Raymond K Rugg's Blog, page 3

Shortlisted on Mash Stories :)

I'm pleased and proud to announce that my short story, "Independent Contractor," has been shortlisted for the current Mash Stories competition.

You can find the story at  http://mashstories.com/shortlist/independent-contractor/.  Please click on over, give it a read, and if the spirit so moves you, vote for it in the Mash Short Story Competition.  Being shortlisted means that my story is in the running to win, and while reader votes alone do not determine the winner, they are taken into consideration by the judges.  (The link above goes to my story, "Independent Contractor," which I would rate at about a 'PG-13' advisory level.  If you want to read some of the other shortlisted entries, please be advised that some are what I would definitely rank as being in the 'R' rating.)
 

Hanging out at the Library

So I was at the library today.  Picked up some Robert Lynn Asprin, some Raymond Feist, some graphic novels, and a Stephen King collection of shorts that I haven't revisited in decades.

But one book that  ran across, I didn't bother to check out.  Because frankly, I've got dozens of copies of this book on my shelf at home.  Yup, there was Rugg's Handbook of Sales and Science Fiction, right there in the business section.  :)

Day made!

The Top 5 Speculative Fiction Roles of Richard Kiel

Richard Kiel as Kanamit Here’s a true Sales and Science Fiction entry for the blog.  Actor Richard Kiel passed away on Wednesday, and given his unique and imposing physique, was a staple for roles in speculative fiction since the 1960s.  But Kiel had a thing or two to say about sales; in 2007, he published a book on how to sell real estate, and an IMDB note claims that he was working on another book about using religious principles to achieve sales success.

Here’s my list of top speculative fiction roles of the man the world came to know as Jaws.  They aren’t necessarily his best acting, nor the most impactful roles, but they are the ones that I want to note as we say goodbye to Kiel.

1.  Kanamit:  Kiel played an alien in the 1962 Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man."  The television show episode was written by Rod Serling, from a short story by science fiction giant Damon Knight.  This episode is one of the best Twilight Zones and is often cited in contemporary popular culture.

2.  Eegah:  Also in 1962, he played the title role in a film about an economy-sized caveman on a rampage in Palm Springs.  IMDB reports that it was shot for $15,000 in 14 days...  and even at that, you'd think it would have turned out better than it did.  MST3K riffs it, and rightfully so, but it was Kiel's first film role, and it does hold a certain (notorious) place in the history of spec fic film.

3.  Diablero:  This one is a two-fer, because Kiel appeared in two different roles in two different episodes in 1974 in Darren McGavin's Kolchak: The Night Stalker.  In Episode 8, "Bad Medicine," he was the lead supernatural villain of the episode, a demon from Native American legend who kills for jewelry.  And then he turns around and appears as a bayou swamp monster in Episode 9, "The Spanish Moss Murders."

4.  Malak:  Malak is the first recurring character to make it onto this list.  Kiel was a resident of The Land of the Lost in two 1974 episodes of the live-action Saturday morning show.  He played a caveman, but not an “ugg, ugg, me Malak,” kind of caveman.  Instead, he was wily, clever and intelligent, and styled himself as god or king, but was pretty much a big bully taking advantage of his situation.  Kiel appeared in episode 2, “Survival Kit,” and episode 7, “Flying Dutchman.”  And a word of warning-  this is Season 3 of the series, and if you’re like me, a fan of the original premise of the show, just about the only way to describe season three is, “Everything is different now.”

5.  Jaws:  If you want to argue against the validity of James Bond films as true speculative fiction, I won’t fight you on it.  I just think they’re close enough to warrant inclusion on this list.  Kiel first appeared as the villainous henchman Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and reprised the role in Moonraker (1979), and a comedy cameo appearance in Inspector Gadget (1999).

On a final note or two, it’s also said that Kiel was offered the role of Darth Vader, but turned it down so that he could take the Jaws role in James Bond.  He also was the initial choice for role of the Hulk in the 1978 television series, but turned out not to have a bulky enough of a look to him, and was replaced with Lou Ferrigno.

Revisiting the Thieves' World anthologies

Robert Asprin The main point of Rugg's Handbook of Sales and Science Fiction is that, in general, a person's passion can help them to succeed in their profession, and that in particular, a sales rep's personal interest in speculative fiction can provide ideas for success in sales.  (And I should apologize for the alliteration;  lots of p's and s's in that last sentence!)

And although the Handbook's subtitle mentions "tips and tricks," sometimes the lesson can be as simple as providing an example.  As in the case of Thieves' World.

Robert Asprin's Thieves' World was a fresh and ground-breaking approach to fantasy, and the proof of its success is in its sales pudding; from an over-drinks conversation with friends grew a 12-volume franchise with spin-offs and tie-ins.  Thieves' World sold, and it sold beyond what anyone could have ever predicted.

Regular readers know that I also write for the Fantasy-Faction genre website, and my latest contribution there is a two-part article revisiting the Thieves' World books.  Here's a taste of it, but for the whole thing, be sure to click on over to Fantasy-Faction.  And when you get there, be sure to browse around, the site is chock-full of great articles on fantasy and speculative fiction.

Readers of Fantasy-Faction are likely to be familiar with Scott Lynch and his Gentlemen Bastards books. Lynch has a style that is a pleasure to read, and has given us some very memorable characters. But Lynch has also accomplished a highly engaging bit of worldbuilding, and created a place in which “Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser would have felt right at home,” according to George R. R. Martin.

It was the worldbuilding as much as the title of the third Gentlemen Bastards book that drove me back to my bookshelf lately, as Lynch’s latest, Republic of Thieves, brought to mind Robert Lynn Asprin’s Thieves’ World from 1979. The “thieves’ world” of the title was not actually a planet of outlaws, but instead, the city of Sanctuary, a backwater community in decline and overrun with lawlessness...

[Read the full article at Fantasy-Faction.com]

The top Speculative Fiction roles of Joan Rivers (yes, Joan Rivers)

Writer, actress, producer Joan Rivers passed away today, September 4, 2014, at the age of 81.  A lot of words and phrases come to mind about Joan Rivers-- outspoken, ground-breaking, and Emmy-winning are some that are showing up on a lot of the news sites right now-- but one phrase I'd be willing to bet you don't immediately identify with the Queen of the Barbed One-Liners is Speculative Fiction.

Yet Rivers managed to rack up a decent showing in spec fic on the large and small screens.  Granted, most of those roles were either as her playing herself, or were in spoofy, tongue-in-cheek takes on the genre, (or both!). 

A lot of people will remember Joan Rivers as abrasive and often inappropriate.  And I can't argue with that.  But I will also remember that she attempted to use that abrasiveness and impropriety to move people out of their complacency, to make them think outside of their daily rut.  As quoted in NPR's interview in 2010, her goal was to "Make them listen to the truth and laugh about it."

So as we mark her passing, let's remember a few of her roles in speculative fiction.

1.  Perfume Sales Rep:  In 1984's The Muppets Take Manhattan, Rivers plays a woman working at the perfume sales counter in a department store.  It's a cameo role, because it's intended to be Joan Rivers as a perfume sales rep, but she does get to interact a bit with Miss Piggy.  And yes, like it or not, I do have to categorize the Muppet films as Speculative Fiction.  And I have some solid reasoning for doing so, but that's a different blog entry.

2.  Dot Matrix:  Joan Rivers is credited as the voice of Dot Matrix in 1987's Spaceballs.  Again, spoofs are not my favorite flavor of spec fic, but I'll allow it.  And she reprised the role for 11 episodes of Spaceballs, the Animated Series in 2008-2009.

3.  Joan Rivers:  This is one of those 'playing herself' appearances in Shrek 2 (2004).  All I have to say about this is that after you watch any of the DreamWorks Shrek films, you should go back and read the source material, Shrek! and some of William Steig's other books.  And then ponder whether this Caldecot Medal-winning author could have ever dreamed, back when he wrote about a young ogre in 1990, that it would one day lead to a movie that included a digitally animated Joan Rivers in it? 

4.  Queen Zonthara:  Also in 2004, Rivers voiced the role of Queen Zonthara in the animated television series, Dave the Barbarian.  A Disney Channel Original Series, this show is an example of 'humor through anachronism,' as the barbarians in the middle ages hang out at the shopping mall or make cell phone calls via a crystal ball.  Also of note in this series: Queen Zonthara's daughter, Princess Irmaplotz, was voiced by Joan Rivers' daughter, Melissa Rivers; and the Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy is voiced by Paul Rugg.  (Ruggs are allll over the place in speculative fiction!)

5.  Joan Rivers:  Again, Rivers as Rivers, this time in Iron Man 3 (2013), along with a half-dozen other news/media personalities playing themselves.

Bonus:  Those were roles that Joan Rivers played, IN speculative fiction (even when she was playing herself).  But she also appeared in some productions ABOUT speculative fiction (or speculative non-fiction, as the case may be), including:  The Horror Hall of Fame television movie documentary in 1990; the first episode of the first season of Celebrity Ghost Stories on the Biography channel in 2009; and Spaceballs, the Documentary in 2005.

The top Speculative Fiction roles of Richard Attenborough (that aren't Jurassic Park)

The normal fare of this blog is a post that ties in to one of the lessons from my Handbook of Sales and Science Ficiton.  The recent post about the top Speculative Fiction roles of Robin Williams was related to the Handbook, in that his role in Bicentennial Man was mentioned in one of the lessons.  But that post proved to be so popular on the Interwebs that I've decided to take the advice of Lesson #31.  Hence, today's post.  (I'll let you figure out Lesson #31 on your own; if I do it for you, then you won't really learn anything...)

Lord Richard Attenborough passed away at the age of 90 on August 24, 2014.  His biggest speculative fiction role has to be acknowledged to be that of John Hammond, the owner of Jurassic Park, in the movie of the same name.  But this legend of the film world had a couple of other, if lesser known, roles in productions that can be included under the 'speculative fiction' tent.

1.  Albert Blossom:  Attenborough played circus owner Albert Blossom in 1967's Doctor Doolittle.  When Doolittle brought him the Tibetan Pushmi-pullyu, a llama with a head on each end, Blossom had "never seen anything like it in [his] life."

2.  Kris Kringle:  While so much of his career was in military films, after Jurassic Park, Attenborough showed up in some more whimsical roles, such as that of Kris Kringle/Santa Claus in the 1994 re-make of Miracle on 34th Street.  I personally prefer the original, but that might just be nostalgia speaking.

3.  Magog:  In 2001, Jim Henson's Jack and the Beanstalk; the Real Story was a television movie, and Attenborough played the role of Magog, Arbiter of Justice Great Council of Mac Slec.  An interesting take on the trend of revisiting fairytales, and it won a primetime emmy.

4: Other Interesting Connections to Spec-Fic:  Steven Spielberg has noted Attenborough as one of the people who influenced his work, and Attenborough apparently felt bad when Gandhi, (which Attenborough directed) beat Spielberg's E.T. out for Best Picture in 1982.  Spielberg also is said to have wanted Attenborough for the role of Tootles in Hook (1991), but Attenborough was already committed to directing Chaplin.

So, not nearly the volume of speculative fiction roles as some other actors, but what he lacks in quantity, he makes up for in quality-- Jurassic Park was a classic film, and if Spielberg's vision of Hammond was different than that of author Michael Crichton, I can live with that. 

The top Speculative Fiction roles of Robin Williams

The recent death of actor/comedian Robin Williams was tragic in the true sense of the word.

And while I usually am not one to participate in the communal sorrow that results when a popular figure leaves us, I do feel a certain obligation in this instance to note his passing; Williams was mentioned in the Handbook for his role as Andrew Martin in the movie Bicentential Man.

But the more I pondered it, the more I realized that a large portion of Robin Williams' acting career was in Speculative Fiction.  So I've compiled a few of my favorite Robin Williams Speculative Fiction roles here.

1.  Mork from Ork.  Introduced in a Happy Days episode (who'da thunk that Happy Days was a science fiction series, right?), his role as the alien Mork, sent from the planet Ork to observe and report on life on Earth was spun off into its own successful series, Mork and Mindy.  Although sit-com sci-fi isn't really my cup of tea, this is the show that brought Robin Williams to the nation's attention, running on ABC from 1978 to 1982.

2.  Peter Pan.  My next pick is from the 1991 movie Hook, nearly a decade after the end of Mork and Mindy.  Williams had quite a few movies under his belt by this time, including some other spec-fic films and a pair of his most memorable appearances (Good Morning Vietnam and The Dead Poets Society).  In Hook, he plays a grown-up Peter Pan, living in our contemporary world as Peter Banning and having forgotten his fairytale origins.  Dustin Hoffman, in the title role, abducts Banning's children in an effort to bring about the return of Pan and instigate an ultimate battle between them.  Also starring Julia Roberts in a particularly disturbing portrayal of Tinkerbell, and the outstanding Bob Hoskins as Smee, this is a film that is eminently riffable, yet ultimately enjoyable.

3.  Batty Koda.  The following year, he appeared in the animated film Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest as the voice of a bat who had been the subject of lab experiments.  I'm not so much a fan of this movie, but it was considered to be a pretty fair success, particularly for a cartoon film put out by a studio other than Disney.  (For the past 22 years I have thought that FG was a Don Bluth film, but just now found out that it wasn't.  And apparently, it's a common mistake.)  But I'm listing it here because the storyline of little fairies fighting off the destruction of their rainforest home by humans certainly fits the spec-fic genre, and Williams' role as a deranged lab bat was a great fit with his manic and off-the-wall delivery style.  (And because my daughter calls this movie 'a piece of her childhood.')

4.  Genie.  Close on the heels of Fern Gully, also in 1992, Williams appeared in what would be his most endearing voiceover role ever, as the Genie in Disney's animated film, Aladdin.  What can I say about Genie?  It was a great performance, he delivered some great lines paired with some great animation, sang some great songs.  I don't think a week goes by that we don't quote a line from this movie in our household.  In fact, just writing about it makes me want to go back and watch it again.

5.  Alan Parrish.  The movie Jumanji was released in 1995, a film about a magical boardgame that actually changes reality as the game progresses.  Williams' role was that of a young boy who had been sucked inside the game world and had to live and survive for years in a dangerous jungle setting until finally released back out into our world as a grown man.  Back here, he has to finish the game that was begun so many years ago in order to stop all the jungle hazards that the game is inflicting on his small New England hometown.  The one time that I ever saw Robin Williams in real life was during the filming of this movie, so it's one of my faves in addition to being a fun watch.  And it's worthwhile to read the source material, the Chris Van Allsburg book, both to see his great art and to see how much the story changed in evolution from book to film.

6.  Andrew Martin.  And finally, Robin Williams played the title role in the film Bicentennial Man, a robot (well, technically an android) who develops sentience and becomes a 'person'.  And in his quest for humanity, he lives a full and rich life and finally has his positronic brain altered so that he will undergo the final human experience of death.  The story comes from The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and ultimately from Asimov's short story, "The Bicentennial Man."  It is this role that earned Williams a mention in Lesson 37 of The Handbook of Sales and Science Fiction.


And I'm going to leave it at that.  There are plenty of other speculative fiction roles that Robin Williams played, so feel free to chat about your favorites in the comments section.  He really was a creative artist who will be missed.

Here is the latest from Carol Berg!

Well, it's the beginning of August, school is back in session (at least here in my neck of the woods), and the blog posts have been few and far between.

My excuse (and I do have one, and it is a good one) is that what would otherwise be my blogging time has been taken up with sales, and sci-fi, and Sales and Sci-Fi. 

Let's break that down.  First off, sales.  Last week, I celebrated my one-year anniversary at my current sales position.  I love the company, and I love the work, but as my fellow sales reps out there know, the front end of a sales job means extra time invested in networking, studying, and pounding the pavement, phone and internet.

And now, sci-fi.  Earlier this summer, I became a contributing writer for the genre website Fantasy Faction.  Marc Alpin is an extraordinary young man in the UK who has transformed a passion for the fantasy genre into an award-winning internet presence.  You can find my work for Fantasy Faction at http://fantasy-faction.com/author/raymond-rugg

And finally, the Sales and Sci-Fi.  Well, to be more accurate, the Sales and Swords & Scorcery.  That's the second volume in my collection of sales lessons drawn from the genre of Speculative Fiction.  If you read the first volume (Rugg's Handbook of Sales and Science Fiction, available from Amazon in hard copy or Kindle (and as part of both the lending library for Amazon Prime members and the new Kindle Unlimited program), you already had a taste of Sales and Swords & Sorcery; In a 'coming attractions' teaser at the end of the book, I included a sales lesson drawn from Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora.  So I've also been pounding away at getting this second collection of sales lessons completed and published.

So the blogging has slowed down, but I did want to share something with you that just happened (and yes, the title of this post is a spoiler for what I'm talking about!)

Carol Berg, author of several fantasy novels, and her latest has just been released, Dust and Light.  Read more about it and see her upcoming appearance schedule on her website at http://www.sff.net/people/carolberg/ .

And the reason that I note her most recent book here is that it is one of her earlier works, Revelation (the second book of the Rai-Kirah trilogy) that provides one of the sales lessons that you'll be seeing in my Sales and Swords & Sorcery collection.  So click on over to her site, learn a little bit more about her work, and buy her new book, the first book of her Sanctuary duet. 

Fantasy Rings, the Ultimate Power Accessory!

Check out my latest contribution to the award-winning genre website Fantasy Faction!

http://fantasy-faction.com/2014/fantasy-rings-the-ultimate-power-accessory

Can't get enough of Nimoy

In April, I posted the Sales Lesson #31 from the Handbook of Sales and Science Fiction on the blog.

Instead of doing it again, I'm just going to include a link back to that post:  http://salesandscifi.weebly.com/blog/a-sales-lesson-from-shatner-and-nimoy

The reason that I'm revisiting the sales lesson derived from the careers of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy is that I recently came across a photo (above) that my wife at the Las Vegas Star Trek convention in 2009.  It was really an incredible experience to see these two old friends on stage together chatting about life, the universe and everything.  And Nimoy was really nice to my daughter during the Q&A.  Zachary Quinto was there, too... how's that for cool?

While the Trek Con was the only time I've seen Shatner in person (so far, that is... he's scheduled to be at the Reno WizardWorld ComicCon, so fingers crossed, knock on wood, ptui-ptui), Nimoy sightings have been more frequent here in the Reno-Tahoe area. 

But in January, Leonard Nimoy announced that he is suffering from a lung disease resulting from years of smoking.  Coupled with the fact that he apparently sold his Tahoe house earlier this year, I think it's likely that we won't be seeing as much of him as before.

Nimoy has been a good neighbor to the Tahoe region, a source of pride and inspiration for those of us in the Jewish community, and a science fiction icon (and not just for his work on Trek).

So here's to Leonard Nimoy; l'chaim, and thanks for everything.