(1) BIG PLANET. New evidence suggests a ninth planet is lurking at the edge of the solar system.
Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced Wednesday that they have found new evidence of a giant icy planet lurking in the darkness of our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They are calling it “Planet Nine.”
Their paper, published in the Astronomical Journal, describes the planet as about five to 10 times as massive as the Earth. But the authors, astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin, have not observed the planet directly.
Instead, they have inferred its existence from the motion of recently discovered dwarf planets and other small objects in the outer solar system. Those smaller bodies have orbits that appear to be influenced by the gravity of a hidden planet – a “massive perturber.” The astronomers suggest it might have been flung into deep space long ago by the gravitational force of Jupiter or Saturn.
Accompanying the Post article is a short video with the delightfully hideous title “Planet Nine from outer space.”
(2) IN WORDS OF MORE THAN ONE SYLLABLE. Read the paper here.
3. ANALYTICAL THEORY
Generally speaking, coherent dynamical structures in particle disks can either be sustained by self-gravity (Tremaine 1998; Touma et al. 2009) or by gravitational shepherding facilitated by an extrinsic perturber (Goldreich & Tremaine 1982; Chiang et al. 2009). As already argued above, the current mass of the Kuiper Belt is likely insufficient for self-gravity to play an appreciable role in its dynamical evolution. This leaves the latter option as the more feasible alternative. Consequently, here we hypothesize that the observed structure of the Kuiper Belt is maintained by a gravitationally bound perturber in the solar system.
(3) WORLDCON LODGING. MidAmeriCon II hotel reservations open January 25.
Heads up ! Hotel booking confirmed open from Monday 25th ???? watch this space for more linky previews over the weekend https://t.co/WdoBTjJ0Ml
— MidAmeriCon II (@MidAmeriCon2) January 20, 2016
(4) FAKING IT. According to The Digital Reader, the “Number One Book Brits Pretend to Have Read is 1984, But for Americans, It’s Pride and Prejudice”.
A recent survey of 2,000 Brits has revealed that 62% of respondents had pretended to have read one book or another in order to appear smart. The top ten books that people pretend to have read are an impressive list of books, with Orwell’s 1984 and War and Peace taking the top 2 spots.
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is sixth.
(5) HARLAN SAVES. Elon Musk described the influence of Harlan Ellison on his thinking during this interview. The reference comes at about 13:20 into the video.
It’s possible that Harlan will save the human race. Elon has funded research on A. I.’s with the idea that when they emerge that they will be friendly to us humans. “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” frightened Elon enough to get him to fund the research therefore, if that research helps avoid an unfriendly A. I., then Harlan saved all of us
In the second part of this interview, Elon Musk talks about Artificial Intelligence and the deep concerns its causing him. But first he talks about Tesla building an affordable car, Apple’ rumoured electric vehicle and the future of autonomous driving.
(6) REMEMBERING HARTWELL. Dozens of deeply moving and historically fascinating tributes to David G. Hartwell are appearing at this hour. Representative is Michael Swanwick’s memorial:
I was in Chicago a couple of years ago for Gene Wolfe’s induction into the literary hall of fame there when the phone rang and David Hartwell said, “I’m sitting in Fred Pohl’s kitchen with him, going through J. K. Klein’s photos, looking for pictures of old time writers. Do you want to join us?” You bet I did. I think back to that brief call and I can hear him grinning. The joy in his voice was infectious. That was the key to David G. Hartwell: he loved science fiction, he loved work, he loved making worthwhile things happen….
(7) SARTORIAL SPLENDOR. Here’s the David G. Hartwell Necktie Exhibit that celebrates his garish neckties.
(8) VIEW TIPTREE SYMPOSIUM. The first in a series of videos from December’s James Tiptree, Jr. Symposium at the University of Oregon is now online.
It shows Professor, Carol Stabile convening the symposium, welcome remarks by UO Dean of Libraries, Adriene Lim and Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Doug Blandy, and the keynote talk by Tiptree biographer Julie Phillips, followed by Q&A.
(9) LIVED EXPERIENCE. Sarah A. Hoyt pays it forward in a column of mentoring for indie and other fledgling writers. In a few places I was nodding my head, especially section 3.
However, with the proliferation of indie, I’m seeing a lot more kid writers running around the net (and conferences) with their metaphorical pants around their metaphorical ankles and fingerpainting the walls in shades of brown.
I would hate for that to happen to one of mine, even if just one who follows my lessons here or over at PJM and as such, I’d like to at least ward off some of the worst behavior….
3- Speaking of marking you as a newbie:
Just a few years ago, I realized either a lot of people were naming their kids Author, Writer or Novelist, or the newbies in my field had got off their collective rocker.
This used to be advice given to us before social media: don’t put writer on your card. If you’re doing it right, they’ll remember that.
I guess it’s more needful than ever for people’s egos to affirm their real writerness (totally a word) now that there are no gatekeepers.
Look, the way to affirm you’re a writer is to write, and to take it seriously. Putting “writer” or novelist, or author on your card, your facebook page or your blog isn’t going to make you any more “real” than you are.
But Sarah, you’ll say, how will people know it’s me, and not another Jane Smith?
Well, if they’re looking for you, they’ll know.They’ll know because of your friends, your place of origin, the stuff you post. Fans are amazing that way.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- January 20, 1920 – DeForest Kelley.
- January 20, 1930 — Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon.
(11) SHOW HIM THE MONEY. Stephen Harper Piziks on Book View Café doesn’t work for free anymore.
“We just don’t have the money to pay you,” say the moochers. “We’re barely making our other expenses as it is. Even our president is a volunteer!”
Then maybe you should charge more for admission. Or get some sponsors. Or just realize that you can’t have speakers at such a low-budget event.
“But you’ll get exposure,” goes more whining.
Tell you what. You talk to the grocery store, the electric company, and the mortgage people and get them to accept exposure instead of cash, and I’ll speak for exposure.
I once showed up at a local convention where I’d been scheduled to speak on five panels (that’s five hours of public speaking) and was informed that I owed =them= $30 to cover my admission. It was only when I turned to walk out that they grudgingly allowed me free entry. Later, the con chair denigrated me by name on Twitter. I thanked him for the exposure.
And that brings me to final reason I charge. No one, including event organizers, values something they get for free. You get what you pay for, and an author who speaks for nothing is worth nothing. Certainly they’re treated that way. At festivals and conventions where I spoke for free, I’ve been ignored, pushed around, insulted, and denigrated. This has never happened at places that paid me.
(12) THE SECRET OF TIMING. Vox Day, while reporting this morning that David G. Hartwell was not expected to recover, identified him as part of this history:
Hartwell was John C. Wright’s editor at Tor Books; he was also friendlier to the Puppies than any of the SF-SJWs are likely to believe. I had the privilege of speaking with him when he called me last year after the Rabid Puppies overturned the SF applecart; he was the previously unnamed individual who explained the unusual structure of Tor Books to me, using the analogy of a medieval realm with separate and independent duchies. He wanted to avoid cultural war in science fiction even though he clearly understood that it appeared to be unavoidable; it was out of respect for him that I initially tried to make a distinction between Tor Books and the Making Light SJWs before Irene Gallo and Tom Doherty rendered that moot.
(13) IT’S A THEORY. Scholars told the BBC why they believe some fairy tales originated thousands of years ago.
Using techniques normally employed by biologists, academics studied links between stories from around the world and found some had prehistoric roots.
They found some tales were older than the earliest literary records, with one dating back to the Bronze Age.
The stories had been thought to date back to the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Durham University anthropologist Dr Jamie Tehrani, said Jack and the Beanstalk was rooted in a group of stories classified as The Boy Who Stole Ogre’s Treasure, and could be traced back to when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split more than 5,000 years ago.
Analysis showed Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin to be about 4,000 years old.
[Thanks to Gary Farber, Will R., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day JJ.]
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I’m not doing too well– out of the Brit list of 10, I’ve read only 3: 1984, Catcher in the Rye, and To Kill A Mockingbird. (Great Expectations was one of the books we read aloud in class in middle school, but I’m not counting that.)
From the Bookriot list of 20, I’ve read only 5: 1984, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Harry Potter series.
Several of the other books are ones I Like To Get Around To Some Day, When I Get The Chance. Others I don’t give the slightest fraction of a rat’s ass about ever reading, for instance Jane Austen–if I cared about the dating and dancing of rich socialites, I’d watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians instead. (Al;though I did like Lost in Austen.)
Recent reading: I’ve long considered Dan Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos to be 1 (4) of my favorite books, but it has been several years since I reread Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion (I reread Endymion and Fall of Endymion again most recently around a year ago—the conversation between Raul Endymion and Martin Silenus about Silenus’ expectations from Endymion is one of my favorite comic exchanges in all fiction.) My latest impressions are that the first two books still hold up very well. There is little in the first book that I would consider superfluous, though the Gibsionian view of VR/cyberspace is a bit dated. The second book dragged a little bit more, and could have benefited from a little trimming (though don’t ask me where.) If the two books could have been trimmed by 200-300 pages and consolidated into a single volume, that might not have been a bad thing.
As for the Hyperion TV series supposedly in the works, it has more of a chance of doing the books justice than a movie, but it would still require a gigantic budget to do it justice (not to mention the amount of violence and sex restricting its target audience.) And I fail to see how they would deal with the problem of gelvat gb abg erirny gung Zbargn vf Enpury Jrvagenho. And the literary allusions would need to be profoundly dumbed-down for a general audience. So overall, I’m thinking that an on-screen version of the Hyperion books will fit my general rule of thumb of avoiding screen adaptations of books I like any amount at all because I no longer own a TV Brick.
I agree with Alex. Salinger’s Glass Family Saga is made up of beautiful stories, beautifully written. They could not be more unlike Catcher in the Rye.
Catch-22 is laugh out loud funny. But if the first chapter about Yossarian censoring the letters doesn’t tickle your funny bone, you might as well just put the book back on the shelf.
I read Moby Dick as a teenager and loved it. I assume it is at least partly responsible for my love of long sentences with concatenating streams of subordinate clauses.
> “If you say ‘artist’ people tell you that their Great Aunt is in a watercolor class–I say ‘illustrator,’ which implies other things.”
I don’t think it’s exactly the same phenomenon, but my spouse says that when people ask her what she does, if she chooses “astronomer” it means the conversation will continue, and if she chooses “astrophysicist” it means the conversation will end abruptly.
I haven’t read Ulysses. I borrowed Finnegan’s Wake from the library instead. (I know I’ve read some Tolstoy and some Dostoevsky, but can’t remember what. It was a long time back.) I probably missed a lot.
Jane Austen–if I cared about the dating and dancing of rich socialites, I’d watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians instead.
Austen isn’t about rich socialites dating and dancing. They’re not really about rich people. (Try Persuasion. It’s about second chances.)
Hoyt said:
@RedWombat on January 21, 2016 at 9:12 am said:
My initial inclination was to disagree strongly with Hoyt, largely because she seems to assume that you put “writer” on your card in order to prove something, as a bit of posturing, and not to be informative. Look, I’m a writer, it says so on my card! (And I have never seen such advice given, for the record.)
I think that’s a bit ridiculous. If you’re going to a convention as a writer, why not put “writer” on your card? What are you supposed to put on there, anyway? Amateur sous-chef? Cat-worrier? Nothing? Except, I think “nothing” is a terrible choice. People need a prompt to remember why they have your card. “If you’re doing it right they’ll just remember” strikes me as far more presumptuous than a simple “writer.”
But RedWombat has made me consider that there’s another way to look at it — “writer” often isn’t the most specific and informative thing you could put there. I still claim it’s better than nothing, but maybe not much better.
The enormously talented C.S. Inman, at one time had business cards with a space for him to write in “you met me at…” and “we talked about…” which I thought was genius.
Of course, now I’m thinking, if the main goal is to prompt memory later, you might as well put “Amateur sous-chef and cat-worrier.”
@Darren Garrison
I like to use the prologue to Hyperion to illustrate how science fiction readers tolerate a much higher degree of confusion than readers in just about any other genre. Things are fine up until the Consul gets that message from the CEO, and we can hardly understand it at all because we don’t know what any of the key nouns mean. But as the story progresses, we gradually learn all about it, and one of the real pleasures of SF is untangling mysteries like this.
It’s also a good illustration of why authors are tempted to do infodumps.
I may still have Peter Schickele’s card around somewhere. It said, “Peter Schickele”, “Person”, and had the phone number of his manager (hand-written in pencil, if I remember correctly). I don’t know if he had other versions of the card, but I think he assumed that people who were asking for his card would know who he was.
His manager (identified as “glorified stage hand” on concert programs in those days) returned my phone call, and we eventually commissioned a composition from Mr. Schickele, which has even been performed by other ensembles.
Reminds me of when I’d meet people in college. Half the time I told them I was a physics major I’d get *cringe* “Ooh, I hated physics!”, and half the time I’d get “Wow. You must be very smart.” How do you reply to either of those statements?
(Although I had one unexpected conversation on a ski lift my junior year. I told the guy I was riding with that I was a physics major…and he turned out to be a junior-high science teacher from Princeton. We spent the ride talking about fusion reactor research, until we got to the top of the hill and went our separate ways.)
@James Moar: “Either you’ve misremembered the film’s title, or you need to turn up the brightness on your monitor.”
I only wish that were true, but Fifty Shades of Black is an actual thing.
Personally, I’ve never understood why one would settle for 50 shades of gray when any copy of Photoshop will bring them 256.
Who Goes Here?, I think – like too many Shaw books, a neglected classic.
IT’S A THEORY: I found a book of analysis of folk tale tropes written in the Victorian era on Gutenberg one time. The author showed similarities between communities across Europe and the Near and Middle East.
His conclusion was that these aspects weren’t part of a shared story experience, but a universalism of certain fears and desires people experience.
I remember reading an interview with Ed Begley Jr. and one of his cards had something like, “Serving Mankind Since 1949” and another said, “Hollywood Phony” which fits in nicely with our discussion of books people claim to have read*.
*DFTBA sells a shirt that says, “Holden Caulfield thinks you’re a phony.”
McJulie said: “But RedWombat has made me consider that there’s another way to look at it — “writer” often isn’t the most specific and informative thing you could put there. I still claim it’s better than nothing, but maybe not much better.”
I usually put “Freelance” in front, because most of the people I was handing my card to were people who employed freelancers (gaming industry publishers) and it helped to differentiate me from freelance artists, who also stalked the convention floors handing out their card. I’d assume one would have different cards for different situations.
Right now, my big question is whether and how to do the little advertising cards self-publishers leave on tables at cons. Do those get picked up? (I mean, before the end of the con as part of general clean up.) Can any self-published authors testify as to the ROI on them?
Just saw this and got so excited I had to share immediately – Netflix to Adapt Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon
Truly a golden age for SF on TV.
@John Seavey: (ad cards)
I happen to have an ad card in sight right this moment, as a quiet reminder to buy the collection sometime. It’s for a Cthulhu mythos anthology titled That Ain’t Right, which I think is really all that needs said. OTOH, while prowling through some other con leftovers, I found some ad cards for a couple of authors who have since become prominent Puppies; they will see no return on that particular investment.
One technique I thought was nifty is one I saw at Dragon Con, where a self-published author put a Smashwords discount code on the quarter-page flyer. The coupon was good for a few days after the con, giving people the chance to get home and unpack before it expired. I picked up the book, but it’s still in The Pile.
[4] Have read all, save for the many-shaded one.
Although I’m not sure I finished the Forster.
Jack Lint said:
Hoyt says she’s been noticing this for “a few years”, and I know there’s been someone hanging around Baen fan forums for that long whose Facebook first name is “Author”.
I only skimmed Hoyt’s post but doesn’t she even state upfront that it was inspired by the spat involving Author Kristen Lamb?
(edit) Yes —
“I was — ahem — inspired by the sad spectacle in Amanda’s comments yesterday (no, really sample them, they’re amazing.)”
Does anyone actually use business cards anymore? It seems like I quit seeing them somewhere around 2005 or so. Even in Japan, where the business-card ritual used to be a really big thing.
@Greg:
Yes, business cards are still around and actually get used. Personally, I’d rather scan QR codes, but I frequently see business cards. I even have some myself.
Hey, I just noticed a whole new “what the hell were they thinking” book kerfuffle!
The Amazon reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Birthday-Cake-George-Washington/dp/0545538238
Zippidy-doo-dah.
The entire thing was inspired by the discussion with/comments from Kristen Lamb, but did she specifically say the Author/Writer thing on cards was due to Author Kristen Lamb?
I still walk over a lot of discarded business cards, so they must still be a thing in some quarters.
I was gonna say basically what Greg did–although I pick up a few at art shows/cons/RenFaires, where it’s stuff I might want to buy later, when I have money. But other than that, nope.
List: read Austen, read Tolkien, read Lee, read Dickens for class and meh, read Catcher for class and hated it (Holden Caufield is a) the junior-varisity version of every PUA/MRA/GamerGate guy in the universe and b) the ideal recipient of the phrase “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”), decided at some point that there isn’t enough alcohol or Prozac in the world for me to read Russian novels.
Greg Hullender:
They can be. There are the practical ones for such people that one doesn’t call often but needs the number handy when one does. (the more so since our city ceased to print a White Pages directory; I have found the online version incomplete when it comes to businesses, especially doctors.) We’re theoretically doing renovations, which means a number of other contractors and plumbers and all. And I definitely had ones from cons for artists, etc. (Which is why I have evidence I met Elise Matthesen and even saw her jewellery years before I encountered her online and went, “well, that’s nice, and 90% of it totally isn’t for me. But wow, that last 10%…. )
Darren Garrison: De Gustibus and all, it’s more than possible Austen would not be for you. But it’s a lot deeper a study of the social mores and expectations of its day than it is “A bunch of rich socialites”, there are reasons it lasted when the Kardashians will be forgotten in a generation or two, and the specific way you dismissed it also implies that the people who do like Austen are shallow and silly and wrong. Please, don’t do that.
At SF cons? You bet. I always come back with a pile of ’em and feel like a complete fool if I show up without any of my own, because somebody will ask.
I think that an overwhelmingly large percentage of people are shallow and silly and wrong.
Scrollship Tropers
Altered Pixels
Babylon Hive
Who Scrolls There?
The Stainless Steel Scroll Gets Pixeled
I’m out…
@Cat
I wondered as I was reading that article if Hoyt was repudiating the Puppies.
@Jack Lint – oh, definitely the Heart of Gold!
For Leckie fans, a very spoilery essay about the Ancillary series just went up on tor.com:
http://www.tor.com/2016/01/19/the-politics-of-justice-identity-and-empire-in-ann-leckies-ancillary-trilogy/
ETA: for certain definitions of “just.”
Rex Stout, who created Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and therefore has a permanent place in my personal pantheon, said
Of course, he’d actually read the novels, which always helps if you are going to criticise them, even in 8829…
A Long Scroll to a Small Angry Pixel
Sweeney Todd the Demon Pixel of Scroll Street
Pixel Scroll is Murder
Murder on the Scrollient Express
The Curse of the Pixels
The Last Pixel Scrolled at Noon
The Pixel who Guards the Scroll
He Shall Scroll in the Sky
The Scroll on the Crown
My name is Scrollymandias; look on my Pixels, ye Mighty, and Despair!
The Pixel Came Down like the Wolf on the Fold
In Scrolladu did Kubla Khan a stately pixel-dome decree
Guess on January 21, 2016 at 9:08 am said:
That one’s tricky. Some books are reference books, and those will probably be well-creased if they’ve been read at all. Others are introduction or overview books that are useful for getting a mental model of what you’re dealing with, but many don’t get much day-to-day use. My copy of Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming gets re-read about once a decade, so it doesn’t have very many creases, but it’s definitely been read. (I suspect it’s one a lot of people only pretend to have read, but I’ve read it three times now—except for book 4, which wasn’t out the first time I read the series.) On the other hand, many of my O’Reilly language reference books are in danger of falling apart. But for a lot of reference stuff, there’s now frequently better on-line material available than anything you can find between covers.
As for “Great Literature”, my grandpa gave me a large collection when I was in my early teens, and, as a indefatigable reader, I plowed through a substantial portion of it. My conclusion: while Sturgeon’s 90% rule may not strictly apply to this particular subset of books, that doesn’t mean the percentage of crap is anywhere near as low as zero! 🙂
(There were some I marked as potentially over my head at the time, and having gone back and re-tried some of those as a gr’up, it was about 30% now-I-get-it and the rest were still-not-interested.)
Oneiros, if the lurker planet supports me in e-mails, I am too much if a gentlebeing to ever make such a claim in public.
If I have the opportunity to speak with Laura Resnick at ConFusion, I’ll be sure to tell her she has been missed. And I am sorry not to have the chance to meet you, Cat Rambo! Though I’m sure you’d be insanely busy. And John from GR, let me know if you’d like to meet at some point.
That isn’t even remotely what Austen’s books are about. Anyone looking for Kardashians-type “entertainment” would be deeply disappointed and confused.
Is that supposed to inspire a response other than, “Well, fuck you, too”?
You’re not insulting the taste and judgment of random anonymous people; you’re insulting the taste and judgment of the people here, that you’re conversing with. And a minimum expenditure of actual thought ought to suggest to you that there’s a reason Jane Austen is still be read, two centuries later. Shallow and silly work that has nothing meaningful to say to the human condition doesn’t remain popular past its cultural context. That doesn’t mean you’d like her books, or that they’d speak to you. It does mean you should rethink the wisdom of judging books based on your own inflated opinion of yourself and unconsidered contempt for most of humanity.
Here in 9551, we weep at such shallow and silly “thinking.”
(4) FAKING IT
I actually have read most of these, and a couple of the exceptions I’m not particularly bothered about:
UK list:-
1984 by George Orwell
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
A Passage to India by E M Forster
Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
US list:-
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ulysses by James Joyce – on my “want to read someday when I’ve got plenty of time” list
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville – tried unsuccessfully many years ago; may try again sometime
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Bible – large parts of, at least
1984 by George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James – don’t be silly!
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling – first book only; didn’t do enough for me to want to continue
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Scrolls and Scrollability
Pixel and Pixelation
In the current New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum gives her support to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. You can read it online in the On Television section.
Here in 610, paper is just arriving in Japan from China. Waiting for the first manga to appear. Probably center around the wacky adventures of a samurai who turns into a cat at night.
I have great interest (but very little in the way of real expertise) in folklore, and am very skeptical of the idea of deep temporal relationships between stories. I would expect more of a analog than homolog relationship (to borrow terms from biological evolution.) (Think “Jenny Greenteeth” and the kappa both being invented to try to keep children the hell away from water.)
I have been struck by the similarities in folk tales from deeply disconnected areas, though. One particular example is pair of stories found in Irish and Japanese folklore. My guess is that somehow the Irish story was transmitted to Japan in modern (past couple-three hundred) years time and became “nativized” before the folklore researcher recorded it.
Irish version:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/yeats/fip/fip13.htm
Japanese version:
http://www.worldoftales.com/Asian_folktales/Japanese_folktale_27.html
@ John Seavey
With the slight modification that I’m not self-published, simply published by a non-SFF press that hasn’t a clue how to market to SFF readers, and that I don’t leave cards randomly on tables…
I always carry a small selection of “book business cards”, generally one with info about my most recent book (and contact information) and one with my assorted social media information. I will press them upon people at the drop of a hat. (Random people on trains and airplanes, the Starbucks barista, the woman I shared a breakfast table with at an academic conference, fellow members of my dragonboat racing club, co-workers, anyone who expresses the slightest interest when the subject of my books comes up.) And I know that in at least a few cases, that led to a book sale, when the person in question mentioned it online in a form that turned up in an ego-Google.
Purely anecdotal, but yes, sometimes it does work.
I essentially said “ugh, not for me.” Which many other people here have said about many other books that other people like. It is only because it (apparently) touches on your and Lenora Rose’s tastes that suddenly I’m rudely insulting the books by dismissing them. Yet you don’t have to give the caveat that “even though I don’t like these, I’m not implying that people that do like them are somehow wrong in liking them” when you–for example–have been reviewing puppy nominations (I read all of your reviews, BTW.)
Either we both get to say that “I think this is garbage” without explicitly having to use weasel terms to say that we aren’t judging the taste of those who do like it–or neither of us do. I personally prefer that neither of us have to stoop to that level of wishy-washyness. So how about you continue to be able to call the popular stuff you don’t like crap (even though that implicitly questions the tastes of those who do like it) and I will continue to be able to call different popular stuff that I don’t like crap? Oh, and not resort to argumentum ad populum to defend the works?
@ Lis Carey, very well said on both the literary and manners fronts.
It seems that the commenters who find Austen dull seem to be male (guessing from names, apologies if I’m wrong). Few men have been in just the position of Austen’s women, so perhaps they see the limited round of social activities in the book and think it is the subject. Auden said that Austen wrote about “the amatory effects of brass (money)”; I’d say she writes with wit and kindness about the desperate struggle of a range of women to build rewarding lives while maintaining their integrity. Except for Emma, Austen’s protagonists live in a world where they aren’t able to support themselves, but need somebody to marry them (they don’t get to ask) that is both rich enough to keep them in comfort and also personally attractive and honorable enough, so that marriage isn’t merely trading sexual and economic services for the means to live. The fact that the struggle is masked by quotidian social duties and relationships merely adds tension to it. I’d agree with the commenter above in recommending Persuasion, as it’s more explicit about the stakes involved.
Interesting that Charlotte Bronte loathed Austen, who was continually recommended to her as as literary model. Austen’s about achieving what you can within the boundaries set by society, while the Brontes wanted to break the barriers down to allow passion to flourish.
Darren Garrison: Saying that Others I don’t give the slightest fraction of a rat’s ass about ever reading, for instance Jane Austen–if I cared about the dating and dancing of rich socialites, I’d watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians instead is a bit more than “ugh, not for me,” I think. When people pointed out that the characters in the book (that you haven’t read, as you state) are neither rich nor socialites, you also didn’t seem to me to be willing to accept the possibility that you were saying that people who enjoy the complexity of Pride and Prejudice were people who would care about Keeping Up With the Kardashians . . . I don’t think anyone’s response to that qualifies as an argumentum ad populum. Certainly I found it mildly insulting, as a long-time admirer of Jane Austen’s work, and as someone who has never seen Keeping Up With the Kardashians (and who would likely have to be forced at gunpoint even to consider watching that show).
I’ve read six of the U.K. list and nine of the US list, providing that reading large chunks of the Bible but not the whole thing counts.
::tickbox:: and a relatively quick look around at what’s been going on with y’all, then off again to RL for at least another week or so.
I thought this piece in the New Yorker on how men and women writers describe love and marriage was pretty interesting:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-ideal-marriage-according-to-novels
It does discuss Austen so it has some relevance here.
Has “The Wonderful Scroll to the Mushroom Pixel” (or “to the Pixel Planet”) been used yet?
Hm. Oddly enough, I’ve read all ten of the books on the UK list–some of them admittedly in school, but still. On the U.S. list, I haven’t read Ulysses (Joyce confuses me), Anna Karenina, Infinite Jest, and Fifty Shades (what?). I’d put Catch-22 and A Tale of Two Cities in the “not sure” list: I think I’ve read them but I can’t remember exactly when or where, so maybe my “memories” of their contents are just from the zeitgeist. (Do I have to admit I don’t think I’d even heard of Infinite Jest? In some situations I’d probably fake having heard of it, at least, out of embarrassment–but not having read it. I don’t think.)
This makes me feel very odd, as if I were a counterfeit Brit or something . . .
There was a space luxury liner in one of James Schmitz’s books — A TALE OF TWO CLOCKS, I think — that, aside from the murders, I’d love to be a passenger on. I don’t want to pilot it, though, I want to be pampered in elegant luxury.
If I have to pilot the thing, I’ll take a Green Lantern ring too. Not only can you fly around in atmospheres or under water with that, you can also use it to clean the house.
The long Pixel to a small, angry Scroll…
@Darren Garrison:
No, sadly, you didn’t. If you had, no one would have been annoyed. What you did say was:
Which is a much, much ruder statement about both Austen’s work (which you admit to essentially complete ignorance of, having not even attempted to read any of it), and those of us who enjoy it (that we are the shallow and foolish who think watching the Kardashians is entertaining.)
1. I was writing reviews, not engaged in conversation.
2. I was reviewing works that I had read, not dismissing anything unread.
3. I did, in fact, make specific and explicit mention of the fact that lack of context (“novellas” that were part of ongoing series whose earlier bits I hadn’t read; the fifteenth novel in a series; etc.) was very likely making these things less enjoyable for me than for people who were familiar with the larger context.
And I think I was reviewing works that I had read is the most important thing here. I wasn’t insulting as worthless books I hadn’t read and comparing the people who did like them to people who are the audience for what nearly the entire planet agrees is shallow and silly “entertainment.”
@Mary Frances:
I think he’s referring to the fact that I referenced the books’ continuing popularity for two centuries. I’d think it’s quite likely that he regards that as argumentum ad populum, though I and perhaps you understand it differently. Or maybe you just missed that I said that.