Champlin’s novel Wand navigates Los Angeles of the early ‘90s when gang rivalries threatened the South Central city
PITTSBURG, CA, USA: Wand, an imaginative and optimistic novel of 1990’s Los Angeles, is published by Author’s Press of California, 30 years after its entry in the (Ted) Turner Tomorrow Award Competition.
Wand, one of 2,500 novels written in response to a competition announced in 1989 by media mogul Ted Turner, has been published by Author’s Press, 30 years after the competition concluded.
Author Chuck Champlin, a former Walt Disney Company communications exec and former Los Angeles Times editor, submitted the novel by the deadline of Dec. 31, 1989. (Champlin Jr. is the son of the late Charles Champlin, longtime LA Times arts editor and film critic. Champlin senior died in 2014.)
The Turner Tomorrow Award was created by the founder of CNN, to be awarded to “an unpublished work of fiction offering creative and positive solutions to global problems.” Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, won the one-time Turner award in 1991. It was selected from among the 2,500 entries by a celebrity panel including famous sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. The award was worth $500,000, at the time the largest sum ever awarded to a single work of literature.
Champlin’s novel Wand navigates Los Angeles of the early ‘90s when gang rivalries threatened the South Central city. The central character, Chris Walkman, has an imaginative, hopeful, cartoon-inspired take on the world, and hopes to make a difference.
Mysteriously, Walkman is awarded $20,000 “to make the world a better place.” After hiring a homeless man as a helper, he enlists a video artist to stage an impromptu large-screen video connection between the South Central neighborhood of Watts and upscale Westwood, in an effort to promote cross-town dialogue.
Walkman believes that “magic wands” include the power of the pen and the reach of television broadcast antennas as tools to revitalize communication and cooperation. His efforts at civic improvement result in the establishment of Wand Enterprises, a non-profit company envisioned as a spark to further community development.
“I admired this effort by Ted Turner and his prize to inspire new thinking about human possibilities,” Champlin said. “I, like several thousand others, was motivated to get to work. I’m proud of my novel and thrilled that Author’s Press is publishing it.”
“Turner is a visionary who has taken a lot of abuse for his troubles, including even from the judges of this contest!” Champlin continued. “I switched on my thinking, thanks to Turner’s incentive, and he changed my world, to say the least.”
