JMS Schedule-Gallifrey? Fiona?
Scott Rae
Sunday but has he updated that with any other dates/time that he'll be
at Gallifrey?
And does anyone know when Fiona is scheduled to be there?
Thanks,
Scott
Jms at B5
>
I sent Fiona an email asking, and this is the reply:
"Space Fantasy Television: A How-To -Saturday 2/19, 12:00pm
** Discussion about the planning and implementation of SF television, and the
best strategies and success stories
Science Fiction Across the Pond -Sunday 2/20, 2:00pm
** Approaching the craft of science fiction from both sides of the Atlantic
Ocean, with writers from both the US and UK
Doing a reading of one of my short stories on Sunday around noon-ish.
I hope to autograph after my reading, and have scripts available for sale."
jms
(jms...@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
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> >And does anyone know when Fiona is scheduled to be there?
> >
>
> I sent Fiona an email asking, and this is the reply:
>
> "Space Fantasy Television: A How-To -Saturday 2/19, 12:00pm
> ** Discussion about the planning and implementation of SF television, and
the
> best strategies and success stories
>
> Science Fiction Across the Pond -Sunday 2/20, 2:00pm
> ** Approaching the craft of science fiction from both sides of the
Atlantic
> Ocean, with writers from both the US and UK
>
> Doing a reading of one of my short stories on Sunday around noon-ish.
>
> I hope to autograph after my reading, and have scripts available for
sale."
Those sound like great panel topics! I'd love to watch them. (Web cam!)
I can't speak for the Toronto Ad Astra Science-Fiction Convention as a
whole, but I'd certainly put in my vote for you as a guest of honour. (It's
primarily a written F&SF convention rather than media, but I think you
certainly qualify in that regard!) I suspect that Toronto Trek would *love*
to invite you as well -- and probably already have. (Yes, I know, it's got
the T-word in its name, but they are good people, and like to get the
writers as well the actors to the convention.)
Of course, the secret is to get the publishers and agents to the convention,
and then the writers will come. That's for written SF. Is there an
equivalent for media SF, or is it a lost cause to get the media people with
any power to a con? (Mutter, 5 minutes with Ted Turner behind the hotel,
mutter, Narn bat-squad, mutter...)
Ron of that ilk.
www.ad-astra.org
Jms at B5
>to invite you as well -- and probably already have. (Yes, I know, it's got
>the T-word in its name, but they are good people, and like to get the
>writers as well the actors to the convention.)
Yes, I've been contacted multiple times by them, and you're right, they're
good, and remarkably patient/persistent people. But I kinda set this rule not
to do cons with the word Trek in the title, because I tend to get grief from a
portion of the Trek fans who think I'm "poaching" on their terrain. Since this
can, at times, become quite...intense...on their part, I'd rather not get into
the situation to begin with.
Mac Breck
Are you going to be at an East Coast convention any time in the foreseeable
future? I'd love to get your autograph on the "To Dream in the City of
Sorrows" introduction.
Mac
"Jms at B5" <jms...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000215001629...@ng-bd1.aol.com...
ImRastro
>Yes, I've been contacted multiple times by them, and you're right, they're
>good, and remarkably patient/persistent people. But I kinda set this rule
>not
>to do cons with the word Trek in the title, because I tend to get grief from
>a
>portion of the Trek fans who think I'm "poaching" on their terrain.
I have never understood that. I admit, I ahven't been to many SF cons, but
I've been to several comic book cons, and, be and large, we all get along
there. Can someone explain this whole Trek v. The World thing? Maybe this is
the wrong forum to ask in.
John W. Kennedy
> I have never understood that. I admit, I ahven't been to many SF cons, but
> I've been to several comic book cons, and, be and large, we all get along
> there. Can someone explain this whole Trek v. The World thing? Maybe this is
> the wrong forum to ask in.
Have you ever read C. S. Lewis's "Perelandra"? (Sometimes published as
"Voyage to Venus", it is the middle volume of the untitled trilogy that
began with "Out of the Silent Planet" and ended with "That Hideous
Strength".)
Do you remember the episode of the "redheart" berries?
That episode, in a nutshell, is the key to understanding the phenomenon
called the "fan" the quasi-intelligent life form that gets emotionally
attached to some work of art (or set of works, or even genre), starts to
find in it more than the creator ever intended, and constantly bedevils
him to produce more, just like the original (as they remember and
interpret the original), only, of course, it has to be just as fresh and
new as the original was. (A current patent example is the "fans" who
were ten years old when the original "Star Wars" came out, and cannot
understand why "The Phantom Menace" doesn't live up to their
expectations.)
As time passes, the "fan" phenomenon grows malignant in other ways.
Because, to them, work X is the be-all and end-all of artistic
achievement, they can no longer know or understand its origins. Indeed,
a quasi-theological mindset appears, in which the original work is
perceived as self-existent. Common tropes are seen as original
insights, and witticisms by fictional characters become the hubs of
entire philosophies of life. Simplifications of setting, character, and
motivation are taken for ideals, and imagined technologies and religions
are treated as though they were, not only real, but entirely worked
out. (Science Fiction and Fantasy are, for obvious reasons, more easily
abused in this way than other genres, and a television series, at one
extreme, more easily than a book, at the other.)
At the same time, phantasies of involvement in the mythos seduce the
mind of the obsessed "fan", leading always to carefully nursed mental
images, and sometimes to literary effusions: the "Ensign
Mary-Sue-Ellen" phenomenon, often with a fairly erotic content,
sometimes blatant, and sometimes ineptly masked, as in so-called "slash"
fiction.
Where money is the driving force, as it normally is in Hollywood,
creators (or the creators' masters) play to all these tendencies. What
started out as art all too quickly becomes a regular grind of producing
yet one more dose of laudanum for the addicted masses.
Latter-day "Star Trek" is the chief present-day manifestation of the
"fan" effect. "Pokémon" is a leading new candidate, although to date
both the main videogame [the Gameboy one] and the main dramatic version
[the TV anime] have kept up a surprisingly high standard. Marvel Comics
represent a more thoroughly degenerated case.
Naturally, these "fans" of "Star Trek", having built "Trek" into
something that represents for them not only a substitute for religion,
but often a substitute for interpersonal relationships and for life
itself, react to "Babylon 5" as to a heresy. Merely by creating another
attempt at TV science fiction at a not obviously juvenile level, JMS has
implicitly (in their minds) attacked "Trek". (It's rather like the
Caliph who ordered the Library of Alexandria burnt, with the
justification that all the books either agreed with al-Quran, and were
thus redundant, or disagreed with al-Quran, and were thus blasphemous.)
"Babylon 5", alas, has "fans" of its own. JMS seems surprised by it.
Well, it is sometimes difficult to comprehend just how stupid people can
be who are stupider than ones self. But this is the true explanation
for much of the dissatisfaction expressed:
At everything after Michael O'Hare left,
at everything starting with "Into the Fire",
at the fifth season,
at the "Crusade" fragment.
"You changed it!" "It's not the same any more!" "It's spoiled now!"
-- no different, really, than one expects from a peevish child, or
(alternatively) from a disappointed fetishist. And that should not
surprise anyone, because "fans" are, in the long run, just those things.
I remarked once before that JMS went searching for an audience, and
found only "fans". That was an overstatement, of course. He found an
audience, too. But television, when run by capitalism, especially when
run by the insanely Bourse-driven capitalism of today, doesn't want
audiences; it wants nice, predictable (in the mass), addictive "fans".
Because (to return at the end to C. S. Lewis), "A man with an obsession
is a man with very little 'sales resistance.'"
--
-John W. Kennedy
-rri...@ibm.net
Compact is becoming contract
Man only earns and pays. -- Charles Williams
Susan Phillips
>Doing a reading of one of my short stories on Sunday around noon-ish.
>
>I hope to autograph after my reading, and have scripts available for sale."
Do you know which scripts you'll have?
Sue
"How can you be anal-retentive if you don't have an anus?"
Bartleby, "Dogma"
Jms at B5
>>
>>I hope to autograph after my reading, and have scripts available for sale."
>
>Do you know which scripts you'll have?
Just to clarify...I was forwarding Fiona's email, so the above was from her. I
imagine she'll have at least two of her Crusade scripts available, one of which
is the unproduced Bester script.
Michael J. Hennebry
Jms at B5 <jms...@aol.com> wrote:
>>I suspect that Toronto Trek would *love*
>>to invite you as well -- and probably already have. (Yes, I know, it's got
>>the T-word in its name, but they are good people, and like to get the
>>writers as well the actors to the convention.)
>
>good, and remarkably patient/persistent people. But I kinda set this rule not
>to do cons with the word Trek in the title, because I tend to get grief from a
>can, at times, become quite...intense...on their part, I'd rather not get into
>the situation to begin with.
My recollection is that the last time this discussion came up it also
involved Toronto Trek.
Have they ever offered to change the name for a year?
Maybe they could have a contest to decide what the name should be.
First entry: Toronto Quest.
If they don't change the name, how would you respond to an invitation
to Lady Morella and her bodyguard?
Alfred Bester wouldn't need a bodyguard.
BTW I was rereading the article you posted to a Star Trek group,
one that begins "Before you hit the *kill* button".
If I were type-casting Majel Barrett, it wouldn't be as Lwaxana Troi.
More likely as Nurse Chapel. I suppose that it's partly because
it was a long time before I knew that LT and NC were played by the
same person.
If one is going to be type-cast, being type-cast as LT is probably
better than most. There are probably more roles for irritating
brunettes who spend their vacations making their daughters jobs
difficult, than there are for Vulcans or for Russian ensigns.
--
Mike henn...@plains.NoDak.edu
"I'm just an old country doctor." -- Bones
Jms at B5
>eventually be offered through any other mechanism, such as the fan club?
>
She's selling her own scripts, which per WGA are the property of the writer. I
think that there's a website being set up for a variety of writers to sell
their scripts, called Scripts from the Lot, and I believe that hers will also
be available that way. (I don't have the URL at hand at this point.)