I’ve seen some other videos of lanterns be floated over Poland as part of their midsummer festival, but I thought this was just too cool looking not to post.
Archive for June, 2011
Lanterns Over Poland
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011Lists of Top Crime Films
Monday, June 27th, 2011Ever since the 70s Crime Film Festival I’ve been a bit on a crime film kick, having watched Get Carter, Mean Streets, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Casino and Scarface. Along the way I’ve found a few Best Crime Films lists that may be worthy of your attention:
Lovecraft and Copyright
Friday, June 24th, 2011While looking around for something else, I stumbled upon this this fairly extensive piece on the copyright status of H. P. Lovecraft’s work.
The impression I always had is that all of Lovecraft’s works that weren’t already in the public domain passed into in 2007, 70 years after Lovecraft’s death, under the terms of the Berne convention. But the story of who owned what before that point is quite tangled indeed…
Lawrence Person’s Library: Reference Books (Part 2: Oversized Books)
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011And here’s the second part of my series on my reference library. The last installment dealt with the books I reach for most often. The reference works listed in this post share only size, being too big for most of my other shelves, which is why they’re filed here. Some of these (the Nevins, the first two Bleilers) get a lot of use, while others almost never get taken down (things that have been superseded by both the Internet and the two Clute encyclopedias).
(Click to embiggen.)
I’m not going to do a full run-down of publication dates, etc. for everything, but here’s a general overview of what’s here:
The New and Perfect Man (Postscripts 24/25) is Out
Thursday, June 16th, 2011Including my story “The Dog Parade.”
Here’s the traycase the signed, limited edition comes in:
And here’s the book itself nestled snugly inside that traycase:
It was actually an unusually long journey for the anthology to be published, as one of the sets of signature sheets got lost in transit, which set back the publication timeline considerably.
Contents of Postscripts #24/25: The New and Perfect Man, edited by Peter Crowther & Nick Gevers, are as follows:
Sold wherever fine SF anthologies are sold…
Lawrence Person’s Library: Reference Books (Part 1)
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011I haven’t posted much the last week because I’ve been busy doing this and that, and one of the things I’ve been busy with is a long-overdue cleanup of my office, including doing something about those Nova Express review copies cluttering it up. Now that I’ve finally finished moving books around, and gotten a new camera (a Kodak Slice) to replace the one that died, I thought I would put up some long-overdue pictures of the books in my office, starting with the reference shelf right next to my computer, which contains the reference works I tend to reach for most often.
(Click to embiggen.)
Going left to right (left being the side closest to the computer, and thus the books I reach for most often) are:
One guideline I’d offer aspiring SF/F/H book collectors is: Don’t skimp on the reference works. Some of these books can be expensive, but all it takes is one real find (or one expensive dud avoided) for a good reference work to pay for itself.
More pictures of my reference library when I have the time…
The Sun Wants to KILL YOU
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011Some nice turns of phrase (pathetic fallacy division) from the inimitable James Lileks:
At the center of every solar system, perhaps, there’s not a benevolent disc that paints the world with light and heat, but a raging devil shouting its hate wordlessly across the void….Every civilization that has ever, and will ever, exist in this galaxy or the millions of galaxies in the heavens, revolves around a suicide bomber.
I just thought that was a nifty turn of phrase and, being in a part of Texas suffering from one of the worst droughts ever, it struck a certain chord…
Starr Faithfull, Andrew J. Peters, and the Scandals of Yesterday
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011Today we come up on the 80th anniversary of an unsolved death that marked a major scandal for a prominent political figure. The badly bruised body of beautiful 25-year old girl washed up on the beach at Long Island, her liver showing traces of Veronal (the first commercially available barbiturate). The body turned out to be one Starr Faithfull, a “good time girl” well known on the Boston social scene.
That would be interesting enough. But it turned out that Starr Faithfull kept a diary, in which she described having an affair with a prominent political figure. The figure turned out to be Boston Mayor Andrew James Peters, who denied the affair, but who ended up paying $20,000 worth of hush money to Starr Faithfull’s father.
John O’Hara would later use elements of the story in his novel BUtterfield 8, though set in New York rather than Boston, which lead to Elizabeth Taylor’s Academy Award winning performance in the movie of the same name.
But the movie (I haven’t read the book) changes one very big detail: the first time she had sex with Peters, Starr Faithfull was eleven years old.
As to whether she was murdered or not, that remains unresolved to this very day…
Liberty County Mass Grave: “Never Mind”
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011You know that 0-30 range for that mass grave? It turned out to be on the low end of that range. Namely zero.
Can I say I’m psychic for thinking this was bunk?