Lawrence C. Connolly's Blog, page 5

Obscure SF Films: Part 2

The lightning round.

In my previous post, I reported on the first round of The Obscure Science Fiction Movie Game.

Held on the first day of this year’s North American Science Fiction Convention, the game asked panelists to identify great-but-forgotten films.

Points were awarded based on how many in the audience had seen and liked each movie.

Naturally, films seen and loved by only a few scored higher than better-known and less-appreciated titles.

First-round results: 1s...

Obscure SF Films

… the search continues.

The hunt for overlooked genre films (see my previous post) resumed in Buffalo, NY, when Hugo Award Winning artist Frank Wu hosted a panel on forgotten science fiction films.

Held on the first day of the 16th North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), the panel gave me the chance to join featured writers Ira Nayman, Matthew S. Rotundo, and Stephen R. Wilk in a gameshow format that cast panelists as contestants and audience members as judges.

Here’s h...

Wanted: Standalone Novels

Can you find the standalone science-fiction novel?

Last week’s post concluded by asking, “Do you have any recent stand-alone sf books to recommend?”

Alas, it seems coming up with such recommendations is not as easy as it sounds.

Consider, for example, the books pictured above–seven titles I’ve either read or reread in preparation for a panel at the upcoming Confluence Science Fiction Convention.

Here’s the panel’s description from the con’s program book:

Not Everything Is a...

Great but Forgotten Films

One of the “great” science fiction films I recall seeing as a kid is World Without End, a post-apocalyptic adventure in which a band of astronauts lands on a primitive planet that turns out to be Earth in the future.

That’s not a spoiler.

Other films might present similar surprises as twist endings, but World Without End delivers the revelation early and builds from there. That’s to the film’s credit, though whether it’s enough to make WWE a truly “great” film is debatable.

Regardle...

Science Fiction Summer

Summer days. Books. Spaceships and dinosaurs.

That pretty much captures my misspent youth—so much so that even now I associate lazy July afternoons with Winston juveniles, Ace paperbacks, and EC Comics.

Given that association, it’s fitting that summer is the season of the Nebula Conference (which I posted about here) and the two major science fiction conventions WorldCon and NASFiC.

Summer SF Conventions

Established in 1975, NACFiC is held whenever WorldCon takes place outsid...

Canyon of Dreams

The West Portal of Bronson Cave served as the entrance to the Batcave in the Batman television series (1966-69). If you dig it, they will come.

In the early 1900s, the Union Rock Company excavated a tunnel through the base of a mountain in what was then called Brush Canyon. Their intent was to extract rock to pave the streets of LA.

What they left behind was something more enduring.

Over the years, the tunnel’s three openings have been featured in countless films and television sh...

Putting Together A Short Fiction Collection

You’ve been writing stories. Some have appeared in magazines and anthologies. A few are still making the rounds. And a few more—possibly the best of the lot—don’t seem to be a good fit for the current markets. But one thing’s for sure. You’ve got enough for a collection.

So what do you do?

Next week, at 1:30 PDT on Friday, June 7, three panelists and I will be unpacking that question at the 59th Annual Nebula Conference, held this year at the Westin Pasadena. You can attend in person o...

Writing & Resilience

TEDx Youth event 11 May 2024.

Later this morning, I’m leaving for Milford, the town where Damon Knight, James Blish, and Virginia Kidd helped establish science fiction as a respected literary genre and where The Virginia Kidd Literary Agency still operates out of Kidd’s former residence.

Blish and Kidd dubbed their residence Arrowhead, and during the 1960s it served as a getaway for SF writers who wanted to get away from nearby New York City. Such luminaries as Damon Knight, Kate Wilhel...

Writing in Private

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.”

So said Ernest Hemingway when accepting the Nobel Prize in 1954. And yet, a few decades earlier (according to his recollections in A Moveable Feast) he wrote many of his short stories in public—surrounded by (and occasionally taking inspiration from) the strangers who came and went as he sat in Parisian cafés.

Here’s his account of settling down to work in a café on the Place St.-Michel:

It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, a...

Cabrini Opens

Jonathan Sanger, Bradley Eisenstein, M. Jones, and the 21st Century Scop at Tuesday’s cast & crew screening of Cabrini.

I haven’t posted in a while.

There’s a reason. It’s one I’ve written about before, most recently in a piece titled Walking and Talking, in which I wrote about my inclination to focus on one thing at a time.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Focusing.

Following a round of meetings on a new film project last fall, I’ve been pretty much focusing on meeting a fast-approachin...