(1) The Verge covers the University of Iowa’s progress digitizing the Hevelin fanzine collection – “10,000 zines and counting: a library’s quest to save the history of fandom”
The University of Iowa’s fanzine collection is going digital before it falls apart
In July, UI digital project librarian Laura Hampton officially began the long process of archiving the Hevelin Collection. The library is partnering with the fan-run Organization for Transformative Works to collect more zines for eventual digital archival, but Hampton is currently focused on material from the 1930s to 1950s, spanning the rise of zines and the Golden Age of science fiction. The vast majority of the images will stay offline, but an accompanying Tumblr has given outsiders a peek into the roughly 10,000 zines that Hevelin donated — and into the communities that helped create science fiction as we know it, from fandom clashes to fan fiction.
The SF Fan, May 1940
(2) Pop quiz at Clickhole – “Obama Quote Or Description Of A Ray Bradbury Book Cover?” Unlike quizzes at File 770, not all the answers are Ray Bradbury.
(3) Time is running out to send your name to Mars. The last Day to register is September 8, 2015 (11:59 p.m. ET)
(4) Rachael Acks, on “FAQ: What is SFWA in charge of?***” , lists six things SFWA is in charge of and 35 it is not in charge of. How does she keep track?
(5) George R.R. Martin likes Kevin Standlee’s ideas for redoing some of the Hugo Award categories – “Hugo Reform”
I suspect that the chance of these changes being enacted are remote (every existing Hugo category has an entrenched constituency, so while adding categories is difficult, abolishing one is all but impossible) but nonetheless, I think these are eminently sensible changes and I would whole-heartedly support them. Let me tell you why.
For me, the most problematic Hugo categories are those that honor a person rather than a work. Look at Best Artist, for instant. I was just discussing that with my friend John Picacio this past weekend, as it’s a pet peeve of his. The award has been around for half a century, yet fewer than twenty people have ever won it. The same people win, year after year. Many voters have no idea what art they did the past year, if any; they just know, “oh, I like X’s art,” and they vote for him, again.
The Best Editor categories have shown every signs of working the same way. Originally the category WAS Best Magazine, which was easy to judge. Did ASTOUNDING or GALAXY have a better year? It was changed to Best Editor in the 70s, during the boom in original anthologies, sometimes called “book-a-zines”… and to allow book editors to compete. But few book editors were ever nominated, and none ever won, until the category was split in half. Problem is, and this complaint came up often during Puppygate and after, that most books do not credit their editors… and besides that, the reader has no real way to know what the editor did. Some novels are heavily edited, some much less. What is the criterion? The proof should be in the pudding. Which pudding tastes better. Reward the WORK, not the author or editor or artist. Go back to Best Magazine, and add Anthology/ Collection (both the Locus Awards and the World Fantasy Awards have such a category, and it works well). That more than covers the Short Form Editors.
(6) Daniel Lemire – “Revisiting Vernor Vinge’s ‘predictions’ for 2025”
Let me review some of his predictions:
- In his novel, many people earn a small income through informal part-time work with affiliate networks, doing random work. Today you can earn a small income through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and there are many Uber-like services whereas individuals can earn small sums by doing various services. So this prediction is almost certainly coming true….
(7) Avedon Carol on The Sideshow – “Never mind the forecast, ’cause the sky has lost control”
Christopher Priest leaps to the defense of Terry Pratchett. I remember years ago reading an article in Time Out from a woman who had been assigned to write about Pratchett and proceeded to state that she had not read any so she just asked her male friends if it was just boy’s stuff and they said that it was, thus proving they hadn’t read it, either. She rattled on for several more paragraphs but… seriously? That’s how a “professional journalist” covers an assignment? So now we have some nitwit over on the Guardian‘s blog pontificating on the lack of quality of Pratchett’s work which he says he hasn’t got time to waste actually reading it. I don’t know where these people come from.
(8) Jaythenerdkid on The Rainbow Hub – “An Interview with Benjanun Sridaungkaew” (Original link no longer works. Google cache file available for the time being here.)
In a situation like this, leaving often seems like the best option. Certainly, Bee has cut back on her involvement with the SF/F community at large. But she’s determined to keep on doing what she loves and is passionate about.
“I plan to keep writing,” she says. “I don’t think of SF/F as a community any more so much as a subculture that shares an interest or hobby rather than a sense of community.
“A community that awards a trophy to a racist hit piece on me is not a community I’d want to belong to, but I like to think those people are not ‘all’ of the field and fortunately my experiences have lined up with that: there are sub-communities who aren’t part of that at all.”
(9) William Underhill in a comment on Mad Genius Club.
I also think the fact that File770’s posts are moderated and need to be approved, and posts here and on Mr. Torgersen’s blog are not, is thought-provoking.
Yes, it is.
(10) Add K. Tempest Bradford’s name to the list of those who have volunteered to host a short fiction rating site that would be handy for Hugo voters – “io9 Newsstand Has One Last Thing To Say About The Hugo Awards”
I have long felt that there’s a real need for spaces where people can get together and passionately discuss the short fiction they read. That having such a space would make it easier for readers to find more short stories they’ll like. A place where anyone can rate and review stories and also easily find write-ups by pro reviewers.
A Goodreads-type site for short fiction.
And before you ask: no, Goodreads itself wouldn’t be a great space for this. The company isn’t interested in adding individual short stories, and the few that are on there now are either shorts that were issued with ISBN numbers or put there by community librarians. We need a site and service that is committed to creating a database of short fiction, with the ability for signed-in users to rate and/or review that also pulls in links or review text from pro reviewers where they exist.
Having such a site could also make it easier for people to nominate for the Hugo Awards when that time comes around. As everybody knows, you don’t need to have read everything in order to nominate faithfully and well. You only have to nominate the best of what you’ve read. However, if you want to see what other folks have read and loved, you could just go to the list of short fiction published during the year, sort by highest rating, and read the top 10 or 15 or 20.
I would love to spearhead such a project. But: money. Anyone know a venture capitalist?
(11) Hey, I just came across this photo today.
https://twitter.com/GeekElite/status/635221497720664064
If you open the picture in large format, you can see John Scalzi is wearing the yellow “File 770, That Wretched Hive of Scum & Villainy” button he pinned on his lanyard just before the panel began.
[Thanks to Paul Weimer, Mark, David Doering, and John King Tarpinian for some of these links. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Warner.]
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@Aaron
So… what did the Puppies do at previous Balticons?
Or the Wrightlighters, whichever it was.
That was my first question, too, but I was going to be all well-bred and shit and not ask.
But as long as I’ve wrecked that plan, what are the FFA nonnies?
Wait, we’ve reached the finals of the stringed instrument bracket already and it is LUTE v MANDOLIN? I was certain Banjolele would make it to the final. Sorry but I abstain.
So… what did the Puppies do at previous Balticons?
This is secondhand, but apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back was that they were incredibly rude at a panel on romance in science fiction when the subject of gay romances came up. And by rude, I mean obnoxious and disruptive.
@Steve Wright
I’m the same. I bought a membership because one of Brad Torgersen’s comments at GRRM’s blog irritated me and I had enough with their dishonesty. I voted no slate because a) slates are terrible and b) their selections were (mostly) terrible.
Sometimes, I think I’ve seen the depths of JCW’s ideas, and then I read something like this:
And … my head explodes.
RedWombat: that was genius!
re Joan Aiken I would say try the Armitage stories or Wolves of Willoughby Chase to start. While I love Aiken’s YA stuff, I never cared much for her adult books.
Audio books–just finished listening to the 2nd Peculiar Crimes Unit novel by Christopher Fowler and went straight on to the third (2nd was the Water Room and third is the 77 Clocks. Same reader for the series and he does well.
I’m a huge fan of the Simons (Simon Prebble and Simon Vance) as readers and have been known to get books just because one of them is the reader. Prebble reads the audio of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Vance reads the Steig Larsen Millenium series, the complete Sherlock Holmes, and most of the top tier Dickens novels, among other classics. I have been sloooowly working my way through Dickens (stalled out on Nicholas Nickeby at the moment but I’ll be back) and Vance as a reader brings out the humor in the storytelling, all of which went strIght over my head when I was slogging through Great Expectations for a college lit class.
RedWombat:
Your play script earned the highest compliment a humor piece can get from me: I literally — yes, literally — laughed so hard I had tears rolling down my face. Followed immediately by a 5-minute coughing/laughing spasm which required the therapeutic administration of intravenous Diet Coke.
Bravo.
I can’t believe it myself, but I am delurking to defend the smell of lutefisk as compared to surströmming (AKA fermented herring, the thing you never, ever, ever open indoors). The former doesn’t smell all that bad and the latter is OH MY COD like something that isn’t merely fermented but rubbed around in a sheep pen that hasn’t been cleaned in a good long while, then tossed to very old cows to lie on and possibly ruminate, and finally, after it has been retrieved from the cows, bottled to keep all those various rancid smells trapped and brewing ever more toxic. I was brought up to always try what my hosts proffered, but when it came to surströmming, I simply could not.
Our hostess was beside herself because she had forgotten the potatoes that apparently are supposed to mask the odor, but I really don’t think it would’ve made a difference.
@Jane_Dark
JCW is seeming more and more like brilliant performance art. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
@Aaron: This actually removes my one reservation about attending CapClave this year.
@Kurt Busiek
I’m pretty sure in this context FFA stands for FailFandom Anonymous and I’m guessing nonnies are the denizens thereof.
@ Camestros Felapton
We can’t be in the finals; we haven’t had the brackets yet. We wouldn’t miss that. That said, much as I admire the renaissance cred of the lute, I’m going to have to go for the mandolin here; the instrument, the lessons and the music are all much more practical to obtain plus it’s my main instrument.
For the person back thread who was wondering no, the lute and the mandolin (even the melon-back mandolin) are not the same. For starters a lute appears to have a minimum of five courses (pairs of strings tuned to the same pitch) and a mandolin only has four. A melon-back mandolin does look nice and renaissancy though, if you need an instrument for a RenFair, and they’re a lot easier to get.
This actually removes my one reservation about attending CapClave this year.
I’ll be there, working the registration desk for a while, and then just enjoying the rest of the convention, although there is always the possibility that I’ll be roped into doing more work. I’m also going to be helping with breakdown at the end of the convention.
Also in terms of general data-keeping and where I come from or why I was motivated to vote this year, I have read SF (but really more fantasy) a long time but never registered to Hugo-vote till this year because I heard about the kerfuffle and I know someone who won a Hugo last year and I felt personally insulted on this person’s behalf for the way the winning story and its author were belittled by persons of the Puppy, both frothing and non, stripe. The award was deserved, full stop. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Something that smells suspiciously of surströmming.
And that is why, even though I have never been to a con, I felt compelled to vote. Oh, and by the way, in my travels through life, I have met Philip Jose Farmer, Christopher Stasheff and Laura Resnick. Does that get me anything?
Just to keep the data coming… My parents were non-college-educated sorts who worked with their hands and came from turd-farming and goat-ball-licking lands. When I spit in the tube from ancestry.com to find out the particulars of my ancestry, I was given 7% Iberian peninsula. Look out! That apparently gives me a free pass to do and say whatever I want in perpetuity throughout the universe.
[small]nicoll[/small]
The review may be found here.
Cat:
Thenkyew!
@Shao Ping and Steve Wright: Likewise. I don’t usually pay that much attention to the Hugos, as the winners mostly don’t align very well with my taste in fiction, but I was so angered by the Puppies’ gaming of the nominations that I bought a membership for the first time since 1971 so that I could vote against the slates.
Posted from 1600 years before the Hugos were created, which is admirably science-fictional.
If I were voting, I would vote for a banjolin* over a banjolele.
*not a kind of anteater.
@PhilRM
Posted from 1600 years before the Hugos were created, which is admirably science-fictional.
Wow. It’s like SP4 being able to tell you how you should nominate before they even have a list.
Also, mandolins have metal strings, and lutes typically have gut strings. Lutes are larger(*), and usually have a peghead which is angled back from the neck. Most mandolins have flat(ish) backs, whereas all lutes have bowl-shaped backs. I’m not a lutenist, but I believe that lutes are usually plucked with the fingertips, while all mandolinists use plectrums.
(*)although in the past few decades there’s been a proliferation of larger mandolin-like instruments, with names such as cittern, octave mandolin, Irish bouzouki, etc. Mine, with five courses (GDAEB, starting an octave below a standard mandolin), is called a “tenor mandolin” by its maker, and I’ve been playing it more than my regular mandolins.
Thank you, all! Glad you enjoyed it.
Now, if only I could get a novel out of these shenanigans…but who would want 300 pages of that?
Add a murder mystery and you could write Bimbos of the Death Sun for the 21st century
I’m another who came out of the woodwork this year because of the puppies – although it isn’t my first time voting. Most years I haven’t read enough of the nominees to be worth it.
@Camestros: “Given the infrastructure Paulk maybe setting up for SP4, they might not need much more from LibertyCon other than the branding and the air of legitimacy.”
And I don’t think LibertyCon would be willing to provide that branding. I could be wrong, but I believed Brandy (the con chair) when she assured me before this year’s event that regardless of the high Puppy content on the attending-pro list, the con itself was taking a neutral stance.
If I get invited to the post-con wrapup meeting, I may be able to find out if this position has changed. I think a good part of the board and staff are “in the bubble,” but the Hugo results may have affected that. I would like to believe that the board can recognize hostile, bald-faced mendacity when they see it, and the Puppies have just been cranking that out nonstop lately.
You just have to be willing to dig through the HTML entities. ☺
Thanks to the Aiken suggestions I have just added Wolves to a set of e-books I am adding to my iPad with no idea of when I will actually read them. (Some of the suggestions weren’t available in the iTunes store, which helped in the winnowing down.) I see from the selection that AIken has written a number of Austen follow-ups, which no doubt (in combination with her reputation) is why she was invited to do the Emma Watson completion. Alas, I’m disinclined to see if she managed better when unconstrained by an existing partial text. For those who wonder just why I took Emma Watson in such dislike, my review is available through Goodreads among other places.
@lurkertype: “They should run their own awards, with LibertyCon’s help or not. It certainly would raise LC’s profile, though I don’t know if they’d care for it. If people at LC are going around secretly strapped, seems to me they’d dig Larry’s gun-porn.”
I don’t think LC’s got any interest in raising their profile. Remember, they’ve got that capped-by-charter maximum of 750 paid memberships. Changing a nonprofit’s charter is not a trivial thing, scaling the volunteer staff up to support a larger con is its own challenge, and I have heard zero interest at the meetings in doing either. This year, they set the cap at 700 and sold out before the beginning of the con. They are not hurting for attendance.
The two times I have met Larry C. were both at LibertyCon, where he was indeed a popular guest, but I am skipping Chattacon next year because I do not wish to encounter him a third time. Similarly, I’m skipping LibertyCon next year (and probably for the foreseeable future) because of this nasty allergy I’ve developed to being around large numbers of Puppies.
Thankfully, here in 4001, the whole fiasco has faded from the memory of all but the most dedicated archivists. Most of them think the records must be the work of other historians playing an elaborate practical joke, because it’s far too ludicrous to have actually happened.
We’ve already had 300 pages of that, in this here wretched hive of scum and villainy! That’s why your white dwarf version of it is so powerful that you have the whole Christ-hating crusaders of Sodom corner of the Internet trying vainly to draw breath in between the helpless guffaws.
I can totally see an anthology of File770 filk selling on Amazon. Do an audible version along with it. Possibly do it as a fundraiser initially. Might have different volumes to catch different favors or styles.
If Mike doesn’t want to do the above/have help with that then I see no reason why various authors here couldn’t put together small books made up of the filk they’ve done. Create an audible to go along with it for Amazon and other places you put your work up for sale.
May not be a best seller but you never know what will catch the publics eye. Never underestimate your fans. Remember you might have been on the ballot.
You make a pertinent argument but I must insist on banjolele as my write in candidate.
splitter!
☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮☭☮
Oh, I hadn’t got the SJWMARXISTPEACENIK setting switched on
So “If You Were a Platypus …” is a dystopian fantasy.
kurt: “what are the FFA nonnies?”
http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/157246.html?thread=842840638#cmt842840638
I’m a lifelong reader of SF, but only an occasional con-goer. (I’ve been to exactly ONE WorldCon. (And then I forgot to nominate the following year….))
And – because I am eternally behind in my reading – I rely upon the Hugo ballot for reading suggestions. (Well, MOST years, that is….)
And when I saw what the assholes did to this year’s ballot, I HAD to join, if only to send a message* to the vandals who dropped Wisdom from My Internet etc. on the Hugo ballot.
Apparently several thousand of The Silent Majority felt much the same way.
(*…The ‘message’ being those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat…).
@Camestros I’d vote 1) mandolin 2)banjolin 3) lute 4) banojlele
If banjolin picks up enough 2nd place votes it might win, and since they’re like a mandolin with a banjo body, I could play one.
@Morris Keesan
Your tenor mandolin sounds like a very interesting instrument also, though I bet the chords get a bit challenging.
I’m surprised to hear that lutes are plucked with the fingertips, but maybe fingerpicking courses-of-two is easier when the strings are gut rather than wire. I have tried fingerpicking my mandolin but it really didn’t work well. I have a mandola that has only 4 strings rather than 8 and that I can fingerpick just fine.
@Rev Bob, perhaps Atlanta has cons you can go to? Or there’s MarCon in Columbus every year. It would be an 8 or 9 hour drive for you so I’m not sure if that’s too far.
Tasha Turner: I can totally see an anthology of File770 filk selling on Amazon. Do an audible version along with it.
In that case, I’d like to have MRK read my sonnets, and would love it if Janis Ian would deign to sing my version of “Me and Hugo Squee”.
I’ve just been rereading “If You Were a Platypus”, and this is my favorite line, this time through:
I’ve gotta come out solidly for the lute, but not the lutefisk.
I’m sorry to have caused some of you to see more of Wright’s Wrants. But perhaps you’ll take my word for it next time about the gombeen (good word!). I think Anger is his number one, then Envy, and then Lust. The others are all, naturally, tied for 5.
I’d like to show his splenetic output to, say, the Bishop in charge of his diocese and see if a quiet word about “keep it down, you’re making the rest of us look bad” and “your penance for being such a gombeen idjit is about 20K Hail Marys and 50K Acts of Contrition” could be had. Being as the Church is kinder and gentler nowadays and we can’t get a nun to smack his hands with a ruler repeatedly for typing all this rot.
Here in 6367, we’ve found the archivists’ discussion from 4001, and we’re SURE it’s all an elaborate joke. ?? ? ? ? ?
(dammit. that was “comet/star/hammer and sickle/peace sign/yin-yang/moon”)
@Cat:
At present, I’ve got three cons on my schedule for next year. Two are in Dalton, GA (FantaSciCon, Hallowcon) and one is in Atlanta (TimeGate) – so I’m not hurting for cons to attend. March, May, and October are a decent spread, now that I’ve removed January and July* from the list. My wallet will also be pleased with the lower hotel bills, although that’d be a wash if I picked up another Atlanta convention. There is a very outside chance that I might try DragonCon again, but the heat, cost, and walkiness are convincing arguments against it. (I’ll have to make my mind up about that in the next couple of days, too. Otherwise, the hotel rooms will all be taken and the choice will be made for me.)
It also bears mention that the J&J events are difficult from a mobility and temperature standpoint. They take place at the same venue, which I can best describe as “sprawling,” whereas the other three are much more self-contained. Sure, I have to drive longer to get there, but once that’s done, getting around is so much easier. Granted, you’d think someone would’ve perfected those medical nanites well before my current year of 7306, but it appears not. I heard something about the Great Battle Of The Historians derailing technology for a few hundred years, though…
* LibertyCon is usually in June, which is even more awkward to attend so soon after TimeGate in May, but it’s in July next year as a one-time shift.
I’ve been reading/watching/enjoying science fiction my entire life. I was raised on reruns of the original Star Trek and taught to read anything I could get my hands on. I have never been to a Worldcon, although I’ve been to a few other kinds of cons, starting when I was in college. I have always enjoyed checking out what won the Hugo award, but usually a few years after… I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the current year.
Upon hearing about the slates this year, I became interested. It took me about a month and a half to get interested enough to become a supporting member at Sasquan. The only reason I voted in the Hugos was because of how incredibly obnoxious the slate-mongers were, and how they insulted people and works I care deeply about (Digger deserved the Hugo, dammit). Now I’m more involved than ever and committed to be involved until at least 2017.
Like, apparently, thousands of other fans… I didn’t realize just how much the Hugos meant to me until someone messed with them. If my voice can help to counter the toxic behavior of people who would rather talk about how much they hate other fans rather than talk about what they love, then I’m going to speak up.
Speaking of which, I finished Seveneves. My review will go up on my blog tomorrow morning, along with a handful of other reviews. I also am working on looking at all the comic books I’ve read so far this year and putting together a list of the ones I think are likely to interest other people. No surprise, Astro City by Kurt Busiek is already on the short list. If you like superheroes at all and haven’t read that comic book, you are really missing out. I’m also thinking Usagi Yojimbo: Senso, is on the list, since the final issue came out this year. Another good comic, and Senso is a bookend to the story that has a lot of punch if you are regular reader, and has a lot of ties to science fiction even if you aren’t.
Cat on September 5, 2015 at 7:39 pm said:
I almost never play chords. I play melodies, occasionally picking up an adjacent string for two-note harmonies. When I do play chords, I mostly omit either the top or bottom pair of strings.
Not being a lutenist, I wasn’t completely sure, but the first two lute performances that I picked off of YouTube have people playing with fingertips. The technique looks roughly like classical guitar technique.
My friend the gambist says that the lutenist in his band sometimes plays clawhammer lute. This is obviously not orthodox technique.
And I want to change my vote in the bracket. I’m withdrawing my vote for banjolin, and I’m now voting for the theorbo.
If we’re telling our stories, I’ll mention that I was also a life-long (well, since the age of 12) reader of SF/F but never a huge con-goer, never an amateur-press person. Over the last decade I’d read relatively little science fiction, and rather more heroic and urban fantasy – plus long streaks of comics reading broken by streaks of not reading comics that lasted nearly as long. But mostly, I realized about five years ago, I’d turned into a mediafan. This was kind of shocking, but I rolled with it.
The Puppies changed all that. Like others, I realized that I cared. And as I’ve belabored on numerous occasions, precisely because my reading history was old and involved reading a lot of books that were older yet, I looked at their potted history of the field and was repulsed by its falsity.
And good job, Puppies, you got me to read Ancillary Justice out of curiosity, and it got me excited about science fiction-qua-science fiction again in a way I hadn’t been for 20 years. Ann Leckie even approved my version of the book’s “social-justice message,” which tickled me greatly.
Now I’m reading a bunch of science fiction again, and having a great time with it.
The kicker: I didn’t actually join Sasquan as a supporting member! I didn’t actually vote against the Puppy nominees. I am in the reserve army of the integrity of the Hugo Awards, fvckers, so if you think the anti-slate side is “maxed out,” I’m here to tell you you’re fooling yourselves.
omg RedWombat, there is water spit all over my front and it is *your fault*. I implicate this particular exchange:
Beagle-Pox: I’m 1/32th Latverian, on my cousin’s side. How interesting am I? Your simple minds can’t handle all this interestingness!
FFA: Look, just back the truck of popcorn up to the house, okay?
Wrong: adjectives verb verb gerund Jesus!
but seriously, the whole thing.
Also, it’s the year 8729. I’m pretty sure English is a language known only to specialists. If we’re *really lucky*, they’ll be genus Homo. Otherwise, I salute my Blattodean overlords.
Fred Clark on Slacktivist covers this frequently, in the context of evangelical Christian conspiracy theorists. Given how he’s obviously a fan – he’s dropped in references to Buffy and used Granny Weatherwax “people as things” speech as an example of how morality ought to work – I’m considering nominating him for Fan Writer.
And now I need to go catch the TARDIS, because it’s Sept 6 0019 and I don’t want to get stuck here.
I have a new theory, JCW is a secret wallfacer and these angry, completely unself-aware rants are All Part of The Plan.
Adjective Verb Verb Gerund Jesus? You can find him in the action figure aisle at Toys R Us, right next to Bishounen Jesus, Surrealistic Giraffe Washer Jesus, and Steampunk Jesus, right?
@Rev Bob
Interesting! I didn’t know about FantaSciCon, HallowCon and TimeGate; I should check those out. I’m about four-five hours drive north from Atlanta, so those would all be in my range. October is probably out because I’m going to OVFF, but March would be do-able, finances and energy permitting…
This is only the second time in my life, and both times this week, I’ve heard of the bouzouki. It was mentioned and played an interesting part in the latest book I read by Tanya Huff The Future Falls . I’m sure my comments on the book can be found by someone whose browser doesn’t refresh every time they change tabs. It’s also posted on Goodreads.
I’m about halfway through Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I can see why others love it but it’s hitting too many of my “I hate this trope” buttons for me”. Older male treacher condescending to young female student. Teacher refuses to explain things which ends up causing constant problems using “just repeat after me”. The Prince attempting rape with excuse “I thought she was a servant”. The writing and prose and workdbuilding are solid. Some of the characters are well fleshed out. But I keep putting the book down to read here, play mindless games, chat with my husband. Will continue and hopefully it picks up.
There’s a fantastic cover of U2’s “Please” by Elvis Costello and Donal Lunny on YouTube where Lunny plays bouzouki. We saw it live actually, and it was my first bouzouki experience.
Re: lutefisk. I probably had it about 25 times in my life, once a year from early youth until age 29. That year, the future Mister Doctor Science came to my parents’ house for Christmas, and I knew better than to offer him the traditional Swedish-American Christmas Eve dish. So I made 3-alarm chili for him, which admirably covered the smell of the lutefisk other people were eating.
Recently, I was asked what lutefisk tastes like, and I couldn’t say: for me it’s so strongly associated with like “Christmas Eve at Grandma’s house” that I can’t separate out the actual *taste*. I mean, I never actually *liked* it or anything, but it’s so traditional that I can’t say I don’t like, either.
I’ve been a reader of SF since I could read — from THE SNEETCHES to the Oz books to THE BORROWERS and on.
By the time I was con-going I was heavily into comics, but I’ve attended a few SF cons here and there over the years.
The Puppies had nothing to do with me going to Sasquan — I’ve just been reading more prose than usual these days (and to be fair, “usual” is a lot to begin with), and a fair amount of it has been SF or fantasy. So when I found out Worldcon was in my home state, I figured why not?
Voting in the Hugos was a side benefit. But I liked both the con and the Hugoing to the point that I’m seriously considering Kansas City next year. I’m already a supporting member of Helsinki, and I’d love to attend — an August trip to Finland for me and my wife sounds like it’d be a real treat.