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Sime-Gen Perspectives Newsletter
April 2000
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Contents:
Feature Articles
News
Copyright Notice
Unsubscribe instructions
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***** Feature Articles *****
**INTRODUCING NEW VOLUNTEERS:
*Greg Anderson will be editing logs.
*Lori is a graphics specialist.
*Ed Imperatore is our new IRC Moderator
*William Cassidy, artist.
* Claire Gadzikowski
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MOONDANCE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
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Writers! Screenwriters! Playwrights! Filmmakers! Producers! Agents & Managers! Directors!
CALL FOR ENTRIES!
The Moondance International Film Festival is by and for women. Our objective is to promote and encourage women screenwriters, playwrights, short-story writers and women who make independent films, and the best work by women, in any genre of feature films, animation, documentaries, short films, stage plays & short stories. Moondance provides a forum in which those women can have the opportunity for their work to be viewed and accepted by the powers that be, within the international film community.
Moondance encourages and promotes non-violence, as a solution to conflicts, in the arts & film.
We also promote themes encouraging anti-discrimination, anti-bias or anti-bigotry.
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Send in your entries now! Entry fees are discounted for early entries!
Entries accepted from April 1, 2000 through October 1, 2000 (postmark)
Categories:
SCREENPLAYS
FEATURE FILMS
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
ANIMATION
SHORT FILMS
STAGEPLAYS
SHORT STORIES
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Competition Eligibility:
Women filmmakers and women screenwriters, playwrights and short-story writers only. International entries are greatly welcomed.
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Questions? Want more info? Need the entry forms? Go to: http:// moondancefilmfestival.com
E-mail Contact: moondanceff@aol.com
For printable entry forms, go to: http://moondancefilmfestival.com
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Check out the Updates link on the homepage, for letters from Moondance 2000 entrants, attendees, & participants!
View the photos link from Moondance 2000!
Send the URL to friends & colleagues! http://moondancefilmfestival.com
**LITERARY INFLUENCES ON LIFE
Wendy Fisher writes, "I really didn't read scifi until I was in college. I was an au pair for a wealthy family (whom I still bless). They gave me a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land. For thirty years, Heinlein’s views of the future world influenced my worldview -- my ethics, my competitiveness, my sexuality, even my faith. Then I discovered that, in general, I was identifying with his male protag[onist]s, rather than his female characters. Oh well, I could have done worse than to emulate a Fair Witness or Thorbie or any of a dozen others. In the Golden Years, Heinlein preached against discrimination, taught tolerance, gave hope that endless love really did exist, cautioned against governmental control, attacked organized religion, described 'honor' and 'courage' and 'perseverance' in a way that almost anybody could understand, offended everyone who read him at one time or another about something or other, stimulated thought, and sugar coated it all with adventure and excitement. In short, he taught some of us to be human!"
Ann Marie Olson admits, "one of the earlier influences in my life, on the issue of relationships at least, was The Forbidden Tower, which might explain why certain concepts still are very difficult for me to figure out, like jealousy and monogamy. Most of the other SF/F I read when I was younger didn't deal much with relationships or even characters to the same degree, so it didn't really have as much of an effect on my own life. It was only much later I read Heinlein.
"Later on it was a whole plethora of writers, from Burroughs, PKD and Crowley through Varley, Forrester, Shakespeare and Blake who expanded my horizons, as it were. My tastes are quite catholic and getting worse as I age. Even negative examples are now grist for the mill.
"Actually I take a great deal more from non-fiction than fiction. If something catches my roving eye when I am reading, I go look up the sources on the phenomenon. (Where my interests in child birth, Gnosticism, recreational pharmaceuticals, medicine in general, military history, fiber arts, Islam and so on, ad infinitum, come from.)"
Jaye lists works that have enriched her life. "1. The Island Stallion Races [by] Walter Farley. [Two] extraterrestrials show up[,] and one helps Steve realize his dream[. H]e takes them to Cuba (written pre-Castro, obviously) to race. Started me on SF.
"2. Norton - I loved the [books about] people who [are] "mind-locked" in the SF, and related to the people in Witch World.
"3. Heinlein, especially Stranger in a Strange Land. What strange ideas for a 17-year-old in California's Bible belt!
"4. Gene Stratton-Porter put me in touch with the world my parents grew up in.
"5. McCaffrey - all the earlier stuff before she began rehashing each ‘story’ from many points of view.
"6. Sime-Gen - Hooked by the cover blurb of Ambrov Keon, [I] went out and bought a copy of every book I could find in the universe. Then [I] branched out to Those of My Blood and Dreamspy and First Lifewave, which I still love, and to the Duschau trilogy, which never really grabbed me. This was the first universe where a new character of my own began talking to me. Someday — probably after I finish college -- I'll master the skills to tell my own stories.
"7. Darkover -- I know the cover art was the first thing that caught my eye, but the [mention] in the front that Marion and JL had been in correspondence for a long time clinched it.
"8. The earlier Mercedes Lackey books -- the Arrows and the Herald Mage ones, most of all.
"Honorable Mention -- VERY honorable -- Laurell K. Hamilton, Vonda N. McIntyre, Madeline L'Engle, Agnes Sanford, Elizabeth Peters, Mary Stewart[, a]nd a lot of others who are not coming to mind.
"Because my SF reading began in 1963, it's hard to identify where I first encountered a lot of ideas; but in my 20's, when I "swore off" SF/F because of religious pressure, I realized that, in some strange way, I was killing myself [through] emotional and mental starvation."
Leigh Kimmel writes, "Frank Herbert's Dune was certainly a major influence on my life -- when I read it as a sophomore in high school, I felt like my head was going to burst absorbing all the new concepts and ways of looking at the world. (Of course now, as I look back at a book report I wrote on it then, I realize just how shallow my comprehension of it at the time was). It was my first experience of a sf book that took religion seriously as a major force in human society. Every other sf book I'd read at the time either ignored it or treated it as something humanity would soon outgrow as we went to the stars."
"What immediately jumps into my head upon reading the question," says Janice St. Clair, "is A Wrinkle in Time (and every other fictional or autobiographical printed word by Madeleine L'Engle), which I devoured (repeatedly) after discovering it. Though I have also devoured and reread Heinlein throughout my teenage and adult life and he helped me immeasurably in developing my free thinking, reading L'Engle always left me with the feeling that no matter how powerful real evil in all its forms is that love and stability and goodness persist and ultimately I will be all right. When I read Wrinkle for the first time as a young teen, I was not getting that security from any other source, nor did I for decades afterward. I don't know if I would have survived without her fiction."
"Heinlein springs immediately to mind," says Pat Newcomb, "Others have spoken eloquently about his endless delineation of the meaning of being human. I too feel that he taught me that.
"Earlier in my reading, though, I read F. Paul Wilson's Healer, which similarly explored ways for societies to be completely tolerant and a human/nonhuman relationship of the deepest possible connection (the alien lived in the protag[onist]'s brain). Their efforts to fight what seemed at first a physical/mental illness plague outline the cogent reasons to be a healer and factored into my ambition to enter medicine.
"Even before that, though, Isaac Asimov's elegantly reasoned stories explored how to think and reason scientifically. Asimov, without losing touch of the human soul (think "Bicentennial Man" or The Gods Themselves), displayed the awesome power of science, and helped make me a scientist.
"LeGuin (Wizard of Earthsea) left a powerful mark on me, exposing the magic of Naming in her rigorously constructed world, and speaking Truth throughout. And, though it took me quite a while to warm to her, McKillip (esp. Stepping through the Shadows, an autobiographical/mythical work, and "The Riddlemaster Trilogy") explores the landscape of the mind, especially at the uncertain border between reality and madness; and that, after all, is where Magic resides.
"Well, I could go on, since books have been therapeutic shelters in times of trouble and provided stimuli when I needed to work, they've been advisors in quandaries and companions in travel. But you guys know that. That's why I'm on the [Sime~Gen] list."
***** News *****
*WEDDING: Leigh H. Kimmel and Larry P. Ulrey will be wed at 8am on 1 July 2000 in Salon E of the Indianapolis Marriott, located at 7202 E. 21st Street, Indianapolis, IN 46219. The wedding will be during the science fiction convention, Inconjunction. A reception will be held that evening in their room (room number TBA). Let’s all extend them both congratulations and wish them a long and happy marriage.
*PARODY contest winner and October poetry contest winners can be read at <http://www.simegen.com/contest/winners.html>.
*WORLDCON IN CHICAGO. If you are planning to be at the convention, don’t forget the Sime-Gen party. Larry Ulrey (ulrey@juno.com) is the contact for the party, which is tentatively scheduled for about 9pm on Friday, 1 September. Information about the convention can be found at <http://www.chicon.org/main/top.htm>.
*FOUNDING 400: Karen Litman reports that there are currently 344 records in the Founding 400 — a total of 292 for the hardcover, of which 290 are unique. Some people may have ordered more than one copy of the book. Some people in the record have never stated a preference for either book, so they have "no order" with their names. We need 400 hardcover orders before we're able to publish. Anyone who orders the hardcover can have a name as "Naztehr [Name] ambrov Zeor" listed in the book. Those interested in signing up can do so at <http://www.simegen.com/form1.html>.
If you are unsure of your status, contact Karen through ZeorWel@juno.com. Karen checks that address every few days and can check the database for the name. A form for change of address should be on the same web site as the original form.
*SITES TO REMEMBER: To sign up for classes, go to <http://www.simegen.com/school/SchoolForms.html>.
To volunteer, go to <http://www.simegen.com/agreements/helpwanted.html> for the latest openings.
*Please Note all material posted on Official Virtual Tecton is copyright (c) by Sime~Gen Inc. and ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED. TO GET YOUR SIME~GEN(tm) MATERIAL SANCTIONED FOR WEB POSTING or TO GET PERMISSION TO REPOST FROM OFFICIAL MATERIALS E-MAIL AMBROVZEOR@AOL.COM, contact simegen@simegen.com. Sime~Gen (tm) is the trademark of a fictional universe) copyright (c) by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, 1969, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1986 and Sime-Gen Inc. 1999, 2000
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