(1) RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. One of the biggest news stories in the world today — “Large Hadron Collider: Weasel causes shutdown”.
The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at Cern is offline after a short circuit – caused by a weasel.
The unfortunate creature did not survive the encounter with a high-voltage transformer at the site near Geneva in Switzerland.
The LHC was running when a “severe electrical perturbation” occurred in the early hours of Friday morning.
What did they discover when they bombarded the weasel with neutrinos? That it just made him mad?
(2) TIME FOR REFLECTION. They took the covers off the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope for the next round of work, the BBC reports.
Revealed for the first time in all its glory – the main mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched in 2018.
JWST is regarded as the successor to Hubble, and will carry technologies capable of detecting the light from the first stars to shine in the Universe.
Paramount in that quest will be a large primary reflecting surface.
And with a width of 6.5m, JWST’s will have roughly seven times the light-collecting area of Hubble’s mirror.
It is so big in fact that it must be capable of folding. Only by turning the edges inwards will the beryllium segments fit inside the telescope’s launch rocket.
The observatory is currently under construction at the US space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
When in recent months engineers stuck down the segments to their support structure, each hexagon had a cover on it.
Only now, as the engineers prepare to move to the next stage of assembly, have those covers been removed to reveal the full mirror….
Leaving such a sensitive surface exposed even for a short time may appear risky. The fear would be that it might get scratched. But the European Space Agency’s JWST project scientist, Pierre Ferruit, said that was unlikely.
“The main danger is to get some accumulation of dust. But it’s a cleanroom so that accumulation is very slow,” he told BBC News.
“They need to rotate the telescope to get access to the back, and the protective covers were only resting on the mirror segments, so they had to be removed before the rotation.
“When the mirror is upside down, the exposure to dust will be much less, and I doubt anyone will be allowed to walk underneath.”
(3) NEWT SCAMANDER SCREENPLAY. The “Thursday Book Beat” post at Women Write About Comics alerts Harry Potter fans that another Rowling publication is on the way.
Potterheads might not be getting an eighth novel in the Harry Potter series, but J.K. Rowling seems committed to giving her fans new material to devour. She announced that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them wouldn’t just be available as a film on November 18, but that the screenplay would also be published on November 19. Newt Scamander’s adventures in the United States may be a balm for readers who can’t get to London to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, though this announcement also begs the question: why publish the screenplay in the first place when the film will still come out first?
(4) REUBEN NOMINEES. The five cartoonists nominated for this year’s Reuben Award have been announced. This award is generally considered the highest honor a US cartoonist can receive. It is presented yearly by the National Cartoonists Society.
- Lynda Barry
- Stephan Pastis
- Hilary Price
- Michael Ramirez
- Mark Tatulli
The nominees in the rest of the categories are here at Comics Beat.
(5) CLASS OFFERED BY RAMBO AND SWIRSKY. Rachel Swirsky posted details on “Retelling and retaling: Take a class with me and Cat Rambo”
Take an online class from me and Cat Rambo! May 21, 9:30-11:30 AM, Pacific Time.
Personally, I love retellings. As a kid, I had a collection of picture books retelling the Cinderella story in a dozen different settings. SFWA president Cat Rambo and I are teaching a class on the subject.
(6) EDELMAN’S LATEST ALSO HIS EARLIEST. Scott Edelman time travels to 2001 and interviews Samuel R. Delany for Episode 7 of Eating the Fantastic.
The latest episode of Eating the Fantastic was recorded 15 years before Eating the Fantastic began.
How is that possible?
Well, when it comes to Chip Delany, all things are possible.
On June 18, 2001, while Chip was in the middle of a book tour supporting the 25th anniversary republication of Dhalgren, I interviewed him at Bistro Bis in the Hotel George. The recording I made that day wasn’t created to be heard, but was merely a tool so it could be transcribed and run as text in Science Fiction Weekly, a site I edited during my 13 years at the Syfy Channel….
Samuel R. Delany and Scott Edelman
Who’ll be on the next installment of this podcast?
I’m not yet sure of the identity of my next guest, but I’ll be at StokerCon in Las Vegas the second weekend of May—where I’ll either win a Stoker Award or, in losing, tie at six for the most nominations without a win—and while there I plan to record several new episodes.
So it might be award-winning poet Linda Addison. Or writer Mary Turzillo, who won a Nebula Award for a story I published when I edited Science Fiction Age. Or it could be writer Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended the Clarion writers workshop way back in 1979 when we were still both getting started. (More time traveling!)
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- April 29, 1983 — David Bowie stars in Tony Scott’s vampire film The Hunger.
- April 29, 1983 — Something Wicked This Way Comes opens in theaters.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born April 29, 1955 — Kate Mulgrew.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born April 29, 1923 — Director Irvin “Kersh” Kershner is born in Philadelphia.
(10) VOTE. The Internet Movie Database is running a poll on “Your favorite ship’s commander?”
Everybody is in there from Kirk, Picard and Janeway, to the captain of The Love Boat, and Captain Kangaroo….
(11) READ TIM PRATT. Rachel Swirsky’s latest story recommendation — “Friday read! ‘Cup and Table’ by Tim Pratt”.
“Cup and Table” is my favorite of Tim Pratt’s stories–and it has a lot of competition. To explain how much competition, let me tell an anecdote about the audio magazine I used to edit, PodCastle.
I was no longer on staff when this happened, but at one point, the editors I who took over after I left received a letter. That letter complained of how many stories about lesbians were in the magazine, arguing that PodCastle should just be called LesbianCastle. One of the editors deviously ran the numbers and found that, proportionally, they did not actually run that many stories about lesbians. However, they did run a surprisingly high percentage of Tim Pratt stories. A percentage that, in fact, exceeded the percentage of stories about lesbians. He suggested that they call themselves PrattCastle instead.
(12) LIFE IN THE VAST LANE. In BBC’s article “Where to find life in the blackest vacuum of outer space” there is, says Chip Hitchcock, a “Shoutout to Hoyle, but not Anderson (who IIRC wrote about something much more like their topic).”
On the face of it space is dark, cold and full of lethal radiation – but maybe life has found a way to cling on in the blackness
First, we had better agree on what counts as “life”. It does not necessarily have to look like anything familiar.
As an extreme case, we can imagine something like the Black Cloud in astronomer Fred Hoyle’s classic 1959 science-fiction novel of that name: a kind of sentient gas that floats around in interstellar space, and is surprised to discover life on a planet.
But Hoyle could not offer a plausible explanation for how a gas, with an unspecified chemical make-up, could become intelligent. We probably need to imagine something literally a bit more solid.
While we cannot be sure that all life is carbon-based, as it is on Earth, there are good reasons to think that it is likely. Carbon is much more versatile as a building block for complex molecules than, say, silicon, the favourite element for speculations about alternative alien biochemistries.
(13) WARP SPEED. Larry Correia’s lengthy “Europe Trip Recap” doesn’t end in time to avoid an extraneous complaint about the LA Times’ Hugo coverage. Otherwise it’s an entertaining account of his just-completed overseas tour.
The next day we drove across all of Germany to the Czech Republic, and I got to experience the autobahn, which my whole life has been this sort of mythical place that has no speed limits, and is filled with drivers that understand slow traffic stays right, and where they never camp in the left lane, and in fact, if you’re blocking the left lane, they’ll come right up on your bumper at 100 miles an hour, honking, and flashing their lights. It was a place devoid of mercy, unforgiving of weakness. So we set out.
Apparently there are two kinds of tourist drivers on the autobahn. Those who are weak, fearful, whose crying pillows smell of lilacs and shame, who stay in the truck lane, or who wander out into the left occasionally, timidly, to be honked at and chased aside by awesome Teutonic Super Drivers…
And the other kind is the American who manages to average 180km an hour across all of Germany in a Volvo diesel station wagon.
It was AMAZING. I felt like a race car driver across an entire country. You know why German cars don’t have cup holders? Because if you stop to drink while driving, YOU WILL DIE. And you should. You need to be on. I’d get a gap, jump out to the left, floor it (because fuel economy is for hippies I’m on the mother f’ing autobahn!), and nobody pulls out in front of me in a minivan to enforce their personal speed limit, people ahead of me going slower (like 100mph) immediately get out of the way, and when some bad ass comes up behind me in a super car, I get out of his way, and then they blast past me like I’m standing still.
It was beautiful.
(14) CUNIEFORM COMPUTING. ScreenRant hopes it has listed “12 Facts You Don’t Know About George R.R. Martin” but chances are you already know all but a couple of them.
4. The Magic of the Wordstar 4.0 Computer
Martin is a dedicated user of the WordStar word processor software, which was the preeminent word processor back in the 1980s, that ran on Microsoft DOS. Martin is one of a handful of famous writers who use the WordStar 4.0 Computer that utilizes a DOS operating system. The other notable users are William F. Buckley Jr., Ralph Ellison, Robert J Sawyer, Anne Rice, and Andy Breckman (of the tv show Monk). So he’s one of the few people left on planet Earth that uses this word processor.
In an interview with Conan O’Brien, George R. R. Martin explained his reason for choosing such a classic program. “Well, I actually like it. It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn’t do anything else,” Martin said. “I don’t want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don’t want a capital! If I’d wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work a shift key!”
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
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one-fifth!
Two-fifth
::ticky::
Sacrificial fourth!
That poor weasel has the Higgs Boson Blues.
Fifth!
True fifth!
Diminished fifth (fa over ti)!
(13) WARP SPEED
That was amusing, especially (for me) his experiences of London. He missed out on the Natural History museum though, which is one of my favourite things in London. (Dinosaurs!)
@Mark,
Once a month in London the dinosaurs invade?! Man. I knew London was a magickal place.
Someone on another site suggested that right now is an excellent time to talk about books we love. I agreed, and posted my top twenty 2015 SFF books. Thought I might as well post them here as well.
Notes: I counted “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers as a 2014 book, or it would also be on the list, probably around #15. I think that is the only novel I left off for technical reasons. Anything else that isn’t on the list, you can assume I either didn’t read or read and ranked below #20. All books on this list I would have ranked as at least “good”. Books off the list get into “meh”-ranked territory. (Just off the list, in borderline territory, would have been “Planetfall” by Emma Newman as #21.)
20. Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell. YA fantasy that originally appeared as a fictional, Harry Potter-like series read by characters in one of Rowell’s other books. Very much in conversation with the tropes of that style of fiction, which allows it to be the final book in an otherwise nonexistent series. An interesting look at the tropes and traps of chosen one fantasy.
19. The Hunter’s Kind, by Rebecca Levene. The second book in an epic fantasy series centered on Krish, moon god reborn and struggling to figure out what that means. A solid read, and a fantasy story where personal power does not always mean control of events.
18. The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge. Faith’s father moved his family to the island to flee a scandal. But it followed them, and his death there is connected to a mysterious plant. Somewhere in the middle of Hardinge’s books, quality-wise, but even her middling stuff is head and shoulders above the run of the mill.
17. The Rest of Us Just Live Here, by Patrick Ness. In fantasy novels, some are chosen to be the epic heroes. This is not their story. This isn’t the first novel to explore the idea of what happens to the background characters, but this one does it particularly well and with a clever conceit.
16. Last First Snow, by Max Gladstone. In my opinion, Gladstone has never again quite lived up to the promise of his debut novel, Three Parts Dead, but Last First Snow may be the closest one yet. Chronologically the earliest book in his Craft fantasy sequence, it follows a path of a man from local hero to villain of a later book. Think the Darth Vader story done by someone who knows what he’s doing.
@Mark,
Dangit. I meant once a year. My already unfunny joke, just got unfunnier. 🙁
15. Dark Orbit, by Carolyn Ives Gilman. A crew goes to investigate a rare inhabitable planet, and finds it is not just inhabitable but inhabited, by a strange blind civilization. Chock full of interesting ideas, by a writer who’s never been afraid to push the boundaries.
14. Indexing: Reflections, by Seanan McGuire. Fairy tales are dangerous, and no one knows this better than the no-nonsense agents of the ATI Management Bureau, who contain fairy tale incursions when they hit the real world. A sequel demanded by fans, it wisely expands the story of one of the most interesting characters of the first book. Great fun to read. (Note: This is an edge case as a 2015 book; the bulk of it was published serially in 2015, but it was completed in 2016. I believe that makes it a 2016 book by, for example, Hugo rules. So if you like, take this one off, move everything below it up one, and stick “Planetfall” at the end as the new #20.)
13. Lair of Dreams, by Libba Bray. The second book in this 1920’s New York fantasy series continues what looks to be a grand story arc. This book adds additional characters and plot elements, and sometimes the book felt a little weighed down by complexity, but it all came to a well-written conclusion that finally draws almost all the disparate elements together. And the setting is just the bee’s knees, sweetie. Enjoyable throughout.
12. The Gracekeepers, by Kirsty Logan. In a world nearly drowned by rising waters, a circus sails from island to island, and two very different people try to escape the confines of their fate. Lyrical, odd, and always interesting.
11. The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. The empire absorbed and destroyed her culture, and she vows to destroy it — from the inside. A lot of people found this a love it or hate it book, and it does have its flaws; sometimes the main character seems more a mouthpiece for ideas than a person. But the I was still wrapped up in the story, and the emotionally wrenching ending left me literally nauseated. I can’t help but admire that.
10. Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon. Castle Hangnail needs a new dark overlord, or it will lose its status as a villainous lair. Twelve year old Molly is not the kind of dark overlord they were expecting. A middle grade fantasy that is utterly, utterly charming from beginning to end.
9. The Mystic Marriage, by Heather Rose Jones. One woman is an embittered alchemist. The other a scandalous socialite. Can two such different people find love? The second book in the Alpennia series is both a highly personal story and a continued exploration of the grand sweep of this Ruritanian European country that never was.
8. Half the World, by Joe Abercrombie. A warrior maiden joins a quest to find allies for her imperiled country. Sound cliche? It’s supposed to. Abercrombie takes the standard tropes of fantasy, and gleefully shatters, deconstructs, and rebuilds them into something better. This second book in Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea fantasy series is the best one so far.
7. Cold Iron, by Stina Leicht. Flintlock fantasy. The royal twins must go beyond the confines of their station in an attempt to save their kingdom from a threatened invasion. Sound cliche? It isn’t. Epic sweep, solid characters, interesting world.
6. Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente. In a rococo solar system where Hollywood makes silent movies on the moon, a documentary filmmaker goes missing on Venus. And odd novel told in memories, fragments, screenplays, and stories, difficult to describe and oddly compelling.
5. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. The wizard in the tower claims a local girl to be his servant, as he does every decade. But as the story unfolds, layer after layer is revealed, an onion of a novel with an old, old crime at the heart. Virtuostic writing; you may have heard some of the notes before, but they’re perfectly played here.
4. Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman. A half-dragon, half-human goes on a quest in the hopes of averting a potentially devastating war. The second and final book of Hartman’s Seraphina duology takes the brilliant fantasy of the first and expands it to a whole world. Rich, epic, and includes a truly chilling villain.
3. Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. She used to be a spaceship; now she’s both something less and something more. The conclusion to the far-future SF Ancillary trilogy knocks it out of the park. The second and third book work together as a single story, and if you felt the second book seemed truncated, this one is why — it takes everything that was going on and brings it to a great conclusion that examines what it means to be a sentient creature.
2. The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. It starts with an apocalypse. Then it gets interesting. This is Jemisin’s best work to date, and it is nearly flawless. Three interwoven (and, as it turns out, closely interconnected) stories told in three different ways, telling a tale of prejudice, power, and a society with rot at its heart.
1. Cuckoo Song, by Frances Hardinge. A girl awakes with holes in her memory and curious cravings, and her search for answers leads her far afield. I cannot rave enough about this book. A YA faerie-themed book told from a point of view unique in my fantasy reading experience, set in a time when British culture was on the cusp of change. Compelling characters, a riveting plot, an amazing heroine, and a villain with motives that make perfect sense. I don’t give a lot of books five stars; this one gets them.
(And I will quickly add — it is also, of course, entirely possible that a book has been left off this list because I forgot about it, or got the publication date wrong. Yes, even if it was a book I really liked. It’s been a long year and a third …)
The LHC was running when a “severe electrical perturbation” occurred in the early hours of Friday morning.
Pop goes the weasel . . .
(10) I hadn’t known Captain Kangaroo commanded a ship, but I was very young when I watched his TV show.
(1) Had a power outage caused by a raccoon once. Somehow pales in comparison, but an important lesson to young raccoons out there to stay off of the power lines.
(7) Has anyone seen Something Wicked This Way Comes recently? I saw it when it first came out and thought it wasn’t bad, but somehow didn’t quite capture the magic of the novel. I probably should watch it again. I keep thinking that Spielberg should do something by Bradbury, but maybe he’s kinda past his golden sunshine phase of moviemaking.
(10) I don’t recall it, but wikipedia tells me that after 1974, Captain Kangaroo’s show would be started by famous people saying, “Good morning, Captain.” At one point Shatner and Nimoy said the line in their Star Trek uniforms. Anyone remember this?
Also, any votes for Captain Horatio Huffenpuff?
What’s a “WordStar 4.0 Computer that utilizes a DOS operating system.”?
Man, WordStar was so powerful, it actually evolved itself from a simple word processor to a computer, and then had the temerity to utilize DOS *on* itself!
Damn, no wonder people still use it!
And if you want to use it on your modern system: Google Robert J Sawyer and vDos.
I first read about that weasel in an article in Dutch (I sometimes read the Dutch news for practice and to increase my vocabulary.). The headline led to a certain amount of head-scratching until I worked my way through the article and established that no, “wezel” didn’t have some alternate meaning (you know, the way “mouse” might if an errant mouse damaged a technical installation.). (Also when you’re looking at “deeltjesversneller” and thinking “something that speeds up tiny things, that were once part of something bigger. What do I know of that would fit that description?” “CERN” is a big fat hint.)
@ Kyra,
Thanks for your list. I’m a big fan of Ancillary Mercy, Uprooted and The Fifth Season; loved Bryony and Roses, and enjoyed the Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Thanks to your brackets and other filers, I also did a lot of great catch-up reading: notably A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (caused me to miss my bus stop twice), Seraphina, the first three of Bujold’s Five Gods books, and Swordspoint. All were beautifully written, as well as exciting and well crafted. As a copy-editor, my business is dealing with poor writing, and all these books were a great refreshment, as well as a great pleasure. Looking forward to reading the Chambers novel soon and All the Birds in the Sky sounds good, but am deep in The Invisible Library now, and delighted with it.
[ticky]
“Pop goes the weasel… ”
*snort*
Agreed that the movie version of Something Wicked This Way Comes was…off somehow. I never bothered to rewatch it, so it’s hard to put into words what my problem is, but it might be that it seemed like at every moment you could see the cast and crew thinking about what they were doing as opposed to just doing it.
Regarding 13, I’m really glad Larry Correia enjoyed his trip to Europe, since I was a little worried the lack of recognition (he’s not very well known over here, Baen books being hard to get) would get to him.
I’m also glad that he realised how bad American chocolate (Hershey’s is worse than Soviet chocolate back in the day and about on par with East German chocolate) really is, though if he thinks Kinder Bueno is good, he still has a way to go. I’m also happy he enjoyed German food, though it’s not really my thing, in spite of being German. BTW, I have seen proper German sauerkraut (Hengstenberg Mildessa) in big US supermarkets, so maybe that’s the one to pick up.
BTW, the Rothenburg something something town is called Rothenburg op der Tauber (Rothenburg on the Tauber, because there are a lot of towns called Rothenburg or Rotenburg in Germany) and it really is lovely. Heidelberg is nice, too (I have family there), though I’ve never understood why Americans are so into Heidelberg, since there are plenty of towns which are just as nice. Personally, I love the towns along the river Moselle.
I’m also happy that Larry enjoyed our highways, though we don’t really drive 180 km/h all the time and Larry likely wouldn’t either, if he lived here, because the fuel costs are much too high. Most of us drive at approx, 120 or 130 km/h where there is no speed limit (and near bigger cities there usually is), though I have gone up to 200 km/h at times, when I had a cool rental or a car I wanted to test. You do need a suitably empty highway though or it gets dangerous very fast. I also find that I don’t like extremely high speeds. Beyond 140 km/h it gets uncomfortable and I find anything beyond 180 km/h rather unpleasant.
Regarding climbing stairs, that’s what most of us do on holiday, since old buildings rarely come with elevators, so if you want to visit the castle/cathedral/whatever, you have to climb stairs. And St. Paul’s isn’t even that bad – no comparison with Hohenzollern castle. In fact, one of the things that surprised me about the US was that they had elevators in the sort of sights (e.g. stalactite caves) which would normally require stairs.
As for the lack of coverage of American WWI participation in the Imperial War Museum, that’s pretty normal over here, since the US only showed up in WWI, when it was almost over (the really bad battles at the Somme and Verdun happened in 1916 – BTW, the battlefield at Verdun and the bonehouse is a sight to visit) and is mostly only mentioned as a side note. Though the British veneration of WWI is rather excessive by European standards – Germans mostly ignore WW1 and focus on WW2 instead.
Oh yes, and the Paris catacombs are really cool, unless you are squeamish. I dragged my Mom down there, when I was sixteen, and she didn’t like it at all, whereas I was, “Cool. This is like an Indiana Jones movie.”
So yeah for travel opening Larry Correia’s mind. Too bad he still had to put a crack regarding John Scalzi’s article in the Los Angeles Times in there.
@Cora American chocolate. It is to weep. A significant fun part of my several trips to Europe (including most recently Italy last November) has been getting away from the pale reflection of chocolate that is American chocolate, and having something worth eating.
A friend of mine from England used to come over for gaming conventions in the 90’s. We continually begged her to bring good chocolate with her. This got her in trouble with customs once, who wondered just what mischief she was up to…
One day I will get a chance to drive on an Autobahn. My personal land speed record as a passenger is 115 MPH (185 km/h) in a rickety station wagon that really should never have been going that fast. My personal land speed as a driver, given the quality of my cars over the years, is 90 MPH (144 KM/h).
On the better-in-Europe front–the orange juice. Holy god. There must be laws about how long you can leave it in a vat or something, because the orange juice I got in Europe was so much better than it is over here, and we have FLORIDA for chrissake!
I haven’t tried WordStar, but I have to agree with Mr. Martin on the annoyance of many word processors trying to fix things I don’t want fixed. Especially if you’re making up words or using non-standard spellings, or words not in English–I am forever de-autocorrecting things as I type.
Things that are better in Europe: I haven’t been able to find a good buckwheat crèpe (a.k.a. galette) in my Midwestern part of the world. I go to so-called French restaurants and receive what is basically a scrambled egg wrap and it is to weep.
Kyra, thank you for the list. Ive only read a fee of those, and enjoyed them quite a bit. A few more are titles I have been meaning to look into, amd the rest are now titles I want to look into. When I get back to a real keyboard, I may post a few titles I enjoyed last year.
People who diss “American chocolate” — wtf? Do you not know of Ghirardelli (my personal choice for chocolate in drinks and baked goods)? Or the fact that there’s now a whole section of the candy aisle at my local supermarket for upscale chocolate bars? Some are European, of course, but in my observation you have to go American for your organic/single-origin/fair-trade/pepper/sea salt/orange/etc etc choc.
It’s like dissing “American beer” when we’re actually in the Golden Age of craft brewing.
Wordstar, yes. There use to be a lot of wordstar compatible editors with the same keyboard shortcuts. And I’ve found that MS Word has grown worse for every edition since 6.0. It is like it is trying to destroy documents as soon as you open them. I prefer to use Wordpad in windows, it is not so hellbent on destruction and polymorph on a global scale.
For some reason, I love reading authors opinions about countries I have visited once or many times and they see for the first time. I dunno, makes me feel smart? Or it is just fun to read that happy feeling of adventure and discovery. Correa is no exception, it was a nice piece. More like this!
For some reason people always talk about swedish chocolate, I think they mix us up with Switzerland or something. Regarding that, is there anything (apart from alcohol) that people at Worldcons usually enjoy if you bring from your homecountry just to be nice?
Doctor Science:
I found my Golden Mecca of Beer in New Yorks Burp Castle. A true religious experience with little signs telling people not to talk to loudly as people wanted to appreciate the beer.
Neutrino bombarded weasel has to be an origin story:
Mr. McGee, don’t make that weasel angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
(14) I started doing tech journalism back when there was real competition in the word-processing sector–in fact, some of my earliest assignments were WP-package evaluations. I encountered plenty of writers who baby-ducked on WordStar and hung on to it even through operating-system changes and the dominance of WordPerfect* and MS Word. And while I wasn’t a fan, I understood its appeal: a consistent interface and a set of controls that, once learned, suited a touch-typist quite well. It didn’t care much about the underlying hardware or the details of the OS, as long as the keyboard layout could accommodate it. And it turned out copy–not camera-ready documents but something that could be sent to an editor who expected professionally-formatted hard copy. (Them days is gone, of course.)
I also note that Screen Rant seems to have drawn much of its characterization of WordStar from the Wikipedia article, and that it fails to refer to a couple of the “notable users” in the past tense.
* I’m a WordPerfect diehard my own self. But that’s a different rant.
Looking at Kyra’s list, I’m not sure I’ve really found a book in 2016 that I like as much as any given one of those on that list (except Mr. Splitfoot, but as a ghost story I would barely classify it as speculative fiction). City of Blades was good, but it also wasn’t anything new, really. Even looking at forthcoming books, all the stuff that I’m pumped about are parts of continuing series.
So I guess what I’m asking… has anyone read any novel that really blew them away so far in 2016?
tofu:
“Lovecraft Country” by Matt Russ. Eldritch horror in Jim Crow’s America.
There’s an entire library’s worth of stories where there’s a world of magic hidden just below the surface in ours, unnoticed by mundanes. “Lovecraft Country” makes explicit how the Black American experience has been like that, hidden in plain sight from white Americans.
Also, the characters are great.
Doctor Science just totally ninja’d me on Lovecraft Country. I hope there’s more good stuff to come in 2016, but it’s a fine start.
Cora:
In fact, one of the things that surprised me about the US was that they had elevators in the sort of sights (e.g. stalactite caves) which would normally require stairs.
Part of this is American laziness, but another part is accessibility. In particular, if the place is partly or wholly supported by government money it has to make a *serious* effort to be wheelchair-accessible. It’s not always possible, of course, but they have to try.
WordPerfect! I miss DOS, and WordStar, but what I really miss is “reveal codes” in WordPerfect-for-DOS, as well as the macro composer, both of which were elegant barebones perfection compared to their bloated and convoluted counterparts in current versions of Word.
I usually disable most of the auto-correct features — though not all of them, because I am incapable of spelling the word “receieive” without assistance.
Joe (Joe’s Own Editor) in Linux still carries WordStar capabilities, in fact you can run it in pretty much compatibility mode using the “jstar” command. I’m still an avid user, after all these years in Linux/UNIX-land… Once you learn certain key-combinations, it’s hard to forget them.
(1) The thing I love about that particular article is the photo that shows us that in Europe, even the particle-smashers have bike lanes.
Paul Weimer: American chocolate. It is to weep. A significant fun part of my several trips to Europe (including most recently Italy last November) has been getting away from the pale reflection of chocolate that is American chocolate, and having something worth eating.
There’s great Ametican chocolate but it’s all small batch producers who do it. Check your local Whole Foods as some of the chocolate they carry that’s from here is quite. Oh and need I say that not all European chocolate is great, say Cadbury’s which has been piss poor no matter who owned it.
I have had a bit of Lovecraft fatigue (and this from a guy who traveled around the world with a plush cthulhu), but the filers have convinced me to add Lovecraft Country to my Mount 770.
Well done.
@cat (and someone else upstream who defended Ghiardelli)
True, its not an absolute that all American chocolate is crap, and all European chocolate is the one true chocolate, but it did seem, to the amount I saw, tasted and experienced ,that American chocolate on a whole is a lot like American cheese. Which is then to say that not every cheese in the US is Kraft singles.
(Oh dear, I’ve gone back to cheese again, haven’t I? Whoops)
The nearest whole foods to me are in terrible parking locations, so I don’t visit whole paycheck so much as I might.
Cadbury Milk chocolate is my chocolate ideal. You have to check the packaging to make sure it was made in Britain though, Cadbury made elsewhere is just not as good.
Current reading: Irona 700 by Dave Duncan. The setting is a more or less Grecian fantasy empire ruled by a parliement. Our heroine is chosen in the yearly ceremony which selects a new member-for-life from among the citizens of the capital who are turning 16 that year by the whim of the goddess of chance.
It’s got a lot in common with The Goblin Emperor, but it’s on a much longer timescale (I’m at about the halfway point and the heroine is now 27), the setting is much better at not being generic medieval Europe, and if you struggled with the linguistic aspects of TGE, I promise you that this offers you no such hurdles.
Chocolove chocolate is not bad and not really expensive (found in Boulder area Whole Foods, but I think it is a local manufacturer so I’m not sure how widely it is distributed).
I need chocolate without dairy OR vanilla and I can actually eat a few of their varieties.
(sigh I miss vanilla. Ironically, I’m probably not allergic to artificial vanilla — wood pulp shouldn’t have the proteins that make my esophagus swell shut — but I don’t want the other stuff that’s likely to be in products that use the artificial flavoring.
Dr. Science:
Oooh thanks for the rec. It’d be interesting to read it along with Victor La Valle’s Lovecraftian novella to get a one-two punch.
Someone needs to give a eulogy for the poor. victim of the LHC, say some weasel words…
Current viewing: Cut my anime lineup to 5 or fewer shows, as I do at this time of the season. Here are the ones that survived, if you want to make a note to check them out later: Kagewani -II-, Re: ZERO, Concrete Revolutio, My Hero Academia, and The Lost Village.
(Technically that’s 4.5 shows, since I count the shorts as half-shows. If I’d continued with another short, I could’ve had a second fifth.)
Also looking at least decent, but cut for various petty reasons: the continuation of Sailor Moon Crystal, Kumamiko, and Flying Witch.
I won’t do any more direct links to my commentary posts because they’ll be crawling with spoilers for the rest of the season, but if you’re watching any of the same shows I am, please feel free to drop by at Amazing Stories and enjoy the cultural notes or argue with me about my crackpot theories.
And BTW, since no one has said so for a couple weeks, if you haven’t watched ERASED/Boku Dake ga Inai Machi yet, you still really need to.
To my taste American mass production chocolate is crippled by a love of milk chocolate (or, sometimes, shudder of shudder – white ‘chocolate’). We tend to love the sweet profile. My own taste in chocolate though leans towards bitter. European chocolate is more accepting of that. Then again I can happily chomp on cacao nibs all by themselves. I’m probably an outlier.