{"id":12325,"date":"2007-12-13T19:38:46","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T00:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=12325"},"modified":"2014-01-08T17:52:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T22:52:02","slug":"sci-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/13\/sci-fly\/","title":{"rendered":"Sci-fly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just ran across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreporter.com\/index.php\/briefings\/commentary\/2490\/\" target=\"_blank\">a 2005 post which appeared at <i>The Comics Reporter<\/i> site <\/a> in which comic-book personalities were asked to share famous industry events at which they wish they&#8217;d been flies on the wall, such as &#8220;Sit in on a Lee\/Kirby or Lee\/Ditko plotting session, circa 1963&#8221; and &#8220;Joe and Jerry signing the contract to give Superman to DC.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Which got me thinking&#151;what science-fiction events would <i>I<\/i> have wanted to witness as  a fly on the wall?  Here are the  first five that came to mind:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>The discussion in which <\/i>Astounding<i> editor John W. Campbell, Jr. inspired Isaac Asimov to  create his  classic story &#8220;Nightfall.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Jack Williamson&#8217;s face at the newsstand that day in 1928  upon seeing his creature from &#8220;The Metal Man&#8221; illustrated on the cover of <\/i>Amazing<i> and realizing that he must have made his first fiction sale&#151;only no one had bothered to tell him!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/JackWilliamsonSignature.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/JackWilliamsonSignature.jpg\" alt=\"JackWilliamsonSignature\" width=\"264\" height=\"85\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12326\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The screening  George Lucas held for friends such as Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma of a  rough cut of <\/i>Star Wars<i>  before the special effects were laid in.<\/p>\n<p>Don Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth and others as they were being ejected from the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939 by Sam Moskowitz  and Will Sykora as part of one of the earliest fan feuds.<\/p>\n<p>Daniel Keyes bringing the manuscript of  &#8220;Flowers for Algernon&#8221; over to the apartment of  Horace Gold, and listening as the agoraphobic editor of <\/i>Galaxy<i> told him that he needed to change the ending to make it more upbeat.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can think of many other moments I&#8217;d like to have witnessed.  How about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just ran across a 2005 post which appeared at The Comics Reporter site in which comic-book personalities were asked to share famous industry events at which they wish they&#8217;d been flies on the wall, such as &#8220;Sit in on a Lee\/Kirby or Lee\/Ditko plotting session, circa 1963&#8221; and &#8220;Joe and Jerry signing the contract [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[374,375,55,78],"class_list":["post-12325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daniel-keyes","tag-horace-gold","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-jack-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12329,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325\/revisions\/12329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}