(1) FILLING A KNEAD. A German company is working to make bread-baking in the ISS happen: “3, 2, 1 … Bake Off! The Mission To Make Bread In Space”.
Crumbs may seem harmless here on Earth, but they can be a hazard in microgravity — they could get in an astronaut’s eye, or get inhaled, causing someone to choke. Crumbs could even float into an electrical panel, burn up or cause a fire.
That’s part of the reason why it was a very big deal in 1965 when John Young pulled a corned beef sandwich out of his pocket as he was orbiting the earth with Gus Grissom.
“Where did that come from?” Grissom asked Young.
“I brought it with me,” Young said.
Young took a bite and then microgravity took over, spreading bread crumbs throughout the spacecraft.
Today, instead of bread, astronauts usually eat tortillas: They don’t crumble in the same way and they’re easy to hold with one hand as the astronaut floats about.
But for many Germans, tortillas just don’t cut it. So when a man named Sebastian Marcu heard that German Astronaut Alexander Gerst is returning to the International Space Station in 2018, that got him thinking: “Shouldn’t we do something to enable him to have fresh bread in space?”
(2) BLOWN UP. The inflatable ISS module is still going strong, and may lead to complete inflatable space stations: “After A Year In Space, The Air Hasn’t Gone Out Of NASA’s Inflated Module”.
The module is called BEAM, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, and it has been attached to the International Space Station since April last year.
Expandable modules allow NASA to pack a large volume into a smaller space for launch. They’re not made of metal, but instead use tough materials like the Kevlar found in bulletproof vests.
The station crew used air pressure to unfold and expand the BEAM, but it’s wrong to think about BEAM as expanding like a balloon that could go “pop” if something punctured it.
NASA’s Jason Crusan says there is a better analogy: “It’s much like the tire of your car.”
Chip Hitchcock calls it, “Another example of science bypassing SF — it looks like we may never have the space-based construction workers featured by writers from Heinlein to Steele.”
(3) BECOMING MARTIANS. Click to see a video of a long-term simulation of life on Mars: “On a mission to Mars (with Hawaii stopover)”
Researchers living near the active Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa are six months into an eight-month mission which simulates what it’s like to live on Mars. We asked how “living on Mars” – in close quarters – has been so far.
(4) OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS. Fantastic Trains: An anthology of Phantasmagorical Engines and Rail Riders is taking submissions until Midnight September 30, 2017.
Edited by Jerome Stueart and Neil Enock, the anthology focuses on speculative fiction stories of trains—fantasy, steampunk, science fiction, horror, slipstream, urban fantasy, apocalyptic, set in any time, any place—and will be released by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing in the spring of 2018.
Stories must be previously unpublished, in English, between 1,000-5,000 words.
Authors are invited to structurally play with some ‘locomotifs’ that will add interesting connections to these disparate and individual stories.
For more information, check out the call for submissions.
(5) CLARION. The 2018 Clarion Summer Workshop instructors for 2018 will be:
- Week 1 – Daniel Abraham
- Week 2 – Ken MacLeod
- Week 3 – Yoon Ha Lee
- Week 4 – Karen Lord
- Week 5 – Karen Joy Fowler
- Week 6 – Ellen Datlow
(6) PRESS GANG. Boskone 55 has announced that Harlan Ellison biographer Nate Segaloff as the NESFA Press Guest.
(7) SORRY GUV. I guess this just now came to the top of his To-Do list <rolleyes> — “Dick Van Dyke sorry for ‘atrocious cockney accent’ in Mary Poppins”.
Dick Van Dyke has apologised for the “most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema” more than half a century after his role in the 1964 Disney classic Mary Poppins.
The US actor played chimney-sweep Bert in the film, and has been the subject of much teasing from fans about his famously off-radar accent.
Van Dyke, 91, was chosen this week by Bafta to receive the Britannia award for excellence in television. Speaking afterwards, he said: “I appreciate this opportunity to apologise to the members of Bafta for inflicting on them the most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema.”
… Van Dyke recently announced that he would be doing “a little song and dance number” in the Mary Poppins sequel. He will play the part of Mr Dawes Jr, chairman of Fidelity Fiduciary bank, alongside Emily Blunt as the nanny extraordinaire in Mary Poppins Returns.
Van Dyke rose to prominence in films including Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as well as his 60s TV sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show. His wide-spanning career has earned him five Emmys, a Tony, a Grammy, the SAG lifetime achievement award and induction into the Television Hall of Fame.
But he has previously spoken about his turn as Bert, saying he would never be allowed to forget it. “People in the UK love to rib me about my accent, I will never live it down,” he said. “They ask what part of England I was meant to be from and I say it was a little shire in the north where most of the people were from Ohio.”
(8) DIRECTING TOLKIEN. Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski confirms that he has been hired to direct a Hollywood biopic on British fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien: “Finnish director Karukoski attached to US Tolkien movie”
A biopic based on the coming-of-age of writer J.R.R. Tolkien is to be made by the same Hollywood studio as the recent War for the Planet of the Apes. It could also be Finnish director Dome Karukoski’s international debut.
(9) TED TALK. Howard Hendrix passed along the link to the TED talk he presented in April at UC Riverside, “since it’s sfnal, concerns Phil Dick (among other matters), and was presented by a science fiction wirter (me).” It was just posted by TED last week. “Saving Private Mind: Madness, Privacy, Consciousness | Howard Hendrix”
Society is not a prerequisite for the existence of privacy. Privacy is a prerequisite for the existence of society. Howard Hendrix’s TEDxUCR talk explores the philosophical, legal, neurological and evolutionary contexts for understanding the relationship between privacy and individual human consciousness — particularly through the lens of “madness” in the lives and works of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and Hendrix’s younger brother, Vincent John “Jay” Hendrix.
(10) THEY HAVE A WORD FOR IT. John Hawthorne helped create a resource on the topic of “amazing words that don’t exist in English.”
I recently reached out to over 150 language learning websites and facilities and asked them to give me some of their opinions on what are the most interesting foreign words that are not found in English. I took all my research and gave it to my colleague Adrian who made a list of 35 of the best words.
You can read all the takeaways from their research right here. These are three examples:
Antier/Anteayer (Spanish)
Can we all agree that saying, “The day before yesterday,” is a complete waste of words? So many words for such a simple concept. Those who speak Spanish have a much simpler version: “Antier”.
When did you last talk to your mom? Antier.
Desvelado (Spanish)
Insomnia. The tossing. The turning. The inability to fall asleep. That feeling of being sleep deprived is called “desvelado” in Spanish. It’s that feeling of exhaustion that comes after a terrible night’s sleep.
You need five cups of coffee. Why? Because desvelado.
Tuerto (Spanish)
What do you call a man with one eye who isn’t also a pirate? Tuerto. It seems like this word would have rather limited usage unless you work in a BB gun factory or something.
But you do have to admit, have a single word to describe someone with one eye is pretty fantastic.
(11) EARL GREY LISTENS. Elizabeth Fitzgerald, in “My Current Podcast Playlist”, provides an excellent survey of more than 15 sff, gaming and writing podcasts.
Not Now, I’m Reading: A new podcast just started by Chelsea of the Reading Outlaw and Kay Taylor Rae which focuses on reviewing genre books and media. As a keen reader of romance, I appreciate that their focus is a little wider than just SFF and the way they’re unapologetic about their passions.
Overinvested: Gavia Baker-Whitelaw and Morgan Leigh Davies review movies, TV shows and comics. Most are genre, though not all. These ladies are savvy critics who really know their stuff and are also not afraid to love material they know is rubbish.
The Skiffy and Fanty Show: This Hugo-nominated podcast is headed up by Shaun Duke and Jen Zink with a large cast of co-hosts. They do multiple segments of varying kinds, including signal boosts, interviews and Torture Cinema (wherein a panel reviews a movie deemed to be awful by pop culture).
(12) SWARMING SHARKES. Are these the final transmission of the Shadow Clarke Jury? The Clarke Award winner, Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, was announced today.
Awards, it seems to me, work in unusual ways in the science fiction community. They link to an existing community of fans, writers and publishers that has its own particular shape and weight. Fandom is changing. Having spent much of the twentieth century on the edges of literary culture, what was once marginal is now thoroughly mainstream. The success of major titles such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games, promoted by cinematic adaptations, has broadened the pool of readers—but simultaneously brought pressures of its own, the pressure to sell and sell big, to build blockbuster brands.
Awards fit awkwardly into this changing space. Are they primarily markers of prestige? Are they handed out by fan communities to honor the successes of their own? Do they chart new trends? Whereas winning the Man Booker Prize can have huge ramifications for an author’s career—and their sales—this isn’t really the case for science fiction awards. Many writers and editors will tell you that even the Hugos in most cases don’t result in a substantial change in sales numbers. One case, oddly enough, where it did was Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem which won the 2015 award for best novel, a year that was mired down by the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies slate-creation. In fact, it may well have been the high volume of conversation in online circles surrounding those Hugo awards that inadvertently contributed to the sales boost. Certainly, journalists could sense a story and so the firestorm may well have provoked media attention that simply wouldn’t either ways have focused on the Hugos.
And if awards themselves occupy an ill-defined space then the relationship between awards and criticism is even murkier. Sometimes critics participate in the process of choosing award winners but just as frequently that role falls to the fans themselves, through various membership and voting systems. Fans of a genre that has always had a popular element—almost by definition—and has for much of its existence been barred from prestige culture may well have a justified suspicion of criticism. And yet just as science fiction is going mainstream, it is also entering areas where it was previously barred: there are several degrees that include science fiction literature within the UK and the field itself has developed through prizes like the Clarke Awards and through institutions like the British Science Fiction Association.
What they thought should win —
As regards the Sharke winner, the race was between Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station, and Martin MacInnes’s Infinite Ground. But whilst Infinite Ground enjoyed passionate support from two or three jurors in particular, and Central Station ran a close second for pretty much the entire jury, in the end it was The Underground Railroad that came through as the clear winner. ‘The Whitehead is a phenomenal book,’ Vajra said, summing up our discussions. ‘In my reading, the very core of science fiction is not novelty, but freedom: that is, emancipation. By this measure The Underground Railroad is as core as core science fiction can possibly be, and the extent to which this is contested is an indictment of the state of discourse in science fiction itself. I would like to see it win all the awards and be firmly planted in this soil so that a better science fiction could grow from here. It’s not Whitehead that needs it so much as the rest of us.’
What they predicted would win —
We all felt that whilst Ninefox Gambit is very much a traditional space opera, it also presents some interesting variations on that tried-and-tested formula by being more ambitious in terms of its concept, more inventive in its use of language, more diverse in relation to its character demographic. For all these reasons – together with the fact that we all, to varying degrees, found things in this novel to admire – we came eventually to the conclusion that Ninefox Gambit would be the title inside that envelope:
(13) THE BOOKER. The 2017 Man Book Prize longlist was announced yesterday. Mark-kitteh says, “I see several books of genre interest in the Booker. Underground Railroad, 4 3 2 1, and Exit West. (There may be more, I’m not familiar with them all).” You can add Lincoln in the Bardo, for sure.
Title Author (nationality) (imprint)
- 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (US) (Faber & Faber)
- Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (Ireland) (Faber & Faber)
- History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (US) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan-UK) (Hamish Hamilton)
- Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (Ireland) (Canongate)
- Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (UK) (4th Estate)
- Elmet by Fiona Mozley (UK) (JM Originals)
- The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (India) (Hamish Hamilton)
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (US) (Bloomsbury)
- Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (UK-Pakistan) (Bloomsbury)
- Autumn by Ali Smith (UK) (Hamish Hamilton)
- Swing Time by Zadie Smith (UK) (Hamish Hamilton)
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (US) (Fleet)
(14) TOOTHSOME. Once the Sharkes wrap up, people will have to depend on Syfy for their finnish entertainment: Sharknado 5: Global Swarming.
With much of America lying in ruins, the rest of the world braces for a global sharknado, Fin and his family must travel around the world to stop them.
(15) STARSHIP PRANKS. Fox showed this version of their trailer for The Orville at Comic-Con.
THE ORVILLE is a one-hour science fiction series set 400 years in the future that follows the adventures of the U.S.S. Orville, a mid-level exploratory vessel. Its crew, both human and alien, faces the wonders and dangers of outer space, while also dealing with the familiar, often humorous problems of regular people in a workplace…even though some of those people are from other planets, and the workplace is a faster-than-light spaceship. In the 25th century, Earth is part of the Planetary Union, a far-reaching, advanced and mostly peaceful civilization with a fleet of 3,000 ships.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Hampus Eckerman, Mark-kitteh, John King Tarpinian, Paul Weimer, Martin Morse Wooster, and Michael J. Walsh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (Hopefully I’ve used this only once…).]
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2) But it’s a model Fritz Leiber would recognize.
[godstalk]
[Currently in mourning for Coke Zero]
I have a rather extreme case of amblyopia (1) so I am effectively one-eyed. Sort of. It’s not that the images from my left are not perfectly sharp. It’s just that I have no idea what the images are. It’s hard to describe and the only optometrist I’ve had who got it happened to have the exact same condition.
Strangely, despite having no depth perception to speak of, I was a pretty good shot as a teen. Fired off thousands of rounds on our target range. No hearing protection so I am also totally deaf in certain specific gun related frequencies.
1: I was wall eyed as a kid and the intersection of British medicine and my American parents generous advise to the Brits on how they could better meet my parents’ standards meant I was the bottom of every triage list it was possible to be the bottom of in England, so eye surgery had to wait until I was five and back in Canada.
(1) But if it doesn’t give off crumbs, is it really bread? Sourdough is their best bet, but the crust shatters all over. I guess you’d have to eat it immediately and someone would be on hoover duty. Seems to me it would make the astronauts hungry b/c then the station is going to smell like bread for a long time.
(2) B’loons. In. SPAAAAAACE!
Yep, no brawny manly men welding away and fighting down the pub on payday. Send up a woman (saves weight and room) and have her turn the knob on a tank of air.
(8) From Tom of Finland to Tolkien? Well, that’s… range.
(10) I’m sure English has plenty of words other languages don’t. And if English decides it needs a word, it will soon have it, as our own JDN is famous for saying.
(12) Can we go back to ignoring them now?
(15) So it’s “Galaxy Quest” meets “Redshirts” meets “Family Guy”?
@Arkansawyer: thank you — I should have remembered that as A Specter is Haunting Texas is one of my favorites (and only one of several Sack stories).
@lurkertype: there’s a German slow-baked rye bread that is very good (possibly an acquired taste) that creates few or no crumbs — certainly it has no hard crust. But I suspect these people are aiming for something more mainstream; it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
edit: Fifth!
@10: Douglas Adams would love this. I also note Ansible‘s defunct “Hazel’s Language Lesson”; my favorite was the word that meant “to tap someone with a stick and see ‘wee!’ reprovingly.”
“One-eyed man” and “Puerto” are both three syllables long.
Nice of them not to put any funny bits into the ORVILLE trailer, so they’d be fresh and surprising when the show actually airs.
@Chip Hitchcock: A pleasure! The story which first came to mind was “The Beat Cluster”, but A Spectre Is Haunting Texas followed shortly thereafter.
(Somehow, Leiber failed to catch my kid’s otherwise brilliant mom, who did give him three chances. I didn’t try Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser on her, and thus my “Sixty-sixty?” joke fell so flat this weekend. But we did find some used books, including Web of Angels! And I got a Styx LP on Wooden Nickel records.)
Have we done The Pixhiker’s Guide to the Scrolexy yet?
Well, Google finds only one Pixel Scroll instance of it so far.
One Scroll,
Two Scroll,
Red Scroll,
Blue Scroll.
Kurt Busiek: Nice of them not to put any funny bits into the ORVILLE trailer, so they’d be fresh and surprising when the show actually airs.
At least they cut out all the childish bickering between former spouses from the earlier trailer — but since I know that it’s part of the plotline, I sure as hell won’t be watching that show.
@Kurt Busiek
I always heard tuerto (rhymes with muerto) as a two syllable word.
Even so, four letters, one syllable — it’s really not saving much. I can’t see it as a crying lack in English.
@Kurt Busiek: Yeah, but it’s perfect for someone’s name in a spaghetti western.
(12) This reads oddly:
Surely the bolded phrase should have been the single word “otherwise.”
I hope I’ve spared you all the typoes and autocorrect errors in my comment. No promises, though.
jayn on July 27, 2017 at 8:14 pm said:
I’ve always heard puerto as two syllables, also. (And Arguello has three, the way I’ve always heard it – but we might be doing it Rong.)
Strictly speaking, one is supposed to pronounce every vowel in Spanish individually, so: tu•er•to. But sounds like “ue” sometimes sound blended together into one syllable.
Science didn’t wholly bypass SF with the inflatable ISS module — see the “bubbs” in Raymond Gallun’s admittedly rather obscure 1961 novel THE PLANET STRAPPERS. (My review of that novel is here.)
1) I suspect a lot of people underestimate how much Germans love bread. In any place where there’s more than two Germans, you’ll quickly find a place where you can buy German bread, either imported or made from scratch. I’m actually the fairly rare German who can live without decent bread for an extended period of time, though even I will occasionally just want proper decent bread.
When my Dad worked in Singapore in the 1980s, there were two shops in town – one attached to a hotel and one an import supermarket run by what I’m now certain was a gay couple – which sold imported German bread. It was awful, old, dry and stale and probably way past its expiration date, but my parents still bought the stuff at extortionate prices. Meanwhile, I discovered the joys of Ramen noodles, desperately wanted to try the durians and century eggs I saw in shops there (my parents didn’t let me) and wondered whether I could exchange my breakfast of stale German bread for the interesting soups and congees I saw a Chinese neighbour cook every morning.
10)
Every language had words other languages don’t. The German word I miss most in English is not “Schadenfreude” (which is not all that common and has a perfectly acceptable English equivalent in “gloating”), but “Spießer”, a derogatory term for a very conservative and small-minded person. Because there’s no English term I can spit out with the same disdain as “Spießer”. I would also like a proper English equivalent for “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” or “Aufarbeitung” (coming to terms with negative aspects of one’s past) and for people to recognise that the things you call cabbage or kale are about six or seven very different vegetables.
Meanwhile, English words I miss in German are “bodiceripper” (so perfectly descriptive of what it is and yet German doesn’t have a word for it), “blockbuster” (we have words for movies that fail, but for those that succeed beyond everybody’s imagination – never mind that my old dictioary still insists that a “blockbuster” is a specific type of bomb which does have a German name), “space opera” (I guess you could call it “Weltraumoper”, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring) and f-buddy (not sure if I’m allowed to type the full term here, but the first time I came across it, it was just so perfect to describe a type of relationship for which there are no words in German).
That’s true. So we can steal it when we need it.
15) I give it half a season.
So hey: I don’t suppose you all can recognize anybody that matches the author types on this list…
@Rose: No, none at all, why?
@Cora: Ha! I lived in Bangkok for a while and at least for christmas I went to the most expensive mall to buy a proper bread… Id did with Toast for the rest of the year though, so Its possible).
Anyway: Ive watched Valerian and the city of a thousand planets yesterday and its visually stunning! THe visuals, the aliens, the Worlds, the shots all is incredible imiginative and it really shows that you can still do new things in action movies. The problem is that the story lacks this imaginiation. The plot hover slightly only over the predictibility of Avatar. Worse: The first mission of the two mains is quite cool and a nice idea. But thats about it – it peters out in something thats more or less a continuous action sequence, that feeds a storyline older than the source material providing it (I wont spoil it here though). And in the end you could erase the first hour from the movie and start with the mains arriving at the afforementioned city and nothing would be missing (except some backstory that is repeated anyway, and some of the best shots of the movie). So this makes the movie so dissapointing. Its not really bad, in the sense that Avatar was not really bad, just very pedestrian and predictable, but given the World building and visuals it stays so far under its possibilities its sad.
And then there is the acting… Im normally not one to call out bad acting, but here…. Ethan Hawke has a small scene but he is the only (!) actor that fills his role with life and its such a relevation that I literally was stunned by his performance, even if it wasnt exactly an Oscar-role. It just stood out against the other actors (Rihanna did a reasonable job for a non-actress as well). I wonder why Besson, who normally is on point with his casting, chose the two mains that have neither acting skills nor chemistry. Especially Valerian does not convince anyone that he is a womanizer, a secret agent or that he really is serious with his pursuit of Laureline. The whole movie he acts like a teenager with his first crush that he wants to “live forever with”, not like a responsible adult that really wants to commit.
Like I said: The first mission was promising: Not only visually but also the style of the mission itself and how the two mains pulled it off let me hoping for a great movie. But it quickly slid down to the very-mediocre-department.
“And he wasted a perfectly good pixel”
While Im at it, I also finished The Rise and Fall of DODO by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland (and no, this is not related to the last post, the movie was not that boring). Now, Im a Stephensonfan (Seveneves notwithstanding), butI know Galland only from her participation in the Mongoliad-books, which I couldnt bring myself to finish.
Anyway: Its a fun romp about a shadowy organisation and time travel (not much of a spoiler, because that much is clear after page 1). It does offer what I would call Stephenson-traits like putting up restriuctions and than find creative way around them and interesting side characters – but mostly in the latter part of the book. The first two thirds or so it reads more like a Jasper FForde- novel (a good thing imho): Funny, original and not too heavy. Like I said, its a fun romp, although the buildup is probably a bit too long, especially when you start to see where things are going. But even before that they need an awful lot of time to get something done, so if your plot must move forward all the time, its probably not the best book too read. I was quite entertained. I like the style (a mishmash of severel “sources” telling the story through different channels – although this is more in place after the first half) and that it doesnt take itself too seriously. If you can do with “light and entertaining” and dont need to have “profound”, Id say this is very much in the recommendation-category.
(To use another odd comparision: The first hald reminded me -in a good way! – of the first season of Misfits, insofar as the Misfits didnt do anything constructive with their powers, mainly trying to fix the fallout of the pilot and the fallout of their fixes. Its a bit like that in DODO as well)
(10) THEY HAVE A WORD FOR IT.
This seems appropriate for many fans:
In general, for any language pair, there will be words in one language that doesn’t exist or have a slightly different meaning in the other. This means that translations are generally longer than the original text – there are many cases where the author used one word and the translator have to use several, but it’s less common that a long phrase can be replaced with a single word. Which again means that your typical doorstopper fantasy novels sometimes have to be published in two volumes when they’re translated.
I’m sure Scott Summers would agree.
@Cora
“Schadenfreude” is quite often used in the UK – it was popularised by a TV commercial iirc. We may well be totally misusing it though!
@Peer
My thoughts about DODO were pretty similar. A lot of Stephenson’s recent tendencies were smoothed out, although it could still have trimmed a hundred pages or so without doing the story any harm. Enjoyable.
Little Scroll, big Scroll; Pixel on a shelf.
My impression (which may be erroneous) of schadenfreude is that there’s a level of subtlety encompassed there that isn’t present in the more overt gloating — that schadenfreude is something you feel, and gloating is something you actually do.
(10) The Hebrew word I miss most when I speak English is “davka”, which can mean “on the contrary,” or it can mean being deliberately contrary or spiteful.
And then “I did to him davka” means I did something specifically because I knew he wouldn’t want it, or that it would be inappropriate.
So you can say “I’m a big Spiderman fan, but I davka don’t want to see the new movie.”
Or you can say “My friend’s a major Batman fan, so I did to him davka and bought him a ‘I <3 Spiderman’ T-Shirt."
Particularly common is when you're having an argument, and you say "I'm not doing this davka” — that is, “You may feel like I did this specifically to spite you, but no, you’re misinterpreting my intentions and actions.”
It’s amazing how useful and commonplace a phrase it is, and I really miss it in English.
Fits with how schadenfreude (skadeglädje) is used in Sweden. On the other hand, we do not have a word for gloating. 😛
11)
This is why Elizabeth, when I went to Continuum, had a clue as to who I was already. 🙂
Slight spoiler to my DUFF report. As a result, when I reached Canberra on my adventure, she helped arrange a tour of Geoscience Australia, which was amazingly cool.
And hey, credit on a story again.
10) I find it interesting that English used to have one verb, hight, for the construction “to be called, to be named”, but has since lost it.
@Paul Weimer: also “yclept”, which means the same as “hight” – I’ve only ever seen two writers use it: Geoffrey Chaucer and E.E. “Doc” Smith.
@Steve. Hunh, didn’t know about that word. So English went from two to zero words for it, which is really odd and interesting.
I first encountered “hight” way back when I read WHEELS OF IF.
@JJ
Yes, that fits with my (also possibly erroneous) use of schadenfreude as well – you feel it when someone has got his comeuppance. And then you may gloat after that 🙂
It was a staple of bad translations of Norse sagas: “Ketil Flatneb hight a man, the son of Bjorn Buna; he was a mighty hersir of Norway and of great kin.”
In fandom, one usage that has struck me was the “O the embarrassment” construct. I vaguely remembered it from an Analog story from the 80s when I was a kid, so it was a big surprise to see Stross use “O the embarrassment” as I began to interact with fandom again during the Puppy Perplexities.
Hampus:
“Pixeln frossade i Skrollens olycka”?
Although in a way, that is a translation that uses a word also means things taht are not “gloat”, because it would be hard to gloat a massive bowl of ice cream, while it would be delightful to frossa one.
@Standback — Sadly, why do I think that “davka” is an incredibly apropos word for our current political climate?
I really enjoyed The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
Tonally, it was reminiscent of 50’s Heinlein — conversational prose, amusing characterizations, exciting incidents, clever concepts. ‘DODO’ is especially ingenious in the working out of the organizational aspects of time travel.
Well, I’ve been looking for the updates on the GALAXY QUEST tv show. Not a blip for a while.
On the other hand IT’S ABOUT TIME is out on DVD. Better known for its theme song than any quality, and known for its idea that cavemen were morons.
@Steve Wright: @Paul Weimer: also “yclept”, which means the same as “hight” – I’ve only ever seen two writers use it: Geoffrey Chaucer and E.E. “Doc” Smith.
Roger Zelazny also used it, in ‘The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth’. I’ll always remember that because I had to look up the meaning; this was pre-internet.
#7) The other day, my wife and I were debated who’s accent was worse Dick van Dyke’s “British” accent in Mary Poppins or Nicola Bryant’s “American” accent in Doctor Who.
And @PhilRM, @Steve Wright, @Paul Weimer, Poul Anderson also made use of yclept.
@Johan P: Which again means that your typical doorstopper fantasy novels sometimes have to be published in two volumes when they’re translated. I’m not convinced that’s a reaction to phrases needed for single words, even if the translator is unwilling to make up a word for the phrase; how much of a difference could that make, and would it not be balanced by using existing words for what takes a phrase in the original language? I get the impression that translated size more reflects the overall language; a visible example is Perry Rhodan, which is significantly smaller per installment in English than in German.
@Steve Wright: you’ve never read “Satan and Sam Shay”? (You could argue that “yclept” is a deliberate archaicism there as it’s used only by Satan.) A fun read, and not hard to find.
Rob Thornton: AFAIK, “O the embarassment” originated in Joe Haldeman’s “A !tangled Web”, which ISFDB tells me came out in the 9/81 Analog. Joe was sociable and the phrase was effective and cute, so its spread isn’t surprising — especially to Stross, who strikes me as well-read (if occasionally too cute — starting a chapter set on a ~Communist world with “It was a bright cold afternoon in April, and the clock was striking fourteen.”!?!)
Do not taunt happy fun scroll.
@Steven H Silver: And @PhilRM, @Steve Wright, @Paul Weimer, Poul Anderson also made use of yclept.
It’s funny, Poul Anderson’s name immediately rang a bell in this context, although I couldn’t possibly tell you where or how often he used it.
Not familiar with fannish “O the embarrassment”. The phrase makes me think of The Kinks’ song “All of My Friends Were There”:
My big day, it was the biggest day of my life.
It was the summit of my long career,
But I felt so down, and I drank too much beer,
The management said that I shouldn’t appear.
I walked out onto the stage and started to speak.
The first night I’ve missed for a couple of years,
I explained to the crowd and they started to jeer,
And just when I wanted no one to be there,
All of my friends were there.
Not just my friends, but their best friends too.
All of my friends were there to stand and stare,
Say what they may, all of their friends need not stay.
Those who laughed were not friends anyway.
All of my friends were there to stand and stare.
Days went by, I walked around dressed in a disguise.
I wore a mustache and I parted my hair,
And gave the impression that I did not care,
But oh, the embarrassment, oh, the despair.
Came the day, helped with a few large glasses of gin,
I nervously mounted the stage once again,
Got through my performance and no one complained,
Thank God I can go back to normal again.
I went to that old café,
Where I had been in much happier days,
And all of my friends were there,
And no one cared.
Say what they may, all of my friends were there.
Not just my friends, but their best friends too.
All of my friends were there,
Now I don’t care.
https://www.kindakinks.net/discography/showsong.php?song=10
(2) Balloon space stations
“Another example of science bypassing SF”–Chip Hitchcock
And of course, SF being the genre of infinite possibilities, I can cite a counterexample–Steven Gould’s Exo (although Gould uses teleporting to make it work).
Re Anderson. Mmm. I might’ve known or at least twigged to it. He uses Hight in “The High Crusade”, which I recently re-read (and podcasted about)
http://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-430-readalong-the-high-crusade-by-poul-anderson/
@PhilRM, It’s funny, Poul Anderson’s name immediately rang a bell in this context, although I couldn’t possibly tell you where or how often he used it.
I don’t have them at hand, but I would suggest looking at a) his essay “Uncleftish Beholding,” followed by the novels The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, or Three Hearts and Three Lions.