Sunset and Steel Rails — the first draft is finished as of about fifteen minutes ago! So … now to the Alpha reader and editor, and the latest novel in “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and Lots of Sidearms” will be ready for launch in November.
And now for finishing up the Tales of Luna City …
So I saw a couple of variations of a news story regarding the home in a teeny town in Oregon which was the location for exteriors in a movie shot at about the time that my daughter was in elementary school. Yes – the simple white frame house on a hill overlooking a Hampton Inn, a major local road, and something of the sea-front; the house featured in the movie The Goonies … a fun and funny kid’s movie, which has lately been headlined because the current owner of same is sick to death of movie fan visitors showing up at the garden gate and being … well, showing up and apparently in herds and a good portion of them being rather invasive, rude and awful. It is the 30th anniversary of the making of that movie, and the surge of visitor interest has become overwhelming, at least as far as the current owner is concerned, although it seems that the administration of the city of Astoria has seized the day and posted signs all over the place, referencing the Goonies House. Well, all props to them, and I am certain that they are reaping some benefit through tourists visiting. I live in a town which boasts two major tourist draws, so I cannot be dismissive of all of that. I also grew up in Sothern California, where seeing a camera crew at work, or recognizing a familiar place in the background of a movie or TV was just part of the charm of living there.
There are lots of houses which were used as exteriors for movies, some of them with every bit as much of a cult following; Ralphie’s house in A Christmas Story, for instance, although in that case, the house itself is now a local museum. The Winnetka house used in Home Alone, and Home Alone 2 is still a private residence and the current owners don’t seem to be particularly bothered by sightseers. The Money Pit mansion seems to be located at the end of a quarter-mile long driveway, which probably helps to keep sightseers at a respectable distance. The house used for exteriors of The Godfather movies is perhaps a little closer to the street, but still … These last three are or were recently on the market; I am certain that whoever purchased them, or is thinking about purchasing them has noted the past use of the property for a movie or movies as just a curious tidbit. But still … When did private property become a public utility?
The comments on the various news stories about the Goonies house are a bit dismaying, to me as a home-owner. The current owner bought the place – which really looks to be quite a modest little hillside cottage with a splendid view – some fifteen years ago. Likely, she viewed it having been used as a movie location as just another curious tidbit; oh, yeah, that’s interesting, right along the lines of having had a now-famous person born there, or having guested George Washington for a night or two. Slap up a historical marker and call it a day; not everyone wants to set up a museum or souvenir shop in Home Sweet Home. A fair number of comments seem to suggest, with various degrees of snideness, that is what the owner should do – but really? Turn your house into a commercial enterprise? Again, when did private property become a public utility? It seems that the owner was quite gracious in earlier years, with a relatively small trickle of Goonie fans, but the trickle has become an ungovernable, unendurable flood. There’s a limit to what the owner of a private home can put up with – and no, selling and moving away (the other snide suggestion) is no solution, either. Hanging up blue tarps and declaring the house closed is a relatively mild response; I am only surprised there isn’t a ten-foot wall, and restricted access at the bottom of the driveway.
By way of decency, one of the stars of the Goonies is asking for consideration on the part of the beleaguered homeowner. Good for him.
For a long time, especially after that tour in Greenland – thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle, among the rocks and glaciers, the ravens and the little furry arctic foxes whose pelts turned from brownish to pure white in winter – I rather liked Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels. Likely this is because I could relate very well, to being stuck in an isolated, cold and dim place, at the far end of the supply chain, far and away from sunshine, family and the accustomed amusements. I sympathized deeply with the Terrans who got assigned to that cold, forested planet with one dim red sun and four moons: seriously, Greenland didn’t seem very far removed or alien from all that. I bought several of the Darkover series from the Stars and Stripes bookstore in Athens, ordered most of the rest from the publisher later on, even essayed a couple of short stories myself, after reading some of the fan-fic anthology collections and thinking to myself, “Oh, heck – I can do much better than that!” I went as far as submitting a story for a new anthology, only alas, by the time I got to it, MZB had stopped doing them altogether, and the submission was returned, with the usual curt rejection letter also adorned with a stern warning regarding violating MZB’s copyright by committing fan-fic set in “her” world. Spending so much of those years overseas, I was barely aware that there were such things as science fiction conventions anyway. Only when I got to Salt Lake City, and discovered that the various local science fiction, fantasy and Society for Creative Anachronism enthusiasts held one downtown annually, did I find out about cons, or how much fun they were.
No, I never met any famous, near-famous, or even up and coming authors. Basically, the Salt Lake City con was more a chance for local fans to dress in costume, and maybe collect an autograph from an actor or two who played a character in one of the Star Trek iterations. Somewhere I have one from Armin Shimerman … who is a real hoot as a raconteur, and totally at home with playing a slippery character. Because, of course – as he said modestly, “They paid me lots of money.”
But long after I left the military, I still had a soft spot for Darkover, and ventured into The Mists of Avalon – being an enthusiast for things Arthurian from way back. I even bought some of the other non-Darkover books, including one which the Daughter Unit insists indignantly that I should not have ever let her read. This was The Firebrand – a retelling of the Trojan War from the point of view of the prophetess Cassandra. Part of the fall of Troy involves the incidental rape of a young girl, which horrified my daughter – even more so, to read this year of matters relating to MZB’s personal life and the ongoing abuse that her daughter was subjected to … by both parents, it seems. The matter of MZB’s husband being a notorious pedophile – and this being common knowledge among con-goers in the 70s and 80s came up in several discussion threads earlier this year in regards to the Great Hugo Sad Puppies Flap, to the astonished dismay of certain of us who had not been die-hard con-attendees or writers trying to break into any kind of mainstream – science fiction or otherwise – for more than the last decade or so. (The full horrifying testament by MZB’s daughter is linked here.)
The term “horrified” just doesn’t begin to describe my initial reaction … look, it’s no news to me that there have been writers with rackety and disreputable lives, sometimes even involving courtrooms and prison sentences of varying terms, whether justified or not. But this is far, far beyond my toleration – perpetuating and turning a blind eye to sex abuse of a child … really, how much of that episode in The Firebrand drew on real life and first-hand experience, tell me? Looking back now — her books all seem to me to be tainted with a particularly ugly miasma. Certain passages, incidents and characters … I would have to close the book and walk away, now, for now they feel like something drawn on more than imagination alone.
No, I’m not going to rush out and burn those books of hers that I have, or dump them on Goodwill – but I can’t have them on my shelves now, even remembering what enjoyment I once took from them, or even some of the lessons in world-construction and story-telling that I gained. So, into a box they go, and buried out in the garage someplace far back in a corner. There are quite a few of them, I am rather astonished to see – the box is more than filled, and likely I will have to find a larger one, once we find that copy of Mists of Avalon. Yep, that goes, too.
As I write historical fiction and only read around the edges of science fiction, this year’s Sad Puppies campaign, to widen the field for Hugo nominations held some interest for me, in the sense that I do have on-line writer friends involved, some of them very deeply involved indeed. In a small way I have been pulled into the shallows of the controversy just by online friendship and shared interests. The whole controversy would take several thousand words to explain and explore, I have my own books to work on … and well, others more involved are considerably more eloquent.
This is a fairly concise question and answer session. There has been a lot of calumny heaped on certain writers by what appears to be a small, but noisily effective faction, whose thrust seems to be that book awards – and readers – should be more guided not by interest in a cracking good story, but rather by the degree of political correctness involved, and the gender/orientation/ethnic background of either the author or the characters. And that only a certain kind of science fiction fan is the legitimate kind. One of the authors so distained by the politically correct set fires back, with a dispatch from Fort Living Room. A long-time fan replies here.
We did have fun at the Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne last Saturday – although, alas, I don’t think we sold many books, those of us who were in the community room. The new library building is altogether splendid, and with a lovely landscaped area in back and to one side, and with a large open space in front that may eventually become a sort of overflow adjuct to historic Town Square. If we had been in the old library building, which was in one of the old buildings edging Town Square, we might have had more foot-traffic from Boerne’s Market Days … but then there wasn’t room for anything like that in the old building, and as the saying goes, if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle. But still – I was at a table across from Jeff Morgenthaler, who does local history non-fic, and whom I have known about for years: the owners at Berkman Books in Fredericksburg now and again ventured that they would love to host a joint event for the two of us, as he did in non-fic what I did as a ripping good yarn in the Adelsverein Trilogy. The book of his which I always recommend to readers is The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country, for a good and readable overview – of exactly what the title says – and an encyclopedic bibliography, for those who want more, more, more.
Next table to us was Jack Lyndon Thomas – a Vietnam veteran with several novels focusing on that war – among them one with the intriguing title The Monsoon Killed the Tiger. He hit it off with my daughter, both being veterans of wars four decades apart. 
Really, though – I think the biggest hit of the whole book event was a kid’s book author, Tina Mollie Fisher – her book is called Pig’s Big Adventure … and she brought a tiny, very young piglet as part of her table … well, table and enclosure display. The piglet’s name was Princess, but I wouldn’t have been able to resist naming it Bacobit, or Wilburina. I can see why people get them as pets, and then are totally appalled when they grow to three hundred pounds or so. And that was my Saturday ….
We will do it all again next year – it’s only about the second time for this book event, and sometimes these things take a while for word to get around. Even without a pig ….
Recent Comments