Carrie Fisher, 1956-2016

I don't know if today's audiences are aware of just how big of an impact Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia made in 1977.

Yes, she was the beautiful princess in white waiting to be rescued by the men and then — what? She kicks you-know-what, saves the men, has a tongue sharp enough to cut diamond, and turns out to be a leader of the Rebel Alliance. Back in the day, people talked about her character as being revolutionary; she (and Star Wars creator George Lucas) subverted the roles and gender attitudes of the time.

Fisher will always be known for her Star Wars role, but she also made a name for herself as a writer, becoming a best-selling author and script doctor in Hollywood. She became a hero for an entirely different reason when she talked openly about her struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction.

Princess Leia was revolutionary. And the actress who portrayed her was funny, sharp, and pointed. 
And I'm scared to think what else can happen in the next four days of this crummy year.

Remembering Joe Shattan — and What I Learned About Him from His Office

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building. (Public domain photo)

Former Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney speechwriter Joe Shattan died this past summer. I'm late in hearing about it (it happened in early June), but I would like to share some memories I have of him.

"What? John, you know a Quayle/Cheney speechwriter?" Yes, in the summer of 1990, I had an internship in the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Of America. It was thanks to the Institute for Educational Affairs (an organization that I think continues today under a different name).

Anyway, I was assigned to work with Zelda Novak (daughter of the "Prince of Darkness" conservative columnist Robert Novak), and I spent the summer doing pretty useless work in appropriate obscurity. But on the other side of my desk (stuffed in a cubby hole) was the office of Joseph Shattan, who was often traveling with the VP and who allowed me to spend my lunch hours in his office when he wasn't there. I never got to know him well or much at all, but I did get a good sense of him during those lunch hours, and you can see why.

I'm from Green Bay, Wisconsin. If you're a Green Bay person and there exists a photo of you with a Packer player, you've got it framed on your walls, and probably in a prominent place. In Washington, D.C., people are the same way about big politicians, and usually their desks and walls are covered with framed photos of them shaking hands with or at least photobombing presidents, vice presidents, senators, governors, and representatives.

But Joe Shattan? In his quiet, neat, book-filled office, he had plenty of photos, but they were of him and his family. Wife. Kids. I saw all those and didn't see the other celebrity-suck-up photos, and thought to myself, "This guy has his priorities right. Good guy."

When I stumbled across the news today that he had passed away (on June 8, 2014, at the young age of 63, felled by cancer), I found a couple things that reminded me of my fondness for this person. First, other people were writing about what a kind and genuine person he was — not something you generally associate with political people, especially conservative political functionaries who spent decades in government.

The other thing was a link to an article Shattan had written in 2009, in which he remembered how much he loved visiting the library in the Old Executive Office Building (a large old building next to the White House where the vice president has his office and staff). Shattan, a writer and clearly a book lover, really enjoyed going to the library, taking in the atmosphere of books and busy librarians and available information in that pre-internet age. Back then, I hadn't known about his joy for that library, but I had also enjoyed escaping to it when my useless tasks allowed. I can still remember that library well, with its beautiful columns and spiral staircases and awesome collections of books. I especially recall the corner where I dug through countless old copies of The New York Review of Books. It was the summer in which I had just discovered John Updike and Philip Roth, so I loved searching for old reviews of their books. The library was the one room in the Old Executive Office Building (now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) that had the same nice vibe as Joe Shattan's office.

I never knew Joe Shattan well, but I apparently knew him well enough to know that this book-loving intellectual whose politics were quite different from what mine became was a good man. I'm very sorry to hear about his passing. R.I.P.

R.I.P. Iain Banks, Culture-d Man

Scottish novelist Iain Banks, who wrote science fiction under the slightly different monicker of Iain M. Banks, which surely fooled no one, has died of cancer at the way too young age of 59. He had announced just a couple months ago that he had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had very little time left. He promptly proposed to and wedded his partner, Adele.

Banks is the author of numerous books, but most notable to this website is his incredible contribution to the science fiction field, his Culture series of novels set in the far future. Certainly read other reports of his life and death, but do him the most justice by checking out his many intelligent, fascinating, challenging, controversial, excellent Culture books.

Lyle Lahey, 1931-2013

At about 7:15 p.m. Central Time, on Friday, February 8, 2013, Lyle Lahey passed away. Known to many in Wisconsin as an independent (and ever-opinionated) political voice, Lyle was also my stepfather.

I don't remember the first time I met Lyle Lahey, but it was probably during a visit to my mother's office at Brown County Publishing in Denmark, Wisconsin. There, lots of talented albeit underpaid professionals assembled a number of local newspapers and one magazine; the magazine was my mother's brainchild; the newspapers were where Lyle worked as a political cartoonist, editorial page editor, and designer.

At some point, Mom must have taken me down to her friend Lyle's office, and there, amidst his drawing board and reference material and stacks of books and magazines and newspapers, was the tall, lanky political cartoonist whose work I saw every day in the Green Bay News-Chronicle and stories of whom I had heard my mother retell.

Over the years, I saw Lyle numerous times, and he eventually became my stepfather. I knew people in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who subscribed to the News-Chronicle soley because of Lyle's political cartoons. I had a (friendly) argument with a friend in high school who was certain Lyle's last name was pronounced laHEY and who didn't believe me when I said I was pretty sure my own stepfather pronounced his name LAhey. For 35 years, Lyle produced political cartoons on a daily basis for Brown County Publishing and the Green Bay News-Chronicle. He rarely took vacations, he never stopped (he had high respect for Bill Watterson, but I think Lyle thought him to be a bit of a weakling when Watterson called it a day after 10 years of "Calvin and Hobbes"), and he did something that artists almost never do: When he had to decide between producing material that was blander and more commercial so it could be syndicated nationally, he chose to stick to local topics because he felt that the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin, deserved to have a cartoonist who addressed their issues.

Lyle also, many years before, created "Bunky," a weekly comic strip in The Farmer's Friend (another Brown County Publishing newspaper). A year ago, I suggested republishing his "Bunky" comics through the magic of Amazon's print-on-demand service; he and my mother gave their blessing. Now, it's an imperative that that be done. Lyle's desert-dry sense of humor is perfectly transmitted in that strip's mixture of a befuddled space alien, a farm boy, and a sojourn to Maoist China.

Lyle Lahey was the man who sent home from the office a couple dozen issues of Omni magazine for me to devour. He was the man who helped my mother come to terms with it when I came out. He was the man who brought home library books of early Superman, Little Nemo, and (the greatest of all) Krazy Kat. He was the man who was the staff political cartoonist for the smallest daily newspaper in the country to have its own political cartoonist. He was the man who shared copies of Car Design and Comics Scene magazines with me, because he knew we both liked the publisher and I really knew nothing about cars. He was the man who shared Harlan Ellison and thriller books with me. He was the man – the stepfather – who got along great with my father; they traded stacks of car magazines each time they saw each other at frequent family gatherings.

And, like a generation so removed from my own ironic generation, he said what he meant and he took you seriously when you said something serious.

Lyle was a good man, a better man than I am or ever have been. He was, in the best sense of the term, an old-fashioned man. He read widely and a lot; he cared about what he talked about, and when you spoke to him, he always focused on what you were saying.

No man is perfect, but you won't get any admissions from me of errors in Lyle Lahey.

 Rest in peace, Lyle; you've earned it.

Gerry Anderson, RIP

The Puppetmaster is dead; long live the puppetmaster.

More accurately, 83-year-old producer Gerry Anderson, who with his wife Sylvia was the power behind Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett and the Mysterions, and other puppet series (not to mention the live-action Space: 1999 in the mid-1970s), passed away earlier today.

End scene.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

Just this morning on the subway ride to work, I was reading an interview in Filmfax magazine with writer/editor Dr. Samuel J. Sackett. Decades ago, he had sent his first story to author Ray Bradbury to get his opinion on it. Bradbury "rewrote the first two pages into one page to condense it and, of course, it was all in his style which was not my style, so I had to rewrite that page as I would have written it," Sackett told the magazine. "But there was one sentence I simply couldn't rewrite because I couldn't think of another way to put it, so there's one sentence by Bradbury in that story. But I don't remember which sentence."

Upon arriving at work, I learned that Ray Bradbury has passed away at the age of 91. As they say, the death of an old man is no tragedy – meaning, as I take it, it's neither a surprise nor too soon. But that doesn't mean it is not an occasion for sadness and happiness; to lose someone who crafted tales of great poetry is a loss and at the same time a reminder that this weird human species is capable of producing someone who can make a martian pulp story into poetry.

I believe Fahrenheit 451 was the first of his books that I read, probably back in junior high school. (I was just making reference to the wall-sized TV screens in a conversation with a friend last week.) Sometime later, I read his epic book The Martian Chronicles, a book that is inescapable as a lodestar for later writers tackling the topic of former civilizations on Mars, just as one can't write about robots without either referencing or being seen to avoid referencing Isaac Asimov's robotic laws.

Bradbury was an unusual genre writer in many ways. Unlike the hard-SF writers or the new wave SF writers, Bradbury's stories were a gentler, more humane sort. It says something good about the science fiction world that his stories were not only read but celebrated within it. I think they will be celebrated for many years to come, and their influence will be sustained, even if later generations "don't remember which sentence" of the continuing narrative about Mars came from Bradbury. He's woven himself too much into the stories.

Moebius Is Dead

There was rotten news to wake up to this morning: French comics legend Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, has passed away.

This past fall, I had the pleasure of meeting a neighbor who is an artist and designer (and builder and inventor ... all very cool). He showed me some of his artwork, fantastic, thin-lined illustrations of people on flying contraptions against alien-looking landscapes. I said to him, "I don't know if you'll think I'm crazy or not, but what this reminds me of is Moebius." He immediately smiled and agreed, noting how much he admired Moebius' work.

Moebius, one of the creative geniuses behind the French comics magazine Metal Hurlant (which came to the U.S. as Heavy Metal and to Germany as Schwer Metall and to other countries under other names), leaves behind a staggering amount of work from around the world over many decades. Below is just a sample.

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

Pro Bowl Packer (and Former Neighbor) Gale Gillingham, RIP

I was sorry to see the news today of the passing of former Green Bay Packers player Gale Gillingham. It's a name that many of you – even recent Packers fans – might not remember, but I've always known it; during the NFL season back in the early 1970s, his family lived in the same apartment complex as we did on Green Bay's west side. We played with his kids, and I remember that his family was very nice. My condolences to the Gillinghams.

Steve Jobs, RIP

The Apple website homepage says it all:

Farewell to a business and technology genius.

Green Bay's Martin H. Greenberg, RIP

The news is spreading that editor Martin H. Greenberg passed away today at the age of 70. Greenberg edited – what's the technical word I'm looking for? – zillions of books in science fiction and other genres over the years, working closely with other legends such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg.

I remember seeing his name as a co-editor with Asimov on countless SF anthologies when I was growing up, and when I learned that he was from my hometown – Green Bay, Wisconsin – it was my first clue that this far-away world of science fiction could also originate from out-of-the-way places like GB. That was almost as exciting a realization as the cool visions and ideas that were being presented in the science fiction I was reading.

Starting in 1975, Greenberg taught at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He passed away after losing a fight to cancer. As writer Max Allan Collins put it, "This business ... this world ... is suddenly a smaller, shabbier place."

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Rita Eisenstein, Longtime Starlog/Fangoria Publishing Exec, Passes Away

Sixty-six is too young to die, but that's the age at which Rita Eisenstein fell to cancer. For all of us who grew up on the magazines produced by her and her colleagues at Starlog Group (and the many other names under which that company operated over the years), it is worth noting her sad passing.

Fangoria, the only surviving publication of that once-expansive line of titles, has a nice article on its web site today noting her death and her long career at that company. (The small photo at left is taken from Fango's article.) Former Starlog Group president Norman Jacobs praised her loyalty and hard work, telling Fangoria that Eisenstein was "the mother of the Fangoria Family. The brands owe so much of their lasting impact to her tireless efforts. In terms of friendship and dedication to her job, she was one of a kind."

Eisenstein joined Starlog magazine as a receptionist during its first year of publication back in the late 1970s. She may have begun by answering phones at the company, but she quickly rose up the ranks, handling advertising and other duties and becoming associate publisher and executive vice president.

Irvin Kershner Dead at 87

SFX magazine reports that director Irvin Kershner has passed away at the age of 87. As the man who directed what was in my opinion the best of the Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back, Kershner definitely left his mark.

Tony Judt, R.I.P.

Three feet away from me, as I sit writing this, is my still-unread copy of Postwar, Tony Judt's book about Europe following the devastation of the second world war. I bought it as soon as I heard about it, because years of reading his essays in The New York Review of Books have taught me to expect good work, serious thinking, and interesting facts and stories from Judt.

Now we'll get no new work from him, but I still can read his previously published book for the first time. Tony Judt is dead.

The New York Times reports that Judt, suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, died at the age of 62 yesterday. The paper notes:

Mr. Judt (pronounced Jutt), who was British by birth and education but who taught at American universities for most of his career, began as a specialist in postwar French intellectual history, and for much of his life he embodied the idea of the French-style engaged intellectual. An impassioned left-wing Zionist as a teenager, he shed his faith in agrarian socialism and Marxism early on and became, as he put it, a “universalist social democrat” with a deep suspicion of left-wing ideologues, identity politics and the emerging role of the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

In an age when even supposedly independent intellectuals have broadly sold out to ideologies and money, Judt embodied something that's rare today. I still appreciate a recent essay in which he embraced being called a rootless cosmopolitan, because it was what helped him see things from outside the groupthink of the rooted.

Judt was independent, smart, human and humane, and controversial. I'll miss him not only because I always found something of interest in his essays, but also because there are too few people like him today.

Locus Magazine Founder Dies

Charles N. Brown, founder of science fiction news magazine Locus, died July 12. He was 71.

Locus is a densely packed periodical with author interviews, previews of book releases, fiction magazine reports, industry news, and more. It was originally founded as a one-sheet fanzine, but grew into the full-scale magazine because of Brown's love for the publication and his enjoyment editing it, notes Locus.

One last note: The Oakland, California-based magazine uses the same printing company -- Alonzo Printing -- as my San Francisco-based magazine, and I decided to add color to my non-coated pages as a result of seeing how successfully it worked with Locus' similar paper stock. Just a little tidbit to chuck into the back of your mind.

R.I.P. Charles N. Brown. You made your mark on the science fiction publishing world.

Arthur C. Clarke, R.I.P.

The news just broke that Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at the age of 90. Clarke came up with the idea for the geosynchronous satellite, wrote tons of books (most famous for 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End). He was also an outspoken champion of science and rationalist thought.

You might want to check out his Clarke Foundation, which he set up to spread his ideas.

And read the Clarke remembrance by Kerry O'Quinn, an old friend of Clarke's.