| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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' Forry, of course, is a world-renowned collector of horror, science fiction, and fantasy memorabilia. This is the second time I have seen what is basically the same slide show and he made the same mistake both times. He has what he claims was the articulated model of the stegosaurus from KING KONG and it is really the styracosaurus from SON OF KONG. Getting the breed wrong he might consider a technical point, but getting the film wrong should be the sort of mistake that he would be embarrassed about.
After that I sequestered myself and worked on my log for a while until the non-Hugo awards ceremony at 4 PM. This has been moved off of the mainline of programming and has been banished to a remote auditorium. It usually is something of an embarrassment. Last year the Seiun Award for Best Translated Novel went to Orson Scott Card. I forget the novel. He was given a nice Japanese sake set and he thanked them for the tea set. Generally these awards are just sort of ignored by the fans. It is a little rude, I think, to treat the countries that give such awards with such indifference.
When that was over we met Kate and went back to Scheveningen for dinner and for Evelyn to get ready for the Hugos.
Before Evelyn got ready, she wanted to eat, even if it was only about 5:30 PM, since if she got dressed up first she felt she would undoubtedly spill the gravy on herself. So we went down to the beach and tried to find a restaurant that would serve us that early. We tried a place called 'The First Choice.' I asked for water and they served me bottled water at $1.65. (Fl2.75). They tend to do that a lot. I think you have to ask for 'tap water.' Unlike some places, 'ice water' does not convey the point, since they look at you blankly, then bring you a bottle of water with a glass of ice. I ordered 'beef stroganoff.' Apparently their idea of stroganoff is different here than in other places. It is beef in a tomato sauce. We sat watching the beach, which is topless. I commented that in the Middle East the United States is considered to be sinful and decadent. In Europe and by European standards the United States is puritanical because of our efforts to ban tobacco (which make no mistake about, I wholeheartedly endorse) and the ban on nudity (which I wholeheartedly wistfully regret). Funny that Iran and Iraq never consider Europe to be 'the Great Satan.' I guess that this is something to do with the fact that we have troops in Saudi Arabia and, from what I read, Europe is not committing itself to nearly as great a degree. We may not be the most successful industrial power any more, but we sure are second to none when it comes to defending the industrial powers.
We returned to the room and Evelyn put on the tuxedo she bought for the occasion. Now the only way to get to the convention again was via the tram and with most people dressed for the summer heat it was quite unusual to see a woman dressed in a tux on the tram. I took some pictures.
At the convention we were put in a room together with a bunch of other nominees and their others of varying degrees of significance. Holding forth over the scene was fan artist Tom Mayhew, a large man who was sort of a cartoonist who had a pocketsize book of cartoons which were on- and off-color in varying degrees and also funny in varying degrees.
Eventually they led us to the Prins Willem Alexander Auditorium, which was already pretty full. We sat with George 'Lan' Laskowski, who publishes our stuff in LAN'S LANTERN. They usually play some sort of music to start the Hugo ceremonies. Last year it was the Imperial March from BEN HUR. This time they made an unusual choice. They played a piece Ennio Morricone wrote for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. It is sort of a sad piece of music that mourns the loss of the Old West with the coming of the railroad. It speaks of a melancholic change of eras. With the fall of communism, eras are certainly changing, but I am not sure what the loss is that whoever selected the music is bemoaning.
Through some sort of coup, they got C. Howard Wilkins, the American ambassador to the Netherlands, to speak. I was expecting another 'surprise, some science fiction may be literature and enjoy your space mouse' sort of speech. Instead, he said that he himself was a fan and talked about his pleasure in meeting some of the writers. He talked about his own reactions on reading science fiction (in general, he thought he could be as imaginative as Bradbury, something that is very likely true). His speech had phrases such as 'the rapidly expanding popularity of our field.' It sounds a little strange having an American ambassador refer to science fiction as a field partly his. Saul Jaffe said people who got a chance to talk to him on a one-to-one basis were impressed by how much he seemed to know about science fiction. Later when he presented the Hugo for Best Novel, he said that his own code name was Noah Ward and it was he who had been nominated in every category. It was clear this gentleman was a class act. The American came out looking better than their European counterparts.
All but the last award was announced by writer Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, who read the names too fast at first. As a result, Evelyn's name was read about fifteen seconds before her picture was shown. The picture they chose was the two of us in safari gear at Olduvai Gorge. Wow! My picture was shown to the audience at a Hugo ceremony. I guess I have arrived. Well, sad to say, Evelyn did not win a Hugo and neither did LAN'S LANTERN. On the other hand, for the first time in recent history the stories I wanted to win in both the short story and the novelette categories did win. In fact, of the twelve stories nominated in the two categories, they were the only two I can say I actually enjoyed. What struck me as odd was that shortly after having completed the Hugo nominees, I picked up a book called RIVALS OF WEIRD TALES, which was a collection of fantasy and horror stories published in the 1930s and 1940s (at the time the famous fantasy magazine WEIRD TALES was being published). I read three stories of about the same length. I liked three stories out of three. The stories written now are more literary, I suppose. They are just not very entertaining and they are not very good narratives. Form has triumphed over substance. Style has won over story-telling. It is remarkable how often now I can finish a story sure I must have missed the point.
When the awards were over, Evelyn went off to the Hugo losers' party and I together with Kate, Jo, and Saul Jaffe went to see a play that was being put on. The play was written and directed by someone named Svarapa. It was a murder mystery set on a background of neo-pagan ritual. The first scene had a number of women getting together for a ritual. Included is a mystery writer named Edgar Allan Poe. An oracle in a large pot warns of dire happenings. The women discuss the warnings. Then there was about eight minutes of mediocre chamber music poorly played. The next scene has a ritual and one of the characters dying to the regret of the others. Then there was more uninteresting music. The third scene featured a lot of very bad acting as a police detective, whom we are told is very good but who acts very stupidly, shouts her lines and asks a bunch of very uninteresting questions. The high point of the scene is when the group I am with gets up and leaves looking for something better to do.
We found it in a late-night panel on the erotic aspects of the vampire novel. Late-night panels are often a waste, with drunk panelists being what they mistake for funny. Blessedly, this panel took place on a high level. It was partially on the nature of the vampire and partially on experiences of the writers with some of their less balanced fans. That ended about 12:30 AM. We found the shuttle bus back to the hotel. It did not leave until 1 AM. Evelyn was already back at the room.
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Saturday. Good breakfast, much the same as previous days. We had breakfast and came to the con. My first panel was 'Disappointed in SF?' The first disappointment was that only one of seven scheduled panelists showed up. Talk about disappointments! The panel was a discussion of modern writers and did not really touch on what I find disappointing in science fiction. In fact, their disappointment seemed directly opposite to mine. The others thought that style was not keeping pace with the time. Me, I am less interested in the style than in the ideas. I want to read new ideas written in stories with simple, straightforward and unambiguous style. At one time I read mostly short stories which were ten and twenty pages long. Now when I read novels, I tend to think that many would make very good twenty-page stories. Short story ideas are still very big in science fiction and few make it to works that brief. Short stories are simply not where a writer makes money. If you take the fifteen pages of idea and 380 pages of style, you have a full-length novel. I rarely find a novel that I think is really tightly written and really should be of novel length to express its idea. Too little science fiction really looks at a likely future any more. How many writers really extrapolate from AIDS and global warming? For the most part, current science fiction writers ignore the important trends rather than incorporate them into their writing and extrapolate.
At 1 PM I went to Forry Ackerman's 'My Collection in Slides.' Forry, of course, is a world-renowned collector of horror, science fiction, and fantasy memorabilia. This is the second time I have seen what is basically the same slide show and he made the same mistake both times. He has what he claims was the articulated model of the stegosaurus from KING KONG and it is really the styracosaurus from SON OF KONG. Getting the breed wrong he might consider a technical point, but getting the film wrong should be the sort of mistake that he would be embarrassed about.
After that I sequestered myself and worked on my log for a while until the non-Hugo awards ceremony at 4 PM. This has been moved off of the mainline of programming and has been banished to a remote auditorium. It usually is something of an embarrassment. Last year the Seiun Award for Best Translated Novel went to Orson Scott Card. I forget the novel. He was given a nice Japanese sake set and he thanked them for the tea set. Generally these awards are just sort of ignored by the fans. It is a little rude, I think, to treat the countries that give such awards with such indifference.
When that was over we met Kate and went back to Scheveningen for dinner and for Evelyn to get ready for the Hugos.
Before Evelyn got ready, she wanted to eat, even if it was only about 5:30 PM, since if she got dressed up first she felt she would undoubtedly spill the gravy on herself. So we went down to the beach and tried to find a restaurant that would serve us that early. We tried a place called 'The First Choice.' I asked for water and they served me bottled water at $1.65. (Fl2.75). They tend to do that a lot. I think you have to ask for 'tap water.' Unlike some places, 'ice water' does not convey the point, since they look at you blankly, then bring you a bottle of water with a glass of ice. I ordered 'beef stroganoff.' Apparently their idea of stroganoff is different here than in other places. It is beef in a tomato sauce. We sat watching the beach, which is topless. I commented that in the Middle East the United States is considered to be sinful and decadent. In Europe and by European standards the United States is puritanical because of our efforts to ban tobacco (which make no mistake about, I wholeheartedly endorse) and the ban on nudity (which I wholeheartedly wistfully regret). Funny that Iran and Iraq never consider Europe to be 'the Great Satan. |
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