Join us on Facebook!
(My words are plain text. George's words are in bold.)
Believe it or not, someone once thanked me for “all I do for the genre.” I found – and still find- myself a bit perplexed by this, as I'm just some random dude who types up a thousand words or so as my time allows. Seriously. That's the secret to being Jimbo: Plop butt into chair and don't stop typing till the word count gets to where it's supposed to be. That's also why I don't review shorts: Have you ever tried to write a thousand words about something that's only two thousand words long to start with?
At any rate, I'm not sure how comfortable I am taking credit for supporting an entire genre of fiction. So I decided that maybe, just possibly, I should try to highlight some of the people that actually deserve that credit. That I think I'm probably comfortable with.
I want to make this a regular thing here at Jimbo's and we'll see how that goes, but for today I've found my first vict...errr... volunteer. Yeah, that's what I meant to say. Volunteer. That sounds much better. George Phillies, president of the National Fantasy Fan Federation (the N3F) has graciously agreed to give us some of his time and insight.
Thank you so much George for stopping by, George. First, let me acknowledge that I have received the book you sent me to review. I just started reading Eclipse: The Girl Who Saved the World today. I love the fact that it's about a twelve year old girl. I'm going to see if I can talk my thirteen year old daughter into reading it so that I can have a book that we have both read and can discuss that's not Hunger Games or Harry Potter. Wish me luck and say hi!
Hi, Jim. Best of luck with this effort. I viewed as an honor to be the first person to be interviewed. Hopefully it will not turn out like the honor as described by one of our great 19th-century wits, who said of tarring and feathering that if it were not for the honor of the thing he would rather have done without. As your first victim, err, volunteer, I certainly hope to make your effort a success. I have sent you my other novels, including The One World, Minutegirls, Against 3 Lands, and most important Mistress of the Waves. I say that Mistress of the Waves is the most important of the set because we have in it another 12 or 13-year-old girl (she gets older) who is the heroine of the piece. Perhaps your daughter will prefer Amanda to Eclipse. Amanda Kirasdotr is in no sense a superhero, and her successful competition for the most part does not involve violence. Well, there were the two assassins, the not-at-all competent pirates, and the mythical giant ship-eating squid, but for the most part Mistress of the Waves is a tale about economics and business competition, not about violence.
We'll get to more about your fiction in a bit George, because that's what I'm really about here at Jimbo's but first let's get to your work as the president of the N3F. Tell us a little about the organization itself and how you came to be the person to run it.
The National Fantasy Fan Federation or N3F is the world’s oldest non--regional science fiction club. We were founded in 1941. While some of our founders were fen about whom very little is known, many of our founding members were very well known, including EE Smith, Donald Wollheim, Forey Ackerman, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Harry Warner, Jr., and Ray Bradbury. One of the founding members, Robert Madle, is still alive. Membership in the N3F has ebbed and flowed. We have had hundreds of dues-paying members. At one point we were apparently down to a single dues-paying member. I had been a member of the N3F for some time, ran for the N3F Directorate, became Chair, and eventually ran for President, successfully.
I have focused my efforts on reviving and enhancing the club’s activities. When I became President, we had a newsletter, the National Fantasy Fan, that was published quarterly, and a review and letter zine, Tightbeam, that produced truly beautiful issues on occasion. I encourage the notion that you will get out of a club something resembling what you put into it. If we are sufficiently successful with this project, every SF fan will want to join us. I have encouraged publishing as one of our activities. In addition to TNFF and Tightbeam, we now publish Ionisphere (which does reviews with fen and pros), Origin (which covers fannish history and research), Mangaverse (which reviews primarily anime), Films Fantastic (which covers historical films and filmographers), Eldritch Science (our semiannual fiction zine), and our very long-lived APA N’APA. With some regularity, we also publish Fandbooks on various aspects of fandom, for example cooking. The next fandbook will focus on famous N3F members and their contributions to science fiction.
One of the reasons that we can publish all these zines, some of which are 40 or 70 pages in length, is the Internet. While TNFF is published in paper format, our other 7 zines are produced as PDF files and transmitted electronically to readers. Electronic transmission enormously reduces the burden of printing and collation that would otherwise exist. It’s also relatively cost-free. As a result, I was able to persuade the Directorate to add a new class of membership, the Public Membership, which costs nothing but which allows Public Members to be sent all of our 8 zines, for free.
The N3F also has a wide variety of bureaus, groups of people interested in different fannish activities. I’ve encouraged these to stay active, and have tried to find people interested in reviving some of the bureaus that had passed from the scene. In doing this, the N3F has been blessed with a long list of volunteers who do wonderful work for our club. I certainly have to start with my predecessor as President, David Speakman. Despite being extremely busy with his own professional activities, David has for many years served faithfully as our Treasurer and keeper of our membership records. He is also responsible for our webpages and other software. What other bureaus do we have? The very long-lived Round Robin bureau promotes circular letters that rotate between members and allow discussion of different topics. Curiously, transferring the Round Robin bureau to email has been very difficult to accomplish. Many years ago we had a member who was very seriously physically challenged but wanted to do something for the club. He created the Birthday Card bureau, which still sends birthday cards and renewal notices to the dues-paying members. The Writers Exchange Bureau and Pro Bureau support writing activities among our members, some of whom have been accused of writing novels. A Membership Recruitment Bureau tries to lure new members into the club. The Fan-Pro Coordinating Bureau publishes Ionisphere. The Gourmet Bureau generates the interviews for Read This While You Eat That and Food of Famous Authors. A Video Bureau occasionally generates a list of forthcoming television shows. The Games Bureau, which has been around for many years, reviews games. Origin is the magazine of the History and Research Bureau, which is now large enough that it has its own internal newsletter. The Welcommittee greets new members.
That takes us to the original purpose of the N3F: Fanzine distribution. The idea was that zine editors would mail us copies of their zines. We would aggregate them by subscriber, and send each subscriber a regular packet including all of the zines that they had as subscriptions. The scheme worked well via particular features of period postal rates. Readers will readily see ways in which this approach is seriously unstable. However, under modern conditions we have revived the zine distribution service, as the N3F Franking Service. Zine editors send us PDFs of their zines. We send them out electronically to all of our members. One of the N3F’s original purposes is thus fulfilled through the wonders of modern technology.
We support writing and creativity. The N3F gives 2 sets of prizes. The annual short story contest, for non-professional writers, is judged by Jefferson Swycaffer. The Neffy Awards honor work in novels, short stories, films, television shows, book editing, and more. The Book Review Bureau has as its objective reviewing every science fiction book that is published. We are a long way from meeting that objective. I’ve tried to persuade our reviewers to cover nominees for the Hugo, Neffy, and Dragon awards, but have had more success with the Dragon awards than the others.
That's awesome. I'd imagine that a guy in your position has probably gotten a chance to meet several authors and/or actors who've worked in the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Who have you really enjoyed meeting? Were they really cool? Do you have any fun stories?
I don’t have as much to say here. For many years, until he passed away, I was good friends with Hal Clement. While he lived in Boston, Isaac Asimov sometimes appeared at the MITSFS picnic. (I was MITSFS President for three years.) I did hear John Campbell give a speech at MITSFS. Arthur C. Clarke also came through MITSFS, many years ago. We found the issue of Amazing Magazine with his clever diving invention, the air pump on the small raft that is towed by the diver. Like the geostationary communications satellite that he also invented, the device is now a commercial success in some parts of the world. Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett both lived in Boston for a while; I met them.
Wow. That sounds a like a really good time. I'm a member of the N3F myself but I'd rather get the information straight from the horse's mouth as it were. What are the benefits of membership? If someone out there is interested and wants to join the org, where can they go to do so? Feel free to include a link if you'd like.
To join the N3F, go to http://N3F.org/join. Please do fill out the membership form. Dues are $18 if you want TNFF by paper mail, $6 if you want TNFF by email, and $4 if you share an address with a regular member. All zines other than TNFF are mailed electronically to all members. To join as a public member, for free, just send me an email at phillies@4liberty.net.
What do you get out of being a member? You get eight fanzines: The National Fantasy Fan. Tightbeam. N’APA. Ionisphere. Origin. Mangaverse. Eldritch Science. Films Fantastic. Some are monthly. Some are semimonthly. One is semiannual. You get the support of all our bureaus for your fannish activities. You can vote for the Neffy Awards. As a member, you are a link between the distant past and the infinite future of SF fandom. You enjoy the support of all of our volunteers doing work for the N3F, including:
Five Directorate members, President, Treasurer, Editor - TNFF, Art Editor, Editors - Tightbeam Editor - Ionisphere, Editor - Eldritch Science Editor - Mangaverse, Editor - Films Fantastic, Editor - Origin, N’APA Collator, Keeper of the URLs, Host of the Web Site, Anime/Comics, Artists Bureau, Birthday Cards, Book Review Bureau, Correspondence Bureau:, Election Teller, Fandom History/Research Bureau, Fan-Pro Coordinating Bureau, Film Bureau, Forwarder, Franking Service, Games Bureau, Gourmet Bureau, Historian, Information Technology, Lord High Proofreader, Membership Recruitment, Neffy Awards Bureau, Pro Bureau, Round Robins, Short Story Contest, Social Media, Video Schedule, Welcommittee, and Writers Exchange. Each Bureau has a Bureau head and perhaps other members. If you want something we don’t offer, speak up and we’ll help you set it up.
Yup. That's why I joined. Now, help me out here George. I believe I heard you mention this somewhere else, but the word Fantasy has morphed in meaning somewhat over the last few decades. Someone out there is going to see the name of the National Fantasy Fan Organization and assume it only applies to sword and sorcery novels. Walk us through exactly what genres and/or subgenres the club promotes.
When founded, “Fantasy” referred to the fantastic, things that did not exist: Trips to other worlds, lost civilizations, swords and sorcery, fairy tales for children, tales of horror and the occult, even a few Elliott Queen mysteries, all were subsumed into fantasy. Fantasy now includes science fiction, space opera, paranormal romance, swords and sorcery, alternative history, tales of horror, works of the mythical occult, books, films, videos, comics, poetry, running and attending conventions, fanzine publishing, art and animation, role-playing games, cosplay, gaming and gourmet events, computer games, and more.
Right. Don't get me wrong, I love fantasy works but it's awesome to see that, despite the name, you're an organization that defines itself more broadly. Something I pride myself on here at Jimbo's is being accepting of a broad range of things that fit into the Science Fiction and Fantasy categories. What do you and the N3F think about including games like HALO or comic books like Green Lantern or Superman under the umbrella of Science Fiction and Fantasy? How about manga and anime?
Let’s see. We publish a manga/anime/comics zine, Mangaverse. The BuHead of the Anime and Comics effort, Mangaverse editrix Jessi Silver, also has her own anime web pages, S1E1.com. I write superhero novels and certainly think that comics are part of SF fandom. We don’t currently have active splay or computer game bureaus, but it would be nice to have them.
Are you doing any cons this year? I'm just curious. I don't suppose you'll be at Libertycon in a few weeks? If so, your first round is on me.
I considered attending LibertyCon, but all slots were sold before I saw the announcement. Perhaps someday. It’s a three day drive or switching planes several times for me to get there.
Gotcha. So, now that we've heard all about your work with the N3F, let's hear a little bit about your writing. I have copies of both Minutegirls and Eclipse: The Girl Who Saved the World for review. What else do you have available? I'm not saying you HAVE to throw in a link to your Amazon author page or any personal website you might have, but if you wanted to I think that would be awesome.
I’ve actually written more than 20 books, not all SF
Novels
This Shining Sea (2000)
The Minutegirls (2006) (Now second edition)
Mistress of the Waves (2012) https://www.amazon.com/Mistress-Waves-George-Phillies-ebook/dp/B008J4NLWI
The One World (2012) https://www.amazon.com/One-World-George-Phillies-ebook/dp/B008OB88R4
MinuteGirls, Second Edition (2017) https://www.amazon.com/Minutegirls-George-Phillies-ebook/dp/B075974K2V
Against Three Lands (2018) https://www.amazon.com/Against-Three-Lands-Thousand-Isles-ebook/dp/B079M1GM9S
Eclipse: The Girl Who Saved the World (2019). https://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Girl-Saved-World-Shining-ebook/dp/B07M9X3QYR
Short Stories
Nine Gees (2000)
A Sea of Stars Like Diamonds (2016) George Phillies and Jefferson Swycaffer, Editors
Physics Books
Elementary Lectures in Statistical Mechanics, Springer-Verlag(2000) (textbook)
Phenomenology of Polymer Solution Dynamics, Cambridge University Press (2011) (research monograph)
Complete Numerical Tables for Phillies' Phenomenology of Polymer Solution Dynamics (2011) (research monograph)
Game Design Textbooks
Contemporary Perspectives on Game Design (with Tom Vasel) (2006)
Design Elements of Contemporary Strategy Games (with Tom Vasel) (2006)
Designing Modern Strategy Games (with Tom Vasel) (2012) ( second edition of ``Design Elements of Contemporary Strategy Games``)
Modern Perspectives on Game Design with Tom Vasel) (2012) (second edition of ``Contemporary Perspectives in Game Design``].
Stalingrad for Beginners (Studies in Game Design – 3)
Stalingrad Replayed (Studies in Game Design - 4)
Designing Wargames - Introduction (Studies in Game Design - 5)
Libertarian Political History and Strategy
Stand Up for Liberty! (2000)
Funding Liberty (2003
Libertarian Renaissance (2014)
Surely We Can Do Better (2016)
Awesome. Last question, I promise: I don't want you to walk away thinking “That darn Jimbo guy should have asked me this other question,” because I appreciate the time you've taken for this interview, so here's your chance: What did I fail to ask that you wanted me to? Don't forget to include the answer to your own question.
What were you trying to do in Eclipse? What works do you have in the pipeline?
The first Eclipse novel is actually This Shining Sea, available from Third Millennium, 3mpub.com. Eclipse, the Girl Who Saved the World, is actually the prequel. However, This Shining Sea is now being rewritten as Airy Castles All Ablaze and Stand Against the Light, with Of Breaking Waves as the 4th book in the series. I’ve actually written the closing paragraphs of Stand Against the Light and Of Breaking Waves. Eclipse has a considerable number of challenges to face, and puzzles to solve. She actually doesn’t know that all those puzzles exist yet.
I started to write This Shining Sea in order to try to break several tropes. The first trope was the notion that if the book is about children of particular age, the story must be being written for children of that age, and it really should only be read by them, not anyone any older. I am writing a series of books in which a not-yet-teenager is the heroine of the work, but in vocabulary and structure and plot the book is written for grown-ups. There are older books that leaned hard against this theme. A High Wind in Jamaica comes immediately to mind; modern readers into film and comic books would point out Hit-Girl. This Shining Sea, to be viewed for the moment is a 4-book series, is focused on a group of tween-age children. At the time I started writing, the word “tween” really did not exist. The volume is adult in the sense there’s a lot of politics, people taking responsibility for their own deeds, and so forth. The heroine and her friends try to do the right things, not because they have an adult telling them what to do. The volume is not adult in the sense that folks looking for written child pornography are going to get absolutely nothing out of the volumes, because no such things occur, except in the febrile imaginations of Comet’s parents. Someplace I have an extended series of notes on my other objectives with the novel which I may send you a future date, if I ever find it.
There were several other tropes that get stomped into the ground. Hollywood for many years had the trope that if you had a child, and it was told clearly and unambiguously what not to do, the child would do it, usually in the worst possible way. There are points where adults try to tell Eclipse what to do, and she doesn’t, but she was clearly right in her decisions. There was also the long-time trope that if you had a child or teenager, they had a much older adult, a parent or sensei, to whom at key points they would trun for advice. Eclipse does not have one of them, either, she very carefully (and wisely) keeps her distance from the Wizard of Mars. Some readers have expected me to copy tropes from Marvel or DC. None of the five has a “kryptonite’ in the DC sense. Their powers are not organized along one theme or another. In terms of the Champions rolegame rules, Eclipse has a very large cosmic power pool.
So what am I working on now?
I’m not actually working on all of the books listed below, but I am working to some extent on some of them. The primary focus at the moment is Airy Castles All Ablaze, which is the sequel to Eclipse. It’s up to 193,000 words, but that includes some things that are going to be trimmed out and some things that are going to be displaced to Stand Against the Light, which is the next book in the series. However, I do have other novels that are to some extent being written.
Invasion Tibet is, so to speak, the Buck Rogers prequel in which the aliens are landing in Tibet and preparing to expand. Actually, they don’t land, in fact they don’t have space travel. They have hyperspace tubes that take you direct from planet to planet, with severe mass limits on how much stuff you can move in one lot. To make life even more amusing for them, there is a large scale rebellion on the prior world, and the fellow who is planned out the invasion has the embarrassing difficulty that most of his military units have been redeployed from under his nose, so at first he is basically stuck launching an invasion with a collection of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Of course, it is 1880 or 1900, and the Boy and Girl Scouts do have disintegrator rifles, but nonetheless his position leaves much to be desired. There is a completed section in which the British invasion of Tibet in 1903 is wiped out, and another section in which the invaders shoot up a passenger ocean liner under the mistaken assumption that it is carrying the survivors of the British expedition and certain Tibetan technology they captured. I am not sure how far forward the invasion will advance. Surely they will invade Sinkiang, grab at least large parts of China, and at a guess occupy Siberia. They may even invade Japan.
There is a sequel to Against Three Lands in which the hero of the book through a series of events and a major tragedy becomes the Baron of the MacDonald domain. He now gets to cope with the invading non-Europeans. One segment I have thought out in some detail involves an object that is obviously not a Chinese junk, exactly, having an encounter with a European Galleon that attempts a boarding action. The Europeans are somewhat nonplussed when large numbers of not-Samurai warriors stage a counter boarding to capture not-European ship. There’ll also be border wars between several of the domains, and some effort by the Hundred Isles, or at least the MacDonald section of it, to take advantage of European technology. An astute reader will have noticed the interesting coincidence that the MacDonald sigil bears a remarkable semblance to the Satsuma Mon.
The 4th book in the Eclipse series, Of Breaking Waves is up to 27,000 words but I’m not really working on it, at the moment. The novel ends with Eclipse on her 3rd-floor deck leaning back in a deck chair on a cold spring evening, carefully wrapped in a quilt with a barn cat on her lap, eating cookies and sipping mocha, contemplating a beautiful sunset. So far as she knows, she has nothing she needs to do at the moment.
The Merchant Adventurers is interstellar travel, folks who lost a large chunk of technology realizing that it might be useful to recover it, local politics between the various countries on the home worlds, and a certain amount of technology and housekeeping and the like.
The Eddorian Lensman is space opera; readers on some of my websites will say that it is based on the Christian message of redemption. Of course, the serial numbers are going to be filed off, so this will not be a book about Eddorians and Lensmen, not quite, but a core part of the book will be a character study of the not-Eddorian who works out that his culture is based on bondage, sadism, and degradation of subject species, that this approach really doesn’t work, and redeems himself.
Hold High The Banner (Chinese Communist platoon of 1940 enters not-D&D world);is vaguely based on a plot I had many years ago for a Dungeons & Dragons series of games. There is an oppressed class of beings, the small giant class, which is trod upon and looted by everyone because small giants do not have magicians. The rulebook said so. However, the small giant class comes up with, or is given by the Chinese, the notion of asymmetric guerrilla warfare, and launches a revolutionary liberation struggle for the freedom and dignity of small giants, such as kobolds. To make life different, no one in the Chinese group has any idea at all how to make gunpowder, so the tedious “we have cannon and they do not” plot line is not going to function.
Adara's Tale is about magical university studies. The heroine makes a vigorous effort to organize what is known about magic, makes a whole variety of discoveries, some based on real pure mathematics, and steps across the line she doesn’t really know is there. The secret society that runs her culture therefore realizes they have to kill her, which they do not quite pull off. Readers of the This Shining Sea will indeed meet Adara, at least at 2nd hand, since she plays a significant role in what is going on. She also, even though she has fled the scene, is going to give Eclipse her heart’s desire, a desire that some people will find a bit strange and that many children will think is absolutely wonderful. (Eclipse already owns 2 ponies, so you will have to try again to figure out as to what her heart’s desire is.)
DisUnion is a political novel set in the near future United States in which the current idiocy reaches its natural peak, namely Americans emulate the people of Czechoslovakia and agree that their country needs to be partitioned, as it happens into 6 parts, which it has been. We managed to do this peaceably. The novel is set after the partition took place. There is a captured flying saucer.
No Tears for a Princess at; 89,000 words is classic fantasy with swords and magicians. I wrote most of it in the late 1970s. At the time, the notion of a female hero who was highly effective with sword was extremely radical. It isn’t so radical anymore.
Two new technical books, 'Theory of Polymer Solution Dynamics' and 'Modern Phenomenology of Polymer Solution Dynamics', are under way, as are a stack of research projects.
I have a few bits for sequels to Minutegirls, Mistress of the Waves, and The One World
Perfect! Thanks for taking the time, George! I'll be sending you some reviews for publication soon. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help out.
No comments:
Post a Comment