eldritchhobbit

Happy birthday to Robert A. Heinlein (7 July, 1907 – 8 May, 1988)!



“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.”
- Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones (1952)

Cool Things are Extremely Cool:

- Netflix Revives Western Longmire. Woohoo! I am one happy fangirl.

- The University of Iowa is digitizing 10,000 vintage sci-fi zines dating back to the 1930s. Fantastic!

- Three Calls for Papers of potential interest: 1) on Robert A. Heinlein, 2) on the Gothic and Racism, and 3) on "It's Happening Again": Twenty-Five Years of Twin Peaks.

- FX Is Making a Television Show Out of Alan Moore's From Hell.



- The latest episode of StarShipSofa is out - it's a jam-packed episode - and it includes my most recent "Looking Back on Genre History" segment, which celebrates the recent good news received by fans of The Pretender, Millennium, and Twin Peaks. You can download the episode via iTunes or stream/download it here.


Uncool Thing is Way Not Cool:

( Cut for TMI )

The takeaway here is that most of my Spring 2015 trips and appearances - my Asheville weekend seminars, SofaCON and ConCarolinas, and likely another university campus talk in the works - won't be affected by this turn of events, but I'm very disappointed to say that it looks like Mythmoot III in January is off the table. I'm quite bummed about this.

For now I'm on the road again. Have a great one, my friends!

Things that are cool:

* Scholar Michael Drout has written a most enlightening blog post clarifying his work with Tolkien's Beowulf papers, etc.: "Tolkien's Beowulf: The Real Story."

* From US Weekly: "J.K. Rowling to Pen Fantastic Beasts Trilogy as Harry Potter Spin-Off."

* From The Guardian: "Black death was not spread by rat fleas, say researchers."

* The Heinlein Society is pleased to announce its third annual scholarship essay contest for the 2014-2015 academic year. The scholarships will be awarded to undergraduate students of accredited 4-year colleges and universities majoring in engineering, math, or physical sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry), or in science fiction as literature. Here are more details.

* From Muskrat Magazine: "Indigenizing Sci Fi" by Zainab Amadahy. This is a three-part study of how science fiction/fantasy con organizers everywhere might grow and diversify their events. I'm honored to be mentioned in this piece.

* My dear friend Tony C. Smith has opened a new shop, SeaDriftSoaps. If you're after soap that is natural, unscented, cruelty-free, and handmade, check it out!

* I'll be offering my two-semester history of science fiction with Mythgard Institute again this Fall (2014) and Spring (2015). Consider yourself invited to a free online Q&A session on June 5 for more information! (Note: I'll post a reminder closer to time. Another session timed for UK convenience will take place later this summer, and I'll post about that, as well.)

Last but definitely not least, happy early birthday wishes to sarah531, vg_ford, tunes84, captnofmyheart, wildviolet4, savagedoc45, lalam, silveraspen, denorios, prettybirdy979, sakuraember, cherylmmorgan, muuranker, izhilzha, and justicemuffins. May you enjoy many happy returns of the day, my friends!

Happy birthday to clara_swift and goodnightlady. May you both enjoy an excellent day and a wonderful year to come!


* I stumbled across some older posts that I found to be thought-provoking regarding young adult dystopian fiction. At Tor.com, Jo Walton argued in "The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein's Juveniles" that, taken as a whole, Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles paint a rather bleak and pessimistic picture of future Earth. Cory Doctorow in BoingBoing prompted an interesting series of comments about this, and Patrick Shepherd at Hyperpat countered in "The Pessimistic Heinlein" that Heinlein only created bleak futures in order to give his young heroes opportunities and motivation for improving their own situations and often the world at large. (Note: A list of Heinlein's juveniles is here.) Do you have any thoughts on this, my friends?


* From read_lotr_aloud: "March 25 is Tolkien Reading Day, a day given over to the reading, and appreciation, of Tolkien's works. In honor of that day, I thought maybe we could all read and post a favorite passage from LOTR. Then, as I do with the chapter readings, I will gather links to all the readings into a master list that I will post here at Reading LOTR Aloud. This will be strictly informal - no sign ups necessary. I will post a reminder closer to the day and then on the 25th make a post where you can comment and leave a link if you do a reading. I hope some of you will take part! I already know what I am going to read!"


* I did it: I finally joined BookMooch! In many ways, I find Bookins more user friendly, and I'll definitely be using it as well, but I must say it is great to have the ability to share books internationally via BookMooch.


"Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events."
- Robert Heinlein, The Rolling Stones (1952)

* I highly recommend this fantastic podcast: The Classic Tales Podcast. These are unabridged, classic short stories by the likes of Mary Shelley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Hardy, and H.G. Wells, read by professional actor B.J. Harrison. (Thanks to sword_gryff.)

* For those who love The Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper and are looking forward to the film adaptation this fall, there is disheartening news.

* This month's Locus includes "Yesterday's Tomorrows: Robert A. Heinlein" by Graham Sleight. Although I disagree with Sleight in some ways, I found the article to be thought-provoking and well worth reading.


I'm more than prepared to believe that Heinlein established, pretty much singlehandedly, the language in which modern science fiction is told. The tragedy of his later career is, visibly, that of seeing the gap between what he had believed in and what the world actually did.
- Graham Sleight, "Yesterday's Tomorrow's: Robert A. Heinlein"