(1) 2017 MANNING AWARD NOMINEES. Four of the five Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award nominees for 2017 are women:
- Rafael de Latorre, artist of Animosity and Superzero (AfterShock)
- Riana Dorsey, artist of Cloud Riders (Hashtag Comics)
- Mindy Lee, artist of Bounty (Dark Horse)
- Leila Leiz, artist of Alters (AfterShock)
- Anne Szabla, writer/artist of Bird-Boy (Dark Horse)
(2) LEGENDARY BOOKSTORE TO CLOSE. Dark Carnival, SF bookstore in Berkeley, will soon go out of business, and may take the owner’s nearby comics store with it: “After 41 years, Berkeley sci-fi bookstore Dark Carnival is closing”.
After 41 years serving an enthusiastic customer base of sci-fi geeks and proud comic-book nerds in Berkeley, Dark Carnival, at 3086 Claremont Ave., is closing up shop. Its sister store, The Escapist, which is two doors down on Claremont, may also shutter if sales don’t pick up.
Owner Jack Rems describes himself as heartbroken. Speaking to Berkeleyside Monday, he said he had made the decision due to declining sales. He expressed gratitude to all his long-term customers and encouraged people to come by the store where he is holding a “progressive sale.” All stock is currently being offered at a 20% discount.
Rems doesn’t yet know when he will close the doors to the treasure-trove of a shop for the final time. “I need to pay bills, so as long as by selling off stock we are generating more than it costs [we will stay open],” he said.
(3) ARC AND PSA. The release of Ann Leckie’s Provenance draws closer. The author just got her advance reading copies.
It’s a real book! Sort of.
Just as a reminder–readers of this blog likely already know, but still–Provenance is set in the Ancillaryverse but does not concern the same characters and is not set in Radch Space. No, and not in the Republic of Two Systems either. It will be out September 26, 2017, and I’m given to understand there will be an audiobook, out on the same date. I have no further details about audio, though.
(4) STRANGE TAXONOMY. “The idea that the X Prize Foundation is funding sf is big news,” says Martin Morse Wooster about the news story below, “BUT if you look at the Science Fiction Advisory Council press release you will see that Neil Gaiman and Andy Weir are ‘novelists’ while Charles Stross and Mike Resnick are ‘science fiction writers.’”
From Slate, “Prototyping a Better Tomorrow”:
The fact that so many people are turning toward these dire visions of the future may seem like cause for worry, but it is also a sign of hope. Great dystopian works like The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, in the words of one defender of dystopian fiction, can serve as self-defeating prophecies helping us to recognize and prevent the dark worlds they depict. Put another way, The Handmaid’s Tale actually is an instruction manual, meant to teach us what we must fight to avoid. But hope can’t live on dystopia alone. It requires positive visions, too.
Thankfully, an ambitious new project launched this month aims to use the vision and expertise of the science fiction community–including Atwood herself–to move past dystopian visions. The newly announced Science Fiction Advisory Council, composed of a stellar selection of 64 bestselling sci-fi writers and visionary filmmakers, has tasked itself with imagining realistic, possible, positive futures that we might actually want to live in–and figuring out we can get from here to there. The council is sponsored by XPRIZE, the nonprofit foundation that uses competition to spur private development of things like a reusable suborbital spacecraft. The advisers on the council will “assist XPRIZE in the creation of digital ‘futures’ roadmaps across a variety of domains [and] identify the ideal catalysts, drivers and mechanisms–including potential XPRIZE competitions–to overcome grand challenges and achieve a preferred future state.”
(5) DIVERGING PATHS. For everyone who read these books and thought they should do this except it would take so much time, Tor.com brings you “The Secret Maps Buried Beneath the “Choose Your Own Adventure” Books”.
“Choose Your Own Adventure” was a groundbreaking book series that prepared many of our child minds for the internet…or for keeping track of all the endnotes in Infinite Jest if you’re into that sort of thing. But did you know that each twisty, unforgiving story in the CYOA series has a map? The good folks over at Atlas Obscura have dug into the books and the maps they’ve generated.
The series original ran from 1979 to 1998, but since 2004, Chooseco, the company founded by one of the CYOA author, R.A. Montgomery, has re-released classic volumes and included the maps that are created by all the possible choices in each book! The official maps keep things fairly clear-cut. Pages are shown by an arrow, circles represent the choices the book offers its readers, each possible ending is represented by a square, and the dotted lines show the links between choices.
(6) ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT EXPO. Follow this link to a roundup of game news from E3 2017.
There is a long list of announcements and news items in Tuesday’s individual post alone.
(7) ORGAN CONCERT. Daniel P. Dern was fascinated by the New York Times article about “The Liver: A ‘Blob’ That Runs the Body”.
The underrated, unloved liver performs more than 300 vital functions. No wonder the ancients believed it to be the home of the human soul.
Dern points to “fascinating stuff” like –
Scientists have also discovered that hepatocytes, the metabolically active cells that constitute 80 percent of the liver, possess traits not seen in any other normal cells of the body. For example, whereas most cells have two sets of chromosomes — two sets of genetic instructions on how a cell should behave — hepatocytes can enfold and deftly manipulate up to eight sets of chromosomes, and all without falling apart or turning cancerous.
“Not to mention the amusing term, ‘liverati’,” he continues. “Wonder if this organ was originally an alien symbiote, etc?”
(8) BEOWULF’S NEW NEIGHBOR. A Python’s diaries go to the British Museum.
Michael Palin has made a significant donation of written archives to the British Library, which documents his literary and creative career, covering the years 1965-1987.
Not much text, but some interesting video with commentary. Chip Hitchcock adds, “Note especially that the original contract paid one person in pounds and the rest in guineas; how very antique.”
(9) PUFF, PUFF, PUFF. What happened to Robert the smoking robot? A briefly-notorious private project from the 1930’s.
Today, the story of Robert the Robot is little known, even in the Northamptonshire town where he was once a celebrity.
Yet in the 1930s, his fame reached as far as Czechoslovakia and the United States, where he even featured in Time magazine.
And the reason he came to be?
“Someone bet me £5 I could not make a robot in three weeks,” inventor Charles Lawson, who had a radio shop, told a newspaper at the time.
“I won.”
… “The robot relied on a combination of motors, photoelectric cells, telephone relays and a record player to perform 26 pre-programmed routines, each one initiated by voice commands from a human co-star.
“Smoking was done using automated bellows which were also a feature of 19th Century automatons.
“Remember that this type of robot did not have access to a computer and so talking was done using a triggering mechanism for a record player playing old 78 RPM bakelite records.”
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 13, 1953 — The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms hit theaters.
- June 13, 1981 — Clash of the Titans was released.
(11) FORGOTTEN TV. Echo Ishii holds forth on a rare Seventies series with Edward Woodward in “SF Obscure: 1990”.
1990, made in 1977, posits a future Britain run by the Public Control Department (PCD)- an all powerful bureaucracy in which government regulations turn into social control. A few lone journalists walk a fine line between criticizing the government and being shut down.
It starts with an attempt at a military overthrow in the mid 1980’s in which the state took over. Emigration, not immigration, is Britain’s biggest problem as those with skilled jobs and higher education seek a life abroad.
(12) TRUE SCI-FI. John King Tarpinian says, “I’ve not heard of this artist but I love his work: “El Gato Gomez Painting Retro Mid Century Modern Atomic Ranch House Robot Sci -Fi” for sale on eBay.
(13) TALKING OVER. Rose Eveleth’s “What I Learned About Interruption From Talk Radio”, on her blog Last Word on Nothing, comes recommended by Martin Morse Wooster: “I think has a lot of good practical advice which panelists at conventions can use.”
On June 3rd, writer and philosopher Jim Holt was moderating a panel at the World Science Festival called “Pondering the Imponderables: The Biggest Questions of Cosmology.” …One of the panelists was a woman named Veronika Hubeny, a theoretical physicist. She was the only woman on the panel. Holt asked Hubeny a question about string theory. And then, without letting Hubby [sic] answer his question, Holt began to hold forth on string theory.
The exchange was caught on camera, so you can watch it here. Hubeny is clearly trying to answer Holt’s question, but he simply won’t stop talking to let her. At one point, a woman in the audience named Marilee Talkington, actually shouted “LET HER SPEAK” to stop Holt from interrupting (you can read her entire account of the panel here). After a pause that I’m sure felt like ages to Talkington, the audience burst into applause. Hubeny then finally got to speak.
I’m not here to adjudicate this exchange, and I’m sure if you want to read heated debates about it you can find those using your trusty search engine of choice. Or the YouTube comments, if you enjoy true pain.
But this, this thing where a man simply doesn’t let you get a word in edgewise, this doesn’t happen to me much. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of mansplainers (my favorite being a clone of Solnit’s book-explainer, the man who explained my own podcast to me). But I don’t generally have trouble getting a word in. And I think it’s because I learned how to handle men who talk over me by listening to all that talk radio.
So here are my tips for anybody who might find themselves in a situation like Hubeny, where someone simply isn’t letting you get a word in, as learned from many, many hours of talk radio.
Let’s start with some general rules. First, when you are dealing with a chronic over-talker, do not try to be subtle. This is not a situation in which you should “go high.” Politeness does not work here, nor does trying to “take the high road.” You will wait forever for them to notice that they are doing this. You will die or fall asleep or the universe will end in a white-hot explosion before they will stop and think “hm I have been talking a lot I wonder if I’m talking over this person.”
Second, there are no pauses in talk radio, no long moments of thinking, no silences while you try to formulate a thoughtful response. Think of this conversation like a rock climbing wall. Each breath and micro-pause is a foothold. Your interlocutor will grab every single one and climb to the top, and you will be left at the bottom staring up at his backside. And it is not a nice view, let me assure you. …
(14) THE CANDY MAN. Atlas Obscura argues that “C.S. Lewis’s Greatest Fiction Was Convincing American Kids That They Would Like Turkish Delight”. And American adults — as a Narnia fan it seemed de rigeur to try some why I was on a tour of Turkey in 2004.
Turkish Delight, or lokum, is a popular dessert sweet throughout Europe, especially in Greece, the Balkans, and, of course, Turkey. But most Americans, if they have any association with the treat at all, know it only as the food for which Edmund Pevensie sells out his family in the classic children’s fantasy novel The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Until I first tried real Turkish Delight in my 20s, I had always imagined it as a cross between crisp toffee and halvah, flaky and melting in the mouth.
Here’s what it really is: a starch and sugar gel often containing fruit or nuts and flavored with rosewater, citrus, resin, or mint. The texture is gummy and sticky, some of the flavors are unfamiliar to American palates, and the whole thing is very, very sweet. (In addition to the sugar in the mixture, it’s often dusted with icing sugar to keep the pieces from sticking together.) While some Turkish Delight newbies may find they enjoy it, it’s not likely to be the first thing we imagine when we picture an irresistible candy treat.
What I had matches the author’s description. And it was okay, but far from addictive.
(15) HOPS HORROR. “Don’t drink and dive,” says Andrew Porter after seeing this ad for The Temple from Narragansett Beer.
The Story
There was nothing we could do. It was just after 2pm on June 28th when we heard the explosion from the engine room. We were across enemy lines and we could do nothing but sink quietly to the ocean floor. Helpless and incapacitated, our submarine drifted for days — weeks. That’s when we found it aboard the ship — a very odd and seemingly ancient ivory medallion. As the men started to pass it around the ship for inspection, their minds began to fill with darkness and visions of those lost to the deep floating by the portholes of the ill-fated vessel in which we were trapped.
League by league, we fell into black nothingness, and with every league another member of my crew was stripped of his sanity. “MERCY!” they would begin to cry. Over and over. One by one they would turn. There was nothing else we could do… what else could we do? It needed to stop!
Today is August 9th. I have been resting on the ocean floor for nearly 3 weeks now alone and in complete darkness… except for… My mind has been tainted by hallucination. I swear it. Outside of the porthole lies a temple with a lone light shining over it’s door. The voices of my men have been chanting, pushing me to explore the impossible structure. I fell to their temptations, put my diving suit on, and stepped out onto the pitch black ocean floor and headed for the inconceivable glow. Once I arrived on the steps a voice hissed, “What do you seek?”
(16) CARTOON OF THE DAY/. In Martin, Sholto Crow reveals what happens if you use a metal detector on the beach and you dig up something that has a green flashing warning light!
[Thanks to JJ, DB, Cat Eldridge, Daniel P. Dern, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael J. Walsh, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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(5) DIVERGING PATHS.
I actually did this for “Seven No-Trump” which was the Zelazny Amber one.
It’s nice to be reminded of Russ Manning and his art. What a clean, dynamic style he had. One of the most immediately appealing artists, yet his style never cloyed for me.
(14) Turkish delight:
I have made Turkish delight, using one of the recipes found in my copy of The Joy of Cooking. Made with lemon juice it is very tasty; made with concentrated dark cherry juice it is mysterious and alluring.
(2) I have an autographed Zelazny from a signing at Dark Carnival, I believe it’s Courts of Chaos but I’m too lazy to get off the couch to verify. But my favorite Dark Carnival book is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (no relation), which isn’t autographed or hardcover or anything, I just really liked it. I don’t think I would have ever found it if not for Dark Carnival.
(14) I recall a rousing discussion of Turkish Delight, locoum and Aplets and Cotlets at the Spokane Worldcon meetup of Filers. Since then I have had pear-flavored locoum from the neighborhood deli, it was definitely awesome. Just not awesome enough to make me actively seek out more.
(2) My memories of 41 years of Dark Carnival
(14) I get my Turkish Delight at a small store in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. It’s good there, fitting the description and sweet but (I find) not cloyingly so. Weird flavors like pistachio and rosewater are much tastier than you might think. It’s especially good after it’s been kept for 3 weeks or so and starts to develop a slightly crunchy crust.
(13) Talking Over
I second the lesson “don’t be subtle”. I recall one memorable instance (memorable to me, anyway) on a convention panel when a tag-team of wife and husband (author wife on panel, husband in audience) proceeded to completely monopolize a panel in the first ten minutes. Having experienced this particular situation before (from these specific people), I ostentatiously picked up a book and gave the appearance of starting to read to myself until someone made note of it and I commented, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else was going to be expected to speak.”
I would hope the categories aren’t meant to be exclusive, and I’m guessing they mostly wanted to have an excuse to imply breadth and dish out adjectives like bestselling, award-winning and visionary.
As it is, I think Neil fits all those categories: bestselling novelist, award-winning SF writer, visionary filmmaker*, producer and screenwriter.
*or at least filmmaker, “visionary” is subjective.
Now that’s a proper fannish title. Bravo, Daniel Dern.
(13) Good ideas for dealing with bloviators, particularly the ones who are supposed to be moderators.
(14) It is, in fact, not delightful. Pleh. Smaller me was disgusted and vowed to go back to chocolate or gummi bears or jelly beans/babies. I quite like a number of Middle Eastern sweets (oh gaz, how I crave you), but not this.
Clickity.
(5) I hated and loved these at the same time. One of my older sisters used to buy them and I’d read her copies and try to find all the possible endings. I seem to recall one of them that had a “mystery ending” that, according to the front of the book, you couldn’t get to by reading along any path and that it was cheating to read through until you found it. My sister read every page until she found it and when I told her she cheated she tried to stop me from reading her books (like THAT ever works).
In other news, I’ve now seen Wonder Woman twice, which is twice more than I usually go to the theater to see any movie (because I hate theaters). It was even better on the second viewing, which I wasn’t expecting, because I thought it dragged a little on the first viewing. On the second viewing it didn’t seem to drag at all. I just wish we saw more of Etta. I really like that character and have since I first started reading comic books.
2) LEGENDARY BOOK STORE TO CLOSE – I lived down the street from the Telegraph version of Dark Carnival from 1977 to the mid-80s. I had numerous discussions there about an early attempt to divide fantasy from science fiction in the shelving and got a lot of recommendations for books, whether I wanted them or not. I loved the place, but it was sometimes frustrating to not be allowed to just browse, which I noticed others were allowed to do.
13) TALKING OVER – Yeah, I served on a non-profit board where we had to require hand-raising for awhile in order to change the culture. There were a couple of board members who had great ideas that didn’t get aired because they wouldn’t interrupt, the chair wasn’t good at recognizing people, and there were other members who needed to be interrupted or they’d just keep talking.
(5) DIVERGING PATHS
I had quite a few of those as a kid, but fairly quickly moved on to the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books instead – and books with dice+monsters proved to be my gateway drug to rpgs.
I do remember them having quite a lot of ‘failure’ endings.
@Mark-kitteh: There were always many more failure than success endings, which might be realistic, but not what a young’un wants in their leisure reading. We could fail perfectly well at home, the whole point of books was to do funner stuff.
13) I’ve had more trouble getting heard now the last few years than I would have ever imagined when I was younger. Possibly it’s just the scales balancing, but it’s really been difficult at times. I’m thinking of a meeting where entire events got cancelled and other events scheduled while I had my hand up trying to speak.
Nice little twitter story here from Seanan McGuire (October Daye). Bears some resemblance to The Ballad of Maui Hair.:
https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/874733630739726336
Hampus Eckerman: Bears some resemblance to The Ballad of Maui Hair.
In what way? I didn’t see anything resembling that story. ❓
The story I’d heard was that Edmund probably hadn’t had anything sweet in ages thanks to rationing, and that’s what made it so addictive. Likely from my grandmother; she’s 94 so she’d have known.
A person listening in to what is happening around her, tweeting to others, becoming part of the story at the end.
Hampus Eckerman: A person listening in to what is happening around her, tweeting to others, becoming part of the story at the end.
Ah, gotcha. I was glad to see her help out the daughter. I was one of those children who always got whatever was left over and was frequently told to just suck it up, while the oldest child got all the privileges and the youngest child got whatever they wanted, so I totally empathized with the daughter in this story.
If you asked my parents, they would deny that this was ever the case. But a couple of years ago, when I was visiting my cousin (who was 10-15 years older than I and my siblings, and who had spent several summers visiting us when we were children), they said to me, “Oh, it was always quite obvious to me that your older sibling was your father’s favorite, and your younger sibling was your mother’s favorite, and it never seemed to me as though they were very fair to you” — which, decades after you’ve grown up, you wouldn’t think you would still need to hear that, but it was incredibly validating and good to hear.
That is quite a thread, and strongly reminiscent of all too many episodes with my beloved baby sister. Well, except for the part about helpful adults intervening, frustrating my parents, and making it all fun! 😉
Hep, me and my brother are clones of each other. Same kind of music, books, comics, interests. So were never any real conflicts. You’ll notice when you meet us in Helsinki.
(5) My children have inherited my extensive collection of these. Once they finished devouring them, they proceeded to read all of the ones from the library.
(14) Dunno if it’s still around, but when I was a kid here in Canada there was a mass-market version of turkish delight called Big Turk — though it was covered with chocolate for some reason. I had it once or twice but it definitely had a peculiar taste which I never really acquired.
Also (14), there’s a tradition in English literature of people being led astray by sweets — lurid tales about the Thuggees in India maintained that anyone could be made a criminal by a single taste of jaggery, a form of crystallized cane sugar.
14) … This baffles me. People who don’t know what Turkish Delight is are surprised, disappointed, even offended, when the reality fails to conform to their completely uninformed guesswork? Did the writer of this piece, who evidently didn’t know either, not think of using information-searching techniques such as Asking Someone Who Does Know or Looking It Up In A Book? – you know, techniques available even in the primitive ages before the Internet?
I mean, I would get it – I think – if it were some kind of caustic commentary about people who wrongly assume that their tastes and their experiences are somehow universal, but it doesn’t read like that to me. It reads like the author is genuinely amazed that C.S. Lewis made (this weird stuff that no one could possibly be that fond of) sound irresistible. To which I can only reply, well, different people like different things. Which seems kind of obvious, really.
(Turkish Delight? As far as I’m concerned, I can take it or let it alone. Some people like it more than I do. Some people even like it a lot more than I do… and maybe I’m jaded, but I can’t find anything particularly astonishing in that idea.)
(14) I’ve loved Turkish Delight since I was little, but it didn’t have anything to do with Lewis. My mom used to buy it — and applets and cotlets — when we were young. I don’t know where she got her taste for it. Might it have had something to do with growing up during WWII?
I had Turkish Delight once, having no idea previously what it was like, except from the Narnia books. Was working at a temp job and it was offered around the office. It was good! Not something that would tempt me to follow the White Witch, but good!.
In other news, I received a crocheted Xenomorph from my mom today. It will go next to the Dalek she made a few years back.
I wonder if anyone’s first introduction to the concept of Turkish Delight was Dorothy L. Sayers’ description of it in Strong Poison.
Dark Carnival: Sorry to hear the news. I went there once in 1993, when I was visiting a friend who lived in the Bay Area, and spent entirely too much money.
Turkish Delight: Haven’t had it for many a year, but I used to occasionally pick up a box of the rosewater-flavored variety at a nearby Greek/Middle Eastern grocery store. It did seem a bit … weird, but I enjoyed it.
Looking up jaggery, I find it also called gur.
There is a Dublin “delicacy” called gur cake, I wonder if it is related. The folk etymology of gur cake from gurrier has never sounded likely to me, and lots of Indian words made it into soldier’s slang.
Interesting, I see at least one source suggesting the derivation goes the other way, from gur (sugar) to gur cake to gurrier, one who eats gur cake. Another possibility is that gurrier, from the French guerrier, a warrior, is entirely unrelated to the cake, which agrees with me better.
Now halva is a Middle Eastern sweet that I can’t quite wrap my head around.
@Matthew Johnson: they had it in the checkout line at Canadian Tire last night and they carry it at my local convenience store. I’m leery of trying it, though.
I did have fresh Turkish Delight that we bought in the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul a few years ago. We had a nice chat with the owner, who apropos of nothing turned out to be Armenian, and the Turkish Delight itself was fantastic.
Turkish Delight is supposedly part of the inspiration for jelly beans. I personally love some jelly beans (e.g., the Jelly Belly version) but find many of the larger jelly beans with the thicker shells to be kind of disgusting.
[godstalk]
…can’t quite wrap my head around.
My introduction to Halva was a couple of references to “cruddy, dried-up halva” in “Manduck the Magician,” from MAD Comics. See it in a store, and I’d think of the phrase. I’m not sure if I ever actually tried any, but I did pick up one or two packs of Joyva Halva at different times and peruse the ingredients.
Hampus, does anyone ever see you and your twin together? Asking for my invisible twin, Jack.
4. call me surprised…
I suppose I have already been corrupted by Turkish Delight.
I’m most partial to the pistachio-flavoured variety, but I normally only ever have it when it’s served along with a Turkish coffee. It’s the traditional pairing, and it’s very fitting.
It does compete in this part of the world with a whole array of diabetes-inducing sweets and puddings. Baklava is a more common gift or enticement. Or you can buy deep-fried dough and sugar-based items from street vendors.
My personal favourite is a type of milk pudding thickened with shredded chicken breast and lightly caramelised. Animal protein and sugar in a single dish – now there’s nutritional efficiency for you.
I’m also a huge fan of baklava. But in these parts, I satisfy myself with doughnuts.
Going back to Turkish Delight, I have to admit a weakness for any number of the sorts of candies that are basically just flavored sugar in a gel matrix. e.g. when I (I hope) go see Wonder Woman this weekend, I’ll probably be smuggling a box of Super Hot Tamales in my backpack.
Matthew Johnson: I suspect the chocolate-covered candy bar you’ve seen is halvah, not Turkish delight. Halvah is a dense, crunchy, nut-butter candy that would take to mass packaging and chocolate coating better than Turkish delight would. At any rate, that’s what the Turkish-style candy bars we have here in the states are. The word on halvah from one description I’ve read is, “Gets stuck in your teeth. Tastes good, even the next day.”
Steve Wright: You’re right, as well as wright, and I’m a proponent of the opposite fallacy, which is, “If you say you don’t like it, you haven’t tried the good stuff.” At any rate the revolted descriptions I’ve seen here make me suspect there’s a lot of really bad quality Turkish delight out there.
If people tell me they hate fantasy, and I ask what they’ve read and it’s Terry Brooks and Christopher Paolini, I’m inclined to discount their distaste for the genre as a whole until they’ve read a little more widely.
DB: No, I’m familiar with halvah (fond of it, though I find eating once a year or so is quite sufficient). What’s under the chocolate in a Big Turk is a very dense, gummy substance that’s extremely sweet and has a slightly musty taste, a tiny bit like camphor if I remember it correctly.
@DB Halvah is a dense, crunchy, nut-butter candy that would take to mass packaging and chocolate coating better than Turkish delight would.
Here in the UK, on the other hand, food scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Big Turk is a chocolate bar manufactured by Nestlé Canada, that consists of dark magenta Turkish delight coated in milk chocolate.
I normally don’t care about cultural appropriation but chocolate covered Turkish Delight is many shades of wrong.
There are two kinds of Turkish Delight on sale in Ireland, one artisan “authentic” rose etc. flavoured stuff, and the other mass-market translucent purple goo coated in chocolate.
The two seem to share nothing bar sugar and a name.
@rob_matic: if you want even more shades of wrong, check out the advertising for it. It’s full of Eastern promise.
Oh my word. There’s a desert and pseudo-Bedouin clothing. That is very wrong.
David Gerrold banned on FB thanks to trolls.
@4: to be fair, the release distinguished between best-selling novelists and SF writers. And Slate makes up for this by listing filmmakers and SF writers, leaving out the mundane novelists….
@13: the problem is knowing when to deploy such tactics, which would unbalance a more-balanced panel; I can see all of them being used by certain people, in a sort of Greshamization of the panel. I suppose they’re necessary sometimes, but maybe they should have a warning sticker (“Use this power only for good!”) on them.
David Gerrold seems to be unbanned on Facebook at the moment, if I understand correctly what “banned on Facebook” means.
But it is more than possible that I do not.
@rob_matic
I’ve seen it done that way in super traditional shops, so it’s not solely a ham-fisted North American thing.
I’m not the biggest fan because I find it often too sweet (same issue with halvah, which I love the first couple of bites and than am done), but there used to be a little place in London, ON that made this brilliant Turkish delight using citrus flavours, lightly coat them with honey and then roll them in sesame seeds. It was a revelation.
When a person is banned on Facebook, their profile is still active, but they cannot log in to post or view other people. This leads many people to assume they aren’t banned – because you can see their profile. It’s a stealthy way to shut people up.