SF COMMENTARY 100 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Part 3 DIRDA * BLACKFORD * BRYCE * HOLMBERG * STEELE * KING * SALVIDGE * TRAIN * RUDD * GILLESPIE
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SF COMMENTARY 100 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Part 3 DIRDA * BLACKFORD * BRYCE * HOLMBERG * STEELE * KING * SALVIDGE * TRAIN * RUDD * GILLESPIE Cover: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen): ’Dancing Almond Bread’. S F Commentary 100 50th Anniversary Edition * Part 3 November 2019 138 pages SF COMMENTARY No. 100, 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION, PART 3, November 2019, is edited and published by Bruce Gillespie, 5 Howard Street, Greensborough, VIC 3088, Australia. Phone: 61-3-9435 7786. Preferred means of distribution .PDF file from eFanzines.com: http://efanzines.com or from my email address: [email protected]. FRONT COVER: Ditmar (Dick Jenssen): ‘Dancing Almond Bread’. DJ Graphic, Cinemascope version. 2 Contents 4 BRUCE GILLESPIE CELEBRATING FRANKENSTEIN’S TWO HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY 4 I MUST BE TALKING TO MY FRIENDS 5 TIME WHOOSHES BY! 84 CRITICANTO: 9 GOOD THINGS ARRIVE IN THE MAIL 17 2018: THE BEST OF EVERYTHING 84 Favourite Novels :: Favourite Books :: Favourite DANIEL KING Films :: Favourite Television :: GALACTIC POT-HEALER: Favourite Popular CDs :: Favourite Classical CDs PHILIP K. DICK’S ‘SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL’ 47 JENNIFER BRYCE 89 GUY SALVIDGE FAVOURITES FOR 2018: AMETHYSTS AND OTHER TREASURES TEN BOOKS, TEN CONCERTS, SEVEN MOVIES 93 DAVID RUDD 76 MICHAEL DIRDA A DOUBLET OF EARLY FANTASY FICTION FROM TALES OF LOVE AND DEATH BY ROBERT AICKMAN BENGAL 81 JOHN-HENRI HOLMBERG 96 COLIN STEELE MANY HAVE MISSED THE THEME THE FIELD OF FRANKENSTEIN: 3 I must be talking to my friends First the good news the magazine. On Facebook recently I wrote that the best news of the year is that Ciao, Bill Burns continues to host at eFanzines.com all the issues of SF the favourite Melbourne restaurant of our Friday night fannish group, has Commentary that have been created during the last 25 years as reopened on Friday night. It has remained open at lunchtime during the PDF files. Along with many other fans, I continue to be grateful last few years, but meanwhile our group has spent every Friday night for Bill’s extraordinary project, which has enabled SF fanzines to wandering mid Melbourne looking for a restaurant with decent food, or continue as a genre. a restaurant quiet enough to hear each other speak. Last Friday night (11 October), we wandered down Hardware Lane — and found that Ciao Good news, bad news ... had reopened on Friday night under a new name: Hardware Club. Anton, our genial host of yesteryear, greeted our mob of 10 and set up The very good news of 2019 was that anonymous ‘Joe Phan’ financed a table. He welcomed us back as if we had been wandering the desert the production of a large number of print copies of SFCs 98 and 99 and for 40 years (which is how we saw it). Finally — great service, great food, gave me the funds to post them. a house wine that is drinkable ... but it’s already very popular and noisy. I couldn’t hear much of the conversation from my end of the table. But The bad news is, as usual, the cloud of gloom generated by Australia we had returned home at last! Post. It continues to persecute people who want to send real magazines and books overseas. Australia’s airmail rates were already twice those For SF Commentary readers this hardly rates as the best news of of any other country in the world. Rates rose again on 1 October. I will the year. From your point of view, the best news is that nearly all send out overseas copies to a small number of people, mainly contribu- issues of SF Commentary from the past 50 years are now available tors, but otherwise will be notifying people to download their copies from for reading, perusing, and printing. Mark Olson has scanned all eFanzines.com. Sorry about that. I still haven’t won a lottery or been the duplicated issues of SF Commentary, and made them available offered an inheritance. through the website organised by Joe Siclari and Edie Stern’s fanzine history project (fanac.org). A warning: each page is scanned separately as a .jpg file. To read an issue consecutively, Lowlights of the year you need to download all the pages for an issue, then link them Lowlight of the year has been our loss of Harry the wonder cat. But I’ve using Word or Adobe Acrobat or similar PDF-generating program. already written about Harry in SFC 99. But at least you can now take a peek at the great early years of 4 Another lowlight of the year is the news that our much-missed fan about was visiting hospital. As a result he has been wearing both a neck brace town and former member of ANZAPA, Chandler Award winner Bill and back brace for many months. He left rehabilitation hospital to return Wright, has spent much of the year in hospital. He has suffered several home on 17 October. He always sounds remarkably chipper on the major falls. In one accident, he fell from a tram, incurring the original phone. Ring him on 0434 315689, but allow for the fact that he spends injuries. In another incident, a taxi sped off while he was getting out. much of his day involved in physiotherapy exercises or other aspects of After several months of treatment, he eturned home for a month or so. the healing process. During the third incident, a car backed out straight in front of him as he Time whooshes by! I’m still failing to retire. My basic income is a bit of pension money Nova Mob. In doing so, I stepped off the safe little lagoon shore and a bit of superannuation money (which will run out in about of the literary footnote into the mighty maelstrom of the Tiptree three years). To survive financially I need to keep compiling ocean. I had to re-read many stories I had not read for nearly 50 indexes. When that supply of index work runs out, I will be in real years. I had to read lots of stories I had never read before. financial trouble. I’ve had enough work this year to stop the bank (However, I’ve had no time to read the Tiptree’s two novels.) I account disappearing, but it’s also stopped me being the actifan gave myself the great pleasure of re-reading Julie Phillips’ biog- I want to be. raphy James T iptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, the best literary biography I’ve read. And I read various other books Until now I’ve been able to produce two parts of the Fiftieth for the first time, such as Letters to Tiptree (Twelfth Planet), edited Anniversary Issue of SF Commentary. But they should have by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein. All this made it impos- appeared in January. A few weeks ago (before I was again rudely sible to publish SFC 100 by October or write ANZAPA Mailing interrupted by three indexes and a Nova Mob talk), I went diving Comments. through the computer files and found at least 200 pages of material. You might be amazed to learn that the Gillespie and Cochrane household has spare minutes in the day. What have we been doing You might not give a stuff when the next issue of SFC comes out with them? — and I know that I’ve failed to hit my own deadlines. But some of my contributors have been on the edge of their seats for ten Elaine has also been working hard on professional jobs during the months waiting for their deathless prose to appear in print. year. Her editing and proofreading jobs are always much more demanding than anything I do, so she’s rather enjoyed the last At the beginning of the year I made a very unwise promise to few weeks without paying work. She has also knitted a lot, and deliver a short talk about the work of James Tiptree, Jr. to the embroidered a lot, and cuddled Sampson a lot. Sampson believes 5 that any Elaine who is sitting still in one spot is there for the Jamie Reuel in South Croydon in April. My sister Jeanette and climbing-on-of-the-cat. His basic health is not good, and his legs Duncan visited us early in the year, and Jo and Carey Handfield, are not very dependable, but Elaine keeps him alive and enjoying who now live near by, join us for cakes and coffee at Urban life. He’s all we have since Harry died very suddenly at the Grooves once a month. beginning of May. (See SF Commentary 99.) Charlie and Nic Taylor took us out to Kilmore to attend the annual Highlights of the year have included our little film nights with John Winter Solstice party and barbecue held by Rose King and Francis and Diane and Geoff once a month. Sorry we can’t invite anybody Payne in a house filled with books. This year’s event was more else; our seating arrangements are very limited. Both John and than usually sociable. Geoff bring along films (on DVD and Blu-ray) that I would not have seen otherwise. This year’s films have included Fritz Lang’s great A dinner surprise was a night at Taco Bill’s in town in July. Gerald film noir Human Desire (1954), starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Smith and his wife Karen were in town from Sydney, so they Grahame (based on Zola’s novel La Bête Humaine), Memo Meyes’ arranged a night to meet all the ANZAPA members about which little masterpiece Martian Child (2007), starring John Cusack, Karen had only heard rumours.