SF conventions, and snapshots of SF conventions, go back a long time. Here's
Midwestcon 2, put on by the Cincinnati Fantasy group in June 1951; shots include
a haunting image of Henry Burwell, publisher of Atlanta zine
Science Fiction Digest, and an already-old
E.E. "Doc" Smith. From Retronaut,
an unnamed 1980 con in LA. From the Mills photo archive,
con costumes from the late 60s through the 80s. Forrest Ackerman, editor of
Famous Monsters of Filmland,
in "futuristic costume" at the first WorldCon in 1939. This last from the endless compendium that is the
MidAmerican Fan Photo Archive.
posted by escabeche
on Aug 1, 2012 -
19 comments
"It's a Good Life" is a 1953 story by Jerome Bixby, who also wrote
It! The Terror From Beyond Space, said to be the inspiration for
Alien, and the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror" (the one with evil bearded Spock.) It was made into a famous Twilight Zone episode, and is generally considered among the greatest SF stories ever written. Is "It's a Good Life" about God? Communism? 1950s suburban conformity? Or just about the horror of the self-contained world it creates in its few pages and the terrible realization that it would be possible to survive inside it, for a while?
posted by escabeche
on May 1, 2012 -
106 comments
Think you get a lot done? Isaac Asimov (
pronounced like "has, him, of" without the h's) , who would have turned 87 today, wrote or edited over
500 books, including
science-fiction novels, introductions to
organic chemistry (a field in which he held a professorship at B.U.) , indispensable
anthologies of early science fiction,
jokebooks,
guides to Shakespeare, and
collections of lively essays on science that have introduced thousands of people to the pleasures of thinking hard about the universe. He also found the time to write
a few essays and
write postcards to his fans. His story
"Runaround" , from his 1950 collection
I, Robot, is the only piece of fiction I know centered on the properties of a differential equation. His
Foundation Trilogy was given a
special Hugo award in 1966 as the best science fiction series of all time; a
movie version, to be written by Jeff Vintar and directed by Shekhar Kapur, is currently in development. Previous AsimovFilter:
here,
here,
here. Feel like a slacker yet? Stop reading MetaFilter and get to work!
posted by escabeche
on Jan 2, 2007 -
95 comments
