“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Mark Twain
Good old Mark Twain, how right you were! When it comes to travel writers, Italy can boast three great names that are now gone: Fosco Maraini, Folco Quilici and Tiziano Terzani. I read a lot of things by these guys. Quilici of course catered for my love of oceanography, while Maraini and Terzani were guides through and across Asia and the Far East.
I have just learned that Lawrence DiTillio, better known to many of us as Larry DiTillio, passed away yesterday at the age of 79, after a long illness.
DiTillio was a writer for television, the man who wrote the Saturday morning cartoons He-Man & the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra, among other dozens of titles. He also worked on Babylon 5 and a number of other series. In this role, he touched the lives of millions of kids the whole world over.
But to me, and to many others, DiTillio was the game designer of The Masks of Nyarlathotep, the colossal campaign for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Considered by many the War and Peace of roleplaying, Masks of Nyarlathotep changed the way in which roleplaying campaign were designed. It coupled a complex, non-linear plot with such an incredible amount of historical detail and invention that made the experience of playing it an absolute delight and, in many ways, a life-changing experience.
Larry DiTillio was the man whose story about a dark plot for the downfall of humanity had me and my friends sitting around a table every Saturday afternoon or Thursday night for two years. He did contribute to make us what we are. He will be missed.
Today marks the 150th birthday of British writer Algernon Blackwood, one of the great authors of supernatural fiction, whose work influenced the likes of William HopeHodgson, H.P. Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, Ramsey Campbell and many others.
Born in 1869, Blackwood was a member of the Golden Dawn, and had a versed interest in matters mystical and supernatural
My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness…. Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary powers etc., and the word “supernatural” seems the best word for treating these in fiction. I believe it possible for our consciousness to change and grow, and that with this change we may become aware of a new universe. A “change” in consciousness, in its type, I mean, is something more than a mere extension of what we already possess and know.
Algernon Blackwood
Today, Algernon Blackwood is remembered chiefly for his short story The Willows, that is considered a classic of weird fiction, The Wendigo, that is the definitive story about this creature from Native American folklore, and for the John Silence stories featuring an early occult detective. All these, and a lot more, can be found on the pages of Project Gutenberg.
To me, Blackwood will forever remain the author of The Valley of the Beasts, another story based on Native American folklore and one that caused me quite a scare when I was about ten or eleven years old.
Blackwood died in 1951, and here is something from 1949, when he related one of his strange stories, on film. Enjoy! (and lookout – as the opening card says, this is for adult audiences)
Today I read something that made me feel very old, and rather uneasy. On my friend’s Lucy’s blog she was talking about the latest Marvel movie, the one featuring Captain Marvel, and she observed that while comic-book-based films have a number of drawbacks, she still welcomes a movie that might inspire some young girl to become a jet pilot or an astronaut. And I was drinking to that, when somebody commented…
I can’t see what’s good about suggesting to a girl to become a pilot
And my head hit the desktop with a deep, hollow Tunc!, like a wooden bowl.
There’s another anniversary going, and that’s the death of Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the great literary giants to grace the field of science fiction and fantasy. I always preferred her non-fiction to her fiction, and I decided to remember her by spending the evening reading her collection of essays, Dreams must explain themselves, and before that, while I was making dinner, I found out and enjoyed very much Learning From Le Guin, a long, fascinating lecture by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Check the video out. It is always great to be able to learn from the greatest.
Karavansara 