Over two weeks, I’ve had the two most amazing cinematic experiences in my life. Neither of those are over-selling it. They were amazing evenings and I am so happy I got to go through them. Let’s start with Cinequest. It’s a film festival. One of the best in the world from folks that I talk to, and every year, they have a silent film or two. We’re lucky enough to have folks like Dennis James, perhaps the world’s finest cinema organist, around. I’ve been to all but two of the silents Cinequest has shown, and this year they chose F.W. Murnau’s Faust. I’d seen it, at least part of it, and I knew I had to get a look at it on the big screen with the Mighty Wurlitzer. Only there was somethign else. Lightning. Don Buchla is an inventor. He’s also a musical genius. His work has gone from early analog set-ups to incredible MIDI controllers. He invented a series of devices that were obviously Theremin-inspired. The Lightning sticks are very impressive, the sticks can be programmed with a series of sounds and their position in relation to a central stand. It’s amazing, and I’d never gotten a chance to watch it in action. And Mark Goldstein, a local electronic musical legend, would be playing the Lightning along with Dennis James on the console... and the THEREMIN! I love the Theremin. In fact, you should listen to the theme Song to Drink Tank 300 at http://johnny- eponymous.podbean.com/2011/12/01/theme-song-to-the-drink-tank-300/. It’s Unwoman and my friend Heather at their finest with the Theremin. So, Mark and Dennis were playing along with Faust, and as always Jason Wiener and our buddy Phil had front-row seats. The film started and, from the first notes of the Wurlitzer, I was entranced. Sitting in the front row, you can see down into the pit as well as seeing all the screen at the California Theatre. I split my time between being tied into the film and being tied into the motions of the musicians in the pit. The two of them created an amazing soundscape, and the story of Faust and in particular the cinematography was amazing. It was incredible. The film made me go through a series of emotions, but most importanly, it was incredible to see how the music and the film played with each other. The most important thing was that the guys were actually watchign the movie. That made everything so awesome. We watched the film from as close as we could, felt the wind from the pipes and could see how Mark played the Lightning sticks, but beyond the entire intellectual event, there was some magic in that old Arts-and-Craft theatre we found. After The End, we gave an immediate standing ovation. I think Jason, Phil and I literally jumped to our feet. It was amaz- ing. Perhaps the best part of the film was the over-the-top (even for the silent era) performance of Emil Jannings. The man who would win the first Oscar ever awarded but in a helluva fine per- formance in a film by one of the three biggest names of Silent Di- rection (along with Von Stroheim and Griffith). The entire presen- tation was incredible and then I headed home and got a good night’s sleep and realised that it was a film that you have to dis- sect into pieces. Murnau’s direc- tion, the performances and the music all need their own disec- tion. I’ll have to buy the DVD. and everything I can read on it. The biggest thing for Film Geeks of 2012 had to be the debut of the 5.5 hour long version of Abel Gance’s Napoleon. It was a part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival programme in the off- season at the beautiful Art Deco Paramount The- atre in Oakland. When it was announced, dozens of tickets flew off the shelf for 40 or 50 dollars a piece. Later, when you add in the Ticketmaster fees, and an increase in prices, the tickets ended up in teh range of 90 to 130 dollars! I was lucky; Jason got the tickets for fifty bucks. Fifty bucks, front row. Now, Napoleon hasn’t been shown at all in teh US since 1981 when they toured it around the world, and this version was first shown in 2005 in the UK. The man in charge was Kevin Brownlow. Let me talk about him for a moment. If there is a man who deserves an Oscar for being the greatest film historian who has ever lived, it is Kevin Brownlow. He deserves it so much, in fact, that he DOES have an Oscar (I believe technically it’s an Academy Governor’s Award) for his work documenting and preserving the films of the silent era. His life’s work has been assembling, perserv- ing and ocassionally presenting Abel Gance’s mas- terpiece. As time has gone by, many of the classic silents have lost a lot of their material. Metropolis is the ultimate example. Less than half of the original existed in a presentable form less than 10 years ago, and now, after the discovery of a much longer print, it’s as near-complete as you’ll ever find. Many films were cut down for release in foreign countries, typically American releases of foreign films were much shorter. Here, Napoleon is as long as it is likely to ever be again: fives, thirty-two minutes. Napoleon is, without doubt, the longest of all the surviving silent films, but it’s not just its length that makes Napoleon impressive. It’s the depth of innovation. The film was made in 1927, not much more than a year before the Sound Era would begin. At that point, many films were still shooting very simply, largely locked-down cameras, sometimes not even moviing within a scene. Gance would have none of that. In fact, I would argue that Gance might have over done it a bit in the camera movements. pans, turns, a swish or two, at one point there’s a party going on and it seems to have been shot using a camera on a swing. I think there were a couple of jib shots, too! Everything that would identify the MTV Gerenation of film shooting was there. All of it. It’s amazing that films like Strike and Battleship Potempkin often get pointed to as the films that defined modern editing (they did!), but I’d argue that modern shooting was defined by Napoleon. There was extensive use of tinting, a practice that was HUGE in the pre-1930s era of film. Many classics widely used tints to give their films some color well before the two-strip Technicolor technique started to be used. Here, the tinting is subtle, but intelligently used. I knew the climax was here when the screens were tinted Blue on the right, white in teh middle, and red on the left. Oh yeah, I also meant screens. Three of ‘em. You see, Gance shot the less half-hour or so in a format called Polyvision. Here, Gance used three cam- eras to capture three images. Some of them he tried to make into one sweeping vista, not entirely successfully, but the entire effect, sitting right there in the front row, was amazing. He also used the three screens to show different images and moments. That was the most effective use of the technique as you weren’t trying to see if the edges lined up. The effect of the process is that it overwhelms you and, especially if you’re sitting where we were, it forces you to move your attention. It makes it less about a performance and more about a scene. Napoleon had out-grown a single actor. It had become something that could only be experienced across three screens. Now, with all this talk of the techniques, you may think that this was a movie without a story. It was no such thing. The movie starts out with a truly magnificent openign segment. Little Napoleon Buenoparte is at school and there’s a giant snowball fight. It’s rough going as his two rivals are together on the other side. Here, he shows early hints of his own genius and wrath. After getting hit with a snowball with a rock in it, he goes and beats the tar out of his rivals and then leads his fort to a charging victory. The kid who played Little Nap was just about perfect. He had the look of Napoleon, along with a great amount of poise. I was surprised to see that he was 17 when they shot it as he looked no more than 12 or so. It was one of the best young actor performances I’ve ever seen in a silent, an era known for its youth performances. That sequence was like the entire movie in a single point: fun, funny, sweeping, powerful, multiple layers of story going on and a powerful moving camera. The action is big, the acting is excellent and when it moves from teh ‘battlefield’ to the dorms, it shows Napoleon’s temper and strength. Very impressive. It’s also there that we are introduced to Napoleon’s pet eagle. It plays an important part throughout the film, and it REALLY made Jason want a pet eagle. I didn’t have the heart to try and talk him out of it. The funny thing is stuff like montage and well-placed graphics all power the film as much as the perfor- mances, but the most powerful moments of the film are the stares of the star, adult Napoleon, Albert Dieudonné. The secret of the film is that Gance, an actor, understood the value of a stare, a look, a moment. This is obviously an actor who understood what it takes to make a film that is powered by the performance, and then he did somethign very intelligent: he went big on every- thing else. That is the sign of a smart di- rector and an absolute genius. I haven’t seen Abel Gance’s other masterpiece, J’Accuse, but I have seen Austerlitz, an- other Napoleon movie and it had many markings of a film made by an actor who just flat-out gets how movies are made. Napoleon shows all this in spades. Almost everyone was there. I personally saw Stephen Toblowski (Ned Ryerson from Groundhog’s Day), talked to Leonard Maltin briefly, of course Brownlow was in attendance, at least one of the founders of Google, a couple of big wigs from CAA, a lot of the local film community, and most importantly, me, Jason, Phil, Espana, Thad, Joe Price, Lynn, and of course, The Lovely & Talented Linda. It was with them that we went to dinner at this wonderful Pho place and talked and joked and ate great Vietnamese food and talked some more. It was a wonderful time, and it was the first meeting of the multiple parts of my world: my fandom friends and my Cinequest friends, and they seemed to like each other. I Love when that happens. The funny thing is, even if you think that Napoleon is the greatest film ever made, and there are a lot of folks in the know who say that, it’s not flawless. There are a couple of completely extraneous plotlines, including one that’s a story of a woman who is in love with Napoleon. It’s an interesting story, provides one particularly complex and lovely scene where they put the marriage of Napoleon to Josephine with the girl ‘marrying’ a Na- poleon doll. It was a great scene, but the storyline didn’t really provide any momentum to the overall story. The amount of time spent on the Revolution, and in particular on The Terror. I mean, it would make sense that they’d get a lot of coverage, but really it was a tad long. One of the best moments, and one of the reasons why I can certainly understand that Napoleon was a hugely influential film, was after we are introduced to the Revolution, and especially to Robespierre (who is wearing the most awesome small round sunglasses in history and REALLY looked like David Caruso) and there’s a young man passes out the lyrics to “La Marseillaise” and the gathered crowd joins together in singing it. It’s a great moment, the editing and super-imposition of images is fantastic. It’s a powerful scene that shows, perhaps completely opposite of what Gance was thinking, was how easy it was for the French at that moment to be swept up, carried along the road towards... well, whatever. “La Marseillaise” was a classic moment in another film, Casablanca, where they sing it at full volume to drown out the singing Nazis. The similarities between the two scenes are exact, while what I took away from both of them was almost the exact opposite. There was also an amazing amount of music in a silent film. Hurdy Gurdy players, songs, drummers, it was all over the place. The other best part might have been the fact that the film was accompanied by the Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra. It was amazing to be sitting right over the pit of the Orchestra... and not just because there was an amazingly hot bassoonist in there! The score was written by Carl Davis, who was conducting the orchestra not 10 feet from where I was. It was amazing to be there... and not just because I could stare down at the hot bassoonist. All in all, it was an amazing day. 8 hours in the theatre and while walking around the theatre during the breaks was great as people were loving getting to talk movies. And I met Kevin Brownlow and got to thank him for the greatest cinematic experience of my life! This issue’s got some stuff in it! It’s got Taral Wayne, Steven H Silver, plus a cover from Steve Stiles (the first one he’s done for us in a few years) and art from Mo! It’s awesome! The other day I was luxuriating in the final hours of a long, splendid nap, when I was suddenly struck over the noggin by the Muse. I actually got out of bed to think about it for a little while before finishing my snooze. To tell the truth, I’d been through a week of hip pain that, when in bed, made a full night’s sleep impossible. A sudden change in the weather and an end to my hip pain was the occasion for sleeping in. And with plenty of sleep also comes a fresh supply of dream material. Normally, my dreams are of no use to anyone but me. Who wants to hear about my living with a Viet- namese boat family in the aftermath of a global rise in sea level? Or of how nearly I was swept out the window into the muddy, malevolent, ten-story deep waters? I’m still trying to forget that one myself... But this dream... it was beaut. It was well worth working up into a lengthy story, perhaps even a book. There was pathos in it, beauty, irony, tragedy, song and inspiration. It is the story of Debb, the only Fraggle in the Rock who cannot sing. All her life Deb has been unable to hold a tune, and spoils songs for her friends when she joins in. She plays no instrument. She flatly cannot compose lyrics. And she drives Cantus – the mystical meistersinger – to exasperation. “Every Fraggle has a song inside. You must have a song. Why the hell don’t you have song?” Debb doesn’t know that she drank from the Spring of Dissonance while a babe. But neither Cantus or the other Fraggles can help. Debb is from a different corner of the Rock. Obviously, she isn’t at home with people who spontane- ously break into song, and has grown footloose. As a recent arrival at the Great Hall, she meets people she would like to be her friends, only Debb doesn’t fit in there either. If she hasn’t anything in common with most Fraggles, however, she does share a passion with Gobo for poking her nose into new places. One day she finds a tunnel where a curious hole has opened high on the wall, and climbs up to take a look. On the other side is another, unknown cavern. Water has weakened the rock wall over eons until it has collapsed, and Debb easily climbs through onto a gravelly slope. Most of the cavern is full of jumbled rock and pools of still water. I have to stop at this point, or give away the story. But what Debb discovers amidst the chaos is so mind-numbingly terrible that once it sinks in what had happened, she can only flee back to the Great Hall... where she weeps hysterically. Several days go by before her friends can even draw from her what she has seen. The story turns on that point. So now what the hell do I do? Oh, sure, I could spend a lot of time writing it up for the fanboys to read, and some will say, “this sure was swell,” but I’m of the old school of writing. Samuel Johnson said nobody but a fool would write without pay. Of course, he said this in the 18th. century, when he would have looked like a fool wearing knee-stockings and a wig. But, you have to agree with him when you think about it,. A good manuscript and a Loonie won’t even buy a cup of coffee. I’ve been writing for years without anyone paying me. I did it because I wanted to. But, let’s face it, self- indulgence will only motivate me so far. Let Steven King write his next novel for free, and give me the two mil- lion dollars to write my Fraggle Rock novel instead. He’ll never miss it, trust me. More money only puts him in a higher tax bracket. Unfortunately, there’s another obstacle. While Jim Henson could possibly have been flattered into per- mitting me to base a masterpiece of literature on his brainchild, the current owners are Disney. Disney would only be terrified if some unknown made better use of their property than they’re able to, and an army of venom- ous, kung-fu lawyers would parachute into my neighborhood to hunt me down and kill me. So, like I said... what the hell do I do now? I first became acquainted with Gene Wolfe in the mid-1980s when I first discov- ered The Book of the New Sun and took my first stab at The Shadow of the Torturer. It didn’t take me very long to realize that I had not clue one as to what was happening and that the author’s prose was not any- thing like what I had ever tried to read be- fore. But, I had heard good (no, great) things about the books and I struggled onward, gaining an appreciation for the work as I went. The first time I met Gene Wolfe was at Rivercon XXI in 1996. In my age-addled mind, I recall being on a panel with him, but when I checked the program book, I discov- ered that I was not a program participant at the con that year, so that probably says something about my memory. In any event, I introduced myself to Gene at one of the panels, only a few quick words. A couple of months later, I enrolled An Evening with Gene Wolfe in a class being offered on writing science fiction by Columbia College in Chicago, ac- By Steven H Silver tually the suburbs of Chicago. In the years immediately prior to my enrollment, the class had been taught by Phyllis Eisenstein or Jody Lynn Nye. The year I took it, the class was being taught by Gene Wolfe. I think the word that came to mind when I realized Gene would be teaching the class was “intimidating.” Of course, Gene is an excellent writer and teacher and even as we all got to know him a certain amount of the intimidation factor remained throughout the class. A couple of years later, I was speaking on the phone to Gene, most likely about Windycon programming, and he suddenly stopped and said, “Is there something you forgot to tell me?” I ran our conversation through and couldn’t think of anything. I had hit all the topics I had planned to. ‘I hear crying in the background.” Right, Since the last time I spoke to Gene, my wife had given birth to our first daughter. When I had heard that Gene was going to be honored as the recipient of the first Fuller Award by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, I knew that I wanted to be there to share the evening with him. The Fuller Award is named after Henry Blake Fuller (1857-1929). His most famous novel is The Cliff- Dwellers (1893), for which a literary society has been named since 1907, although Fuller was never a member. Many of his works used literary realism to detail the lives of the citizens of Chicago, and Theodore Dreiser de- scribed him as the “Father of realism.” Since the Hall of Fame is only open to authors who have shuffled off this mortal coil, the Fuller Award has been established to let author’s enjoy their accolades while there is still time. As I mentioned to Valya Dudycz Lupescu, who organized the extravaganza, it is wonderful to see Gene being recognized by the literary establishment outside of science fiction. The event took place at a private estate located in the suburbs of Chicago. The owner purchased the es- tate in the 1980s, and as his personal collection of coin operated nickelodeons, stereoscopes, gramophones, slot machines, and other toys from an earlier era grew, so also grew the house. Prior to the start of the ceremonies, attendees were able to walk around and look at portions of his home. When I arrived, I almost immediately bumped into Michael Swanwick, who had already performed cur- sory reconnaissance of the house. He suggested that the downstairs was the place to go, a fact that was lamented by Betty Anne Hull, who had joined us, but for whom stairs present something of an issue. I headed downstairs and was pleasantly surprised to see Michael and Betty walking through a gramophones a few minutes later. Yes, the enormous cage elevator does work and Betty was able to use it to more fully explore the house. My meager powers of description really can’t do justice to the house and its contents. The walls are lined with old movie posters from the earliest days of cinema through the 1950s (I think the most recent poster I saw was for Charles Chaplin’s 1957 film A King in New York). In front of the posters is a row of coin operated machines which, when a activated, play music and have scenes en- acted by moving slats. Gramophones are lined up in tidy rows with only Nipper missing. The gramophones were among those things which were not running, so we couldn’t hear the delightful scratchiness of old 78s. Heading deeper into the maze of rooms, Michael, Betty and I came to a room filled with slot machines, scales, stereoscopes, and nickelodeons. Prior to coming to the event, I had emptied the change from my pockets, but Michael had some nickels and quarters and dropped one into an old nickelodeon, so we were able to watch the images from a bygone era flicker by. After examining a fortune telling machine similar to the one in Big, I helped Betty back to the elevator and continued to poke around before climbing the stairs into the turret which houses a pendulum and a theodolite. The room where the awards were to be given was an enormous room designed to hold the owner’s pipe organ. The organ was originally built by the Wurlitzer Organ Company for the Riviera Theatre in Omaha, Ne- braska in the 1927. You’ve heard of the Mighty Wurlitzer... This is it (number 1571, in fact). When the owner bought the organ, it had 2,400 pipes, which sounds impressive until you realize that he has since expanded it to contain 8,000 pipes, making it the largest pipe organ in the world. It stands on a stage at one end of the room, in front of a large blue drapery which is filled with tiny holes. Behind the scrim are the majority of the organ’s pipes, although there are plenty in the music room itself, including pipes that stretch 37 feet up the walls. Trumpets in the back of the room are also controlled from the organ, as are a piano, various drums, symbols, bells, and other instru- ments in the rooms behind the curtain. Various parts of the organ were originally taken from Wurlitzers in the Nile Theatre in Mesa, Arizona, the Hub Roller Rink in Chi- cago, the Paramount and Egyptian Theatres in Los Angles, and many others. The room is huge, and ornate, and the organ, dwarfed by the space around it, draws all of your atten- tion. When the organ was first brought to the estate, it was located in a more modest room, however when the owners son decided to get married, the current room was designed and built in a ten month period to accom- modate the organ and the wedding. In addition to the or- gan, the room also contains a couple of calliopes located at the back of the balcony. When I entered the room after my excursion up the turret, I noticed that Gene had arrived. I tried to make my way over to him, but was unsuccessful. The property’s manager was about to start on a tour of the back of the organ for Gene, his family, and a select few. Jennifer Ste- venson suggested that if they didn’t want us to join the tour, they would turn us away, and so we traipsed along with the group, which also included David Hartwell, Law- rence Santoro, and Gene’s daughter Terry, and three of his granddaughters. The rooms behind the scrim took up three sto- ries of varying heights and contained numerous tubes and instruments. Even as I took pictures of the rooms, filled with the various instruments connected to the organ, I knew that I couldn’t do them justice. As with everything else in the house, I just couldn’t back away enough to get the scope of everything. Eventually, it was time for the main event to begin and I found that Betty had saved a seat for me (unfor- tunately, Fred Pohl, her husband who bought Gene’s first science fiction story, was unable to attend). The first part of the evening was emceed by Gary K. Wolfe, who made sure that everyone knew he was no rela- tion to Gene, although whenever Gary made that statement, Gene would announce that he was going to tell their mother. After Gary spoke, he introduced Neil Gaiman, Gene’s one-time collaborator, who proceeded to regale the assembled with stories of Gene, as well as a reading of “A Solar Labyrinth,” a Gene Wolfe story that first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in April, 1983 and has been reprinted in Storeys from the Old Hotel. Gene came up to receive the award and give his acceptance speech, a good deal of which was spent roasting some of the friends he new were in the audience, and demonstrating his sense of humor with all the self-deprecation he could be expected to manage at an event designed to make sure he knew how important, loved, and even revered, he is. Following Gene’s speech was a production of a live radio play adaptation of his story “The Toy Theatre” by Chicago author Lawrence Santoro, performed by Terra Mysterium. The actors were accompanied by R. Jelani Ed- dington on the Mighty Wurlitzer, mostly incidental music, but the play did include the song “Coin Operated Boy,” written by Amanda Palmer (who was not present) and originally performed by The Dresden Dolls on their debut album in 2004. As a radio play the staging was minimal, but there was movement and the actors even went so far as to interact with each other in appropriate ways. Santoro’s adaptation worked quite well, maintaining Gene’s style and dialogue while, in Santoro’s words, “cutting away the pa- per.” Once the play ended, it was time for Ed- dington to perform a solo concert on the Mighty Wurlitzer. There was no set play list circulated, and Eddington provided a brief introduction before each piece, talking about the composer, about the organ, about music in general. He played a reprise of “Coin Operated Boy” without the vocal accom- paniment, as well as “Londonderry Air” (after all it was St. Patrick’s Day). Eddington explained that the finale would be a piece which would show of the versatility of the organ and show how it could rep- licate the sound of a full orchestra. Long before he revealed the composer as John Williams or the piece as Star Wars, it was clear what we would be hearing. He did, also, warn the people in the bal- cony that the trumpets would be sounding behind them. After the finale, Eddington offered up an en- core: a medley of patriotic music as the Wurlitzer was first lifted above the stage on its rising plat- form, and then sunk below the stage until only the top half of the organ was showing. It would be awesome to see a silent movie accompanied by that organ. I think the closest I’ve come was as a student at Indiana University when Dennis James would accompany silent films on their 4,543 pipe Schantz organ. Following the concert, it was time to head over to the Carousel Pavilion for dinner...except that Gary K. (no relation) Wolfe realized that for all of Neil’s introduction of Gene and Gene’s stories, Neil never actually presented the award to Gene. The two performed a quick hand off and posed for pictures and we walked up to the Carousel Pavil- ion. The Carousel Pavilion was a large, cavern- ous room in a building finished in 1997. Tables were sprinkled throughout and two railway cars lined one side of the room. An enormous clock stood in the center of the room and there was an ornate barrier to the back half. Walking through the bar- rier revealed a large carousel. Around the walls of the rooms were organs purchased from dance halls and fairgrounds. Dinner was provided by Wild Asparagus and I found myself at a table with Tina Jens, Jody Top - Jody Lyn Nye with the Fuller Award Lynn Nye, Bill Fawcett, and Lawrence Santoro. Dur- Bottom - Fashionplate David Hartwell on the ride! ing the meal, Toastmaster Peter Sagal, who hosts the NPR news show Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and who had been announced as a Special Guest at Chi- con 7 the day before, introduced family, friends, and colleagues of Gene’s to make a toast. Peter explained that although he was a long-time science fiction fan, and noted his attendance at Noreascon III in 1980, where he met Pohl and Isaac Asimov, he didn’t really know everyone he would be introducing that night and, following a cursory exploration of Wikipedia, decided it would be better if he just made stuff up, proceeding, for instance, to introduce Gene’s daughter Terry, who rebelled against her father to become a motorcycle mechanic in the Pacific Northwest. Most of the toast were short, enough that when the third toast ended, Sagal asked the toasters to speak for longer period so he could finish his salad, which was a poached pear salad. After dinner, they announced that the carousel would be open for rides. The Eden Palais Carousel is an 89 foot wide, 42 foot tall structure that was built in 1890 with 36 hand carved life-sized horses created by Josef Hübner and four gondolas. The center is covered in seven paintings by Andre-Charles Coppier. Despite its size, the carousel was designed to be toured rather remain in one place and it traveled throughout from 1890 until 1959, when it was purchased from the Caron family by Magic Mountain, an amusement park in Golden, Colorado, which opened in 1957. Unfortunately, around the time the carousel arrived, Magic Mountain declared bankruptcy. The carousel was left outdoors for the winter before it was pur- chased and rescued by Charles and Sue Bovary, who put it into storage in Great Falls, Montana. It remained in Great Falls until it was purchased and moved to its present location. The assembled masses moved towards the carousel like theoretical lemmings towards a cliff1. I rode the first wave on one of the horses, which bucked very much like a real horse. I found myself wondering how long it was going to last and thinking about how embarrassing it would be to explain to my wife that I threw my back out on a carousel. The big surprise was that not only did the horses move, but the gondolas also moved. While the second group rode the carousel, I took the opportunity to explore the tremendously lush railroad cars, one a Pullman Palace Car, the other a Victorian Station Caboose, which were in the room. Both spoke of an elegance in travel which is lacking these days. Of course, when travel took so much longer, comfort was much more important. Shortly before I left, I was able to corral Peter Sagal, with whom I had been in touch for Chicon 7, and whom I saw at a taping of Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me! several years ago, and discuss some ideas we had for his schedule at this year’s Worldcon. Then, business, pleasure, and celebration of a friend behind me, I climbed into my car and drove home, wondering how I could get back onto the estate to share its marvels with my wife and children.

1 - Lemmings don’t actually do that...it is all a canard perpetrated by Disney who pushed the lem- Sagal and Wolfe mings off. Jill Thompson and Some Peter Sagal Guy named Gaiman

Jody Nye and Bill Fawcett Michael Dirda Letter Graded Mail sent to [email protected] by Our Gentle Readers Dear Chris: We’re getting California temperatures here, so who wants to be inside? The first day of spring is coming up, and it will feel like the first day of summer. Global warming exists... Got some issues of The Drink Tank to comment on... 308...If people complain about The Drink Tank, refer them to the General Manager of the complaints department. Let Linda take a swipe at them; she’d have a great time. As always, those who complain like to point out what they see as a problem, but rarely offer to help solve it. A note from Jack the Ripper to start the locol? How fitting. The Cronenburg movie A Dangerous Method won a number of Genie Awards earlier this month, including a Best Actor award to Viggo Mortensen. Emerald City was a great fanzine, and I locced each issue I got. So what if it didn’t have a locol? Communication was the main thing. Taral says fan art is going away? I sure hope not, but then, I am afraid this whole fanzine thing is going away, so we’ve got to work hard to keep it around. I have some Rotslers tucked away for my own zine. Yes, I am considering putting my own zine together, and see what it looks like. I have lots and lots of favours to call in... Ian MacDonald’s Planesrunner was mentioned recently in another zine, can’t remember which offhand. With 1080 worlds/universes out there to explore, this can provide his characters with as many settings and adventures as he can cook up. Looks like fun, as long as it doesn’t become another neverendology, like Xanth or Discworld... 309...I am not a comics reader, so I haven’t read the comics being discussed. I have no opinion of Watch- men, although I can’t help but be familiar with some of the characters like Rorschach. If I owned the characters, I could say no sequel, and make it stick. If you sequel anyway, I can go and get an injunction, and I’ll sue yer ass. But, if I have sold the rights and you want to sequel, I hope you’d listen to me when I say I’d prefer there wasn’t a sequel, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you went for the sequel anyway, for you own the rights, purchased from me. DC Comics is a business first and foremost, and will listen to its shareholders before its creators and con- sumers. 310...I’ve been to Chicago three times, all for Worldcons, and we ha enough money to see the World- con, but never enough money to stay longer and see some of the city. This time, there’s no money and no real impetus to see yet another Chicago Worldcon, so we’ll keep saving for London. I am sure there are great things to see in Chicago, but there’s no use longing for something I can’t have. More from the Cranky Old Man, yours truly. I am sure I’ll have other things to say the next time around. I’ll check with eFanzines to see if 311 is there yet. See you next loc. Yours, Lloyd Penney. I personally don’t think that Fan Art is going away, but I think that the forums for it will be changing. Few blogs have gotten on teh original fan art bandwagon, but it could happen. I’m salivating about getting to spend time in Chi-Town!