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August Derleth February 24, 1909

2012-02-24T05:42:00.001-08:00

August Derleth doesn't get a lot of love from Lovecraft fans. This strikes me as extremely unfair. Yes, he wrote some stories as "posthumous collaborations" which don't rank high in the Cthulhu Mythos, he tried to skew HPL's work in a direction that was counter to Lovecraft's ideas. But these are secondary. The guy (along with Donald Wandrei) rescued HPL from Pulp obscurity. Derleth chose to promote Lovecraft, publish Lovecraft, save Lovecraft, rather than his own works. That's huge. Most writers suffer from tunnel vision. They can be very self-centered. I know -- I'm a writer. It isn't done out of having a poor character or anything. It's just self-promotion which you need to do. It's a competitive marketplace. For a writer to back burner their own work for another is almost saintly. That he had to write a few so-so Pulp stories to help keep HPL alive in readers' memories, so what?

Derleth helped to promote and rescue other writers as well. Robert E. Howard's first book was an Arkham House HC. Fritz Leiber. Frank Belknap Long. Lots of others. Derleth also found new talent besides just the Pulpsters too. Lumley, Campbell and such. He gave them the first place to publish, encouraged them. Like John W. Campbell and Science Fiction (who gets much more love) Derleth helped to shape modern horror. I just don't get the haters. Don't like his fiction, don't read it. But stop slagging the guy.

And what about his fiction? Not just the HPL derived stuff? Derleth was a writer in his own right. He wrote several minor classics for Weird Tales. "Mr. George", the quiet ghost story, that was filmed on Thriller (May 9, 1961). "The House In the Magnolias" (1932), "The Drifting Snow" (1939) and "Logoda's Heads" (1939). His work is as worthy of being remembered as a dozen others from WT. And then there is the Solar Pons stuff. I could never get past the name thing. If he had been able to use the Sherlock and Watson names I might have enjoyed these. But it was a copyright issue. Pastichers have it so much easier today.

I think the future is going to be kinder to August Derleth. I think his work will be re-visited and found more interesting than people were told. Read him. Discover him for yourself.

Terence Fisher February 23, 1904

2012-02-23T05:43:00.001-08:00

The Universal black and white monster films of the 1930s and 40s get a lot of critical attention, sometimes to the exclusion of later films. This is slowly changing with people beginning to realize producer/directors like Roger Corman did some pretty cool stuff too. Terence Fisher was another. You could think of him as Britain's Roger Corman, having directed some of Hammer's best films including Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf in 1960, Peter Cushing in several films against Christopher Lee's Dracula, The Gorgon (1964) and lots of others.

America had lost the monster film edge, making comedies like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (which dribbled down to TV shows such as The Addams Family and The Munsters). In the UK they took the triumvirate (Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Werewolf) in a new direction which included buckets of blood, some nudity and a new color image of what a monster movie was.

Fisher also tackled some classics of another sort with The Hound of the Baskervilles (1958) Robin Hood, Dr. Jekyll, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera (1962) and Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out (1968). As Corman had his Vincent Price, Fisher had his Cushing and Lee. As with most horror film makers, Fisher has been largely ignored for decades but in recent years critics are beginning to clue in. Blood and popcorn! Let's watch some monsters.

Edward D. Hoch February 22, 1930

2012-02-22T06:02:00.002-08:00

There is a myth in the writing world that you can't make a living writing short stories. Edward D. Hoch proves the falsity of that idea. The man wrote hundreds and largely all in the Mystery field. He started in the Pulps and kept writing until he died at 77. You can pick up any issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and you'll find a Hoch story. He had several different series: Nick Velvet, Captain Leopold, Ben Snow and lots of others. But my fav has to be the Occult-ish detective, Simon Ark.

Simon Ark claims to be a long-lived Gnoptic priest of ancient Egypt. Despite this his mysteries, which appear supernatural, turn out to be quite earthly. Simon was a hold-over to the Pulp days of Mystery when a little "seasoning" for a Mystery series was expected. Most mystery writers today would shudder at the idea of introducing anything as questionable as a little Fantasy into the mix. There are exceptions of course, such as the Science Fiction Mysteries of Isaac Asimov and Sharon McCrumb. But as a breed, Mystery writers like to stay on the side of accepted reality. I suppose this old-fashioned Pulp stuff smacks of Scooby Doo. Anyway, to get back to Ed. He did write a few very good horror stories for Weird Tales so we know he's one of the Chosen.

I would love to see a publisher collect all of his stories like they have done with Robert Bloch and Philip K. Dick. They are great fun and you just want to read all of them. I have no doubt this will happen someday.

Interview With Edward D. Hoch
"Zoo" by Edward D. Hoch
12 Questions with Edward D. Hoch

P. Schuyler Miller February 21, 1912

2012-02-21T06:08:00.000-08:00

P. Schuyler Miller is one of those early SF writers few remember, having written before the Golden Age. His work was influential as Isaac Asimov tells in Before the Golden Age: "What fascinated me in this story ["Tetrahedron From Space"] and what caused it to live on in my memory was the picture of extraterrestrials who were utterly non-human." Asimov also notes the period racism and over-use of adjectives. Despite this he improved and wrote enough stories to be collected in The Titan (1952).

As examples of early SF Miller may have lacked in technical excellence but he had that sense of wonder everybody talks about, exploring fresh ideas that had yet to become cliches. He was an important pioneer along with writers like Ray Cumming, R. F. Starzl, Stanley G. Weinbaum and Nat Schachner.

Miller went on to become a very influential book reviewer of SF as well as an active fan in the world of Conan. His map and career schematic (done with John D. Clark) were approved by Robert E. Howard as largely correct. This outline was used to flesh out the series by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter and others in the 1960-70s.What started as a Pulp hobby (you couldn't really make a living at it in the old days) became a life-long obsession for Miller. He improved SF in so many ways.

Richard Matheson February 20, 1926

2012-02-20T06:21:00.001-08:00

I could go on about Richard Matheson and I Am Legend (1951) at length but I've done that elsewhere. Instead I'd like to remind us all that Richard writes more than just horror. He also is an SF and Fantasy writer but also a writer of Westerns. He matches the needs of the story to the genre not the other way around.

Like many writers who began in the Pulps he wrote stories for the Westerns magazines:

"They Don't Make Em Tougher" (Dime Western May 1951)

"The Hunt" (West March 1952, Vol. 76 No. 3)

Too Proud to Lose (Fifteen Western Tales Feb 1955)

"Son of a Gunman" (Western Stories December 1955, Vol. 1 No. 3)

But in more recent years he has written several very distinctive novels:

The Journal of the Gun Year (1992)

The Gun Fight (1993)

Shadow On the Sun (1994)

By the Gun (Collection) (1994)

Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickock (1996)

It shouldn't surprise anyone that a writer with the kinds of experience that Matheson has (TV, movies, novels, etc.) should write stories based on character. The Journal of the Gun Year, for instance, follows a largely illiterate youth as he matures and ultimately meets a bad end. The story is told in his journal. This would be a gimmick in the hands of many but not Matheson. He uses it subtly to show how his main character is growing (in all things including grammar). These are novels, not just Westerns.

Terry Carr February 19, 1937

2012-02-19T06:02:00.000-08:00

Writers, artists, actors, their work is pretty obvious because it is right there in front of you. But editors that's another thing. There were several editors that I think of fondly, mostly for their work as anthologists. Terry Carr was one of these (Donald A. Wolheim, Peter Haining, Isaac Asimov and Harry Greenberg are some others). Terry always put together interesting books. Universe, New Worlds of Fantasy, one-offs, they all had the hallmarks of an editor who loved SF/F/H as well as the written word. As someone who loves short fiction, these anthologies were essential for finding out-of-print stories that everybody raved about but the magazines were long gone.

Terry also wrote a few interesting things on his own as well. "The Warlord of Kor" is a great read. Listen to it at http://librivox.org/warlord-of-kor-by-terry-carr/. Intelligent but with enough mystery and action to make it an ACE Double. I sometimes wish he'd written more. He died so young at only 50.

Jean M. Auel February 18, 1936

2012-02-18T06:59:00.000-08:00

Jean Auel's series known collectively as the Earth's Children series (or Clan of the Cave Bear series to movie watchers) shows how everything old is new again. Jean has had phenomenal success with her caveman books in a publishing world that would have turned its noses up at the idea of writing about prehistoric men. Because the genre is a lot older than 1980. The first books appear shortly after the discovery of Neanderthal Man in Germany in 1856. Pierre Boitard’s Antedeluvian Studies: Paris before Man. Fossil man... appears in 1861. The first English tale was Sir Arthur Helps’ Realmah (1868). Old Chuck Darwin would really stir the caveman controversy with his The Descent of Man in 1871. There was Andrew Lang’s “The Romance of the First Radical” (1886), the novels of J.-H. Rosny and a host of others including Henry Curwen, Samuel Page Widnall, Charles C. Dail, Marcel Schwob and Stanley Waterloo. H. G. Wells wrote a popular series called "A Story of the Stone Age" (1897) then later a story called "The Grisled Folk" (1921) in which humans have conflicts with Neanderthals. Robert E. Howard published his first story in Weird Tales on the same theme in "Spear and Fang" (July 1925). Cavemen after Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) pretty much becomes a Pulp adventure idea that just gets sillier and sillier ending with films like 1,000,000 Years BC (1966).

Then enter Jean M. Auel with Clan of the Cave Bear in 1980 and it's all new again. Not only that, but who is reading the books? My mom! My mom who loves her Maeve Bichy and romance novels and such is reading about cavemen. (Ironically at the same time I'm reading about them too in Pellucidar and other Edgar Rice Burroughs fare.) And Auel is writing about that idea that H. G. Wells used back in 1921 and Lester Del Rey wrote a classic about called "The Day Is Done" (Astounding , May 1939). Wells took the POV of Cromagnon Man encountering a Neanderthal while Del Rey used the opposite POV and showed how hard it was to be a Neander competing with humans. Jean Auel took this same idea, expanded it into six really big books, exploring character on a level never before done with a caveman story. And her success has inspired many others now writing in a similar vein, such as the Gears. And it's not just cavemen. There are First Nations series, prehistoric Britain series, any long span of time that can allow a full examination of a culture. Jean Auel, like John Jakes with his Kent Family Chronicles, created a whole new kind of publishing. Neither of them invented the kernel (there were cavemen books, there were American history books) but ran with it in their own way.

The film version of Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) with Darryl Hannah was poised to be a spectacular event but in the end proved very disappointing. There never were any sequels. The delicate touch that is required to pull off such a tale was not present. The result was not much better than Rachel Welch and Harryhausen dinosaurs. But fear not. Jean's books are too popular to ever be left undone. One day the right director and producer will create such a film series. (Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC was not such a beast.)

Andre Norton February 17, 1912

2012-02-17T05:48:00.000-08:00

Most SF fans go from the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs to those of Mary Alice Norton, better known by the more male sounding "Andre Norton". Like H. Rider Haggard's works, I came to them late, which could have meant that I would find them childish (such as the Hardy Boys novels which I never read and could not read now unless forced to do so). This was not the case with Haggard or Norton. Andre Norton's works is filled with so many interesting ideas, well-rounded characters (many who are young but no matter) and wonderful prose. They are not "juvenile" in any way that matters.

Norton beat the odds by virtue of her talent and fortitude. She did not write for the SF magazines or traditional publishers. She wrote almost exclusively for ACE paperbacks in the early days. You know the ones, you can flip them around and there was another "short" novel on the other side. She could have been a mere blip on the radar of paperback SF but her works endure. Readers grow up and give them to their kids. That's the sign of real permanence. If you love animals, love adventure, colorful backgrounds and fiction that stays with you without boring you, then you read Andre Norton, for none of her works are plodding or ponderous. They sweep you up and carry you away with the first word.

We all have our favorite Nortons. It might be Witch World. Her "Baldies" Time Agents. Her post-nuclear holocausts tales. There is even the Beastmaster series that was made into three films and a TV show. I would love to see a Witch World movie personally. It's a fun mix of SF and Fantasy and there are so many great stories there. Perhaps a mini-series along the George RR Martin track?

Andre Norton's earliest published work is in the public domain and you have to read it if you are a fan. "The Gift of Asti" appeared in Fantasy Book (Vol. 1, No. 3 1948) and it is obviously not the work of a master writer (yet!) but so many of Norton's themes are already there that it is charming. Check it out http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19029/19029-h/19029-h.htm

Christopher Eccleston February 16, 1964

2012-02-16T17:33:00.000-08:00

Christopher Eccleston should be be my favorite Doctor. He re-launched the franchise back in 2005 but chose to do it for only one year before handing it off to David Tennant (who is my favorite of the new series). For one thing Eccelston is around my own age. He is the first really to be so. Matt Smith is much younger, Tennant somewhat younger, and all others were older. Here was a End of the Baby Boomers/Gen X Doctor. (I really think it was the leaving after a year.)

Which I get. He wanted to do movies and even got some good roles. He played The Rider in The Seeker (a too-close to Harry Potter) film based on a great series of books by Susan Cooper. More recently he was in The Borrowers for the BBC (last Christmas). I think a really great role is waiting for him if he can get away from playing potboiler villains in American movies. Maybe a role in the later Game of Thrones?

Be patient. It's coming.

Matt Groening February 15, 1954

2012-02-15T05:58:00.000-08:00

Matt Groening has done something few cartoonist ever do. He's created more than one popular franchise. His first was the largely depressing Life in Hell but it got him noticed and The Simpsons has been an institution for decades. My personal favorite is Futurama which is of course more genre oriented. Fry, Leela, Bender and the rest have been poking fun at Space Opera (and just about everything else) since 1999, cancelled and revived it has yet to pass away. Futurama is more than just The Jetsons done Simpsons style. The success of shows like The Big Bang Theory have confirmed what Futurama fans know... that brainy is funny.

Simon Pegg February 14, 1970

2012-02-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

( Thinking: Good thing they play me millions to do this...)

Simon Pegg is a very funny guy. I don't think anyone would disagree about that. But he's also an actor who has found his niche both in comedy and genre with films like Sean of the Dead, Star Trek, Big Fuzz, Paul and Mission Impossible 4. He has appeared in other things of course. My favorite was on Black's Books where he played a psychotic book seller. He also appeared on Doctor Who in 2005 and a cameo in George Romero's last zombie pic. He's living the fan-boy's dream.

Georges Simenon February 13, 1903

2012-02-13T05:27:00.000-08:00

Georges Simenon is one of four French authors I try to read whenever I can find them. (The others are Guy de Maupassant, Maurice Le Blanc and Jules Verne.) Translation is sometimes an issue. Simenon is, of course, most famous for creating Inspector Maigret in a series of about 80 novels. He wrote many other books as well and all have that same psychological bent that was Simenon. He was first and foremost interested in people. Which is good for a novelist since you have to create characters. The other thing I enjoy about his books is the simplicity of his language. (Not to say it is simple.) Simenon had a straight forward style (even in translation) that can take my breath away. I think he thought humans were interesting enough you didn't have to dress it up with lots of flowery words.

I do wish there would have been a really good TV adaptation. Michael Gambon was alright but the series was short. Maigret has never had a Raymond Burr or Basil Rathbone to cement his image with the public (in North America anyway). Part of this is the French background, which is a hard-sell outside of France, but ironically, is what also make the series so good. Like Harry Potter, you can't just change it to America and expect the final result to be anything but a disaster. Thank goodness Harry stayed in England.Maigret needs to stay in Paris.

I think the other part of Maigret's lack of Hollywood appeal is the quiet sadness of the series. There aren't car chases and gun battles. It's cerebral and sordid and people smoke a lot of cigarettes. Any writer wanting to learn about characterization and observation of real people should read Simenon. He takes the whole thing beyond mere journalism to a kind of sad poetry.

George Meredith February 12, 1828

2012-02-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

George Meredith is a Victorian novelist who would not interest me much (being of the usual non-genre variety) except his first novel was a minor Fantasy classic. The Shaving of Shagpat (1856) is an Arabian Nights style adventure, and one of the first novels to borrow from that classic. (Others include Vathek (1815) by William Beckford and Khaled (1891) by F. Marion Crawford, and even The Thief of Baghdad by Achmed Abdullah (1921) which was filmed with Douglas Fairbanks.) Fantasy authors using the magic that is the 8th Century collection of Arabic folktales known as The 1001 Nights, form a distinct branch of fantasy that can be seen as an influence on writers as diverse as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson and most recently Howard Andrews Jones. Sword & Sorcery, that branch of Fantasy created by Robert E. Howard, seems to gain from its exposure to the Ancient East. (The very words "swords" and "Sorcery" could be used to define The Arabian Nights.) William Beckford's Vathek pre-dates Meredith but his quest is a darker one, creating an "Arabesque" rather than an adventure fantasy. It is Shagpat that first seeks to create fun rather than darkness with the tales of Sinbad and Ali Baba. Everett F. Bleiler calls Shagpat "a very curious work, at times written with great imagination of small incident and richness of fantasy." In this way, Meredith is one of the fathers of modern Heroic Fantasy.

Lin Carter's edition for The Ballantine Fantasy Series (1970)

Jane Yolen February 11, 1939

2012-02-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

Jane Yolen has that gift that Rosemary Sutcliff had. She can take a million versions of an old story and retell it in a way that feels like "the" version. I think she can do this because she sees right to the center of a tale and knows what it is really all about. If you don't believe me look at all the versions of Arthurian myth out there. They range from dull to downright silly. Neither of these describe Jane Yolen's Merlin and the Dragons, for instance. She retells the first tale of Merlin when he was known as Emris and how he deals with Vortigern. This was made into a wonderful cartoon in 1991, narrated by Kevin Kline (On a show called Long Ago and Far Away that presented fairy tales.) The cartoon has the same feel as Li Ming's illustrations. This book actually re-sparked my interest in "The Matter of Britain" after a long dissatisfaction with it all. Now that's saying something.

But Jane Yolen is more than just King Arthur and Merlin (which she has done a few books on). She also writes wonderfully about fairies and fairy tales in Skule Skerry and Briar Rose and the collection Favorite Fairy Tales From Around the World (to name only a few). Whether you're reading a Yolen book to a child (or just for yourself) or one of her more mature books, you have that same feeling, that you are genuinely in the realm of Faery. Introduce your kids to her works, and they will be lifelong lovers of Fantasy.What greater gift can you give?

Happy birthday, Jane.

Lon Chaney Jr February 10, 1906

2012-02-10T05:54:00.000-08:00

Lon Chaney Jr is an interesting figure in the world of horror films. He played one of the most pathetic men cursed with being a monster, Larry Talbot. But his career has its pathetic side as well. Forced into his father's image, Lon Chaney Sr. "The Man of a Thousand Faces", Jr actually changed his name from Creighton Chaney to resemble his father's. You can change the name but you can't change the face.

Most of us think of Lon Jr either as Talbot or Lenny in Of Mice and Men (1939), which is a much better suited role, since Lon Jr did a great job at likeable characters. He never should have been a horror actor. I also remember him, in his later career, as Chingachgook in Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, a Canadian-filmed TV show. (When my brother farted on me as a kid it was known as a "Chingach-poop", but that might be too much information...)

Lon Jr. ended his career like many horror actors, just trying to find roles and beating the type-casting. I do enjoy him in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein where he plays Larry Talbot (again). It's too bad he wasn't allowed to do more of the funny stuff in that film. I think he would have enjoyed it.

Frank Frazetta February 9, 1928

2012-02-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

When you talk about Heroic fantasy there are three names: J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard .. and Frank Frazetta. No other 20th Century artist had such an impact on the idea of what Fantasy is. Fantasy art before Frank was pretty lame unless you went back to the great children's illustrators of the turn of the century like Rackham, Nielsen or Dulac. Frank wasn't drawing for kids. You don't see Arthur Rackham on the side of a van. You don't find Maxfield Parrish on album covers. Frank was quite simply a genius. He could capture that moment, like a fast sports camera, that spoke of the majesty and excitement of a scene. He gave up a career in professional baseball to be an artist. Here's one fan-boy who is so happy he did.

Enuff yakking. You could be looking at Frazetta paintings.

Jules Verne February 8, 1828

2012-02-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

Jules Verne is one of those writers who comes and goes in popularity. In his day he was considered an exciting writer of fantastic romance (not the modern spin on that word). Not really a "Science Fiction" writer because that term didn't exist until the 1920s. Verne liked to couch all his tales in the possible and so much of what he imagined was only slightly amplified as opposed to H. G. Wells, who extrapolated his ideas rather than find them in the patent office. (I think you can figure out which I prefer.) I think the closest modern author to Verne was Michael Crichton, who wrote a similar "it will happen in a day or two, or maybe next week" type of SF. His novel Sphere is derived from Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues.

These days Verne is getting another wave of popularity with the "steampunk" craze. Readers are finding Verne's Victorian tech the appeal, along with the old-fashioned ideas about men, women and the world. It is a fun way to enjoy works that might otherwise be too dated to be read. I have to admit I've read most of Verne's works in my 40s (rather than the my boyish years as you are supposed to do. I preferred Pellucidar over Nemo.) and enjoyed much that was there. Verne was influential in his way, certainly in the adventure genre. When you read A. Merritt or Ian Cameron you can feel Verne lurking behind it all. I also have to admit I enjoy Verne during times of stress, when a horror novel or a complex SF novel are too much work to read. (I won't disrespect him by saying he's a "beach" read.) I like to unwind to Verne.

The Verne movies are a mixed bag. I've enjoyed some at a Disney level and others because of Ray Harryhausen's monsters but I don't think anyone has really gone beyond the obvious with him. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came close with their Captain Nemo but there is still a masterpiece of Vernian cinema waiting to be made. Ironically, it will probably be a steampunk film not based on his works. Like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Verne is more of an attitude to adventure than a closely followed script. Some of the very first films were Jules Verne films. George Melies did A Trip to the Moon in 1902. They 've been trying ever since.

Star Wars it ain't...

Charles Dickens February 7, 1812

2012-02-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to go on about Dickens' ghosts because I've done that on my website here: http://www.gwthomas.org/dickens.htm Instead I'd like to acknowledge something else about old Chuck. He is in that small group of people who changed culture, really changed it. He is the man who gave us "The White Christmas". That feeling we strive for every year, that rosy warm fire kind of Christmas, crunchy snow under-foot, the family love and roasted goose (or turkey). That's all because of Chuck. Even Dickens, back in his time, complained about Christmas getting too commercial. Wow, if he could see it now. And the thing all those advertisers are trying to sell you -- the Dickensian Christmas.

Shows based on A Christmas Carol usually suck balls but Doctor Who managed to actually do it right with their 2010 Christmas Special. Rare in deed!

Few people have a direct impact on culture. We mostly have to be happy with our small part. Some others I can think of include Ray Palmer (The man who kept the UFO myth alive until it could cement itself in the 20th century.), Anna Sewell, who created the SPCA and the movement towards non-cruelty to animals, J. R. R. Tolkien, who invented the Fantasy trilogy (Why do all those Fantasy stories have to be in three parts?). Well, you get the drift. Dickens was one of these too. I can't claim to finding his great novels of much interest but I do thank him for being an editor. His All the Year Round and Household Words helped to foster the English ghost story, one of my favorite types of stories. He also championed Edgar Allan Poe. Most of Dickens' ghost stories are pretty lame by today's standards, but it was Dickens who gave me one of my first frights as a kid. In A Christmas Carol (TV or movie, not the book, and not the final scenes with the skeletal Ghost of Christmas Future either) there is the scene where the Ghost of Christmas Past lifts his fur-trimmed Santa suit to reveal two hideous children clutching his legs, Ignorance and Want. As clumsy as this seems to me now, when I was young that scene freaked me out. Santa's got zombie kids hiding in his clothes! The didactic soap-box of it now is annoying but when I think of that image away from any message, it's still good and creepy.

All the Year Round

Happy 200th birthday, Chuck.

Patrick McNee February 6, 1922

2012-02-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

Patrick McNee is one of those all-purpose actors who end up doing a lot of genre stuff. He is of course most famous as John Steed on The Avengers (1961-1969) but I only saw those shows long after I knew him from other things like Battlestar Galactica, where he did the voice of the evil Cylon leader and then later an actual role. I saw him in Sherlock Holmes movies (as Watson of course) next to Roger Moore and later Christopher Lee. And I even saw him in A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sim, though I realized it years later.

A Christmas Carol

Patrick brings a sense of fun to his roles, no matter how diverse, from The Howling to A View To a Kill to This Is Spinal Tap to and even The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw. A genre career that includes The Twilight Zone, The Man From UNCLE, and Around the World in 80 Days. He is one of those actors I will watch no matter the show, being glad to just see him go about work.

Battlestar Galactica

H. R. Giger February 5, 1940

2012-02-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

H. R. Giger became world famous when he did the film design for Alien (1979). He changed horror art forever by giving it the essence of "art". I know that sounds dumb but horror art was Pulp covers, EC comics, bad movie posters. Hans Rudy, like a modern day Pickman, said no, horrific images can also be artistic images. You either love him or hate him I suspect. Which is how an artist should be. He's not making comfy pastoral pics to hang in the dining room. A Giger painting is an event.

This image reminds me of the Great Redoubt in Hodgson's The Nightland

Lilith

It's not surprising that Giger chose to do images based on H. P. Lovecraft and Frank Herbert, also very imaginative writers. His work with celebs like Debra Harry also cool.

George Romero February 4, 1940

2012-02-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's strange when someone begins a media flood then is largely forgotten. This is kind of what has happened with George Romero. George made zombie movies for decades, so the flood was not sudden, but you look at all the zombie books, comics, TV shows and movies right now and you'd think it was instantaneous! I think what has happened is all those bronze-agers like myself grew up with George's haunting images in their brains and then had to release it anew.(Take writers like Eric S. Brown, Brian Keene and Carlton Mellick. They are all about my age. Okay, Robert Kirkman of The Walking Dead fame might be a bit younger. Generation X, even Generation Y, zombies are just a part of our culture.)

But George Romero is really the guy who started it. I know I can hear some saying but he didn't invent zombies. That would be like saying Anne Rice invented vampires. No, zombies are a part of Haitan folklore. Writers such as Robert E. Howard, Lafcadio Hearn, August Derleth and Charles Birkin wrote zombie stories (check out Peter Haining's Zombie! Stories of the Walking Dead (1985). But it was George who took the idea of Richard Matheson's vampires in I am Legend, and came up with the global zombie plague. The apocalyptic zombie. The there-is-nowhere-to-run zombies. And he did it first in The Night of the Living Dead (1968) which remains one of my very favorite films on this theme. There were later color versions that did nothing for me. The b&w of the first film feels scarier to me. The claustrophobia, the sense of desperation. The Walking Dead has done a good job of capturing that too, and I think they have succeeded because they learned from George. You have to have people you care about in a good zombie story.

I haven't forgotten. Thanks George.

Sidney Lanier February 3, 1842

2012-02-03T15:39:00.000-08:00

1842-1881

Lanier's reputation is largely that of a poet but he also wrote two important collections of Arthuriana, The Boy's Book of King Arthur (1880) and The Boy's Book of the Mabinogion (1881). The first was illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. This I find ironic since it was Wyeth's mentor, Howard Pyle, who wrote the classic four books on King Arthur. (Not to mention a snapping good Robin Hood as well, and illustrated them too, of course.)

But back to Lanier. As you can see from his dates, he died a very young man. Perhaps that's expected of a poet? Well, the Romantic ones anyway. Yup, TB, just like Keats. A book on King Arthur isn't so unexpected. Tennyson wrote poetry at that time and wrote of the Matter of Britain. It was current, but the Mabinogion is more surprising. This is the cycle of Welsh stories that pre-date Arthur. Evangeline Walton wrote a great 4-volume set of novels about it in the 1930-70s. The second book was not illustrated by Wyeth, sadly.

There is something about Victorian Arthuriana that I love. I'm not sure if it's the chaste re-writing or the leisurely style. It certainly is more readable than Malory who suffers from being too simple or bold. It was the Victorians who made Arthur as literary as he can be. I think the only writer I can say I prefer over them all is Rosemary Sutcliff, who wrote so wonderfully in the last century.

Being so old these books are on-line here:

The Boy's Book of King Arthur (1880)

The Boy's Book of the Mabinogion (1881)

Wyeth's Illos here.

Frank Gruber February 2, 1904

2012-02-02T05:45:00.000-08:00

1904-1969

Frank Gruber was one of those high-production writers you read about from the old Pulp days. (300 stories in 40 pulp magazines, 60 novels and 200+ screenplays and television scripts.) He wrote Westerns, Mysteries and everything else that paid money. Later he went to Hollywood to write movies and his days of eating in Automats on ketchup soup ended. One of the films that Frank wrote has a personal connection for me. That film was Cariboo Trail (1950) a lackluster Western supposedly set in the Cariboo country of British Columbia. Starring Randolph Scott, it was actually filmed in Colorado. What strikes me most about this film is all the lost opportunities. The story of the Cariboo Gold Rush is an exciting tale with plenty of material for a series of movies. What Hollywood (not surprising) ignores is that it is very much a Canadian story, not just recycled Americana. I'm not blaming Frank. I'm not even blaming the producers who knew their audience. It just strikes me that Canadians need to get off their duffs and re-make this properly. (Those Native headresses in the poster below belong to the Plains Nations and not the Shuswap who live in the Cariboo. Sigh.)

Frank was a prolific "working" writer. I have to admire his productivity, his talent. We often glamorize the idea of the guy who pumped out millions of words for cheap magazines. I'm sure Frank would laugh at that. There was nothing glamorous about poverty, even in the name of Art. Slowly Frank's earlier work is coming into public domain:

The Silver Owl

George Pal February 1, 1908

2012-02-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

(1908-1980)

George Pal was what I wanted to be when I was a kid. A guy who got to make fantastic cinema. Because like most geekie kids back in the 1970s I wanted to be a film maker. Super-8, 8mm, dreams of 16mm and eventually the real deal. Animation, live-action, it didn't matter. I just wanted to make science fiction and fantasy films. It wasn't George Lucas, but George Pal, that inspired me first. George Pal gave us Destination Moon (1950), When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), The Naked Jungle (1954), The Conquest of Space (1955), The Time Machine (1960) as well as Tom Thumb (1958), Atlantis the Lost World (1961) The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), The Seven Faces of Dr Lao (1964), The Power (1968) and Doc Savage (1975).

At least three of these are personal favs, films that (even if not perfect) I still enjoy today as often as I can watch them: The Time Machine, Naked Jungle and Doc Savage. George didn't worry about chasing trends. Like Ray Harryhausen (another inspiration), he had his vein he worked and you knew when you watched one of this movies that you were in for something fantastic. The Time Machine with Rod Taylor is a very watchable film even today. The classic Wells is always fun. The best thing about this adaptation (compared to The War of the Worlds) is it is a period piece. I prefer my Martians in tripods and London. The Naked Jungle was based on "Leiningen Versus the Ants" a classic nail-biter. Chuck Heston, always fun. And Doc Savage was an admirable try though a failure. Anderson was a poor choice I think. He thought it was a comedy I suspect. Would really like to see a remake.

One of the things I like about George is that he was a producer. Producers get a lot of crap in Hollywood. He didn't direct his movies. Byron Haskins could do that. Or Michael Anderson. He didn't write them. George was the straw boss that saw that these films got made. He was a visionary who inspired me to create, even if my film career never happened. I learned a lot about storytelling (the kind I like) from George. I learned I like monsters and rockets and geez-whiz, it's the end of the world. (Others could do this -- Irwen Allen for instance-- but not like George). There is a little 8 year old inside me who thrills to this day when I see a trailer for a film like the new John Carter movie. That's George Pal stuff. Bring it on.