Following that I saw the last half of two American television writers, Alan Cole and Chris Bunch, talking about why American television is so bad. At least a third of the talk was how they accepted garbage assignments and did them for the money only. It quickly became obvious that these people were Joe Valachi's of television. They were not so much critics of the system, but part of the system who were willing to talk about it. They were schlock writers talking about their own contribution to the problem. And the audience cheered them.
Next Greg Bear and Brian Aldiss had a discussion about Olaf Stapledon. Olaf Stapledon was one of the great original writers. He writes books without characters that go on for more than a page or so. Instead he writes things that seem like history books but they go billions of years into the future. Aldiss told a story about how he stole a two-volume set of LAST AND FIRST MEN, the only book he ever stole! He was in the army in the Pacific during the second World War and found them on the shelves of an abandoned plantation. The Army had taken over the house and the books was so much better than the banal conversation of soldiers so he looted them. And they were with him for the rest of the war.
Then came a panel on science fiction in the 1950s with a moderator whom I did not recognize, together with Bob Shaw and Bob Silverberg. They reminisced about Peter Hamilton, who edited NEBULA SCIENCE FICTION. Silverberg talked about seeing Destination Moon in 1950 and when the lights came up he discovered John W. Campbell was sitting in front of him. (Ah--I am writing this as the discussion goes on. The joking moderator is Kenneth Bulmer.) As a thumbnail, what happened in the 1950s was a flowering of magazines, then books (both paperback and Science Fiction Book Club) killed off many of the magazines. Then the books backed out and at the end of the decade, other than a couple of magazines, Doubleday Books, and the Science Fiction Book Club, science fiction seemed dead. One of the audience asked why there was a move away from true science into psionics and similar false sciences. Silverberg seemed to want to ascribe it to the questioning of authority in the 1960s, but it clearly came much before that. It is tough to keep Bob Shaw on the subject. He is a heavy-drinking, joking Irishman.
Harry Harrison and George Hay next talked about John Campbell. Comment from Harrison: 'Talking with [JWC] is like tossing manhole covers.' Harrison thinks that modern science fiction writers 'all have their finger up their nose.' On one hand, he says that science fiction was invented by Campbell, but also that the modern writers do not write enough like the old days. Someone asked, if JWC were alive today, whose stories would he be buying? Harrison says it would be a bunch of better authors whom Campbell would have developed himself. Also, there is the old story about Godwin's story 'The Cold Equations,' about the stowaway girl who added too much mass to the rocket. Godwin rewrote it eight times saving the girl. Campbell would not accept the story until Godwin killed the girl. Either physics says the girl added too much mass and would have to go or there was no story. Of course, it is a better story without weaseling around the laws of physics.
The next presentation was on 50 years of Superman in various forms. A few interesting points were made. Clark Kent was a combination of Kent Taylor (the actor who was the brother-in-law of one of the creators of Superman) and Clark Gable. Kryptonite was invented because the radio actor Bud Collier wanted to go on vacation for two weeks and so they wanted to reduce the character he played, Superman, to a state of just coughing for two weeks. A number of interesting writers have written for comics, including Edmond Hamilton, Alfred Bester, and Ed Binder.
(11:13 PM): This is one of those 'you had to have been there' stories, but I will try to tell it anyway. I was walking back to my hotel a few minutes ago and in front of the Metropole Hotel was a man handing out convention news update sheets out of a Gestetner stencil box. He had apparently just told a non-convention member how to find someplace in Brighton. In a slurred voice, the nonmember was saying, 'Sanks. You have been a big help.' Then as he walked away, he said back over his shoulder, 'Good company, Gestetner!'
After the panel we went to a Greek restaurant for dinner. Evelyn, I, Kate, and Saul Jaffe went. We rushed back after dinner to see Lars von Trier's 1984 Danish film THE ELEMENT OF CRIME. All the scenes were shot in near-darkness and what you can see is in sepia tones. It involves a policeman investigating a crime in a post-destruction Copenhagen in which the whole city is flooded six feet deep in water. The soundtrack is indistinct and the film moves with a snail's pace.
August 29 (11:27 AM): So it was back to the room and a discussion with Dave as to how bad the film seemed to be.
At about 8:30 PM we went to the netnews party. I am sure that Evelyn will cover it and it was described on-line at the party. I talked to various people about what they already had done in Britain and what they will be doing for the rest of the trip. Not thrilling but it passed time.
After being there an hour or so, I returned to our room for a while, somewhat ahead of Evelyn. I did some reading and a little before midnight Evelyn showed up and I headed out for a movie at the Odeon. Like EXPLORERS, this was to be a theatrical print of a film shown in a genuine theater. I had better than a half an hour so I stopped on the way for what was billed as a reading by horror writers Ramsay Campbell and Clive Barker of their own stories.
Barker is a new, young, horror-story writer who has some really off-beat ideas for horror stories. Stephen King is popular but he really does not have enough new and original ideas in horror fiction. Barker is considered to be the real current superstar by most people who read a lot of horror novels rather than by those who read best-sellers. Barker, however, did not show up. Campbell did. Campbell's novels have a great deal of respect among horror readers. He is sort of the grand old man of horror writers. A case could be made that either is the most popular British writer of horror fiction.
Barker did not show up but I did see what Campbell is like. Campbell has the same sort of looks that Bob Shaw has. Campbell looks a little younger and more jolly, but they are both plump and red-faced. However, if you notice, their most prominent feature actually changes. Each has at the end of his right arm a piece of glass, a mug-like object. But it changes in cycles. It will be full of a clear, brown, foamy liquid, then it will be half full. Sometimes it will be nearly empty. Then suddenly it will be full again and the cycle will begin again like it did ten minutes before.
I had time to hear one horror story from Campbell, a sort of whimsical thing about going to see a neighbor's slides of a holiday trip and not realizing the neighbors did not come back quite human. GASP!
After that I had to be off to my film. MUTANT is a low-budget American film that is a re-telling of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD--as many cheap horror films are--with toxic waste given this time as the reason for the transformation. I gave it a zero rating. Dave gave it a -1.
August 30 (8:30 AM): Well, I am now a day behind. That is a pretty constant state. At a convention, a trip log can not stay up-to-date for more than a few minutes at a time or it is a bad science fiction convention.
Breakfast was a carbon copy of every other breakfast at this hotel. I had a spirited discussion with Evelyn about science fiction. She would like to see the category just go away. In fact, she wants to see all categorization of fiction go away. I cannot represent her reasoning but I think it revolves around the fact that borders between types of fiction are not well-defined so she wants to remove all distinctions. I guess this would involve having just one big fiction section in libraries and bookstores. She would still have non-fiction categorized because it is useful to have it categorized. From my point of view she is forgetting that the distinction between categories of non-fiction may be just as indistinct and indeed the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Her same arguments, carried to their logical ends, would mean just having all books alphabetized by author without regard to content. This is really, I believe, at basis an old complaint that Evelyn has had that there is a science fiction ghetto. People look down on science fiction and other people will read only science fiction. What results is a 'categorism' (to coin a word) that is akin to racism. I agree that the current system of categorizing fiction has problems, but it is still more useful than not having genres of literature acknowledged. I was also a bit surprised when Evelyn asked me why my approach in the argument was to pick holes in her proposal rather than to defend the current system other than to say it seems to work. This seems to me to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding in the rules of logic. One does not have to defend the Status quo in logical argument; if a change to the Status quo is proposed, it becomes the battlefield. One side defends the change; the other side attacks it. A discussion of whether the status quo is good or bad is pointless.
In any case this is all moot. People categorized literature because it was useful to do so. I think most people realize that categorizing fiction or anything else may have problems, but it is more useful than ignoring distinctions. When Evelyn convinces a single branch of B. Dalton to alphabetize all their fiction I will believe her proposal might catch on. When I was growing up most public libraries did alphabetize all fiction together. Then they started putting stickers on the spine of the book. A rocket in an atom meant it was science fiction. Then many of the science fiction books were pulled out and put in a bookcase labeled 'science fiction.' Today most libraries acknowledge genres and have sections for science fiction, mystery, westerns, etc. It would appear most people like it that way. To the best of my knowledge, bookstores depend on the fact that people really do find categorization useful and have for a long time.
Following breakfast Evelyn and I continued on to see the art show. It is a fair-sized art show but not really all that great. It is spread out over two rooms but nothing all that impressive. One mother was carrying around a three-year-old. She pointed out one of Charlene Taylor's 'Teddy Bears in Space' pictures, assuming the teddy bears would interest the child. In a loud voice the child said, 'I don't like that.' I told Evelyn that I hated to admit it, but the child was absolutely right. At one time Taylor was promising but her cutesy artwork now is just a little sickening.
Evelyn then went to do some autograph hunting and I looked around the huckster room. The noon panel was on horror writing. This time Clive Barker did show up. He looks a lot like a young version of Eric Idle and he smokes big Cuban cigars that smell up the room. Campbell was there with his beer, too. Someone suggested that the popularity of horror might stem from its unfamiliarity, that these days very few of us have ever seen a corpse. However, as Campbell pointed out, the Italians surround themselves with dead in catacombs but they also make films like TOMB OF THE BLIND DEAD with very realistic-looking corpses on horseback. They were asking who in the audience actually were in professions where they had to come in contact with the dead. One nurse talked about it, but what really surprised us was that Kate Pott in our own group did the most. We all knew she worked in a nursing home and we figured it was doing things like caring for people and cleaning up. Apparently a big part of her job is what she called (and what got a big laugh) 'post-mortem care.' This involves dressing and making up the dead before they are removed to mortuaries. Kate knew she was fascinated by Clive Barker and his work. Now Barker seemed to be just as fascinated with what she does. |
