julesjones

RIP Neil Armstrong

2012-08-25T19:39:58Z

Just seen the news reports that Neil Armstrong has died. Another little piece of living history has just slipped away.

It's 43 years since he first stepped out onto the lunar surface, one small step for a man. He was 82. There isn't that sense of regret there was a few weeks ago, when Sally Ride died far too young. But it's still another hero gone, another link broken.

He's gone, but his footprints will outlast all of us. Now there's a memorial for one man who represented all mankind.

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RIP: Sally Ride 1951-2012

2012-07-24T06:31:50Z

One of my heroes has gone, at the far too young age of 61. I'm feeling the generation gap this morning -- I think it will be hard to explain to my younger colleagues how it felt for me as a teenager, watching the news footage of her shuttle taking off from Kennedy Space Centre 28 years ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18963939

James Nicoll linked to a fuller biography:
https://www.sallyridescience.com/sallyride/bio

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RIP Janet Lees Price

2012-06-10T17:16:55Z

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Janet Lees Price on 22 May 2012 (currently at the top of the news page at http://www.avon-paul-darrow.co.uk/news.htm ). I never had the opportunity to meet her, but I know from friends how much she gave to Blake's 7 fandom.

Kalypso_v has a nice tribute to her.

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RIP Ray Bradbury

2012-06-06T14:29:23Z

io9 reports that Ray Bradbury has died. He was 91, but still sad to hear it. :-(

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RIP Reginald Hill

2012-01-13T19:16:05Z

Just seen on the Guardian website that Reginald Hill has died. I love the Dalziel and Pascoe books -- excellent crime books, with a very *fannish* sensibility about playing games with the reader. There's a good obituary on the Guardian website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/13/reginald-hill

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RIP Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011)

2011-11-23T21:43:53Z

My flist today is full of the news of the death of Anne McCaffrey. It was a shock when I saw the first post this morning -- somehow I had not thought of her as being in her eighties, even though her Hugo came in 1968.

I haven't read any of her new work in over a decade. Somewhere in there it became too predictable, with too much retconning, and I also found myself less tolerant of those things which I didn't like in her work. But in my teens and twenties I couldn't get enough, and not just because I was younger in those days. The world-building, the characters, the sheer imagination of some of her stories, these fed my own imagination. Not just Pern, but other universes as well. Of them all, I think my favourite is still Killashandra Ree, crystal singer. Now there was a female character who wasn't just a bad conduct prize for the male hero.

Here is the review I posted last year of the short story in which Killashandra first appeared:

Anne McCaffrey - Prelude to a Crystal Song
This is the first segment of what later became the novel The Crystal Singer, although MacCaffrey re-wrote large chunks of the anthology series material, in particular giving it a different ending. I always loved this short story and the novel that grew from it, in part because the heroine really isn't always likeable - and the author knew it. But in spite of Killashandra having, as McCaffrey says, a generous portion of the conceit and ego needed for her chosen profession of opera singer, she also has courage, the self-understanding to recognise her self-pity for what it is, and the maturity to indulge herself just a little with self-pity after a crushing disappointment at the end of her time as a music student and then move on to practical consideration of what else she might do with her life. Fate hands her the opportunity to take her inborn talent and hard-won skill to another profession, one where the rewards - and the risks - are a worthy challenge.

Rest in peace, and thank you for the dragons, for the shellpeople, and most of all for the crystal singers.

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RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T21:03:11Z

I awoke this morning to the news that Steve Jobs had died, far too young. It was no surprise -- the man had visibly been living on borrowed time for months if not years. It still made me sad.

I'm no Apple fangirl. The last time I used an Apple product was playing games on a friend's Apple IIe. There are plenty of criticisms I can and indeed have made of Apple and of Jobs. But even though I've never owned an Apple product, Steve Jobs made my life better. He saw useful technology around him, and how it could be used more widely, and found a way to enthuse other people. He didn't create the original Apple -- that was Steve Wozniak. He didn't invent the mouse, or the GUI -- that was the Xerox PARC team. But he sold those ideas to the public at large, and the machine I'm typing this on is a direct result of that, even if it's a Wintel machine. This was his gift, to see what ordinary people might do with information technology, and show them his vision.

Steve Jobs changed the world. We are the poorer for his passing.

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"But as year follows year, more old men disappear"

2011-05-05T21:37:43Z

Next year no-one will march there at all.

Claude Choles, last known combat veteran of the Great War, has died. There is one remaining veteran, but Choles was the last of those who saw combat.

When I was a teenager, I watched those old men of Eric Bogle's song. Anzac Day parades, with the veterans of too many wars, but the old men who'd lived through the horror of the First World War had pride of place. They would have been mostly in their seventies and eighties then, many of them still fit enough to march, fit enough to snap a sharp salute as they passed the memorial. As I got older, they got older, and fewer. And finally there were only a very few very old men in wheelchairs, most of them still bright and alert but terribly terribly frail. And now there are none.

Yesterday the Great War was still living memory. Today it is history. Alas, there is still a supply of men, old and young, to march in next year's Anzac Day parade.

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Elisabeth Sladen

2011-04-19T20:21:56Z

Damn it. I'm seeing stuff all over about Elisabeth Sladen having died. Still only headlines, but it looks to have been confirmed on BBC News 24. She was only 63. :-(

Oh - just shown up on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13137674

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RIP Nicholas Courtney 1929-2011

2011-02-23T21:55:33Z

As with so many of my friends list, I salute the passing of Nick Courtney, forever known to fandom as Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart in the Whoniverse, appearing intermittently as that character on the tv show from from 1968 to 2008, and in a number of the audio adventures.

I never had the chance to meet him, but by all accounts he was a gentle and lovely man. I will remember him, and the pleasure his acting brought me. He will live in on the hearts of my generation of Who fandom, and perhaps in the new generation too.

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RIP: Alex Higgins

2010-07-25T10:40:40Z

Alex Higgins has died, at the age of 61, and in a pitiable state. He was by all accounts mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Like that other renowned sportsman from the back streets of Belfast, George Best, he was ill-equipped to handle the fame and fortune his great talent brought him. He was a volatile, violent drunk who burnt through his winnings and died penniless. At his worst, he famously threatened to have his teammate Dennis Taylor shot during the World Team Cup.

None of which takes away the fact that it was indeed a rare and great talent, and one that through television brought joy to millions. The Hurricane was the living embodiment of the phrase "poetry in motion", and I regret that I never had the chance to see him play live. Snooker was his life and his death, and when he came to the table at the top of his form, what you were given was art at its finest. For all the shambles and emotional damage he inflicted upon himself and others, I think the world is a little better for his art having been in it these last forty odd years.

Rest in peace, Alex. You had little enough of it in life.

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RIP Barbara Karmazin

2010-07-06T19:10:09Z

On one of my email lists when I got home this evening:

I don't know who she wanted to email, but I am sorry to inform that my
mother, Barbara Karmazin, has passed away today. I know she will miss you
all because writing, friends and family were her life and passion. Goodbye
from Carlos in behalf of my mother.

***

I hadn't had any contact with Barbara for a year or so, because I'd had to drop off most of the romance loops and a lot of sf fora with pressure of work at the day job. But I knew her from early days at Loose Id, particularly with our common interest in writing cross-genre sf&f/romance. A nice woman, a good writer, and I'm sorry to hear this news.

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RIP: Martin Gardner 1914-2010

2010-05-23T15:37:45Z

Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses in a toast to the life and works of Martin Gardner. He died yesterday, after a long and fruitful life during which he showed many, many people that mathematics could be *fun* -- and in doing so, helped a little to shape the world as we know it.

I spent many happy hours in my high school library browsing the back copies of Scientific American, mostly to read his Mathematical Games columns. As a teenager I nigh on wore out their copies of his books, and as an adult have three of them in my personal library -- and more recreational mathematics books by other authors about concepts I first met in his column.

I haven't made a flexagon for years. Time to remedy that...

Wikipedia biography, with the usual Wikipedia caveats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner

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RIP: Barry Letts

2009-10-09T21:46:18Z

Another figure from original Doctor Who has gone. Barry Letts was producer through most of the Pertwee era, and also directed a number of Pertwee stories. He was responsible for some of my favourite Who stories. (We will pass lightly over certain radio plays, both Who and B7.) He was also active in different roles in the production of Doctor Who both before and after his time as producer, and had a strong influence on the long term shape of the series. Nor was Who the whole of his career. 84's not a bad innings, and he leaves a legacy of work for the BBC that will provide fond memories for years to come.

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RIP: Minotaur

2009-06-15T21:50:26Z

Like many other slash writers, I found Minotaur's Sex Tips For Slash Writers site of enormous help in my writing. The site was Minotaur's way of giving something back to the slash community -- and he was a very generous man. If you read slash fanfic, if you read m/m romance, you've probably benefited from his work.

And now he's gone. esprix reports his death from a heart attack yesterday.

I met him at BASCon a few years ago. I'm glad I had a chance to thank him in person for his enormous contribution to our community. Rest in peace, Minotaur.

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