(1) LE GUIN HOME DONATED FOR USE AS NEW WRITERS RESIDENCY. “Le Guin Family Donates Portland Home To Literary Arts For New Writers Residency”:
Today, Literary Arts announced that the Le Guin family will donate their home to Literary Arts to create the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency. This will be Oregon’s first significant permanent recognition of Le Guin’s 50-year literary legacy since she died in 2018.
Andrew Proctor, executive director of Literary Arts, shared, “Our conversations with Ursula and her family began in 2017. She had a clear vision for her home to become a creative space for writers and a beacon for the broader literary community. With the launch of the public phase of our Campaign for Literary Arts this month, we are closer than ever to making this dream a reality. This campaign will allow us to raise funds to launch the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency and plan for its future. The Le Guin family had many partners to choose from and we are honored that they are entrusting Literary Arts with this cherished cultural treasure.”
Originally built in 1899 from a Sears & Roebuck catalog plan, the three-story house and garden were purchased by Ursula and her husband, Charles, in the early 1960s when Northwest Portland was home to many academics, artists and working-class households. With a view of Mount St. Helens and decorated with her personal collection of rocks and well-loved art and books, Ursula’s corner room evolved throughout the years from a nursery for her children to the place where she wrote some of her best-known work, from novels to her blog. There is still a designated space on her desk for the typewriter on which Ursula would type her final manuscripts. A redwood tree, planted in the 1960s, now towers over that corner of the house, a reminder of Ursula’s Northern California roots.
Once established, the new Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency, to be operated by Literary Arts, will welcome writers from around the world, with a focus on those residing in the western United States.Staying true to the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, the program will invite writers of different genders, races, ages, economic status, education and literary genres to apply for residencies. The writers will be selected by an advisory council made up of literary professionals and a Le Guin family member. Appointed writers will be asked to engage with the local community in a variety of literary activities, such as community-wide readings and workshops. The residency program is currently in the development phase, with plans for future renovations to the home for improved accessibility.
The AP News article “Ursula K. Le Guin’s home will become a writers residency” adds these quotes from her son:
Theo Downes-Le Guin, son of the late author Ursula K. Le Guin, remembers well the second-floor room where his mother worked on some of her most famous novels.
Or at least how it seemed from the outside.
“She was very present and accessible as a parent,” he says. “She was very intent on not burdening her children with her career. … But the times when she was in there to do her writing, we knew that we needed to let her have her privacy.”
[Theo] Downes-Le Guin, who also serves as his mother’s literary executor, now hopes to give contemporary authors access to her old writing space. Literary Arts, a community nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, announced Monday that Le Guin’s family had donated their three-story house for what will become the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency.
…No date has been set for when the residency will begin. Literary Arts has launched a fundraising campaign for maintaining the house and for operating an office in town….
…While writers in residence will be welcome to use her old writing room, the author’s son understands if some might feel “intimidated” to occupy the same space as one the world’s most celebrated authors.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to be in there in this constant state of reverence, which would be against the spirit of the residency,” he says….
(2) TAKE THE TARDIS TO TATTOOINE. Camestros Felapton tells us what all fifteen of them would wear to “Doctor Who’s Star Wars Cosplay Party”. Very funny!
If Doctor Who went to a Star Wars-themed costume party, what costume would they wear? In this clickbaity listicle post, I will give the definitive answers! Yet, as The Doctor is the ultimate space wizard shouldn’t every version of them dress as a Jedi? No, not at all…
(3) PASSIVUM. In case you didn’t get enough discussion of the passive voice yesterday, KW Thomas has some wisdom to contribute. Thread starts here.
(4) ARGUING WITH ART. Here is the cover of Savannah Mandel’s forthcoming book Ground Control : An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration from Chicago Review Press. It asks, “Is it worth it – socially, politically, and economically – to send humans to space?”
Seeing that tagline reminded Andrew Porter of the posters Frank Kelly Freas did for NASA back in the Seventies, one of which said —
(5) THE ROAD GOES EVER ON. Martin Amis died a year ago in May. A homage in the Guardian: “’He made every sentence electric’: Martin Amis remembered by Tina Brown, his old friend and devoted editor | Martin Amis”.
…Martin knew how good he was, and meted out his treasures to lucky editors with a certain lofty care. One of my first calls when I got to Vanity Fair was to ask him to write a piece about a new play by David Hare. His first question was: “Do I have to see it?” I found myself wavering, knowing that whatever he filed would be better than anyone else’s. Over the years, he became graver, more wary perhaps, but unchanged in his satirical glee.
Last February Isabel arranged for me to visit Martin at their home in Brooklyn. They loved each other devotedly, to the death. It hurt to see him so frail, but he was still Martin, undiminished: “I went in to have this special chemo treatment,” he said. “The doctor’s office was full of posters of happy cured people, windsurfing.” The italics dripped with the delighted disgust that Martin reserved for that wishful – and peculiarly American – fraudulence.
Mostly he reflected on “this new stage”, as he called it with an aloof curiosity. “There is absolutely no spiritual dimension to any of this,” he said. “No one writes anything really good after 70, anyway. It feels all right to look back at my life as ‘then’ – the past, belonging to someone else. The only thing I regret is not knowing how all this” – he gestured – “turns out. I’d like to have seen Trump finally finished.”
The truth is that none of us gets to know how it turns out, because it keeps going and we don’t….
(6) BRUSH UP YOUR DRAGON LORE. [Item by Andrew Porter.] I’ve been binge watching HBO’s House of the Dragon series 1; the second season starts June 16.
I found the Wikipedia article, which explains who is what, and has episode guides, useful: House of the Dragon.
(7) PAT SIMS (1937-2024). Past Big Heart Award winner Pat Sims, who served as secretary/treasurer for the Cincinnati Fantasy Group and later as VP of the Orlando Area Science Fiction Society, died June 9 at the age of 87. Deborah Oakes told the Cincinnati Fantasy Group: “She slipped away peacefully last night about 9:30 pm. Her niece Clara was with her in hospice when she passed away. She will be cremated, and her ashes spread at sea with Roger’s ashes, per their wishes.”
Pat first encountered fandom in the early 1960s after she moved to Chicago, where a roommate took her to meetings of the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club. She was recruited to work registration for Chicon 3, the 1962 Worldcon.
The following year she met Roger Sims (1930-2022) at Midwestcon, and they married in 1964. Pat and Roger were active in Detroit fandom for many years, then in Cincinnati. They later moved to Florida.
Together they hosted Ditto 10 (1997), Ditto 17 (2004) and FanHistoriCon 9 (1999).
Roger and Pat also became the 1995 Down Under Fan Fund delegates. Non-fan honors bestowed on them (through fannish connections) included being commissioned as Kentucky Colonels, and being named Honorary Captains of The Belle of Louisville.
Pat received the Big Heart Award in 2002.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born June 10, 1952 — Kage Baker. (Died 2010.) Kage Baker was one of those writers that I had a close relationship by email and phone for many years until she passed on. I’m still sad that she died early but relieved that she is no longer in constant pain.
Though most knew her as a genre writer, she was very proud of her other life. As Kathleen noted on the site she keeps about her life with Kage, Kathleen, Kage and the Company: “Kage Baker taught Elizabethan English (also known as Language I when we had time for lots of classes) for the performers at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. She taught it for most of 30 years; we team-taught at workshops, she and I, in a spiel I can still recite. Well, I can recite my half – I get stuck pausing for her lines here and there. We had worked out a class recitation that was half improv and half thesaurus.”
Kage told me how they both dressed up on in their best Elizabethan cosplay finery for the Renaissance Pleasure Faires, surely the social highlight of their year from the way she described it way such obvious delight. I know they even took Harry the Space Pirate with them on occasion.
Yes Harry, a most unusual bird. Let’s have her explain: “Well, a Household Bench Mark is approaching — my parrot, Harry Redux, is about to reach his first birthday. Or his twenty-first, as he is the reincarnation of my first parrot, Harry Prime. He is the Dalai Parrot. I rescued Harry Prime from an abusive situation 20 years ago, and he was the love of my life; when he died last year, I decided my middle-aged life had enough tragedy and it was time to invoke Mystic Forces. I made sure of a clutch laid shortly after he entered the Higher Plane, and waited anxiously for his return — the system works for Tibetan religious leaders, and I saw no reason why it would not do so for my evolved dinosaur. Sure enough, this brand new little bird exhibits unnerving knowledge of his past life, including where we hide the McVittie’s Digestive Biscuits in the kitchen. When he gazes dulcetly from his pirate-gold-coin eyes, one must believe that here is an ancient and inhuman soul.”
She baked food a lot. Really she did. Quite a bit, much of it Elizabethan. And then there was Barm Brack: “Barm Brack is a soul cake — traditional Scots recipe calls for a bean or silver coin or some other token to be baked into it and the person getting the winning slice gets fame or good luck or sacrificed or whatever, deciding on how much of The Wicker Man you take seriously. I leave the tokens out of mine, personally. Life is enough of a lottery as it is.” Her recipe is here: “Barm Brack”.
No, I’m not talking about novels here though I liked them so much that we were supposed to do a Concordance for them for Golden Gryphon. I was supposed to draft a series of questions for each of the cyborgs for which she was would play out being that cyborg and answer the questions in detail. Each of these would be in turn become a chapter in the Corcordance. Sadly she got too ill before we could do it.
I’ll miss her a lot. She was a great conversationalist, a fantastic SF writer and she wrote a number of really great reviews for Green Man including this one authored with her sister about a series dear to both of them: “The Two Fat Ladies: The Complete 4 Series”.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Frank and Ernest look at shelving patterns.
- F Minus shows the face of AI.
- Homefree stresses comfort reading.
- Shoe defines writing motivation.
- Thatababy relabels Wacky Racers.
- The Flying McCoys takes a nursery rhyme case.
(10) FREE COMIC EXPO. The Bowers Museum Comic Art Expo will be held in Santa Ana, CA on June 15-16. Schedule at the link.
This free two-day event promises to be a dynamic gathering for comic enthusiasts, artists, and collectors alike, in celebration of our current exhibit, Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form. The Comic Art Expo will feature a variety of artists, live DJs, and family-friendly activities.
During the Expo, arrive in cosplay* to get FREE General Admission, and gain exclusive access to Asian Comics for just $10! Join us for a season of color, creativity, and community!
Here’s more about the museum’s exhibit “Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form” whih runs through September 8.
Never-before-seen at a museum and making its American debut, Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form presents the largest ever selection of original artworks from Asian comics, displayed alongside their printed, mass-produced forms. This exhibition is a vivid journey through the art of comics and visual storytelling across Asia. From its historical roots to the most recent digital innovations, the exhibition looks to popular Japanese manga and beyond, highlighting key creators, characters, and publications. Explore thriving contemporary comics cultures and traditional graphic narrative artforms from places including:
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.
Visitors to Asian Comics will dive into a kaleidoscope of diverse stories, from fantastical folklore, pivotal historical moments, revealing memoirs, and challenging expressions of freedom. Discover acclaimed and influential creators from Osamu Tezuka, Zao Dao, Morel, Hur Young Man, and Lat, to genre innovators and under-represented artists including Abhishek Singh and Miki Yamamoto. See how their work has influenced cinema, animation, fashion, visual art, music, and videogames, and get creative in the accompanying makerspace that’s fun for all ages….
(11) TAX CREDITS ARE PEACHY. “Jobs IRL: How Georgia makes movie makers”, a podcast at Marketplace, provides a look at Georgia’s film production tax credits and the pipeline for show business jobs.
Here’s an article based on one of the segments: “How Georgia is training production crews for its huge film industry”.
You ever see that peach as the credits come to an end on screen for shows like “The Walking Dead” or “WandaVision”?
That peach means filmed in Georgia, a state set to surpass California for sound stages by square foot. The names that come before the peach — best boy, gaffer or, in this case, “key rigging grip” — they all come with a paycheck.
“We do things ranging from putting cameras onto dollies and cranes to hanging heavy lights above people’s heads,” said Francis Harlan. He does this for a show called “The Bondsman” being shot here on a set designed to look like a honky-tonk bar. It’s about an undead bounty hunter starring one Kevin Bacon. (Talk about fewer than six degrees.) Blumhouse, the production company, spun up a program to give a trainee his shot….
(12) LINGUA FRANCA. “Young people, especially, are choosing to read in English even if it is not their first language because they want the covers, and the titles, to match what they see on TikTok and other social media,” says the New York Times. “English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu!”
When the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan was in the Netherlands a few years ago promoting her most recent novel, “The Candy House,” she noticed something unexpected. Most of the people who asked her to sign books at author events were not presenting her with copies in Dutch.
“The majority of the books I was selling were in English,” Egan said.
Her impression was right. In the Netherlands, according to her Dutch publisher, De Arbeiderspers, roughly 65 percent of sales for “The Candy House” were in English.
“There was even a sense of a slight apology when people were asking me to sign the Dutch version,” Egan said. “And I was like, ‘No! This is what I’m here to do.’”
As English fluency has increased in Europe, more readers have started buying American and British books in the original language, forgoing the translated versions that are published locally. This is especially true in Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and, increasingly, Germany, which is one of the largest book markets in the world.
Publishers in those countries, as well as agents in the United States and Britain, worry this could undercut the market for translated books, which will mean less money for authors and fewer opportunities for them to publish abroad.
“There is this critical mass,” said Tom Kraushaar, publisher at Klett-Cotta in Germany. “You see in the Netherlands: Now there is a tipping point where things could really collapse.”
The English-language books that are selling abroad are generally cheap paperbacks, printed by American and British publishers as export editions. Those versions are much less expensive than hardcovers available in the United States, for example, and much less expensive than the same books in translation, which have to observe minimum pricing in countries like Germany.
“People should read in whatever language they want,” said Elik Lettinga, publisher of De Arbeiderspers in the Netherlands. But the export editions, she continued, “undercuts on price.”…
(13) ROBO BOOGIE. Click to see a brief entertaining robot video on Tumblr.
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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First!!!!
All this talk of passive voice and tenses makes me think:
This will have been Fun.
(3)
(It’s “Y was done to Z by X” instead of “X did Y to Z”)
It feels like this emphasizes Y. The “active” version emphasizes X.
Last night someone left a comment for me, and Yes I do read the Scroll, I may skip items that arent of much interest to me, but I do read the scroll.
And no I am not reading the Hugo Packet, as I am not an Attending or Supporting Member (or whatever it ‘s currently called) of this year’s Worldcon and I am working my way thru the MTBR Mountain Range that I currently have. I read extensively but not just in the Genre, Mysteries, Non-Fiction Ect. (I just finished a facinating book about the Nazi Occupation of Paris. The chapter on Sex and the Single Wehrmacht Soldier was hilarious, esp when it covered the most exclusive Brothel in Paris. (Prostitution and Brothels were Legal in France until after the War). Whenever the Madame wanted something from the Kommandant she would just barge into his office and make her demands. If he was not compliant at once, then she would threaten to close here establishment saying “And then where will your Officers go” She got her way everytime.)
(2) It has been pointed out that I left out the Scream of the Shalka Doctor (whose position as a canonical Doctor has been bolstered by a recent episode). He would go dressed as Captain Pryde from Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.
(3) Passive voice, as far as I’m concerned, is for writing papers for journals, and theses.
(4) Disagree, very strongly. And if you don’t like that, send me offplanet, and I won’t bother you…
(5) Well, I’ll have to disagree with him, given when I started writing.
(7) I believe I remember them from OASfS, the Orlando club, that I joined when I was living in FL from ’03-06. Damn….
(10) I’d love to know what that bottom pic was from.
(1) A fine tribute to Le Guin.
4) As computers and mechanized objects get better, the case for people does become weaker.
12) I’ve been reading in English exclusively (unless it’s a German book) for 35 years or so, long before TikTok or Instagram even existed. The reason is that the translations available of the books I wanted to read were often not very good, if there were translations available at all. At the time, import books were extremely expensive due to the exchange rate and due to importers charging a premium. Did the author get paid more for those books? Nope, but that’s hardly my problem.
So sorry, if I say to this article, “Screw you.” I’ll read in whatever language I want. Also, bigger English language sections in bookshops (and the Netherlands had bigger English language sections even back in the 1980s, because many books were never translated at all) means more chances to buy books in a store rather than having to buy them at Amazon, which means healthier bookstores.
Also, I’m not sure if export editions are even a thing except for specific books. The English language books I buy here are the same books sold in US or UK bookstores, depending on which edition you get. They’re mostly paperback editions (and as a teenager, I didn’t actually know that there were fiction hardcovers in the US, since I’d never seen one, not even in the US itself), though you can get some hardcovers as well.
mark: That art in (10) might be part of this — https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/garudayana-saga/list?title_no=15125
MkeG: Cool! Thanks!
(12) LINGUA FRANCA. “English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu!”
You gotta wonder … why use French in the headline when the situation in France is not discussed at all? What I’m trying to insinuate is that the journalist may know not of what they write. Speaking of France, there are a good number of bookstores and their genre sections are full of translated works of English language originals. There are foreign language sections, but they’re small and barely dominated by English titles. I’ve noticed that in my neighborhood in Nice that there is a new English language bookstore (the first in a long time that I know), but I haven’t explored it yet so can’t speak to what editions they sell.
I lived in the Netherlands for a decade. There is a square in Amsterdam that has 2 or 3 English bookstores (can’t remember if the third is exclusively English or a Dutch bookseller with a large English section). The titles sold there are the same you’d see in London.
I’ve also had some minor experience trying to sell an English language SFF anthology at a local con. They did not fly off the table.
Apparently it helps books fly if they are propelled by Le Tik-Tok!
1) This is something that Alice Sheldon was also interested in seeing happen. I can’t remember if she and Ursula discussed it. I remember Alli asking me to look into it if her estate earned mad movie money (but the Philip K. Dick estate it is not). The Tiptree Award Motherboard put it under discussion once or twice.
Really glad to see Theo taking it on.
(8) It occurs to me that there are a few things that Kage wrote that I haven’t read yet. Something to rectify, ASAP.
Pixels were scrolled
Thomas: That’s not passive voice, it’s future perfect.
Tax credits for film making are a form of cronyism, i.e., businesses getting favored treatment and extra income through political connections. Giving one kind of business better tax treatment than all others (assuming expenditures and deficits don’t change) means taxing others more. They then have less money to hire people, buy supplies, rent spaces, etc. It may make movie tickets cheaper (insert sounds of disbelief here), but it does so by making other things more expensive. It encourages people to get jobs producing things which politicians favor, rather than things which consumers prefer to pay for.
(3)
P J Evans:
That is literally one of the textbook reasons for using passive: to emphasize the object instead of the subject. Another is when the specific subject/actor is unknown:
“He was mugged on his way home.”
“Damage from the hurricane is reported to have been extensive.”
mark:
…and another reason is to increase formality of tone in academia and business English and any other place where sounding pretentious can be a bonus. 🙂
A less official reason is to deliberately dodge responsibility, as employed masterfully by an author you may have heard of:
KW Thomas is absolutely correct about not worrying about passive voice. Native English speakers will use it appropriately but not excessively in writing and speaking. All of us here in that category have done so in conversation, where the obvious passive voice remark is such standard modern usage that I doubt anyone would even consider using the active.
I must go reread Sabatini now.
On a whim, I am researching the current thinking around using LLMs to both write and to interpret legally-binding documents (contracts, laws, etc.) So far, human-in-the-loop is still necessary, but there will soon come a point where either (a) LLMs can reliably produce or interpret legal-binding documents, or (b) the output of LLMs in the legal sphere merely reaches a point where it is “good enough” and then human-based expectations and interpretations will be adjusted accordingly. Getting some strong Accelerando vibes from this research.
3) I will just resort to my usual method for dealing with sweeping generalizations about grammar:
(Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3, emphasis mine.)
If passive voice is good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me.
Of course, Hal won’t be making the passports or putting the crowns into purses himself–he has staff to do such things, and in this speech, he is certainly giving orders (“proclaim it, Westmorland”) so that certain things will be done. (Senses of both futurity and obligation indicated by “shall.”) Passive construction simply means that somebody will take these actions, and that the actions will be taken.
Andre Norton had planned to turn her home into a writers’ center. She’d even had a separate library built for it adjacent to the house, but things didn’t work out, alas.
@Michael Burianyk
Yes, Europe is not a monolith. The Netherlands are a small country and comparatively few people speak Dutch or Flemish, so many books, movies, TV shows, etc… are never translated, because the market is just too small.Thus Dutch people are exposed to English at an early age, since even children’s programs on TV like cartoons are subtitled rather than dubbed. So of course, they’ll read in English, because they all speak English and it’s the only way they can read many books at all, because they will never be translated.
France and Germany are much bigger countries and there are a lot more French and German speakers, so translating books into French or German is a lot more lucrative. In France, you also have a certain reluctance to engage with languages other than their own.
I found myself in a big Thalia chain bookstore today and noticed that their foreign language section (which is 90% English) had gotten much bigger. I talked to a bookseller about this, also mentioning the NY Times article, and he said that particularly teen girls and young women read only in English these days, which was still very uncommon, when I was a teenager. The selection of books in the English language section, which was heavy on YA, romantasy and romance novels aimed at a younger audience, reflected that.
What always annoys me is the hostility of US publishing industry professionals towards people reading books in English rather reading translated editions. One of the worst examples was a publishing industry professional saying that people shouldn’t read English language books, because those books were sold illegally and the author wouldn’t get paid. Sorry, but that’s not how it works. Even if translation rights haven’t been sold, it is perfectly legal to import English language books. And if the author isn’t paid for those imported books, that’s the agent’s and the publisher’s problem, not the reader’s.
Some of the complaints in the NY Times article are also flat out bizarre. Import books are cheaper paperback editions, so the author gets less money. For starters, you can absolutely get hardcover fiction books here, even in bookstores and definitely at Amazon. Also, readers aren’t bad people for reading paperback editions.
As for “But imported English language books don’t get the marketing support that translated books get”, readers are clearly finding the books without marketing support. Or they are seeing the marketing support for the English language edition, because we live in a globalised world and people do access international sites on the internet.
.
(12) LINGUA FRANCA. I am a little surprised at the surprise Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan had at the majority of Dutch readers bought English language editions of her books.
The Netherlands is just across the North Sea from Blighty and – due to WWII – has had close affiliations with Britain. Indeed, when I was at the Hague Worldcon and then later a fortnight at the ESA Technology Centre in the Netherlands in the 1990s (when terrestrial broadcast TV dominated), I noted that in addition to a few Dutch channels, they also got BBC1 & 2.
Because of my mainland European fandom days of the 1990s and 2000s, I have gotton to know quite a few non-Brit European fans who speak good English. Often they prefer to read English editions in part to improve their English but also because sometimes translated editions can be a bit wanting. I remember one Eastern European fan telling me that they were reading an Asimov novel and they could not understand who this ‘Third Law’ person was. It transpired that the translator had mistook the Third Law of Robotics as a human individual and did this throughout the book….
@Jonathan C: Ah, Arthur C. Third-Law. Asimov based him on a well-known friend of his, Fred Pohl.