SciFi Happenings in October

Although I haven't yet confirmed it with my friend Dutch Stacy, I am hoping to get up to HallowCon 2015 in Dalton, GA this Halloween. I really need to call him. If you're looking for something to do at the end of the month and you're close to the Chattanooga/north Georgia area, check out HallowCon. The convention will be held at the EconoLodge and Convention Center right off I-75. That's where we used to hold Magic Carpet Con in the 1990s.

In other news, Andre Norton fans will be delighted (or dismayed) to hear that three Witch World movies are going into production.  A small company called Kirin Media Ventures has acquired the film rights and they have retained film/documentary producer George Paige to get the ball rolling on the first movie.  The three films will be based on the first two Witch World novels, Witch World and Web of the Witch World.  A Chinese production company, Kylin Network (Beijing) Movie & Culture Media Co. Ltd., is also involved in the project.

I have no idea of what to expect at this stage in the game.  Honestly, these small productions crop up all the time.  I am still waiting on the Carson Napier movies from Angelic Pictures (based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' five-book series starting with Pirates of Venus).  It is not easy to bring movies to distribution ("Brenda Starr" starring Brooke Shields was produced but never released).  You know, "stuff happens" (if I may say that without drawing political criticism).

I would very much like to see a Witch World movie franchise happen, especially if it has the budget to do the movie well.  What we do not want to see is something along the lines of an Asylum or Hammer Films low-budget adaptation.  Andre Norton fans, unfortunately, have never been treated well by the film industry.  The "Beastmaster" movies were so awful that Andre didn't even want to be associated with them (or with the television show that was loosely adapted from the loosely adapted movies).

Looking at the cover on the right, you'll see that the artist who did that picture did not understand the story.  I think that is Simon Tregarth (the protagonist of both 1st books in the series) but that outfit is bizarre.  It's like the artist thought he was supposed be a Falconer or something.  I'm not sure.  But this is, unfortunately, what we grew up with as Andre Norton fans.  She was famous, of course, for breaking into the "boys club" of genre fiction writing by using a male pseudonym (pen name).  Mary Alice Norton was nonetheless incredibly influential in science fiction and fantasy, not only for nurturing young women writers' careers but also for introducing a lot of incredible concepts.  She wrote the first book based on a role-playing game, for example.

One of the great innovations of Witch World is that it brings characters onto a shared stage via gates, which anticipate the universe-spanning stargates of later franchises like "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" and "Stargate" (plus the television shows those movies inspired).  I don't know if Andre was the first person to use such devices in science fiction but she was definitely the first to use them consistently and for decades while everyone else was still going on about hyperdrive.

Well, enough about Andre.  You can read more about Andre Norton's Witch World on Xenite.Org, which is the Web's oldest fan site for Andre's books.  That was one of the four original sites that were brought together to establish Xenite.Org in 1997.

In other Xenite.Org news we have launched a new portal called Gaming Websites Today.  This new subdomain profiles a small number of game-related Websites that I and/or my friends (mostly friends) have built over the years.  It may not be the best possible name for such a portal but it was all I could think of at the time, so I hope it catches on.

What can you expect to find there?  Well, a little bit of everything (except video gaming stuff at this time).  There is information about role-playing game sites, board game sites, card game sites, and gambling game sites.  This is a personal portal, not meant to be an all-inclusive Web directory or anything like that.  It's just that while I was talking with one of my friends about some of these gaming sites a couple of weeks ago I realized that we could probably put together a pretty interesting portal to showcase some of them (by no means are all the sites my buds and I have made listed there).

There is also a section for blog posts where I can be a little less formal in sharing information about gaming Websites.  I am hoping to persuade some of my friends to contribute some posts there.  These guys can write.  Anyway, that is yet one more section of Xenite.Org for you to enjoy.  We'll get some video game stuff on there eventually.

Finally, in case you enjoyed last year's All Seeker's Eve online celebration of Legend of the Seeker, we're planning to do that again this year.  Details will be posted on the Save The Seeker blog later this month.  At this point all I am hoping to do is establish an annual tradition that keeps the memory of the show alive.
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