Cover by Jack Gaughan

Vintage Magazine - Beyond Fantasy Fiction (July1953)

Art by Richard Powers

Galaxy Publishing Corporation

https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v023n03_1962-09_Hybr11

Theodore Sturgeon issue

The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff

Not my first time trying to share this story I love, but here it is for realsies.

2023 Eligibility for Awards

Happy New Year everyone! Glad to be with you again in 2024. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that the new year brings you health, wealth and prosperity! I should have done this ages ago, but I was ill over the holiday season, so this is my very late post about my eligibility for speculative fiction awards this year. I had a banner year in 2023 re my work for 2022, and I was so…

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you do not have to like fanfiction. if you think fanfiction is cringy & annoying you can just Say That. but any attempt to argue that fanfiction is inherently inferior to other types of writing falls apart under scrutiny.

'most fanfiction is badly written' sturgeon's law is an adage that states '90% of everything is crap'. this was first coined in defence of science fiction, a genre often maligned as inherently inferior to 'real literature' (sound familiar??)

'oh but most fanfiction is worse than published fiction' yes; this is because pro published books go through a heavy selection and editorial process before the public see them. when it comes to quality of writing you are not comparing like to like. the appropriate 1:1 comparison would be fanfiction & amateur original fiction.

i have hung out in multiple online writing spaces & in 'anyone welcome' RL writing groups and can say with reasonable confidence that most original fiction getting produced is just plain mediocre. there's so so much bad original fiction being produced every day. u just never see it.

'you have to wade through so much garbage to find anything worth reading' you ever hear like. a fiction magazine editor describe what their slush pile experience is like??

'ok but fanfiction is bad because it lacks originality, it's better to come up with your own story & ideas' nobody actually thinks this!! people trot this out about fanfiction but like pro published literature is full of retellings of public domain stories and no-one ever argues that they're inherently worse or less creative than works with original plots.

the dividing line between fanfiction & 'original' fiction generally isn't actually originality, it's whether or not it's transformative of a text that's currently under copyright. & i would hope it's self-evident that the copyright status of the text a work is transforming shouldn't have any bearing on its literary merit. why on earth would it??

'but most fanfiction is trope-y and formulaic' yes this is true and yes i do think there's an argument to be made that a work of fiction that's interchangeable with thousands of other works of fiction is lacking in 'literary merit'.

however this is also true of a lot of pro published literature. whole swathes of genres like eg crime & romance exist to give readers the same experience over and over again. are these books bad? maybe! does their existence mean the entire genre they belong to should be written off? obviously no.

'but fanfiction is all about shipping' yeah a lot of fanfiction belongs to the romance & erotica genres. you do not have to like this. but disparagement of romance as a genre has its roots in the fact that it's mainly written & enjoyed by women. its just sexism lads. :(

'fanfiction encourages bad habits in writers' there's some merit to this argument IMO (that's a different rant) but see above re:90% of everything is crap; the presence of bad writing in a genre doesn't mean that the whole genre should be written off.

'what so you think fanfiction is as good as *insert classic novel here*' nobody is saying this; if you see someone arguing that fanfiction is real writing and jump to 'this person thinks MCU coffee shop AUs are culturally significant works of literature', to be blunt, that is a you problem.

'fanfiction just isn't real literature' ok so fiction divides into 'real literature' and 'not real literature'. got it.

[ID: screencap of a tumblr post by user theislandofmisfittoys:

Okay… nice dichotomy, IDIOT ‼ what lies  outside it???]

(OP)

The man who killed five people at a Louisville, Kentucky, bank in April was motivated by his outrage over the nation’s gun laws, which he considered lax and hoped a bloody rampage of white victims would spur politicians into action, according to a police report released Tuesday that contained excerpts from the killer’s journal.

Connor Sturgeon, 25, gunned down co-workers inside a conference room at Old National Bank on East Main Street on April 10 after he admitted in his journal that he was suffering from mental health issues, was dissatisfied with his job and the direction his life was taking.

Eight others were injured during the shooting, including a responding officer who was struck in the head and critically wounded. Sturgeon fired more than 40 rounds in about eight minutes, according to the report.

"I have decided to make an impact. These people did not deserve to die, but because I was depressed and able to buy [guns], they are gone," Sturgeon wrote in his journal on April 4, according to the report released by the Louisville Police Department.

"Perhaps this is the impact for change – upper class white people dying. I certainly would not have been able to do this were it more difficult to get a gun."

The April 4 journal entry was the same day he purchased an AR-15 rifle for $500 used in the deadly shooting six days later, according to a receipt in the police report. He also bought 120 rounds and four rifle magazines in a process that took about 45 minutes, he said.

Sturgeon noted his surprise at how straightforward it was for him to purchase the weapon, given his mental health struggles.

"OH MY GO THIS IS SO EASY," he wrote in bold. "I knew it would be doable but this is ridiculous."

He went on to ridicule lawmakers, writing how he wanted his actions to galvanize them.

"I know our politicians are solely focused on lining their own pockets, but maybe this will knock some sense into them. If not, good luck."

Sturgeon wrote that "Democrats get rich [by] doing nothing in the name of civility" while they allow Republicans to "do whatever they want to whoever they want."

"A level of corruption that stands directly between us and progress," he wrote.

The report also reveals that investigators found a plan stored in a Notes app in which he wrote, "They won’t listen to words or protests, so let’s see if they hear this."

Sturgeon appeared to reserve his harshest criticism for the National Rifle Association.

"But let us not forget the most important player here," he wrote on April 9. "The one who made all this possible. [Let's] give it up for the NRA!!"

"I couldn’t have done this without all of your lobbying dollars! You really brought this whole thing together. This is the world you are building. One without any regard for the value of human life."

In Kentucky, Sturgeon faced no barriers to entry as a gun owner since he had no prior criminal record, which means he would have passed the federally required background check, according to the Washington Post.

The state does not have a "red flag" law, a measure to prevent people who are reported to be potentially dangerous from buying and possessing guns.

Nevertheless, such a law may not have prevented Sturgeon from buying the weapon because his mental health struggles had not been reported to authorities.

Sturgeon’s family has said they intend to sue the maker of the rifle used in the attack.

The report also contained a picture of Sturgeon taking a selfie on April 5 that showed him making a "joker face," which authorities say is a trend popular on social media.

Authorities say they have closed the investigation into Sturgeon’s actions.

He was shot dead by police later that day, and investigators determined that the actions of the officer who shot Sturgeon were not criminal.

The five employees killed were Joshua Barrick, 40, a senior vice president; Deana Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer; Thomas Elliott, 63, also a senior vice president; Juliana Farmer, 45, a loan analyst; and Jim Tutt Jr., 64, a commercial real estate market executive. Elliott was a close personal friend of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Of the five victims, only Farmer was black.

From MollyRobertsmagick.com

I am not affiliated other than an email subscriber and I lover their blog and works.

The golden, misty, mysterious magick of autumn stirs colors in the soul of the Art Witch

Let's explore a bushel of ways to bring your creative magick out to play this season with 13 Autumn Inspired Grimoire Prompts!

1) Record an autumn color collection. Create a page cataloguing the autumnal colors you notice in your environment to heighten your magickal vision and drink in the seasonal beauty

2) Dab cobs of corn with paint or ink. Roll the corn cob onto the page for harvest inspired textured backgrounds or papers for later use.

3) Create a page dedicated to all of the beautiful poetic names for the autumn moons: Harvest Moon, Singing Moon, Wine Moon, Sturgeon Moon. Make up a name for a full moon inspired by your own environment.

4) Write a list of all the teachers you are grateful for: spiritual, craft, vocation, ancestral, animal, digital and academic teachers.

5) Trees are the star of autumn. Dedicate a page to honoring Dryads! Leave your book in a tree overnight for tree blessings and green magick inspiration.

6) Experiment painting with fruit juices to invoke bountiful harvest energy. Try pomegranate, cranberry, berries and wine

7) Use acrylic paint, paint pens or metallic paint to decorate dry leaves with patterns, words of power and symbols for all the blessings of the season.

8) Make a cornucopia shaped pocket. The cornucopia is a powerful symbol nourishment and spiritual abundance. Tuck drawings, magazine cuttings, words or symbols inside the cornucopia pocket to invite abundance and gratitude.

9) Write an affirmation to help you navigate change gracefully.

10) Use boxing tape to create specimen tags of autumn herbs, flowers and leaves. Sprinkle or place your dry botanical specimen on the sticky side of the clear tape. Seal with a second piece of tape and burnish out the air bubbles until the tape is flat. (These make fabulous mini spell book marks!)

11) Compose a letter to Themis, the goddess of Balance, Justice and Equality. (Her feast day is September 28th.) Ask her to imbue you with Reason, Fairness, Truth and Justice

12) Mushrooms galore! Celebrate mushroom magick in your book: Draw mushrooms from life, write a recipe using mushrooms, learn the names of mushrooms in your area or research mushroom myths and lore.

13) Create a dark mirror in your book. Paint one side of a piece of clear plastic packaging or page protector with black paint. Adhere the plastic to your grimoire page *shiny side out*, painted side in. (This gives you a reflective surface.) Draw or collage a frame for your dark mirror and scry away!

October 1944. Born on Monday: The debut of one of the most fearsome of DC's Golden Age villains, the monstrous Solomon Grundy, in a story written by noted science fiction author Alfred Bester. Although he looked like Universal's Frankenstein Monster (then appearing with Dracula and the Wolf Man in a popular series of monster movies), Grundy was actually a kind of swamp monster, built around the skeleton of murdered miser Cyrus Gold. As Green Lantern explains:

Grundy's origin is very similar to that of the Hillman Comics muck-monster The Heap, who had first appeared in the Sky Wolf story in AIR FIGHTERS COMICS #3 (December 1942), although the Heap had originally been a WW1 German flying ace, Baron Emmelmann. (The Heap later inspired Swamp Thing and Man-Thing.) However, all of these characters ultimately had their roots in a Theodore Sturgeon short story called "It," first published in the pulp magazine UNKNOWN in 1940.

Because Solomon Grundy is immune to Alan's power ring (which didn't work on wood), Alan eventually deals with him by shoving the monster in front of an oncoming freight train. However, as any horror movie fan could tell you, it's not so easy to kill something that's dead to begin with. Grundy would return three more times in the Golden Age, next appearing in the Green Lantern story in COMIC CAVALCADE #13 (Winter 1945).

THE STARS LIKE DUST [aka Tyrann; aka Rebellious Stars] by Isaac Asimov (Garden City: Doubleday, 1951). Cover by Whitney Bender.

A science fiction mystery. The book is part of Asimov's Galactic Empire series and takes place before the actual founding of the Galactic Empire, before even Trantor becomes important.

The story was first serialized in the January, February, and March issues of Galaxy Magazine.

Galaxy Magazine January, 1951. H.L. Gold editor. Cover by John Bunch.

Tyrann [Part 1 of 3] by Isaac Asimov. Illustrated by Bunch.

“Dark Interlude” by Mack Reynolds & Fredric Brown. Illustrated by Maus.

“Rule of Three” by Theodore Sturgeon. Illustrated by Karl Rogers.

“Made to Measure by William Campbell Gault. Illustrated by Lawrence Woromay.

“Susceptibility · John D. MacDonald. Illustrated by Vincent.

“The Reluctant Heroes” by Frank M. Robinson. Illustrated by Sibley.

read [pb edition]

Cover by Walter Popp  --  1953

https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v011n02_1956-08_PDF

cover by Dick Shelton for Fear is a Business by Theodore Sturgeon

i had been looking for this Sturgeon short story for years , finally found it.one of the best sf stories about ufos ever. Sturgeon was the master. no wonder so many lesser writers hated him. 

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1971) – Episode 203 – Decades Of Horror 1970s

“She who is buried here shall henceforth have no name, shall cease to exist in the minds of man as she has ceased to exist in life.” Well, she has a name and she is remembered. Not much of a curse, ay? Join your faithful Grue Crew – Doc Rotten, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, Jeff Mohr – as they take in the last, but not least, of the four Hammer mummy films, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971), sadly sans Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee.

Decades of Horror 1970s Episode 203 – Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

Decades of Horror 1970s is partnering with the WICKED HORROR TV CHANNEL (https://wickedhorrortv.com/) which now includes video episodes of the podcast and is available on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, and its online website across all OTT platforms, as well as mobile, tablet, and desktop.

An archaeological expedition brings back to London the coffin of an Egyptian queen known for her magical powers. Her spirit returns in the form of a young woman and strange things start to happen.

  Director: Seth Holt, Michael Carreras (uncredited)

Writing Credits: Christopher Wicking (screenplay); Bram Stoker (from the novel by; The Jewel of Seven Stars, 1903)

Selected Cast:

Andrew Keir as Fuchs

Valerie Leon as Margaret / Tera

James Villiers as Corbeck

Hugh Burden as Dandridge

George Coulouris as Berigan

Mark Edwards as Tod Browning

Rosalie Crutchley as Helen Dickerson

Aubrey Morris as Doctor Putnum

David Markham as Doctor Burgess

Joan Young as Mrs. Caporal

James Cossins as Older Male Nurse

David Jackson as Young Male Nurse

Jonathan Burn as Saturnine Young Man

Graham James as Youth In Museum

Tamara Ustinov as Veronica

Penelope Holt as Nurse

Sunbronze Danny Boy as Tod’s Cat

Once again, it is time to revisit a Hammer Horror entry from their 1970s features. This time, the Grue-Crew follow dismembered hands and devious archeologists as they confront the resurrection of the evil Egyptian Queen with no name. By the way, her name is Tera. Shhhh… don’t tell. Andrew Kier does an admirable job stepping in for Peter Cushing (after only a day’s shooting) to lead the heroic defense alongside the beautiful Valerie Leon against the Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971).

At the time of this writing, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is available to stream from Wicked Horror TV and various PPV sources. The film is available on physical media as a Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1970s is part of the Decades of Horror two-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1980s. In two weeks, the next episode, chosen by Jeff, will be Killdozer (1974), based on the 1944 Theodore Sturgeon novella and starring Clint Walker, Carl Betz, Robert Urich, and Neville Brand. You asked for it! Really. You did. 

We want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: comment on the site or email the Decades of Horror 1970s podcast hosts at [email protected]. 

Check out this episode!

Encounters at the End of the World - Antarctica documentary by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog's narration was so delightfully odd in the Fireballs documentary, particularly when that doc featured Antarctica, that when I found out he'd made an entire other documentary about the people who live and work on the lonely continent in 2007, I had to find it. And it is fascinating and just as weird as I'd hoped.

Highlights:

Werner Herzog starts us off with some philosophical musings on deep questions, like why don’t chimpanzees ride goats. This is because he is interested in the human condition.

According to the commentary track, he asked all the scientists he interviewed this question. No one had answers. This did not make it into the film.

The cafeteria has a soft-serve ice cream* machine. Its name is Frosty Boy.

Frosty Boy is very, very popular. Everyone loves Frosty Boy.

*Frosty Boy serves something LIKE ice cream. It’s not actually ice cream. But they don’t tell us what it is.

Before going out in the field the team had to take survival lessons. One of these lessons is how to do things in whiteout conditions. Whiteout conditions are simulated by wearing buckets over your head.

The buckets all have faces drawn on them.

DVD commentary track clarifies the bucket faces weren’t done for filming, they’re just like that.

Weddell seal researchers take milk samples from nursing seals. They have a very scientific method of getting the seal to cooperate that was captured on (public) film for the first time in this documentary.

The method is: they walk up to the seal and stick a bag over its head.

I cannot emphasize enough how hilarious it is to see a person walk up to a seal longer than he is, with what looks like a big tarpaulin tote bag slung over his back, and then just WHOMP it quickly over the seal’s head.

Afterwards they clarify that the seals are fine and gruntled afterwards, making them ideal animals to work with.

Antarctica has an active volcano! Like, pool-of-lava-bubbling active!

Philosophical Penguin Musings

Questions of penguin philosophy are put to an introverted scientist who looks like he may be regretting agreeing to participate

“Dr. Ainley, is there such thing as insanity among penguins?”

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has a frozen sturgeon stuck in what appears to be a shrine carved out of the icy wall of a tunnel.

“The strangest of all, the real strangest footage I saw in my entire life” is the real frozen sturgeon "mysteriously hidden away" beneath the ice of the “mathematically precise true South Pole.”

Possibly this was done by a maintenance worker.

There is also a container of Russian caviar.

And a letter that I couldn’t read.

“And this is very strange, I mean, paper cut-out flowers from magazines and this little poem. Very, very odd. And this is my favorite sequence in the film: a garland of frozen popcorn around it.” "You cannot invent it. Reality is so strange, in a way it outdoes all your fantasies.”

Werner Herzog is also I think so strange that you cannot invent it.

i recently came across a scanned image (at this website) of an essay written by Theodore Sturgeon, published June 1967 in Cavalier Magazine, where Sturgeon describes his 'signature mark' and the ethos it represents for him. i decided to transcribe the article for future reference, and figured that people who follow me might also find it insightful and inspiring.

especially when it can be so easy to take something that has been presented as a fact at face value, i think we can always benefit from a reminder to ask the next question.

the symbol being described is an uppercase letter Q with a right-facing arrow striking through it. in my transcription i chose to represent the symbol with (-Q->). check out the scanned image of the essay to see how it was originally printed.

⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

I give you this symbol. I want you to wear it between your eyeball and your eyelid and look at the world through it. I want to do this, and I want you to do what I say, because you are not the crawling blob in that big bucket of ooze which, down deep, you think you are: you are Mankind. That isn't the best thing in the Universe to be, but it can be. It can be. It will be, if you do what I tell you. All I ask of you is that you hear me out.

Here is the symbol: (-Q->)

What it means is: Ask the next question.

Every advance this species has ever made is the result of someone, somewhere, looking at his world, his neighborhood, his neighbor, his cave, or himself, and asking that next question. Every deadly error this species has committed, every sin against itself and its high destiny, is the result of not asking the next question, or of not listening to those who do ask it.

That next question, (-Q->), is nothing more than a signboard which points toward the truth; the absolute, furthermost irreducible truth. there are not many absolutes, but we know one thing about them all: they are not complicated. More on that later.

First, an example of (-Q->) in action. Let's take something that has filled countless thousands of newspaper inches, in computable hours of argument and temper, a rich crop of injustice and stupidity, and has wasted a great deal more time than it is worth - the pornography question. We'll start with the warcry "we've got to get that filth off the newsstands!"

This is quite enough, in many communities, to gain a majority support right now. "Right-thinking people" gather up their axe-handles and burning torches and rally round what looks to them like the ultimate and self-defining truth. Now we ask that next question:

(-Q->): Why? A: Because it can get into the hands of young people

At this point, for many people, doors close, shutters bang, and all the lights go out inside. But that answer isn't an answer, as you can discover by asking the next question:

(-Q->): What happens if it gets into the hands of young people? A: It might arouse them.

Slam. Bang. Click... but wait. Isn't there another question? Sure!

(-Q->): What happens if they get aroused?

This will probably get you a variety of answers, and you'll forgive me if I don't pursue them in this question-and-answer format, because I haven't much space and I mean to pack it as full as I can. But you get the pattern: every time anyone answers that next question, that (-Q->), see if there isn't another one which can be asked. In this instance you can run the thing down until you find out on the highest scientific (and morally ethical) authority that it doesn't harm anyone to get sexually stimulated with no outlet; that it happens all the time to virtually everyone; that the list of things which stimulate one person or another at various times are by no means limited to what one finds in the girlie books, but include such things as pieces of string, wash on the line, sunsets, music, dogs howling, and a thousand other things, and if you got rid of all that filth you'd find yourself on a desert or in a cell - where, probably, your imagination would do a whole heap worse than any professional pornographer; further, that if the young person is stimulated to find an outlet it is, in a vast majority of cases, masturbation, which does not make green hairs grow in the palms of your hands, which does not cause pimples, and in the case of hyperactive individuals leaves them less likely to commit rape than more - especially if they are free of guilt about it. How do I know all this? By getting my questions answered, and by unfailingly asking that one more. If you do the same, you'll find the references, the carefully performed and documented experiments, the careful analyses and cross-checked conclusions. Let me here caution you never to abandon the (-Q->) technique when it leads you to a conclusion you like. Ask that one more question again, and ask it again... really, the only time you won't be able to ask it will be when you're up against a truth so basic and so simple that the question can't be asked.

And I've never had an answer that was that close to the truth - not ever. But in looking for it I've gotten rid of an awful lot of well-known facts that just ain't so. It makes you very light-hearted, very sure, and rather hard to hurt.

Now about basics and simplicity: complicated and subtle things can be overwhelming and they can change your whole life and the face of the world, but if they are complicated they are not (in the most important sense) important. Now here's a simple basic: living things change. Growth is one of the many kinds of change; what you can be sure of is that anything that has stopped changing has stopped living. Got it?

You are alive. Your family and your town and the county and state and nation are, each in its way, living things. All living things want to feel secure. Human beings are accursed with something that makes most of them, at one time or another in his life, seek security by stopping. He wants things stable and permanent and unchanging, like a pyramid. But there is another kind of stability - dynamic stability - the steadiness of a gull's flight. It's something that cannot happen unless the bird is in motion.

And by and large, friend, gulls outlast pyramids.

This is the kind of conclusion that the (-Q->) process leads you to, and armed with it you can look about you with a kind of Man from Mars astonishment. Living things (nations, cities, towns, families, people) trying to be dead. Trying to stop - stop time, stop change, stop thought, when they could spread their wings and rise it... Listen:

Laws are always late. Usually in the past, and certainly in a faster-and-ever-faster moving future, by the time a law is passed the circumstances which brought it about have already begun to change, which is why so many of them rule us by "the dead hand." As far as I know, no human group has ever tried to establish a whole body of laws with tenure - laws which would expire on a certain date unless the community voted to continue them! How much public apathy do you think you'd find in a democracy like that? Listen:

(-Q->): What is the function of the incest taboo? No - wait - don't give me those answers that "everybody knows," because nobody knows. If you start out on that recessive defective gene bit, with the idiot children of first cousins and all that, I'll only refer you to animal breeders the world over, and hope you enjoyed those idiot pork chops last night, and have fun with the loot you picked up at the $2 window, courtesy of the dark horse who paid 83 to 1 and who is the result of a dozen generations of inbreeding. Men are different from hogs and horses - but biologically they are not all that different. Listen:

Olaf Stapledon, bless his memory, wrote a book called Last and First Men which traces the history of Man through the next couple of hundred billion years. He speaks of something similar to what I call the (-Q->) process, and calls it "the precious insight." Through the generations, he says, it appears repeatedly and is repeatedly struck down by accidents large or small (well, we can't do much about that) "or," he says, "by an access of racial imbecility, or by the mere cowardice and vertigo that dares not look down the precipice of the fact."

I think we are in such a period of "racial imbecility" as he describes. I think that there are a few people around - you, for example - who can cure it because they are not afraid to look down the precipice of the fact, no matter how deep the pit, no matter how different.

All I ask of you is that you look at what is there, and ask that next question. In exchange I offer more than those who claim that this act idea, or that, will save this species from extinction. I offer this species its maturity and triumph.

I just heard a voice from one of you:

(-Q->): Just who the hell do you think you are? A: That's it. Don't stop there.

-- TheodoreSturgeon, 1967

In 1991, Surfer magazine named the Sturgeon-class attack submarine USS Tautog (SSN-639) the "hottest surfboard in the world" after a SEAL was photographed riding on top of the sail.

USNI