(1) LE GUIN HEALTH NEWS. Ursula K. Le Guin, who was hospitalized for a few days this summer with heart problems, gave a health update in a comment at Book View Café on October 22.
The kindness of these messages is wonderful. I wish I could thank you each. I can only thank you all with all my heart.
Health update: My daily bouquet of medicines with weird names is definitely doing its job. Am quite recovered from the bad time, and get along fine if I don’t push it. My model of behavior is the Sloth. Can’t hang from branches yet, but am real good at moving slo o o w w l y . . .
Best wishes to all my well-wishers.
(2) STARSHIPS IN OUR LIFETIME. Starship Engineer Workshops are being offered in London on November 12-13.
For further information or to book contact the team at: [email protected] for more details. For the full promotional flyer: http://i4is.org/app/webroot/uploads/files/SE_A4_Nov2016%20(AM)%20Vers%202.pdf
The Initiative for Interstellar Studies in collaboration with the British Interplanetary Society will deliver an updated Starship Engineer workshop course. Two one day courses, either attend one or both, each will be different and important in their own way.
12th November: Starship Engineer. Aims to give a grounding in interstellar studies. It starts from considering the essential requirements to giving you an overview of different spacecraft systems, then takes you on a journey through several actual starship design studies. We use examples from the literature, but focus on two specific case studies, that of fusion and beamed-sail propulsion, as plausible ways by which we may someday reach the stars.
13th November: Science Fiction Starships. The works of science fiction literature have fascinating starship concepts, but how realistic are they? In this day course we will examine and evaluate the laser-sails in “The Mote in Gods Eye (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), Torch Ships in “Time for the Stars” (Robert Heinlein), Quantum Ramjets in “The Songs of Distant Earth” (Arthur C Clarke) and other inspirational examples of interstellar vessels….
Principal Lecturers: Kelvin F. Longis a physicist and aerospace engineer, until recently Chief Editor Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, author of the book “Deep Space Propulsion: A Roadmap to the Stars” and is the Executive Director i4is and a member of the Breakthrough Starshot advisory committee.
Rob Swinney is a former RAF Squadron Leader aerosystems engineer and is a Deputy Director of i4is. He, and Long, have both been involved in the creation and running of the only two modern starship design projects, Project Icarus (fusion) and Project Dragonfly (laser-sails).
(3) IN TRAINING. Kevin Standlee writes a lyrical post about taking the California Zephyr through the Sierras.
Speaking of the nice parts: the eastbound Zephyr includes some views through the Sierra Nevada that you don’t get on the westbound trip. For example, shortly after Colfax the train goes around “Cape Horn” with some spectacular views of the American River Canyon. Some of the trees have finally been cut back as well; for a while, they’d grown so thick that they cut off the vista, which was unfortunate. Eastbound you miss this because the normal eastbound track goes through a tunnel that custs off this corner with its precipitous view. I’m composing most of them while snaking our way up the mountain, but I can’t post it because on this stretch there is no cell phone signal. We’re on the opposite side of the mountains from the I-80 corridor where the cell phone towers are. Not that I mind. I’m mostly looking out the window. As a touch-typist, I don’t need to stare at the keyboard to write.
(4) NOT A TYPICAL ANALOG WRITER. Galactic Journey says Harry Harrison has finally registered on their radar screen –
[Oct. 23, 1961] Who is this Harry Harrison, and what makes him different? https://t.co/5xRJ7I6HYU pic.twitter.com/zrcGOnFewP
— Galactic Journey News (@journeygalactic) October 23, 2016
Author Harry Harrison has been around for a long time, starting his science fiction writing career at the beginning of the last decade (1951). Yet, it was not until this decade that I (and probably many others) discovered him. He came into my view with the stellar Deathworld, a novel that was a strong contender for last year’s Hugo. Then I found his popular Stainless Steel Rat stories, which were recently anthologized. The fellow is definitely making a name for himself.
Harrison actually occupies a liberal spot in generally conservative Analog magazine’s stable of authors. While Harry tends to stick with typical Analog tropes (psionics, humano-centric stories, interstellar hijinx), there are themes in his work which are quite progressive – even subversive, at least for the medium in which they appear.
For instance, there is a strong pro-ecological message in Deathworld. I also detect threads of pacifism in Harrison’s works, not to mention rather unorthodox portrayal of women and sexual mores. Harry isn’t Ted Sturgeon or anything, but he is definitely an outlier for Analog, and refreshing for the genre as a whole.
(5) ALMOST YOUR BIGGEST FAN. The Twitter user formerly known as Jim Henley knows how to pay a compliment.
And as I've stated on File 770, I'm your fifth biggest fan!
— John Lee Petitfours (@JimHenleyMusic) October 21, 2016
(6) DILLON OBIT. Comics artist Steve Dillion died October 22 reports the BBC.
Steve Dillon, the legendary British comic book artist, known for his work on Preacher, Punisher, and 2000AD’s Judge Dredd has died aged 54.
His brother Glyn confirmed the death on Twitter, saying his “big brother and hero” had died in New York City.
Dillon was a prolific artist who began professional work at age 16, drawing for Marvel UK’s Hulk magazine.
He was best known for his US collaborations with writer Garth Ennis, creating classic cult comic titles.
In his Twitter profile, Dillon, originally from Luton, describes himself as: “A comic book bloke. Co-creator/Artist of Preacher. Co-founder/Editor of Deadline magazine. Artist on Punisher, Judge Dredd and many others.”
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born October 23, 1942 — Michael Crichton.
(8) YOUR EPIC IMAGINATION. James Davis Nicoll says it’s “Good news!” Dorothy J. Heydt’s The Interior Life (published under penname Katherine Blake) available again as a free ebook.
Go here for the download.
(9) DO YOU LIKE WHAT SMART PEOPLE LIKE? Ann Leckie keeps hitting them out of the park. Today’s topic: “On Guilty Pleasures”.
Or Romance. Romance isn’t one of my things, right, but let’s be honest, a crappy detective novel or a crappy SF or Extruded Fantasy Product is just as bad as a crappy Romance. When it’s SF we’ll protest that no, that’s just a bad one, the whole genre’s not like that, but Romance? Romance is just stupid, man.
Isn’t it funny how guilty pleasures are things that poor people like–or tend to buy or use because it’s cheap. Isn’t it funny how guilty pleasures are things that teenage girls like, or women. Isn’t it funny how guilty pleasures are things we liked when we were kids.
I’m not saying that nothing can be criticized–there are surely bad Romance novels. Taylor Swift is a pretty good songwriter who has done some very admirable things, but she’s also had her less than admirable public moments. Velveeta doesn’t come out well in a comparison with really good cheese (unless its a competition for what will make the easiest mac & cheese, given only three minutes and a microwave to work with), and it’s probably not very good for you. I’m perfectly willing to criticize things I like, or consider criticism of those things, and still like them.
No, I’m talking about that weird, moral dimension to likes and dislikes. You like pumpkin spice anything? You should be ashamed. You should feel guilty, because you’re not supposed to like that, smart people don’t like that, people who like that have something wrong with them.
So much of what we like or dislike–what we’re publicly supposed to like or dislike–is functioning as in-group identifiers.
(10) HAN SOLO MOVIE CASTING. Donald Glover will play young Lando Calrissian, and YES he will wear a cape reports the Los Angeles Times.
Donald Glover is officially your new Lando Calrissian. Lucasfilm has announced that Glover will play the younger version of “Star Wars’” Cloud City administrator turned Rebel Alliance general in the upcoming standalone Han Solo film.
Glover will join Alden Ehrenreich, who was confirmed to play the young Solo during Star Wars Celebration in July.
According to the press release, the upcoming film will depict “Lando in his formative years as a scoundrel on the rise in the galaxy’s underworld — years before the events involving Han, Leia, and Darth Vader in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and his rise to Rebel hero in ‘Return of the Jedi.’”
(11) ACCELERATING HUMAN IMAGINATION IN ENGLAND. Did somebody think it wasn’t fast enough?
On November 24 and 25th on the campus of the University of Liverpool, London, the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and the University of Liverpool, London will host a workshop called Accelerating Human Imagination, bringing together a number of US and European experts in the study of imagination. They will be presenting and discussing new research on questions such as: What is “imagination?” Is there a singular basis of imagination that develops into a number of different phenomena, or do we use the word imagination to group together a number of aspects of behavior and cognition into a common category? If we can better understand imagination, we might be able to find ways of directly engaging it in order to accelerate its operation. What use might we put this accelerated imagination to?
(12) RAW SCIENCE FILM FESTIVAL. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination is a partner of the Raw Science Film Festival, which honors films on science and technology from around the world. The screening and award ceremony will take place on December 10, 2016, on the Fox Studio lot inside the historic Zanuck Theater. Sheldon Brown will be on hand to present the inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination Prize in Speculative Media. The deadline for festival submissions is November 9.
(13) INDIE SHRINKS. At Mad Genius Club, Fynbospress makes insightful speculations about the new author earnings report.
Interesting times, interesting results. After two and half years of constant growth, this time we see the first contraction for indie market share. Trad Pub’s big five showed a very slight gain in unit sales, but most of the market share went to Amazon’s own publishing arm, and a smaller amount to uncategorized single-author publishers (mostly indies).
On gross revenues, most of the lost market share went to small and medium publishers, with a smaller amount to amazon Pub.
Having the what, we’re left to speculate on the why, and how. Causes may include, but are not limited to: Amazon’s Kindle first program, pushing their own new releases; Bookbub’s increasing percentage of big and medium press slots as opposed to indies (and increased price raising the barrier to the fewer slots left); Amazon’s new promoted/sponsored search ads; consolidation of indies into small pubs; the stars being in the right configuration for C’thulu to rise from dead R’lyeh; other factors unknown at this time.
(14) SAY AHHHHH. Research shows “Migraine Sufferers Have More Nitrate-Reducing Microbes in their Mouths”.
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found that the mouths of migraine sufferers harbor significantly more microbes with the ability to modify nitrates than people who do not get migraine headaches. The study is published October 18 by mSystems.
“There is this idea out there that certain foods trigger migraines — chocolate, wine and especially foods containing nitrates,” said first author Antonio Gonzalez, a programmer analyst in the laboratory of Rob Knight, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego and senior author on the study. “We thought that perhaps there are connections between what people are eating, their microbiomes and their experiences with migraines.”
Many of the 38 million Americans who suffer from migraines report an association between consuming nitrates and their severe headaches. Nitrates, found in foods such as processed meats and green leafy vegetables and in certain medicines, can be reduced to nitrites by bacteria found in the mouth. When circulating in the blood, these nitrites can then be converted to nitric oxide under certain conditions. Nitric oxide can aid cardiovascular health by improving blood flow and reducing blood pressure. However, roughly four in five cardiac patients who take nitrate-containing drugs for chest pain or congestive heart failure report severe headaches as a side effect.
(15) SQUINTING. Kevin Marks discusses “How the Web Became Unreadable”. Surprisingly, he’s not talking about all the political posts.
It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop. I’ve caught myself squinting and holding the screen closer to my face. I’ve worried that my eyesight is starting to go.
These hurdles have made me grumpier over time, but what pushed me over the edge was when Google’s App Engine console—a page that, as a developer, I use daily—changed its text from legible to illegible. Text that was once crisp and dark was suddenly lightened to a pallid gray. Though age has indeed taken its toll on my eyesight, it turns out that I was suffering from a design trend.
There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter.
(16) HAGIOGRAPHY. Leonard Maltin interviews Stan Lee for Parade.
DINNER WITH DOCTOR STRANGE
When asked which three of his superheroes he would like to have dinner with, he takes a moment to think the question through. “I’d probably enjoy talking to Iron Man,” he says. “I’d like to talk to Doctor Strange. I like the Silver Surfer. Iron Man is sort of a classier Donald Trump, if you can imagine that sort of thing. The Silver Surfer is always philosophical; he comments about the world and man’s position in the universe, why we don’t enjoy living on this wonderful planet and why we don’t help each other.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, James Davis Nicoll, JJ and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]
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First?
Hopefully not last!
Thoid (or does Mike count?)
Glad to hear LeGuin is doing better.
FYI, if you haven’t checked it out, watch the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on BBC America. The pilot is streaming on their website and is supposedly also on Hulu. It takes the base premise of the novels and adss some additional violence and intensity. Definitely need to pay attention, though.
Dorothy is convinced nobody will pay for a book that failed to earn out its advance, thus the free download. It is also, as far as I can tell, impossible to tip her if you like the book. And she won’t do Patreon.
Some might say the book failed to earn out because Baen put an unfortunate cover on it. Not the usual sort of Baenal unfortunate, either. The woman on the horse is supposed to look like a ringwraith.
15) I’ve seen plenty of websites with text on a busy patterned wallpaper, making it impossible to read without actually highlighting the text. It’s annoying as heck. I should add that this isn’t a NEW trend… but it’s a persistent one.
@James Davis Nicholl: That really is an unfortunate book cover–if I saw it in a bookstore, I’d never pick it up.
(9) Wait, people aren’t supposed to like pumpkin spice anymore? When did this happen?
If I recall correctly, Dorothy said she thought Jim Baen bought the book as a favour to Karen Anderson and didn’t have any idea how to market a fantasy about a housewife who becomes aware of a secondary world.
I’m glad Le Guin is doing better.
I have been cursing the shrinkage of text size and the decrease in contrast for quite a while now. The patterned wallpapers that make reading difficult have been around longer, but people doing those things weren’t learning it from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, or equivalents in usage in earlier periods.
This might sound completely nuts, but has anybody noticed that mass market paperbacks seem to be getting smaller? I was shopping today, and in the grocery store, the Wal-Mart, and the local bookstore I went to, I looked at some recent MMP’s (romance, urban fantasy, and just general releases) and thought, “I swear those books are shrinking.” Stephen King’s recent collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, stood out–it was just short and fat.
Am I hallucinating, or is this really happening?
James Davis Nicoll: Dorothy is convinced nobody will pay for a book that failed to earn out its advance, thus the free download.
Well, that’s too bad — I’d have bought the hell out of this e-book. I bought a paper copy last year, but when my vacation plans changed, it ended up at a friend’s house and they haven’t been in a position to send it on to me yet because of life reasons.
I appreciate Heydt’s generosity — but I’d rather have paid her for the work.
I’m absolutely downloading Dorothy’s book, and I wish there was money in it for her.
Some of my earliest memories are of the California Zephyr. In 1959, we moved from Santa Ana to Fort Collins, Colorado, and Mom brought me on the Zephyr while Dad drove with my sisters. I remember the green glass dome of the observation car (I played on the rug for a couple of minutes, then Mom decreed that it was time to “let other people enjoy it,” and I never saw it again.), and even more strongly remember the toilet, with the pedestal welded to the tread-metal floor. A pedal next to it made the bottom drop right out, and everything just went out the bottom of the train. Imagine being almost three and seeing that! In later years, I convinced myself I’d imagined that part, and, later still, found that I hadn’t. Grandma and Aunt Mary met us at Union Station in Denver, and I have some scattered memories of that as well.
I’d love to go on that route again. As a consolation prize, I’d take the Zephyr across Canada (if I had a sleeper car).
I’ve been taking the train between Reno and the Bay Area more often lately for reasons having to do with having my RV spending time with a mechanic in Fremont who is trying to fix an issue with the fuel-tank transfer valve. I may do this also in the winter, so that I don’t have to fight bad weather over Donner Summit on Interstate 80.
My follow-up post today includes the photos I took yesterday but couldn’t post due to the quite limited bandwidth I had rolling through the Sierras.
Kip W on October 23, 2016 at 8:52 pm said:
There were still such toilets on passenger trains until not too long ago, but Amtrak’s fleet is, I think, now all equipped with retention toilets. In fact, they stopped working in the coach in which I sat on Saturday. I went and told the car attendant, who said, “They were supposed to fix that in Oakland last night!” She told me as we were coming in to Reno that there was a vacuum leak in one of the toilets on that car, so every time you flushed it, it would cause the vacuum that makes the system work to start failing. After we left Reno, she was going to lock out that one lavatory because it’s a long trip to Chicago (three days), and she can’t spend the whole trip resetting the system to restore the vacuum.
You presumably mean VIA Rail’s Canadian, not the California Zephyr, the latter being the name of Amtrak’s trains 5 and 6 between Chicago IL and Emeryville CA. As it happens, I shared a diner table at lunch with a couple who were on their way out to Toronto on Amtrak and would return to the west coast on the Canadian. I’d love to take that trip myself, but it’s very expensive. (My three trans-US train trips have been paid for with credit card points. I now have enough for a fourth one.)
I’m not sure having the Silver Surfer over for dinner is wise. Some of the people he has been known to hang out with have big appetites.
ticky
Kevin Standlee
I presume you are more up-to-date on train names than I am, so I’ll just say that I had been thinking there was a Canada Zephyr. Ah, well!
At any rate, for nostalgic reasons, I’d most prefer to travel between CA and CO again, but a train ride across Canada sounds appealing, too. I rode some trains in my later years: went up the Northeast Corridor from Georgia to NYC and back, and enjoyed that (much better than buses). Rode a bit in England in First Class (not a sleeper), and when I couldn’t find anything I wanted on the menu in my car, I walked back to the Snack Car and had some Stouffer’s Chicken and Dumplings that really hit the spot.
I actually was in a sleeper car in China, and even rested a bit, though I spent most of my time in a jump seat by a window with my camera in my hand. We pulled into a brand-new station in Nanking (or was it Nanjing?), that was spookily empty, especially for China. We were pretty hungry by then, and found food downstairs at McDonald’s or KFC, the first vendors who were up and running.
I like pumpkin spice!
I am iffy on many pumpkin spice flavored things, like pretzels and roast chicken, which do not, to my mind, need to be pumpkin spice, but if they’re your thing, hey, knock yourself out.
The pumpkin spice Starbucks latte that started this whole craze/backlash is okay, not great, but I’ll throw a shot of pumpkin spice liqueur in hot apple cider with a glad heart.
JJ on October 23, 2016 at 8:40 pm said:
James Davis Nicoll: Dorothy is convinced nobody will pay for a book that failed to earn out its advance, thus the free download.
Well, that’s too bad — I’d have bought the hell out of this e-book. I bought a paper copy last year, but when my vacation plans changed, it ended up at a friend’s house and they haven’t been in a position to send it on to me yet because of life reasons.
I appreciate Heydt’s generosity — but I’d rather have paid her for the work.
Love the heck out of this book.
Yes, would have paid for it.
Hmmm… and the page has links to all sorts of stories too.
Any chance of them turning up somewhere?
I’d toss money at that.
Pumpkin spice?
There is always this:
https://www.monin.com/m/pumpkin-spice-syrup.html
nom nom nom
8) and ensuing discussion: Snagged! The Interior Life is one of my Desert Island Books, and my hard-copy is getting a little worn from use. I had always wondered if the Demoura sections were a standard fantasy-quest story that had been rejected and then the author got a different (and much better) idea about how to rewrite it, but that seems not to have been the case based on Heydt’s comments on that linked review by Jo Walton.
Re the fonts, I’ll admit that I didn’t pick up on the difference between the first two right off. But somewhere about a chapter in I did notice, and promptly went back and started over, paying attention this time. The third font (which only appears in the last few chapters) is, as noted, quite distinct from the other two.
Heydt never explains exactly how or why the mental connection between Sue and Lady Amalia came to pass, and overall I think that’s a wise choice. There is one throwaway line somewhere in the middle of the book that suggests they share a patronym / house-name, and that was good enough for me.
I think what really made this book work for me is the way in which each of the principals “thinks outside the box” WRT the other one’s world. Yes, Lady Amalia’s experience as a woman who expects to be respected and treated as an authority helps Sue break out of the mold of “just a housewife”, but some of Sue’s advice and ideas are equally unexpected and useful in Lady Amalia’s quest.
I also like the way Sue’s relationship with her husband is handled. Fred makes his first appearance looking like a stereotype straight out of a 50s sitcom, but as the story progresses it becomes obvious that the changes in Sue are also changing him, and that he doesn’t have a problem with any of this. He defends her against catty gossip from a drunken lout at a party; he supports her desire to take classes in computer programming and accounting; he tells her very explicitly that he never expected her to whore herself out for his promotion, and if not getting said promotion is the price of her turning the Big Cheese down, well, so be it.
Yes, the our-world section of the story is set very solidly in the 80s and a little dated to read now — but the themes in it, especially those about the expectations placed on women, are still extremely relevant even today.
James Davis Nicoll(8): THANK you! I love that book and am delighted to have an e-copy. But the one I downloaded seems to be missing the last few pages, although it’s acquired a recipe for cake. Glad to have it anyway.
(9) DO YOU LIKE WHAT SMART PEOPLE LIKE? I haven’t read this yet, but I liked the one you linked to a day or three ago; I need to just start reading Leckie’s blog.
(15) SQUINTING. Oh yes; why purposely make it tougher to read, with grey-on-grey-on-grey. Not just computer text, either; there are other things I use my glasses for that I wouldn’t need to if they just used a smidge more contrast. Just a bit is all I ask! Harumph. Everything blending into a grayish mass doesn’t really look very good anyway; how do these design trends (like “flat”) get started? And ultra thin fonts are really just silly. These things combine into a sort of “how tough to read can we make this.”
Weird that designers point to Ian Storm Taylor’s article. If (as Marks says) Taylor says black isn’t always really black – well, that’s no reason for making it even lighter. It sounds morel like a reason to use black. But then my eyes aren’t what they used to be, so I would say that.
@Camestros Felapton: LOL.
(15) SQUINTING
I’m a fan of firefox’s Reader view – click an icon and the article turns into black-on-white with plain fonts, with options to change size etc. Particularly handy on mobile. Doesn’t work on all sites, unfortunately, particularly not the ones that Kevin Marks is complaining about.
There’s also an option to simply increase font size on most browsers (usually ctrl and +).
(13) INDIE SHRINKS
Over in the author earnings report she’s looking at, there’s much speculation but little conclusion. I think trying to read the tea leaves on a single set of results is probably just an exercise in frustration.
I noticed that the comments on AE do show that the indie authors there are extremely worried about the possibility of Amazon algorithm changes affecting them, either now or in the future.
ETA: Also down in the comments I noticed David vanDyke (“What Price Humanity”) talking about an alleged bug in Kindle Unlimited that may be affecting income. He links to an in depth article of his on teleread.
Sending up a flare: I’m on my second attempt at Ninefox Gambit and I have to ask if there’s anyone here who really loved the book who is not a gamer?
I’m really struggling with this book because it doesn’t seem to be much of a story to me, but more of a diagram of a battlefield with various weapons and protections available, and a list of sequential plays employing them — and I’m wondering if it’s because I’ve never been an RPG or video gamer that I can’t seem to appreciate it.
@JJ: I really like it and I’m not a gamer.
@JJ
Conversely, I was disappointed and I play a lot of RPGs and video games (*).
I wouldn’t say it’s about the weapons and protections, personally. The battles are supposed to illustrate the way the master-strategist character thinks, which is why the tech is rather nebulously described.
(*) I don’t call myself a gamer, though. Too many years of exposure to people who do.
RE: Guilty Pleasure.
I have a mild suspicion that Ann was inspired to write this post because of a troll on twitter who followed a retweet of my retweet of her post on pretentiousness and obtusely tried to engage with her (with me cced in) but with a strawman version of her argument in that piece. I was apologetic that I had helped attract the troll to her, she was graciously dismissive of the troll’s yammerings.
I wouldn’t call myself a gamer and I enjoyed it. I had to get into a right headspace for it though.
Meanwhile…
My news crews are camped outside the Dragon Awards website in anticipation of the “Check back in October for information about voting for the Dragon Awards in 2017” announcement. With only a week left in October, tension is mounting.
Camestros Felapton: My news crews are camped outside the Dragon Awards website in anticipation of the “Check back in October for information about voting for the Dragon Awards in 2017” announcement. With only a week left in October, tension is mounting.
In other words, Timothy has appropriated your computer and is throttling your internet connection by hitting “refresh” every 2 seconds, and tension is mounting as you are debating whether bringing in some freshly-killed kibble, or a really big dog, would be a more effective method of enticing him away so that you can finally get some time on the computer yourself.
I vote for the dog. 😉
Thanks for your input, all — after more than 100 pages (~26%), I have decided to mark Ninefox Gambit as WTF and DNF, and have moved on to Malka Older’s Infomocracy.
11) “So. Where do you get all of your wonderful ideas?”
While I do not like pumpkin spice (away from pies), Starbucks has introduced a new drink called Chile Mocha and it’s really good. I like the Mocha’s little spice-heat kick. It goes well with the sweet chocolate and makes me think of the drink’s ancient origins.
[bean-stalk]
Trains: I’ve done two fairly lengthy trips in the last few years. This summer I took the Amtrak to & from Glacier National Park (about 24 hours each way) and a few years ago my mother & I took the train from Winnipeg up to Churchill, way up on Hudson Bay (48 hours each way, more or less). For the Glacier trip, I just went coach, which was not conducive to actually sleeping (next time I’ll bring a travel pillow and a sleeping mask); for Churchill we got a sleeping compartment, which was really pretty nice. In both cases, I spent most of my time burning through books on my Kindle unless we happened to be going through a scenic area.
If I ever were to go into a Starbucks, I’d probably have to investigate the Chile Mocha.
I suspect that your blog is the extent of the media excitement around the Dragon Awards.
Cam also seems to be the only one outside of Beale’s attempt at remaking Wikipedia to be interested in THAT, too. Cam, buddy, you are killing your brain cells with all this.
Trains:
Last year as part of our honeymoon we rode the Andean Explorer from Cusco to Lake Titicaca in Peru, which is a day’s worth of travel. Great scenery, and quite a luxurious train – this was the part of the trip where we treated ourselves. Not much oxygen up there though.
Before moving to Turkey, I was quite keen on taking the Trans-Asia Express from Istanbul to Lake Van (and maybe even onward to Tehran). It’s meant to be a great journey and Van looks like a nice destination, but sadly the service has been suspended for the last year or so due to the security situation in the east of Turkey.
INDIE SHRINKS
Interesting, although too early to draw any conclusions.
One worry I have for indie writers is that, although they are free of the cold dead hands of the traditional publishers, many of them are instead very dependent on Amazon. All it takes is a change in Amazon’s algorithms and sales can be massively affected.
@James Davis Nicholl
As I’m sure you recall from rec.arts.sf.composition (and no doubt other venues), Dorothy is not only convinced that nothing she has ever done is worth anyone’s attention or money, but she is steadfastly committed to arguing vociferously with anyone who attempts to assist her in thinking otherwise. One gets too tired to try eventually.
(10) I’ve tended to imagine the Han Solo/Lando Calrissian backstory as something like one of the better Hope/Crosby Road movies, but without the parts that get up one’s nose today.
Camestros’ comment inspired me to e-mail the Dragon Awards address asking when they would be releasing voting statistics. They stopped answering my messages last spring, and didn’t answer this one either.
My calendar has reminded me that tomorrow is (or was) the feast day of St. Crispin.
We few, we happy few, we scroll of pixels;
Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jagermeister…we didn’t do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: Good.
Dan: You recited the St. Crispin’s Day speech in the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: Was it untoward?
Dan: Nah, it was just embarrassing.
JJ, Ninefox
I would really not consider myself a gamer, and I really enjoyed it. Thought what jumped out at me about the calendar system was that it was part of the East Asian feel of the books; a regime redoing the cycle of years and festivals could often be very big whenever a new dynasty got the mandate in China; many of the surrounding states adopted a similar nomenclature.
What stood out to me was the creeping horror of the regime involved her, and just how awful they could be, was so gradually peeled back, as each example of the regime’s depravity was brought before one’s eys.
“Ann Leckie to the white courtesy phone. Ms. Leckie, you have a call from the Anti-Deviationist Cooperative. They have a few (un)kind words for your consideration.”
As the ranking member of the IAoPaC (International Association of Pariahs and Contrarians), local #770, I look forward to processing Ms. Leckie’s application in due course.
More seriously, I did want to give a shout-out…as all the cool kids say….to The Grim Tidings Podcast. I encourage folks to give them a try. They are equal to (or better than) most of the recent fancast nominees, IMHO.
The reason for the link love is that they held a contest for a bunch of free books. The prize was Brian Stavely’s “Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne” trilogy courtesy of Tor. I won. I’m halfway through book two and am very much enjoying his work.
B/R,
Dann
@TYP
Re the calendars changing, that’s a very interesting point that I hadn’t heard of.
@Kip W: there’s an old “funny” song
It’s mentioned in “City of New Orleans”, and a later verse in the early Vonnegut story “Welcome to the Monkey House”. I’ve heard Garrison Keillor sing it to “Humoresque”, but I don’t know whether that’s the standard tune.
(9) DO YOU LIKE… I really appreciate the direct and thoughtful way Leckie expresses herself in all of her writing, but this one resonates more than usual.
I don’t like the idea of guilt over one’s pleasures, particularly if what you like is coded female or adolescent or an artifact of the underclass. My kids were raised on Velveeta because it’s the best way to make queso fundido and they didn’t like any of my fancy ways of making mac and cheese. They still buy it. So what?
And yet, I don’t eat from paper plates without some qualms. Because I was raised with that as the norm and it embarrassed me when friends came for dinner. So I can understand people wanting to hide evidence that they like things that have markers for groups to which they don’t aspire, even if it’s not something I do very often.
@JJ, I’m not a gamer. Ninefox Gambit has been a lonely standout in my reading over the past few months in that I finished it, l loved it, and I still remember it. Nothing else I’ve read since sometime in June has done all three for me.
I’ve heard Garrison Keillor sing it to “Humoresque”, but I don’t know whether that’s the standard tune.
That’s the only tune I’ve ever heard it sung to. (I learned it as “flushing”, not “using”. I think the airline-type ones that trains have now are an improvement, except when they’re not working.)
Locus is reporting that Sheri S. Tepper has passed away. And–possibly to keep the cosmic balance somehow–Jack Chick.
God, I don’t have enough obscenities for this year.
RedWombat, damnit. This has been a rotten year. Thanks for letting us know. I’m gonna go off and re-read “Grass”….
I first heard the mildly-risqué folk version of “Humoresque” on one of the late Oscar Brand’s “Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads” LPs. Herewith a YouTube link:
I note that his 12-string is just a little out of tune.