Editorial insertions in blue italics.
Other contributor comments in red italics.
Issue 9:
12/30/2009
Dear Steven:
Thanks for Argentus 9, a truly sepia-toned publication with faces from
the nearly-distant past. I'd wonder how the estates and descendants of these
entertainers would feel about their likenesses on a fan publication...probably
anywhere from pleased to amazed. As long as you're not making money off their
trademarked licences, I don't think they'd object. In Toronto, there's been too
many companies and businesses that take the likenesses of people like Laurel and
Hardy, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe and use them to promote
themselves without royalty.
TAFF is decided for another year, and congratulations to Anne KG Murphy and
Brian Gray on winning. Commiserations to Frank Wu, but he's got a silver rocket
to console himself with. DUFF is just starting up, and already two candidates
have surfaced, John Purcell and Jeff Boman.
[And Anne and Brian have the first installment of
the TAFF report in issue 10 of Argentus.]
I've already commented on the Canadian origins of many of these people famous
through their time in vaudeville and silent movies, and where I am currently
working in the daytime, the Law Society of Upper Canada, I am a short walk away
from the Hospital for Sick Children, which has a historical plaque on the corner
of the property, indicating that it was the site of the Pickford homestead. Ben
Turpin is a name finally connected with the crossed eyes and bowler hat. Also, I
have had clarified for me the origins of United Artists, and thank you for that.
I always figured that someone, at some point, would mistake a Hugo award for a
weapon, especially a rocket or projectile, or even a bullet of some kind. But, a
knife? Long and thin and silvery, I suppose.
Steve Green's TAFF report...he's right, CUFF has never been contested, and
probably never will. The last report I had from LeAmber Kensley was that a
candidate from the Maritime provinces had stepped forward to run for CUFF,
seeing that the Canvention for 2010 will be in Winnipeg. That's one way to meet
the TAFF winner...keep him in your car for some hours as you drive him to his
first post-Worldcon destination. That was our big contribution to the trip, to
save Steve from spending hundreds of dollars on a flight to Toronto.
What got me interested in science fiction in the first place? The marvelous
imagination of its writers. Why would I want it harnessed? I'm not even the type
that demands factual science in my SF. How about imagination there, too?
I did not know that Calgary is a suburb of East London, South Africa. I'm all
too used to the Calgary in the province of Alberta. I guess there are only so
many names.
The letter column...I had thought that the rocket lapel pins were tradition, so
I imagine some felt a little ripped off when they did not receive the pin. I
asked in my letter if Japanese fandom might bid for the Worldcon again, and I
can answer myself; yes, they are planning to bid again, for 2017, I believe.
Paper fanzines haven't been entirely replaced, and won't be as long as the
technology to do so still exists. Someone will always want to do something a
little retro.
My loc...Anne KH Murphy has brought MidFanzine back to existence, so I look
forward to further issues. I have returned to the Ad Astra committee, and will
be a part of that committee for the 2010 convention, but we may have to leave
for other reasons. Yvonne's going to school in the new year, and I may need more
time for employment reasons, so we may leave the committee, and go back to our
retired status.
Vampire horses? Aliens that say "Hah! I kill me!" because they're
already dead? You know, I never really watched these shows in their original
run, so I'm not likely to watch them should they be "revised". Well,
that's one word for it. "Re-imagined" is another...
Time to fold...Yvonne and I wish you a Happy New Year, and may it hold every
success for all of us. Take care, and see you sometime in 2010.
Yours, Lloyd Penney.
Issue 10:
Dear Steven,
Thank you for Argentus #10, to which I would have responded earlier,
except when I saw that you intended to publish annually I let tilings slide in
favor of the usual, namely indolence and procrastination. The cover, by Steve
Stiles, was interesting and well composed but might have suffered from the lack
of contrast that resulted when you chose to print it on dark red.
Generally I agree with Daniel Kimmel on Spielberg and E.T. though I have to
say that if E.T. is a piece of lightweight fluff—cotton candy he calls it,
then it is hard to fault Spielberg for revising his movie in order to pander to
the audience du jour when it was re-released some years later. This is the
critic trying to have it both ways, "Even if it distorted the meaning of
the original," would only be a cut if the original had had a meaning.
Spielberg makes entertainments which are highly profitable, and that enables him
to try his hand at art, where he sometimes succeeds, as with Schindler's List.
Saving Private Ryan, in my opinion, failed as art because it panders to the
American audience but it was highly profitable, and even failed art is likely to
be more interesting than cotton candy.
James Bacon's "The Battle of the Bulge; A Retrospective" probably
should not have been in the Mock Section. The other pieces were all short and
snappy, referencing well known stories or characters. His was a perfectly
respectable short story in which Captain America played a featured role, and
should have been off on its own somewhere. Even so, the natural ending would
have been the death of Captain America. In a sort of epilogue Thor, "the
so-called Nazi God" is subsequently destroyed by an atomic bomb dropped on
Munich eight or nine months later. Better Thor should have walked off the
battlefield and out of the story with no explanation to let the war follow its
natural course.
You asked for a submission for your next issue. A sheet of cartoons is
enclosed, and The Tao of Happiness, a short essay which I don't remember sending
to anyone else. That should do for now.
Best wishes,
Alexis Gilliland
Dear Steven:
Translations of Verne are a problem. He was so popular at the time that
publishers rushed out translations, and didn’t bother to check, or
“corrected” the text one way or another. Sometimes it isn’t
altogether bad—the version of the title given to Jean-Jacques Langévol in Les
Cinq cents millions de la Bégum (1879) put in the “Fitzroy” translation
of 1959 makes a little more sense than the one given in the original.
But a lot of translations cut text, made interpolations, and otherwise maimed
the story. I rather fancy that most of them were information-is-free
editions, too. Wells had the same problem. Serviss’s Edison’s Conquest
of Mars (1898) is a sequel to a rewritten version of The War of the
Worlds titled Fighters from Mars, which among other things moves the
setting of the invasion to the Boston area.
Who cares about Buzz Aldrin autographing your car’s dashboard? Get
him to autograph you and then go to a tattoo parlor to make it permanent.
The food section is nice, but between the number of things I don’t eat and
the number of things I can’t eat, I can’t enjoy it quite as much as some.
(I used to like some Mexican dishes, but now they don’t like me.)
E.T. shares with so many of Spielberg’s other works a theme of
childhood good, adulthood bad. And a lot of people saw through it, as it
were. Thus the cartoon showing spaceships full of E.T. people with the
caption, “We’ve softened them up psychologically, NOW we attack!” Or
Mike Resnick’s dissection of the movie’s total lack of logic.
Since Richard Dengrove is looking out for scandal, he had better pass by Theda
Bara. After a remarkably brief career, she got married, retired, and spent
the rest of her life reading, interspersed with baking cookies for the local
children. Who never knew that that nice Mrs. Brabin had been the woman in
a brass bra in Cleopatra (1917) — mostly because all the prints of the movie
had been destroyed in fires and such.
Robert Bloch knew Buster Keaton, and paints a very effective picture of him
in his own “unauthorized autobiography”. (As for that book, the one
striking about it I remember is sitting in a restaurant reading it. I got
to the section describing “Doc” Smith and his daughter Vera. That was
when Vera Smith Trestrail came in and took another table.)
As for A&E getting away from “arts” programming and TLC actually
teaching something (and, I add SyFy cancelling all its SF shows), I recall a
comment by Harry Warner, some fifteen years ago, noting how all the cable
channels seemed to be, whatever their declared purpose, showing nothing but old
sitcoms. So that process is hardly new.
In the Mock Section, presumably the disappearance item was explained a couple
of days later when the young man in question explained he had gone to New Jersey
to accept a scholarship to M.I.T. (He had. Really. The trip
just involved a very long detour.) Incidentally, as I pointed out in my
book Heinlein’s Children (advt.) Kip and family live in Missouri.
Namarie,
Joseph T Major
2/3/2011
Dear
Steven:
I’ve waited a little while, since your zine is annual these days, but
only now can I sit down and make some comments on Argentus 10.
Great
Stiles artwork on the cover. Armoured dragonfly-style ornithopters look cool
indeed.
Since this issue came out, there’s been lots of trouble in Tunisia,
Egypt especially, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen. The article about living in Yemen
should be quite interesting. Given that the Middle East and surrounding areas
seem decidedly unstable, any glimpse into the politics of that region should be
quite informative. (It was. As a stamp collector in the past, I knew there were
two Yemens, but did not know that they became one in 1990. I also knew that
Yemen, apart or together, is fairly isolated, and outsiders are restricted as to
where in the country they can go.)
I
don’t envy Leah Zeldes Smith’s position…I’ve seen reviews in the local
papers here scathing enough to shut the restaurant down. As a result, the
reviewers are relatively anonymous, and if ever the identity of the reviewer
gets out, s/he has to find a new beat. I would find it hard to be objective on
this kind of writing; the people who work in restaurants have a job I wouldn’t
take on a bet. I go past Marah’s reviewed restaurant, Taste of China, every
day…I go down Spadina Avenue to get to my evening job. However, there are so
many restaurants on Spadina…I’ve never been in any of them.
During
the ultranationalism of the war on terrorism in Iraq, the idea of freedom fries
and anything anti-French seemed so childish as to be insane. France disagreed
with so many things American during this time, endured that childishness, and
still stayed a friend to the US. Canada would not follow the US into Iraq, and
we endured the same kind of nonsense. Dubya never did think that your friends
may agree with you, but sometimes it’s your closest friends who will tell you
when you’re wrong.
Science
by consensus…this is when repeated observation and logic go out the door. As a
result, right wing commentators decry climate change and evolution, just to name
two hot topics. In any other country, such right-wing commentary would be called
just inane stupidity.
In
the past, I tried to convert friends into SF readers. Back then, I had an
anthology edited by Terry Carr called SF For People Who Hate SF. One female
co-worker I gave this to read it, and said she hated it. She also failed to give
the book back to me, after close to a year of asking and nagging on my part.
Guess she hated it so much, she got rid of it.
Michael
D. Thomas’s article on steampunk… Absolutely right. The future died. Our
future may have looked like we were aiming ourselves at the start at one point,
but now it looks fairly bleak, with global warming, more and more wars, and
religious intolerance and extremism. Those who enjoy steampunk (and I am among
them) reset their selected time period for the Victorian era, where the future
looked rosy indeed, and inventions came fast and furious from Edison and his
peers. There’s been quite an industry that sprung up from steampunk…jewelry,
clothing, films, television, books, much more, and when Disney took part of
their Magic Kingdom and rechristened it the Mechanical Kingdom, many thought
that steampunk had jumped the shark, becoming part of popular culture. No matter
what, the steampunk movement is a true version of creative anachronism, and you
can’t argue with its popularity.
Yvonne
and I are aiming to get to London in 2014, assuming of course they win their bid
for that year. Should we go for TAFF for that year? Sure hope it’s eastbound
that year…
And,
thanks for the link to my loc. Do I respond too early or too late? Lots of my
locs go missing from time to time.
A
page and a half will do for the moment…I’ve got to get ready to go to my
evening job, and at least make a few bucks. Just saw on Facebook that H.B. Fenn,
the Canadian distributor for Tor Books in Canada, is declaring bankruptcy. More
and more, I am in the wrong industry in the wrong country. Still hope springs
eternal. Take care, and see you next time around.
Yours, Lloyd Penney.
12/23/2010
hi Steven ~
Thank you for Argentus 10! All the articles are interesting, and a
couple are fascinating (principally "Steampunk, Disney, and the Death of
the Future" by Michael Thomas, and "A Science Fiction Fan in Sana'a"
by Mark Herrup ~ with those weirdly fantastic Yemenese trees!). Of course the
artwork is splendiferous. I enjoy the Gilliland pieces in the food article. Too
bad no Chicago eateries appeared in the "favorites" article despite
Chicagoan Leah Zeldes's lengthy discourse on how to exercise critical judgment
experiencing commercial cuisine. Sorry if I could not provide any food-involved
faeries, dragons, etc., but at least you have one dragon sipping tea. Very glad
the Washington DC illustrations were useful.
I am just learning about "steampunk," such a nice surprise. For a
while now (for a variety of reasons) I have deliberately distanced myself from
sf&f fandom and (sadly) science fiction and fantasy literature itself.
Rich's companionship and the friendship of certain other individuals in fandom
have been the sole draw for me. "Steampunk" piques my interest because
it steps away from the omnipresent dystopian technology-enslaved "blasted
earth" future. Yet for me its charm lies less in advanced
19th-century-style steam technology (fun as it is) but rather a psychological
reorientation. Not necessarily a return to Victorian ideals and objectives, nor
is it living an outer-spacey Jetson dependence upon exploitative
technology, manufacturing and marketing.
Rather ~ it is global consciousness. Learning to live harmoniously with fellow
humans and, moreover, with the sea, earth and air of Gaia who gave birth to us
all. The compelling new challenge is greater than just repairing environmental
damage and restoring balance, but essentially readapting human existence to
sustain the planet that sustains us ~ not unlike ancient hunter/gatherers. That
is revolutionary on so many levels. Yep, that was the hippie message back in
1966. Finally people are beginning to listen.
The illustration you used on page 13 won first prize for fantasy art at
Reconstruction last August in Raleigh. Interestingly, it is the second
exploration of that particular concept. The first effort is mine, living in its
custom wooden oval frame, and will never be sold. Surprisingly I have always
received a strong response to this simple tiny black and white ink interaction
between a water dwelling dragon and his Japanese lady friend. I guess a third
incarnation is in the works for Renovation.
I shall give you my USPS address (below), but in truth I do not need a hard
copy. My place is far too small to encourage collecting things. I was able to
save your transmitted copy to peruse. I love the website with all the previous
available issues!
delphyne woods
