"Stan, the pig, and sexism."

Am I right? Am I?

"Saskatchewan, the Sputnik, and spotted owl."

(Just as he did, I know they are not the right answers.)

I think this is something the board admins will eventually deal with, but I'd appreciate any help from any writers or editors here regarding this exchange.

[Poster #1]: "I don't agree with you. You're an annoying person. Buy a new thesauraus."
[Annoying person]: "Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule."
[Poster #2]: "Is there a verb missing? (such as, "you are compelled to spew banal ridicule"). If not, how do you banal ridicule?"
[Annoying person]: "Ridicule(noun)is the direct object of the transitive verb compelled(past tense). Banal is an adjective, describing ridicule. No additional verb is required. Comprende?"
[Poster #3]: "Split infiintive! Split infinitive!"

What annoying person has written just sounds wrong to me. She's made obvious errors before. And have I mentioned that she's annoying? My first impression was that she's missing a verb, but could this kind of highly contracted sentence structure be legit? Or is "You are compelled to banal ridicule" just a great blog name that someone should grab as quickly as possible?

That, certainly.

But at the risk of jumping in ahead of those far more qualified, I believe the infinitive "to ridicule" is indeed the object of "compelled," and a more correct wording would be "you are compelled to ridicule me in your usual banal fashion" to fit the annoying person's apparent style.

But is "You are compelled toward [adjective][noun]" grammatically correct?

I had this rueful thought while nearly buying a diadem at a summer festival recently; there is sufficient nerdiness in a diadem that it had better be perfectly designed and made, or no degree of sprezzatura in the wearer will carry it off. And while these diadems were good enough for earrings, if you follow me, they weren't good enough for headdresses.

Anyway, back to the annoying sentence: "you are reduced to petty taunts" would be idiomatic, yes? because slightly cliché we understand 'reduced' as 'forced' or 'compelled', and 'taunts' is as much a noun as 'ridicule', and slapping the adjective on it is fine.

---L.

Widget, the Wadget, and Boff.

I am too skiffy for my shirt.

Annoying person is overly stylistic, but not seriously grammatically errant, as others have elucidated. No infinitives have been fractured.

(I hate me.)

How about:

Philip A. Cooney, the White House, and decades of climate research right down the toilet? Whoosh!

I flubbed when I wrote "toward." I had a handful of chocolate after months of none, and the sugar rush...well, I'm just coming down. Anyway, I meant "to" was probably being used as a preposition instead of a prepositional part of an infinitive.

Now: how many of you already knew that? Anybody?

mom, the wolf man, and me

The Rules of Moopsball. With illustrations! After clutching this article to my bosom for (er) 15 years, I finally got hold of the author's email address, asked him for permission to put it online, and he said yes. (Thanks!)

If you were reading Damon Knight anthologies in the 70s, you may remember this. Or if you were reading "Legion of Super-Heroes" in the 80s. I was neither, but I found a copy of _Orbit 18_ in my high school library.

Also, I know CSS2 now.

If I could find the person with the rights to _The Glass Harmonica_, and get *that* online, my past geek lightcone would be nearly complete. The only thing better would be the discovery of an untouched trove of _Vision On_ videotapes.

Or 20, by your feeble Earth mathematics. Er.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/downloads.shtml

I know it's too late, but if I don't write it here it'll just gnaw its way out of my skull.

Fran, your unpleasant acquaintance's grammar is unquestionably in error. Regard the sentence:

Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule.

Also, the person who was objecting to the split infinitive has committed the error of forgetting which language he or she is speaking. The badness of split infinitives is a non-rule erroneously imported into English by misguided Latinists. Infinitives may not be split in Latin because they're single words, but the language Latin that same thing as English not is. If said person argues with you, tell 'em it's actually a phrasal infix.

"Lying, the Switch, and a Bored Rube: The Daily Life of Con Men"

I don't see a problem.

Thus, you are compelled to ban all ridicule.

It doesn't quite fit with the blanks though. Too many articles. And I had quite overlooked the 42. :)

It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the fill in the blank, and then I noticed the page header...if only my cursed employers didn't insist that I spend some time actually working, I probably would have been by sooner...

Teresa: Excellent advice (of course). Not only does this describe the grammar, but the phrase will also cause most people to stop in momentary confusion, thus allowing a quick getaway from a tedious argument.

Fran: If all else fails, simply refer the twit to this thread.

What was the question anyway ?

"[You are] commanded to court to kneel before the King." = "You are commanded to [noun defining a location] to [verb]."

"Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule" = "You are compelled to [adjective] [noun]."

Thanks for the link to the insult generators, but those seem much more well crafted than AP's attempts.

Beth, I think you were mostly joking with your tempting suggestion to point AP to this thread, but I would want to wait for an explicit invitation from our hosts.

Phrasal infix? I like it!

I think Jack is correct, the answer is Life, the Universe and Everything, since this is open thread 42.

reduced to fruitcake
compelled to fruitcake

and also

compelled to yield
reduced to yield

"Reduced to" wants a noun object. "Compelled to" wants a verb object. I'm sure there's a technical term for this, but it's plain to the ear.

Actually, I think this might explain it:

reduced to | fruitcake (verb + auxiliary, noun)
compelled | to yield (verb, infinitive)

I never did learn to apply precise rules of grammar; just as well, since I don't think we *have* precise rules of grammar that actually describe English. But it's like "being reduced to water" or some such; there's an implicit verb.

Also published as The Book of Weird. I do remember that book, see: http://www.wsfa.org/journal/j74/c/index.htm#bw

The 1994 reprint is listed at Baker & Taylor as "PERMANENTLY OUT OF STOCK" *sigh*

Thus you are compelled [by your lack of wit to utter] banal ridicule.

And it's that double damned passive construction which should be avoided at all costs if you really want to be clear to your listeners. (Yes, I meant to do that)

MKK

a hip, a hop... no,wait.... that doesnt fit in here.

how about summer, the heat and mosquitoes?

Teresa, for the real nerds a giveaway is any use of #42.

What was the question anyway ?
as far as i can determine, it is "how many roads must a man walk down?"

SLATFATF, ladies and gentlemen

Jonathan Moeller: The question, as I recall from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" Which I don't think can actually be spelled out with the standard English Scrabble set -- too many y's.

What was the question anyway ?
Dude, it was the answer.

Fran: "[You are] commanded to court to kneel before the King." = "You are commanded to [noun defining a location] to [verb]."

Okay, that example was more ambiguous than I'd intended. I threw in the last clause for decoration, and to weight down the sense of the whole thing. It could equally have been "I am commanded to court", or "I am commanded to court, where I shall kneel before the king."

See also: "remanded", "tempted", and other words with consonants in them. Actually "tempted" is a good example. The usual use is "tempted to ", but if you say "tempted to lechery" -- or Cleveland -- it's the same stylistic angle.

(This cursor is normal.)

On my academic soap opera, good news. The Academic Vice President has finally succeeded, as of today, in demanding that the bizarre Dean step down, and remain as a mere Assistant Professor of Psychology on a 3-year contract. Now there is no power behind the illiterate and unpublishable Chairman, who deposed me without cause from my Adjunct Professorship. It should now be less of a Hostile Workplace for my wife, and a place where I might reasonably be rehired.

I've heard these described as 'causative verbs'.

I haven't played an actual game of Moopsball but I have attended many the Estrella War (SCA event). The rules some years were quite similar.

Also: The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.

(does anyone even have a clue as to what was going on in the last couple of Ringworld books?)

(It's better when Garrison Keillor sings it to the tune of "Tell Me Why," but that's something else again.)

Oh, the holly, and the ivy?

I am mortified; I consider myself a serious Hitchhiker's fan and didn't spot that. (My first thought was the Sturgeon cited by cmk, but I remembered it needs a leading "The".) Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore
might be my favorite unposted "almost".

Andrew: you might also want to mention in your endnotes that moopsball (in an indoor version) also appears in Gene Wolfe's There Are Doors. This is not surprising as Wolfe was a frequent contributor to Orbit, but I was rather struck to realize that the book gives Wolfe and the late Jim Morrison a point in common.

Jules: the form may be archaic, but it's still known:
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commmander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
Through the wilderness I wander.
With a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end;
Methinks it is no journey
-- Tom o'Bedlam's song.

(referenced in SF by Bester, Brunner, and Anderson that I can think of offhand; any others?)

It does? I've *read* that. I must have noticed, squeaked, and then forgotten.

Thanks. Will update.

I've tried using the site search and Google search, but the problem is that "law" and "mistake" and "error" are not specific enough for search strings.

Can someone help me out? I need to refer to this principle for something I'm working on.</humility>

HP, the comment you're looking for is here. As I said: "It is an iron law of online discourse that any post correcting someone else's spelling, grammar, or usage will itself contain an error of spelling, grammar, or usage."

Source: University of Liverpool
Date: 2005-06-08

New research into the Ancient Greeks shows their knowledge of travel inspired early forms of fantasy and science fiction writing.

There is a long tradition of fantasy in Greek literature that begins with Odysseus' fantastic travels in Homer's Odyssey. Dr Karen Ni-Mheallaigh, at the University of Liverpool's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, is exploring fantasy in ancient literature, examining theories of modern science fiction writing and how these can be applied to texts from the ancient world.... Dr Ni-Mheallaigh's findings will be published in 2006.

This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Liverpool.

Bedad. I've Googled that, not that I don't believe you, but because the reason it stuck in my memory and the reason it was the first thing that came to mind was precisely the, ah, articular asymmetry.

My memory clearly is not what it was.

TK

Not to be picky, but--the record shows, me by two minutes.

M de Villepin has set himself 100 days to restore French self-confidence, to infuse France with a sense of its poetic destiny: “We need a heart that beats for everyone.” For this poet, practical considerations are secondary. As he wrote in his recent 823-page treatise on French poetry: “What does it matter where this path leads, nowhere or elsewhere, if the furrow continues flowering, if the flash of lightning still inflames the night . . . If the poet still consumes himself, he refuses the enclosures of thought, certainties, to camp in the heart of the mystery, in the living spirit of the flame....”

Oops. At least I didn't say six times seven. Poor Douglas Adams would've spun in his grave fast enough to generate an Improbability Field (of course, the very fact he's spinning in his grave due to an incorrect math problem is itself improbably the result of an Improbability Field).

Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg

And yet I can say from memory "The Lemon-Freshened, Active-Enzyme, Junior High School Witch" three times fast without batting an eye. Except I probably got my descriptors out of order. Sorry, Hildick...

Fran, your unpleasant acquaintance's grammar is unquestionably in error. Regard the sentence:

Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule.

Actually, as I read it, it may be awkward (or, if you refer, poetic), but it is not grammatically incorrect. I read it not as "compelled to [dance the limbo, bite your fingernails, whatever]" but as "compelled to[ward]. M-W online gives one definition of "compel" as "to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly," so one with a small vocabulary could, indeed, be compelled to banality.

I'm having serious doubts about Mr De Villepin's poetry, though.

Let's see if we can both invent calculus.

"... Rimbaud meets Rambo link, made me laugh out loud. Reminded me that in Heian Japan, being a good poet was a pre-requisite of a good statesman...."

Similarly writing and interpreting poetry was part of the Mandarin Chinese exams for Civil Service, with those getting the very best scores almost automatically assigned to the court of the Emperor. The greatest court poet, Su Tung-Po was the head of the hydraulic engineering, canals and the like, and exiled to a remote island when an unfriendly Emperor was in power.

I also think that those unable to appreciate poetry, let alone write poetry, do not have the nuanced linguistic ability to play as adults on the world stage. Public information allows easy classification: which U.S. Presidents and presidential candidates wrote and published poetry; which were unable to handle prose adequately?

Tom Whitmore & cmk:

"Let's see if we can both invent calculus."

The first post has come, and they're passing Archimedes from the gate in approximating π from polygons approaching circles. Now Tom has the derivatives of polynomials, and cmk says that's not fair, as Tom has better access to used and new books. cmk has a breakthrough with antiderivatives, and found a haiku concealed in an equation of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Tom develops the improper integral, and Federal officers seize it... In jail, Tom finds clues in 16 Dec 1998 LIEBNITZ DESCENDANTS CHART as a fold-out of his signed limited edition of Neal Stephenson's "The System of the World" that lead him to crack the da Vinci Code. cmk meets in a Washington DC garage with "Deep Differential" -- a lineal descendant of Sir Isaac Newton, who says: "Follow the counterfeit money in the Tower of London." Tom Whitmore cracks the Differential Equations of "The Courts of Chaos" and sets off a 50-state manhunt when he mysteriously disappears from the high security jailcell. cmk discovers that Japan did not wimp out in discovering Calculus before Europe, then retreating, as popularly believed, via Geometric Calculus in Fukui - Portal... "for geometry, you know, is the gate of science, and the gate is so low and small that one can only enter it as a little child." [Attributed to William K. Clifford (1845-1879)]. Tom Whitmore emerges briefly with a press release with The Man in the High Castle. cmk reveals that Kobo Abe is still alive, and has been writing Philip K. Dick screenplays in Hollywood, but is thrown into the Bobby Fischer Jail Cell for revealing that the covert Calculus Service has built a manned Japanese Moon Base. Then things start to get strange...

I wrote a poem (or "inherently shapeless bit of text separated into lines") yesterday that I think might be pretty meaningful. I would welcome criticism -- here is a link: Facets

Sturgeon's legacy is there.

You mean "a better shot than they" (or she, or he, but the point is that "better than" requires a subject pronoun).

I anxiously await the discovery of the error in this post.

Pistols? Tsk. Swords! More visceral.

Also, I didn't see it, but one might point out that if we're descending into the grammar critique of the argument, one might point out that while ridicule can be a verb, banal is deep in adjective territory.

He made a banal argument.
He argued banally.

Robert Silverberg wrote a novel called Tom O'Bedlam, which included what seems to be to be the full lyrics of Tom O'Bedlam

(As opposed to Bedlam Boys, which follows the same melody but seems to have a complete discrete set of lyrics as some musicians play it - and to be a mish-mash of itself and the Tom O'Bedlam lyrics per others. Not a criticism, just folk process, though it does seem a pity none of the recordings I have seem to be the actual Tom O'Bedlam).

Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! [dies]

Cool spheres (NOTE!) though.

Another thread, and a link here, mention that horrible cult of teenage anorexics. SFGate columnist Mark Morford had a column about it yesterday: linked text

You can find a version of "Tom O' Bedlam" (set to a melody by Antonia Duren) on the Stampfel & Weber album Going Nowhere Fast. Stampfel & Weber are also known as the Holy Modal Rounders; in addition to their own albums, you can hear Stampfel's idiosyncratic vocal style on "Fingertips" by They Might Be Giants (he's the guy singing the title) and "New Amphetamine Shriek" by the Fugs.

I don't think Going Nowhere Fast ever made it to CD, alas.

I've been following your conversations with great enjoyment and enlightenment for nearly two years, but have hitherto been too shy to introduce myself, until now. Rather in the spirit of "Mr Underhill" at Bree (except that I really am writing what I say I am!), and hopefully with the blessing of our kind hosts, I'd like to pick your estimable brains.

For my library degree at UCL (London) I have to write an MA dissertation, and for my research topic I've chosen to look at libraries in SF (loosely defined). The jury is out on whether this was inspired, or incredibly foolish - probably the latter, as I am not very well read in SF, but it seemed to me that there must be something in it. I am open-minded as to what constitutes a library for the purposes of the dissertation - scenarios where libraries as we know them have (God forbid) been entirely replaced by computer networks would also be useful, provided there is more to be said than "no library here either"! I am mostly interested in discussing the texts as literature - the library (or lack of it) as symbolic of attitudes to knowledge/culture/the written heritage - than in assessing how realistically the future of libraries has been anticipated.

I have a rag-bag list of titles I am aware of (ranging from Asimov to Jasper Fforde and Pratchett via Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but inevitably it is biased towards the books I've read since I began to think of myself as a future librarian, as I wasn't paying attention before.

Given that the regulars here clearly have vast and retentive memories (and libraries), I would be very very grateful for any reading suggestions of primary or secondary texts. Hence the nervous wait for an Open thread in which to delurk...

<holds breath and waits to see if this was a good idea or a dire social solecism>

You might want to go with a strict definition. Loosely defined, this is way too big a topic.

I haven't read the Discworld series (yes, bad me) but the Unseen University and its library have been prominently mentioned... someone more familiar with the series want to recommend which novel is best for this?

Ugh. Brain browned out... will come back to this later.

You, me, and half the readership. What astonished me (when I brought the immense power of the Internet to bear on bringing the words to the top of my cranial eight-ball) was the overwhelming tendency to omit the brackets from The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff. Was it republished without the flourishes, or do people simply omit them?

I second tnh's appreciation of Tim's entry. John M Ford's is a valiant attempt, but I've never known Bertie to care about the age of his brandy, as long as it was not too diluted with soda. I also suspect that the first comma needs to be an exclamation point.

The true, the blushful answer embarrasses those of us who could have counted underscores, who could have noticed a remarkable number, and who didn't. All die.

See Foundation's Friends for Orson Scott Card's "The Originist", largely set in a research library and in which research is an integral part of the plot. (I am not the fan of Ender's Game that so many people are--maybe I shouldn't've read Ender's Shadow first--but he may have written the best Foundation story ever there.)

In my game of humiliation, I'll admit I've never read Dune, or any other Frank Herbert.

Did anyone catch Michael Cunningham on The Diane Rehm show yesterday? Specimen Days sounds like a good book, but should I be happy that he sounds respectful (in a good way) of SF genre traditions? Or should I be mad that he said of the phrase 'speculative fiction' "Thank goodness for Margaret Atwood"? Or both?

Roland, the headless, Thompson gunner.

Pellegrina, here's my short, messy, and very much incomplete list of libraries and librarians in fantasy and SF. Some are mere asides (but show how the concept of libraries evolves or more usually, does not evolve, in SF), and in some the library or librarian is central:

Librarians in Fantasy & SF

Smith, E.E. Doc. Lensman series
Pratchett, Terry. Discworld series
Wolfe, Gene. Shadow of the Torturer
Star Trek: All My Yesterdays; Lights of Zetar. Star Trek book Memory Prime
Eco, Umerto. Name of the Rose
Springer, Nancy. Fair Peril
Robinson, Spider. Callahan's Bar
Bes shahar, eluki. The New Britomart in Chicks in Chainmail.
Another short story in Did You Say Chicks?
Heinlein, RA. Have Spacesuit will travel.
Rowling. Harry Potter books.

Article in American Libraries May 2000, p.42 (a whole long list -- very good place to start your project)

A search for Gordon R Dickson's ultimate library (The Final Encyclopedia) led me to John Gunn's article on Libraries in SF. I can imagine you might rather avoid it for fear of being drawn into a plagiarism trap, but when there is prior art on the subject, your work must compare and contrast itself. Consider yourself compelled there.

You have my sympathy for any difficulties this information may cause you.

By the way, there was an article or story, somewhere in the narratonoetic region that stretches from popular maths to science fiction, about the dire results of the exponential growth in scientific libraries. I somewhat expect an authoritative ID from someone on Making Light within 90 minutes of this comment, unless my presumption puts them off.

Janet Croft:

You nailed it. I cannot resist correcting some of the typos (the b in Umberto ...):

Librarians in Fantasy & SF

Smith, E.E. "Doc". Lensman series
Pratchett, Terry. Discworld series
Wolfe, Gene. Shadow of the Torturer
Star Trek: All My Yesterdays; Lights of Zetar. Star Trek book Memory Prime
Eco, Umberto. Name of the Rose
Springer, Nancy. Fair Peril
Robinson, Spider. Callahan's Bar
Bes shahar, eluki. The New Britomart in Chicks in Chainmail.
Another short story in Did You Say Chicks?
Heinlein, R.A. Have Spacesuit Will Travel.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter books.

I can't recall the story that predicted the modern use of the word "web" for the electronicized library, and dealt with successive miniaturizations to storage on individual molecules, then atoms, then quanta, then "notched" quanta... Eventually the entire moon (?) is the index, but the orginal complete contents have been lost.

"The Enchanted Duplicator" is a sort of anti-library story.

"Memex" by Vannevar Bush was a theoretical predecessor to electronically readable libraries, albeit he envisioned something extrapolated from microfilm technology. Ted Nelson cites that concept as an ancestor of Nelson's invention of Hypertext, itself cited as an ancestor of the Web.

I regret that my keynote address at the Hawaii Library Association had the recording botched to total loss.

...do they still have that place when you can buy a used clue for a quarter?

Do the Math: Brits Concoct Sitcom Formula

Pilcher and her team analyzed two decades' worth of British comedies and came up with a formula that looks like this: [((R x D + V) x F) + S]/A. Pilcher explains to the paper:
"Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognizability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V), and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).

"The difference in social status between the highest- and lowest-ranking characters (S) is added, and finally the total is divided by the success of any scheme or stratagem in the show (A). Each term in the formula is assigned a value up to a maximum of 10 to give an overall scientific score."

When, if ever, is it appropriate to use italics for emphasis in text?

Ex: The last time Alice ate chilled monkey brains, the prince had been pleased but it had turned her stomach. She was definitely not interested in doing that again.

I've read half a dozen different rules in different places and thought I'd ask for a few dozen more opinions, just to make sure I'm thoroughly confused.

or

A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave

The first is definitely SF; the others tend more toward fantasy.

link

Probably a more compelling later story: "Picnic on Paradise" by Joanna Russ. This describes a "Planetary Library" that contains indexed psychic holograph rods instead of books. (I think this predates the 3-D "talking book" library that eventually showed up on Star Trek.)

"... an article or story, somewhere in the narratonoetic region that stretches from popular maths to science fiction, about the dire results of the exponential growth in scientific libraries."

was Kurd Lasswitz's story "The Universal Library", which appeared in Fantasia Mathematica, edited by Clifton Fadiman. This long-out-of-print gem was reissued a few years ago, along with its companion volume, The Mathematical Magpie.

I'm as astonished as S. Dawson that it took that long for Norrell's collection to appear.

"... They are known to the World under several Names: As, Disputes, Arguments, Rejoynders, Brief Considerations, Answers, Replies, Remarks, Reflections, Objections, Confutations. For a very few Days they are fixed up all in Publick Places, either by themselves or their *Representatives, for Passengers to gaze at: From whence the chiefest and largest are removed to certain Magazines, they call Libraries, there to remain in a Quarter purposely assign'd them, and thenceforth begin to be called, Books of Controversie."

"In these Books, is wonderfully instilled and preserved, the Spirit of each Warrier, while he is alive; and after his Death, his Soul transmigrates there, to inform them. This, at least, is the more common Opinion; But, I believe, it is with Libraries, as with other Cemeteries, where some Philosophers affirm, that a certain Spirit, which they call Brutum hominis, hovers over the Monument, till the Body is corrupted, and turns to Dust or to Worms, but then vanishes or dissolves: So, we may say, a restless Spirit haunts over every Book, till Dust or Worms have seized upon it; which to some, may happen in a few Days, but to others, later; And therefore, Books of Controversy, being of all others, haunted by the most disorderly Spirits, have always been confined in a separate Lodge from the rest; and for fear of a mutual violence against each other, it was thought Prudent by our Ancestors, to bind them to the Peace with strong Iron Chains. Of which Invention, the original Occasion was this: When the Works of Scotus first came out, they were carried to a certain great Library, and had Lodgings appointed them; But this Author was no sooner settled, than he went to visit his Master Aristotle, and there both concerted together to seize Plato by main Force, and turn him out from his antient Station among the Divines, where he had peaceably dwelt near Eight Hundred Years. The Attempt succeeded, and the two Usurpers have reigned ever since in his stead: But to maintain Quiet for the future, it was decreed, that all Polemicks of the larger Size, should be held fast with a Chain."

"By this Expedient, the publick Peace of Libraries, might certainly have been preserved, if a new Species of controversial Books had not arose of late Years, instinct with a most malignant Spirit, from the War above-mentioned, between the Learned, about the higher Summity of Parnassus."

"When these Books were first admitted into the Publick Libraries, I remember to have said upon Occasion, to several Persons concerned, how I was sure, they would create Broyls wherever they came, unless a World of Care were taken..."

(note to powers that be: something about one or more ads on this page was breaking display for me until I adblocked *.blogads. It was specific to this post; I could read the next one problem free. I assume it's not affecting everyone, though, so I don't know what the magic ingredient is.)

I am *so* naming a character "Thomas O'Frastis" in some future work. No matter how much I have to pound my universe around it to fit.

Also McKillip's _Alphabet of Thorn_, though that's fantasy. I can't remember if the library is mentioned in Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, but it's the sort of thing he liked.

...would googleprint/Search Inside and good metadata make this question easier to answer, or impossible to sift through? There's a meta-question...

Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship/A Spaceship for the King is book and library technology driven.

yes, that was a grenade lobbing haiku....

Pull the pin and throw
far from the edge of the swamp
Lest you disturb frogs

Blam! rain of shrapnel.

The Sword of Maiden's Tears, The Cloak of Night and Daggers, et sequelae (by Rosemary Edgehill) have conventional Earth libraries as important settings, in part because most of the major human characters are librarians. Usually filed as Fantasy.

the overwhelming tendency to omit the brackets from The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff. Was it republished without the flourishes, or do people simply omit them

OK...as far as I know, this story has always been published with the names in brackets as above. As for the text...

When this story first appeared as a 2-part serial in F&SF, there were many words throughout the story that were in brackets. The bracketed words represent words in an alien langauge that cannot be adequately translated, but are approximated by the bracketed term. This was obviously Sturgeon's intention. When the story was reprinted in Sturgeon's collection Beyond (Avon), however, all the brackets were replaced with parentheses. (It actually gets even more complicated, since there are parentheses that represent brackets within brackets, but I'll spare everyone...) When Tor reprinted the novella in its Tor Doubles series, we (that's the editorial "we"; I worked there then) used the Avon text as the setting copy, but (after consulting with PNH and TNH) I had Avon's parentheses returned to brackets with the F&SF text as reference for the typography only. There's more geeky detail, but that's the gist of it...

Protector, Larry Niven. Earth is a colony that's been lost for 2.5 million years, and a Protector figures out its location from the library.

The Counterfeit Heinlein, Laurence M. Janifer. (Background: Robert Heinlein referred to "a story I will probably never write.") Hundreds of years from now, a copy of the "lost" novel appears, is displayed in a library, and is stolen. Our Hero must solve the mystery. (Bonus points for this one: it's a novel about a novel stored in a library.)

"The Last Question," a story by Asimov. This is on the outer fringe of your topic--it's closer to "the sum of all knowledge" than to "collected texts"--but it's worth reading.

Borges. I wish I could remember the title of this, but one sentence went "God is in one of the letters in one of the books in the eight thousand books in the library at Alexandria."

Happy reading.

hm. for those of you who don't know,
the spoon/handle on a grenade has a fairly
strong spring underneath it, and when you
give it a toss, the spring pushes it off
pretty fast and furious, so then you've
got this very unareodynamice thing
(handle/spoon) flying through the air,
and it makes a sound that is surprisingly
like a turkey call. I just couldn't figure
out how to explain that in 17 syllables.

It's just that without that little bit
of explanation, it just sounds weird.

Oh, it sounds like a turkey call,
and then the turkey goes BOOM!

I must say I think I've discovered a new literary style here. there seems to be an endless supply of grenade haikus to be written...

You're not the only one; as I look through the comments I'm struck by the number of entries assuming a little "the" that isn't there.

Andrew/PNH: indoor moopsball is played in the first asylum section, at the beginning of chapter 9 of TAD. I remembered because both of the editions I've seen credit it, on a separate leading page as if it were a dedication. (I can't believe I went down and dug that out; I should have crashed long ago. If you see an item tomorrow about somebody scaling the Needham antenna farm and screaming nonsense from the tops, that will be me.)

Or, in the lost Happy Days episode by Sturgeon,

[Wichie], the [Fonz], and [Balf].

Ron Howard - Richie Cunningham
Donny Most - Ralph Malph
Henry Winkler - Arthur Herbert "Fonzie" Fonzarelli

Apparently, Sturgeon had creative differences with Ron Howard as to whether or not Apollo 11 would make it as a Science Fiction film, since it was, after all, factual.

So says the Guardian in How to make a book, which follows a comic novel entitled The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists from writing to arriving on bookshop shelves.

Wasn't it in Orson Scott Card's Wyrm that someone used a library as her brain ?

Periodic Haiku

I also quite liked the idea of the magic mirror in Del Rey's Day of the Giants, which the hero used to read library books and scientific papers over the shoulders of the patrons while he was trapped in Asgard.

Jeremy

"Dare to disappoint your father. Rock on!"

Then the Glee Club sang the Hallalujah Chorus, but with spoof science lyrics, speaking of Science Songs.

Comics Continuum has a first look at Serenity #1 comic from Joss Whedon and Dark Horse. It's at the bottom of the page. They have five pages.

</delurk>

Grads get the Loh down
Alumna, radio personality says 'dare to disappoint your father.'

The really hard thing is trying to make it a haiku instead of just counting syllables. All I know is I tried.

I understand that 13 isn't a hard and fast requirement, either. Some are shorter.

http://www.brentrasmussen.com/archives/2005/06/friday_cat_blog.html

Michael Flanders & Donald Swann, on the basking habits of the hippopotamus:

Mud, mud, glorious mud!

Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!

So follow me, follow—down to the hollow

And there let us wallow

In glorious mud!

I believe a proper haiku is also supposed to mention a season or time of day as well. I remember one that ended "Happy hour at Splash" that I thought was delightful...a purist might not agree that "happy hour" is a time of day, but all New Yorkers know it is!

From: "Reviving the Love of Poetry" by Jerry Griswold, L.A. Times, 11 June 2005, p.E6, review of "Break, Blow, Burn" edited by Camille Paglia, Pantheon, 2005. Hammers her mis-reading of Gary Snyder's "Old Pond," in which Ms. Paglia chatters about Kafka and Byron in wrestling with "What are we to make of the title of Gary Snyder's 'Old Pond?'" without recognizing the obvious reference (Snyder studied Zen) Basho's verse, probably the most famous of all Japanese poems.

Congratulations Caltech, class of 2005! Welcome
friends and family and no, you didn't hear wrong... I am indeed your commencement speaker.

Yes, we are at Caltech, the top science school in the country -- No matter what MIT may pathetically try to claim-- Speaking of which, I thought we were promised a prank by MIT. A commencement prank. What's the matter... Too scared, Girlymen? I'm sorry-- What with our Governor, "Girlymen" is what we say in
California-- It's a kind of Austrio-Hollywood term of endearment-a love tap, if you will....

Well [Feynman] sees we're in a glaze, and so, to perk things up, in describing electromagnetic induction, where a magnetic coil pulls a needle in, out, in, out. . . He suddenly stops, in amazement, and erupts comedically, in his thick Bronx [No Sandra, BROOKLYN!] accent: "Look at that! It's little like?.

And then--to our shock--he utters a non-FCC approved word for which, on public radio last year, I got fired-

So I won't say it again but you may figure it out if you consider that Feynman's own commencement speech right here. . . in '74 began with Feynman's famous riff on pseudoscience which features. . . a naked woman getting a massage at Esalen. And he doesn't mean Madame Curie.

So under the bas-relief of Feynman as God, I suggest. . . Maybe a little electromagnetic coil. . . Flanked by a bottle of champagne, two wine glasses and. . . maybe some bongos....

Then, and that's the trickiest part of it, a good haiku has to be a completely non-symbolic item. To a well crafted haiku, any attempt at commentary will end up turning into paraphrase.

The one I made earlier in the thread is bad in that regard. Trying too hard to be clever. And poorly, at that.

Anyway, I've kept thinking about this: the commentary section of a blog might be a good place to practice haikai/renga, à la Bashô.

Mickey Spillane [1918-] pseudonym of Frank Morrison Spillane, "American thriller writer, master of 'hard boiled' style peppered with sex and sadism. Spillane is best-known for his private detective Mike Hammer, who appeared in his first published book I, THE JURY (1947). The hardback edition did not sell well, but the paperback became a world-wide phenomenon. In the character of Hammer, the most chauvinist avenger among classical private eyes, Spillane created a dark counterpart to the knightly Philip Marlowe...."

"The biggest part of the joke is the punch line, so the biggest part of a book should be the punch line, the ending. People don't read a book to get to the middle, they read a book to get to the end and hope that the ending justifies all the time they spent reading it. So what I do is, I get my ending and, knowing what my ending is going to be, then I write to the end and have the fun of knowing where I'm going but not how I'm going to get there." (Spillane in Speaking of Murder, ed. by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, 1998)

"Mickey Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of a bartender. In his youth he read such writers as Alexandre Dumas and Anthony Hope, and was also fascinated by comic books. He attended briefly Fort Hays State College in Kansas, but dropped out, moved back to New York, and began his writing career in the mid-1930s. Spillane's first stories were published mostly in comic books and pulp magazines. He developed Mike Danger, a private detective, and wrote among others for Captain America, Captain Marvel, and The Human Torch. During WW II Spillane worked as a flying instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force [sic]...."

"I, the Jury was written in only nine days, but it became such success that Spillane quickly produced six more Hammer novels, five of them published between 1950 and 1952. THE LONG WAIT (1951) sold 3 million copies in a single week in 1952. 'Crime novels are a good way to make money,' Spillane once stated. The sixth, THE TWISTED THING, did not appear until 1966."

excerpts from Mickey Spillane

Again, avoiding a spolier, the final chapter of The Twisted Thing proves that the entire plot could not imaginably be possible without a very specific, and rather horrifying, fictional technology and its direct effect on one person, and indirectly on a whole community. That this is Science Fiction does NOT depend on the "mad professor" type character at the start, or the Frankenstein paradigm, but on that final chaper, and how it forces one to re-revaluate the novel retroactively. I think it would make a great movie, but only if directed by someone who knows BOTH genres.

Anyone else familiar with the book in question, who wants to opine in support or opposition to my thesis?

First, empty your cache, for IE6 is lame and stupid, and will insist on loading old un-updated CSS stylesheets until you stick a firecracker up its ass.

The Steel, The Mist, and the Blazing Sun

- - - - -

Libraries in sf: In one of Dean Koontz's very early sf novels (one of the ones he won't allow to be reprinted), STAR QUEST perhaps, one of the characters is a disembodied brain operating a travelling spaceship/library. It's been over thirty years since I read it, but I think the ship was supposed to contain real paper-and-ink books.

Yep. "Bookmobiles-s-s-s-s. In-n-n-n-n. Spa-a-a-a-a-ce!"

And just think, between stops you could evacuate the stacks to keep all that acid-laden paper from oxidizing.

I guess both "youth" and "comic books" are rather flexible terms here....

I'm guessing that the reviewer meant "comic strips." My point is that Science Fiction is a "big tent" which includes people not normally taken as Science Fiction authors, including those who kick and scream that they are not Science Fiction authors. I've been focussed on the Science Fiction / Westerns intersection and interaction, and so it was a nice surprise to read another Spillane novel that is clearly SF (he had an antigravity maguffin at the end of another). But thanks for keeping us honest on matters chronological. Extra credit to name the other Spillane to which I refer, or to say more about the Science Fiction that he says he's planning.

By Vanora Bennett,
Special to The Los Angeles Times

"LONDON — For book lovers here, June can be the cruelest month. The carefree summer lies ahead, with its pretty British regional book festivals, partying, lecturing and autographing. But first, the literary pecking order must be established. Just one question is on all lips at book parties: Who will win the prizes?"

"Three literary awards worth a total of $220,000 are presented in June. The Orange and the Samuel Johnson prizes each are worth $55,000, while the new Man Booker International Prize, to be awarded once every two years, is worth $110,000 — life-changing sums for people scribbling in garrets. And even some of the top losers are winners: Being short-listed can substantially increase sales."

"There's just one catch. London's biggest book awards (these three, plus the British Man Booker Prize of $90,000 in October and the Whitbread prize of $55,000 in January) appear designed to exclude as much as to enthuse."

"Until the creation of a parallel international prize this year, the Man Booker Prize in practice rewarded all English-language fiction that was not American. And the Orange Prize is for all novelists — as long as they are not men...."

"The Orange Prize is a blot on Britain's literary landscape," fumed one critic, Simon Jenkins, of the London Times.

I find it hard to put much faith in the writing of anyone who gets the name of such a well-known newspaper as The Times wrong.

Other prizes have their quirks. The Samuel Johnson is only for nonfiction.

Oh, dear. It's a hard life when you're excluded from a prize for something totally different from what you do...

The rules of the Whitbread are too complicated for ordinary mortals. (Winners in each of five categories — poetry, novel, first novel, biography and children's writing — face off for the big prize)

Doesn't sound that hard to me. Honestly, I don't see why anyone's complaining. If the sponsors of these prizes want to restrict them to certain people, what's wrong with that? It's their money that's being awarded.

"In A Fine Brush on Ivory, his 'appreciation' of Jane Austen, Richard Jenkyns remarks that in Austen scholarship there are "pressures which cause ordinary critical circumspection to break down,' and principal among them is 'the peculiar affection in which the person of Jane Austen is held by many readers." This affection is not altogether explained by admiration for her genius, nor is it entirely a symptom of nostalgia for her orderly, decorous, vanished world (though there is a Web site, www.pemberley.com: 'your haven in a world programmed to misunderstand obsession with things Austen'). What does explain this 'peculiar affection' for Jane Austen?..."

Now, thanks to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, we know how Jane Austen would have written High Fantasy.

But what sort of Science Fiction, or Noir Detective fiction could she have written, if so inclined?

The cover looks well produced though. I doubt she got that on a $500 package.

(picks self up, looks around, blinks)
Boy, that felt like falling through the rabbit hole. Where am I?

Roger MacBride Allen's Solace trilogy has some great library scenes. For safekeeping, the solar library keeps most of its physical materials in the stacks, a giant space habitat, filled with nitrogen and kept at a low temperature, in orbit around Neptune.

If I recall correctly, There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell by Pat Murphy, has a library in it.

Goshwow.

Dang. I'll never get to go on a sunset excursion to Mars. *sigh*

Cool photo, though.

I'm looking for books in a category I would call AU historical fantasy. In other words, books set in historical places, which may be significantly and consciously different from the real historical places, with "fantastic" elements such as magic that really works. My two primary examples of this are Philip Pullman's Oxford in the His Dark Materials books and Susanna Clarke's Regency England. Surely there are other people doing this sort of thing? Who are they? Books in which seemingly-historical places are thinly disguised with fantatic names are okay, but not precisely what I'm after.

Many thanks in advance.

My favorite recorded version of this is the Garcia Grisman one, 10 seconds of which are available, here. (This was a standard part of their repertoire -- obscenely cheerful, with lots of Deadhead twirlers in the aisles at every performance.)

Adam Stemple and Todd Menton do a good version, too. Leadheads in the gallery will probably know whether that one's recorded anywhere.

--Mary Aileen

I suspect Kaye wouldn't fit; his works start by renaming everything but keep all the historical details in place. And I'm not sure there's any actual fantasy in them, except as we take in stories that are non-fantastic but mundanely unfashionable and colorfully told (cf Randall, Winter's King(?)) just as SF includes alternate history even without a mechanism to travel to it.

And I wrote one, The Dragon Waiting.

Glen Cook's latest -- The Tyranny of the Night -- is perhaps an edge case, in that I don't know how many people would recognize the history he's using. (Dread Empire does the Albigensian Crusade, with a side of extra-creepy.)

I've never heard the Garcia/Grisman version, but that snippet sounds good. And I thought I was a Leadhead, but I must be out of date, because I didn't even know Stemple and Menton had done anything together.

MKK

--Books by fictional authors ("That section of the room is devoted to the books of the gifted writers of Bookland. You will observe it is extensive; for the wonderful literary genius is by long odds the most common character in fiction.")

--Unwritten books ("masterpieces that were planned and never carried through.... The main treasure of my library is that unbound collection of the Unwritten Plays of Christopher Marlowe.")

--Books as the authors meant them to be ("Oh, that is the 1599 version of Troilus and Cressida--the only edition in which the play is anything like comprehensible...")

Tigana has significant fantasy content (powerful magic). A Song for Arbonne has much less, but some, and The Sarantine Mosaic a bit more than Arbonne. The Lions of Al-Rassan has almost none, and The Last Light of the Sun a moderate amount. However, as noted these are not set in our world, but in close historical analogues.

As for actual alternate history with fantasy... I can't think of much that hasn't been mentioned except Dave Duncan's "Demon" books (The Demon Sword/Knight/Rider), published under the name "Ken Hood." However, as the series was never finished it makes for somewhat unsatisfying reading, given the number of major narrative threads left unresolved.

There's also Lois McMaster Bujold's The Spirit Ring - one of her lesser novels, but good fun nonetheless. There is not a lot of historical background given, but it clearly diverges from our timeline.

Mary Stewart's Arthur series also comes to mind.

"Death by a Thousand Cuts... tells the story of the campaign to repeal the estate tax (what we [in the UK] would call inheritance tax [and Aussies call death duties]) in the United States, which culminated in the inclusion of the measure in George Bush's massive tax-cutting legislation of 2001. Don't let that put you off. This is one of the most interesting books about politics, and power, and the way the world is going, that you are ever likely to read.
What makes it so fascinating is that it is a mystery story. The mystery is this: how did the repeal of a tax that applies only to the richest 2 per cent of American families become a cause so popular and so powerful that it steamrollered all the opposition placed in its way?"

I second (or theird?) the recommendation of Guy Gavriel Kay (I'm re-reading 'Tigana' right now.)

I also like Sean Russell ('The Initiate Brother' and 'Gatherer of Clouds' are his first books I believe, and I just finished his latest, The Swans War series and loved it). I just finished Lian Hearn 'Tales of the Otori' which I quite liked.

Besides the Avalon books, Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote 'The Firebrand' (Troy) and 'The Fall of Atlantis' which I think fall into that category.

Also: Morgan Llewellen, Ellen Kushner, Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm's 'Freedom & Necessity', Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust', Garth Nix's 'Sabriel', Pat O'Shea's 'The Hounds of the Mórrigan'.

Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon blends fantasy elements into the famous pair's voyage across colonial America, but many people find Pynchon a difficult read.

Note to self: send contribution to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I still think we need Project Pied Piper to spirit away all the children in their communities, but there's no way to do that without doing additional harm to them.

The article then mentions that the passengers were standing on the helo's PONTOONS when police rescue picked them up.

For news copyeditors out there, it isn't a crash if you can walk away from it. It definitely isn't a crash if you're floating when it's over. Now, a chopper that goes underwater, now THAT is a crash...

Sorry, just a pet peeve....

The only solution, of course, is to abduct all these prophets and convert them to the One True Way of Pluralism, by suasion or the sword.

Oh dear...

Um, it is if you're floating upside down at the end. (Pictures are worth a thousand words after all. Who'd'a thunk?)

(Now, if only her next book were out in paperback...)

I live ~30 feet uphill from Salmon Bay in Seattle, and I suspect that the Ballard Locks would slow things down (plus there's lots more hill behind my building) so I suspect I'd be OK in a tsunami, but still...

Santorum, the dog and wedded bliss.

PS: the individual comments have apparently lost their links. Is this part of the War on Comment Spam?

Sister Stiletto of Subtle Suasion

Via Bookslut's Blog

Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-California) is having a bit of trouble explaining how it is that a defense contractor with business before his committee bought a house from Cunningham for $700,000 over market value and was promptly rewarded with contracts.

So how is Duke Cunningham responding to this?

He's launched an all-out drive to support the flag-burning amendment!

Thanks for the link. Good stuff.

Greg

What the heck is a "Glastonbury Tor"?

Is it a thing or a place?

I think the article said it was found "on" GT, but I'm not sure if that's a British-ism for "in" a certain location, or if a GT is some sort of thing, and the Dalek was actually on top of it.

My wife and I were in Santa Maria when the Michael Jackson verdicts were announced. We were on the beach at Morro Bay, felt the quake (I thought it was a collision of vehicles in a trailer park at first), and were evacuated to high ground, right after the tsunami warning, by John Varley. We saw a car crash on the 101 heading south (idiot driftsed off the freeway's high speed lane into ditch, overcorrect getting back on freeway, pulled a 720 or so, hit a produce truck). Our coffee (all we ordered) never arrived at Sambo's in Santa Barbara, so we left in a huff after 2 tables seated after us got their full breakfasts. Our tire blew out a hundred feet before the Arroyo exit from the 210 approaching Pasadena. Slightly more exciting 1/2 week vacation than planned, but could have been far more exciting. In some alternate history, the rioting fans when Michael Jackson was convicted, the tsunami killing folks all along the West Coast, the car crash or flat on freeway leading to fatalities. So we'll accept excitement without death anytime. Will repond to other threads after I've caught up.

From an alternate timeline near you!

Dr. Chistine M. Carmichael (a.k.a. Mrs. Jonathan Vos Post): LOL!

[plus she strongly recommends the new John Varley novel, only available in hardback?, MAMMOTH. I similarly recommend the (paperback available) RED THUNDER.

More nice photos by Lee, unrlated to me, with cute quotation: "The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."
- Dorothea Lange

Note also that this Official Varley home page links to recipes, movie reviews, and other delights.

If you are using legend as in "medieval," no, it's not. Glastonbury Tor may be thus described in a modern Arthurian text, though I can't think of one, but it is not the site of Arthur's court or castle in any medieval text I can think of.

Glastonbury is the earliest specified place for the "abduction" of Guinivere, it's supposed to be the site of Arthur's final resting place, and it's got various connections to grail myth (particularly to the Joseph of Arimathea branch, and the Glastonbury Thorn), and it's a popular hermitage for varous knights, including Lancelot. In 1190 the then abbott is said to have discovered Arthur's grave, including an inscribed cross, with "Arturius" on it.

Näxte Halt, Glastonbury Tor. Ausstieg Links!

(Tor = City Gate, now where many junctions, and therefore subway stations can be found.)

It was a long, hard, walk there and back again, but we actually managed to scale it to look over the old lakelands, and stood near where the abbot was hanged because he disagreed with Henry VIII, plus we were able to draw some water from one of the springs, to go with the bottle I also brought back from Lourdes.

The Sci-Fi channel is picking up Firefly.

--Mary Aileen

Is anyone else finding the "Choose Your Own Adventure" particle addicting? I added a few choices yesterday; today I'm going to figure out which existing choices to link back to. While it is a lot of fun to go through and "choose" a great story, it is even more fun to randomly punch in a number and see what comes up. I wonder if that bit about being surrounded by Welshmen and encountering a sheep is any less of a non-sequitor within a story path?

My understanding is that this is legally impossible, as Fox have an exclusive contract for first showings (at least in the US -- here in the UK Sci Fi were the first to show Firefly, so I don't know where that stands) and are refusing to have anything to do with the show.

Frustrating, but reminds me of those "permanently out of stock" books we'd try to order when I worked at the bookstore. Not out of print, but not being printed!

5.3 2005/06/16 13:53:25 34.058N 117.007W 12.5 4 km ( 2 mi) NE of Yucaipa, CA [San Bernardino County]

That's the third one in 4 days - when do we start breaking apart from the rest of the country and sliding into the ocean?

JVP -

I take it you've reported it to the USGS -
http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/index.html

Also, does anyone know the efficacy of huddling under a "desk" during a quake? That's what our office building earthquake propaganda instructs us to do. I can understand if you're a manager with a proper desk, but most of us are in these cubicles that have a sort of countertop along 3 sides. Doesn't seem like it would stand up to strong shaking, and I might get a computer monitor crashing down on my head in the bargain.

I'm close enough to a door that I could run outside. I just hope I'm never surprised by a 'quake when I'm in the server lab, which is full of racks of big heavy video server modules, switches precariously sitting on rack-tops, overhead cable runs, and a great huge air conditioning system you can just tell is living for the day it can take out us carbon units.

I'm on the 7th floor (of a 30-something floor building) so running out the door isn't an option. I am concerned about what *is* an option, as I really don't think these cubes are what they had in mind when they suggested getting under desks. The floor wardens look at me like I've gone chartreuse when I ask for options.

All in all, I prefer to be at home, which is only 2 stories. Sunday morning, when I realized it was a quake, and not a large animal running under the sofa (no, we don't have a large animal. I'm not sure when I'll start experiencing earthquakes as actual quakes, and not some big guy jumping on the floor above me or whatever) I only had the presence of mind to make sure I wasn't near the bookcase. I should probably review my Earthquake Preparedness stuff.

For the authors in the crowd (probably everyone here but me) here is pathologist Ed Uthmann's Autopsy Screenwriter's Guide. It has, in addition to his comments on The Brain Cutting (good for the Food Channel, perhaps) this note:

There has been a general belief that some dieners [morgue atttendants] also take payment under the table for notifying funeral homes of deaths in the hospital (so that the funeral home can send an agent out to approach the family), but I am not aware of any cases where this allegation was proved. From my own experiences, I know that in some cities the funeral home business is extraordinarily competitive, and I am aware of one case where agents of two funeral homes got into a physical altercation in the morgue over the disposition of a body that each claimed.

Hmm. I haven't seen that on CSI, at least not yet. I wouldn't know about Six Feet Under. Interesting site overall, if you like this sort of thing.

Einstein rocks into Glastonbury
By Justin Parkinson
BBC News education reporter

Forget Coldplay and think cold fusion: Albert Einstein, the world's best-known scientist, is hitting the Glastonbury music festival this summer.

E=MC Hammer

"... Project leader Dr Karen Bultitude said: 'Einstein would have enjoyed Glastonbury. He wasn't one just for putting his theories together in the lab - he liked to get out and about. I'm not sure whether he would like the mud, so he would be hoping for good weather, like the rest of us....'"

For now, a Divx clip I shot this afternoon showing my dog hurling herself through a hula-hoop:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/kira_jumps_hoop.avi

Technology is Good.

Thank you for the particle about the tree houses. I suggested them as the perfect Father's Day gift for my column last week.

Right, I am going to bed before I lose all ability to communicate.

(puts treehouse back on shelf)

Keith Roberts's PAVANE is an extraordinary piece of work, but it may miss your criteria; it's a series of shorter pieces, only one of which has any fantastical element, and a revelation at the end somewhat alters the whole nature of the story. Still worth reading.

Jean Luc Courcoult says:

“In the year 1900, Professor SAHIB started work on the phenomenal construction of an elephant
to be used as a time machine. His project, now matter how insurmountable it may have
appeared, took up all his energy and also attracted the attention of the sultan of his country. This
ensured that he had the necessary means and funding for his project. The results of his efforts to
transform giraffes and monkeys into machines were disappointing for many years; it was not
that his special training hurt the animals but they did not like his treatment and he was faced
with the stumbling block of their problems of memory which meant that they could not
concentrate enough to go back in time.

Faced with the sultan’s dissatisfaction, he obtained a troop of elephants and fed them with a
mixture of crushed metal, gunpowder and denatured oil that he imported from Abyssinia. This
source of oil attracted his attention because the nearby trees had become large metallic
sculptures. However, although the metal provided the idea of eternity, it did not provide the
movement necessary for his invention. Of course, the elephants became metallic after a few
months, but they were as immobile as the sculptures. The professor has to face the facts: he
needed a special elephant and at that time, there was a group of isolated mountains in the heart
of India where an elephant that was over there hundred years old lived. The sultan was growing
impatient. So all the people in the palace were requisitioned to capture the animal. Time went
by and the elephant became nothing more than a steel sculpture, like the hundred or so that
decorated the city’s gardens. Afraid of the sultan’s wrath and vexed by his failure, he had the
idea of building steel kneecaps that he placed on the key points of the animal’s joints. With the
help of ropes, jacks and springs he succeeded in getting the animal to move.

Then, he placed a terrace on the elephant’s back and made rooms in its stomach. It was a
real vessel with a kitchen and a bathroom. He invited the sultan and his suite to climb onto
the back of the machine and got his team to set the elephant in motion. He was surprised,
even astonished and afraid when he saw the trees grow slowly, the buildings deteriorate
and the city mushroom. The delighted sultan showered him with gold and set off a few
weeks later on the back of the elephant on a long journey through time…”

More pictures, swell video clips, and commentary in English from Ian Flanigan.

Here's a collection of links from Hilary Talbot's puppetry blog, Spirits Dancing.

They're in Amiens right now. London in September. Other cities later.

* Armin Shimerman's novel series, sciencefictionalises Dee's magic

* Philippa Gregory, The Queen's Fool, 2004, fictionalised 1550s, John Dee a minor character.

* H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror" says that John Dee translated the Necronomicon into English.

* John Crowley, Ægypt, 1987, Dee and as Giordano Bruno as characters.

* Gustav Meyrink, The Angel of the West Window, 1927, John Dee is the second protagonist.

* Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum, Dee in Conspiracy Theory.

* Derek Jarman's film Jubilee, Dee kicks off the plot.

* Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602, graphic novel, Dee's position as Advisor to the Queen has been taken by Doctor Strange.

* Michael Moorcock, Gloriana, Doctor Dee in Fantasy very loosely based on Elizabeth's court.

* Robin Jarvis, Deathscent [1st book of trilogy], Dee a major character, Fantasy Elizabethan England.

* Philip Pullman, Northern Lights, Dee is mentioned, Alternate History Elizabethan England.

* The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, Dee is baffled by wizards in a magic circle who claim to come from another sphere, talk to a crystal ball, and tell him there's no such thing as magic.

source: Wikipedia, "John Dee."

"Lisa Goldstein is the only author coming immediately to mind, though there are others hovering just out of reach."

Cool! Do I get to plug my books now? The two you might be interested in are _Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon_ and _The Alchemist's Door_ (the latter about Dr. Dee).

Sorry, meant to fill in what Wikipedia missed: your _Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon_ is absolutely breathlessly cleverly WONDERFUL! Now I must read _The Alchemist's Door_ to find out more about Dr. Dee -- especially as I've sold an 8- or 16-page comic with him and kindred, and hope to spin off a novella and/or graphic novel. I connect the dots between Newton, Hawking, and Clinton Avery (the heroic Doctor Arcane). Cambridge University was "probably founded in 1209 by scholars escaping from Oxford after a fight with locals there." Hence Clinton Avery is asked to plan Cambridge University's 800th Anniversary gala, as that's where he earned his degrees, before he skipped town to compete with Indiana Jones. Sort of. I mean, isn't Hawking the #1 wizard alive?

I mentioned Pullman earlier, but unless Northern Lights is something other than the British title of The Golden Compass, which is what I thought it was, IIRC it's not set in the Elizabethan era, but in a vaguely 19th-century England whose alternate history goes at least as far back as the Reformation and Pope John Calvin. I could be losing my mind, though.

Thank you again to everyone who's volunteered information. You've given me a lot of leads on the kind of stuff I want to read more of.

The editors of The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia will appear on the C-SPAN2 channel (which becomes "BookTV" on weekends) on Sunday, 19 June, at 10:30 AM EDT, repeated the following midnight EDT.

The program apparently lasts for less than 75 minutes.

Lisa, I'm normally quite immune to fantasy, but I've been recommending _Dark Cities Underground_ to just about everybody I know. I love the net of references.

Also, since this is an open thread, does anybody remember the URL for the photo demo of bookbinding? I tried searching and apparently I'm not using good terms. Someone in rasfc needs to see it.

It had only just dropped off the bottom of the visible particles list.

If you don't require actual fantasy with your AU, Harry Turtledove's Ruled Britannia is set in a London in which the Spanish Armada was successful. (It also involves Shakespeare.)

(2) suggested a Noir title to me: "The Dead Don't Lie."

And here's another Dr. Dee book, _The Book of Splendor_ (forgot the author). It takes place during Dee's visit to Prague, just as mine did, and it came out the same year as mine. I haven't read it -- I'm too chicken.

"A historical novel about the most unlikely of lovers, interwoven with the mysticism of the Jewish occult."

"It is 1601, in the old city of Prague under the reign of Hapsburg emperor Rudolph II. Rochel is young, illiterate, of dubious birth, a Jew who is not quite a Jew, an outsider among outsiders. Yet she has heard stories, not only of the ancient Hebrews' heroic deeds but also of the handsome prince who rescued the virtuous Ashenputtel, and of the mermaid who sold her voice for a pair of legs. Rochel's chance to escape poverty comes in an arranged marriage, but her heart belongs to another."

"In his castle on the hill, in possession of every luxury known to man, Emperor Rudolph II is discontent. There is no end to what he wants. His mania will ignite the long-standing resentments of his foes within the city...."

I've been compling vast amounts of data on Emperor Rudolph II, for the backstory to my Alternate History Fantasy Murder Mystery novel set at CalThaum (the California Institute of Thaumaturgy), in Paradena, California, "Axiomatic Magic" (mss. roughly 3/4 complete). When the world's #1 Group Theorist is magically murdered on campus, the Paradena Police Department is not quite prepared, so enters the amateur sleuth: Wizard-Professor Richard Feynman. I pitch this as "Harry Potter meets A Beautiful Mind."

In that novel-in-progress, in Newton succeeded as an alchemist, and Kepler as an astrologer, thanks to Rudoph, because of the strange conjunction of his expensive obsession with the occult, his covert support of Kepler, his explicit support of Tycho Brahe (and thus of having Kepler edit The Rudophine Tables), and his commissioning the most elaborate automated pneumatic-hydraulic organ ever (reputed to be able to compose its own music).

I figure that the organ was really the first digital computer, and was used by Kepler, and will get me a $500,000 advance similar to that of Neal Stephenson for playing equally fast and loose with the intersection of cryptohistory and cryptography.

Ours have drawers under (usually) one end of each counter. So far they haven't come down (10th floor of relatively new building in downtown LA). And I went under desk because it felt like a Really Good Idea at the time.

And on a different theme:
AU stories with recognizable locations (or nearly so): I'm surprised no one mentioned Randall Garrett.

Happy (early) Solstice!

Being a father is one of the greatest joys in my life. The joy of being a spouse is well-known, and promoted by classical Comedy, and mainstream media. The joy of parenthood is under-represented, I believe, by the same media. Perhaps this is because (1) spousal joy is signified by the wedding, and the "happily ever after" is glossed over; (2) parenthood has the birth as a (painful) priviliged point in time, but the rewards are spread over a spectrum of later events (first word, first walking, first day of school); (3) the vast majority of people know at least one parent, but not all are in a hurry to become parents, or enjoy it; (4) dysfunctional parents or children make for better drama (King Lear springs to mind, or Oedipus).

Remember when Nancy Reagan tried to launch Grandparents' Day? But there is no American Cousins' Day, or Aunts' Day, or Uncles' Day, or Greatgrandparents' Day.

"This leads to the concept that an individual should sacrifice itself in order to save 'two siblings, four nephews or eight cousins,' since siblings share 50% of an individual's genes, nephews 25% and cousins 12.5% (in a diploid, randomly mating and outbred population)."

"For kin-selection to occur all that is necessary is for individuals to behave nepotistically towards their kin. Usually this requires kin recognition either due to innate cognition of character traits associated with relatedness or due to recognition of specific individuals with whom they have grown up."

Darwin first wrote about kin selection, in explaining the sterile castes of social insects W. D. Hamilton provided the mathematical mechanism for evolution of superficially altruistic acts.

Now, where's the hammock, and my beer?

Churchill also served under David Lloyd George as Minister of War and Air (1919-20) and Colonial Secretary (1921-22). Churchill created great controversy over his policies in Iraq. It was estimated that around 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control the country. However, he argued that if Britain relied on air power, you could cut these numbers to 4,000 (British) and 10,000 (Indian). The government was convinced by this argument and it was decided to send the recently formed Royal Air Force to Iraq.

An uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen took place in 1920. Over the next few months the RAF dropped 97 tons of bombs killing 9,000 Iraqis. This failed to end the resistance and Arab and Kurdish uprisings continued to pose a threat to British rule. Churchill suggested that chemical weapons should be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment." He added "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes to spread a lively terror" in Iraq.

I stumbled across this in Spartacus. Some research confirms, at least, the basics of the stated account from that reliable but partisan (Trotskyite?) source.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRchurchill.htm

Perhaps not meant to be taken too seriously. I certainly got a chuckle out of 2,5,9,10 - and the only one which made me think 'clueless' was 7.

A bold Los Angeles Times experiment in letting readers rewrite the paper's editorials lasted all of three days.

Thank you *very much* to everyone who has replied to my request for reading tips on libraries in SF. I haven't had a chance to read through them carefully yet, as I somewhat unthinkingly posted my request two days before flying off to the US for a fortnight's holiday to visit my neo-Luddite mother. Rather than attempt a cut-and-paste job into Word on the public library computer, I'll wait till I get home to compile a proper list and any other responses that seem apt. But I didn't want to wait that long to express gratitude!

I will naturally be wishing to acknowledge your (plural) contribution - are there any house rules for that, or would a reference to Making Light (assuming there is an approved style for references to blogs) with the URL of this thread be sufficient?

"A bold Los Angeles Times experiment in letting readers rewrite the paper's editorials lasted all of three days."

To me, as a Los Angeles Time subscriber, who's appeared in the L.A. Times editorial page, and who tried this wiki, the interesting thing is the L.A. Times complaining about the blog slashdot.org.

Major newspaper attacks major blog. Sign of the times?

Check out this week's "THE ONION" ASAP.

Start with the Horoscopes.

http://www.theonion.com/2056-06-22/index.php?pre=1

Send her over to Everything You Wanted To Know About Literary Agents at Neil Gaiman's blog.

And buy her a Yog's Law tee-shirt.

And this would be purchased where ?

http://www.sff.net/people/yog/"

You advise that the writer should get an offer before shopping for an agent. Yet my quick scan of Ralan's guide to markets indicates that Tor is possibly the ONLY major fantasy publisher that looks at unagented MSes. If Tor doesn't take the book, what then? It sounds like a Catch-22 to me.

There's been a move toward only-agented. All this has done is moved the location of the slush pile.