November 12, 1971, on the eve of Mariner 9 going into orbit at Mars, Ray Bradbury took part in a symposium at Caltech with Arthur C. Clarke, journalist Walter Sullivan, and scientists Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. In this excerpt, Bradbury reads his poem, “If Only We Had Taller Been.”
[via BoingBoing]
Posted by Jesse Willis
From CBC TV show Telescope:
Broadcast January 9, 1969, here’s the full 23 minute show:
Posted by Jesse Willis
Good news!
An agent of a Canadian crown corporation came to my door with a official document this morning!
And it was all thanks to you.
As you can see by the evidence…
… all the clicking you did during the months of March and April this year were worth it. And of course the funds will go to a good cause – more SFFaudio.
So thank you very much, and feel free to give yourself a pat on the back for all the patting on the back of us you did.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Jack London is a 1943 biographical feature film about Jack London!
It’s also available for download via Archive.org: |AVI|MP4|OGV|
This movie got me thinking. Is it the only biopic of an Science Fiction author?
So I looked around and found a list of biographical films on Wikipedia. And while I had remembered there had been movies featuring Mary Shelley, like Gothic – that isn’t a biopics per se.
Based on the Wikipedia list, it appears that Edgar Allan Poe has been a character in some quasi-biographical films, notably the recent John Cusak movie, The Raven (which has its roots in earlier dramatized biographical snippets like The Raven (1915)). The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) is a true biographical film, but it’d be hard to argue that twain wrote Science Fiction (though the case for Fantasy is pretty easy). Robert E. Howard got a biopic, in a solid little movie called The Whole Wide World (1996) but it’s just a snippet of Howard’s life.
I don’t think there have been any other Science Fiction writers who’ve had an actual biographical film made about him or her. Maybe writer’s lives are too sedentary for good drama?
Posted by Jesse Willis
A Beautiful Young Nymph Going To Bed is a satiric poem by Jonathan Swift. It was first published in 1731. One Wikipedia editor describes it like this: It features Corinna, “a young woman preparing for bed by deconstructing.” It’s awful, deeply sad, hilarious, and absolutely wonderful. Listen to Tom O’Bedlam’s narration:
Posted by Jesse Willis
Foster, You’re Dead by Philip K. Dick is PUBLIC DOMAIN.
The story’s copyright was not properly renewed. This was not generally know prior because a copyright office renewal form |HERE| seemed to show that the story had been renewed.
The form shows Foster, You’re Dead as being published in the May 1955 issue of IF: Worlds Of Science Fiction. But an examination of the table of contents page from that issue shows that no such story was published in IF’s May 1955 issue. Observe for yourself:
Instead, Foster, You’re Dead was originally published in Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3 an anthology of NEW SF that was published in 1955.
Here are the copyright page copyright page and table of contents from it:
To make the case even more clearly here is the editorial introduction, written by Frederik Pohl, explicitly detailing the fact that Foster, You’re Dead, and all the other stories in the anthology, had never before been published:
Foster, You’re Dead by Philip K. Dick is PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Here is the |PDF|.
Posted by Jesse Willis
