#5 - On and Off the Throne (Ten at Fifty)

If I were a queen
And he asked me to leave my throne
I'll do anything that he asked
Anything to make him my own

"He's So Fine" - The Chiffons

The Chiffons were in fact the queens of the nascent "girl group" sound. "One Fine Day" in particular is a perfect exemplar of what the producers were always after, and retains its winsomeness in many settings:

So it's a grand irony that their first hit should be known to a great extent as the song "unintentionally plagiarized" in the making of George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord." Years after his passing, though, they remain active:

Even though for sheer excitement, Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" is hard to beat, much of the output of The Chiffons sounds exactly like the lodestone that would show the way to songs like "Where Did Our Love Go?"

(Sort of like a seventies redux band, Axl Rose and company had their big one in  at #6 for the year 1988 with the all-too-predictable rocker "Sweet Child o'Mine" - and, well, maybe there wasn't much room after that for more of the same... could his "sweet child" have been the persona singing the Chiffons song, abandoning her crown to be Axl's arm candy? - no, forget I mentioned it.)

Funny you're the broken one but I'm the only one who needed saving

"Stay" - Rihanna

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of pushing a preferred search target ahead of all others that would match a given text string. I mentioned earlier that "sw", a relatively narrowed consonant pair, was just about certain to match a pop group; from a browser with no history, entering "stay" in the Google search field, without even a space to indicate the word wasn't longer, prefers to send you either to "stay lyrics" or "stay rihanna". And that makes me wonder whether the webisphere just naturally pushes it up due to the constant querying of obsessive youth, hefty payments by the publisher for Def Jam Recordings (Rihanna's label) to the appropriate techno-dweebs, or some combination thereof.

So it's kind of amazing that this hugely successful song actually carries some gravitas in its calculating pop ballad appeal, diverging a little from the fairly insufferable formula material that she shares with Katy Perry, Beyonce, Madonna, Donna Summer, oh, no, it's the XFactor:

Suffice it to say that the guy's well off his throne in this love song.

5: Sci Fi is Not for Sissies; Westercon 66: A Skeptic Comes Home

1968 Worldcon: author Jerry Pournelle is in white

The Seeds of Outlaw Fandom

“Hashi or wine or music in measure, God piss on the man who bars other men’s pleasure.”  Poet Ismi Shihab in Throne of the Crescent Moon

“I don’t trust anyone who claims to serve God by beating up dancers and drunks.”  The Doctor, also from Throne 

When we got to the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention, Happy Jack and I split from my parents and went to the registration tables, and then set off.  I can’t recall too many specifics about this con, even though it had a huge impact on me.  I remember a lot of people walking around in wacky and extreme costumes, but even the folks who weren’t in “costumes” were a sight to behold, as this, after all, was Berkeley in 1968, and the previous year’s Summer of Love seemed to still be in full swing; this year’s assassinations and race riots seemed somewhere “outside” the Hotel Claremont’s walls far, far away.  Then again, maybe that was mainly my own state of mind, gob-smacked as I was by the fans, panels, hucksters, artists and writers that surrounded us.  That afternoon, we ended up outside at the Society for Creative Anachronism feast/bash, a completely mind blowing event with large hirsute men wielding all manner of ancient weaponry, kings and queens and squires galore, many beating on each other, and voluptuous women in provocative dress, some “openly” suckling their babies (my parents attended this event and the brazen breast-feeding was a common, derisive discussion point of my mother’s for many months after).    

So a double barreled blast of the World and Western Regional Science Fiction Conventions warped my young world.  It planted the seeds than soon sprouted into the Rules of Outlaw Fandom, which, five years later, were a covert part of one of fandom’s most nefarious organizations, the Sacramento Area Super Science And Fantasy Reading And Study Society (SASSAFRASS).  More on that later.

One down!  I completed Throne yesterday, and my impressions have not changed: solid old school sword and sorcery, decent writing, good characterizations, Arabian Nights-ish with a “modern” sensibility.  It grabbed me early on and I actually am looking forward to reading more in the series. 

On the other hand, I don’t see how anyone could nominate this for any kind of science-fiction award, and not just regarding its complete lack of sci-fi, but also regarding its fairly pedestrian writing “style”.  But then, after reviewing the Hugo nominees of 1963 a column or so ago, I guess this has always been the case.  But aren't there any better, "literary" sci-fi works out there?  After being away from the genre, I thought maybe things had changed, but it initially seems like it used to be: if a book is TOO well written, or written by a “mainstream” author, it is no longer considered “sci-fi/fantasy”, OR maybe current sci-fi fans WANT to keep their genre just about where it’s been for the last 50 years?  Maybe someone can explain this to me?  Well, I must admit I haven't read that large a sampling of current sci-fi, so maybe I'm way off base.   

In any case, I embarked last night on my next Hugo-nominated book: John Scalzi’s Redshirts.  

  

To Be Continued 

4: Sci Fi is Not for Sissies; Westercon 66: A Skeptic Comes Home

1968 Hugos: Philip Jose Farmer, Betty Farmer, Harlan Ellison and ?

By the time 1963 had come to an end, I was crazy for science fiction (and music, in equal measure, but that’s another story that incredibly intersects with this one at a Westercon two decades later).  As the sixties rolled on, I was obsessed with reading the genre’s “classics” and contemporary efforts.  I began exploring the world of fanzines and found out more and more about conventions, which sounded like crazy gatherings of bizarre, twisted fans and the authors and artists they adored; I couldn’t really imagine what a convention would be like, but longed to attend, which was not an easy thing in Sixties Sacramento.  I also began to meet a few like-minded folk who shared these interests.

One of these like-minded folk was Happy Jack, who I met in a 1968 summer photography class.  He was an even more voracious sci-fi/fantasy reader than me, and we tried to figure out how we could experience one of these conventions.  Incredibly, the 26^th annual World Science Fiction Convention was happening the last weekend in August in Berkeley, only about 70 miles away, AND it was to be combined with that year’s Westercon!  This promised to be a sci-fi orgasm that could not be missed!  However, we faced a rather large problem: HJ and I were just a little over legal driving age, but neither one of us yet had a license, let alone a vehicle to get us there.  As the summer wore on, we couldn’t figure out how to get to the Con, so I finally swallowed my idiotic teenage pride and asked my parents if they would take us!  Incredibly, they agreed.  And so, on that first Saturday in September, the four of us set out for the Hotel Claremont in Berkeley.

A Back Burnered Book

I’m making good progress with Throne of the Crescent Moon, and it continues to keep my interest and fill me with enjoyment.  Unfortunately, I am missing the two books I was currently reading, having to put them on the “back burner” until I complete the five Hugo nominees (or July 4 comes around if I don’t complete them, whichever happens first).  I usually read two books at a time, one fiction, the other not, and the current fiction is absolutely amazing, and I already “miss” it.  I think my co-blogger gave it to me; it’s hard to remember as I got it over a year ago and it just sat on my bookshelf.  I wasn’t drawn to it at first, as it didn’t seem to have much of anything that would interest me: a 600 page Civil War “novel” with small print that was written over 90 years ago!  I mean, c’mon Spence, your tastes have always been a bit hoity-toity, but did you really think I would read this thing?

So once again I am exposed for the arrogant snob I actually am.  Because I gotta tell you: Evelyn Scott’s The Wave is MAGNIFICENT.  First of all, as far as I know there is no other “novel” quite like it.  It is composed of vignettes/short stories/profiles of a never ending and never repeating cast of characters that lived and/or died during the War.  It starts with a guy on a small row boat near Fort Sumter.  Then it progresses through the months and years, touching on individual people’s experiences, as the war rages on, minor and historical moments all through the prism of that particular character’s experience:  “Important” people, “little” people, black people, white people, slaves, soldiers, even some foreign (!) people.  The Gettysburg section is amazing.  I’m about two-thirds through it, and I normally never recommend a book unless I’ve finished it, but this one so far is SO well written, and SO imaginative, you might want to at least research and consider it.

And as for you, Spence, if it was in fact your recommendation, here's a bit of a challenge: I’d love to read your review of it on this blog!

To Be Continued

Part 3: The Rocky Road to Westercon 66: Sci Fi is Not for Sissies

Hugo Gernsback

“Angel-touched or not, at bottom the girl was just another wounded child of God with a monster problem.”  Throne of the Crescent Moon

I’m loving this book!  Though what it has to do with science fiction, I have no idea.  When did Hugo nominations start going to sword and sorcery?  Maybe always?  Speaking of 1963, I think I better take a look at the Hugo nominations that year (none of which I’ve read): the winner, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, a classic of the sci-fi genre, or so I’m told; A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke, surely a “real” sci-fi novel if Clarke’s the author, eh?; Little Fuzzy by H Beam Piper (what is it with all the author initials?), evidently sci-fi; Sylva by “Vercours”, some kind of French language (!) sci-fi time travel fantasy; and, ah ha, there is precedence, The Sword of Aldones by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  So I guess fantasy has always had a place on these lists.

Of course, at the time of their nomination, I wasn’t really that serious about tracking down the nominees, not having even really heard about the Hugos in the first place.  There was enough to keep me busy with Famous Monsters of Filmland (RIP Forrest J Ackerman, who I had the pleasure of meeting at his home/museum, but that’s another story), Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and the other “classics” I started discovering.  Little did I know that Amazing Stories’ creator Hugo Gernsback had some awards named after him, or that those same awards were bestowed at an annual science-fiction convention, or that in a few years I would actually attend a World Science Fiction Convention.

In any case, when I found the hard bound copy of Throne of the Crescent Moon at the used book store, I couldn’t believe the cover art (by Jason Chan); I felt like I was picking up a Young Adult novel (which is not in any way a “knock”), and I was a bit taken aback that THIS (?) was nominated for any kind of award.  The cover depicts an old fat bearded Moses-like man seeming to project some kind of light, and two fierce young male and female “heroes” wielding a two-pronged sword and fierce claws against some kind of vicious group of malevolent zombie-like creatures.  What was this, 1938, this was border-line embarrassing for a high-brow reader such as myself. 

But you know what?  Its combination of Robert Howard, The Grey Mouser, Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone, and, yes, of course, Game of Thrones, is working!  (I say “of course GoT" because nowadays that is the new fantasy gold standard that all current fantasy epics must somehow acknowledge, whether consciously or not, as Lord of the Rings was before it, and of course as LotR still is, too)  I’m only about a hundred pages in, but so far it’s really keeping my attention: it’s actually exciting and charming!  Good lord, what’s happening to me?       

To Be Continued 

The Rocky Road to Westercon 66: Sci Fi is Not for Sissies, Part 2

“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”  Isaac Asimov

It strikes me as serendipity that 1963, the same year my blog partner’s current music series references, is also the year I discovered science fiction/fantasy magazines.  Close to my house was the Stop ‘n’ Shop market, attached to The Chatterbox Café (where my mother and her friends often held court), next door to a “five and dime” that had a baseball card dispensing machine out front (a machine that also introduced me to Mars Attacks! cards).  The store had a magazine selection, and for some reason I took notice of an issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.  I was a comic book fan already (just a year or so before this I discovered Marvel when this same market, which didn’t carry comics, for some reason had a shopping cart FULL of recent issues, like Fantastic Four #5, various Spidermans, Avengers, etc.) and DC’s sci-fi anthology comic Strange Adventures was one of my favorites, so I knew I liked the genre, but I hadn’t up to that point read any short stories or novels.

At any rate, whatever issue I bought, I loved.  This immediately kick-started a search for other magazines and books.  I discovered Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, Amazing Stories, HP Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury.  (Little did I know that I would spend much joyful time talking to Bradbury at a science-fiction con or two.)   I already was a reader and fan of some “horror”; my father had begun reading me Edgar Allan Poe when I was six or seven; I still vividly remember his renditions of “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Cask of Amontillado”.  Whether or not this was appropriate material for my age is irrelevant; I loved it!  So several years later, when I heard about conventions, it was only natural that I would want to attend. 

Dr. Akrabu’s “command” that I read all 2013 Hugo nominees seems like an impossible task, but yesterday I bought four of them: Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 and Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon for very reasonable rates at a local used book store, and John Scalzi’s Redshirts at Barnes and Noble, where I am a “member”, and so got a little discount.  I also found Mira Grant’s zombie series, but I have to confess something: realizing that Blackout (which also happens to be the name of another recent sci-fi novel by Connie Willis that I have actually read and enjoyed) is the third in a series, I opted instead to buy the first one, Feed, which was also nominated for a Hugo in 2011.  I am hoping that the Doctor will understand my reasoning, but in any case, this is what I will be reading.  So the only one I have yet to secure is Lois Bujold’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. 

I have no idea how I am going to do this.  I think I will have to actually read many if not all of them simultaneously.  Is it even possible to read five novels at the same time and retain anything about them?  I started Throne of the Crescent Moon last night.  A blurb on the cover said fans of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would enjoy this book.  Well, back in 1963 I became a huge Gray Mouser fan.  But would Fuller V.2013 still like this kind of thing?  Can the Fuller who adores Wallace’s Infinite Jest find satisfaction in this year’s Hugo nominee crop?

To Be Continued   

The Rocky Road to Westercon 66: Sci Fi is Not for Sissies, Part 1

by William Fuller

Because of some troubling emotional problems related to science fiction, I started seeing Dr. Ackrabu about a year ago.  He is one of only a handful of counselors who specialize in sci-fi related disorders.  I didn’t expect to have that many sessions with him, but due to the nature of my issues, I ended up seeing him several times a week through last January; it has now tapered off to once a week.  His methods, admittedly, tend to the arcane, but it feels like progress is being made.  At first I bristled at his “Absinthe Protocol” and “Mote in God’s Eye Gambit”, but I must admit my “troubles” are less than they were a year ago.

At my session last week, besides my more serious issues, I told him I was afraid of the upcoming Western Regional Science Fiction Convention, that I hadn’t been to a convention in 30 years, knew virtually nothing about the current literary “scene”, and that I couldn’t face what I felt would be a humiliating and debilitating experience.  He listened intently, stroking his strong, attractive chin and rubbing his protrusive, shaved head.  After what must have seemed like a huge whine-fest, he sat silently for a few moments.  And then he spoke.

“There is only one way to deal with this.  It will not be easy, but it is imperative that you follow my instructions.  If you are successful, in addition to this specific issue, it may have a far reaching positive impact on your other problems.  Of course you WILL attend the convention.  And you MUST read all five 2013 Hugo nominees before July 4.  I know you haven’t read any so far because you say you no longer read science fiction.  But this is what must be done.  Do you understand?”

I was incredulous.  “Five books in one month?  I can barely read one or two!  How am I going to do that?  I don’t have any idea what those books even are!  I’ve probably never heard of the authors!  I barely even like science fiction anymore!  How will I find the time…”

He raised a hand and shushed me. “Do your research.  Get the books.  Do the reading.”

He rose from his plush chair.  My appointment, evidently, was over early.

“Man up, Mr. Fuller.  You have a little over a month.  Sci Fi is not for sissies.”   

To Be Continued  

#6: From the Top to the Bottom To the Top

But when she left
Gone was the glow of 
Blue velvet

- "Blue Velvet", Bobby Vinton

Stanley Robert Vinton, Jr. scored big with his cover of this sentimental tune, hitting #1 on the Top 100 in '63 well after its double debut by The Clovers and Tony Bennett:

This son of a bandleader was ready to play any instrument in his band as well as sing, and it seems like the workings of fate that he shared a birthplace, deep in the rust belt, with Perry Como, and appeared on Guy Lombardo's television show on his way to the top. He's also one of that handful of top artists dramatically shadowed by the British Invasion; his last #1 hit, "There! I've Said It Again" was supplanted by "I Want To Hold Your Hand." But he was destined for sustained success in any case, cashing in on songs with "Lonely" in the title, and even getting some more mileage out of the syrupy "Sealed With a Kiss" well after Brian Hyland's hit version.

One of the more remarkable projects of the "Polish Prince" ended up being the only American hit with Polish lyrics, "My Melody of Love."

(A quarter century later at this slot we find the ubiquitous Whitney Houston doing a dance tune, "So Emotional." One obsession of the time was electronic drums, a fairly new item, and the percussion sound here is similar in particular to the Bee-Gee-tinged, been-there-done-that Fine Young Cannibals hit "She Drives Me Crazy.")

Nigga, I just think it's funny how it goes
Now I'm on the road, half a million for a show

- "Started From the Bottom", Drake

Part of the disproportionate representation of Canada in the flow of popular music, since Joni Mitchell and Neil Young (and before), is Aubrey Drake Graham, who chose to go by his middle name on the way to the top. He is a little unusual among those  who achieved fame in hip hop in breaking into acting on the way there, and having had a Bar Mitzvah on the way there.

And his song is a little unusual in that genre as well, because it suggests a different (and to me welcome) direction for rap motifs. I think it's arguably not rap, or rap-related; all of the vocals have a chartable melody rather than the knowing monotone that was the enforced motif of performers in this realm. He goes yet further into what could be called, relatively to the softening center, an experimental direction here:

Another interesting facet of this song is that it's the only one of its top ten, as far as just song length, that would have passed muster fifty years before, since it is the only one under three minutes. But it's also the first we've encountered on our march to #1 that would probably have been categorically rejected for use of the word "nigga" as well as prohibited vulgarity.