January 19

On the Avatar beat, charges of plagiarism from Russian readers of the famous Strugatsky Brothers, who apparently wrote a number of novels about a planet called Pandora inhabited by a race of humanoids called the Nave. Hmm...The Strugatskys are great authors, whose mesmerizing novella Roadside Picnic was freely adapted as Stalker by director Andrei Tarkovsky (and the brothers themselves as screenwriters).

http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=11815

While we're on science fiction: I was interested to discover that SFSite runs periodic lists of odd and overlooked speculative fiction. Here is the latest:

http://www.sfsite.com/lists/10odd03.htm

The blog mardecortesbaja.com reproduces one of Dudley Fisher's teeming Right Around Home comics, which he created from 1937 to 1951 for the Sunday newspaper market:

http://www.mardecortesbaja.com/blog/_archives/2010/1/17/4430468.html

Among notables born on this date are some very fine fiction writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith, Julian Barnes, and Edwige Danticat. Also born on this date are Algonquin Round Table regular Alexander Woollcott, rockers Janis Joplin, Phil Everly, sand Robert Palmer, opera singer Hans Hotter, conductor Simon Rattle, Scottish inventor James Watt, sociologists Auguste Comte and Werner Sombart, painter Paul Cezanne, photographer Cindy Sherman, poets Rex Ingamells (Australia) and Dragotin Kette (Slovenia), film director Richard Lester, broadcaster Robert MacNeil, and actors Jean Stapleton, Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos), Fritz Weaver, and Tippi Hedren. Drea de Matteo was a very deserving Emmy winner in 2004 for her portrayal of doomed mob girlfriend Adriana La Cerva, whom a viewer might first take for just another bimbo, but as we come to know her, we recognize as both a heartbreaking character and a breathtaking performance.