“Mr. Science Fiction”, who coined the term “Sci-Fi” and left his mark on the SF/horror genres, died yesterday. He was 92.
Category Archives: Literature
Barack Obama: More Leftist Dogma
Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech tonight. It was definitely a historic moment, all partisanship aside — and on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington address.
After acknowledging the moment, I listened to his speech. I can’t say that I agreed with it. For a man who has talked a big deal about “hope” and “change”, it turned out to be “more of the same” tired, re-hashed left-wing rhetoric: Government good. Free enterprise bad. Regulation good. Market forces bad. Cradle-to-grave socialism good. Liberty and self-determination bad. Class warfare good. Success and prosperity bad. Peace through weakness good. Peace through strength bad. Domestic oil bad. Blowing wind and sunshine up one’s buttocks good.
The speech was nothing but a rehash of “liberal” talking points, with a bit of John McCain-bashing thrown in.
I can’t bring myself to support or vote for Obama; it isn’t due to the color of his skin, but simply because of the content of his character. An Obama administration would not be a dream, but a nightmare.
Speaking of Senator McCain, here’s his take on The Sermon at The Temple:
“Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meager record of Barack Obama.
“When the temple comes down, the fireworks end and the words are over, the facts remain: Sen. Obama still has no record of bipartisanship, still opposes offshore drilling, still voted to raise taxes on those making just $42,000 per year and still voted against funds for American troops in harm’s way.
“The fact remains: Barack Obama is still not ready to be president.”
Well, the election is now Mac’s to lose win. He’s picked his VP candidate, and we’ll all know who he/she will be tomorrow morning. For the sake of the nation, let’s all hope he chose wisely.
Related: Zombie reports on the view outside Invesco Field prior to the coronation ceremony.
Related 2: Don Surber fact-checks Barackus Caesar.
Gordon Parks, R.I.P.
From ABC News.com
Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with “The Learning Tree” and the hit “Shaft,” died Tuesday, a family member said. He was 93.
Parks, who also wrote fiction and was an accomplished composer, died in New York, his nephew, Charles Parks, said in a telephone interview from Lawrence, Kan.
Related: IMDB Profile, Wikipedia Entry
Octavia Butler, R.I.P.
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Octavia E. Butler, considered the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, died after falling and striking her head on the cobbled walkway outside her home, a close friend said. She was 58.Butler was found outside her home in the north Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park after the accident Friday, and died the same day. She had suffered from high blood pressure and heart trouble and could only take a few steps without stopping for breath, said Leslie Howle, who knew Butler for two decades and works at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle.
Butler’s work wasn’t preoccupied with robots and ray guns, Howle said, but used the genre’s artistic freedom to explore race, poverty, politics, religion and human nature. [...]
Her first novel, “Kindred,” came out in 1979. It concerned a black woman who travels back in time to the South to save a white man. She went on to write about a dozen books, plus numerous essays and short stories. Her most recent work, “Fledgling,” a reinterpretation of the “Dracula” legend, was published last fall.
She won numerous awards, and in 1995 became the first science fiction writer granted a “genius” award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which paid $295,000 over five years. She served on the board of the Science Fiction Museum. [...]
“Mostly she just loved sitting down and writing,” [SF writer Peter Heck] said. “For being a black female growing up in Los Angeles in the ’60s, she was attracted to science fiction for the same reasons I was: It liberated her. She had a far-ranging imagination, and she was a treasure in our community.”
As a reader (and maybe someday a writer) of science fiction and fantasy, I had the opportunity to read “Kindred”, and I enjoyed it immensely. Butler will be missed, but she will never be forgotten.
Frank Kelly Freas, R.I.P.
Famed science fiction and fantasy illustrator Frank Kelly Freas died early today.
From his biography:
Recognized as the most prolific and popular Science Fiction artist worldwide, FRANK KELLY FREAS has illustrated stories by some of Science Fiction’s greatest writers: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson, and Frederik Pohl, to name a few. Nominated an unprecedented twenty times, Freas was the first to receive ten Hugo Awards (World Science Fiction “Oscars”) for achievement in the field as Best Professional Artist.He has been active in the Science Fiction field since 1950. In the course of his remarkable career, his endeavors have covered many areas including MAD Magazine covers from 1955 to 1962. An official NASA mission artist, his space posters hang in the Smithsonian. He was commissioned by the Skylab I astronauts to design their crew patch.
You can find his art on record and CD albums (for instance his cover for Queen’s first two million sale: News of the World, or on the cover of DC Comics’ 1992 STAR TREK ANNUAL. He painted beautiful women on the noses of World War II bombers, as well as portraits of five hundred saints for the Franciscans.
I had to opportunity to see Freas at past SF conventions and I’ve been a long-time admirer of his works. He will be missed by many in fandom.
Update: Freas was 82 at the time of his passing.
Freedom is Free…
At least for today, at your local comic book store.
Today is Free Comic Book Day. Follow the link to find out where you can get a free comic book — as well as see which new comics are worth buying.
The Book-Burning Firemen Among Us
Ray Bradbury (who recently celebrated his 83rd birthday) on the subject of censorship disguised as multiculturalism:
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmild teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my “Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” so it shapes “Zoot,” may the belt unravel and the pants fall.
(link via A Small Victory, by way of Joaane Jacobs and Hit & Run)