Here I am...

... holed up in a nice motel room in Euroa. All is well. I do like a long drive to help clear my head, though it's not as clear as it should be as there was some smoke around in southern New South Wales. Must be some burning off going on. At least it's nothing like this; in fact, Victoria has been experiencing floods, and apparently some roads (though not ours) are still blocked.

Death of Ray Bradbury

Have just heard about this.

Am in the midst of packing, unfortunately, but let me just say quickly that Ray Bradbury's death is the end of an era - he was one of the greats, an immense, and immensely influential, talent. I'm sure there will be many posts and articles today doing him more justice than I am in just this quick notice.

It doesn't seem that long ago that Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and, of course, Bradbury, were all still with us. :(

Hitting the road

I'm off to Continuum 8, the 2012 national science fiction convention (which is being held in Melbourne this year). I have a fairly busy schedule there, but still hope to have some fun. As always, am looking forward to catching up with friends.

If any of y'all are going - see you there!

"Norway goes secular"

This is an interesting story about a decision in Norway to remove the Lutheran Church as the state religion. It doesn't seem to be a total removal, as the royal family will still be required to belong to the church, and there will apparently still be some other constitutional recognition given to it. On the gripping hand, it does appear that any formal political power still enjoyed by the church will now be removed, as will any formal political control of it. We're told that, "The current requirement for at least half of all government ministers to be members of the Church will also be scrapped, and even the minister of church affairs will no longer need to belong to the church."

That is more important - a higher priority - than removing every vestige of establishment where it already exists.

In the longer term, of course, I don't see any role for established churches, even relatively harmless ones. Or for royal families, if it comes to that! They are all silly anachronisms that we could well do without.

H/T Jerry Coyne, among others.

Tales to astonish!! (Vatican condemns liberal views on sex!!)

Well strike me blind, whoever would have thought that the Vatican would take this attitude? I'm totally scratching my head about it all.

The Vatican has condemned an American nun for writing a book in which she praises female masturbation and approves divorce and gay sex and marriage, warning that the book must not be used by Catholic educators.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/vatican-throws-the-book-at-nuns-understanding-views-on-sexuality-20120605-1zub1.html#ixzz1wy0g1adY

Okay, folks,  I'm as revolted by the miserable morality of the Roman Catholic Church as anyone else. But just lately my Twitter feed has been full of people who are acting surprised. Really, how did you all expect them to react to such a book?

Of course it flies in the face of the Church's moral teachings, which it considers authoritative. Not that I want to make that sound like a bad thing.

Jason Nahrung interviews Russell Blackford

Over here - go and enjoy it (or whatever).

My sessions at Continuum 8

Here are my sessions on the program of the national science fiction in Melbourne next weekend.

Continuum 8 @ Rydges on Swanston, 701 Swanston Street Carlton

Sessions |Timetable | Tags | People

Russell Blackford

Participating in Events:

New Faiths For New Worlds Saturday 10:00 until Saturday 11:00 (60 Minutes)
Humanity Enhanced Saturday 15:00 until Saturday 16:00 (60 Minutes)
Apocalypses Through The Ages Sunday 14:00 until Sunday 15:00 (60 Minutes)
Where Are All The Wonder Women? Sunday 16:00 until Sunday 17:00 (60 Minutes)
Readings Monday 11:00 until Monday 12:00 (60 Minutes)

"Snapshot" of Jenny Blackford

Jason Nahrung and others are conducting a series of short interviews with people associated with the Australian science fiction/fantasy community.

Here is the interview with Jenny, posted today.

Sample:

You’ve had some poetry published recently, after a long hiatus, and one ventures the new stuff is quite different to your first piece in Dolly all those years ago: what do you think has inspired you to not only return to poetry, but poetry of a decidedly darker (?) nature?

As to what has inspired me to return to poetry -– the real question is why I ever stopped writing it. Apparently, I just gave up quietly in my final dispiriting years of high school. The poetry writing asserted itself naturally a few years ago and took a while to nose its way out into the world.

And as to the alleged new darkness: not all my recent poems are dark. My poem forthcoming from The School Magazine is a fairly sweet little thing about a cat (though some might think ‘soft silk sack of bones’ has a slightly sinister edge). And my most recent poetry publication (in Star*Line 35.1 is another sweetish cat poem (though it does start with the potentially sinister ‘Gravity is stern as death’, and does ascribe uncanny powers to cats.) Hmmm…

I wish I could find my copy of ‘Ti-trees Rising’, the poem that was printed in Dolly back in the ’70s, but it seems to have disappeared from my filing system. It’s about ti-tree scrub, but I do distinctly remember the words ‘reptilian silver’ and ‘the cold moon in the dark’, so there’s at least a smidge of a sinister edge there as well.

Getting deeper: it’s true that the definitely dark ‘Mirror’ was my first poem for decades, but it’s based on memories from my teens. I was totally convinced that I saw someone else’s eyes looking back at me in the mirror, and I was terrified. Back then, I’m sure family and friends would have been horrified if I’d put all that fear and darkness into a poem. Now that I’m grown up, I’m allowed to.

That poem about ti-trees that they're discussing was Jenny's first professional sale, made when she was still a teenager in high school - and it also won a regional poetry prize. I hope she does manage to find the damn thing.

I want to read it!

Sunday superstuff (no villainy this week) - More on Northstar's wedding

Gay superhero Northstar (the white guy with the pointy ears, for those who are not familiar with him) gets married to his boyfriend, Kyle, in Astonishing X-Men #51 ... in the latest expression of support for the gay community from the comics industry, and specifically from Marvel. There is a preview here, with some nice images.

Given that same-sex marriages can now be legally recognised in the state of New York, it's more than appropriate for the comics industry and medium to be showing a same-sex wedding in New York City. Partly, Marvel is celebrating social progress in the real world, however hard won (and fiercely opposed) this progress is turning out to be.

Let's hope that the gains can be held in the real world, even as they're reflected in fictional worlds.

The wedding itself looks cute, with many of Marvel's characters from the X-Men/mutant side of the Marvel Universe shown as in attendance. I wonder whether we'll get villains invading festivities as happened way, way back when Reed Richards and Sue Storm got married (surely Marvel is more sophisticated than that these days!).

As a nice touch, it looks as if Northstar's sister, Aurora, is going to be acting in something like the traditional "best man" role, providing the rings and generally tidying her brother up and sorting him out. I look forward to seeing all this artwork with dialogue so we can find out exactly what is going on. But yeah, it looks like a lovely wedding!

Avengers addendum!

Box Office Mojo is usually a day or so behind, and often a bit more with takings outside of the US. But in any event, it has now caught up as far as last Friday - showing The Avengers now going ahead of The Dark Knight in raw dollars grossed in the US (making it number # 3, measured in that way, behind Avatar and Titanic). And it has now also passed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in worldwide box-office gross (making it number # 3, again behind Avatar and Titanic).

In inflation-adjusted terms, it is still somewhat behind The Dark Knight in the US domestic market, but will (I'm confident) eventually overtake it. It will not overtake such classics as Gone with the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), and Sound of Music (1965), and will probably settle in the end into somewhere in the mid to high 20s on the list of all-time US grosses, adjusted for inflation. Perhaps it will end up in about the same territory as such huge successes of their time as Mary Poppins (1964), Thunderball (1965) and Grease (1978).

But that puts it in impressive company. It's actually very difficult (for me, at least) to compare the performances of movies from different generations. You can adjust for inflation, at least within a particular market, but there are many other imponderables to make fair comparisons difficult. Some of those imponderables give advantages to earlier movies.  Still, one way or another, we can say that The Avengers is turning out to be one of the most commercially successful movies of all time.

And as a further addendum, I will slightly tweak the heading of the previous post in case anyone reading it quickly thinks I'll no longer be blogging at all!