Monthly Archives: January 2016

Forgotten Book: The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke (1957)

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If you're interested in undersea adventure, Clarke's The Deep Range may hold some appeal.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 175th in my series of Forgotten Books.

Over the last 50 years I have read a lot of science fiction and, early on, I tried to concentrate on some of the classics of the field. I got hold of a list of the greatest science fiction as determined by the readers of Astounding/Analog in 1957 and 1967 (if I remember correctly). This list included such things as A Canticle for Leibowitz, Last and First Men, Childhood’s End, The Demolished Man and many more. (I made a very quick look online and did not see it. That’s not to say that it isn’t out there, but my patience was small).

I found that I really did not like the works of Arthur C. Clarke. And I did give him a try. I read The City and the Stars, Childhood’s End, The Other Side of the Sky, A Fall of Moondust, Against the Fall of Night, 2001: A Space Odyssey and more. I enjoyed Childhood’s End and A Fall of Moondust. But I just didn’t love them the way I loved a lot of other books by other writers.  His award winners Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise never appealed to me. I find his characters wooden and his plots pretty contrived.

I know many of you love these books, and maybe someday they will leap into my hands and I might come to love them, but that has not happened yet. And that is one of the things I love about the field. I can see what some people love in books and while they may not appeal to me, we are still part of the same geeky family.

That said, why did I pick up this Clarke book this week? Beats me. But I really enjoyed A Fall of Moondust and the subject of The Deep Range was something I had interest in. I have had a copy for a while, and since I’ve been addressing some classic writers recently, I thought this might be the time. And I’m glad I did.

The Deep Range is set some discrete period in the future when the population and overcrowding have outstripped the ability of land farms to supply the food and nutrition necessary for life. The single world government has established the World Health Organization’s Bureau of Whales. Whales are a major portion of this world’s food supply. Plankton farming provides protein for humans and whales. The Bureau of Whales’ wardens provide protection for this resource – protecting them from the orca killer whales and keeping them safe and sheltered during calving time.

Walter Franklin is a former spacer who has been grounded and is now on an escalated training course to become a whale warden. His six-month training is accelerated from the normal multi-year training. Walter is trained by First Warden Don Burley who is given no background on Walter’s situation. He is reluctant at first but soon finds himself growing to like the man. They both find themselves attracted to scientist Indra Langenburg, who is working up a master’s thesis on sharks, but it is Walter that eventually wins her.

The novel covers around 20 years of Walter’s time with the Bureau and his adventures, which include a near death experience in very deep water, encounters with a giant squid and a giant sea serpent, bureaucracy, activists and a rescue of a fallen submarine.

Walter Franklin is a likable character and I really enjoyed reading his adventures. Clarke was a diving enthusiast and spent a great deal of time underwater, exploring the ocean floor and fauna. You get a lot of that information in various info dumps as Walter learns about his environment, but I like the subject and actually enjoyed those bits.

So, I give this one a thumbs up. It may not be in most people’s list Clarke’s best, but it’s on mine. And, as I repeatedly say, my taste is in my mouth and your mileage may vary. If you like Clarke, the seas, whales or adventure stories, you could do much worse than The Deep Range.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: Cloud Atlas (2012)

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Audiences tend to love or hate Cloud Atlas.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 152nd in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

This week’s film is not very old but I think it is pretty forgotten. There seems to be a sharp divide among the folks who have seen Cloud Atlas. Many of them love the film; the remainder seems to despise it. There’s not a lot of middle ground. Love it or hate it.

And it is pretty easy to see why the divide is there. Cloud Atlas is not an easy, mindless film. It requires work on the part of the viewer. No easy-to-follow caper or adventure film here. And, to top it off, it is long, clocking in at 172 minutes.

So let’s talk about the film and its structure. The story follows six narrative paths with intertwining fates. The basic story lines involve 1849 Pacific Islands and San Francisco, 1936 London/Edinburgh, 1973 San Francisco, 2012 London, 2144 Neo-Seoul and Hawaii 106 years after the big fall (estimated as 2321). The lead actors have the following roles:

  • Tom Hanks plays Dr. Henry Glass, hotel manager, Dr. Isaac Sachs, gangster/author,  Dermott Hoggins, an actor playing Timothy Cavendish (see below) and Zachry.
  • Halle Berry plays a native woman, Jocasta Ayrs; Luisa Rey, an Indian party guest; Ovid and Meronym.
  • Jim Broadbent plays Captain Molyneux, Vyvyan Ayrs, N/A, Timothy Cavendish, a Korean musician and a prescient.
  • Hugo Weaving plays Haskell More, Tadeusz Kesselring, Bill Smoke, Nurse Noakes, Boardman Mephi and Old George.
  • Jim Sturgess plays Adam Ewing; a poor hotel guest; Megan’s Dad; a highlander; Hae Joo Chang and Adam
  • Doona Bae plays Tilda Ewing, N/A, Megan’s Mom and Mexican woman, N/A, Sonmi-451 and N/A
  • Ben Whishaw plays a cabin boy, Robert Frobisher, store clerk, Georgette, N/A and a tribesman.

The primary viewpoint characters are Adam Ewing (Sturgess), Robert Frobisher (Whishaw), Luisa Rey (Berry), Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent), Sonmi-451 (Bae) and Zachry (Hanks). As you can see, each actor had multiple roles and each plays a different part in the overall plot.

The various plots include the awakening of a young rich man to the problems of slavery and a plot to kill him, a young composer trying to get ahead by being the amanuensis to an elderly composer, the quest of a young journalist to find out about a flawed nuclear power plant, the attempts of an elderly publisher to escape danger and a mental hospital, the awakening of a female android (fabricant) and her message to the people of her world and the trials of a middle aged tribesman trying to overcome his shame and fear of the unknown.

The Wachowskis (Lana and Andy) along with Tom Twyker wrote the screenplay based on David Mitchell’s novel and the trio also directed the film. The structure has the six stories running simultaneously, sometimes with dialogue from one era suddenly appearing and applying in another. And there is no rigid flow from one section to another. You may go from the post-apocalyptic final world to the South Pacific to Neo-Seoul to San Francisco and so on. The stories each have their cliffhangers, which are addressed, and there are numerous similarities between the stories. Somni trying to escape on a telescoping bridge matches to a sailor walking along a top sail beam ready to unfurl it.

It’s a complex movie that respects the intelligence of the viewer by not trying to explain everything, Much of the later sections’ dialogue are a patois that you can get the gist of without knowing the exact meaning of each word, since the language and everything else has evolved over time.

The film rewards the careful viewers in many ways, and, for once, the documentaries on the Blu-ray actually have insights that are revealed in later viewings.

If it sounds interesting, give this one a try. And, as I have said many times, your mileage may vary. I loved this film and wish I could describe it better to you. And I really, really wish I had seen it on the big screen.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron (1954)

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The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet sets the wayback machine to 1954.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 174th in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week we have a book that shares some similarities with last week’s Shell Scott adventures. No, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet is not a humorous detective novel. But like the Prather novel, I missed Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet novels when I was much younger.

This first novel in the series should have been in my school libraries when I was in grade school and, had they been, I would have found them. But, in those formative years, I was in Alaska and then in small-town Texas. The libraries were small – heavy on reference books and some fiction. In several, there was not a formal library, just collections of books in each teacher’s room and whatever was there was what you got. It was not until junior high in Iowa Park, Texas, that I really found out about libraries and what wonders they held.

The Iowa Park town library was small and featured many older titles. I got to read my first Edgar Rice Burroughs books there and Tom Swift (not the Tom Swift Jr. titles that were coming out when I was at that age; these were the older things). And, since the junior high was in the same building as the high school, we had a more formal library at the school, and there I found Heinlein, Wells and Verne. Those were exciting days of discovery.

But, the Mushroom Planet was never in the galaxies I roamed. I don’t believe I ever heard of those books until I got to college and took a course in children’s literature (kiddy litter, as we called it). And I was not about to read them then.

Somewhere along the way, I acquired the first volume of the series and it has been on my shelves for a while. The other day I decided to pick it up and read it.

It’s a fast read and definitely a kid’s book. There are some attempts at science-y things but not much. And that is deliberate. The first chapter tells you what you need to know with the strange green ad in the paper

WANTED

A small space ship about eight feet long, built by one or two kids. The ship should be sturdy and well made and should be of materials found at hand. Nothing need be bought. No adult should be consulted as to its plan or method of construction. An adventure and a chance to do a good deed await the boys who build the best space ship.

Yep, you’ve got to be imaginative and a risk taker and your own person. David and his buddy Chuck are the boys who meet up with Mr. Tyco M. Bass, a peculiarly odd person who wants the boys to travel to Basidium X, a small planetoid located 50,000 miles above Earth that only he can see because he has a special filter. He can make a fuel to power this ship and send two boys to it in two hours, and there they can help out the residents of the tiny mushroom planet. They need to bring some food, capture some Basidium air and bring a mascot, for which Mrs. Pennyfeather, David’s chicken serves the role.

They travel to the planet and meet two wise men, Mebe and Oru, and the great King Ta help them solve a problem and return home, all in one night. Of course, no one believes them because they are kids and things happen to their proof.

It was a fun enough book. If I had preteen kids or grandkids, I might have subjected them to this. I think they would have enjoyed it. But I find that for myself, the one book will do. I don’t really care to return to the Mushroom Planet.

What about you readers out there? Someone have a fond spot for these books, or some other ones. As a kid I read a lot of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift. Then I found ERB. I was lost from that point on. And at 14, Conan began to appear and Elric the following year or so. And Philip K. Dick. I was doomed.

I hope your new year is going well. I’ll be back with another book next week, certainly one more age appropriate, I think.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Film: Blow Dry (2001)

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Not Alan Rickman's best-known film, but certainly worth checking out.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 151st in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

With the unexpected death of Alan Rickman this week, I was reminded of my favorite film of his which, of course, no one mentioned in any of their notices about his career. So I pulled my DVD off the shelf and took another look at it — and I still loved it a lot.

Blow Dry has a pretty stellar cast with Rickman, Natasha Richardson, Rachel Griffiths, Rachael Leigh Cook, Josh Hartnett and Bill Nighy in the lead roles and lots of great British character actors like Warren Clarke (Dim from A Clockwork Orange), Rosemary Harris (Aunt May Parker from Spider-Man 1, 2, and 3) and David Bradley (Argus Filch from Harry Potter) in supporting roles.

The story starts in the town of Keighley in Western Yorkshire where the prestigious British Hairdressing Championship is coming. Tony (Warren Clarke), the mayor of Keighley, is excited about this but no one else seems to care until people start arriving. Among the contestants are Raymond Robertson (Nighy), the two-time defending champion and his daughter Christina (Cook), who is visiting from America. Their primary competition is seen as the Kilburn Kutters with Heidi Klum as their model and the Style Warriors from London. What Ray does not know is that Keighley is the home to his old nemesis Phil Alan (Rickman) who was also a two-time winner until, on the eve of the final competition, his stylist/wife (Richardson) ran off with his model (Griffiths), leaving him with a young son and no way to compete.

Phil now works as a barber with his son Brian (Hartnett) in Keighley. His ex-wife Shelley and her partner Sandra own a beauty salon in the town called A Cut Above. Phil has ignored them for ten years, never speaking to them.

Shelley wants to enter the competition. She has incurable cancer and has not told anyone. She’s told Sandra it has been cured. Only Daisy (Rosemary Harris), a blind old woman she does the hair of, knows her secret. Shelley wants Brian to help with the men’s timed cut, but he is reluctant to do it for fear of alienating his father.

Robertson makes the mistake of visiting Phil and talking about the competition, and Phil gets mad and agrees to let Brian help. Brian is fascinated by Christina, whom he remembers from the old contests when they were both kids. Robertson really wants the third win and he is not above cheating to get it.

In many ways this is a predictable film. There is anger and hostility from Phil but he eventually comes around. There is a come- from-behind victory and the reuniting of Phil, Shelley, Sandra and Brian as a family. And, yes, here are also some bizarre hairstyles.

One of my favorite bits has Christina trying to improve her hair coloring. Her attempts have not pleased Ray, so Brian offers to help her by taking her to the funeral home where he regularly cuts the hair of the recently deceased. She colors the hair of an old man bright red with Sid Vicious spikes. But, before she can return his hair to its natural color, Christina and Brian get locked out of the funeral home. The old man’s family is not amused when they arrive the next day.

The wonderfully quirky script was written by Simon Beaufoy who was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for The Full Monty. He subsequently won on Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire. Warren Clarke delivers a fine performance as the mayor who gets more and more into the competition. It culminates with him lip-syncing over the closing credits to the Elvis Presley song “I Just Can’t Help Believing.” The soundtrack includes Bill Withers, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Roger Whitaker, Santa Esmeralda and Jackie Wilson.

One odd thing I did notice is that the DVD features both Hartnett and Cook on the cover while the movie poster just has a model. If you did not know it, you would not know Rickman was in the movie unless you read the fine print. Poor packaging in my opinion.

According to Wikipedia this film got blasted when it was released and only earned a score of 19% from Rotten Tomatoes. I’m not sure what film those critics saw, but I loved this one and the people I have shared it with also loved it. Apparently, it ran in US theaters for 24 days and earned a little more than $600K.

Others will remember Alan Rickman for Die Hard or Harry Potter or Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. I will remember him for those and for Galaxy Quest, too. But I will always remember him with flashing scissors and the amazing tattoos on the soles of his feet in this film.

Check it out. Your mileage and mine may be different but then, so are we. RIP, Alan Rickman. We will all miss you.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Speculative San Antonio: Science Fiction Author KB Rylander

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San Antonio author KB Rylander has won the Jim Baen Memorial Award.

I met KB Rylander a couple years ago at Armadillcon, simply excited to run into yet another San Antonio author at the convention.

Turns out KB wasn’t just another emerging writer from the Alamo City, but a very good emerging writer from the Alamo City. By the time I sat down at the bar with her at the next Armadillocon, her short story “We Fly” had won the 2015 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award.

The work I’ve read from her so far explores some familiar sf tropes like uploaded consciousness and generation ships, but always with an engaging focus on the humanity of its characters. The people in her stories feel real and idiosyncratic — and as a result it’s easy to become absorbed in her prose.

Make no mistake, KB Rylander is a writer to watch.

In addition to being your first professional publication, your story “We Fly” won the Jim Baen Short Story Award. Could you talk a little about what the award is, about your story and why it appealed to the judges?

The Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award is sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society and is for near-future science fiction involving manned space exploration. Anyone can enter who hasn’t already won and there is no entry fee, so check it out!

My story “We Fly” is about a woman whose consciousness was uploaded into an interstellar probe to search for habitable planets. After decades of travel she awakens at her destination but something is wrong. She has unknown errors in her processors and her memories are giving her contradictory clues.

My idea for this story came from the logistics of exploring planets outside our solar system and how probes make sense given the extraordinary travel times. That said, since communication with earth might take years those probes are going to have to be highly intelligent and self-sufficient. When I decided to use an uploaded human mind the central idea for this story popped into my head. I can’t say what that idea was because it spoils the ending, but it allowed me to have a lot of fun writing memories that the character experiences within the story and give clues within those flashbacks.

I think it appealed to the judges because the reader is anchored close to the human struggles of the characters while still having a cool science fiction premise. I suspect it also did well because of the strength of the last couple of lines. That last image you leave a reader makes a huge impact in their overall satisfaction of the piece. I lucked out on this one because “We Fly” was one of those stories that just gave me the right ending before I’d even finished the first draft.

Writing is sort of a family business, from what I understand, as your mom also wrote (or still writes) fiction. How did growing up around a writing parent prepare you for what you’re doing now?

My mother is a writer and was writing seriously when I was a kid. She has unfortunately taken a twenty year break but I’m trying to nudge her back into it!

Even though I wasn’t planning to be a writer myself, I often attended writing conferences and lectures with my mom and occasionally sat in on her writers group listening to everyone give critiques.

We were a family of readers and my mom always talked about what was good writing and what wasn’t, and I listened and learned.

Needless to say, she has been a huge influence on my writing.

I think part of my hesitance to pursue it myself was seeing how difficult it is to succeed, but that has also prepared me to have realistic expectations.

How long have you been writing and when did you start sending out work for publication?

I never thought I wanted to be a writer, but looking back all the signs were there. I’ve been writing stories for fun my whole life, but got serious about it five years ago after my daughter was born.

My whole childhood I thought I was going to be a scientist, but by college my interests had shifted to history and linguistics. I kept running into the same problem that I hated the idea of specializing in any one field. At some point I realized a writer can do All The Things.

That said, it felt like an impossible goal because there are so many people trying to make it in this field and so few people succeed. I decided to give it my all and gave myself permission to fail, which I needed.

I spent the first couple of years of serious writing working on novels and shifted over to short stories in 2013. I started submitting them in 2014.

So far, I’ve only read short work from you. Are you working on any novel-length projects?

I have a young adult novel in the works.  It’s near future science fiction about a genetically engineered teenage girl trying to keep her siblings alive after 99% of Earth’s population drops dead.

I wrote the zero draft in 2011 and 2012 and put it aside. I rewrote half of it in November and hope to get it ready for submission this year.

Do you only write science fiction or do you work in other genres as well?

Most of what I write is science fiction but I write some fantasy.  I dabble with non-speculative fiction as well.

I feel most comfortable with middle grade and young adult because I’ve read so much more of it. I can’t picture myself writing a novel that isn’t MG or YA but you never know.

Who are some of the writers whose work inspired you, and what have you learned from them?

This is a tough question because there are so many wonderful books and short stories that have inspired me in different ways.

Honestly I think it’s teachers who inspired me more than anyone else.  My mother is one.  Another is my eighth grade English teacher Kim McIntire who introduced me to a ton of classic science fiction. We spent a whole semester just on Ray Bradbury works. We read The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine and dozens of his short stories.

My high school English teacher Tess Morris was probably the best teacher I ever had, college included.  She challenged me and we read a lot of great literature.  My favorite was As I Lay Dying. I loved Faulkner’s use of POV and how he tossed rules out the window. One of our assignments was to write missing chapters of the novel. I had a lot of fun playing with strange POVs and stream-of-consciousness. From there I went on a Faulkner binge and was first introduced to the concept of a circular structure reading Light in August. Frankly, I hated that novel, but it started me thinking about writing in a different way.

In college I devoured the Harry Potter series and loved it much as I loved Lord of the Rings as a kid. In those books the writing just needs to get out of the way so the reader can immerse in the story.

The Book Thief is one of my favorite books and I put it right up there with To Kill a Mockingbird. The writing is just so darn beautiful. If I could write half that well one day I’ll die happy.

What’s next for KB Rylander? Where else can readers find your work?

I’ve got a short story coming out in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction sometime this year.  It’s called “Last One Out.”  It’s about the last woman on Earth and her robot companion and is set in Sweden, where I spend a lot time.  It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written.

 

Forgotten Book: Everybody Had a Gun by Richard Prather (1951)

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Everybody Had a gun features Richard Prather's private eye Shell Scott.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 173rd in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week is special across the various blogs that constitute the Forgotten Books group. Check out the listing at Patti Abbott’s blog by clicking the link at the end of the column. Friday, January 15, has been designated Richard Prather Day, when as many of the bloggers as are inclined will discuss the work of this quintessential ’50s paperback writer.

I will confess up front that I have not read much Prather. I didn’t discover his works when I was at the impressionable age where I would have read everything multiple times. By the time I had found Prather’s work, I was already reading Hammett, Chandler, both McDonalds, Charles Williams and more. Prather was entertaining, but the others were more representative of what I wanted to read. Still, I thought I would give one a try this week.

Prather is best known for his Shell Scott series of detective novels. Scott is a California private eye, tall with blond close cropped hair, a veteran of WWII and able to get into some truly interesting situations.

This novel begins with action on the first page. Shell is walking down the street when someone starts shooting at him. He almost doesn’t even notice it since he is reading the paper about a local hood named Lobo who had contracted a fatal dose of lead the previous night. But when he does, he has no idea who or why is after him.

He cautiously approaches his office and begins running down the list of people who might have a grudge. It might be Marty Sader, who runs a local nightclub and who had hired Shell to check out a horse betting parlor and to get an idea of the take. Shell takes the job but finds out very little, as Lobo approaches him and tells him to stop. This is something he would normally ignore, so he continues his research, but Lobo is a little more insistent the next time. And Lobo is a right hand guy for a bigger fish named Collier Breed with whom Shell does not want to tangle.

When he gets to his office, Shell sees an attractive redhead tentatively approaching the building. When she sees Shell at his window, she crosses over the street headed toward his office. Meanwhile, a short skinny guy with a gun enters the office and attempts to take Shell away. There is a fight and he knocks the hood out. The redhead shows up and recognizes him as one of Sader’s guys.  She says Sader wants to kill them both and that she has just escaped from him. She won’t talk until Shell gets rid of the hood, so he sends her down to the bar below his office and takes the hood to a nearby cop.

When he gets back to the bar, he discovers the girl never made it there. He finds her purse and learns her name is Iris Gordon. He tracks down her address. He meets her barely clothed roommate, Mia, and finds that they both work for Sader. Figuring that if she escaped from Sader earlier, perhaps she has been taken back there. He tries Sader’s house first and finds a drunken Mrs. Sader shooting a big gun at bales of hay.

Soon he is involved with two gangs, lots of people with guns, some fast talking and quick thinking — and lots of dead bodies. It’s a fast-moving, quick read about attempted takeovers, murder and more.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I would have probably loved it when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t bad. It had a fair bit of skewed humor, which was OK, but a little can go a long way. If you’ve not read Prather, this isn’t a bad one to start with. Chronologically, it was the third Shell Scott adventure and the series was starting to get its quirky feel.

Check out the other Prather reviews on Friday and give him a try. As always, your mileage may vary.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Film: Time After Time (1979)

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Time After Time pits H.G. Wells against Jack the Ripper in 1979 San Francisco.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 150th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

For me, this week we really do have a Forgotten Film. I recorded Time After Time the other day knowing I had seen it somewhere along the way, though not in the theater when it was released. It was released in late August 1979 when my work schedule was pretty hectic and I was dating the amazing Sandi. Two months later, Montgomery Ward moved me from San Antonio to Laredo, Texas, which was like going to the third or fourth level of Hell.

Anyway, I knew the basic premise. Jack the Ripper steals H. G. Wells’ real time machine and goes to 1979 San Francisco. Wells follows and tries to stop him. Sounds like a film I would really love. But I didn’t remember hardly anything about it before I screened it yesterday.

As I watched the film, I did not recall anything specific about it. I really think that I must have never seen it, but I knew enough about it to think I did.

I gave you the basics. Dr. John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner) is a London doctor in 1893 with some truly nasty habits which include slicing up prostitutes in Whitechapel and sending notes signed “Jack the Ripper.” He is a friend of H. G. Wells, visiting regularly for dinner and chess. As the film opens, Stevenson commits one of the murders on his way to Wells’ (played by Malcolm McDowell) for dinner.

Wells has something to show his friends on this particular evening – a working time machine. His is reluctant to test it yet, but he shows his guests the basic operations. A truly bad move on his part. The demonstration is interrupted when police arrive at the house looking for the murderer. Clues have led them to the area and while there, they discover Stevenson’s medical bag contains some bloody ephemera and souvenirs from the murder. The house is immediately searched but Stevenson cannot be found.

When the police leave, Wells suddenly has a revelation and going into his basement, he finds the time machine is missing. As he is watching, the machine returns empty, using a recall method that Wells had installed. He peers into the cab of the machine and finds it has been set for 1979. He hurriedly borrows money from his housekeeper and uses the machine to travel to the future.

Wells has imagined a utopian future where logic and reason have removed war and crime from the human condition. Not taking the Earth’s rotation into account, Wells arrives in San Francisco instead of London as he expected. His Victorian clothes and manners add a humorous effect to the film.

He realizes he has no easy way to find Stevenson, so he goes to a jeweler to sell some of the jewelry but fails in this attempt since the jeweler wants some form of identification. He eventually ends up at a pawn shop where such trivialities are not a matter of concern.

Realizing that Stevenson will have to convert his British currency and coins to American dollars he goes from bank to bank to try and find a clue. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets the Foreign Currency Exchange Officer Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who has handled a transaction for Stevenson the day before and has recommended the Hyatt Regency to him.

Wells tracks Stevenson there. A fight ensues and Stevenson flees. With wells in pursuit, the two ran for an interminable period before Stevenson is hit by a car. He is tracked to the hospital where Wells is told that Stevenson is dead.

Amy has flirted with Wells and aggressively pursued him while he was at the bank. So when he returns to the area, she picks him up and takes him to lunch. They tour the city and end up as lovers. Soon it becomes apparent that Stevenson is not dead and, when he exchanges money again, he figures out that Amy was the one who set Wells on his trail.

I’ll save the rest for you to see for yourself. It’s kind of fun. McDowell and Steenburgen worked very well together, and they obviously enjoyed their time together, as they were married the next year and stayed together for ten years.

Much of the film’s charm comes from the reactions of a highly educated and fairly liberal Victorian writer to the world of 1979. McDowell plays Wells almost a naïf in his reactions to the knowledge of two (!!!) WORLD WARS as well as other wars. And the ease with which someone in the U.S. could procure a firearm. And the idea of Women’s Liberation.

All in all, I enjoyed the film, seeing it for the first time since I no longer recall the early viewing. And I loved the soundtrack from one of my favorite composers, Miklos Rozsa. It was reminiscent of some of my favorites of his work, like El Cid and Ben Hur.

According to Slashfilm.com, Time After Time has been picked up by Kevin Williamson of Scream fame and ABC has picked up the series. No idea when this will be happening, but the article was from September 2015. Of course, I had no idea of this when I selected the film for viewing. It had been a part of a science fiction marathon on TCM on New Years’ Day.

It appears to be readily available for reasonable prices if you want to find it. If you have not seen it, give it a look. If you saw it more than 30 years ago and remember nothing about it, also give it a try. And, as always, remember my taste is in my mouth and your mileage may vary.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Speculative San Antonio: Kij Johnson reading and signing at The Twig

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Next weekend, The Twig Book Shop will host a reading and signing by one of contemporary sf and fantasy’s most respected authors.

Multi-award winning writer Kij Johnson will read from her short story collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees on Friday, Jan. 15, at 6 p.m. The Twig is located at 306 Pearl Parkway, Ste. 106, San Antonio TX 78215.

Kij Johnson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. In addition to her World Fantasy Award-nominated At the Mouth of the River of Bees, her books include the novels Fudoki and Fox Woman. Each summer, she teaches the prestigious Intensive Novel Workshop for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction; she has also taught at the summer science-fiction workshops Clarion, Clarion West and Odyssey. In the past, she has worked at Tor Books, Dark Horse Comics, Wizards of the Coast and TSR; currently she is an assistant professor of creative writing  at the University of Kansas.

In advance of her San Antonio appearance, I asked Kij to discuss her twin careers of writing and teaching writing.

You’ve spent quite some time teaching writing both in workshops and in university settings. What advice can you give emerging genre writers, and what are the most common mistakes you see them make?

There are lots, but here are a couple!

* Retreading other peoples’ work. Often we try to recreate a work we love understanding that what we should be doing is trying, not to reproduce the work but the way that work made us feel. Instead of trying to reproduce Peter Beagle’s Last Unicorn, or George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, we would be better off analyzing what the original did for us — broke our hearts, made us yearn, made us feel vicariously wise or dangerous or full potential — and then write a different story that does the same thing emotionally, instead of the same thing as far as the plot or genre goes.

* Writing as though movies, TV, and comics are the same as books. In fact, everything about the experience is different: the tools, the process, the degree of autonomy, the scale, the strengths….

Can you pinpoint specific books or stories that were pivotal in you choosing to write fiction yourself? What were they?

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin books opened my eyes to just how much is possible in fiction, a sweeping narrative saga about complex characters behaving imperfectly in a gorgeous global setting.

John Myers Myers wrote a book that changed everything for me: Silverlock. It was written a lot of decades ago, and the general conceit is that there is a Commonwealth (of letters), where a shallow, embittered person can discover worlds of possibility. This doesn’t even touch the book’s charm and strength; but after reading it twenty years ago, I started to engage with works I loved as a writer — what would I do differently? How would I insert myself into the story?

Stylistically, your short stories range from the elegant to the disturbing. Do you decide to adopt a different narrative approach before you start a story, or is that more likely to evolve as you begin drafting the piece?

I often know from the very beginning that a work will have a specific stylistic aim: cool and elegant; classic and emotionally detached; angry and sexy; over-the-top lavish. However, that often changes as I go. The novella I just handed in to tor.com, The Dream-quest of Vellitt Boe, started out intending to be a Lovecraft pastiche as far as voice went and changed to something much more American-letters-y.

Your novels The Fox Woman and Fudoki take place in Medieval Japan. How difficult is it to research such a complex setting, and do you plan to return to that time and era in future work?

It was hard! I read everything — and I do mean everything — that was available in translation, in all available translations. I read a lot of scholarly papers, as well. I’m not sure whether I will return to the place and time: I have another book I could tell that takes place a couple of hundred years sooner, but it depends on some business-type stuff.

You’ve said you spend a lot of time working and reworking your stories. Why is that and how many incarnations is each story likely to see?

I seldom get everything right off the bat. Even if I am close, there is almost always something very delicate I can do to tweak it — basically, the equivalent of using not just the 220-grit sandpaper, but the 600. Rewrites can range from five or six to scores of rewrites of different levels of intensity.

What else are you working on right now? Any new books or stories you can tell us about?

I just turned in a novella for tor.com, The Dream-quest of Vellitt Boe, which will be out as part of their new novella line sometimes in 2016. I also have a novel coming out in 2017 from Small Beer Press. Thanks for asking!

Forgotten Book: The Will to Kill by Robert Bloch (1954)

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Robert Bloch's The Will to Kill is full of twists and turns.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 172nd in my series of Forgotten Books.

After enjoying a Fredric Brown book last week, I thought it might be nice to try a novel from another classic writer. So I pulled my copy of Screams by Robert Bloch off the shelf. That volume contains three early suspense novels by the Psycho master, so I decided to go with the earliest novel, The Will to Kill.

I had read a lot of Bloch over the years, mostly his short fiction. His horror for Weird Tales was spectacular and he was an early acolyte/friend of H. P. Lovecraft. In fact, the two writers each did a story where they killed the other off by horrific means. Such a fun group.

The Will to Kill was, for many years, a legendary Bloch novel, available only as an Ace paperback original that was very hard to come by. Over the years, I searched for copies of this novel in many states. I did eventually find one in the late 90’s in Springfield, Missouri, at a small paperback house. I locates a lot of great titles that day, including the first five 84th Precinct novels by Ed McBain. I was about to check out when I saw this one behind the counter. The clerk said they were holding it for some customer but he had never come in. I asked when he was going to pick it up and the clerk said if it was still available on Friday, I could have it for $2. Come Friday I picked it up.

Screams collects three early Robert Bloch novels, including The Will to Kill.

I never got around to reading it before my Big Book Sale of 2007, when it went away to land on someone else’s shelves. So this last week, I decided to remedy that situation.

Tom Keller is a Korean War veteran suffering from PTSD, even though that phrase did not exist at the time. He has come home from the war to a loving wife. Sometimes Keller suffers from blackouts, fugue states where he wanders and does things that he does not remember. Following one of those episodes, he wakes up with scissors in his hand and a dead wife at his feet. Her throat had been cut … by scissors. He is jailed but eventually released when forensics prove he could not have performed the murder.

Now in another town, he runs a stamp, coin and book store where he works with his new girlfriend. He wants to be with her, but he still has his own doubts about the murder of his first wife. As the novel opens, Keller is recovering from a blackout and has no idea what he has done. He soon finds that he has told his girlfriend Kit about his fears and this drives her away.

While Kit is gone, Keller deals with a fat man with an obviously stolen stamp collection. He chooses the high road and does not buy the material, even though he could turn it into a quick profit. The seller is upset and leaves.

Soon, Keller encounters the fat man again at a bar, where he is abusing a woman and making threats. When Keller steps in, a knife comes out. But Keller is a veteran and disarms the man, ejecting him from the bar.

The girl he has saved, Trixie, invites him over and frantic sex happens at her place. Keller falls asleep, and when he wakes up, Trixie is dead. In circumstances similar to the previous murder he was involved with.

Keller is, of course, arrested and the earlier case is brought up. A blind man identifies Keller by his walk and the taps on his shoes as the killer. The murder weapon is identified as a poniard, a French style stiletto. And, of course, Tom has one in a case at his store. Or, had one, since the store has been broken into and the knife taken. The only possible lead is Trixie’s roommate. When the police go to ask her questions, she is found dead also. But, Tom was in police custody when the roommate was killed. And, of course, the same knife was used.

Kit shows up with a lawyer, Anthony Mingo, for whom she used to work and had been romantically involved. Tom, already unsure of himself, takes this new twist poorly and begins to doubt Kit’s affection for him.

The story takes several good turns and eventually resolves itself, but not before several unusual items from Tom’s and Kit’s past are revealed.

I really enjoyed this novel and read it in one sitting. And, with Screams, I still have two more early Bloch novels waiting for my attention, specifically Firebug and The Star Stalker. Bloch was really crafting his style at this point, leading up to his 1959 novel Psycho.

So, if you can find the Ace paperback, buy it. If not, get Screams and have three fun books. And, as with all such titles, your mileage may vary, but I doubt it. Bloch is fabulous.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs. This week Todd Mason is hosting the listing.

 

Speculative San Antonio: Sanford Allen on the Public Axis Podcast

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Shortly before the holidays, I participated in San Antonio comedy troupe Comedia A Go-Go’s Public Axis Podcast and the results are now live.

The discussion with my side-splitting hosts covered wrestling, writing, rock-n-roll, dueling holidays horror movies, superheroes, siblings and a whole slew of other topics. Be warned: it’s a loud, surreal and frequently funny ramble. Thanks to Regan Arevalos, Larry Garza and Jess Castro for a great time, some strange questions and many much-needed laughs.