Views from Medina Road

As I mentioned several weeks ago now (at the end of this post), actor George Takei, famed for his role as Lt. Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series, appeared at the rocket-engine factory where I work in the Los Angeles suburbs for a lunchtime speech in celebration of the company's recognition of 'Gay pride' month -- Takei (here's his Wikipedia entry) being a prominent actor who recently 'came out' and whose association with the most famous SF TV series ever being especially apropos to our line of work.

Takei looks great for being 71 and spoke powerfully in a rotund voice for well over half an hour, in a speech obviously prewritten but dramatically delivered without notes, about his childhood in Los Angeles and in Japanese internment camps during World War II, in Arkansas and northern California, and how that experience as a less than full citizen related to the ideal of American freedom and liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all, and his current experience as a gay man faced with legal barriers to full recognition of his long-time companion for over 20 years -- with whom, coincidentally concerning my company's arrangement to have him come speak, he had just taken out a marriage license, following California's Supreme Court ruling allowing same sex marriages.

Following that appearance I dug out my copy of his autobiography, To the Stars, published way back in 1994, and read it. The book was published long before Takei 'came out' and so focused on his childhood and acting career without any description of his personal life. I was enlightened to learn of his early roles in films alongside the likes of Richard Burton and John Wayne, and amused by the recurrent Star Trek theme of William Shatner constantly hogging directors' attentions and having camera angles repositioned on himself to the detriment of other actors in the scene. Still, Takei's own recurring attempts to expand the role of Sulu in the feature films that followed the TV series, to the point of suggesting scenes with Sulu wielding that rapier as in the famous scene from "The Naked Time", didn't strike me as all that much different. Just less successful.

I'll also mention that Takei's book is written in a similarly rhetorical style as his speech -- expansive, with too many adjectives and adverbs for normal prose, though perhaps appropriate for inspirational delivery. It's heartfelt, and sincere.

I should also mention at this point, even more belatedly, the episode of Star Trek: New Voyages that Takei guest-starred in, "World Enough and Time", co-written and directed by Marc Scott Zicree, who was kind enough a couple months ago to send me a DVD copy of the episode, in recognition of its nomination for this year's Nebula Awards (though it didn't win) and Hugo Awards (results to be announced in about 3 weeks). The series is a recreation of the original Star Trek, with amateur actors playing the roles of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, et al, with production values, given the advances of 40 years, that impressively outstrip the original show. For anyone with an interest in Trek (even if like me you haven't kept up on the last couple TV series or movies) it's worth checking out. I can't say much for the amateur actors -- compared to them, George Takei is especially impressive, as is the actress playing his daughter -- but the script is expert, a clever time-travel story in which the young Sulu is lost in an alternate universe and returns after decades of local time -- now played by Takei -- to the early Enterprise. It's downloadable here. It's a worthy Hugo nominee, and even though I haven't seen any of the other nominees in its category... would not be an unworthy winner.

Running a bit slow this week, down sniffly and sneezy with a summer cold. Blinks pending.

Also compelled to contemplate design changes and polish to the homepage, in response to comments on this blog's posts and to the Locus Survey Comments post. Those comments were concerned mostly with color schemes, graphics, and permalinks, not to mention general 'clutter', though specifics on what sites work better or how things could be made better on this site were sometimes lacking. The general trend for websites these days is to turn everything into a blog, with comment threads and datestamps and 'permalinks' that conflate the homepage posting with the item itself; I'm not inclined to wholly recast Locus Online in that direction. I do however recognize an opportunity to recategorize the content on the site and the way it is archived and accessed, via links and menus on the homepage. Rather than reveal the direction of my thoughts right away, I'll simply invite additional inputs from anyone reading this post...

Inputs about links, permalinks, color schemes, graphics, or even (!) the content of the site. Resources are limited and I can't promise grand reformations, but I take every comment and criticism seriously (perhaps too seriously).

I was all set to post a blog entry called "Disenfranchised" -- because, while I did buy my Denvention membership rather late, it was some two weeks ago now, and I'd worried that I'd not gotten any email response to my purchase (though I noticed my credit card was duly charged, a week ago), and despite two follow-up emails, had not gotten the PIN number needed to submit Hugo votes -- but then, just a few minutes ago, an email arrived with that needed PIN number.

So I've submitted my votes, on today, the last day of voting. Good thing; I wouldn't want to have happen what happened a few years ago when I didn't get around to voting.

With the Disch obit today, a couple hours' work upon my arrival home from a July 4th trip, I've tried posting the entire thing on its own page, with its own URL, rather than only on the homepage, to see if this attracts any kind of permanent notice. In particular, Google, I've noticed, compiles new content when posted on new pages, but not new content merely posted on a site's homepage. I'm curious now to see if Google compiles my Disch obit, where they didn't compile my Budrys obit...

Disch was one of my favorite authors, in the sense that he was on my 'A list' -- one of those dozen or so authors whose new books would cause me to replan my schedule and set aside everything else to read their new books. I kept looking forward to The Pressure of Time, one of those great heralded but never completed novels, and though I've not reread them in years, I remember the impact that stories like "The Asian Shore" and "Casablanca" and "Understanding Human Behavior" made on me. And On Wings of Song, of the novels...

OK, then, away with the search box bubble. Realign the title logo vertically, rather than horizontally, and make it the same width as the left pane where the Blinks are. Recombine the current issue and magazine info bubbles on the right (they were split while highlighting the Locus Poll voting). Make all the content in the left pane left-justified, rather than a mix of center and left. Make the search box a simple box, same width as left pane, and put the semi-independent other Locus links (the indexes, Locus Press, etc) in a similarly thin box alongside, the width of the center and right panes.

Consider moving Blinks into the center section, alternating with main content posts. That works OK, but then what fills up the left column? More ads? Put blinks back in left column.

Realign categories of drop-down menus along the top. No need for Indexes drop-down; those sections are static, and now listed across the top. Move the similarly static Links pages drop-down over the left side, as part of the website links. Now the four drop downs in the center section are all content that's regularly updated and amended. And there's now a distinction between features derived from the magazine, and those special to Locus Online, though perhaps most readers don't care or notice.

And finally, make room for a link or two to specific posts from my blog, when they are relatively newsworthy.

That's it for now. (Here's what it looked like a month ago, though this capture has the ads removed.)

Last Sunday I wrote up my experience attending this year's Locus Award banquet in Seattle, and only now after a busy week have I found time to sit down and write up my notes on the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, which took place later the same day, Saturday the 21st of June. As before the event was held in the "Sky Theatre" of the Science Fiction Museum, housed in the same Frank Gehry-designed building that houses the Experience Music Project (EMP), adjacent to Seattle's famous Space Needle; an effect of any Frank Gehry building (I've also been in Los Angeles' Disney Hall) is to completely dissociate one's presence *inside* the building from any sense of the exterior structure. It's a different universe. Appropriately, at least in this case.

As in previous years the event took place in the after-dinner hours, the doors open at 7:30, with coffee, wine, port, and desserts served until 8:30, when the ceremony actually began. I was assigned to a table over on one side where I found myself next to Peter Beagle, whom I'd never previously actually met, and Robert Sheckley's widow; we chatted, mesmerized by Beagle's mellifluous voice. The Sky Theatre's huge electronic screen flowed with continuously moving pixel bars, while the underlit jellyfish-like sculptures hanging high above gently undulated with the air currents...

Connie Willis was this year's Master of Ceremonies, striking a more serious tone than the comedic shtick of her Locus Awards performance earlier in the day. There was a moment or two of self-deprecating hesitation, but at this event Connie provided a thoughtful introduction to the event by describing four things that she thought *should be* inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame but that never would be:

• Miles Breuer, and all the other forgotten pulp meisters whose stories inspired those writers who went on to become Hall of Fame inductees -- Pohl, Sturgeon, Williamson -- who'd gone on record citing a particular now-forgotten story as the inspiration to their careers as a writers;
  
  
• Similarly, all the non-science fiction influences that inspired such careers;
  
  
• And again, all those really awful stories and films that served as inspirations that one would nevertheless never admit to actually liking -- Octavia Butler 'fessed up to Devil Girl from Mars, Frederik Pohl to Just Imagine, Connie herself to Volcano;
  
  
• And finally, that feeling you got from that film or story or book you can't identify, having long ago forgotten, about the alien invasion or the time traveler or the spaceship landing on Mars, whose core iconic message nevertheless served as the basis for your belief in the power of science fiction...
  

All these are part of the Hall of Fame too.

In a change from previous years, there were no mini-documentaries projected onto the Theatre's master screen to summarize each inductee's career; instead, each honoree was introduced by someone who provided that summary as a personal account. The sequence began with Peter Beagle, who read a lengthy letter from Frederik Pohl about the careers of Ian & Betty Ballantine, from their start with Penguin Books in the late '30s through their golden age with Ballantine Books in the early '50s, publishing any number of future classics, to their save-the-Earth efforts in the late-'60s early-'70s publishing nonfiction. It was long--but Beagle's mesmerizing voice kept the audience engaged. Charles Brown accepted for Betty, who was unable to attend, reading a (shorter) account from Robert Silverberg, and offering his own perspective on the importance of the Ballantines to the history of SF publishing.

There was a curious interconnectedness to this year's four inductees, almost as if it had been planned that way. Next came Jack Womack, introducing living Hall of Fame inductee William Gibson, who commented about having read all those early books published by the Ballantines -- with all those Richard Powers covers -- and about how Rod Serling's Twilight Zone confirmed for him the arrival into popular culture of science-fictional ideas, no longer relegated to obscure paperback racks.

Then came David Hartwell, with a detailed and insightful account of the career of artist Richard Powers -- whose career was established when the Ballantines chose him as the signature cover artist for their books in the 1950s -- who introduced surrealism into SF art, and whose career then waxed and waned over the decades as tastes in book covers changed. His honor was accepted by his son, Richard Gid Powers.

Finally came TV writer/producer Marc Zicree to introduce posthumous inductee Rod Serling for his TV series The Twilight Zone; Zicree, of course, began his career with the still essential book on the show The Twilight Zone Companion, and his introduction was another detailed, insightful, fascinating account, this time of Serling's war experience, his early TV successes, and the censorship that drove him to disguise his messages as science fiction. He was also perhaps the earliest example of a writer whose vision dominated the production of a TV show, inspiring any number of others, from Gene Roddenberry to Ronald D. Moore to Damon Lindhof and Carlton Cuse -- I mention this because it caused me to reconsider an earlier post about TV writers and producers here on this blog. His honor was accepted by his daughter, Anne Serling Sutton.

After the ceremonies, as usual, the SF Museum itself was open for browsing. Little had changed since last year -- there was a wall of Richard Powers paintings set up specially for this event, and a room downstairs that last year featured a gallery of paintings was occupied now by someone's enormous collection of toy robots. But the Star Trek chair and Lost in Space model still dominated the main entry room. A couple people I talked to spoke of a plan by the museum to extend its purvue into fantasy and even horror, a somewhat controversial move.

I hung out for a while, chatting with various folks including Marc Zicree and Elan Ruskin...

On a final note of interconnectedness, my once-every-five-years-or-so chat with Marc Zicree was coincidental with a scheduled appearance at my workplace the following week -- now this past Tuesday -- of George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek, of course) whom Zicree had directed in that Star Trek: the New Voyages episode that has been nominated this year for both a Nebula and a Hugo, and which Zicree had sent me a copy of on DVD. I never got around to writing up my reaction to that, but I will do so soon, along with an account of that George Takei event....

This year's weekend was a confluence of three events, up one from two in the past couple years: the Locus Awards, the SF Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, and this year the kick-off of Clarion West's six-week summer program for new writers. To highlight the last, Clarion West sponsored a live interview of (Hall of Fame inductee) William Gibson, conducted by uber-librarian Nancy Pearl, famous for her wide-ranging recommendations on NPR. That event was Friday night at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus a few miles northeast of the Space Needle and Marriott Hotel where the other events took place. The interview last an hour, and was recorded and taped, though I don't know how or when it might become available. Pearl is an effective interviewer in that she asks a question and lets the interviewee fully respond, without interruption or redirection; she lets the interviewee determine the conversation, rather than having any pre-set agenda of her own.

Gibson talked about how he reads so little genre SF in part because the packaging is so ugly; how he's native to SF, but not a nationalist; how JG Ballard has always been far more important to him than RA Heinlein; how he's liked recent books by Charles Stross, Junot Diaz, and Michael Chabon; and perhaps most interestingly, how his own novels start with tiny seeds and then grow, like an accumulation of rubber bands into an ever-enlarging ball with a single knot at the center, in order to 'explain' and justify the initial image. The knot at the core of SPOOK COUNTRY, for instance, was the video image at the beginning of chapter two...

Saturday there were the usual panels on short fiction and the future of SF, not unlike the two panels last year, with Connie Willis, Gardner Dozois, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Bill Gibson, Jack Womack, and moderating them Charles N. Brown. The Locus Awards banquet followed at 1p.m., with the Hawaiian shirt contest conducted a bit differently than last year. This time three 'celebrity judges' (instead of audience applause) determined finalists; then Connie quizzed them about SF and Hawaiian shirts, with the winner the finalist who answered the most questions correctly...

Though few of the actually winners of the Locus Awards were there, there were enough other celebrities and stand-ins that the ceremony was entertaining. Gardner Dozois accepted for F&SF, and for his and Jonathan Strahan's anthology THE NEW SPACE OPERA, and then for Neil Gaiman's novelette -- and for the last Gardner continued the Locus Award tradition (begun last year) of performing an interpretive dance to express the recipient's gratitude. Amelia Beamer accepted for Shaun Tan, who'd sent a cut-out action figure of himself, to which Connie applied a miniature Hawaiian shirt and lei. Jennifer Brehl was on stage most often -- she accepted for Ellen Datlow, for Joe Hill, and for Terry Pratchett, and since the Locus Awards include scrolls to the publishers of the winning works, she also accepted those for HarperCollins/Morrow/Eos for the anthology, 1st novel, fantasy novel, and sf novels (quite a sweep there; I hadn't even noticed it, and I counted the ballots!). Bill Gibson did perhaps the most entertaining acceptance, expressively reading a speech from Michael Chabon about the high standards of both Locus reviewers and Locus readers....

Saturday evening was the Hall of Fame ceremony, but I'll have to write that up later--time to pack, and head for the airport and home.