Yesterday, while having tea with my wife, I mentioned the uneasy feeling that I was getting over not only how many science fiction writers that influenced the way I think have passed away already, but also of how many were dying lately. I started making a list of dead sci-fi writers (which I enhanced through Wikipedia while writing this post).

Jules Verne died in ‘05. Karel Capek died in ‘38. H. G. Wells died in ‘46. H. P. Lovecraft died of cancer in ‘47. Henry Kuttner went to shovel snow off of his driveway in Jersey and died of a heart attack in ‘58. Paul Linebarger died in 66. Hugo Gernsback died in 67. William Jenkins died in ‘75.Philip K. Dick stroked-out in ‘82. Kuttner’s wife, C. L. Moore died in ‘87, of Alzheimer’s. Cyril Kornbluth died the same year. Bob Heinlein died in ‘88. So did Clifford Simak. Isaac Asimov died in ‘92. As it turns out, of AIDS that he contracted from a blood transfusion. Douglas Adams was working out and had a heart attack in 01. Robert Sheckley went to visit Ukraine, fell ill and later died in a hospital in ‘05. Andre Norton died in ‘05.Stanislaw Lem died in ‘06, also of heart-related problems.

Well, at least Kurt Vonnegut is still alive - said my wife. Yeah, but he’s pretty young, I said. Little did we know that he was already gone…

It seems that I received a package in the mail from him just recently, although it was already 9 years ago.

Theodore Sturgeon, the real Kilgore Trout died in ‘85.

The era’s not over yet. As I went through Wikipedia’s list of important sci-fi writers I was surprised to see so many classics born in the 20s and 30s to be still writing.

Also, three out of six Beatles are still with us.

I have been hunting for Henry Kuttner’s autograph for a very long time. Henry Kuttner is one of my favorite sci-fi writers of all time (see my article about Kuttner). Kuttner died early and his signatures are very rare, fetching upward of $500. I keep a request for a book signed by Kuttner in hope that some ignorant bookseller might sell a signed copy cheaply. A few days ago abebooks wishlist emailed me a really weird item:

“henry kuttner
His personal baby book
his very first book starts on april 7th 1915 and includes his first photograph, mother’s as well as his nurses’ signature, and documents his first 3 words (please nobody take offense) nigger, nigger, nigger. It was in the possesion of author C.L. Moore but now it could be y
ISBN:
Bookseller Inventory #22224
Price: US$ 2500.00 ”

I hope nothing bad happened to Kuttner’s wife and co-author, C.L. Moore. Why would a thing like that end up on the market?

Now, that’s a rather weird choice of first words for a baby. But the year being 1915 and everything, my guess is that little Henry must have been rather fond of the nursery rhyme that Agatha Christie used for her whodunit masterwork. Here’s a write-up from Rosetta Books, and eBook publisher:

.. A note about the title — Christie originally called the novel Ten Little Niggers, a reference to an old nursery rhyme that she places, framed, in the guest rooms of the ten characters in the story. Each dies in the manner described in a verse of the sing-song rhyme — e.g., “Ten little nigger boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there nine.” The rhyme ends with the words, “… and then there were none.” The offensive word, which carries an extra dimension of ugliness in American culture, was replaced with “Indians” for American publication. Ironically, “Indian” is now also a politically incorrect term, so the novel has officially been retitled And Then There None. As Charles Osborne points out in his delightful and indispensable study The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, the shift in the old American title creates a bit of confusion. For Americans think it refers to another nursery rhyme that begins, “One little, two little, three little Indians …” The nature of the original title reflects the time in which the novel it was written and the world in which Christie became an adult and a writer, one shaped largely by the British Empire and the racist thinking of the past. The cosmetic change of title to And Then There Were None is merely that, however. It erases a troubling shadow from an extraordinary, hugely entertaining achievement.

Some somewhat related links:

Straight Dope : In whodunits, it’s “the butler did it.” Who did it first?

A complaint to Canadian Broadcast Standards Council :

This case is, in the experience of the CBSC, unique; it marks the first occasion on which a Regional Council has been asked to review the title, as opposed to the content, of a television program. The broadcast in question is a cooking show entitled Gwai Lo Cooking which is aired by CFMT-TV (Toronto). The source of the complaint is the historic Cantonese expression “gwai lo” which is used as a material component of the show’s title. In its etymological background, “gwai lo” translates as “foreign devil” or “ghostly fellow” and it continues to be used by some Chinese to refer to “pale-skinned” Westerners. In the context of the title in question, “gwai lo” refers to the show’s host, who, although of Caucasian, rather than Oriental, much less Chinese, descent, speaks Cantonese and is able to offer North Amercian and European cooking recipes to the Cantonese-speaking Chinese Canadian community. …

The skyscraper with the globe on top is called the Paramount Building. The building has a mountain like shape and the little stars on the illuminated clock face look like the stars on Paramount Pictures logo:

That building used to have a kick ass movie theater on the ground floor, the kind described in my favorite sci-fi story of all time, Henry Kuttner’s “The Proud Robot”. Now it houses WWF store and NY Times offices. WWF undertook an amazingly complex project of rebuilding the original theater marquee:

“Working with the New York City Landmark Commission was a prolonged challenge in replicating the historic sign. Purists on the Landmark Commissions often push for exact replications ­ right down to the materials involved. But Tobin & Parnes had ideas for bringing the epic sign into the 21st century using new materials and technologies.
The commission initially rejected the idea to use LED technology in 1996, but later approved the concept as more signs in the surrounding area started incorporating LEDs. “
…
Multimedia Signage Inc. in California manufactured the signage that boasts the highest resolution ever achieved. The LED pixels and cells have a .45 pitch. The highest resolution before this sign was created was .75 pitch.
…
In order to get TV quality resolution on these screens we needed to go with that .45 pitch, otherwise the resolution would only give you a clear image of someone from their shoulders to the top of their head,�? said Ms. Dibner. “Using the .45 pitch we can get almost the whole person in there.�?
…
But how do you use technology without distracting from the historical detail of the sign? It was something that many were not sure could be achieved using LED technology because the sign curved up and down. But the Landmark Commission demanded that the sign’s original curvature be replicated.

The solution: using very small diodes and arranging them to match the curve. The result: any image on the sign curves with the curvature of the marquee with no distortion, another requirement of the Landmark Commission. “

I just love the topic of new technology meeting the old. But Landmark Commission people are nasty engineer hating snobs.