ALEXIAD (!7+=3!G) $2.00 February Has Come in Cold and Icy
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Vol. 13 No. 1 February 2014 ALEXIAD (!7+=3!G) $2.00 February has come in cold and icy. From the window it is Printed on March 6, 2014 beautiful. It is not so pretty when every step has to be examined. It Deadline is April 1, 2014 is not as bad as the huge ice storm of two years ago. Most of the ice is arranged in rough waves, not the slick mess that made sidewalks Reviewer’s Notes impassible even for cats. It still requires careful negotiation. The trip to the corner convinces me to take the bus and not try to walk to Does it ever seem like everyone else around you has a much bigger work. Winter is here in white fury. It is as far south as Atlanta, income and membership in some secret discount club? When I see co- Georgia, which was totally unprepared for snow. At least here we workers drive to work in SUVs and talk about their three-week have snowplows and salt. vacations in India or Peru, it’s discomfiting. — Lisa But . I have my own network. I have family across the country. I wish there were more fanzine fans, but the days of Degler (and doesn’t Table of Contents that take us back) ended fannish hospitality. Editorial. 1 One reason baby-care books boomed was that G.I. Joe and Rosie Reviewer’s Notes. 1 the Riveter, after their marriage, struck out and moved into Levittown, where they had neighbors, but no network. Instead of asking Grandma Coffee.. 6 why Junior was crying, they looked it up, in the book that said that Gotta Have Them All!. 7 crying was good natural exercise or the one that said that it was Super Bowl.. 6 traumatic. There were no connections. Winter Travels. 6 This was why Robert Bloch’s “A Way of Life” (Fantastic Universe, October 1956) was appealing; in a devastated world, the people with Book Reviews communications and connections were in a position where they could JTM Bagley, Spymaster. 5 take responsibility — and somebody had to do it. So Fandom ran the JTM Chadwick, The Forever Engine. 3 world. That it would more likely be like Ian Watson’s “The World JTM Green, Murder in the High Himalaya.. 4 Science Fiction Convention of 2080" (F&SF, October 1980) , a JTM Hotta, Japan 1941.. 5 marginal group surviving, but barely, in a marginal world, is a bitter JTM Jarvis, Chasing Shackleton. 4 realism. But even Watson’s Fans had connections and community. JTM Resnick, The Doctor and the Dinosaurs.. 3 It has been longer since Watson’s story than between that and WW Small, The Avenging Ray. 12 Bloch’s story. There have been changes. What connections, what community is there in this fandom of consumers, not participants? Video Review JTM Wholock. 5 Next January, I will be eligible to retire from work. Eligible is not the same as “able”, and with expenses (heating bills of $$$) as they are Con Reports it’s not going to happen. Such are the confines on my congoing. SB HispaCon XXXI. 10 RSK LosCon 40.. 10 I’ve seen recommendation lists for the Hugo nominations. Lists, I’ve seen, the books recommended I haven’t. So often, the Fanzines Received. 13 recommended books are obscure volumes from small or foreign presses. Has real science fiction become such a marginal market that Random Jottings.. 2 it now can only be published a step above self-publishing? As for the Fan Hugos, there is hope now, but again, rhe realization Letters.. 14 . how many minor pros with blogs are out there, rallying the Sheryl A. Birkhead, Dainis Bisenieks, Sue Burke, Brad W. Foster, followers to give them an award? Alexis A. Gilliland, Jerry Kaufman, Robert S. Kennedy, Evelyn Leeper, Rodney Leighton, Murray Moore, William H. Patterson, But it looks as if there will be some sort of convention round this Lloyd Penney, AL du Pisani, George W. Price, John Purcell, Darrell year; ConCave in Bowling Green in February (assuming the convention Schweitzer, Joy V. Smith, Milt Stevens, Jim Stumm, R-Laurraine hotel doesn’t fall into a sinkhole), Holmes, Doyle, and Friends in Tutihasi, Taras Wolansky Dayton in March, ConGlomeration in Louisville in April. Then NASFiC n Detroit in July. Comments are by JTM, LTM, or Grant. A small annoyance is that the announced dates for the DC in 2017 bid conflict with the solar eclipse. I just can’t drive seven hundred Trivia:.. 30 miles in a day any more, and flying woutd take about as much out of Art: me. Mike Glyer wanted to have a NASFiC bid in Nashville (near the Sheryl Birkhead. 14, 29 fringe of the eclipse) but Hopkinsville (at the greatest totality) is better Paul Gadzikowski.. 30 sited, and the con can share with the Little Green Men Festival. Hey, Alexis A. Gilliland. 5, 6, 13, 28 it worked for Ray Palmer. Trinlay Khadro. 2 — Joe Marc Schirmeister.. 3, 12 Page 2 February 2014 Alexiad the temperature is -100EF or lower, the memorise have been downloaded into a robotic RANDOM JOTTINGS winterer-overers at the Amundsen-Scott Station humaniform body with human feelings. The by Joe will join this exclusive group. Candidates sit in thousand years have seen a war with her the sauna, which is at 200E F, to warm up, then abductors that led to their annihilation, the on signal, don rubber boots and run out onto the destruction of Earth, the modification of Polar plateau, otherwise naked, to be humanity, and the formation of a multi-species photographed by the Ceremonial South Pole. multi-planetary government. It’s good to know some traditions are kept. Jansen is involved in finding the remnants of the abductors’ technology, terrorism, dealing In the Kindle department, Over the Wine- with the question of identity, and other changes Dark Seas (2001, 2013) by Harry “H. N. in the nature of humanity. Turteltaub” Turtledove, the first mercantile Then, in the third volume, a group of adventure of the Rhodians Menedemos and terrorists use the alien technology to develop . Sostratos, is now available for Kindle (Amazon . you guessed it, zombies. So much for that. Digital Services, $5.99). Also, the third book in David Row’s The Whale Has Wings series, The MONARCHIST NEWS Whale Has Wings Volume 3 — Holding the Barrier is now available (2013, Amazon Digital Sir Shao I-fu, CBE [pinyin: Shao Yifu], Ann Siefker, Martin Arbagi, and others of Services; $3.99). Volumes 1 and 2 were died in Hong Kong on January 7, 2014. Born the Agra Treasurers have pledged to continue reviewed in Alexiad V. 12 #3. on the fourteenth day of the tenth month of the the Sherlockian tradition in Dayton with a new year of the Fire Goat of the 77th Cycle convention, “Holmes, Doyle, & Friends” in I happened to run across Of Dice and Men: [November 23, 1907] in Ningpo, Chekiang Dayton on March 14-15, 2014, at the Airport The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The Province [pinyin; Ningbo, Zhejiang], Shao was Clarion Inn at 10 Rockridge Road, People Who Play It (2013) by David M. Ewell. educated in Shanghai. He joined with his two Englewood, Ohio. Membership is $60 to Ann The book is somewhat haphazard, as Ewell has brothers in Singapore to create Unique Film Siefker, 25 Macready Avenue, Dayton, OH chosen to intersperse his history of the Productions, which later became Shaw 45404-2104 ([email protected]), check development of Dungerons & Dragons ™ with Brothers Studio, one of the leading movie and payable to the Agra Treasurers. There’s not a chapters on his own personal experiences with television production companies in the Sinic moment to lose! Thanks to Dan Andriacco the game. For those of us who aren’t intimately world., responsible for the production and and his blog, “Dan Andriacco’s Baker Street involved with the convoluted corporate history distribution of many martial arts and fantasy Beat”, for the news. of the game, and how it went from nothingness films Shao was made CBE in 1974 and a http://bakerstreetbeat.blogspot.com/ to boom to bust to redevelopment to persistence, knight in 1977. the events described here are an intriguing proof He is better known as Sir Run Run Shaw. The Martin 5 Theater in Hopkinsville was of Moist von Lipwig’s observation in Going originally a single-screen, in the shopping mall Postal (2009) on how the people who develop a And as year follows year, there. That was where I saw The Wind and new concept so often lack the business skills to More old men disappear, the Lion on my twenty-first birthday. They manage it. Someday no one will march there moved into a separate structure behind the Incidentally, while shopping at Barnes and at all. mall with five screens. Just before my fifty- Noble the other day, we happened to find the Report by Joseph T Major ninth birthday, it closed. 2010 adaptation of Going Postal on DVD. “It is the wind that passes, but the sea Captain Józef Kowalski of the Polish army remains.” It is reported that a new adaptation of 1984 died December 7, 2013. Kapitan Kowalksi is in development. The movie will be retitled was the oldest man in Europe at the time of his Frederick Forsyth’s latest, The Kill List Equals, star Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult, death (but not the oldest person), and the last (2013), features the hunting-down of the and be a romance. The director is Drake survivor of the Polish-Soviet War.