Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Sara -- I'll let Martha tell you about Genie. I wonder what did happen
to the stuff in my topic...? four or five years of answering all sorts
of questions, musings, online diaries and whatnot, all off and lost in
the electronic ether, I should imagine.

I'll remind Lorraine to talk to you. But send her a nudge -- I know
she got your e-mail. She's been doing a mammoth Autumn-Cleaning before
the cold sets in which has been taking up a lot of her time... it's
scary to be typing from my office, and have it be so clean and tidy...
  

    
Um, what about Genie?

Assistant sysop Marty Grabien was grabbing and archiving all the Genie
topics before the service was put to death.  Whether they're online
anywhere, though, I don't know for sure.
  

    
Neil--

I had a similarly early start w/ Sondheim...Sweeney Todd was on TV
when I was 11 and I was hooked; knew Company, Night Music and Follies
by heart within a year. That, plus multiple viewings of Annie Hall and
Manhattan, ensured that I had a rather jaundiced view of relationships
until I actually had one.  My wife, a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan from
way back, is amazed that we're compatible in the least.

If you'll be in NYC on either October 16, 23 or 30, Michael John
LaChiusa will be doing three evenings of his work at Joe's Pub at the
Public Theatre... If it's possible, you should try to catch his show.
  

    
Shira--

Do you know the singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen?  He did a song called
"Who by Fire" that's based on part of the Kol Nidre service.  It's on
his album, "New Skin for the Old Ceremony."  Maybe your rabbi will let
you do that one... (tell your rabbi that Cohen is orthodox... how can
he say no?)
  

    

(Who by fire is also on his Best Of album, if that's easier to find.)
  

    
oh yeah...
  

    
GEnie was an online service a la Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy et
al.  Originally not connected to the internet, subscribers dialed in,
later it had some internet connectivity, then later still you could access
GEnie discussions via the web.
 
There was a very active portion of GEnie (The Science Fiction Roundtable -
SFRT) where lots of authors each had their own discussion topic, much like
this one.  Writers who were on GEnie talked about their work, their
interests, whatever they wanted to talk about in their discussion area
and those who knew them or liked their work or the topics of conversation
there would read and participate in the discussions.  Just like this,
more or less.

(And I even see some of the same people here:  Martha, scraps, Lenny,
others).

GEnie now is no more, after a prolonged illness and death, I guess you
could say.  
  

    
I was there as it actually died.  The very hour they were killing it.  Maybe
six or ten of us online, posting as fast as we could, starting new topics
and watching them being shut down.
  

    

I've always been surprised to not see more of the SFRT migrate over here,
because the Well is by far the closest to the same vibe I've found on the
net.  Damon Knight would fit in perfectly here.
  

    
They more or less split up between sff.net and dm.net, two Web-based fora.
I've never been happy with any of the Web-based, threaded BB software,
though--I think the Well-like structure helped GEnie grow into what it was--
so I'm happy there's the Well.
  

    
If the SFRT archives are accessible, that would be really cool....  I was on
GEnie for all of two weeks, I think; was too busy to keep up. Made an
imaginary leather armchair for Emma Bull; I remember that part, and I
remember wanting to read *everything* there. Which seemed like an awful lot.

Neil, any updates on the various Hollywood things in progress? (I can't
remember which are really-o truly-o in the works, and which ones are things
I just keep wishing and hoping for. I'm sure a bunch of other folks are
wishing and hoping too.) 

There was a fellow that Juan and Mike and I met once at your house who was
from some part of the magical land of movies, if fuzzy memory serves; he
was rhapsodizing about how it was actually possible for him to get a good
night's sleep in the Midwest.  I was just thinking about him the other
day.  His paean to slumber amidst the mysterious lands near the Twin
Cities was endearing in an almost goofy way; I felt almost like we should
all take him some hot dish and invite him to stick around.

How well do you sleep in L.A.? Is there, like, cosmic reciprocity
extended?

(I also had the thought that perhaps we ought to mail him a small vial of
our local earth, to put under his bed as a talisman or something, but it
mighta made him nervous.)
  

    
I still miss GEnie and I wasn't even there all that long in the big scheme
of things (a year ot two?).  I've tried out the new haunts, but they
aren't the same.  And I much prefer the format here using picospan on the
Well to reading topics in a newsreader or on the web.

But then I got my start on small local BBSes running similar software,
well before GEnie went online.  And now that I'm on the Well, I don't miss
GEnie or those old BBSes quite so much.
  

    
Chris oarr says:


Hi Jeff.  Hi all.  Neil forwarded me your questions about the
pre-reading
receptions for his Last Angel Tour.  These are pretty laid-back
affairs, and
as Neil pointed out they're more about mingling and milling than
sitting and
chatting.  In fact, I've been floored by the response to these events,
which
already exceed our initial (highly optimistic) expectations.  Apart
from
those individuals who cleaned out the Premium tickets in record time,
we
have people signing up as CBLDF members at an astonishing pace.  I
expect
we'll see over 100 people at the New York reception, for instance. 
Neil
will just about have a chance to say hello and exchange a few words
with
just about everyone.  There will also be a very short address to this
very
special crowd.  Then we're all heading one block over to St. Mark's
Church-In-the-Bowery for the reading.

The great thing about this sort of event---and we've done a few of
these at
this point---is that apart from meeting Neil you also meet so many
wonderful
people.  You shouldn't be surprised to bump into your favorite comics
artist
or maybe another writer whose work you admire.  But apart from that
it's
just nice to be at a function where everyone shares so many common
interests.  And I can assure you that there is no friendlier group of
First
Amendment zealots than Comic Book Legal Defense Fund members.

It's a very casual thing.  A lot of folk will be coming straight from
work,
so I expect we'll see a fair number of coats and ties, but I wouldn't
be
surprised to see sneakers and jeans here and there too.  It's all
fine.  For
my own part, I'll be wearing a sportscoat and slacks.  Is that what
they
call "business casual" these days?

I do hope to meet you at the reception Jeff, and I hope to meet many
of the
rest of you either in NYC or at our Last Angel readings in Chicago,
Portland, and L.A.

Chris Oarr, Executive Director, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
  

    
Neil--

I don't know if you remember this, but--

We spoke briefly at the Dream Hunters signing you did at Virgin
Records in NYC, and I asked you if John Bellair's novel, The Face in
the Frost, was an influence on Stardust. You said you hadn't heard of
it and you jotted the name down.

I saw a copy of it at a used book store this w'end, and, knowing that
I was going to the reading, I picked it up on the chance that you
hadn't gotten a copy.  Should I bring it along for you?
  

    
Oh, John Bellairs is great, _The House with the Clock in its Walls_
particularly.  I loved the illustrations in it years before I knew who
Edward Gorey was.
  

    
Speaking of Gorey, Scott Conner e-mails:

I was mucking about on the Bud Plant Comic Art site
(http://www.budplant.com) and found this item.  Since both Neil and myself
are Edward Gorey afficionados, I though it might be of interest to all....

 THE STRANGE CASE OF EDWARD GOREY  by Alexander Theroux ;  Fantagraphics
(2000) , softcover, 6X9, 68 pages, b/w.

Also, I saw Charles Vess this past Saturday and passed along everyone's good
wishes.  He and Karen are both doing fine; she was at the beach so I didn't
actually get to speak with her.  Charles also has a new piece titled "The
Corn King" that is an absolutely *stunning* piece of work.

 And a question for Neil.  With the release of the illustrated version of
Stardust (the hardcover is exceptionally nice!) and Sandman: The Dream
Hunters, do you think this could be the impetus for more illustrated novels
in general?  *I* certainly hope so.  The Bernie Wrightson-illustrated
version of Shelley's "Frankenstein" is a masterpiece.  A trend towards well
crafted projects such as these would be a very welcome thing.

 Comments?  Suggestions?
  

    
Thank you for pointing us to that book - I'll certainly be picking it up.
  

    
There's a wonderful illustrated version of Moby Dick..can't rember who
did it, but it's full of woodcuts, and a specially designed typeface.
  

    

Barry Moser, maybe?
  

    
That's the one.  Nice, isn't it?
  

    

I haven't seen it, it was just a guess.
  

    

From Sara (who swears she's getting her own WELL account very soon now):

Well, I wrote to someone at sfrt.com , and apparently the Genie Topic archives had been preserved, but aren't available.  Copyright thing:   

   "In order to distribute the archives, we'd need written permission from 
   each person whose posts are included AND IDT's permission to reproduce 
   the formats."

And I for some reason, I don't see that happening anytime soon.  At least they haven't evaporated along with the service.  

And last time I'd heard Leonard Cohen was an ordained Zen Buddhist monk...
  

    
he's both... he lights shabbes candles every friday night at the
retreat.  no kidding.
  

    
        Second the recommendation on The Face In The Frost.  Quite different
from Bellairs' other books, but superb.  One of the best-realized magic
systems I've ever read, in that it represents magic as something quite
directly related to esoteric knowledge and outright trivia.  The
wizards in the book are the kind of people who will happily spend years
learning obscure facts and spells that they know perfectly well they
will probably never need, as well as collecting assorted junk and weird
occult and historical factoids along the way.  As medieval fantasies
go, it's one of my all-time favorites.
  

    

For absolutely no apparent reason, I was trying to remember the name of The
Face In the Frost yesterday. Hallalujah, hurray, this topic comes to my
rescue. I had been forced to refer to it as "that book <streak> loaned me."
While I'm at it, I'll third the recommendation. I was quite impressed by
that book.