Quantcast
Channel: Sweet Freedom
Viewing all 1181 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

some folk-rock (and antecedents)

December 9, 2014, 8:28 pm
$
0
0
Some previously posted, some not.





















Johnny Cash: "Hey, Porter"


Buddy Holly: "Learning the Game"


The Springfields: "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"


Jackie DeShannon: "Needles and Pins"


Mimi and Richard Fariña: "Reno, Nevada"


The Byrds: "Wild Mountain Thyme"


The Byrds: "Here Without You"


The Turtles: "You Showed Me"


Blackburn and Snow: "Stranger in a Strange Land"


The Seekers: "I'll Never Find Another You"


Fairport Convention: "It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft"


Fairport Convention:  "Farewell, Farewell"


The Pentangle: "Light Flight"


Joy of Cooking: "Down My Dream"


Joni Mitchell and The Band: "Coyote"
↧
Search

FFB: FANTASTIC STORIES: TALES OF THE WEIRD AND WONDROUS ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Patrick Price (TSR, 1987)...among some "hidden" fiction magazine best-ofs...

December 19, 2014, 6:25 am
$
0
0
Fantastic, as a magazine, for most of its 28 years and some months of existence (from launch in 1952, early absorption of its predecessor Fantastic Adventures in 1954, and folding into companion title Amazing Science Fiction Stories in early 1981), was an example of at least someone involved doing the best they could with the magazine, in the face of serious obstacles. Sometimes the chiefest obstacle was the apathy of the editor, particularly true during the latter years of founding editor Howard Browne's tenure, and those of his former assistant and heir Paul Fairman...the magazine, starting out with a large budget and some fanfare by a serious, though not quite top-of-the-industry, publisher (Ziff-Davis), achieved initial sales beyond reasonable expectation (the third issue featured a story attributed to Mickey Spillane, at the early height of his popularity, which had been highlighted--and "spoiled" with extensive description--by a Life magazine profile of the Mike Hammer creator, on newsstands before the Fantastic issue was published...so Browne quickly ghosted a new story, "The Veiled Woman," and published it as by Spillane)(in later accounts of the incident, Browne also notes that he thought the genuine Spillane story terrible; the Browne counterfeit is a reasonably good, and probably intentionally slightly parodic, pastiche).
The first issue, a cover much referred to in
James Gunn's introduction and the source
of Asimov's story in the book...and not
included in the selected cover images in
the book...
However, those high circulation figures were not sustained into the second year of publication, apparently, and with the folding in of FA, Fantastic's budget was cut and Browne essentially went back to the usually relatively indifferent efforts he'd been making at Fantastic Adventures, accepting and publishing good work when it was offered by writers but just as happy to run that good work alongside no-more-than-readable hackwork by regular Ziff-Davis writers, much of the latter published under "house names" such as "Lawrence Chandler" and "Ivar Jorgensen,"--the actual authors could be any number of contributors including Browne and Fairman themselves (many of the stable of contributors in those years haven't remembered clearly [or didn't choose to] who wrote what among the less memorable items, and the office records of the era have apparently not all been retained). When Browne officially resigned in 1956 (having checked out to the degree of spending much of his office time writing his crime fiction), newly official editor Fairman went even further along into systematization of Fantastic and Amazing, depending not entirely but largely on four relatively young writers to produce wordage that would be accepted and published unread (under a variety of bylines), as long as the manuscript delivery was punctual and the stories didn't cause any problems that might interfere with Fairman's own in-office writing for other markets...and even this arrangement managed to bring in some good or promising work among the acceptably mediocre, since the quartet was comprised of Milton Lesser (who would publish most of his better work as Stephen Marlowe), Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett. And Fairman had as his assistant a young and
inexperienced but diligent and talented former secretary, Cele Goldsmith, who would dig through the "slushpile" of submitted manuscripts and would occasionally find very interesting work indeed, including what would be the first published story by Kate Wilhelm. When Fairman left, in 1958 (moving on briefly to managing editorship of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, by then published by Ziff-Davis co-founder B. G. Davis, who'd quit ZD, as well as continuing his freelance writing), Goldsmith was elevated to editorship, and with far less cynicism if also less of  a sense of the history of fantastic fiction, she would go on at the magazines to put together issues that would mix sometimes brilliantly innovative and sometimes merely notional work, till the magazines were sold by Ziff-Davis in 1965.  Under Goldsmith (who took through marriage the name Cele Lalli during her tenure),  the fiction magazines had lost their champion at ZD with Davis's departure, and the death of William Ziff not long after meant that for most of her career there, Fantastic and Amazing were secondary projects, with art direction and packaging that was somewhat less consistently good than her editorial product deserved, and a fellow named Norman Lobsenz given the task of overseeing her work, though apparently he mostly wrote the consistently trivial editorials and responses to reader letters in the columns in the magazines. Among the writers she "discovered" through first professional publication, as editor, were Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch, Sonya Dorman (her prose, at least, aside from a student story in Mademoiselle), Roger Zelazny, Ben Bova, Ted White, Keith Laumer, and Piers Anthony (when still a promising young writer, well before he made jejune fantasy novel series his primary occupation). Her magazines were one of the primary markets for the mostly young writers who were shaking up fantasy and particularly sf in the early 1960s. Among those she worked with closely was
One of the better covers from the Goldsmith
or Lalli years...
Fritz Leiber, though the reports of her courtesy and quick and enthusiastic response, trumping even the withered budget she had for her version of the magazines, is a common narrative of her career at the magazines (and her later work on Ziff-Davis bridal magazines, which comprised most of her career), and is one of the more important points made by James Gunn in his introduction to the volume theoretically under review here. Gunn's introduction, for what it's worth, is rather short, Very oddly copy-edited and is the Only editorial matter in the book to give any sense of the context the collected stories were published in, aside from the acknowledgements page bearing the years of publication; there aren't even headnotes to any of the stories nor contributor notes. That is most assuredly Strike One against this anthology, despite it being only the third book (I believe) to collect a sampling specifically from Fantastic, the heftiest of the three volumes, and the last so far (this latter fact is Strike One against the publishing industry).  There is also a rather offhandedly selected set of plates in the center of the book, on heavy slick paper displaying in color some of the front covers from some of Goldsmith's and later editor Ted White's issues, with minimal comment there. and a set of new illustrations for the stories, by such talented artists as Janet Aulisio and Stephen Fabian, which nonetheless mostly seem rather uninspired and oddly out of place in the anthology, rather than magazine, format...indicative of TSR's stewardship of Amazing (combined with Fantastic Stories) and their publishing efforts generally...haphazard tossing around of money, with rather half-assed follow-through (aside from all the Dungeons & Dragons product money TSR had at hand, they'd also gotten a windfall from Steven Spielberg's renting of the Amazing Stories title, and a/v rights to as many of the stories in the back issues as possible, for his misbegotten and shortlived tv anthology series). Also included in the volume, for no obvious reason and probably in part because Martin Greenberg had made an error in his famous filing system and indexed a novelet by Lester Del Rey, published in 1955 in the unrelated magazine Fantastic Universe, as a contribution to Fantastic...or perhaps Greenberg just wanted an excuse to run the story, and hoped no one would notice. Together, let's call those Strike Two against this book being taken too seriously by the casual browser of bookstands, particularly if she
A fairly typically handsome (and comics-
influenced) cover from Ted White's
 tenure as editor (and art director)
knows anything about the magazine whose provenance was one of the primary selling points here. And I haven't even gotten to the contributions of the editors who worked with publishers Sol Cohen and Arthur Bernhard, who ran the magazines on the thinnest of shoestrings, from 1965 through the sale of Amazing to TSR in the early '80s, and all the roadblocks they threw up against good work by subsequent editors Joseph "Ross"/Wrocz, Harry Harrison, Barry Malzberg, longest-serving Ted White, and Eleanor Mavor (who for no good reason called herself "Omar Gohagen" in her first issues). Of course, the editors and Gunn don't much mention these folks' efforts, either, even if they include some of the fiction White published. (I've personally had the good fortune to speak with Harrison, Malzberg and White, if very briefly in the first case, about their experiences as editors for Cohen's Ultimate Publications; Harrison was breezily philosophical, looking upon his short tenure as just another part-time job that helped keep body and soul together during a brief period of living back in the US again; Malzberg I think found the experience as fascinating as it was frustrating, for what it told him about the nature of the markets he was working in as writer, editor and agent; White, who stuck with it for a decade despite having to eventually draw welfare payments, since his stipend as editor and designer was so slight, was nonetheless devoted to the task and willing to put up with the strictures he faced, however grumpily...his next job after leaving Fantastic and Amazing was a year as editor of the then-flourishing, and very well-budgeted, adult fantasy comic Heavy Metal.)

The earmarks of nonchalance all over this anthology are a pity, because the selection of stories is pretty good, though not reasonably representative of the best of the magazine's career. It's also notable which of the contributors whose work is collected here have gone onto ever greater fame in the years since this 1987 book, much less their stories, was first published (pretty obvious examples: J. G. Ballard and particularly George R. R. Martin), those whose fame has been sustained (Le Guin and Philip K. Dick), those whose star has dimmed (almost inarguably unfairly, given their best work: Roger Zelazny, John Brunner and to a much lesser extent Isaac Asimov) and those who remain stubbornly underappreciated (Ron Goulart, David Bunch, and to too great an extent Robert Bloch...Judith Merril is perhaps as well-remembered today as a mover and shaker in the Toronto countercultural scene in the 1970s onward as she is for her extensive work in sf and related literatures).

Courtesy the Locus Index: 
Fantastic Stories: Tales of the Weird and Wondrous ed. Martin H. Greenberg & Patrick L. Price (TSR 0-88038-521-9, May ’87, $7.95, 253pp, tp) Anthology of 16 stories from the magazine, with an introduction by James E. Gunn plus a selection of color cover reproductions.
  • 7 · Introduction · James E. Gunn · in
  • 11 · Double Whammy · Robert Bloch · ss Fantastic Feb ’70
  • 21 · A Drink of Darkness · Robert F. Young · ss Fantastic Jul ’62
  • 33 · A Question of Re-Entry · J. G. Ballard · nv Fantastic Mar ’63
  • 59 · The Exit to San Breta · George R. R. Martin · ss Fantastic Feb ’72
  • 70 · The Shrine of Temptation · Judith Merril · ss Fantastic Apr ’62
  • 85 · Dr. Birdmouse · Reginald Bretnor · ss Fantastic Apr ’62
  • 97 · Eve Times Four · Poul Anderson · nv Fantastic Apr ’60
  • 126 · The Rule of Names [Earthsea] · Ursula K. Le Guin · ss Fantastic Apr ’64
  • ins. · Artists’ Visions of the Weird & Wondrous · Various Hands · il
  • 135 · The Still Waters [“In the Still Waters”] · Lester del Rey · nv Fantastic Universe Jun ’55
  • 144 · A Small Miracle of Fishhooks and Straight Pins · David R. Bunch · vi Fantastic Jun ’61
  • 148 · Novelty Act · Philip K. Dick · nv Fantastic Feb ’64
  • 174 · What If... · Isaac Asimov · ss Fantastic Sum ’52
  • 186 · Elixir for the Emperor · John Brunner · ss Fantastic Nov ’64
  • 202 · King Solomon’s Ring · Roger Zelazny · nv Fantastic Oct ’63
  • 220 · Junior Partner · Ron Goulart · ss Fantastic Sep ’62
  • 229 · Donor · James E. Gunn · nv Fantastic Nov ’60
Two weeks ago, I gave a quick gloss of a review of Ted White's The Best from Fantastic, and the other anthology drawn largely from Fantastic, even earlier than White's and including stories from Fantastic Adventures and one from Amazing, is Ivan Howard's Time Untamed, mentioned here briefly some time back (with its original ugly cover); the slightly less ugly second edition and UK covers are below.  This volume is an example of the "hidden" anthology drawn from a given magazine, or in this case a magazine group (as is the Weird Tales magazine anthology The Unexpected, mentioned in that same post), as are Ivan Howard's several other anthologies for the publisher Belmont/Belmont Tower, which drew from Science Fiction, Future Fiction, Dynamic Science Fiction and the other sf magazines Robert Lowndes edited for Columbia Publications, owned by Louis Silberkleit, who also owned the later, and similarly low-budget Belmont books concern (Silberkleit was also a partner of Archie Comics guy Martin Goodman in several projects over the decades) ...no mention, or essentially so, in the book's packaging that all the collected stories are from the one source, or related group of sources.  I recently suggested to the editors of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction that not only Samuel Mines's The Best from Startling Storiesshould be noted in the entry for Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling's older sibling which the anthology also draws from, but that Damon Knight's anthology The Shape of Things should also be cited in both magazines' entries, as it's also an anthology drawn intentionally and exclusively from both magazines (and quite a good one)...another "hidden" example (as the Mines Startling volume almost is for TWS...). Joseph Ferman's No Limits (quite possibly co- or ghost-edited by his son, Edward Ferman) is an anthology drawn from the 1950s version of Venture Science Fiction magazine; Once and Future Tales, an all-but "hidden" anthology from Venture's sibling The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (and commissioned by a short-lived publishing project, and outside the then-regular set of Doubleday's Best from F&SF volumes). I hope to add other examples to an ongoing list here...I've also briefly reviewed a vintage pirated volume taken from the legitimate UK anthology series Not at Night that drew regularly on the early Weird Tales for its contents...the pirated volume published here as one of the early products of Vanguard Press, co-founded by Rex Stout, no less.

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

↧
↧

FFB: THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, 20th Series, edited by Edward L. Ferman (Doubleday 1973); THE BEST FROM FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION: THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY ANTHOLOGY, edited by Edward L. Ferman and Gordon Van Gelder (Tor 1999)

January 2, 2015, 11:31 am
$
0
0





















The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 20 ed. Edward L. Ferman (Doubleday, 1973, hc)
The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology ed. Edward L. Ferman & Gordon Van Gelder (Tor 0-312-86973-8, Oct ’99 [Sep ’99], $24.95, 381pp, hc) Anthology of 21 stories that appeared in the magazine from 1994-98. Authors include Kate Wilhelm, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bruce Sterling, and Gene Wolfe.
Actual review forthcoming!

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for less encumbered folks' entries...
↧

Saturday Music Club returns, still tardy, now

February 21, 2015, 11:09 pm
$
0
0
Jawbox: "Apollo Amateur"


Thievery Corporation: "All That We Perceive"


Ana Tijoux (con Jorge Drexler):  "Sacar la voz"

http://www.halftheskymovement.org/30-songs-30-days

Nina Simone: "Backlash Blues"


Ion Bogdan Stefanescu and Horia Maxim: "Blue Shadows In The Street"


David Amram large band: "Tompkins Square Park Consciousness Expander"

Ran Blake Quartet: "Short Life of Barbara Monk" 
↧

Saturday Music Club: some bands with singers, some singers with bands...

February 28, 2015, 6:27 pm
$
0
0
Carmen McRae with Brubeck, Morello and Wright: "Oh So Blue" 


Diahann Carroll and the Modern Jazz Quartet: "La Cantatrice"


Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake: "All About Ronnie"


Abbey Lincoln: "Love Has Gone Away"


Aretha Franklin: "Deeper"


Lambert, Hendricks and Bavan: "Watermelon Man"


Ana Tijoux Live in Berlin


Carmen McRae Quartet: Jazz Casual




↧
↧

Saturday Music Club, Music Savings Time edition: Better 1? Better 2?

March 8, 2015, 1:39 pm
$
0
0
Betty Everett: "You're No Good"


Dee Dee Warwick: "You're No Good"


Dinah Washington: "Soulville"


Aretha Franklin: "Soulville"


Fairport Convention: "Si Tu Dois Partir"


Bob Dylan: "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"


The Hollies: "I Can't Let Go"


Linda Ronstadt: "I Can't Let Go"


Glenn Miller Orchestra with Ray Eberle: "Serenade in Blue"


Glenn Miller Orchestra with Pat Friday (singing for Lynn Bari): "Serenade in Blue"


The Bangles: "Dover Beach"


Charles in Charge theme
↧

Friday's Not Too Forgotten Book Guest Post: Mildred Perkins on 11/22/63 by Stephen King

March 13, 2015, 2:04 pm
$
0
0
Mildred reported on her reading the King novel to the Horror List at Indiana University:

I finished reading this book, and though the content is only marginally horror, the author can stand a little more discussion I guess.  The first two hundred pages are interesting and occasionally exciting, and the last two hundred pages the same.  The middle three hundred, however, was a real slog.  It was an important set up to the end, of course, but man that was difficult.  I’m sure most of you know the premise, that a thirty-something Maine English teacher decides to save the world by using a hidden time portal to go back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination.  In an epilogue, King says that he wrote the treatment for the thing (14 single-spaced pages) in 1972, but didn’t have the resources for needed massive research and felt that it was just too close to the event and so he shelved it for most of a half century.

The end of the book was not exactly what I expected.  Some of it I had been predicting for about five hundred pages, and even though I knew the action surrounding the assassination would be tight, I was still impressed with that part.  Very tense.  Well done.  But then the denouement…  It was both what I expected and then a whole lot more.  Basically he took it a lot further than I thought he was going to, and the very, very end (after Jackson’s “end” of The Return of the King, it behooves one to say which ending you’re talking about) actually was very poignant.  I don’t remember ever feeling that with a King novel before, so bravo.

I actually find myself wishing they’d make a movie or mini-series from this.  And it also makes me want to find my copy of It and read it again for the first time in years and years, because he spends some time in Derry, and that was one of my favorite parts.

And as the list-bot advises:
*** To join the Horror List, send a BLANK e-mail with a BLANK Subj line: 
to horror-subscribe@indiana.edu *** 

*** You may also join by sending an e-mail with a BLANK Subj line to list@list.indiana.edu and 
    in the body of the message:  SUBSCRIBE horror Your Name

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
↧

Saturday Music Club: late shift

March 15, 2015, 12:02 am
$
0
0
Thelonious Monk, Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, Ben Riley: "Round Midnight"


The Duke Ellington Orchestra: Night Creature Second Movement: "Stalking Monster"


The Charles Mingus Band: "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting"


Billie Holiday and The Sound of Jazz band: "Fine and Mellow"


Zero: "Mr. Broadway"


Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, Gene Wright: "Winter Ballad"


The Modern Jazz Quartet: "Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise"


Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane Quartet: "Crepuscule with Nellie"
↧
Search

TV notes: MOZART IN THE JUNGLE, NIGHTMARE IN CHICAGO, MAN IN A SUITCASE, SCHITT'S CREEK and on never having Just Three TV Channels...

March 15, 2015, 11:37 pm
$
0
0
Capsule reviews of some of what I've liked a lot over the last few months:

Mozart in the Jungle: a sitcom based on oboist Blair Tindall's memoir, has charmed me, for the most part, and while it didn't change my life nor is it "necessary" viewing, it had most of the good elements of the previous rather good series from producer/supporting actor Jason Schwartzmann, Bored to Death, with less celebration of protracted adolescence than was on display in that series. And, like Bored, it seems to be getting essentially no attention compared to other series on its platform (HBO for the older series, Amazon for this one). Saffron Burrows and her character are only the best of several good reasons to give this a try.

Nightmare in Chicago is a telefilm I've been meaning to see for decades, since first reading about it in an early Leonard Maltin guide (Bill Warren might've written that review for all I know)...originally broadcast in the first season of Kraft Suspense Theater as "Once Upon a Savage Night" (and based, as it turned out, on William McGivern's novel Death on the Turnpike...I keep running into McGivern texts, he the too-forgotten Chicago/Philadelphia noir master; the director was the young Robert Altman).  Unfortunately, neither the full cut of Nightmare, beefed up for syndication from the Kraft episode, nor any form of KST episodes seem to be available outside the gray market,  nor does the episode version seem to be in the Crisis/Suspense Theater package that the Antenna TV network reran recently (a few scattered stations, broadcast and cable, might also be offering it). The link above is to a blurry black and white taping that I suspect was one of those made (several duplicate generations back?) on the fly to reassure Kraft and their ad agency that all the ad spots ran properly during broadcast...so, better than nothing, if not enough better (you do get the full complement of Kraft food ads, and the recipes are often as unnerving as anything about the episode itself). Barbara Turner is particularly good as the kidnap victim of a serial murderer of young women, and Ted Knight is full of appropriate bluster as a police commissioner juggling the suddenly newly active psycho and a nuclear weapons convoy coming through town on the QT.  I look forward to seeing a good copy.

Man in a Suitcase is a bit of a mutant version of a typical 1960s ITC spy drama, since it involves an inappropriately disgraced US ex-spy, with an attitude, who now works in the UK as a sort of private detective/fixer or perhaps a bit more like what The Saint would be like if crossed with irritable youngish Ben Casey. It lasted only one season (ran on ABC in the US). I'm mildly surprised how much I'm enjoying these, put together by some of ITC's better talent of the era.  The first episode (in both the UK and US, apparently, though another is the true pilot), as with several Danger Man/Secret Agent episodes, rather anticipates The Prisoner...others much less so...the influence of The IPCRESS File was probably strong. (Wikipedia notes that this was essentially a replacement series for Danger Man on ITV, the UK commercial network, which certainly makes sense.)

Actual pilot:


Pilot as shown:


Schitt's Creek is a new sitcom on the CBC, imported to US cable with language censored (! sigh) by the Pop Channel, which used to be the TV Guide channel, but is now a joint project of Lionsgate (who bought it) and CBS (who more recently bought in).  Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy are not breaking too much new ground, but nonetheless are expertly portraying somewhat washed up former Canadian television icons, fallen on hard times and living in the motel in the tiny town Schitt's Creek that is one of their few remaining properties...adding to their joy, their spoiled adult children, a daughter and son, live in the room next door (I've only seen two episodes so far, and missed the pilot, so assume the non-kids had been living on parental largesse till that ran out). Chris Elliott and some fine younger actors (including Levy's son, the co-creator) are the supporting cast. I'll watch O'Hara in anything short of a Home Alone movie (Away We Go would be about the far limit), but this is rather good fun so far.

As things wrap up and the layoffs continue from the corporation where I have served as the national public broadcasting scheduling reporter for 17 years (beginning about six months after I started at what was still TV Guide magazine, primarily), entering and editing the data about PBS, nationally syndicated, Create, MHz Worldview and Deutsche Welle North America programming for products ranging from PBS.org through TV Guide products to Comcast and some other cable systems and sub channel guides, I'm about to join the laid off, and it's hard not to think back about my engagement with television, both professionally and beforehand.  

I'm fifty years old, and one thing I've heard repeatedly from peers over the decades has been how they, when young, had only three broadcast channels to choose from when watching tv, at least till cable became available and was actually subscribed to by their families. Seems strange to me, since I guess I was spoiled, from the age of five onward, to never live anywhere where there weren't at least four network stations (including PBS) and usually at least some interesting independents broadcasting within viewing range. In 1969, my parents and I moved from Fairbanks, Alaska, to the Boston suburb of West Peabody, MA, with a summer stopover in Oklahoma City (we traveled by pickup truck with camper atop it. I spent a lot of that trip, while the car was moving or stopped, in the bunk over the cab, which would probably not be an advisable way of going about such a trip today).

So, in Boston, there were no fewer than eight broadcast stations in 1969 or in the months shortly thereafter, and the relatively fuzzy New Hampshire stations to complement them: on VHF, the four big network stations (with National Educational Television/soon PBS powerhouse WGBH on 2, NBC on WBZ 4, CBS on 7, ABC on 5, and those NH stations WMUR, an ABC affiliate on 9 and WENH, the PBS anchor for the state network, soon on 11), and on UHF the commercial independents 27, 38, 56 (the Kaiser Broadcasting channel) and WGBX 44, the little sibling that ran as much local and syndicated programming as NET/PBS items...if 44 wasn't the first station in the US to run Doctor Who, for example, it was one of the first.  (To be continued.)

↧
↧

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

March 16, 2015, 10:52 pm
$
0
0
↧

Saturday Music Club on Monday: some rather funny songs

March 22, 2015, 10:18 pm
$
0
0
Maggie and Terre Roche (featuring the Oak Ridge Boys): "If You Emptied Out All Your Pockets You Could Not Make the Change"


Karen Kilgariff: "Couldn't Love You More"


Tom Smothers: "Mediocre Fred"


Fairport Convention: "Million Dollar Bash"


The Kinks: "Wicked Annabella"


Utopia: "Everybody Else is Wrong"


The Damned: "Grimly Fiendish"


Trusty: "Goodbye, Dr. Fate"


The Virgin-Whore Complex: "The Coldest Night of the Year"


Annie Ross: "Twisted"; Lambert, Hendricks & Ross with Williams: "Every Day I Have the Blues"


↧

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

March 24, 2015, 2:30 pm
$
0
0
The IPCRESS File
Back again, for a second week running (!), and featuring at least two Ida Lupino films among other items of at least some interest, and usually some very great interest indeed, at least from one angle or another...thanks to all contributors and all you readers...

Anne Billson: The Beginner's Guide to Giallo

Bill Crider: Blind Date[trailer]

Brian Arnold: VHS Treasures; CBS Saturday Morning TV Commercials, 1985

BV Lawson: Media Murder

Comedy Film Nerds: Helen Hong

Dan Stumpf: The Key Man; The Villain Still Pursued Her

Darlene Vendegna: TableTop: "Cards Against Humanity"

Ed Lynskey: The Bigamist

Elizabeth Foxwell: Crossroads; Odd Man Out

Evan Lewis: Richard Diamond, Private Detective: "Custody"

Frank Babics: The 4400: "According to Collier"

George Kelley: Some Came Running

How Did This Get Made?: Deep Blue Sea

3 Coeurs
Iba Dawson: 3 Coeurs

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: In the Land of the Head Hunters;The Doris Day Show: "Doris the Model"

J. Kingston Pierce: Bullet Points

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Dip in the Pool" (by Roald Dahl)

Jackie Kashian: LeAnn Olsen and musical theater

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Deep in My Heart

Jake Hinkson: Albert Maysles

James Reasoner: Three O'Clock High

Jeff Flugel: Ride Lonesome

Jeff Gemmill: Veronica Mars
The Late Edwina Black

Jerry House: The Hitch-Hiker

John Grant: The Late Edwina Black;  Keiju; The College Girl Murders (aka...)

John F. Norris: The Two Faces of January

Jonathan Lewis: White Zombie; The Deadly Trackers

Juri Nummelin: Él 

Kate Laity: The IPCRESS File

Kliph Nesteroff: Dick Gautier

Laura: The Big Broadcast

Lev Levinson: The Women

Lucy Brown: Father of the Bride (1950 film)

Martin Edwards: Deception

Marty McKee: Terror Among Us

Mystery Dave: A Million Ways to Die in the West

Patti Abbott: The Egg and I

Paul Gallagher: Warhol

Peter Rozovsky: Talaash

Prashant Trikannad: Are You Turned Off by TV Drama?

Thelonious Monk
Randy Johnson: Have a Good Funeral, My Friend...Sartana Will Pay (aka...)

Richard Wheeler: Casablanca

Rick: This is Cinerama!

Rod Lott: WolfCop

Ron Scheer: Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

Sergio Angelini: Cash on Demand

Stacia Jones: Without a Clue

Stephen Bowie: The Chrysler Theater: "Barbed Wire"

Stephen Gallagher: Chimera

Steve Lewis: Law and Order LA: "Hollywood"; Profiler: Pilot; Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Todd Mason: The Subject is Jazz: "The Future of Jazz"

Yvette Banek: The Grand Illusion
↧

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: MONAD Number Two, March 1992, edited by Damon Knight (Pulphouse Publishing)

March 26, 2015, 9:53 pm
$
0
0
Paperback edition above, hc below.

As noted here previously,  Damon Knight's Monad, as a periodical book (subscriptions available) was sadly short-lived, producing only three issues/volumes before the overextended publisher gave up the ghost (unlike Algis Budrys, who bought his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction and published it himself after the first and only Pulphouse issue, Knight perhaps decided he didn't need to gamble his own cash). Knight's editorial here notes that the first two issues break nearly every rule he set out for himself in the first editorial, and indeed the subtitle is no more true for this issue than for the previous, as the essays collected here are nearly as much about fantasy fiction and literary criticism as about sf per se. 

The quality of the essays is about as good as in the first issue, as well, with William Wu's account of being perceived as not writing Sufficiently Orientally about East Asian and particularly East Asian-American matters a wry tale, Wu trying his damnedest to be both fair and kind but his head clearly still shaking No as he types, with utmost justification.

Contents, courtesy ISFDb:

Brian Aldiss, in a piece first delivered at an IAFA convention, makes some interesting observations about how home-bound, and comfortable in being so, the majority of British fantasy before the latter 1970s had been (British characters even often living rather cheerfully with their household haunts), vs. the quest tendency prevalent in US fantasy...even Arthur eventually settled, though Aldiss takes more interest in another poem usually attributed to the anonymous composer of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

Gary Westfahl's first essay is the weakest in the volume, making valid points about various sorts of and reasons for sequelization, but tying that to a rather tiresomely distended running joke of creating or repurposing terms for these various methods and devices; the butterfly is definitely broken by time the wheel stops turning.

John Barnes replies to Bruce Sterling's essay in the first volume, taking Sterling to task for his rather facile dismissal of modern critical theory, without ignoring the flaws and limits of the array of critical approaches he cites.

Thomas Perry looks closely at Robert Heinlein's first published sf story, "Lifeline," and among other things cites Alexei Panshin for his misconstruction of the story in the latter's critical writing on Heinlein (Perry is too kind, however, to Cory and Alexei Panshin's The World Beyond the Hill, their attempt at a critical history of sf that won an extremely undeserved Hugo not long before this issue was published). Perry's joke about the death of a journalist character in the story is particularly fine. (Perry apparently didn't know, or perhaps didn't remember, that the Thrilling Wonder Stories story contest Heinlein didn't choose to send his story to was subsequently won by first sf-story author Alfred Bester.)

John Sladek briefly and wittily (of course) limns some of the inspiration for and subtext of his novels Roderick and Tik-Tok, and robot narratives generally.  BBC Radio 4 and possibly NPR and Pacifica Radio listeners' loss is our gain here.

Westfahl is in much better form with his second essay, which is a good brief survey, by an academic critic of sf, of how and why much of the academic criticism of sf goes awry, or misses its own point (sometimes by intent and out of practical necessity), and how some for which this is true is still better work than The World Beyond the Hill, which he deftly outlines as pitiful with plenty of supporting evidence, despite, as he notes, having within it at least an interesting and useful consideration of the influence and underappreciated qualities of A. E. van Vogt's early sf...and this in a critical magazine edited by Knight, who first gained widespread attention in the speculative-fiction community, in the late 1940s, for his critiques of van Vogt's widely-hailed early work not long after the latter was first published. Westfahl is also judicious about the strengths and weaknesses of critical works of peers ranging from Darko Suvin through Paul A. Carter (one of the first I read, when his The Creation of Tomorrow, and I, were new) to Norman Spinrad (whose critical work in the last decade or so has been underappreciated and usually rather better than his more recent, and sparse, fiction).

J.R. Dunn's letter rather forcefully, if at excessive length, takes issue with an assertion of Ursula K. Le Guin's in her essay in the first issue, and there's some justice and some useful reference in the churn of his argument.

One could wish for more Knight in this issue beyond the editorial, but one could certainly wish the magabook had had a longer run.  I still need to pick up the third and final issue.

For more of today's books, please see Evan Lewis's blog (and his Hammett-tribute story in the current Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine), as he fills in for Patti Abbott (with her own new story in the new magazine Betty Fedora) this week.
↧
↧

March (and some more) Underappreciated Music: the links

March 28, 2015, 9:22 am
$
0
0
The (finally returned) monthly assembly of undervalued and often nearly "lost" music, or simply music the blogger in question wants to remind you reader/listeners of....

Patti Abbott: One-Hit Wonders

Brian Arnold: Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons: "Wheels";  Halloween Songs

Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Friday Night Videos

Jim C: The Odean Pope Saxophone Choir: Locked and Loaded

Sean Coleman: Joni Mitchell: The Hissing of Summer Lawns

Bill Crider: Forgotten Music; Song of the Day 

Iba Dawson: What Happened, Miss Simone?

The Staple Singers: "Sit Down, Servant"


Jeff Gemmill: Rumer, and Natalie Duncan

Jerry House: Johnny Rivers;Four Bitchin' Babes and more; Hymn Time

Randy Johnson: (Music) Because I Like It...

George Kelley: The Hollies: 50 at Fifty; Amanda Marshall: Everybody's Got a Story

Kate Laity: Alan Savage, Lys Guillorn, Downtown Boys; Gladys Bentley's Quartette; Scottish Night at Albany Symphony; Vic Godard and Subway Sect: 1979Now!; The Possibilities Are Endless (soundtrack); Julie Beman: Movie; The Autumn Stones; Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

Evan Lewis: Kip Anderson and Nappy Brown: "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee"

Miriam Makeba: "Ye tintu tiz alegn" (aka/sic "Yetentu Tizaleny")


Todd Mason: Saturday Music Club: Late Shift (jazz overnight); Better 1? Better 2?; Some Bands with Singers, Some Singers with Bands; SMC Returns, Still Tardy; Further Afield; Some Rather Funny Songs; Some Folk Rock and Antecedents 

Lawrence Person: Shoegazer Sunday

Charlie Ricci: The Monkees: "Goin' Down";Crosby, Stills & Nash: CSN;John Gorka;Annie Haslam: Annie Haslam

Richard Robinson: Wayne Shorter

Ron Scheer: Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser; Oscar Peterson Quartet featuring Joe Pass: Tokyo 1987

Teo Macero Band: "T.C.'s Groove"


The Staple Singers: "I'm Coming Home"
↧

The Parts Left Out: THE REALIST and the Larger Culture

March 30, 2015, 4:51 pm
$
0
0
The beginnings of an entry in Earl Kemp and Luis Ortiz's Cult Magazines that I didn't have the wherewithal to put in the form I'd be comfortable with.
Of course, The Realist Archive, which would've helped enormously, really filled out several months after my deadline...


The Parts Left Out: The Realist and the Larger Culture
By Todd Mason
It seems strange in retrospect. The Realist, the magazine which is often cited as having sparked the Counterculture of the 1960s, founded in 1958 and folding in its first inpulpation in 1974, is now often best remembered as the magazine that published the Disney Orgy. Not even “The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book,” which suggests that LBJ had his way with the recently dead JFK’s corpse, seems to loom quite as large in the collective memory…maybe because of the famous litigiousness of the Disney empire, maybe because so many youngsters saw the various iconic characters engaging in fairly public intercourse at an impressionable age…maybe because Paul Krassner, the founder, editor and publisher of The Realist, will still sell you a poster of the Wally Wood cartoon.
But what was genuinely impressive about The Realist was less about one or another example of the fun that could be had putting an absurd spin on the larger horrors of the day, so much as the audacity of the whole, the willingness to once more throw itself into the breach, to use irony, with absurdity and genuine anger, to do what journalism so often credits itself with doing, to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.
Krassner, by the accounts you can find in his autobiographical writings collected variously and in interviews all over the web, was a bright kid ready for attention; famously the youngest violin prodigy to perform at Carnegie Hall by 1939, he has never lost his taste for public performance. Inspired by the (in 2006, recently late) publisher Lyle Stuart, whose “alternative” newspaper The Independent was an early and formative gig for young man, already working as a comedian (as with Jack Benny, Victor Borge or the Smothers Brothers, using his musical abilities to augment his comedy act), as was a brief tenure on Mad magazine, just after [must doublecheck] its transition to a full-sized magazine from the more distributor-controlled standard comic-book format. Not completely satisfied with the limits of Stuart’s paper’s muckraking nor the not-completely juvenile (but always juvenile-accessible) lampooning of Mad, he reports that he thought he’d best combine the strengths of both, and produce a topical satire magazine for adults. Thus, The Realist.

1958…it’d been years since the mimeographed near-samisdat of the likes of G. Legman’s Neurotica had reached its few subscribers, Harvey Kurtzman’s Trump and Humbug had already slipped away from the scene (and his Help! wouldn’t arrive, with its own kid-friendly limits, for another couple of years, nor the national version of Monocle--not the current magazine of that name), and the closest thing to a truly engaged adult humor magazine widely available in the US was the gray, genteel New Yorker (and in Britain, Punch was not much edgier). Meanwhile, the much-vaunted (and –damned) “Beats” and the “Sick” Comedians, and a few others clustered around the likes of the tabloid The Village Voice or the increasingly surefooted attempts to achieve a kind of wry sophistication on the part of magazines ranging from Esquire through Playboy to the upstart Evergreen Review, seemed to suggest that the Cold War terror of appearing non-comformist was either slackening or at least had bred a reaction, or a counter-reaction, to the notion that Fulton J. Sheen and the Reader’s Digest had all the answers you couldn’t find in an approved civics textbook. A newsletter-format magazine that corralled and expanded upon the absurdity and willingness to address taboo subjects that was characterizing the best college humor magazines, and was more willing to focus on the absurdities of public discourse and official doubletalk, and would take a semi-serious, at least, look at “fringe” culture and ideas…this is what The Realist provided from the beginning. And would continue to provide throughout its run, inspiring offshoots and partial descendents ranging from the National Lampoon through the initially hippy-oriented underground newspapers to such deadpan hoaxes (with their parody grounded by the reality they mirrored) as the Report from Iron Mountain, like the typical Realist hoax article too believable an insanity, for its times, to be dismissed as merely a joke…when the hoax was apparent at all.

[This would be where the bulk of fleshing out with specific examples from Realist articles and interviews would appear, highlighting the diversity of the fringe, countercultural, and early-warning journalism and satire offered by the magazine.]

By the time Krassner wrapped up The Realist for the second time, seeing that there were (with the internet, the web, and other emerging decentralizing technologies) other means to spread the good word and carry on the good fight, he was particularly happy about such developments as The Onion, a paper devoted entirely to pointed hoaxes, and such projects as Harry Shearer’s weekly radio satire review Le Show. He began blogging, an utterly natural outgrowth of his previous journalism. And he maintains. The job is never done, but The Realist, perhaps more than any other single magazine, helped define how it could be done.

↧
Search

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

March 31, 2015, 10:45 am
$
0
0
↧

FFB: WHO KILLED SCIENCE FICTION? (SAFARI ANNUAL #1, 1960) edited by Earl Kemp

April 3, 2015, 3:33 pm
$
0
0
Cover illustration by Ed Emshwiller
In 2006,  Earl Kemp decided to post the assorted contents of his original SaFari Annual amateur press association (APA) publication, essentially subtitled Who Killed Science Fiction?, under which title it won the 1961 Hugo award for best fanzine, despite most of the membership of even the relatively small 1961 WorldCon not having much of an opportunity to read the publication. Like most APA magazines (APAzines), it had been mostly distributed to fellow members of its APA, the Spectator Amateur Press Society or SAPS, one of the more impressive of the APAs in the sf/fantasy fan/convention/fanzine community.  Since this first anniversary issue of SaFari was also a report on answers to a brief survey to writers and fans, of essentially How and If SF Was Killed and, if so, how might that be rectified, copies were distributed to those who had answered the survey, as well. And, as Earl Kemp notes in his annotations from an aborted 1980 reprint and expansion, and presentation of the 1980, 1960 and more content (including comments from elsewhere about the publication) as part of Kemp's online fanzine eI, he wanted to win a Hugo for something. And so he did.

From Kemp's 1960 introduction:
For well over two years I had heard far too many people decrying the death of magazine science fiction, and like Bob Leman [later a notable writer of horror fiction], mourning the lack of critical soul-searching from within the field.

How shall I go about it? I determined first that I would restrict this critical colossus to the magazine field only and decided on five specific points of enquiry, which were:
 1) Do you feel that magazine science fiction is dead?
 2) Do you feel that any single person, action, incident, etc., is responsible for the present situation? If not, what is responsible?
 3) What can we do to correct it?
 4) Should we look to the original paperback as a point of salvation?
 5) What additional remarks, pertinent to the study, would you like to contribute?

The responses to these questions, discretely and collectively depending on the answerer, were the heart of the eventual issue. 

Why was there such a sense of a murdered science fiction in the air, that as many agreed with the premise behind the questions, even if only partially...and that so many editors in the magazine field responded? Well...relatively briefly: In the late 1940s, in the relatively flush years in the US after WW2 and increasingly flush years in science
Along with the brilliant Knight and MacLean,
features PJ Farmer's "Mother" and Evan Hunter.
fiction circles particularly, the fiction magazines at the core of the fandom-engaged field were on an uptick in sales and quality, even as more and more sf was being published in book form and in the general-interest magazines of the era, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. The war and its aftermath didn't force a new sobriety nor maturity on popular culture as a whole, but certainly greater sophistication was suddenly likely to be appreciated, and the new technology sweeping into the culture and its implications for the future meshed with the desire in the sf magazines generally to achieve at least the kind of sophistication demonstrated by the crime-fiction magazines or the better western titles...and so they did. Thrilling Wonder Stories and particularly its younger stablemate Startling Stories moved away from the more juvenile aspects of pulp sf throughout the latter 1940s and began publishing such challenging work as "The Lovers" by Philip Jose Farmer and "What's It Like Out There?" by Edmond Hamilton; Astounding Science Fiction, though unfortunately allowing L. Ron Hubbard to gain his first wide exposure for Dianetics (among other "fringe science"--though Amazing also was a booster of UFOria and similar crackpottery), also continued to feature sophisticated, often engineer-friendly writing; Ziff-Davis's Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, consistently the most juvenile of the more prominent pulps under editor Ray Palmer, were turned over to Howard Browne, who fitfully upgraded them with genuinely good stories mixed in with the usual pseudonymous notional adventure tales, while Palmer went on to found Other Worlds and Imagination, both also somewhat better than his work at ZD; founded in 1952, Browne's Fantastic was both more sophisticated than the other ZD fiction magazines and initially hugely successful. Planet Stories, the first great home of Ray Bradbury's sf as well as the space opera of the brilliant Leigh Brackett and many others, upgraded with the efforts of assistant editor Jerome Bixby and company; the legendary Weird Tales continued to offer good work, up till folding in 1954, and Donald Wollheim finally had a budget and publisher support with the Avon Fantasy Reader, founded 1947 and arguably a periodical book rather than a magazine per se, but still very much like a magazine, and a good one (the similar Avon Science FictionReader soon followed, and the two titles would be merged briefly after Wollheim left Avon for Ace). The Magazine of Fantasy, after several years of planning, finally launched as a similar companion to Ellery Queen's
the second issue, 1950
Mystery Magazine and American Mercury in 1949, and added "and Science Fiction" to its title with the second issue. Even as F&SF mixed in a number of reprinted stories in each issue, as did EQMM, the reprint magazines Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Fantastic Novels continued offering a few notable original stories, such as Robert Bloch's "The Man Who Collected Poe." Other new magazines started to pop up, some as impressive as Damon Knight's Worlds Beyond Science-Fantasy, featuring Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, and some as minor as the semi-professional Fantasy Book...which nonetheless managed to publish, in an issue with a short ghost story collaboration by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl and a story from fellow future bestselling novelist Alfred Coppel, an item called "Scanners Live in Vain" by someone calling himself "Cordwainer Smith." A few pulp sf titles that had been suspended in the face of WW2 paper restrictions, such Super Science Stories and Future Fiction, were revived (and Future and its stablemates would feature some impressively innovative work on a tiny budget throughout the decade)...and an Italian publisher of romance comics, doing well in most of the rest of Europe, tried breaking into the US market, and to round out their portfolio let their advisor H. L. Gold try, among other things, an sf magazine called Galaxy...not exclusively devoted to satirical sf, but that was the way to play it, and an instant success, suddenly passing Amazing, Astounding and Startling to become the best-selling sf magazine, and one of the best-selling fiction magazines of any stripe. That simply, of course, accelerated the flood of imitations from other publishers, some not bad (Fantastic Universe, or the first magazine called Science Fiction Adventures--all of three of which have been not bad!), some terrible (Vortex Science Fiction, and the first issues of If, edited by Paul Fairman and resembling nothing so much as the dullest issues of the Ray Palmer Amazing, despite even a very minor Theodore Sturgeon story in the mix).

And all these magazines were paying, some very well for the time indeed. And even the low-paying "salvage markets" both needed copy and were there to offer extra income to sf writers who would have to simply toss multiply-rejected stories into a drawer or fireplace previously. It had been noted by several writers who worked in that period that one could, for the first time, make a career from writing sf (without being the author of a bestselling novel or several, such as Aldous Huxley, Philip Wylie or C. S. Lewis).

Meanwhile, as noted above, a number of publishers were starting or vastly expanding their sf book lines as the 1950s began; Ballantine Books particularly was willing to pay well for original work, and for serials and collections of shorter work from the magazines, and others (including Lion Books and Fawcett) would to one degree or another follow suit.

And while most of the sf films being made in the 1950s were pretty dire, a few weren't, and a few of those were even loosely or closely based on fiction from the magazines, including The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing (from Another World).  Television was even more unlikely to feature too much of adult interest, at least in the US, but there were odd exceptions (Richard Matheson had at least one story adapted for Studio 57 by the end of the decade, and, early on, several sf writers made some decent money scripting the kids' show Captain Video). More sophisticated was some of the dramatic anthology work on network radio in the early '50s, most notably Dimension X and its continuation X Minus 1, which mostly adapted sf stories from the magazines rather well and with professionalism.

And some writers and other creative people would look to sf, as Alfred Bester and others have noted, as a means for making coded statements about current events in the most repressed years of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's ranting and the clumsy inquests of the House Un-American Activities Committee. All this, and at least some critical attention being paid to sf from "outside" as well as "inside" the writers/fandom community all contributed to a sense of great optimism and some considerable artistic achievement by the mid 1950s...but also a contraction of the market, for various reasons, by the end of the 1950s, and the reasons are certainly discussed directly and indirectly in the Kemp compendium. Amusingly, some of the prime movers of the renaissance, to the degree that there has been (at least several partial ones over the decades) are among the contributors, or are multiply cited...Cele Goldsmith/Lalli at Ziff-Davis's Fantastic and Amazing, Avram Davidson, soon to become editor of F&SF, and Frederik Pohl at the Galaxy magazine group among the prime movers in the US, and Ted Carnell helping overcome the slump through his work in his UK magazines Science Fantasy and New Worlds (and, briefly, one of the Science Fiction Adventures mentioned above).

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
↧
↧

Saturday Music Club: SFnal Jazz

April 4, 2015, 6:46 pm
$
0
0
Gil Mellé Band: "Weird Valley" (1956)


Sun Ra and His Myth Science Arkestra: "Plutonian Nights" (1959)


George Russell Orchestra featuring Bill Evans: "Waltz from Outer Space" (1960)


Dinah Washington with the Fred Norman Orchestra: "Destination Moon" (1962)


The Dave Brubeck Quartet: "Unisphere" (1964)


The Modern Jazz Quartet: "A Visitor from Mars"; "A Visitor from Venus" (1970)


Ornette Coleman Band: "Science Fiction" (1971)


Weather Report: "Mysterious Traveller" (1974)



↧

supplement to the context-setting for WHO KILLED SCIENCE FICTION?--short sf in the 1950s.

April 6, 2015, 5:34 pm
$
0
0
Among the anthologies that have mined the increasing post-WW2 sophistication in sf and fantasy magazines (and related media the magazine writers would publish with), one of the most impressive series has been the Great SF Stories: [year] retro-annuals Isaac Asimov and M. H. Greenberg edited (with input from Barry Malzberg and others) beginning in the latest 1970s...which give a good sense of how much good work was being spread to a wide variety of magazines and original anthologies over the decade--contemporary Year's Best annuals from the 1950s follow, and another latest-1970s retro-anthology, with some overlap between the various volumes, but this rather lengthy data-gather does give some sense of the ferment of the decade:

Indices courtesy the Locus Indices; "CNB" is Locus cofounder/editor Charles N. Brown):

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 11 (1949) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-87997-918-6, Mar ’84 [Feb ’84], $3.50, 317pp, pb) Anthology of 15 stories from 1949 with notes Asimov. This series offers an excellent historical survey of the sf field. Recommended. (CNB)


Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 12 (1950) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-87997-953-4, Sep ’84 [Aug ’84], $3.50, 319pp, pb) Anthology of 18 classic stories.
  • 9 · 1950 Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · Not with a Bang · Damon Knight · ss F&SF Win/Spr ’50
  • 19 · Spectator Sport · John D. MacDonald · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb ’50
  • 26 · There Will Come Soft Rains · Ray Bradbury · ss Colliers May 6 ’50
  • 34 · Dear Devil · Eric Frank Russell · nv Other Worlds Science Stories May ’50
  • 70 · Scanners Live in Vain · Cordwainer Smith · nv Fantasy Book #6 ’50
  • 105 · Born of Man and Woman · Richard Matheson · vi F&SF Sum ’50
  • 109 · The Little Black Bag · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Astounding Jul ’50
  • 138 · Enchanted Village · A. E. van Vogt · ss Other Worlds Science Stories Jul ’50
  • 154 · Oddy and Id [“The Devil’s Invention”] · Alfred Bester · ss Astounding Aug ’50
  • 170 · The Sack · William Morrison · ss Astounding Sep ’50
  • 190 · The Silly Season · C. M. Kornbluth · ss F&SF Fll ’50
  • 205 · Misbegotten Missionary · Isaac Asimov · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
  • 221 · To Serve Man · Damon Knight · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
  • 230 · Coming Attraction · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Nov ’50
  • 244 · A Subway Named Mobius · A. J. Deutsch · ss Astounding Dec ’50
  • 260 · Process · A. E. van Vogt · ss F&SF Dec ’50
  • 267 · The Mindworm · C. M. Kornbluth · ss Worlds Beyond Dec ’50
  • 281 · The New Reality · Charles L. Harness · nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec ’50
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 13 (1951) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-058-0, Jul ’85 [Jun ’85], $3.50, 337pp, pb) Anthology of the best of 1951 plus an introduction about the year in the world and in sf. An excellent anthology. The whole series is highly recommended. (CNB)
  • ix · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 1 · Null-P · William Tenn · ss Worlds Beyond Jan ’51
  • 15 · The Sentinel [“Sentinel of Eternity”] · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Ten Story Fantasy Spr ’51
  • 27 · The Fire Balloons [“‘In This Sign...’”] · Ray Bradbury · ss Imagination Apr ’51
  • 48 · The Marching Morons · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Galaxy Apr ’51
  • 83 · The Weapon · Fredric Brown · ss Astounding Apr ’51
  • 88 · Angel’s Egg · Edgar Pangborn · nv Galaxy Jun ’51
  • 130 · Breeds There a Man...? · Isaac Asimov · nv Astounding Jun ’51
  • 171 · Pictures Don’t Lie · Katherine MacLean · ss Galaxy Aug ’51
  • 193 · Superiority · Arthur C. Clarke · ss F&SF Aug ’51
  • 206 · I’m Scared · Jack Finney · ss Colliers Sep 15 ’51
  • 222 · The Quest for Saint Aquin · Anthony Boucher · ss New Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healy, Holt, 1951; F&SF Jan ’59
  • 244 · Tiger by the Tail · Alan E. Nourse · ss Galaxy Nov ’51
  • 253 · With These Hands · C. M. Kornbluth · nv Galaxy Dec ’51
  • 274 · A Pail of Air · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Dec ’51
  • 291 · Dune Roller · Julian May · nv Astounding Dec ’51
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 14 (1952) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-106-4, Jan ’86 [Dec ’85], $3.50, 352pp, pb) Anthology of stories from 1952. Recommended. (CNB)

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 15 (1953) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-171-4, Dec ’86 [Nov ’86], $3.50, 352pp, pb) Anthology of 17 stories first published in 1953 plus a summary of the year in and out of sf plus remarks on the various writers. Recommended (CNB).
  • 9 · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · The Big Holiday · Fritz Leiber · ss F&SF Jan ’53
  • 24 · Crucifixus Etiam · Walter M. Miller, Jr. · ss Astounding Feb ’53
  • 48 · Four in One · Damon Knight · nv Galaxy Feb ’53
  • 86 · Saucer of Loneliness · Theodore Sturgeon · ss Galaxy Feb ’53
  • 102 · The Liberation of Earth · William Tenn · ss Future May ’53
  • 123 · Lot [David Jimmon] · Ward Moore · nv F&SF May ’53
  • 155 · The Nine Billion Names of God · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
  • 164 · Warm · Robert Sheckley · ss Galaxy Jun ’53
  • 176 · Impostor · Philip K. Dick · ss Astounding Jun ’53
  • 194 · The World Well Lost · Theodore Sturgeon · ss Universe Jun ’53
  • 216 · A Bad Day for Sales · Fritz Leiber · ss Galaxy Jul ’53
  • 224 · Common Time · James Blish · ss Science Fiction Quarterly Aug ’53
  • 250 · Time Is the Traitor · Alfred Bester · nv F&SF Sep ’53
  • 277 · The Wall Around the World · Theodore R. Cogswell · nv Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep ’53
  • 308 · The Model of a Judge · William Morrison · ss Galaxy Oct ’53
  • 322 · Hall of Mirrors · Fredric Brown · ss Galaxy Dec ’53
  • 331 · It’s a Good Life · Jerome Bixby · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #2, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 16 (1954) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-200-1, May ’87, $3.50, 350pp, pb) Anthology of 17 stories from 1954.
  • 9 · 1954 Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 13 · The Test · Richard Matheson · ss F&SF Nov ’54
  • 34 · Anachron · Damon Knight · ss If Jan ’54
  • 54 · Black Charlie · Gordon R. Dickson · ss Galaxy Apr ’54
  • 72 · Down Among the Dead Men · William Tenn · nv Galaxy Jun ’54
  • 100 · The Hunting Lodge · Randall Garrett · nv Astounding Jul ’54
  • 138 · The Lysenko Maze · Donald A. Wollheim · ss F&SF Jul ’54
  • 151 · Fondly Fahrenheit · Alfred Bester · nv F&SF Aug ’54
  • 174 · The Cold Equations · Tom Godwin · nv Astounding Aug ’54
  • 203 · Letters from Laura · Mildred Clingerman · ss F&SF Oct ’54
  • 211 · Transformer · Chad Oliver · ss F&SF Nov ’54
  • 227 · The Music Master of Babylon · Edgar Pangborn · nv Galaxy Nov ’54
  • 258 · The End of Summer · Algis Budrys · nv Astounding Nov ’54
  • 289 · The Father-Thing · Philip K. Dick · ss F&SF Dec ’54
  • 304 · The Deep Range · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #3, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1954
  • 315 · Balaam · Anthony Boucher · ss 9 Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healey, Holt, 1954
  • 332 · Man of Parts · Horace L. Gold · ss 9 Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healey, Holt, 1954
  • 349 · Answer · Fredric Brown · vi Angels and Spaceships, Dutton, 1954
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 17 (1955) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-256-7, Jan ’88 [Dec ’87], $3.95, 349pp, pb) Anthology of 14 sf stories.
  • 333 · Dreaming Is a Private Thing · Isaac Asimov · ss F&SF Dec ’55
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 18 (1956) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-289-3, Aug ’88 [Jul ’88], $4.50, 366pp, pb) Anthology of 15 sf stories from 1956.
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 19 (1957) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-326-1, Feb ’89, $4.50, 350pp, pb) Anthology of 15 stories from 1957 plus commentary. This long-running anthology series is an excellent way to look at the sf field year by year. Recommended. (CNB)
  • 9 · Introduction · Martin H. Greenberg · in
  • 15 · Strikebreaker [“Male Strikebreaker”] · Isaac Asimov · ss Science Fiction Stories Jan ’57
  • 33 · Omnilingual · H. Beam Piper · nv Astounding Feb ’57
  • 89 · The Mile-Long Spaceship · Kate Wilhelm · ss Astounding Apr ’57
  • 103 · Call Me Joe · Poul Anderson · nv Astounding Apr ’57
  • 149 · You Know Willie · Theodore R. Cogswell · ss F&SF May ’57
  • 157 · Hunting Machine · Carol Emshwiller · ss Science Fiction Stories May ’57
  • 167 · World of a Thousand Colors · Robert Silverberg · ss Super Science Fiction Jun ’57
  • 187 · Let’s Be Frank · Brian W. Aldiss · ss Science-Fantasy #23 ’57
  • 199 · The Cage · A. Bertram Chandler · ss F&SF Jun ’57
  • 215 · The Education of Tigress McCardle · C. M. Kornbluth · ss Venture Jul ’57
  • 229 · The Tunesmith · Lloyd Biggle, Jr. · nv If Aug ’57
  • 281 · A Loint of Paw · Isaac Asimov · vi F&SF Aug ’57
  • 285 · Game Preserve · Rog Phillips · ss If Oct ’57
  • 305 · Soldier [“Soldier from Tomorrow”] · Harlan Ellison · nv Fantastic Universe Oct ’57
  • 335 · The Last Man Left in the Bar · C. M. Kornbluth · ss Infinity Science Fiction Oct ’57
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 20 (1958) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-405-5, Feb ’90 [Jan ’90], $4.95, 351pp, pb, cover by Robin Hidden) Anthology of 12 stories from 1958 plus commentary. This series is one of the best surveys of the modern sf short story. Recommended (CNB).
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 21 (1959) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-428-4, Jun ’90 [May ’90], $4.95, 347pp, pb, cover by Robin Hidden) Anthology of 14 stories from 1959.
...and one sees how relatively restricted the markets for good fiction were by the end of the decade...and even Asimov could find no first-rate short fiction from 1959 in Astounding, which was about to become Analog...Sturgeon's "The Man Who Lost the Sea" was in Foley's Best American Short Storiesfor its year.

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories #22 (1960) ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW 0-88677-465-9, Feb ’91 [Jan ’91], $4.50, 351pp, pb, cover by Angus McKie) Anthology of 11 stories from 1960 plus commentary.

--Meanwhile Everett Bleiler and Ted Ditky, eventually with ever greater input from Earl Kemp, produced the first best-of annual in sf:


    The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1952 ed. Everett F. Bleiler & T. E. Dikty (Fredrick Fell, Aug ’52, $2.95, 284pp, hc)
    In England as The Best Science Fiction Stories: Third Series.
    Best Science Fiction Stories and Novels: 9th Series ed. T. E. Dikty (Advent:Publishers, 1958, hc)
And here's Judith Merril's annual, which from the start promised to offer both sf and fantasy:
    SF:’57: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy ed. Judith Merril (Gnome Press LCC# 56-8938, 1957, $3.95, 320pp, hc)
    • 9 · The Man Who Liked Lions · John Bernard Daley · ss Infinity Science Fiction Oct 1956
    • 25 · The Cosmic Expense Account · C. M. Kornbluth · nv F&SF Jan 1956, as “The Cosmic Charge Account”
    • 51 · The Far Look · Theodore L. Thomas · nv Astounding Aug 1956
    • 81 · When Grandfather Flew to the Moon · E. L. Malpass · ss The Observer Jan 2 1955, as “Return of the Moon Man” by Samson Darley
    • 88 · The Doorstop · Reginald Bretnor · ss Astounding Nov 1956
    • 98 · Silent Brother · Algis Budrys · ss Astounding Feb 1956
    • 119 · Stranger Station · Damon Knight · nv F&SF Dec 1956
    • 146 · Each an Explorer · Isaac Asimov · ss Future #30 1956
    • 161 · All About “The Thing” · Randall Garrett · pm Science Fiction Stories May 1956, as “Parodies Tossed”
    • 164 · Put Them All Together, They Spell Monster · Ray Russell · ss Playboy Oct 1956
    • 173 · Digging the Weans · Robert Nathan · ss Harper’s Nov 1956
    • 181 · Take a Deep Breath · Roger Thorne · ss Tiger 1956
    • 187 · Grandma’s Lie Soap · Robert Abernathy · ss Fantastic Universe Feb 1956
    • 206 · Compounded Interest · Mack Reynolds · ss F&SF Aug 1956
    • 220 · Prima Belladonna [Vermilion Sands] · J. G. Ballard · ss Science-Fantasy #20 1956
    • 235 · The Other Man · Theodore Sturgeon · na Galaxy Sep 1956
    • 290 · The Damnedest Thing · Garson Kanin · ss Esquire Feb 1956
    • 298 · Anything Box · Zenna Henderson · ss F&SF Oct 1956
    • 313 · The Year’s S-F, Summation and Honorable Mentions · Judith Merril · ms
--and here's Barry Malzberg and Bill Pronzini's 1979 take on some of the then-overlooked work from the 1950s:
↧

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V; the links

April 7, 2015, 1:32 pm
$
0
0
The MiddleMan
This week's selection of (mostly) recommendations of (and a few warnings about) insufficiently-appreciated or simply obscure film, television, radio, audio recordings, and more...thanks, as always, to all the contributors and to you readers; Patrick Murtha joins us for the first time, this week, and welcome!

Dedicated this week to the memory of Stan Freberg.

Anne Billson: The Three Musketeers in film and television

Bill Crider: Nadine[trailer]; The EQMM Podcast: "The Adventure of the 'Two-Headed Dog'"

Brian Arnold: Redux Deluxe
Mystery in Swing

Brian Greene: Black Rainbow

BV Lawson: Media Murder

Comedy Film Nerds: Matt Mira

"Crime HQ": Videogames: Training for Psychopaths...and Saints?

David Cramner: Ron Scheer: My West: The Sandhills of Nebraska

Ed Lynskey: Framed

Elizabeth Foxwell: Mystery in Swing;National Archives declassification hearings

Evan Lewis: The Big Trail

Francis M. Nevins: Danger and Suspense the tv series and John Dickson Carr

George Kelley: The MiddleMan

Mistress America
How Did This Get Made?: Lake Placid

Iba Dawson: Eden; Mistress America

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Sin of Nora Moran;TCM fare: The Sorcerers, et al.; Nero Wolfe on radio

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents:"Poison" (by Roald Dahl)

Jackie Kashian: Mike Olsen and Andy Ashcraft on game design...and children's television

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Dead Reckoning

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Jake Hinkson: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

James Reasoner: I'll Believe You

Jeff Flugel: The Girl Hunters

Jeff Gemmill: Pretty Little Liars

Jerry House: Stoopnagle and Budd; The Killer Shrews; TED Talks: "Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking"

John Grant: Penny and the Pownall Case; A Passport to Hell

Jonathan Lewis: Race with the Devil

Juri Nummelin: The Killing of America; The Last Starfighter

Kate Laity: PCA 2015 and New Orleans; The Screaming Mimi

Kliph Nesteroff: Dick Gautier (Part 2)

Laura: The Hidden Room (1949 film); College Coach

The Hidden Room:


Lucy Brown: Lesbians coming to bad ends in UK tv drama (some series finale "spoilers" here)

Martin Edwards: Funeral in Berlin

Marty McKee: Doctor of Doom

Mystery Dave: The Opposite Sex and How to Live With Them

Romance de fieras(unfortunately, without English subtitles)


It Follows
Patrick Murtha: Romance de fieras

Patti Abbott: The Apartment as The 1960s film

Randy Johnson: Introspection IV (short fiction by Fredric Brown on LP reissued); The Dirty Fifteen (aka...)

Rick: The Girl in Black Stockings

Rod Lott: The Ghastly Ones; It Follows

Sergio Angelini: The Vicious Circle

Stacia Jones: The Barber

"St. George and the Dragonet" animated:
↧
Viewing all 1181 articles
Browse latest View live
Search