Category: Snippets

alchemy was once a cutting-edge science, one that well-respected men like Isaac Newton and Giordano Bruno thought would heal society’s political and religious rifts. Crowley’s new edition of the alchemical Wedding attempts to resituate it in these terms. Published during the year of the book’s 400th anniversary, with Gorey-like illustrations by Theo Fadel, The Chemical Wedding is living and breathing yet again, reopening a bizarre and understudied chapter in European history.
— Emily Nordling,  The Alchemy of SciFi: John Crowley’s New Telling of The Chemical Wedding book review at Tor.com

I know it was announced months ago at the Nebula Awards ceremony, but I just wanted to point out the well deserved win by George Miller and his team.

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation Winner: Mad Max: Fury Road, Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris

Other nominees:
Ex Machina, Written by Alex Garland
Inside Out, Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; Original Story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
Jessica Jones: AKA Smile, Teleplay by Scott Reynolds & Melissa Rosenberg; Story by Jamie King & Scott Reynolds
The Martian, Screenplay by Drew Goddard
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt

Details of the nominees and winners of the Nebulas at SFWA

Feet of Clay is the new production by the Unseen Theatre Company, another australian premiere of a Terry Pratchett Discworld story.

Runs at the Bakehouse, Wed to Sat at 7:30 until Nov 5th

Unlike the previous production, Wee Free Men, this is a more compact story, a who done it with murders and villainous plots— or more precisely, a how done it, as the head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Commander Sam Vimes (played by Mike Shaw), tries to figure out the connection between a puzzling series of murders and the attempted poisoning of the Patrician, ruler of the city. The familiar shape of the murder mystery setting makes for an exciting tale, even if you’re unfamiliar with the exotic setting in Discworld.

Along the way, we encounter the Dragon King of Arms in the heraldry shop (a nice performance as a haughty vampire by Belinda Spangenberg), with a suitable groan worth of puns in the coats of arms presented for our delight.

We also encounter a lost Golem, the Watch’s new dwarf Alchemist (someone’s got to do all the CSI forensic stuff, right?) — Cheery Littlebottom — played by Alycia Rabig in an awesome beard, with a fondness for sparkly earrings…

It turns out a lot is at stake, as Lord Vetinari (Danny Sag) is being slowly — but surely — poisoned, despite the best efforts of Vimes & the City Watch to protect him. If only they could figure out how the poison is being introduced…

Meanwhile, various guilds are plotting to reintroduce the monarchy to introduce stability in succession upon the patrician’s death.

Kahlia Tutty reprises her role as Angua, and Hugh O’Connor turns in a nice performance as Captain Carrot, to round out the capable City Watch team.

The set makes good use of the stage, with an elevated office for the Patrician (naturally) on one side, and a City Watch desk on the other side of the stage. Twin doors centre stage represent a couple of shop locations, and there’s room front stage for street scenes.

It’s a fun evening, running around 2 hours, including an intermission. 

Worth a look!

Our last discussion for the year (December is usually an expedition to a restaurant for food)! As usual, 7pm at kappys, 22Compton Street.

The Who

No-one has offered a topic, so I’m going to suggest members visit the ABC and have a look at the first two episodes of the new Dr Who spinoff, Class.
Episode 1: For Tonight We Might Die:
http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/class/ZW0907A001S00

Episode 2: The Coach With The Dragon Tattoo :
http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/class/ZW0907A002S00

Coal Hill School has become Coal Hill Academy, and we follow the misadventures of some students and their teacher (appropriately named, as she is rude and spikey), Miss Quill.

The What

As we have noted elsewhere, attendance at Critical Mass has been down this year (though the author sessions provoked some interest). We basically want to find out what we can do to attract more people: do we need to change the venue? time? format? content?; and what can we do to attract more people?

Feel free to answer the quiz we have sent out, or post a comment to this post.

 

 

While we’ve got a slowly growing mailing list (now up to 16 members), this hasn’t resulted in an increase in numbers attending the Critical Mass evenings.

We’ve been meeting regularly for over two decades, but it’s  not at all clear that there’s enough interest to continue regular meetings. The irony is, there’s more SF on TV, film and published in Australia than ever before. Why aren’t we getting the numbers for Critical Mass?

Is it the venue? We moved from the SA Writers Centre because the shrinking membership didn’t justify the annual fees. Our current venue is near the market, cosy and opens specially for us. People seem to like the steampunk coffee roaster, and the balcony venue. Is it too hard to find? Does the monthly gallery opening just down the road divert possible attendees?

Is it the time? We’ve settled on the first Wednesday of the month, but would it be better earlier in the week? Or would you prefer weekends?

Is it the speakers? We haven’t had many volunteers to deliver talks in the last two years; the largest audiences came for the three talks by authors. Would members prefer us to programme a series of speakers a yer in advance? Is the idea of preparing a 40 minute critical talk too daunting for newcomers? Should we run a few workshops on critical talks? Or should we go for 2 or 3 short (10 min) presentations followed by general discussion?

Should we cater for more diverse talks on comics, film, radio and TV as well as written SF? (We’ve had a diverse range in the last year, but this hasn’t lead to bigger audiences.)

is it too old-fashioned to insist on in-person attendance? Should we allow people to connect to talks on G+ or skype? Or at the least, allow our guest speaker to connect remotely via the net?

Perhaps we should just publish the talks a fortnight beforehand, and then meet to discuss them?

Is the problem that we have too low a profile, and might we be better off joining a larger group en masse and forming  a specialist subgroup?

 

 

A Night in the Lonesome October
is a delightful fantasy novel by Roger Zelazny published in 1993, near the end of his life. It was his last book, and I must shamefully admit that I hadn’t read it until recently. The story is narrated as a series of diary entries for the month of October by the dog, Snuff (bottom right on the cover), who is the animal companion of (we presume) Jack the Ripper.  It is set in an October where there is a full moon on Halloween, a time when the Elder Gods try to cross a portal into our universe.
A game is played out between the Openers and the Closers, who gather in the month of October near the location of the portal (the exact position of which must be calculated  during the month).
The cast of characters includes The Great Detective, the Count, the Good Doctor and his Mechanical Man, Larry Talbot, a Witch, a mad Pastor, a Russian Hermit, perhaps some Grave Robbers. As our hero interacts with the animal companions/familiars of the players, we learn more about the players and which side they’re on. A delightful Victorian gothic fantasy romp, gorgeously illustrated by Gahan Wilson, this is some of the best Zelazny has done. Worth buying just for the graveyard scene, where various players trade body parts — others, not their own.

Note that this year in Australia, Halloween will be the night of a Black Moon — the second new moon in a month!

Dimension X: Adventures in Time & Space is a compendium of a dozen episodes of the radio programmes, featuring dramatisations of classic SF stories from the 50s. It’s a nice clean recording, complete with newsbreaks such as the declaration of war between North and South Korea.

Worth a listen to realise how SF has grown, and how time-bound many SF stories have become. Includes some classics which have become clichés.

Contains: The Outer Limit, by Graham Doar; Jack Williamson’s With Folded Hands;  Report on the Barnhouse Effect by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr;  George Leffert’s No Contact; Frederick Brown’s Knock; Robert Bloch’s Almost Human; Murray Leinster’s The Lost Race; Donald A Wollheim’s The Embassy; Robert Heinlein’s The Green Hills of Earth;  an adaptation/preview of the George Pal film of Heinlein’s Destination Moon; Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains / Zero Hour;  Murray Leinster’s A Logic named Joe; Ray Bradbury’s Mars is Heaven; George Lefferts’ The Man in the Moon;  and Villiers Gerson’s Beyond Infinity.  In short, the first sixteen episodes of the show, originally broadcast from April to July, 1950. Listening to the series I can’t help noticing the underlying paranoia in many of the stories, possibly a result of the cold war. Despite that, it’s a good collection of stories.

A personal list for October 1st of SF films worth watching!

• Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
• Metropolis (1927, as restored)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The Man in the White Suit
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
• Fifth element (1997)
• War of the Worlds (Geo Pal, 1953)
• A Clockwork Orange (1971)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• District 9
• Charly (1968) (Flowers for Algernon)
• Alien (1979)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
• Forbidden Planet (1956)
• Dark City  (1998)
• A Scanner Darkly (2006)
• Minority Report (2002)
• Attack the Block (2011)
• Inception (2010)
• Dark Star (1975)
• Alphaville (1965)
• The Andromeda Strain (1971)
• The Time Machine (1960)

Rolling Stone recently published a list of their all-time best TV shows.

Just for fun, see if you can name these shows which are on the list.

Answers: Torchwood, AstroBoy, Firefly, Quatermass Experiment, Utopia, Star Trek Next Gen, Dollhouse, Black Mirror, Outer Limits (Demon with a Glass Hand),  Star Trek (The Trouble with Tribbles), Quatermass and the Pit, Orphan Black, X-Files, Fringe, Buffy, Dr Who, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (remake), The Prisoner