Whipped Cream Difficulties

A couple of quick music related ones: Chad Stuart, of Chad and Jeremy.

Leslie West, of Mountain. (“Mississippi Queen”.)

Rebecca Luker, noted Broadway actress. She was only 59.

Ms. Luker’s Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her three Tony Award nominations. The first was for “Show Boat” (1994), in which she played Magnolia, the captain’s dewy-fresh teenage daughter, whose life is ruined by marriage to a riverboat gambler. The second was for “The Music Man” (2000), in which she was Marian, the prim River City librarian who enchants a traveling flimflam man who thinks — mistakenly — that he’s just passing through town.

…

When she earned her third Tony nomination, this one for best featured actress in a musical, it was for playing Winifred Banks, a married Englishwoman with two children and a gifted nanny, in “Mary Poppins” (2006).

Lawrence tipped me off to the death of James E. Gunn, one of the greats in SF.

Gunn launched his career writing short stories for pulp magazines in 1949 and went on to author dozens of books, starting with 1955’s Star Bridge. He saw his 1962 short story “The Immortals,” about a group who discovers the secret to immortality, made into an ABC movie of the week in 1969 and become a 1970-71 hourlong series.
In addition to fiction, Gunn was known as an editor of anthologies and an author of academic works. He earned a Hugo for 1983’s Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction, an exploration of famed author Isaac Asimov’s contributions to the science fiction genre.

…

In 1969, he taught one of the first classes at a major university on science fiction, becoming a pioneer for treating the genre as a serious academic subject. He created a $1.5 million endowment for the James E. and Jane F. Gunn Professorship in Science Fiction, named for himself and his late wife, in 2014.

That’s one part of his career that I’m afraid will get short shrift. As important as he was as a writer and critic, his most important contribution to the genre may have been as a teacher.

To clarify:

In mourning for Jim Gunn, who taught & guided me at the University of Kansas. He allowed me to take independent study courses along w/the regular coursework––i.e., I wrote stories. Then we’d meet in his office & he gave me critiques, suggestions, & support.

— Pat Cadigan (@Cadigan) December 24, 2020

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2020 at 11:05 am and is filed under Books, Music, Obits, Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.