osted by artist Slawek Wojtowicz, The Ultimate Guide to SF Art on the Web is just what it claims to be—a listing of Web pages and artwork for over 1,100 SF artists, from John Abrahamson to Yasuhiko Yoshikazu.
In addition to offering an easy one-stop gateway to the home pages of individual artists working in SF, fantasy and horror, this index includes studios, galleries, collections and reference sites. One such site is Dreams of Space, which discusses SF art for children's books. Another non-traditional site—one which should definitely not be missed—is Urbicande, a French graphic arts project about obscure cities. The range and style of the various art up for view on these pages varies considerably, offering something for every aesthetic palate.
The featured pages in the guide do not all focus on SF paintings, though. Alaska Dreamer Studios is a jewelry site, while The Beautiful Decay features illustrated poetry. The Cyberplayers offer a unique hybrid of picture book and fantasy-themed theater on the Web. There are also sites on dinosaur model-building, fantasy knives, animation and the storyboards of some major
SF films.
There is nothing to The Ultimate Guide to SF Art on the Web beyond its list of links—and naturally a small proportion of those are out of date—but the treasures compiled at this site are considerable, providing enough beauty in various media to satisfy any SF art lover caught between
the most recent convention and the next.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—December 2, 2002
everal years ago, a commencement speech advocating such useful and whimsical advice as "always wear sunscreen" was falsely attributed to famous writer Kurt Vonnegut, best known in the SF community for such classic fabulist novels as The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five. The palpable desire among those who encountered this speech to believe that it constituted actual words of wisdom from their too-silent hero testified to the high regard and affection which Vonnegut's fans have for him. Any words of wisdom, even inauthentic ones, were much in demand.
Well, now there's no need to subsist on spurious Vonnegut. Simply visit Marek Vit's Kurt Vonnegut Corner and you'll have access to all the gleanings of this wonderful writer you can imagine. Here you'll find biographical data, essays about the man and his works, a large compendium of killer quotes, photos of young and old Vonnegut and a trail to other such sites. But perhaps most crucial for the hardcore SF afficionado is the wing of the site devoted to Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout. A dreadfully untalented yet warmly humane hack SF writer, Trout was seemingly modeled on the career of Theodore Sturgeon, and actually had a full novel composed in his name by Philip Jose Farmer. In this section, Marek Vit gathers up all the story fragments seeded by Vonnegut throughout his canon and displays them gleefully for our delight. It's like sitting at Kilgore Trout's feet for a boozy gabfest, in which the imaginary dean of so-bad-it's-great SF regales us with his insights into how to cure everything from cancer to war.
And yes, the text of the "sunscreen" speech is available here as well. Read it after you've immersed yourself in the real Vonnegut, and then ask yourself how you were ever fooled.
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—November 25, 2002
ary Westfahl is a well-known scholar and critic in the science-fiction field. With regular columns in Interzone magazine, among other venues, he has proven that he can lay down the critical law in a scintillating fashion on writers from Robert Heinlein to Harlan Ellison. What might be less advertised about the man is that he's an expert on SF films as well. And as I can personally testify, from hearing him deliver a speech on Japanese monster movies, his sharp wit and clever phrasings make listening to what he has to say sometimes more enjoyable than watching the actual films under discussion.
Now Web surfers can partake of Westfahl's pithy observations and sonorous prose stylings by visiting Gary Westfahl's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Film. This text-only site contains nearly 100 entries, arranged alphabetically by name, on a variety of folks associated with the SF cinema, from writers and actors and directors to fans and critics. (And more are being added all the time, as Westfahl's busy schedule allows.) Westfahl offers an overview of each person's career, as well as salient moments from their on-screen and off-screen lives. And the best part is, like any critic worth his salt, he's determinedly, wonderfully opinionated. Consider this line from the Nick Adams entry: "Once you link together the phrases 'handsome young actor,' 'absolutely no talent' and 'briefly famous,' it is almost inevitable that 'recurring star of bad science-fiction movies' will be added to the string."
But there's more than just clever dissing at play here. Westfahl comes up with tons of valuable insights as well. Take this one into the talent of minor writer Jerry Sohl: "Screenwriter Sohl fully recognized that he was no good, a midget struggling to stay afloat in a big man's game; and he could occasionally exploit that sense of his own inadequacy to produce scenarios that exhibited, if not talent, a gleeful childishness ... " It's these kinds of apercus that will keep you glued to the screen at Westfahl's intriguing encyclopedia.
— Paul Di Filippo
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