Bill while working as a junior engineer
in the ’60s. He married twice, to Marsha Elkin (1962-69), who helped
him start Locus, and to Dena Benatan (1970-77), who co-edited Locus
for many years while he worked full time. He moved to San Francisco in
1972, working as a nuclear engineer until becoming a full-time SF
editor in 1975. The Locus offices have been in Brown’s home in the Oakland hills since 1973.

Brown co-founded Locus
with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf as a one-sheet news fanzine in 1968,
originally created to help the Boston Science Fiction Group win its
Worldcon bid. Brown enjoyed editing Locus so much that he continued the magazine far beyond its original planned one-year run. Locus was nominated for its first Hugo Award in 1970, and Brown was a best fan writer nominee the same year. Locus won the first of its 29 Hugos in 1971.

During Brown’s long and illustrious career he was the first book reviewer for Asimov’s;
wrote the Best of the Year summary for Terry Carr’s annual anthologies
(1975-87); wrote numerous magazines and newspapers; edited several SF
anthologies; appeared on countless convention panels; was a frequent
Guest of Honor, speaker, and judge at writers’ seminars; and has been a
jury member for various major SF awards.

As per his wishes, Locus will continue to publish, with executive editor Liza Groen Trombi taking over as editor-in-chief with the August 2009 issue.

A complete obituary with tributes and a photo retrospective will appear in the August issue.

Charlie was a hoot and a half, always around taking an incriminating photo of you. It is nearly impossible to imagine science fiction as we know it without his contributions to the field. He will be missed.

BBC America goes HD July 20 with lots of SF, including ‘Torchwood: Children Of Earth’

BBC America goes HD July 20 with lots of SF, including ‘Torchwood: Children Of Earth’

BBC Worldwide will launch BBC America HD, the hi-def simulcast of BBC America, on July 20– and they’ll be rolling out a lot of science fiction during their first week:

  • The five part Torchwood: Children of Earth will debut July 20 at 9 PM and air Monday through Friday.
  • That Saturday, July 25, Primeval has its third season finale at 8 PM and Being Human premieres at 9 PM.
  • Then on Sunday, the first of the last four David Tennant Doctor Who specials runs at 8 PM.

So if you can’t make it to San Diego, you get a few things to compensate. And if you are going to San Diego, you better hope your hotel has HD and BBCA HD.

ComicMix Quick Picks – April 16, 2009

ComicMix Quick Picks – April 16, 2009

Today’s list of quick comic-related items that have piled up here…

  • After three decades, Starlog shifts to the Web exclusively. That link points to ComicMix’s Bob Greenberger, who put in his time there and recalls what it was like.
     
  • How does Kevin Smith get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, and pornography. Or something like that.
     
  • Our friends at FEARnet reported strong viewing numbers for Q1, up 72% over the same period in 2008 (48.5 million vs. 28.2 million). FEARnet views were also up for 13% from February 2009 (17.3 million vs. 15.2 million). Friday the 13th led the FEARnet movie pack with 1.9 million views, followed by The Descent with 1.6 million views and Already Dead with 1.5 million views.
     
  • Rorschach’s LiveJournal. Never compromise or use LOL.
     
  • io9 – Why Science Fiction Still Doesn’t Get Into The Inner Circle


  • SFWA Website Comes To Life, Starts Attacking Web Browsers: This story just makes me shake my head. You’d like to think that SF people are the most tech-savvy folks on the planet, and they so often aren’t.
     
  • "My wife’s consoling comment the other day — that I had lost all my credit cards and cash, but it could have been the Kindle…"
     
  • What the new Sorcerer Supreme needs to know.
     
  • And finally, I’m saddened to report on the passing of Judith Krug. A librarian by training, Judith became the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and a champion for the First Amendment whether it was confronting efforts to ban books in pubic libraries (including public school libraries), creating Banned Books Week, challenging efforts to force libraries to place clumsy, ineffective filters on public computers with internet access or critiquing the intrusive provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, especially as those provisions affected library patrons. I met her when we were co-plaintiffs in ACLU v. Reno, and she was classy as hell.

Any more? Consider this an open thread.

ComicMix QuickPicks – January 14, 2009

ComicMix QuickPicks – January 14, 2009

Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…

* The Simpsons are ramping up for their 20th Anniversary. Yes, you really are that old.

* J. Steven York finds a picture of a new species of flying Beetle.

* Ever wonder what Schroder was actually playing in the strips? It really was Beethoven.

* Whoopi Goldberg has returned to acting, working for a new SF/horror series run by our friends at FEAR.net.

* Sam Raimi wants Morbius in Spider-Man 4? Veeeeery interestink.

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.

Eliza Dushku Talks ‘Dollhouse’

Eliza Dushku Talks ‘Dollhouse’

Eliza Dushku spoke with Sci Fi Wire, beginning the publicity drum beat counting down to the February 13 debut of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.  As most know, Whedon and Dushku were having a meal when inspiration struck and he conceived the show for her on the spot.

The Dollhouse refers to a government operation where the assets have their memories wiped with new personalities imprinted.  The series picks up when Dushku’s character begins to recall her past “lives”.

"Last episode, they surgically implant cameras into my eyeballs and send me into a cult compound as a blind woman," Dushku told the press. "I was playing this tripped-out blind woman. Then I’m playing a 50-something-year-old woman in my own body in this next episode. There are just so many stories.”

The series is shooting 13 episodes including a reshot pilot and once shut down production for two weeks in order to let Whedon retool.  As a result, it has picked up the label of a “troubled” show before it airs.  On the other hand, the stylish promos have generated good word of mouth.

"I think [the way] he also originally had outlined it, we had the 13 episode pickup, but he wanted to gradually play out stories and do a lot of setups," she said. "[The network] wanted more payoffs early on to hook people, I think, so we made that adjustment. I think it’s been really successful. The scripts are tight, solid, fast, action, drama, comedy. It’s really great."

When asked about the Friday night “death” slot for SF on Fox, she scoffed and said, "Dude, we’re in the age of DVR. People watch what they want to watch."

DreamWorks To Do List Heavy on SF

DreamWorks To Do List Heavy on SF

DreamWorks outlined for The Hollywood Reporter which of the properties it retained after its divorce from Paramount are now on their “high-priority list”. Among them are a few genre properties including:

Cowboys and Aliens:
The adaptation of the Platinum Studios comic is still being written by  now executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci. Ron Howard’s Imagine is producing with Robert Downey, Jr. still attached to star.

Real Steel: A futuristic boxing movie written by Les Bohem (Dante’s Peak).

Button Man: The John Wagner and Arthur Ransom graphic novel is being adapted by screenwriter Hillary Seitz (Eagle Eye).

Hereafter: A supernatural-themed original screenplay by Peter Morgan with Clint Eastwood said to be interested in directing the story.

Another Martian Classic Reprinted

Another Martian Classic Reprinted

With a lot of attention focused on Pixar’s attempts to adapt John Carter of Mars to film, the small publisher Paizo has been exploring a different take on the Red Planet.  They announced a release of Otis Adelbert Kline’s The Swordsman of Mars. The 1933 tale was first serialized in Argosy Magazine, which also ran Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Under the Moons of Mars in 1912.

The serial was finally collected in hardcover by Avalon in 1960.  Later that year, Ace published a paperback edition as part of their growing SF line. According to Paizo, though, “entire chapters are missing, key character and location descriptions are completely absent, and the final product cuts a slash across the chest of Kline’s literary reputation that would be totally invisible to readers unable to assemble the original Argosy serial and compare the two texts.”

The publisher, under their Planet Stories imprint, is finally releasing the complete and unabridged tale of swords and monsters on a world not our own this month.
 

Review: ‘Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!’

 

Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!
By Howard Chaykin
Dynamic Forces, July 2008, $49.99

Science Fiction has never been quite as successful in comics form as it seemed it should have been. Oh, sure, there have been plenty of vaguely SFnal ideas and premises – from [[[Superman]]] to [[[Kamandi]]] to the [[[X-Men]]] to the [[[Ex-Mutants]]] – but they were rarely anything deeper than an end to the sentence “There’s this guy, see? and he’s….” One of the few counterexamples was Howard Chaykin’s [[[American Flagg!]]], starting in 1983 – that series had many of the usual flaws and unlikelihoods of near-future dystopias, but it also had a depth and texture to its world that was rare in comics SF (and never to be expected in even purely prose works, either).

American Flagg! suffered from Chaykin’s waning attention for a while, and then crashed and burned almost immediately after he finally left the series, with a cringe-making overly “sexy” storyline utterly overwritten by Alan Moore. American Flagg! limped from muddled storyline to confused characterization for a couple of years afterward – but the beginning, when Chaykin was fully energized by his new creation and the stories he was telling, is one of the best SF stories in American comics.

The series has never been collected well, though a few slim album-sized reprints were once available, and may be findable through used-book channels. This Dynamic Forces edition, reprinting the first fourteen issues of the series, is quite pricey. (Especially for a book with no page numbers, and one in which the pages are precisely the size of the original comics – not oversized, as those previous album reprints had been.) This book has a strong, thoughtful introduction by Michael Chabon – which has already appeared in his [[[Maps and Legends]]] collection, presumably due to the delay in the American Flagg! book – a gushing afterword by Jim Lee, and a new short story written and drawn by Chaykin.

(more…)

Happy Birthday: Julius Schwartz

Happy Birthday: Julius Schwartz

Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1915, Julius “Julie” Schwartz is considered one of the most influential editors in comic book history.

Schwartz got his start in science fiction and fantasy, publishing a fanzine called The Time Traveler in 1932 with his friends Mort Weisinger and Forrest J. Ackerman. He and Weisinger also formed Solar Sales Services, which represented H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester, and other popular SF authors.

In 1944, Bester introduced Schwartz to the people at DC Comics, who hired him as an editor. A few years later, Schwartz was put in charge of DC’s new SF comics, and in 1956 he added Showcase to his list of responsibilities. The first few issues of Showcase didn’t do particularly well, so Schwartz decided to bring back and revamp an old, Golden Age character—and thus the new Flash was born and the Silver Age of comics began.

In the 1960s, Schwartz began editing the Batman titles, and in 1971 he took over on Superman, helping to modernize both characters. Schwartz retired from DC in 1986 but continued to be active in fandom until shortly before his death in 2004.

Schwartz received many awards over the years, including an Alley, a Shazam, and an Inkpot. He was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1997. In 1998, Dragon-Con created the Julie Award for universal achievement in multiple genres. Schwartz presented the awards personally.