From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Sat Sep 11 14:26:21 1999 Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 20:48:29 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9908C" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 15:46:13 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Fwd: [FEM-SF] Victoria Brownworth Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm forwarding this from another listserve ... >Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 19:33:33 -0400 >From: "Susanna J. Sturgis" > >This isn't typical FEM-SF fare, but I'm probably not the only one who can >relate to a story like this, plus I've been in two of Victoria's >anthologies, _Night Bites_ and the new _Night Shade_. I've contributed to >her expenses in the past and tried to keep in touch, but even I didn't know >that her partner had left. > >Please feel free to pass it along. > > > >Susanna J. Sturgis >sjs2@capecod.net > > > >> A C A L L F O R H E L P >> Lesbian/queer author Victoria Brownworth, is ill and in desperate need of >> help. A Pulitzer Prize nominee, for two decades her writing has defined >> issues and highlighted personalities. She is the author of _Too Queer: >> Essays from a Radical Life_ and editor of _Out for Blood: Tales of Mystery >> and Suspense by Women_, _Night Bites: Vampire Stories by Women_, _Night >> Shade: Gothic Tales by Women_, _Out for More Blood: Tales of Malice and >> Retaliation_, _Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors_ (with Judith M. >> Redding), and _Restricted Access: Lesbians on Disability_ (with Susan >> Raffo). >> One of the things she wrote after we convinced her of the necessity of >> going public with her difficulties was, "i know i CANNOT be the only dyke >> out there experiencing this, so in some way i am hoping that this will also >> raise awareness about how easily this could happen to any of us." >> Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Please forward this message >> and see that it is published in the gay/lesbian/by press and circulated on >> the Net. >> Send contributions and good wishes to: Victoria Brownworth >> c/o Hazel McPhee >> 311 W. Seymour St. >> Philadelphia, PA 19144 >> Sincerely, >> Tee A. Corinne, Nikki Baker, Nancy K. Bereano and Firebrand Books, Kathleen >> DeBold & Barbara Johnson, Roberto Friedman, Jewell Gomez, Karla Jay, Judith >> Katz, Lambda Book Report, Lee Lynch, Mabel Maney, Donna J. McBride & >> Barbara Grier and Naiad Press, Susan Raffo, Ruthann Robson, Eric Rofes; >> Carol Seajay, the women of Seal Press. >> O P E N LETTER >> F R O M V I C T O R I A B R O W N W O R T H >> it's so hard for me to write this. i am in so much physical and emotional >> pain, i don't know how i am going to get through this. suicide seems to >> beckon ever more strongly because it is really hard for me to see a future >> for myself under these circumstances. but i know that until i get myself in >> a less scary financial place i can't even imagine what happens next. my >> friends keep telling me that i have so much more to give and so forth but >> all i can see is this yawning abyss. so here is the information: >> i have a progressive neuromuscular disease that has left me in a >> wheelchair and dependent on others for basic needs such as bathing, >> cooking, cleaning, laundry. in addition my vision is periodically affected >> by this which makes me legally blind for long stretches. i am also >> seriously fatigued most of the time--muscle weakness and exhaustion. this >> makes work difficult. i am unable to do the long investigative magazine >> pieces that were both money- making and on which i built my career as a >> journalist because i can no longer physically go anywhere in order to do a >> story. and the work i can do--reviewing, columns--pay very little. >> for the past few years my partner of twelve and a half years has provided >> most of the care for me, however she has left me, suddenly and without >> warning. i now find myself in a desperate situation. i no longer have the >> necessary physical help i had from her. in addition i find myself >> financially destitute because she has also left me with a significant >> amount of debt, including a mortgage in foreclosure. though i have applied >> for disability, i have not yet been approved. there are no other financial >> services available to me in my city as welfare reform has made welfare >> available only to those physically able to work, which i am not. the MS >> society has given me a motorized wheelchair, which makes getting around >> downstairs in my house much easier, i cannot get out of my house easily--in >> fact with only three exceptions, i have only left my house to go to the >> hospital or doctors' appointments in the past three years. i am on a >> waiting list for a ramp and wheelchair lift for my house but that could >> take as long as two years. if i am awarded disability it is my >> understanding they will provide these services. in addition i must pay for >> health care and my medications alone run several hundred dollars a month. >> my level of isolation is extreme, my level of fear even greater. basically >> i am in danger of becoming homeless if i cannot get my bills brought up to >> date. >> i don't want to have to beg for help, and yet that is the position i find >> myself in. i am certain i am not the only lesbian out there who has found >> herself in similar circumstances. perhaps as a community we need to be >> directing more energy toward care for those who are not middle class and >> who have no other supports. how easy it is to fall on extremely hard times >> when one has no savings and depends entirely on what work one can do to >> live. certainly as we all get older this is going to happen to more and >> more of us. i certainly never expected to find myself disabled and then >> suddenly alone and penniless after many years in a stable relationship. >> disability is hard on both partners and sometimes people break down under >> the pressure--i know i have and my partner obviously also did, since the >> dependency had come to overwhelm her. however, despite my long-time >> aversion to marriage, i realize that if we had a legal marriage of twelve >> and a half years--or even a recognized common-law marriage as we would have >> had in our state if we were cohabiting heterosexual partners, i would not >> be in this financial state; she would be obligated to pay me the money she >> owes toward our mutual bills and our mortgage instead of being able to just >> walk away with vague promises of payment in some nebulous future. >> i wish i didn't have to go to the community with my very private personal >> pain and hardship to ask for help. it has been far easier for me over the >> years to give help to others rather than request it for myself, and for >> nearly thirty years that is the kind of activist i have been. but i have no >> choice. i have considered suicide frequently in recent weeks because i >> cannot see a way out of this situation. it is my hope that members of my >> community will reach out to help me through this very difficult time. >> > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 18:33:41 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: How Mercury Press has changed Your life. Comments: To: HORROR@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU, SCIENCEFICTION-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU, Multiple recipients of list SF-LIT Comments: cc: Tia Hamilton , Aileen Gallagher , "alektra@aol.com" , "jecedit@aol.com" , "jem@lm.com" , "srcdilbert@juno.com" , Fred Ollinger , "remjem@erols.com" , Melissa Holt MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Perhaps not much directly, but then again...THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION's 50th anniversary issue is due out around 1 September, with new or newly published work by Theodore Sturgeon, Judith Merril, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Kate Wilhelm, Terry Bisson, Robert Silverberg, Jonathan Carroll, Lucius Shepard, Robert Sheckley, Gahan Wilson, Gregory Benford, and perhaps others. US$5.95. These are all folks who have been featured in the magazine over the years, and it has been an important market for many of them...and it's the last remaining publication of the Mercury Press, which began as the publisher of AMERICAN MERCURY, the slightly more sober magazine of politics and the culture H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan founded after the death of their mercurial THE SMART SET...the latter magazine having been an important early market for folks ranging from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Eugene O'Neill. The MERCURY was a magazine to be reckoned with in its time; publisher Lawrence Spivak was able in 1945 to get a radio show on NBC called "AMERICAN MERCURY Presents Meet the Press"...which by 1947 had gone over to television, and would soon drop the first three words from its title. (Shortly before Spivak left Mercury Press in the early '50s, the AMERICAN MERCURY was sold to folks who had a predilection for reprinting Mencken's most anti-Jewish passages...as such a charming inspiration to us all, the AM straggled into the early '80s.) Back when they were editing THE SMART SET, one way Mencken and Nathan had attempted to bolster their finances was through launching a mystery-fiction magazine: BLACK MASK. While their BLACK MASK was not the seminal market for American "hardboiled" crime fiction it would become (the first home for such pioneers as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, and Carroll John Daly [imagine Mickey Spillane without the sadistic sexual passages]), the pulp sold well. So, when AMERICAN MERCURY considered adding to its stable, publishing a mystery fiction magazine seemed like a good idea, and ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE began publishing in 1942, in the fairly novel "digest-sized" format (probably a function of wartime paper restrictions) which nonetheless helped differentiate it from most crime-fiction pulps visually, to supplement how the contents, as founding editor Frederic Dannay (half of "Ellery Queen") saw them, would help to erase artificial distinctions between crime fiction and literature of good quality. EQMM has remained the most consistently literate of the crime-fiction magazines (contributor Anthony Boucher offered the first English translations of Jorge Luis Borges's fiction to the magazine in the mid/late '40s, for example), and frequently the best-selling (after the fading of the Spillane-like MANHUNT in the mid-'50s to the very recent surge of its eventual stablemate ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, it was the most widely-read for decades). When Boucher and his friend J. Francis McComas asked if Mercury Press if they wanted to exploit the audience the AVON FANTASY READER had proved available for fantastic fiction magazines in the 1940s, Spivak et alles cautiously (even a bit timidly, but the postwar years were tough for magazines) gave their approval for an EQMM-like digest called THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY. With a mix of reprints and such commercially-notable names as Stuart Palmer on the cover, the first issue did well enough to allow THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION to plunge ahead, going from quarterly to bimonthly status quickly, and monthly soon after. A large number of folks who've done notable work in fantastic short fiction have appeared in its pages, ranging from Shirley Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, John Collier, Herbert Gold, and Bruce Jay Friedman to Gary Jennings, Jane Roberts, and Stephen King, and also including more "usual suspects" as Avram Davidson (one of its editors), Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Alfred Bester, Isaac Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, Jack Vance, Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny...and, perhaps more than any other magazine, has highlighted the work of women writers in the fields, including Joanna Russ (her "first story" among many others), Le Guin, Margaret St. Clair, Merril, the enigmatic Wilma Shore, and many, many others (including editor K K Rusch). Just listing the columnists for the magazine is pretty impressive: for Books: Boucher, McComas, Bester, Damon Knight, Davidson, Leiber, Merril, Russ, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Harlan Ellison, John Clute, and at least a dozen more (including the current rotation of Elizabeth Hand, Robert Kilheffer, Douglas Winter and--? blanking), with Charles de Lint doing short reviews; Science: Isaac Asimov, Ted Thomas, Gregory Benford and Pat Murphy and her partner (another blank!); films/visual media: Charles Beaumont, William Morrison ("legitimate theater"), Baird Searles, Ellison, Kathi Maio; Bloch, Charles Platt and others have had running series of articles on fandom, author profiles, and other matters. And since this is devolving into an ad, I'll simply note that MP's VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION was a remarkable magazine in the field in the late '50s, publishing some of the most adult work in the field up to that point (the later revival was less revolutionary, though did publish good long-form fiction), and MERCURY MYSTERY (one of a number of EQMM spinoffs) was the first to pluck a "lost" Hammett novella from obscurity, among other services to the reading public. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 13:20:33 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Call for papers on horror literature and other media Comments: cc: Melissa Holt MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" "John Carpenter's Vampires" indeed. John Steakley's VAMPIRE$, dumbed down for film. -----Original Message----- From: Bob Strauss [mailto:STRAUSS@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 1999 2:35 PM To: HORROR@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU Subject: I offer this from an sff newsgroup, unedited Subject: Popular Culture Assn. con focuses on Horror Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 23:24:46 GMT From: busick@microbyte.net (Jennifer Busick) Newsgroups: sff.horror.news This came to my husband's history email list, and I thought some folks round these parts might be interested. I'll post it wherever it seems like it might fit, and if anyone with access to the private groups thinks it ought to be in one of those, please repost. JenBusick * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [3] CALL FOR PAPERS: HORROR The Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association invites papers or panels treating all aspects of Horror, primarily in literature and film, for its annual meeting to be held at the Sheraton Old Town Hotel in Albequerque, New Mexico (February 9-12, 2000). After the 1999 meeting, the organizations' members wanted to return to this wonderful place because of the great location, the fine hotel, food, sights, and museums. Possible themes for papers/panels include but are not restricted to: - individual writers, especially Jonathan Carroll and Jack Cady - the new British writers: Kim Newman, Christopher Fowler, Graham Joyce, and Nicholas Royle - the "brand-name" writers of horror: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, John Saul, Dan Simmons, etc. - women in horror fiction: Melanie Tem, Lucy Taylor, Lisa Tuttle, Yvonne Navarro, Elizabeth Massie, Kathe Koja, P.D. Cacek, Nancy Holder, Tanith Lee, Poppy Z. Brite, S.K. Epperson, etc. - H.P. Lovecraft and his influence on horror - crossovers between mainstream and genre: Fred Chappell and Angela Carter - trends and periods in horror fiction (splatterpunk, the pulps, the Gothic tradition, etc.) - publishing and marketing (Arkham House, small magazines and small presses, The Horror Writers of America, The Bram Stoker Awards, the decline of the literary horror market, etc.) - horror in the Southwest and Texas (Texas writers like Joe Lansdale, texts about the Southwest like John Carpenter's Vampires, etc.) - horror in popular culture (the use of horror icons, Halloween traditions, Saturday morning cartoons, comic books, etc.) - the new stars of horror film: Kevin Williamson and Joss Whedon - individual film-makers: David Cronenberg, George Romero, Dario Argento, Wes Craven, etc. - television: from Buffy to The X-Files (or: from Dark Shadows to Brimstone) - television classics: The Twilight Zone - classic horror film (Murnau, Whale, Tourneur, Hitchcock, etc.) - body horror - violence and censorship - trends in scholarship and criticism - special effects in horror film - the politics of horror All creative additions and modifications to these suggested topics are welcome. Please submit a one-page abstract or panel proposal and a c.v. by December 1, 1999 to the Area Chair. (Because I will be teaching overseas for most of the year, please submit your proposal via e-mail first.) Dr. Steffen Hantke 4610 West 26th Ave. Denver, CO 80212 steffenhantke@hotmail.com Please visit our website at http:www2.okstate.edu/swpca for more information about our association's history, last year's program, as well as material about other areas of interest for popular culture/American culture studies. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------- Poplar Forest Books Specialists in SF/F, Southern Authors, US History Visit our webpage at http://www.abebooks.com/home/BUSICK/ Catalog 3 coming in August ==================================================================== Bob Strauss Cataloger Hunter Library Western Carolina U. strauss@wcu.edu Class home page: http://www3.wcu.edu/~strauss Personal home page: http://www3.wcu.edu/~strauss/personal ==================================================================== ******* To leave the Horror List, send the message SIGNOFF HORROR to: listserv@listserv.indiana.edu *******