A pop-culture giant has shuffled off this four-color coil. Adam West, who played the title role in the 1966 Batman, and later reprised the role in voice and physical form more than once, has died of leukaemia at the age of 88.
Keith R.A. DeCandido picked his five best bat-moments, including the Bat-usi:
the entire scene in the bar that leads up to Batman doing that magnificent dance in “Hi Diddle Riddle,” the first episode of Batman to air, is pretty much vintage West Batman. We start with him entering the discotheque and refusing the offer of a table, instead going to the bar because he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Reportedly, that scene was the one West read for his audition, and one of the reasons why he got the part was that he played that line 100% straight rather than wink at the camera or be a goof about it. Perhaps the best thing about West’s portrayal was that he took it completely seriously. He refused to stoop to the joke, which is why little kids (like me!) could watch the show unironically and view Batman as a hero who did good. We took him seriously as a hero because he took himself seriously as one. Even when it was totally ridiculous. Like trying to be inconspicuous while walking into a discotheque while wearing a brightly colored skintight outfit and a big blue cape. And dancing a silly dance, though the latter was after they put a mickey in his fresh-squeezed orange juice.
People are asked to bring along an SF&F novel/novella they enjoy, and tell us why they think it’s interesting. (Assume you have 5-7mins to convince us.) We will each choose one of the suggested works to read and report on at the March meeting.
Given the current state of the covid outbreak, the February meeting will be zoom only.
Critical Mass Feb 23, 2022 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne
James Bacon: Jo is quite Irish, I wondered if you were trying to bring an extra depth to this character as there was a lot to her history and the first comic was very intense, and what you were trying to do with her, was she your first comic book character?
N.K. Jemisin: She was first one I have wrote myself, I have been a comics fan for years, and I did the same thing with her character that I did with any character I would have written, which was to give her some depth, but I honestly felt that she was a bit shallow as there wasn’t time to really delve into her background or any of the other stuff that is gone on in her life. I was only really able to give a thin sketch of her, and I was a little kinda sad about that, so to hear that she has a lot of depth, great, I faked it [laughter] but I wanted her to be three dimensional, interesting, memorable, quirky, complicated, flawed, she’s an ex NYPD cop, I have a lot of feelings with a capital F about that and I wanted to not portray her as a one note thing, I wanted her to be layered. If she came across as complex and having some depth, then good, it means I did what I set out to do.
— On the film Blade Runner In fact, this is what links all the films I love the most: they manifest what I take to be a new cultural logic in SF. The genre has shifted from being a literature of ideas (books are good at ideas) to a literature of enduring, powerful and haunting visual images (films are poor at ideas, but very good at the poetry of beautiful images). This is what La Jetée, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stalker,Alien and The Matrix have in common – their gobsmacking visual aesthetic. But Blade Runner beats all of these. It is the most beautiful, the most haunting, the most visually perfect of all of them. It is Scott’s expert conjuring with near-palpable beams and shafts of light amongst the cluttered, smoky and misty darkness; the shadows blocking out a somatically believable city; the gorgeous design; the detail. — On Quantum Thief At the heart it’s a heist story: Jean le Flambeur is sprung from a deep space prison by the enigmatic warrior Mieli and her Banksish sentient spaceship Perhonen, in order to pull-off a complicated crime upon Mars. Meili is in the service of a mysterious, capricious goddess-like being, and the plot unwraps its several mysteries in a very satisfying manner. The Oubliette in particular is a splendid creation; not so much in terms of its far-future hardware as its social codes of privacy, guarded by information-exchange veils called ‘guevelots’, policed by ‘tzaddicks’ – and its currency, time, to be lavishly spent or carefully hoarded as citizens countdown towards a ‘death’ that reprocesses their consciousnesses into ‘Quiet’ machines that do all the hard areoforming and city maintenance work. There’s also a quick-witted Holmes-like youth, with a genius for solving crimes. — On Chris Priest’s The Islanders One of the things I loved about The Islanders is that pretty much all the Priestian fascinations and preoccupations are here: doubles; mirrors; dreams; stage magic; the unreliability and instability of narrative, and several intriguing and underplayed metafictional touches (a young [female] novelist writes fan letters to a tetchily unpredictable Kammeston; when her first novel is published she sends a copy to him. It is called The Affirmation). It coheres, or more precisely refuses quite to cohere, very stylishly indeed. It’s an archipelagic novel in more than one sense (always assuming that the word has more than one sense), formally embodying its scattered loosely connected strings of island subjects in loosely connected strings of narratives. There’s a distant family relationship with Borges, perhaps; or Ballard’s anthology of ‘condensed novels’, The Atrocity Exhibition.
Roberts, Adam. Sibilant Fricative: Essays and Reviews . Steel Quill Books.
Sibilant frictive is a collection of 40+ reviews/essays by Adam Roberts, collected in print in 2014. You may disagree with Roberts on some things, but you will find his comments interesting and worth reading.
One of Dune’s overarching concerns is to locate and explore a “Muslimness in time.” The novels fixate on change across time and space: How does a tradition adapt, or not, across centuries, environments, and societies? The novels interrogate this question through a range of Muslim approaches to it. They look to Muslim scholarly traditions, historical interpretations, and experiences as they shift from place to place and generation to generation. The saga finds answers in Muslim beliefs in the sanctity of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings; in Muslim practices of mysticism and experience as a response to legalism and scientism, or to the (orientalist) binary of reason against unthinking following; in a respect for other traditions that nevertheless preserves a unique commitment to the bespoke quality of Islam; and in Muslim narratives of political succession and revolutionary power.
The Magic and Mystery Bundle, curated by the Melissa Snark:
“A great fantasy story is, to my mind, about endless possibilities. If every author penned their tale according to a rigid set of guidelines, the genre would have all the flavor of stale saltines. A fantastical saga, a magical realm, a raven’s flight, a god of chaos sparks a fire in your imagination.
Magic and Mystery is a collection of ten books that touch on fantasy fiction’s stunning breadth and diversity, from cat assassins to faerie kings. A New Orleans haunted mansion and a talking cockroach—we have that, too. Our stories will seize and sweep you away.
Our featured charity for this bundle is the The Salish Sea School, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting local marine ecosystems and the education of future student leaders in marine conservation.”
Murray included some notes which may be of interest:
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Australian Science Fiction Fandom 1936 to 1960, with Leigh Edmonds
Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track:: Australian Science Fiction Fandom to Aussiecon – Part 1, 1936 to 1960
A Zoom videoconference with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss. FANAC Zoom series. No link as yet. To be provided.
December 4 (US) and December 5 (Australia), 2021 – 7PM Dec 4 EST, 4PM Dec 4 PST, 11AM Dec 5 Melbourne AU
Perry says, “Leigh is doing the talking, I’m just there to steer things along.”
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The White Library by Paul Voermans
Paul Voermans enjoyed his October Nova Mob discussion on The White Library so much that he later provided an article which I’ll circulate real soon now.
We recommend you contact your local library for them to buy the Gollancz hardcover. After all, the novel is set in Melbourne’s State Library and the narrative includes librarians. And it’s fun.
Here’s the link to the very reasonably-priced eBook:
Speaking of e-books, may I make an exception to the “no advertisements” guideline for these emails? This e-book bundle is for a short time only, it originates from the SFWA, and there’s some interesting writing:
The books in the bundle…
Received from Matthew Hughes, Canada’s version of Terry Dowling’s Jack Vance aspect.
“The professional association of science fiction and fantasy authors of America (SFWA) has launched a new StoryBundle – Magic and Mayhem – offering fourteen carefully chosen fantasy novels (one of them mine), that span the sub-genres of fantasy while showcasing magic-induced mayhem, from the hilarious to the horrible and everything in between.
“If you haven’t encountered StoryBundle before, it’s a cool way to snag a passel of great genre reading at a bargain price. And you’ll almost certainly discover some authors new to you that you’ll want to read more of.
The basic deal is US$5 for FOUR NOVELS in any ebook format you like, to read on your laptop, tablet, e-reader, or smartphone.
“But wait, there’s more! Boost your spending to US$15 and you get TEN MORE books. That’s FOURTEEN full-length novels for basically a buck a book. Each title in the Magic and Mayhem bundle has been curated by SFWA’s pros out of a slew of books that came in after a call for submissions.
“Some of the titles they particularly liked:
• Darkmage – ML Spencer’s award-winning debut novel filled with epic battles, flawed heroes, and a brutal struggle
• Playing with Fire – R.J. Blain’s snarky romantic comedy with a body count, featuring a fire-breathing unicorn on a mission of destruction
• Phaethon – Rachel Sharp’s tech fantasy that weaves computer hackers, faeries, and corporate greed into a twisted tale
• Ragnarok Unwound – Kristin Jacques’s story of a young woman tangled up in a prophecy that sets her off to save the world with the help of a brownie, a Valkyrie, and the goddess of death herself
• Cutie and the Beast – E.J. Russell’s novel pairing a former Queen’s Champion of Faerie’s Seelie Court with a cheeky yet adorable human temp worker, as they prove, once again, that when fae consort with humans, it never ends well
•And my own 9 Tales of Raffalon – Matthew Hughes’s intriguing mosaic novel combining nine stories of an enterprising thief as he grapples with crooked guild masters, ghosts, spies, ogres, and a talented amateur assassin
“All the books are DRM-free. You can email them to your friends. And you can give Magic and Mayhem as a gift to that guy who’s always asking you, “What’s so great about fantasy?”
“And you’ll be doing some good, supporting indie authors like me, plus part of the proceeds will go to the good works SFWA does, like helping out writers in need of health care and other worthwhile causes.
“It’s a limited time offer (ends around Nov 3rd), so better not wait to check it out:
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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