A gallery for the weekend: I’ve spent a few hours (instead of working) browsing the artwork of Walter Martin Baumhofer, one of the artists that made a name for themselves in the pulps.
Baumhofer did covers for Street & Smith, and is responsible for the look of Doc Savage on the eponymous magazine covers.
You can’t be more iconic than that.
But Baumhofer was very versatile, as today’s gallery is likely to prove…
(click on any thumbnail to see a larger version of the image) Continue reading
I’ve been absent a few days due to a curious mishap, the sort that only happens when you live in Astigianistan: works for the new sidewalk, accidentally truncated the phone cable, leaving us isolated… well, much more isolated than usual.
Or at least this is what they told us.
In fact I know the natives of Astigianistan don’t trust “the singing wire”, and often cut the lines out of spite or superstitious fear.
It happened with the Apaches, too – or so I learned by watching old Hondo reruns.
Anyway – I’m back, the natives are restless, and tomorrow I’ll appear in video-call at the Lucca Comics & Games special event to present Hope & Glory.
I’ll keep you posted.
Role models.
Everybody needs one, right?
Well, as a kid growing up in suburbia, insight of the toxic smokestacks of the FIAT plants in Turin in the 1970s, I had three role models.
One was Robert Culp, as Kelly Robinson in I Spy.
One was Patrick Macnee, as John Steed in The Avengers.
And one was Georges Descrieres, as the eponymous character in Arsene Lupin.
I’ll talk about all three, just because, in three posts; and I’ll start with the latter, just because.
I’m saddened to learn of the passing away of writer Sheri S. Tepper.
Her novel Beauty was one of the most striking fantasy novels I ever read, and her talent was absolutely wonderful, as was her commitment to telling important stories.
She will be missed.
Beauty is a strange mix of science fiction and fantasy1, that speaks about the human need for beauty, and humanity’s loss of the sense of beauty through time.
And a lot of other things.
A revisionist fantasy that is both chilling and inspiring, it is highly recommended.
Yesterday night, despite the dismal internet connection I have here in the sticks, I followed the first lesson of the Monash University MOOC How to Survive on Mars, offered for free through the FutureLearn platform.
It is a good way to spend an hour, it is far better than television, and it’s helping me to brush up my basic physics and chemistry.
Then it’s about Mars, and that’s part of the fun.
And indeed it gave me a few ideas for stories, which is nice.
Still three weeks to go: all this is very promising.
November is crawling nearer, and soon the blogs and socials will blossom with news about NaNoWriMo – people posting their wordcounts, their progresses, their pains and their triumphs.
It’s ok, I guess.
I never took part in NaNoWriMo, because when I was a serious university researcher (you are allowed to laugh), writing was a leisure activity and I liked to keep it like that. And now that I’m a penny-less out-of-work researcher trying to pay the mortgage and eat once a day with my writing, my writing is at NaNoWriMo levels (and beyond) already, and it’s been like that since May.
BUT…
There’s one secondary, backburner-style project that has been on my mind in the last few weeks, and that will be my own personal Not Exactly NaNoWriMo for 2016. Continue reading
I’ll ramble a bit, if you don’t mind. This post is somewhat connected to the Things I learned from the Movies post a few days back.
Sort of like a reboot.
Last night we were reading a passage from a novel, me and some friends.
It’s a good exercise, reading aloud, and see what it sounds like. It helps a lot.
Robert E Howard used to speak aloud the passages he was typing, or so they say – and it’s a good practice… well, ok maybe not bellowing out loud each and every phrase, but reading some passages aloud helps.
Anyway, the thing we were reading was incredibly bad. But really bad.
This was just some people sitting around a table, having lunch (roast with potatoes, that sort of stuff), and it was supposed to be a quiet naturalistic scene, with some sort of emotional charge underneath.
It was ghastly.
The prose was stilted, the dialogue was made of wood, the whole set up lacked life, rhythm, humor, that spark that brings the scene to your mind’s eye.
It was horrid, and it failed on every point. A disaster.
We laughed a lot, we cringed a lot.
But mostly laughed.
And so it happened that me and my friend Lucy just ended up saying the same thing:
But did this guy ever see a movie in his life?
Which led to an interesting discussion, and it was fun because Lucy is a writer and a movie montage and editing expert1, and I’ll try and summarize it here, for your entertainment. Continue reading
Karavansara 