(1) PROS WITH A FOUNTAIN PEN. The Goulet Pen company blog invited writers to speak about using fountain pens in their work. Two of them are of genre interest: Elizabeth Bear and Aliette de Bodard. In the comments others mention Neil Gaiman and Neil Stephenson as having written book drafts with a fountain pen.“6 Writers On Why They Use Fountain Pens”
My name is Aliette de Bodard and I’m a writer of science fiction and fantasy. I learnt to write with fountain pens as a child but put mine away after I left university. Last year, after a dry spell of being unable to write, I reconnected with that love and discovered the world of bottled inks, and it’s been such good writing practice.
For me, the act of using a fountain pen is visceral and soothing. I love feeling the bite of the nib on paper. Writing things down has been super useful: I brainstorm, or take notes while writing a scene on my computer. I find in both cases using the fountain pen will unlock new ideas for me to work with. I also doodle: I will totally draw little diagrams of what a scene looks like and where my characters are!
(2) PERSISTENCE OF VISION. The Washington Post’s Steven Zeitchik explains why ratings are far less of a determination about whether a show is renewed than they used to be, which is why The Simpsons is on Season 30 because it works well overseas and on streaming platforms. Also, campaigns to save shows matter more, which is why Timeless will have a two-hour TV movie despite being cancelled: “When ratings don’t define success, more TV series are staying on the air longer”.
In fact, last year marked the first time since the ratings site TV By The Numbers began tracking figures nearly a decade ago that fewer than half of networks’ first-year series were canceled. That marks a severe drop-off — the number once topped 70 percent.
And as the fall season begins this month, 13 shows are entering at least their 10th season, believed to be a modern-day record. That includes such programs as “Grey’s Anatomy,” entering Season 15, and “The Simpsons,” entering Season 30. Viewership for each of these shows is down more than 70 percent from their all-time highs.
(3) MAP OF A WORLD. A Reddit fan of Steven Erikson and Ian Esselmont’s Malazan books has mapped the series’ world (known as WU) to a chalkboard globe. Tor.com has an article about it: “Ever Wondered What the Known World of Malazan Looks Like on a Globe?”
While there is no official, unified map for the world of Malazan, that has not stopped fans from constructing their own maps drawing from conjectures and clues in Malazan Book of the Fallen. Now, one especially crafty fan has taken that experiment a step further by making the world (affectionately and informally referred to as “Wu”) three-dimensional.
See photos of the globe at the link.
(4) THE APPETIZER COURSE. Amanda Baker offers her list of “Sci-fi books for people who don’t think they like sci-fi” at Salon.
“The Sparrow,” by Mary Doria Russell — This book was the first I read from my “starter kit,” and it hit me like a gut punch. Yes, there is a spaceship. But it also has some of the most engrossing depictions of culture shock and good intentions leading to severe consequences of any book I have read. It can be an emotionally demanding read.
(5) STEAM AGING. Disappointingly, this place is not open to tourists! “Steampunk Meets Science at New Hendrick’s Distillery in Scotland” – Bloomberg has the story.
The door is stout, with curly wrought iron hinges, the only entrance in an imposing, 13-foot-high brick wall. It could be the exterior of an old castle here in Scotland, a bell hanging nearby to summon attention. When the huge clapper dings, a small hatch rattles open to reveal a pair of eyes, like a guard greeting Dorothy arriving at Emerald City for the first time. “Who’s there?” he says, before recognizing the visitor “Och aye, come in.”
When the gates swing open, it’s an Oz-worthy sight: there’s a palatial building hidden inside, made mostly from glass and iron like a Victorian exhibition hall. Two of the wings are hothouses, filled with plants, while between them sits a central conservatory festooned with decoration. A stuffed peacock perches proudly in one corner, near a pile of steam trunks. A coat rack is hung with tweed cloaks and pith helmets. Penny farthing bikes are racked together jauntily by the door.
…While Ward points to an enormous new visitor center recently unveiled by The Macallan and the 100,000 plus visitors who pass through Bombay Sapphire’s jewel-box of a distillery each year, the Gin Palace is not configured for thirsty, drop-in visitors. Rather William Grant has taken a more selective approach. Bartenders will be invited to come here to finesse their skills alongside select VIPs, who will tour the hot houses and gardens, meet with Lesley in her lab and taste her various experiments; the gin’s brand ambassadors will be tasked with identifying, and inviting, the first few such folks. If you want to wangle a visit for yourself, charm everyone you see wearing a pith helmet and a retro mustache in any bar.
(6) BRADBURY’S VOICE. At the link you can watch The Halloween Tree movie with Ray Bradbury’s commentary overdubbed from the laserdisc edition.
(7) HE WAS HAD. Billy Dee Williams tweeted a photo of he and Mark Hamill at the Royal Performance of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Mark Hamill tweeted the reason he didn’t look Princess Margaret in the eye —
This photo was snapped moments after @realbdw told me that direct eye contact with royalty was an offense punishable by imprisonment in the Tower of London.#Pranked https://t.co/V93EsgGT9y
— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) September 19, 2018
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- September 30, 1959 — Men Into Space premiered on television.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]
- Born September 30, 1946 – Dan O’Bannon, Actor, Writer, Director best known to genre fans for his collaboration with John Carpenter on the cult science fiction film Dark Star, in which he also starred. He built a career writing screenplays for numerous genre films including Alien, Lifeforce, and Total Recall, and directed The Return of the Living Dead.
- Born September 30, 1950 – Vondie Curtis-Hall, 68, Actor and Director, whose genre appearances include Broken Arrow, a guest role on Medium, and a main role in the Daredevil TV series.
- Born September 30, 1959 – Debrah Farentino, 59, Actress and Producer who played major roles in the TV series Earth 2 and Eureka.
- Born September 30, 1960 – Nicola Griffith, 58, Writer, Essayist and Teacher. Her first novel was Ammonite which won the Tiptree and Lambda Awards and was a finalist for the Clarke and BSFA Awards, followed by The Blue Place, Stay, and Always, which are linked novels in the Ammonite universe featuring the character Aud Torvingen. Her novel Slow River won Nebula and Lambda Awards. With Stephen Pagel, she has edited three Bending the Landscape anthologies in each of the three genres Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, the first of which won a World Fantasy Award. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in March 1993. She lives with her wife, author Kelley Eskridge, in Seattle.
- Born September 30, 1964 – Monica Bellucci, 54, Italian Actor, known for The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions and voices for the videogames in that franchise, The Brothers Grimm, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
- Born September 30, 1972 – Sheree Renée Thomas, 46, Writer and Editor who has published two collections of her own stories and poems. The two Dark Matter anthologies she edited, A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, and Reading the Bones, each won World Fantasy Awards. She has been guest co-editor this year on two magazine special editions, the Strange Horizons Southwestern USA Issue (July) and the Apex Magazine Zodiac Double Issue (August).
- Born September 30, 1974 – Daniel Wu, 44, Actor, Director, and Producer, who has appeared in genre films Warcraft, Geostorm, and the Tomb Raider reboot, and currently has a lead role in the post-apocalyptic TV series Into the Badlands.
- Born September 30, 1975 – Marion Cotillard, 43, French Actor and Director, had early appearance in two episodes of Highlander, followed by larger roles in the genre films Big Fish, Inception, Contagion, The Dark Knight Rises, and Assassin’s Creed.
(10) CAN YOU DIG IT? Ever wanted to get the dirt on Mars. Um, of Mars? Well, definitely not from Mars. Phys.org lets you know that the University of Central Florida can hook you up with some sweet, sweet simulant (“UCF selling experimental Martian dirt—$20 a kilogram, plus shipping”).
The University of Central Florida is selling Martian dirt, $20 a kilogram plus shipping.
This is not fake news. A team of UCF astrophysicists has developed a scientifically based, standardized method for creating Martian and asteroid soil known as simulants.
The team published its findings this month in the journal Icarus.
“The simulant is useful for research as we look to go to Mars,” said Physics Professor Dan Britt, a member of UCF’s Planetary Sciences Group. “If we are going to go, we’ll need food, water and other essentials. As we are developing solutions, we need a way to test how these ideas will fare.”
You can also pick up Lunar simulants in addition to the Martian and asteroid models. There’s no word in the Phys.org article whether toxic perchlorates are included in the base price of the Martian simulant, or are an extra-cost upgrade.
(11) CHINA SPACE PROGRAM. According to ThatsGuangzhou, “China Plans to Reach Mars by 2021”.
On September 18, an official with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) provided details on China’s Mars exploration goals, saying the PRC’s first probe will be launched in 2020 and is expected to reach the Red Planet by 2021….
According to ECNS, the first mission will orbit, land and put an exploration rover on Mars after a 10-month voyage. The second mission, in 2028, will bring back samples of Martian soil, People’s Daily reports.
Li Guoping, director general of the department of system engineering of CNSA, said the Long March 8 rocket for 2020 will employ two 2.25-meter-diameter, solid-fuel boosters. The Long March 9 rocket for 2028 will be over 90 meters in length, capable of carrying 140 metric tons into low-Earth orbit, according to People’s Daily.
Last year, China announced plans to build a ‘Mars village’ in Qinghai province due to its uninhabited, otherworldy environment.
The voyages to Mars are only a part of the nation’s space exploration plans. In December, China will launch the Chang’e-4 lunar probe into the South-Pole Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon. The 2,500-kilometer-wide hole is considered rich in iron and was first spotted in the 1960s. Eventually, the country hopes to establish a research station on the moon. China is also planning a space mission to Jupiter.
(12) FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. The New York Post headline reads: “Secret identity of 150-year-old body found in NYC revealed”. ULTRAGOTHA says, “What piqued my interest here, was that the forensic archaeologist contacted the Centers for Disease Control because the body was so well-preserved that he worried the Small Pox virus might still be active. Now THERE’s a story prompt.”
…A testament to the coffins’ effectiveness, Peterson’s skin was intact to the point that she appeared to have been deceased for only a week. Warnasch noted that “smallpox lesions covered her body.” Initially he was concerned by this: “The body was so well preserved that I would not have been shocked if the smallpox virus had survived.”
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the smallpox had degraded to a nonthreatening level. An autopsy revealed that the disease had infected Peterson’s brain and most likely killed her…
(13) I YELLED FIRE WHEN I FELL INTO THE CHOCOLATE. A new chocolate source: “Brazil indigenous group bets on ‘golden fruit'”:
He took pictures of what his people call “golden fruit” and took to the Socio-Environmental Institute, a non-governmental organisation promoting indigenous products.
The “golden fruit” of his native Waikas forest was Theobroma cocoa, the seeds of which are used to make cocoa powder and chocolate.
But it is not just any kind of cocoa. A cocoa expert the Ata Institute, which works closely with the NGO Julio had originally approached, found the pod from the Waikas forest had a different shape from all other known varieties.
The expert, Roberto Smeraldi, thought it could be a hitherto-unknown pure variety offering great potential.
(14) BRAVE NEW WORLD AUTHOR. Mike Wallace interviewed Aldous Huxley on CBS in 1958 —
Aldous Huxley shares his visions and fears for this brave new world.
(15) LESS LIKE ZAP, MORE LIKE SPLOOSH. At Nerdist, Kyle Hill’s video “Beware the Phaser’s Maximum Setting, Because Science” claims Star Trek makes death too neat….
In my latest episode of Because Science, I’m shedding light on the fact that a scientifically accurate vaporization wouldn’t be just a flash of light. What vaporization actually does is right in the name. It turns the matter of the target into vapor or gas. If that’s the case, what would really happen to a human if you vaporized them is nowhere near as neat and tidy as Star Trek always portrayed it. Think more… chunks…
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Nancy Sauer, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, Rob Thornton, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
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(13): Makes me think of the special chocolate in Kage Baker’s Company books, which gives the Company cyborgs an incredible high.
(um, i mean second)
click!
Chocolate. More chocolate. Who says nothing good happens in the world?
(1) Another genre author who used fountain pens was Harlan Ellison.
THERE’S A NEW KIND OF CHOCOLATE???!!!
Ahem. I may be interested in this news.
@Andrew: Nothing special. Any kind of chocolate was what got them high, though of course the higher the cocoa percentage, the better. An idea I agree with.
(1) Urgh. Fountain pens are scritchy-scratchy. I never could write with one without getting the fingernails on chalkboard effect. Ballpoints 4 eva. My shoulders went up around my ears just reading this.
(7) I am looking forward to seeing Lando in the next movie. I bet Billy Dee is still suave as ever.
(10) Over/under on someone growing poop potatoes?
(13) See above.
(15) But what if it was really, really strong, leading to instant total vaporization?
Oooh, legitimate fifth. And good job to @Soon Lee.
@Lurkertype: But what if it was really, really strong, leading to instant total vaporization?
I think the important word there is ‘vapor’.
I like fountain pens. I’ve also written with a Speedball C-6 pen (pointy), which is a little trickier, as it’s a “dip” pen that requires an actual open ink supply. You can’t do some kinds of handwriting while using a ballpoint pen….
(9) — Monica Bellucci also appeared in Brotherhood of the Wolf, my favorite pre-revolutionary French kung fu werewolf film.
Estimate a human body as ~100 liters (100 kg; ~220 lbs) of water. Change 100 liters of liquid water at 100 C to water vapor (steam) at 100 C… that is, add just enough energy to overcome the latent heat of vaporization. Volume expands by ~1600x.
That much expansion would generally be called “an explosion.”
Woohoo Title Credit! And an earworm too. (You are all welcome!)
(1) PROS WITH A FOUNTAIN PEN.
I’m lefthanded & never mastered writing with fountain pens: I either smudge the wet ink as I write, or if I crook my hand, the nib angle is all wrong and ends up scratching the surface of the paper and spattering ink. It’s fascinating reading about writerly fascination with fountain pens, I’m not about to have the same experience myself.
@lurkertype,
Are you, by chance, left handed too?
@Lurkertype: Thanks. I apparently was thinking of the special kind of wine made with the grapes that feature in the plot of “Noble Mold.”
@Joe H – I love Brotherhood of the Wolf! I always felt it belongs in a very specific genre, the only other member of which is Big Trouble in Little China.
(13)
Dick: Why did you yell “Fire!”?
Tom: Well, nobody’d’ve come if I’d yelled “Chocolate!”
I’ve always loved the line, but I dispute it, and I think a few people here do as well.
(My pixel killed his file.)
@Soon Lee: #metoo. I sometimes hated being left-handed when I was younger because everyone else got to write with fountain pens and I was stuck writing in pencil. Plus being any kind of different when you’re a kid can be difficult. These days I appreciate that I get a slightly different perspective on things.
Still, sometimes I’d like to be able to write with a fountain pen, though.
(1) Joe Haldeman has used a fountain pen to write his works in blank books for years. Here’s a quote:
@John Winkelman — I never made that connection before! But it does make sense when I think about it.
@PhilRM: “I think the important word there is ‘vapor’.”
Apocaplyse Stardate 22728.1: “Captain’s Log: I love the smell of redshirt in the morning!”
Also, that would kind of dramatically change the tenor of Star Trek if, when struck by a phaser, folks, rather than just kind of being erased, started popping like a gremlin in a microwave.
@ Joe H.
Or like that chief evil alien parasite in the ST:TNG episode “Conspiracy.”
re @15: ISTM that vaporizing the solids that make up a substantial minority of human mass (30%, says one ancient recollection) would require temperatures much greater than 100C (I’m remembering needing a high temperature simply to make bone break down enough for a mineral analysis, not vaporize), so the explosion would be 2-3X as large — or everyone around would be splattered. I don’t think the phaser is as short-range a weapon as I recall it usually being shown….
I don’t think that the phaser can possibly be heating people up to vaporize them for the reasons stated above. The only think that makes sense to me is that it’s an untuned transportation unit; it beams you to … nowhere.
After all, the special effects (if memory serves) are pretty similar….
@Soon Lee @Oneiros
Didn’t you have fountain pens for lefthanders? Because they certainly existed when I started school in 1979, though they were more expensive than the regular kind.
I learned to write with a fountain pen at school from first grade on, because everybody in Germany did. But I never had a great affinity for fountain pens. I’m not lefthanded (and there were lefthand fountain pens), but my hand position during writing is considered weird (my parents blame some overzealous American kindergarten teachers from teaching me how to write without correcting my hand position to what Germans consider the “proper position”) and not conductive to fountain pen use, so I switched to a ball pen in approximately 9th grade and never switched back.
@Cassy B: Hm. Could that connect with the “stun” setting on phasers – maybe “stun” transports away (to nowhere) a sufficient portion of the oxygen in the body of the target to cause temporary unconscious?
Andrew, I like that! I wonder the stun setting is “O2 molecules” and the kill setting is indiscriminate; x amount of mass…
If all the (unbound) oxygen were beamed away from your body, would you die or would normal respiration restore it before you died? Enquiring minds, and all that….
@Cassy B: I always assumed it was something like that, from the special effect that they used for it.
@Joe H @John Winkelman: Clearly we need to form the Brotherhood of the Brotherhood of the Wolf. I’m also a big fan of Big Trouble in Little China.
“Brotherhood of the Wolf”: I saw at least part of it while visiting my sister. It was interesting, but having missed some of it, I was having a little trouble following the threads. (I have “Big Trouble” on my list.)
From here in 2062, they’re both classic movies.
It’s similar for me – I was never taught how to hold a pen properly when I was learning how to write so my thumb is in the wrong place. I like the idea of fountain pens but the results are horrible when I write. Even with a ballpoint I get accused of having a doctor’s handwriting.
@10 – Here’s another source of Martian Regolith Simulant, not connected to UCF. You can buy a little greenhouse kit – poop not included.
I have no connections to The Martian Garden.
https://www.themartiangarden.com
Yeah, not a fan of fountain pens here. I’m not a lefty or anything, but they just never felt right to me. I’m fine with ball-points, felt-tips, pencils, and paint brushes, but fountains just aren’t my thing. Not entirely sure why. But there it is.
I was so happy when I first discovered broad-nib felt tips, because it finally allowed me to be comfortable while practicing calligraphy. Which I then got into to the point where it permanently altered my regular handwriting–for the better.
Still, while I’m not a fan myself, I’m happy to see them stick around so that people who do like them can continue to enjoy them.
@Cora Buhlert,
I was not given a left-handed fountain pen to use, and this was for the compulsory “learn to use a fountain pen to write” classes. That certainly did not make life easy.
Later, my parents bought me a left-handed pen set for calligraphy (another compulsory set of lessons at school). The wider angled nibs helped because you had to write at a certain angle for it to work. But my normal writing posture often intervened (because the correct hand posture for calligraphy felt wrong), so I’d get some of the calligraphy looking nice but IIRC never a full page worth of writing.
If the classes had gone on for a long time and I had to keep doing it, I expect I would have gained some ability to do calligraphy. But after a handful of calligraphy lessons, the teacher moved on to something else.
(I still have my calligraphy set somewhere, and am now tempted to dig it out to have another go at it.)
I remember writing with cartridge pens (a variant of fountain pen) in elementary school, and hating them because they always leaked ink onto my fingers. These days, I don’t use a pen at all if I can use a computer or make a note on my smartphone. I do carry a ballpoint pen with me, though.
I have a couple of writer friends who are pen enthusiasts (fountain and ballpoint both), and I enjoy reading what they write about pens in the same way that I enjoy reading one of my other friends’ beer reviews even though I hate beer. It’s just interesting.
PhiRM notes that I’m also a big fan of Big Trouble in Little China.
There’s a great review of a one sixth scale Jack Burton figure here.
Gel pens for teh win.
Pentel used to make a plastic-nib fountain-type pen, the “Fountain Pentel”. I liked using it; it didn’t leak.
I too shall become a member.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were “erasable” pens, which were the bane of this left-hander’s existence – everything I wrote with one of those pens ended up smeared thoroughly.
@Cassie B:
Could be – “kill” could take out 5 kilos from the chest cavity which would kill people and leave the intact-looking bodies that result from a phaser-kill.
In order to get Brotherhood of the Wolf on Blu-ray, I ended up ordering a Korean imported version of a French film from the Canadian Amazon.
I regret nothing.
@Cora: I was given a left-handed pen (involving a blade-shaped nib instead of a pointed one — probably like what @Soon Lee had) for the method that I was taught in middle school; it was a resounding failure. I affected [sic] a cartridge pen in high school, after I’d been taught to turn the paper so my pen hand didn’t touch fresh ink, but I got over that silliness before starting college — possibly because of the effect on the pen of dropping it on its point during a major exam. Now I carry a deliberately chosen set: fine black ballpoint for standard work, medium blue to overwrite, red for proofreading (which I used to do more of, mostly for NESFA Press) and a mechanical pencil because writing in ink is a bad idea even in musical scores that aren’t borrowed — one never knows what marking the conductor will change their mind about.
@various re phaser stunning: ISTM unlikely that removing all the unbound oxygen would produce unconsciousness; faintness, maybe, but from what I’ve read about nicotine absorption, inhaled molecules reach the brain in ~~10 seconds — and most people can hold their breaths for rather longer than that without even becoming faint.
@Chip: (re: phasers). Another beautiful theory cut down by facts. I’m still interesting in finding a workable fan-theory that connects the various modes of phaser use (stunning, killing, and disintegrating).
@ Andrew – How about turning the phaser into an intelligent weapon? Given a hand-waving theory about resonant energy affecting nervous systems, we can have the phaser quickly probe the target and figure out what kind of energy pulse is needed to stun, kill or (invoke molecular interference here) disintegrate that target.
How about that?
Rob: That could work – the phaser “vibrates” the target – mildly (focusing on the nervous system) to stun, more strongly (still focused on the nervous system) to kill, and more strongly still on molecular bonds, to disintegrate.
Andrew – If you’d like to use it, feel free to use the handwaving. 🙂
@Soon Lee: Wow, compulsive calligraphy was definitely not a thing here. When I started learning it, the kids at my school were amazed that it was possible to do such a thing by hand! 🙂
I might actually be slightly jealous, if I didn’t know how mandatory lessons can suck the fun out of just about anything. 😉
#15 Stargate quietly abandoned the “third shot disintegrates” rule of their alien zat guns, aside from one bit of lampshading in the “Wormhole X-Treme” episode where it’s suggested and shot down as being too stupid.
(2) Anyone pining for more episodes of “Timeless” should check out “Ministerio del Tiempo” on Netflix.
This is a Spanish Time Travel series which may, or may not, have inspired “Timeless” depending on which lawyer you speak to. The methods of time travel are very different but I’m pretty convinced that there is a connection because of similarities of two of the characters in both series.
It is fascinating to see how two different countries approach the idea of protecting the timeline against change. The American version is all about politics and social change while the Spanish one concentrates more on protecting Spain’s art and culture.
@Cora: I did eventually get to use a left-handed pen but it was a long-ass time after everyone else was already writing with pen and ink, so I was pretty much made to feel slow and stupid. At least it was only passive dumbshittery though and not active discrimination as it used to be.
I like the idea of the fountain pen but have never been able to deploy them. Once in a while I buy one (cartridge variety) but run into details like not having anything to write worth looking good. On the other hand, when I was a yoot my mother sliced her right hand open on some Pyrex that turned out to not be as heat shock tolerant as described, and, in her words, had to learn to write all over again; for the rest of her life she only used fiber tip pens with a calligraphic style flat nib.
Ballpoint pens I hate the writing feel of, except for gel pens which are quite nice – but I can’t get next to the way they smear. Last time I went pen shopping the shopkeeper I talked with said they were intended for forgery-resistant work such as writing checks. They steered me towards Faber-Castell’s Pitt artist pens, which I found quite nice… then promptly stopped using, as I found myself shifting hobbies away from one which required record-keeping.
@Andrew: Erasable pens were definitely still a thing when I was in high school in the early 2000s – I definitely recall classes that encouraged them. Even as a righty they tended to smudge a bit.
Here in 8382, our pens use phasers to disperse stray marks.
@ Patrick Morris Miller
Judge Haller would like to know what you mean by “yoot“.