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Jelly, March 1 2007
Image by sahadeva
Jelly this week was really great, despite the unexpected lack of internet connectivity in the early afternoon.
Left, in search of WiFi at the NYPL. Right, hanging out and chatting sans internet connection. Photo edited in the amazing Picnik, which Photojojo describes as "nicer than lying on a blanket in a grassy field on a sunny day."
Thanks for the croissants and the bagels guys! You rock!
And Alicia, those jelly cookies were delicious! Everybody loved em!
Norm, John, Roz, Mike, Brian.
Image by jovike
Sf authors at the British Library: Norman Spinrad, John Clute, Roz Kaveney, Michael Moorcock, Brian W. Aldiss. This event is part of the Out of this World exhibition.
It was a mind-expanding mix of memories and opinions that culminated in a call for more women in sf and more optimism — as Spinrad said, the future may be worse than we think.
Kaveney tried to bring the conversation back to the 60s many times, prompting Moorcock to remember that New Worlds magazine featured a lot of arguing rather that being a salon/forum. J. G. Ballard punching someone. The magazine was a tatty thing when he took it over from Carnell. Kyril Bonfiglioli had wanted to edit it but ended up with the sister magazine Science Fantasy.
John Brunner was remembered as a self-publicist and not the easiest of characters to get on with. At a hotel breakfast he was against complaining about some cold eggs: "They are nearly up to room temperature now!"
Much railing at genre: sci-fi/speculative fiction. Moorcock said Mother London had just been published as sf (which it isn't) in France. Aldiss's Hothouse novel was renamed in the USA in case it was shelved in the garden section.
Aldiss also told of the time writing Greybeard, after splitting with his wife. She took the children. Aldiss wrote of a future with no children where the people are getting older. He thought it was bloody miserable and no-one would want to read it, but the book has seen numerous reprints and translations.
Spinrad hoped for change with new media, from simple text colour, or music with text as Moorcock suggested: he tried to do this with a book once but failed because of tax issues that meant books and tapes could not be sold together. Aldiss and Spinrad have made a deal for getting their old titles published as ebooks.
On the internet killing books: Spinrad reminded us that photography did not kill painting. Photos became the new way to record history, a memetic medium and painting became something else (man). Moorcock wants the revived New Worlds magazine to break new ground online.
Aldiss — who was amusing throughout — remembered being in T. S. Eliot's office at the TLS, with a print of Ezra Pound on one wall and Eliot on the other. This was strictly business and they discussed paperclips rather than poetry.
I shall wonder for ever what John Clute's plan for saving fiction (?) was as he said it would take half an hour to explain, so there wasn't time. Roz praised John's vocabulary and Aldiss recalled where he had first seen the word ecology.
Moorcock recalled publishing Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron in New Worlds after many publishers had turned it down: Macdonald then realized it was publishable after seeing it in print and put out a hardback in 1969. New Worlds was hit by the scandal: MPs asked questions in the house, Spinrad was called a nameless degenerate (Aldiss: "we were all so jealous!") and W. H. Smiths banned the magazine. Moorcock said the circulation fell from 20,000 to 10,000.
The panel picked the best of their own books and books they thought everyone should read: Moorcock and Spinrad both chose Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius books. Aldiss chose his Helliconia books. Two panelist's chose Disch's Camp Concentration. Moorcock chose Aldiss's Report on Probability A.
Spinrad picked Sladek's The Müller-Fokker Effect and mentioned that for a fine writer, Sladek's career had been almost invisible. Of his own books, Spinrad mentioned a few but feared he would be remembered for the Nazi alternate history novel The Iron Dream.
That's all I can remember at the moment. For more, check #outofthisworld on Twitter and brianaldiss.com: brianaldiss.co.uk/2011/06/22/an-evening-with-aldiss-morco...
Unfinished church (5/5)
Image by Darkroom Daze
Abandoned, unfinished church on Government Hill Road at St. George, parish of St. George's, Bermuda.
(I just fancied editing this one into B+W on an impulse.)
(Better, obviously, on black - click on the picture.)
This is quite a well known Bermuda landmark, seen here from the NW. It was originally intended to replace the old and historically important parish church of St. Peter in the town of St. George, when St. Peter's had suffered hurricane damage and thought to have been beyond repair. The unfinished church dates from the 1870s and is in Gothic revival style, and to my eye has similarities to Bermuda Cathedral, though that is much larger and a little later. There were delays in its construction (reasons for which are summarised at www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda2_000027.htm ). St.Peter's was eventually repaired and there was no further need to replace it. The unfinished building is now in a poor state and has been shut off from general access.
The exterior construction is in local Bermuda stone (Pleistocene aeolianite limestone).
More information at:
www.bermuda-online.org/seetown2.htm [scroll down to 'Unfinished church'].
Photo
Darkroom Daze © Creative Commons.
If you would like to use or refer to this image, please attribute.
ID: DSC_6231 - Version 2
