Some time ago, I read a review of Herbert's bio in Locus, where his son was apparently rather vague about the story's genesis. Same thing in a recent interview in Chronicle.

Funny thing is that I distinctly remember a Locus interview with Jack Vance early in 1981. In it, Vance said that both he and Frank Herbert had come up with the basic plot then had a lottery to decide who'd write the book.

Maybe my memory is played tricks on me...

I happened to be reading it around the time that I first read Teresa's essay God and I, and when I got to the discussion of the Book of Ether, said "Waitaminnit, that's the plot of this....novel...right."

I believe The Book of Ether was a collaboration between HST and RAH. As I recall, it began like this:

We were somewhere outside of Barstow when the unicycle went into the ditch. There is nothing more irresponsible than a Mormon on an ether binge.

Hope this helps!

At the risk of being obvious, Xenocide and Children of the Mind at least are also LDS-tinged. But my memory may be deceiving me.

"I had this theory that superheroes were disastrous for humans, that even if you postulated an infallible hero, the things this hero set in motion fell eventually into the hands of fallible mortals. What better way to destroy a civilization, society or a race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their critical judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?"

As for the sentiment expressed in that quote, I've come across it in some comics too. Alan Moore's "Miracle Man" took the premise to its logical conclusion, with the 'hero' dismantling Earth's governements and creating a lifeless Utopia.

WARNING
INJURY AND DEATH
HAVE REWARDED CARELESS
SIGHT-SEERS HERE
THE OCEAN AND ROCKS ARE TREACHEROUS
SAVOUR THE SEA FROM A DISTANCE

Some time ago, I read a review of Herbert's bio in Locus, where his son was apparently rather vague about the story's genesis. Same thing in a recent interview in Chronicle.

I understand there's a new book, The Road to Dune, that might answer this question for you. I haven't read it. It contains some of Frank Herbert's notes, correspondence with John W. Campbell, and a novella written by Brian Herbert and the ever-bounteous Kevin J. Anderson from FH's original outline for the story.

Anybody interested?

"Ride a worm? That's it? And I get to be part of the sietch tau word-the-Hays-Office-won't-allow? Yippee-ti-yi-oh."

"Thought you'd say that, Junior. Here's your suit, here's your hook, there's your worm."

"Uh . . . that's a . . . big one, isn't it."

"Modest, by the local standard, I understand."

"There better be a Dorothy Lamour at the other end of this rope."

-- then I don't think I'm buying.

Any way to one-up you? Jimmy Stewart as Paul, and June Allyson as Chani? Nah... I bow down before the Master.

And, personally, I'm about a billion times less likely to be interested in anything SF that's Broadway (and especially Musical) themed. TTDV.

(That is what these open threads are for, right?)

If The Road to Dune doesn't have Hope & Crosby in it --

It doesn't, but this does.

Next up: Valentina Tereshkova, in a sarong.

Next thing you know, someone will ask David Lynch to direct "Dune".

Todays catch, and one from September 18th.

Enquiring minds want to know.

OSC actually made the BoM more interesting, in my opinion, plus women got a bigger role all around. (There are only two women mentioned by name in the entire Book of Mormon.)

The Book of Ether itself is the second-to-last book of the BoM, and serves as a sort of prequel to most of the action going on in the BoM.

As for Dune, I always group it in my mind with Lawrence of Arabia. Dune came first in my chronological history--I read it first when I was four, finding it much more interesting than this stupid Hobbit story Dad kept trying to pawn off on me, what with its silly tea party and all. And Dune was probably the number one reason I went all insane after watching LoA (age 11ish, I think) and went and checked out the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But then several of my favourite stories fall into the Imperialist regime-desert adventurers foment uprising category. (See also: The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley, and The Far Pavillions, by M. M. Kaye.)

Seems like a description of a lot of religions to me. (Or to be fair, certain fanatics within those religions.)

Dave

There's some wiggle room, e.g.: "He shut the door on further arguements." is mostly correct.

On the other hand, "He shut the door on their protests" is less correct, since it could mix imagery. Here, 'protests' has a double meaning, one of which involkes the image of protesters bearing signs, houting chants, etc. Only context gives you the right clues for resolving the conflict, and if intended as imagery, is kind of lame.
(Set theory: all mixed metatphors are lame*, but not all lame writing is composed of mixed metaphors.) Obviously vague writing like the second example isn't a good idea for, say, an opening paragraph.

I have trouble constructing mixed metaphors on the fly, so I cribbed one from The UVic Writer's Guide , as follows:
"The topic of pain relievers seems clouded in a sea of medical terminology."
The fault here is that 'clouded' goes better with the image of medical terminology being 'hazy', OR
the "sea" of medical terminology could go with the image of "drowning".

Anyway, the real answer to your question is that mixed metaphors are a sign that someone's an idiot. The probelm is that people who haven't thought through what they want to say will try to cram their thought into whatever sterotyped metaphor occurs to them first. This wouldn't be so bad, (it only leads to boring writing) but they compound their sin** by failing to retreive the whole metaphor from memory. Once they hit that stage, then they frantically try to recall the other half of the metaphor and merely dredge up something similar, and spit out the misbegotten sentence.*** To achieve this comedy of errors, you need to be too lazy (or just poorly read) to skip sterotypical metaphors, AND unfocused enough to remember the wrong half, AND plan poorly enough (or be lazy enough) to leave no time for editing.

Metaphorically speaking, they failed to plan, so they planned to fail, but they had to go to words with the army they wish they had, instead of the army they actually have.****

-R
*unless it's really, really, funny.
**compounded, like interest!! Hah! I do it too!
***quadruple metaphor score!
****I'm going to get punished for this, aren't I?

As I understand it, "The Right to Know" is a reference to the Pentagon Papers, or some other case of the Government trying to hide something big from the People. Sounds familiar?

...Sorry

I am working on it. From memory, they look fairly ordinary.

Oooh -- shiny!

It's by no means the only socially conscious painting Rockwell did, despite the reputation assigned to him as a cheerleader for Whitebread America. His paintings on the civil rights movement are still extremely potent.

Favorite Rockwell painting: "The Problem We All Live With" (http://www.progressiveart.com/rockwel/rock_problem.htm)

Seriously, Vance's and Herbert's approaches are so different that I'd be surprised if they'd need to decide who got to write about the desert planet and the spice worms. On the other hand, they might have wanted to be careful.

In other news, The Garden of the Plynck is online. Sturgeon reviewed it enthusiastically in 1962, but it wasn't an easy book to find at a moderate price. If you like _One for the Morning Glory_, _The Throme of the Erol of Sherol_ and/or hitherby, there's a reasonable chance you'll like it.

I wonder if Vance's "Dune" would have been as successful as Herbert's. I'm not questioning the skills of either writer. It's just that one of the book's main elements was its detailed ecology, and I'm no familiar enough with the Vance opus to know if that was a concern of his. Ecology was coming more and more into people's awareness and, without that aspect, would the book have drawn the attention of that many people?

I wonder how things work out if they turn their faculties over to a cabal of idiot criminals.

As for what happens when idiot criminals are given superpowers, look at what's going on in the real world. At least, in comic-books, they are limited to becoming two-bit thugs who repeatedly get the crap beaten out of them by the good guys.

I've always wondered why people were so impressed with the Dune ecology--it seemed implausibly skimpy to me.

I can't remember whether Vance ever worked out his ecologies, but there were strange plants and animals, and I think at least some hint that they interacted.

One thing that bugged me about the whole thing is, if water is poisonous to sandworms, why do the latetr keep swallowing humans, who are mostly made of water? Of course, they ARE worms.

Part of what makes this difficult is that what is, to one person, merely a conventional turn of phrase, is to another still a live metaphor that will produce an image.

And sometimes it works anyway: "take arms against a sea of troubles" is a mixed metaphor, nobody would actually take arms against the sea.

Maybe they got a buzz from small amounts of water? Or maybe water is like capacin . . . ooooh, the burn!

I can't help thinking . . .

. . . if these people marched to the seat of power to demand answers today, they'd see on that chair a sign reading:

OUT TO CLEAR BRUSH

or:

OUT FUNDRAISING

or:

HE DID IT --->

Seems like a description of a lot of religions to me. (Or to be fair, certain fanatics within those religions.)

Religion is the Spiderman of the masses. "In the beginning, Spiderman patrolled the downtown and the slum. Now the city was quiet and empty, darkness was over the paved surface of the road, and the Spidey-sense was tingling. I wish I could see better, he thought, narrowly avoiding an enormous granite dragon as he webslung from skyscraper to skyscraper."

http://booksforsoldiers.com/

They pay the postage.

"The sleeper must awaken," indeed.

For example, in a recent business meeting, the following phrases were spoken, by two different people, within the space of a few minutes:

"It'll be smooth sailing until we hit a bump in the road."

"The next few weeks will be a roller-coaster ride, but that's par for the course."

Fortunately I am trained in the Art of the Meeting, and instead of bursting into laughter, I was able to smirk for a few seconds while covering my mouth with my hand. A useful trick which, if done properly, makes you look thoughtful, when the uppermost thought in your head is actually "what idiots these professionals be".

"They have their feet firmly planted on the ground without going overboard about it."

Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea.

When I load comments pages in making light, about half the time I get a blank white page with some text ads from the bottom of the page. Any thoughts on what's going on? It's been doing this for quite a while. Sometimes it is frequent, sometimes it's not. (I'm using firefox on XP and 98.) Here's the text:

Hail Eris?
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Read More...
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Buy text ads on Making Light

Vance recalls that one day Herbert enthusiastically
described his idea for a big novel about a desert
planet, giant sand worms, Spacing Guilds, and more, and
asked Vance what he thought. Vance wasn’t particularly
impressed but nodded and made polite noises (he never
really cared for Frank Herbert’s stories because so many
of them contained an element of mysticism). Later, after
Dune became a huge success, Vance was surprised and
amused when Herbert told interviewers that it was all
thanks to Jack Vance’s encouragement!

Cheers, Nick

Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea.

Cheers again, Nick

[I figure it's an open thread, I can do this.]

My impression of Herbert's Dune series is that for the later books, he contrived to build a Dune Novel Generator that was programmed with the stock elements (anything new probably came out of the aforementioned psychedelics). Word processing was just getting going.

A sad fate for a SF / F writer to have to produce an infinite series, like L. Frank Baum and his continuators (just as well Herbert died). Though now Herbert has continuators, or rather prequelizers. I haven't read them.

I call Asimov shout-out...

Was there laughter?

Actually, I'm not sure that even George Lucas is to thank (or to curse) or the rebirth of Space Opera. I think it was up in the air in the Seventies and it was bound to happen. I remember the absolute pleasure I got from reading Leigh Brackett's bringing back Eric John Stark, much as I also appreciated 'serious' SF. People wanted some 'fun' back in SF.

The Associated Press yesterday released information concerning the near completion of the movie version of Frank Herbert's "Dune". They neglected to announce any casting information, so we at Mellon Institute thought that we would fill this gap with our own suggestions:

Baron Harkonnen: Jackie Gleason. ("One of these days, Leto, a one way trip to 'da doon. To 'da doon, Leto!")

Emperor Shaddam: Ricardo Montalban. ("Ah, Reverend Mother, are you aware of the old Ixian proverb that says, 'Melange is a dish best served cold'? You know, it is very cold in spice.")

Duke Leto: Marlon Brando. (pretentious, overbearing, has the respect of his men, and you only see him for the first 15 minutes of the film. "Paul, my son, you are going to another planet. No wait, I did this line before...")

Reverend Mother: Joan Rivers. ("Can we tawk? You wanna tawk? Here, stick your hand in this box...")

Liet Kynes: Ben Haggerty. (man of the wild, knows everything about exobiology, but has a very common sense way of looking at things. "Well, see, this sandtrout is, like, kind of like a vector, you see. He, uh, has this, um...")

Gurney Hallek: Alec Karras. ("Gurney just pawn in game of life.")

Sandworm: Frank Oz

Stilgar: Harrison Ford. ("Shields may be one thing kid, but the sandworms will turn you into lunchmeat in a minute. Give me chrysknife in a tight spot anyday.")

Doctor Yueh: Hunter S. Thompson. (See also his treatise "Fear and Loathing on Arrakis")

Count Fenring: Marty Feldman. ("I was the Sisterhoods closest attempt at the Kwisatz Haderach. They got everything right except my future sight is a bit cockeyed. They call me the Ersatz Haderach.")

Paul Muad'Dib: Muhhamed Ali. ("I float like an ornithopter, and I sting like a hunter-seeker./I'm the prettiest duke-apparent, and the protector of the weaker./And if you mess with my Fremen, you better call on your Guard,/ C'oz I'll make you a target on my righteous Jihad.")

Princess Irulan: Loni Anderson. (We don't care if she can act, we just want to see her in an Imperial Bikini.)

Chani: Susan St. James. (Ditto.)

Feyd Rautha: Tom Selleck. (We have to be fair.)

Lady Jessica: Nancy Walker. ("So. You killed him. You proud of yourself? My son, the killer. Oy, what would your father (may he rest in peace) say?")

Thufir Hawat: Hymie. ("My first line approximation is for goodness and niceness.")

Beast Rabban: Bruce Weitz. ("Okay, hairbag. It's into the arena with you!")

Jamis: David Carradine. ("So grasshopper, you know about slipstyle boots. Big deal. Let's see how you hold up in a tahaddi-challenge.")

Shadout Mapes: Eddie Murphy. ("'Dis here's mah' castle, see, an' I don' wan' no dumbass honkeys fum Caladan messin' wif it, you hear?")

The theme song will be sung by Chrystal Gayle. ("Don't it make my brown eyes blue?")

=================================================
Disrespectfully submitted by Dan Klein and Robert Zimmermann. Casting for Dune Messiah (a.k.a "Jesus Christ Duneperstar") will commence soon.

That last bit did come half-true, courtesy of Tom Smith (in a song he subtitled "Crystal Gayle Killed Frank Herbert").

Ah! I knew there was something familiar about the Kingdom Come style.

And _The Right to Know_ is very striking. Rockwell could be stunning when he wanted to be.

(As an aside, does anyone know why a lot of US states call their FOI laws "sunshine laws"? I keep running across the term, and have encountered a variety of explanations, some of which are less plausible than others)

I've just got email telling me that the first game I've written since the late 80's, a conversion of the puzzle game CastleMouse for mobile phones, has sold it's first copy. If it sells another copy, that will be double the money!

From previous experiences with writng shareware, it's no way to make money, but it's great for the ego.

I will now spend the rest of the day enveloped in a warm glow.

(In the US there's the problem that all sorts of laws and acts have no formal title, so different sources will quite happily call them different things, and "sunshine law" is popular... am writing a comparative study just now, and it gets confusing as heck having to make sure that when I write "a public records law" I'm letting it be confused with the Public Records Law mentioned three paragraphs back. But it's all fun enough.)

[irritating pedant]
Isn't there an extreme sport where people ride sail-powered skateboards or some-such?
[/irritating pedant]

Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea.

So did Caligula.

Then there's always Bush's Katrina-inspired War on Weather...

You really have to be careful boating around flooded cities.

"Indeed, Stephen. Pray, pass the rosin. It is gratifying to know the high regard in which they hold the Navy, but high regard pays no pursers. And it gladdens me to know you have learnt something of the sea."

"How could I not, but, despite our voyages, I know I can never call myself a seaman. I believe I must be the most lubberly sea-voyager known to mankind. Do I have that right, Jack?"

"Oh, you are not so bad as all that. Few with your skills could practise them on board a ship at sea, but would want to be on solid ground before they even dreamt of opening a man's skull. Stephen, you are the veritable Nelson of nautical physic."

"Come, Jack, you flatter me beyond all my desserts, yet I thank for the compliment with all my heart. Still, I think Lord Nelson will be remembered long after we are dead and gone. There will be other Doctors and other gallant Captains, but I venture that Nelson will be revered even if an Englishman could walk to France."

"An Enlishman walk to France? Now that's unlikely. What else may we expect? A man walking on the Moon? But Nelson, I think he will be remembered in such a remote time. Did I ever tell you..."

"...how he asked you to pass the salt?"

Is that a misspelling or a culinary metaphor? Something about, "It's the Captain's Mess, let him clean it up"?

I believe you will find that there is an extreme sport where people ride X-powered Y, for pretty much every value of X and Y.

no it isn't.

Take arms against the pitter-patter of little feet isn't either.

Survivor's tale takes another twist as he fights for life
via Dan Proudman, Sydney Morning Herald, October 5, 2005
He survived the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race with a serious head wound and a broken leg, battled through a plane crash, and beat a heart attack.
Now, for the fourth time in seven years, Tony Purkiss, a Newcastle [NSW] father of two, is facing a fight for life after being critically injured in the October 2005 Bali bomb blasts.

Though hedgehog-powered windmill racing has yet to hit the big time.

In a sudden fit of caution I decided to Google for hedgehogs and windmill racing before posting this. Thus I discovered Men's Miniature Downhill Windmill Racing, and that "Windmill" is a class of dinghy, though the tips for improving your Windmill racing make no mention of using hedgehogs for auxiliary power.

Never heard of the Book of Ether, but if it is in the Book of Mormon, I wouldn't be surprised b/c yes Card is a Mormon and is very strongly influenced by his religion. In fact he's one of the few SF writers I know of who has come out publicly in support of Geo W. Bush.

I call Asimov shout-out

Shakespeare, sorry.

Perhaps he borrowed the image from these legends of people fighting the sea.

...and the tune IS "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

Not many other countries had their foundation documents written by people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

That was, of course, a long time ago; the US was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, and has spent the time since in a gibbering flight from them.

No silly, it's Gillian Krakester.

I'd like to know how to create stable anti-money, and whether I can use it in a weapon system.

Yeah that's really the ultimate question in nearly every avenue of human discourse.

Don't forget powering spaceships! With anti-money, you can build a warped drive!

credit cards.

No silly, it's Gillian Krakester.

I thought it might be one of Asimov's puns. Once read a story of his which ended with a parody of "Give my Regards to Broadway."

Points to anyone who can remind me of the title.

Worst use of metaphor was the NO mayor complaining about lack of funds, and how hard it would be to keep the city afloat.

No I must ascend to my harp seal-powered dirigible and leave you.

the whole story

And my favourite mixed metaphor is stil from Clive James: "Their sacred cows were coming home to roost with a vengeance."

Not sure if these count, but thought I would throw them out.

Not noticeably. He was a rather conventional, and, well, let's say average writer; the stories that the field remembers fondly -- the novellas "Fear" and "Typewriter in the Sky" -- don't have anything visible to do with Dianetics (though one can find signs of anything in anything with enough effort). The yarns with supposedly Dianetical material, Mission Earth and so on, come from late in his life. Indeed, after Dianetics started to bring in the bucks, he mostly quit writing fiction until that burst at the end.

Also note that "Scientology" didn't begin as a "religion;" it started out as a New Science-Like View of the World, and later became a Church for purposes of tax exemption.

And you can have the same religious beliefs affect different writers different ways. So I guess the question is one of those imponderables that can lead you off into interesting lines of thought but can't be decided.

What end?

Don't know about the Worldcon part, but I've heard it was a drunken bet about creating a religion as a hoax. And the later members don't like to remember that part: they'd really like that all memory and mention of its origins disappear.

What end?

My guess would be rear.

I found different sources for it. Whether they're true sources or not is for others to say.

Actually, no— that's not right. Credit cards are one of the many ways that banks create money. They really can't be considered as examples of anti-money. I would imagine that anti-money would have to be some kind of transferable token that served as the opposite of money. It would have to be a store of worthlessness, a barrier to exchange and a unit of exemption.

Hmmmm. I'm going to have to give this thought more consideration. It's possible I might be able to write a horrible parody of Neal Stephenson with it. I suspect it will have a twist ending that will make the reader want to kill me.

No doubt, but Sam Clemens was cynical for just about all of his life about things he considered humbugs, and it would be rather surprising had he not seen (for instance) Mrs. Eddy that way. And the tone of his work was definitely affected after the death of one of his daughters (while he was on tour), and even more so by the loss of his wife and another daughter.

Xopher: I forgot -- Hubbard's not dead, he's in the Frigidaire with Walt. There were rumors at the time the dreckalogy* was appearing that he was already gone and someone else was ghosting them; it was noted that Hubbard was a sufficiently indifferent prosaist that it was tough to tell the original from an imitator.

*A series of ten Crummy books.

I call Asimov shout-out

Shakespeare, sorry.

The quote is, of course, Shakespeare. The Asimov shout-out was calling it a mixed metaphor. From a story about a monkey (Rollo) who, given a small amount of text, can continue it:

"Well, little Rollo doesn't know his Shakespeare. It's 'to take arms against a sea of troubles.'" Torgesson nodded. "You are quite correct, Mr. Hoskins. Shakespeare did write 'sea'. But you see that's a mixed metaphor. You don't fight a sea with arms. You fight a host or army with arms. Rollo chose the monosyllable and typed 'host'. It's one of Shakespeare's rare mistakes."

-- Asimov, "The Monkey's FInger" (in BUY JUPITER)

... this, believe it or not, turns out to be the plot point on which the rest of the story turns.

Am I the only one with a sufficiently misspent youth to think of this immediately when someone brought up this bit of Hamlet as an example of a mixed metaphor? Besides eyelessgame, I mean?

SF

>Random thought while working on intra-process synchronization: "Hey! The plural of mutex is mutices!"

Tempting. Very tempting.

I've always believed in clarity before cleverness, where code is concerned, but sometimes I look at "new" and think "reify" would look better.

You must be working in Java, no? -- I don't think that would look very pleasant or clever in C++ but if I'm remembering my Java correctly it would work well there. Because new is a member of the class I think?

like specifically, "new" is the name of the constructor?

And I thought the public also would hate a fictional character who's an atheist.

And so you can imagine my surprise when, during the finale of House's first season, the doc outright says that this is the only life there is, this is not a test or a stage to something else.

Of course, Gregory House isn't shown as being a particularly happy person.

I'm not kidding.
"...including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."

And:
"...every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation,
and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in their local county probate court.

via Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/3/213554/300

Wth? I thought Republicans were anti-communist!?!

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051005/NEWS01/51005006

Creepy bad would be Orson Scott Card's Treasure Box. I'm not saying it's bad writing, necessarily--I was too disturbed by it to judge it--but it's a bad sort of creepy, with nothing to do (I think) with his religion. Creepy good would be A Planet Named Treason and "A Planet Named Shayol". I'm still not sure about "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittens".

Heinlein? Don't get me started.

The DVD for the first season just went on sale yesterday.

Only one person got it.

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King commented that McGavin was recycling an earlier TV role (using the same wardrobe) as a reporter. One rainy afternoon I was sick in bed and scanning the cable channels for something to distract me and found one of those "movies" lashed together from several episodes of a failed TV series. Son-of-a-gun, it was the series that King mentioned, and he was right--McGavin was in it as a reporter and was even better than he was as Kolchak.

Now if I could just find the lash-up movie made from Mr. Terrific--all episodes of the series are supposed to have been lost in a warehouse file, so it's unlikely to ever show up on cable or DVD.

Eight to five it was under Windows ME.

So, it would work as well (or badly) in C++ as in Java. Still, new is better because it's *shorter*. Or you could go the Python route, and call the class to instantiate an object.
class foo:
...
x = foo()

素人ライブチャット、無料ライブチャットが萌えて凄いライブチャット倶楽部で炎のライブチャット、そして素人で萌え。ライブチャット最前線だからライブチャット糾弾風呂具。萌え萌えライブチャットでぷるるんライブチャット。God bless."

It's been a while since I've done anything with insects, but those look like plant-hoppers, most of which, if I recall correctly are not as colorful. (Though one North American species camoflages itself as a thorn.)

They're members of the order homoptera, which also includes cicadas, aphids and scale insects.

And no, we all disemvowel in the same general fashion, though there have been differences of combat stance and stroke, particularly over Y, The Letter that Questions the Nature of Its Own Vowelhood.

For some reason they seem to be really proud of the fact that it's amateur...

"The amateur live kyat and the free live kyat sprouting, with enormous live kyat club with the live kyat, and the amateur of flame sprouting. Therefore the live kyat forefront live kyat impeachment bath tool. The ぷ る る it is at the sprouting sprouting live kyat the live kyat."

"Kyat" = "chat"; the inexplicably untouched hiragana are "pu ru ru", which I suspect of being either onamatopoeia or an abbreviation for something and/or other.

The story doesn't seem to be online, but it's in this book.

As for the show's new incarnation, it's OK, but nobody can measure to the duo of McGavin and Oakland. By the way, anybody recognized the actor playing Kolchak? Probably not. He's known mostly for a SF/fantasy movie that was trounced by everybody. Not, not The Core... He was Dorian Gray in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Thanks. I knew I'd gotten the "sea of troubles" thing from somewhere, but was thinking it was one of Asimov's nonfiction columns in F & SF.

Serge--It is assumed that the American public wouldn't vote for an atheist; this is not the case everywhere, and in fact several of my British friends and acquaintances find Tony Blair's public religiosity disconcerting as well as unusual. And a television character, unlike a politician, doesn't have a rival spending money to say "don't watch him, he doesn't believe in god."

He's Stuart Townshend, he was also Lestat in Queen of the Damned - another trouncable flick.
Back to the subject of religion, what about C.S. Lewis? The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe are amazing books, but he's well known for books like The Screwtape Letters also. It's an interesting Christian perspective presented in the form of correspondence from a "demon" who is tutoring his nephew in the fine art of collecting souls. How to encourage pride, lose faith, etc. Lewis was hardcore Christian but I never really picked up on that when reading his Wardrobe series.

This reveals to me the origin of the Canadian TV series Seeing Things.

Wasn't Stuart Townsend also the actor whom Peter Jackson initially cast as Aragorn, before ditching him after a day or two of filming and snagging Viggo Mortenson at the last minute? And to finish off the name/topic roundup, when Cronenberg was interviewed on Fresh Air recently, he said of his latest film, A History of Violence, that after several takes of one of the love scenes between Mortenson and Maria Bello, there was some inquiry whether they could get "crash pads" from the stunt crew, who burst out laughing because they'd never been asked to provide those for this context.

I can't find the author with a quick Google search, but the readers of this site are a far better search resource than Google.

Speaking of those scenes in Venice, it was rather disturbing to see all those buildings getting blown up and yet one never got the sense that anybody was getting hurt in the process. (Hell, even the despicable second Superman movie showed the collateral damage from having this kind of stuff going on.)

I fully concur! Did you notice that when the girls were looking through his records during the yard sale, they look at Robert Crumb's bluegrass album?
I also love how Buscemi(sp?) was such a "Crumb-esque" character.

Trollop23 -- Yeah, Buscemi's character was one of the things which made the movie great. He was a caricature and not-a-caricature in the way that I identify with good comix.

Speaking of good comix, anyone know "Concrete" by Paul Chadwick? I discovered it recently and have been digging it.

I've thought there've been several bad movies adapted from comics, but a good bunch ("Spider-Man," "Superman" right up to the end, "The Crow" [I've also heard good things about "Road to Perdition"] spring to mind. I'd really love to see Gaiman's "Stardust" finally get the treatment, and look forward to "Death: The High Cost of Living," too.

I don't know if the show ever made it to the US, but American audiences mostly know the main actor, Louis del Grande, as the telepath who gets his head blown up by Michael Ironside in Cronenberg's Scanners.

I didn't know that. Don't believe I watched Scanners all the way through. I remember seeing that actor in an American commercial for coffee or something.

I grew up a stone's throw away from the Canadian border, on the US side, which is how I got to watch Canadian TV.

Other classic shows: The Littlest Hobo . . . various shows which came to America later, like Degrassi and Fraggle Rock . . . and I'm not even going to mention Beachcombers.

So, it's Cool World I was thinking of. Apologies. It did have Gabriel Byrne in it, right?

kyat as chat makes more sense than as a monetary unit, another possible (googled but not personally known) meaning for that syllable. Anti-money indeed...

But Kanji being syllabic, how would one disemvowel it?

You know, I used to be republican. I'm a little out of touch--have they really lost their way that much? The original bill seemed so...well...
*loss for words*
...I mean, isn't that kind of government control of private lives the kind of thing those filthy commies/liberals would have done? How hard can it be to stay "on message"?

-R.

Hard to image "Dune" ending with Paul Atreides retiring to his veranda to enjoy the sunset, a plate of grilled sausage and boiled ramps, and a bottle of tipple....

Anyway, I'm the one who started this whole Vance/Herbert thread and it turns out that, no, there is no Vance interview in one of Locus's early 1981 issues. What there was is the first photo I had ever seen of Vance. I remembered that so vividly because, when I showed it to a friend, his reaction was "Oh my God! He looks like the super of an appartment building."

There was an interview with Vance.I just haven't found it yet.

Possibly A Round Trip to Esidarap? I think I've read this - did it have a travel agency called "Gloob" (and it's equivalent "Boolg" in the city of Kroywen)?

It's kind of fascinating how one's mental image of a writer can differ dramatically from reality.

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue266/interview.html

I'm reminded, kind a sort a, of an episode of Seinfeld where Elain Benes' father, a famed writer, meets the gang and is rather unimpressed.

Double Plus Bad?

Just trying to be helpful.

Vance does not seem all that fond of fandom.

'President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'" '

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml

Cue theramin music.

Yeah, I could see the connection to that Seinfeld episode without straining very hard.

Wonder what else he thnks he was told. I also wouldn't want to bet on who the message was really from.

President Ties Iraq War to Wider Ideological Conflict
Likening struggle to the Cold War, Bush calls terrorist leaders "evil men obsessed by ambition and unburdened by conscience."

It takes one to know one....

Possibly A Round Trip to Esidarap? I think I've read this - did it have a travel agency called "Gloob" (and it's equivalent "Boolg" in the city of Kroywen)?

Yep, that would be the one. Thanks for the refresher.

Now we know what that lump was on his back during the debates.

I maintain that he is evil, but she says that one can't be a moron AND be evil.

At least we agree on the 'moron' part.

I would say he's evil by results, rather than by intent. It may make it worse, since the proposals tend to sound good and look good on paper. (Remarks about good intentions and routes to other locations are left out, and also various references to evil and intentions as seen in various SF novels.)

OG, you stated:

Me, I'm adopted. I don't get to have ancestors.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm interested because I am an adoptive mother. As far as I'm concerned, my daughter has two sets of ancestors: the ones she knows about (through me and her father) and the ones she'll never know about (her genetic family).

On various adoption message boards, people bewail "the dreaded family tree assignment." I have many times read posts like, "I thought her teacher was great and supportive, then she went and gave out the family tree assignment! I'm so upset! I've scheduled a meeting with the principal to complain." I always think, "Why is this such a big deal? She puts me, her father, her doting grandparents, her adoring aunts, uncles and cousins, and there's the family tree. Why is this so bad?" I have asked a couple of times and gotten no answer.

So, since I think your comment reflects the same thought process, I'm asking you. Why don't you get to have ancestors? Did your parents really tell you that you weren't really part of the family? Were you excluded from "real family" things, like the handing down of heirlooms? Was your adoption a secret? Are you truamatized by having been adopted? Does having been adopted mean that you are without a "real family?"

Please don't answer anything you find too personal. I'm asking in an attempt to understand this, so I can do right by my daughter. I would hate for her to grow up to say such a forlorn thing.

Of course you can. But, because of the old wisdom that one should never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence, it is impossible to tell whether someone is both or not.

But then: if nobody notices that you're evil, are you still evil? Even if there's nobody around?

As for stupid or evil, I decided it doesn't matter. Either way, he and his cronies must be opposed.

Maybe we can make a word that encompasses both:
stevil?
evpid?

Did your parents really tell you that you weren't really part of the family? Were you excluded from "real family" things, like the handing down of heirlooms? Was your adoption a secret? Are you truamatized by having been adopted? Does having been adopted mean that you are without a "real family?"

My answer to all of these questions is a resounding "No." But ancestors and, by extension, family trees are about ties of blood, which are not the same as ties of family. I don't have blood ties to my parents, even though I do share family ties with them. You'll also find people who don't feel they have family ties to people they are tied to by blood and despise.

I've never met my birth parents, because I can't afford it. I'd like to, if only to get a decent medical history for myself. But my adoptive family is my only family, and I have no idea who my ancestors were.

On the evil note, and especially the "Even if no one's around?," is that possible? Can one be evil if no one's around? One can definitely be evil if no one notices (example: a cruel dictator is evil to his subjects. They don't realize it, but he does. I'm being simplistic), but... I mean, say there was only one person left on Earth. If no one else exist, can that person commit an evil act? What *is* an evil act?

As for the memory-stealing kiss in the 2nd Superman movie... I always wondered how that resolved anything. I mean, Lois Lane would have wondered what had happened to her during that missing time and her character is anything but stupid.

Still, even in the first movie, the big weakness was Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor, for me. Luthor should be very dangerous. Think of Telly Savalas. Well, I'd expect that Kevin Spacey will do a good job although I'd have prefered Terry O'Quinn.

And let's hope that the new movie will be as good as the first movie was in the Smallville segment.

I'm just saying.

I assume that my daughter will not know her genetic family because she is Chinese. Giving her up for adoption was illegal, so we have nothing to go on. If it were, by some miracle, to become possible to trace her genetic family, I would be supportive, if she wanted to do it.

Harry Connolly - Good distinction between ties of blood and ties of family. I'm not sure I agree that geneology is about ties of blood, or only about ties of blood. I studied a lot of family systems theory. What I find fascinating about family history is the way the patterns reappear and keep coming back. I recently found out something about my grandfather that explained a lot about my sister. That's not entirely a genetic thing; being part of the same family explained a lot of it. I can see my daughter having the same kinds of discoveries. (But then again, I have both a genetic and a behavioral interest, so it's hard for me to see which is stronger.)

Thanks to both of you for commenting.

I WOULD really really like a medical history. But it isn't that important.

"Blood is thicker than water. And love is thicker than blood."

My sister-in-law was adopted as an infant and reconnected with her birth mother just a few years ago--shortly before her adoptive father died. Having discovered her half-sibs and gotten to know her birth mom really cushioned the blow for her.

I don't remember ever not knowing I was adopted, and it's only occasionally been a bother, specifically when I have to explain that I have no family medical history.

God knows kids are a crapshoot--you wouldn't look at our sweet little daughter and identify either of her parents by personality--but if you tell your kid she was adopted and don't make a big negative deal out of it, I'd expect she'll be okay, or better, according to this local Arkansas writer gossip which is probably meaningless to anyone else reading it:

When I told Jim Whitehead I was adopted, he said the same was true of Bill Harrison and Frank Stanford, and he thought it made us feel special and mysterious, and I think he was right.

(Possibly I could've done with a little less thinking of myself as special.)

Actually I think most fantasy people would not resemble their writing much as to do so would be prohibitively expensive in many cases. Roger Zelazny strikes me as someone that might resemble their writing, I know nothing about him. Does he?

Having met and gotten to know my birth parents, I have become a firm believer in the power of heredity. I now can see that I got most of my looks from my birth mother and most of my temperament from my birth father. I learned all my morals and some of my attitudes and mannerisms from my adoptive parents, but my emotional responses to stressful situations seem to be almost entirely genetic. I now realize that as a teenager, some of the biggest problems I had dealing with my folks were because we have utterly different personalities and had a very hard time understanding each other's points of view.

I didn't spend six frickin' years in evil medical school for people to not know that I'm evil!

The uppermost thing in my mind when I said that is that it has been illegal for much of my life for me to access to any of my records. I very much resent that legal barrier. (Because I was lucky enough to have been adopted in Tennessee, my records are now open, should I ever come up with enough money to pay for the search. The Memphis baby-selling scandal, y'know.) I have known adoptees who have died because of that legal barrier and the associated ignorance of family medical histories.

It has sometimes been a hard-fought battle to find (and keep) doctors who will work with me in assuming that I have a family history of everything. Better to overtest than to find something too late.

As for the rest, well, yes, adoption was a fairly negative influence. The problems came more from the extended family (my parents' siblings and cousins more than their parents) and certain members of the church we attended than from my parents themselves. Adoptee == bastardy == born in sin == Lilith Reborn or some such nonsense. And there was a definite difference in the quality of the relationship between my adoptive mother and her blood family and her relationship with me. For that family, blood is definitely thicker than adoption papers.

I entirely understand the adoptive parents freaking out over the family tree. For my mother, certainly, there was always a sense that adoption meant she somehow wasn't a "real mother" and especially a "real woman". Her inability to carry to term was, to her, a personal and shameful failing. She's never been comfortable with my interest in genealogy, and I believe that it springs from that ridiculous guilt. There certainly haven't been any town drunks or horse thieves in her family tree to embarrass her. :P

According to my boxed set of Fraggle Rock I saw it during it's first run on HBO...did it run on other channels in other markets sooner? I never understood why it ran on a cable channel until I discovered that HBO essentially produced it. I had just assumed it was a syndicated product like everything else.

Superman II (with Zod) remains my high-water mark for comic book to movie efforts (Spider-Man, et. all included). I was like four when I saw it at the Drive-In, it informed my youth. Supergirl and the Spider-Man movies are tied for second. Is that scary to anyone else?

I thought that "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" was great if you turned off that part of the brain that does fact checking. I find that 95% of Hollywood exists in that category.

damon knight once described Roger as "...a courtly Pole with a face like the business end of a hatchet." (He was explaining How to Distinguish Roger Zelazny from Samuel R. Delany From Quite a Long Way Away, but his descripton of Chip has not persisted in memory.) I suppose one would not have been surprised to see him around the courts of Amber, as, say, an Associate Minister of Saturnine Affairs -- and do understand that I'm speaking only of appearance, not personality -- and I guess that if he were in a lineup with Chip and Poul Anderson and Gene Wolfe, you would probably pick him out as the guy who wrote "A Night in the Lonesome October," but one would also suspect the cops' motives in choosing that set.

I can't get into the Who Looks Like Their Writing game -- I'm acquainted with too many writers. I guess Neil looks like he could have written Sandman, but I dunno about Stardust, and I suppose Judi Dench might play Kate Wilhelm in Clarion, the Motion Picture, but that leads to the question of how many civilians would live through a game of Milford Mafia.

Me, well, I probably look like a minor Batman villain written by Paul Dini, drawn by Chuck Jones, and played by Richard O'Brien. Only uglier.

To tell the truth, I liked the movie enough to buy the DVD in spite of everything. Of course, I've always been partial to steampunk movies - even before they were called that. I'm still waiting for the DVD release of Master of the World, with Charles Bronson AND Vincent Price.

If I had the cash to burn, I'd pay Catholic Adoption Services for the full info today. Last I heard, it cost $400 to get my entire file from them. I have no idea why it would cost so much to copy a file and mail it, but there you go.

Also, the last time I checked, PA is one of the states that sides with the privacy rights of biological parents over the rights of adoptees to know their history. /shrug.

OG, I'm sorry you had to deal with all that crap. I'm reminded once again how lucky I am to have had the parents, family and community I had.

a lighter note wrt thickness:
They say blood is thicker than water
But the swamps of home are thicker than blood!
(Princess Winifred the Woebegone, in the princess-and-the-pea takeoff Once Upon a Mattress.)

Isn't Samuel R. Delany, uh...black?

LITERATURE: The Ig Nobel for literature went to the Nigerians who introduced millions of e-mail users to a "cast of rich characters ... each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled."

It's not yet on the Ig site itself www.improb.com/ig/ig-top.html , but CNN has a report here (literature is at the bottom): http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/06/dog.invention.ap/index.html

It means the day of the family tree assignment - we had them in the UK too - is burned into my memory, although not necessarily as a bad experience. I did rapidly spot that no-one had explained how I was supposed to mark multiple marriages to the same person, for instance, and that my ancestry on my mother's side had only one entry. On the plus side, it made my family tree more interesting to draw. (And I suspect sparked my interest in Roman history: you try drawing the family tree of the Julio-Claudians.)

But most of this springs from the specific nature of my mother's adoption: she was fostered by an unpleasant family until she was a teenager and had the courage to run away, and then came to be formally adopted by her schoolteacher - but at an age when new parents and family perhaps make less of a profound impact. She certainly still feels as though she has no ancestry, and indeed no blood relatives at all. (And records, in this case, are pretty much non-existent.)

So even though I have adoptive aunts and uncles and cousins, they don't feel remotely related to me, and I think of myself as having no ancestry on my mother's side apart from her. For different reasons (ie. the Blitz) my family on my father's side can't be traced back before the start of the century. But I always felt this to open up more possibilities than it closed down. And perhaps I'm too young, but I really don't care about the medical history. What I get, I get.

I suppose I do have a strong sense, though, that I'm starting in the world from scratch, and that the looks and tendencies I get from my parents are only important insofar as they add up to independent me. So, I'm a solipsist. But at least I don't have to go worrying about what great-great-grandfather candle would think...

I would hope adopted children would think of themselves as having two families, or at least lots of possible family. I suppose there must be times, though, when blood-ties simply trump all else. I doubt there is much can be done about this, but it needn't be a tragedy. It certainly isn't a failing on anyone's part.

I was referring specifically to the Submarine in the canals of Venice. BUT let the record show that I too own TLEG on DVD and have watched it more than once so clearly I don't have any real problem with it or its style of delivery.

Steampunk and all of its related styles also appeal to me, so perhaps we have enough in common that further explanation is unnecessary.

On that note, if you enjoy anime and steampunk then the new to DVD movie Steamboy would seem to be right up your ally. Alas, if you are like me, you will have been mistaken. Watch "Castle in the Sky" again instead.

Best recent DVD Purchase: Fraggle Rock Season One Boxed Set. Muppet Nirvana. I have often wished that "Pipe Banger" could be a legitimate profession. I probably just like the hats and banging sticks.

New question: Do you think Dozer Constructions were made out of Spun Sugar, crystallized manna or some other substance entirely?

Indeed yes, and Damon did mention that. His point was that, at the time -- the middle 60s -- a perceived similarity of styles and the semi-assonance of their surnames led some readers to either get them confused or guess, in that deep human desire to invent secret knowledge, that they were the same person.

Damon actually prefaced the comparison by saying "There can be few people in the field who have not met both men," but it's worth noting that, when Jim Gunn's Alternate Worlds came out thirty years ago, one of its points of interest was the large number of photographs of writers whose readers neither went to conventions nor subscribed to Locus. This despite that most of the photos were the size of domestic postage and had been selected by some occult criteria -- there being, for instance, three different Asimov portraits, with three quite different arrangements of hair and sideburns.

Roll of the dice, really.

Several years ago, I was in a therapy group with a bunch of women who envied me my adoptee status. I at least had the small comfort of knowing I wasn't really related to the crazier members of my family. And it is surprisingly comforting.

I never really wished for a replacement family. I did spend a lot of time fantasizing about moving far away from my extended family, though. I think we would have been a much healthier family had there been as much distance between my mother and her family as we had between us and my father's family.

Last time I checked, TN wanted $250 for the records search and $250 for a search and first contact by an intermediary. I keep thinking about it, and about the letter I would give the intermediary, asking for medical history and permission to contact them to collect family stories.

Juli, to answer a question I see I missed earlier. I don't recall being told I was adopted; I've just always known. I have two baby books, the standard one everyone of my generation seems to have and one designed for adoptees.

Two kids I grew up with were also adopted, but they weren't told. When it finally came out, the break between them and their parents was deep and, for one at least, permanent. I recall being confused as to why it mattered so much to them. It was, of course, the breach of trust and not the adoption itself that caused the problem.

I loved Townsend's Dorian Gray in TLEG. Such aplomb. I'm also a fan of Conan the Destroyer, Superman II, and Batman Forever, and I'm one of the few people I know who liked Ang Lee's Hulk.

You have enlightened me. I somehow missed that detail. It makes sense, and it just perfectly fits. I can now forego my meditation for the night as I have reached fraggle-ish nirvana.

I haven't seen Ang Lee's Hulk, but I'll certainly check it out based on a ML recommendation.

Conan the Destroyer was AWESOME. Again, I was like eight so the bar was low. But I watch it still, and it introduced me to Robert Howard, and for that alone I am grateful. On that note Del Rey has given His Conan, Solomon Kane and Bran Mac Mark stories some wonderful treatments. I highly recommend them for some pulpish perfection.

In an ideal world, where all gay families are out and proud and laws like the one in Florida are nonexistent, and teachers don't imply that the proper family tree model has a mommy and a daddy, but encourage representations of divorce and adoption and gay parents without stigma, a family tree would be a wonderful assignment. I just don't think that we're there yet.

The child's toy sitting here on the desk combined evilly with that phrase to produce "Mr. Science Fiction Writer Head."

But there's good evidence that a lot of people don't have the biological parents they think they do. You can be pretty sure of who somebody's mother is, unless there's been an outbreak of midwives with warming pans, but the father? Enough kids have blood groups which don't match either of their parents.

It's possible that Queen Victoria's father was not who everyone thought. An only child, with a father-of-record who, in the preceding twenty-five years of Royal rakishness, never fathered a child? How would you bet?

Quite a shock. He didn't make a big deal out of it, as far as I know, and is still close to his family.

For any adoptees who care, the The International Soundex Reunion Registry is a free service reuniting adoptees and birth parents. If both have signed on to the system, they'll try to match you up. It's free, and I'm going to register (unless someone tells me it's being run by Mrs. Sunny Abacha).

Bayou Begged Rush
Bayou Be Shrugged
Ebb Gauged Hydrous
Ado Buys Huge Berg
Bush Bury Aged Ego

...and then a few years ago, out of the blue, a letter arrived. My mom encouraged me to search for my birth parents: I don't think either of us thought that my birth mom might find me.

It's been interesting, and almost entirely positive. Like Eric, I've become impressed with the power of heredity -- I had previously been skeptical that complex tastes like classical music, board gaming, science fiction, and puns might have a strong genetic component, but now I have to admit that the evidence is overwhelming.

There've been some curious coincidences. My dad is Jewish, named Goldfarb; my birth father is Jewish, named Goldberg. My mom is of Scottish descent; my birth mother, Irish.

I'm not sure what the point of the assignment is, though.

Dave, it's simple laziness. Most doctors want to assume that "unknown" is the same as "no" on the family history form. I'd prefer that they assume "yes". There are some subtle, chronic diseases that aren't routinely tested for unless you check the "yes" box. I have had enough idiosyncratic drug reactions and symptoms that I have to have a doctor who doesn't come into the room with an "I know everything" attitude. (An example being the emergency room doctor who refused to give me a nebulizer treatment because I don't present with wheezing. Instead, I was subjected to three hours of EKGs and chest x-rays. At least he cost my insurance company enough that I could justify getting a personal nebulizer.)

Harry, I think it would be less of a shock in adulthood. Most people are more settled in their relationships with their parents than when these kids learned about it, in their late teens. Assumed blood relationships get mixed in with identity in ways I don't understand, and identity is equally unsettled at that age. The thing is, you can't control when the truth comes out.

I finally was able to explain my vague urge to learn more about my blood kin to my mother a few years ago. She had inherited a number of family photos and was going through them, talking about how you could see the resemblences across the generations. I pointed out that's a connection I can't make. She was very thoughtful for a while, and she hasn't complained about it since.

It's hardly the driving force for me that it is for some adoptees. It's bound up with all the other things people keep trying to decide for me. That I can get the information when I choose seems to be enough at present; the important thing is having that choice available.

It was strange to look at all those old issues. Hey! There's me in that masquerade report from 1983's worldcon in Baltimore. Hey! There's Barry Malzberg playing the violin. Hey! There's the earliest photo I've ever seen of Faren Miller.

But there were also photos of then-living Heinlein, Dick, Zelazny, C.L.Moore, Sturgeon, Simak...

David, discovering one's genetically-derived personality quirks can be eerie. One evening when my birth father was over for dinner, my wife was listening to the two of us talking and was unnerved to realize that although there were differences in our voices, my birth father and I had exactly the same vocal mannerisms, the same hesitations, the same rhythms of speech. And we both conducted our conversations in the same loopy, non-sequitur-filled way, too. She said that it sounded as if I were talking to another version of myself.

And it's interesting that your birth and adoptive parents were so close ethnically. Do you think that the match was intentional? In my case, once my file was opened I (and my birth parents) learned that the social worker handling my adoption case had lied to my adoptive parents and told them that I was a Japanese-Caucasian baby, when I was really Korean-Caucasian. (That was something of a shock. I joked to my friends that I suddenly had developed a craving for kim chee.) I guess even in the 1960s there was still enough anti-Korean prejudice among Japanese that they figured it best to just try to have me pass rather than deal with the messy truth.

Long time no visit. New job, long story, but - hey! I have a job! (I'll also be at Capclave next weekend, so hope to see a few familar faces).

I have a query that is possibly worthy of Making Light. Does anyone here speak Polish? It seems that a Polish Star Trek discussion board has linked to a brief* essay I did on my blog about gender and science fiction.

*Looking at it again, it is almost certainly too brief for the subject.

There I am, waiting in line to have Asimov autograph a book. And it is a very looooong line. I look around and who is in that line, right behind me? Patricia McKillip. I had never read her books by then, but had seen reviews. Anyway, we strike a conversation later joined by Helen Kushner. I showed them the book I wanted autographed, a French edition of the first Robot stories, with, on the back cover, a pre-muttonchops photo of Asimov, circa 1950. Short black hair, no facial pilosity, thick-rimmed glasses. To which Kushner exclaimed:

"He looks like Clark Kent!"

It was a beautiful column about how this young girl whom he adores was adopted, and how she flew over an ocean to come from China to her loving home.

Beautiful.

I have one of those murky fannish suspicions that you mean Ellen Kushner.

72 hours in and we're two-thirds of the way to the same point. Admittedly, traffic on the other threads seems to have come to a stop. (I really should have started a couple more, but things have been busy.)

I've experienced my own in recent weeks. I'm still not done.
I picked up the Muppets: Season One DVD a few weeks ago (you were all aware it'd been released, I hope?). If you haven't already bought it, I suggest you do so. It will be the best $30-$40 you'll ever spend. I know of no other title that will give you so much entertainment for your value.
I've always loved the Muppets. Still do, in a way that I no longer love *Star Wars*, the only other comparison I have for it. I had joys when I was a child (Muppets, *Star Wars*, dinosaurs, transformers), and joys as an adult (Shakespeare in Love, music, Muppets), and I think the Muppets are the only thing that make both lists.

I bought the DVD the Thursday after it came out. I probably should've preordered it to get the special-edition, Muppet-felt box, but I didn't care; no gimmicks necessary. The BestBuy sales girl noted my exuberance as I pulled the case from the shelves.
I went home and watched them with my father. We only planned to watch the pilot, "Sex and Violence."
You can't watch just one, though. We sat and watched the Muppets for three hours that night. Rita Morena. The guy from Cabaret. These are people I'd never know if not for the Muppets.

The set is phenomenal. The picture is *amazing*. The songs are as funny as you remember. It really is that good.

On a different note, I always get Jonathan Carroll mixed up with Jonathan Carroll. I'm silly like that.

Anyway, she may have been on to something with her comment about Asimov. Did anybody ever see him near kryptonite?

I was part of the wave of Korean adoptions, and of course always knew I was adopted. I have absolutely no interest in finding ancestors--have never once felt that ignorance as a lack. I don't have any interest in Korean food or culture either; my parents tried, I had Korean-looking dolls and books of Korean fairy tales and they cooked Korean food. It just didn't take. (I don't even like _soy sauce_.)

OTOH, my brother always felt a lack and was incredibly happy when out of the blue he was contacted by some biological half-sibs.

I do believe in the power of both nature and nuture, and I don't really know why I'm completely uninterested. Nature, possibly. =>

Which reminds me of my major pet peeve, the tendency of newspapers and certain types of legal proceedings to use "natural" to mean "biological" or "birth," as in "the natural mother." My mother is not unnatural, thankyouverymuch, and "biological" or "birth" is much more precise.

She didn't find out their names. But she did get far enough along in the investigation to find out that her parents had been, uhh, brother and sister.

Oh dear. At that point, she decided that perhaps it was a better idea to let the matter drop.

(This is the flip side of the idea of finding your birth parents. Sometimes those children put up for adoption were conceived traumatically, through rape or incest, and revisiting that history isn't a happifying thing.)

Any chance you have a link? I'd love to read it. (Parent of Sylvia from China here.)

Also: Alice Cooper on the Muppet Show. Blew my mind.

Here's the link to that Jonathan Carroll column. If that doesn't work, go to www.sfgate.com's archives. The column was published on April 13.

Love the Muppets...guess I'll have to put the DVDs on my wish list.

Lori

Blood is thicker than water, and much nastier.

Blood is thicker than water. Adjust your recipes accordingly.

rhandir, that proposed law was certainly worth getting upset about. If people hadn't gotten upset about it, it might have passed.

Richard, I don't think Vance always writes about ordinary people. Frex, the hero of the Demon Princes novels (Gerson) certainly isn't ordinary. I think his heros are non-flashy and usually of ordinary status, but that's a different matter.

I believe Bush is evil as well as stupid. He likes hurting people, and he actually hurts them. (For an easy case, consider his approach to capital punishment when he was governor of Texas.)

Even when restricted to egg and sperm donors, things can get complicated. We've managed to get to 4th grade _without_ having encountered the dreaded family tree project (weird, huh? It's not because NYC has done away with them--other people I know with kids in other public schools in the city have had the assignment, but neither of the schools my daughter has been in have done it). There have been a few projects of the "draw the people in your family" type, which have, at various times, included pets, my parents, and my brother in addition to me and my daughter.

But if my daughter had to do the family tree thing, she'd have her own version of the interesting choice to make:

Do mom's side only

Or

Put in the donor.

We don't know the identity of the donor, but we know a bit about his family structure. My daughter has in fact drawn, for her own entertainment, a family tree which included members of the donor's family in addition to the family she actually knows; we hung this over the couch for a while until one of the cats tore it down. It looked a bit odd because we only know about parts of a few generations, so the tree was very unbalanced-looking, but the kid liked it, and that was what mattered.

When she was younger, if we had had the family tree project, I would have encouraged her to not put anything on "that side" of the tree, not because we were in any way ashamed or embarrassed about her origins but because explaining would have been . . . well, I'm sure most parents of young children don't want their kids learning about sperm donation from another child at school. Now, she could put whatever she wants, as far as I'm concerned.

In her world, sperm donation and adoption and diverse family structures are simply no big deal. Family is who loves you and takes care of you, and vice-versa.

All I can figure is that he's afraid of catching it...

(Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.)

On adoption: my nephew is sort-of-half adopted: my S-i-L is his biological mother, but by her first husband. My brother has been his father in all the other ways since he was a small child, although the legal status wasn't taken care of for several years: they wanted to wait until my nephew was old enough to speak for himself in court (about 12 years old), just in case.

My total-shock first experience of Jack Vance was at a writer's workshop in Port Townsend WA, back in the '70s, where both he and Herbert were teaching. I was a fan of both back then, but Vance in particular -- I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation on his imagery, but had to settle for landscapes in the works of Percy Shelley. At that point Vance was still heartily outgoing, and we had some good conversations. It may have helped that he was an Oaklander and I'd spent a decade there as a kid. He also gave me a hand-written manuscript in various colored inks that I must still have somewhere (since I rarely throw anything away).

Serge: "The earliest photo I've ever seen of Faren Miller." Gee, I didn't think anybody cared! (The latest they ran is the "cowboy wedding" photo from 2001 -- actually taken months before at a touristy place downtown.)

I'm not adopted, and have enough genealogy fanatics in the family to know a fair bit about various ancestors, but oddly enough it was a comment on some old "Making Light" thread that gave me a whole new window into the past. I mentioned two exotic-sounding last names from three generations back, and somebody must have Googled them to find me. Turns out he has a website devoted to one line and lacked (or had erroneous) info on my grandmother's part of it, but still had traced the line all the way back to an illiterate teenager who came from France to Quebec in the 17th century (his father born near Poitiers circa 1599). All this stuff got Mom excited, and she's digging into the family archives again, finding elaborate French-Canadian ancestral names and bizarre old photos from the late 1800s. Genealogy still seems like more of a hobby than anything "thicker than water" (or soup, or swamps), and adoptees aren't missing all that much if they can't engage in it, but it's a kinda interesting way to waste time online.

Finally, for anyone who skimmed the above but perks up at a mention of Republicans, there's a beautiful skewering in today's animated cartoon by Mark Fiore (www.sfgate.com/comics/fiore/). Turn off your pop-up blockers and enjoy!

I have not bought the Muppet Show DVD yet. I have been warned that to do so jeopardizes my chance at a Christmas Gift. I have also been told that should I buy the complete Calvin and Hobbes that just came out I will simply be a spectator and have no gifts at all under the tree.

She's a good woman, but Christmas isn't exactly a wonderland of surprises. Perhaps if she didn't do her shopping in October she wouldn't need to worry about three months of purchasing habits.

On the other hand complaining about gifts bought and given with love would be a defining behavior of a Jackass...so I will just say, "nope, don't have the Muppet Show set yet".

As far as the princess from CtD, I didn't realize it until you pointed it it. Apparently she plays crazy/needy as a professional calling.

As for your putting a comment about elaborate French-Canadian ancestral names and one about bizarre old photos in the same sentence, I love it.

I agree, and it just scares me silly. The current trend in presidential behavior makes me so depressed I usually can't bring myself to finish a comment about it. I inevitably start one, but can't make the words form out of the despair and I just click the back button in disgust.

My wife and I frequently spend an hour talking about emigrating to the United Kingdom after listening to NPR, but we keep deciding that is just "the grass is always greener" syndrome.

I suppose one would not have been surprised to see him around the courts of Amber

He's there. He's the night shift Pattern guard. Can't remember which book, though: "Sign of the Unicorn", maybe?

I at least had the small comfort of knowing I wasn't really related to the crazier members of my family. And it is surprisingly comforting.

I once spoke to a woman who, as a child, had frevently wanted to find out that she was adopted, so much so that she ransacked her parents' hiding places in the hopes of finding adoption papers. No such luck in her case.

In my own family, the joke has always been that if I wasn't a natural child, then I must have been cloned.

But there's good evidence that a lot of people don't have the biological parents they think they do.

But when you look in the mirror and see the face that you remember your father having in your childhood, or you hear his speech patterns coming from your mouth, it's pretty darned convincing.

Anybody else has seen Joss Wheadon's Serenity? If not, you should.

This, if nothing else, will probably motivate me to see the movie prior to Philcon. I've never been much of a Joss Whedon fan, but I'll hate feeling left out when everyone else is discussing the film.

Oh well, at least I was able to revel in three years of Tolkien-mania.

Alice Cooper on the Muppet Show. Blew my mind.

As a big fan of the Muppets, I have to say that this was one of the more disappointing shows. Other than the novelty of Alice Cooper performing his songs with Muppets, there wasn't very much of the originality and inventiveness that we saw on most episodes. (Of course, standards are relative. "Disappointing" for the Muppet Show still translates to "much better than most of what was on television in the 70's".)

Some of my favorite Muppet Show episodes:

Roger Moore ("There are spies everywhere!" "You mean pies. I trod in one earlier.")

Brooke Shields (My first celebrity crush, and she was perfect for the Alice in Wonderland skits.)

Marty Feldman. When was Marty Feldman not hilarious?

Tony Randall (A tribute to vaudeville, which seemed fresh and original to a kid who was born long after vaudeville had passed away.)

And my all-time, never-to-be-exceeded favorite: Harry Belafonte, with the irresistible performance of "Turn the World Around" for possibly the best show finale ever.

Now for the good news:
Shark followed on 12,000-mile trip

From South Africa to Australia and back, 99 days one way.

SpaceShipOne donated to Smithsonian

I especially liked the photo with 'Glamorous Glennis' in the background.

Also -- who else is planning to see "Were-Rabbits" this weekend? I'm very, very excited at the prospect.

On the other hand, I'm the only person in my family who has any curiosity about the way the universe works. And nobody else ever read a damned book.

So did some of the folks in the Church of All Worlds -- it's been filked into a "call the quarters" part of casting the circle.

Great fun...

Re: Bush/flu/military (scary I agree) -- I really can't see calling out the military to enforce quarantine. Shouldn't individual states use either their State Police and/or National Guard for this task?

Even scarier: I don't think they'll be able to set up a quarantine fast enough.

One of the suggestions in USA Today was work from home. Federal employees are 'supposed' to be able to do this, but I can tell you our managers are fighting it tooth and nail.

If your manager won't let you work from home, and therefore you don't have the equipment at home you need to perform your tasks, how in hell do they think they can set it up fast enough when avian flu is finally on the doorstep?

Do you think *any* of these people are acquainted with the words, "Be Prepared?"

I have since come to appreciate Buffy and Angel, but Firefly is still my favorite, if for no other reason than none of the butt-kicking women ever wears high heels or a push-up bra. Plus, I like my men sarcastic, dark and broody. Loved Serenity, of course, but I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. Maybe I'll put some comments in ROT-13 a little later.

My greatest frustration is that I seem to have missed my chance to see Mirrormask. Was it a severely limited release?

And while asking questions, can you, oh fractured oracle of this blog, answer this query:

"Was Red Sonja originally going to be the third Conan movie, or is that just an old myth?"

Old usenet postings said you could clearly see actors say Conan and hear Kalidor dubbed over because of a licensing dispute. But the production company had the rights to Howard's work (Red Sonja is after all a Howard character), so that doesn't make any sense. Conversely, not capitalizing on the Conan brand doesn't make any sense either...

Tell me oh Oracle, what is the truth?

The doctors don't think a quarantine will work: flu spreads too quickly and easily. They want more flu vaccines instead. The military has no plans for this situation: they don't have any plans at all for a flu pandemic.

I don't know whether Herbert would have been familiar with Cordwainer Smith. A book form of part of what became Norstrilia bears a 1964 copyright; Smith also published earlier short stories treating the theme. Herbert spent years working on Dune, however. Is anyone more familiar with the relevant timelines?

http://video.vividas.com/CDN1/3929_Serenity/web/index.html

As I said on LJ, when I saw the movie for the second time on opening night (I'd caught a preview), I kept bouncing up and down in my seat and whispering to Chad, "Did I mention that the opening is really really cool?" This doesn't introduce the crew, but it sets up the plot and does so just brilliantly. Check it out.

(Another link from yesterday: Dylan Thomas readings for download, after watching an ad:

http://www.salon.com/premium/downloads/dylan_thomas/index.html )

Ah, but you see, I was ~10 years old and had never heard of Alice Cooper. I was expecting to see a woman with long blonde ringlets, wearing a flowered cotton dress. So for me there was plenty of originality and inventiveness going on.

Hmmm.

A parent with a perverse sense of humor could have a lot of fun with that trope:

* Baby-sized space-pod (made of fiberglass) hidden under tarp in basement.

* Illuminated scrolls with alien calligraphy left just out of reach on top of bookshelf, with Post-It(tm) notes stuck containing translations ("In commemoration of the birth of the Royal Heir of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud") here and there.

* Albums with photoshopped baby pictures of Junior or Sis showing antenna or third eye.

As the parent of a four-year-old with an overactive imagination...you have NO IDEA how tempting that is. But inevitably the cost of therapy would outweigh the sheer fun of pulling it off.

And speaking of ladies in sci-fi and Serenity, I just "won" a season set of "Cleopatra 2525", which looks to have all the elements of action chicks I have just been deriding - namely, revealing dominatrix wear and impractical shoes. It stars Gina Torres (woohoo, Zoe!) as a "...cryogenically frozen exotic dancer…" (presumably thawed, hence her conscious appearance on the embossed slipcase) who joins forces with two other similarly garbed honeys to, I don't know, I'm guessing fight people and jiggle a lot? I think I may visit Trader Joes and stock up on Dry Blackthorne and enjoy this Sam Raimi offereing in the way god intended - goofy drunk.

But should I watch this before or after "Mirrormask" and "Good Night and Good Luck"?

So some of the Asian nations are banding together to eradicate the virus? They aren't going to be able to -- one article I read this summer says the migratory bird population in Asia already has it.

I've got this feeling that it may be way to late to stop it...

When asked what the title would be, he shrugged and said "Depends."

Perhaps it was just as well, given Rockwell's frequent practice of putting into his idealized physical settings some rather comical, even a little bit grotesque, human figures. He eventually gave this up, and reportedly rather regretted having done it. Fortunately for his reputation, they all look like Northern Europeans, and are not taken as racist caricatures.

The shift in Rockwell's production seems to have corresponded in part to a change in his market, as well as change in his own view of the world. He switched from "The Saturday Evening Post" to "Look" in 1963. And his 1961 marriage to Molly Punderson (his third wife) may also have been a factor. (Thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell for names and dates.)

Wednesday from Websnark just wrote a wonderful piece on Jerry Juhl the other day. If you haven't seen it you should wonder over and take a look.

I highly recommend "goofy drunk" if you watch anything Raimi has put out in the last few years (and that is not necessarily a criticism).

But please be sober for "Good Night and Good Luck", it deserves your full attention. But that much screen time for the real McCarthy might well drive you to drink afterwards.

Where is Mirrormask playing? I can't find a showing within a thousand miles of here. Here being Boise, Idaho that probably shouldn't be a surprise.

It turned out that wasn't quite true (my grandparents had some surviving siblings, who had children in the US), but at the time, that's all I had. I was stunned that other people had cousins, which I had only read about in books.

Thanks,
-V.

* Baby-sized space-pod (made of fiberglass) hidden under tarp in basement."

My parents told me I was found in a glowing green basket on the front step. This is clearly a lie, because I am just like them.

Including the perverse sense of humor.

According to the Sony website, Mirrormask will open in Boise on November 18, at Flicks.

Of course, according to the same website, it was supposed to open at the Charles here in Baltimore this wekend, but it didn't.

I rarely go the movies, but I was planning to go to this one. On well. I did go see Serenity last weekend -- it was probably my first theater-visit of 2005. (I was expecting to see another episode of the tv show, and was pleasantly surprised to see a very good sf movie.)

And Daniel Pinkwater looks EXACTLY like Daniel Pinkwater ought to.

Oh, surely he had to have been. Smith was published in the sf magazines regularly from the mid-fifties on. He didn't make the Hugo ballot much if at all, but he was regularly anthologized. (The first thing I read by him was "Drunkboat" in a Judith Merril Year's Best.)

I thought Daniel Pinkwater was skinnier... er, smaller, than I expected.

Wow, then I should do OK as an SF writer, because I look more like myself than I possibly could.

I only wish I looked like China Miéville.

Yes, he certainly does.

One of the reasons Firefly worked for me kind of overlaps with the ongoing adoption thread: it's about Family. Not the family one is born into whether we want to or not, but the family we make.

I understand it's not uncommon for kids to fantasize that they were changelings, that their family really wasn't their family.

What's uncommon is the desperation for it to be true and for the fantasy to continue into adulthood. Jimcat could have been describing one of the women I was talking about, a woman who as an adult cut off all contact with her birth family and found another woman of her mother's generation willing to informally adopt her.

I was about the same age, but had heard Alice Cooper on the radio, courtesy of the older kids in the neighborhood. I did wonder why he called himself "Alice", and in fact one of the Muppets asked him this question on the show. He answered, "I was named after a maiden uncle."

According to one of the deejays at the local classic rock station, Vincent "Alice Cooper" Furnier now lives in Arizona and spends a lot of his time playing golf. He says that rock and roll is just how he supports his golf habit.

Side question: what's the expiration date on "It's a spoiler"? One week after DVD release? No longer playing in theaters? Three months? Nine?

This is because you only have Season One. :)

I haven't seen Ang Lee's Hulk, but I'll certainly check it out based on a ML recommendation.

Well, I, like OG, enjoyed the hell out of the Ang Lee Hulk film. My personal mileage probably came from a combination of Lee's moviemaking and how Schamus's rewrite of the screenplay conflated the Kirby/Lee comic with the tv show. (I wonder if Schamus is a comics geek, given the use of The Fantastic Four in The Ice Storm.) I used to watch Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno every week as a kid, and I loved the tips of the hat to the show (e.g., David Banner). For the Kirby-Lee purists, however, it apparently registered as travesty, so ymmv.

Cleo 2525 was a fun show, but I don't know how much I'd like it if I saw episode after episode instead of one a week.

I did a family tree in grade school. No cousins, two aunts, no living grandparents. Two years later, when my sis was in 4th grade, they'd changed that assignment.

And a heaping dose of Peter David's Hulk.

I like that it's not over-the-top. Well, except for Nick Nolte, but he does over-the-top so well.

I think Vance characters are usually ordinary people who rise to extraordinary levels. Not always -- I've heard the lead in his latest trilogy is an upper-crust type who winds up slumming (The Prince and the Pauper without the pauper?) -- but commonly.

Karl Kindred: Gaiman's blog points to http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/mirrormask/theaters, which shows info on additional openings, e.g. the one mentioned upthread in Boise; check this if you're traveling. (I'm sure Denver is

He spots a problem at the very beginning of the book, rubs his chin, goes hmmmm . . . , and then shuffles off stage. An ordinary bloke has an adventure, gets in serious trouble, and is saved by the leader, who is operating undercover.

A fun conciet which I didn't spot the first time through.

* * *

I'm terribly afraid of re-reading Vance. I fear I'll find him a disappointment. I would really, really hate that.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my questions about adoption and The Dreaded Family Tree Assignment. I have lots more to think about.

Also, a desire to read Jack Vance.

On the people looking like their books, in the Fantasy Bedtime hour thread it was asked if Stephen Donaldson was as unpleasant as his characters. To which John Ford replied with an emphatic no.

Well...
the idea that people look like their writing is somewhat less likely to be true I would imagine than that people are like their writing, or perhaps that people are the exact opposite of their writing - especially where Mary Sueism rears its terribly cute head.
So who is like their writing or not?
Does Terry Brooks look like J.R.R Tolkien, smoke a pipe and wear sweaters, while working as a philologist specializing in the study of midwestern American accents? Not that I suppose this to be a common area of study for philologists, but it would certainly explain a thing or two.

As someone who takes writing very seriously I often cannot seperate my opinion of bad writing from the person. I often feel prompted to tell them just what I think of their awful character contrivances and idiotic plot holes, there are a few authors out there that if I met them I would give them a good piece of my mind on a level with what I might tell the average Bush administration lackey.

Xena (and Gabrielle) are good to look at, but it didn't feel to be the primary purpose of the casting. If anyone remembers the episode where Xena and Callisto swapped bodies, it shows something about the quality of the characterisation and acting. There's shows where I can't quite see that working.

I'd just like to extend a big THANK YOU to the Firefly fans on Making Light. I'd seen a few episodes of the show when it was on here in Australia, very late at night, and was deeply underwhelmed by it.

More recently, folks here began enthusing at length about the forthcoming Serenity movie, the preview screenings, etc. Even the trailer was getting folks excited. I wondered if I'd misjudged the whole thing, so I downloaded the trailer and went, "Oh, now that does kind of look interesting."

Flash-forward to this past week, while on holiday, when my wife and I saw the movie--and loved it! Michelle, my wife, came out afterwards, going all, "Phwoar!" (being Australian for "bloody excellent!") I was equally agog at this absorbing, affecting, kick-arse, thoughtful, fabulous movie. As we chatted excitedly about it for hours afterwards, I was reminded a lot of how I felt after seeing the first Star Wars movie, and the way it made prior sf movies (other than 2001 and Forbidden Planet) seem so lame. (Bear in mind: I was 15 at the time.)

Now we're trying to hunt down the Firefly DVDs.

Again, thank you to Making Light folks for getting me all interested in something I had been too quick in dismissing.

Moon Zero Two, Outland, and Oblivion provide examples of various sorts and wrongnesses.

Or, adapting a different book, "Today we're going to show you eight really noisy ways to kill a man."

bugs.... eeeuw! (tee hee)

I'm P J's aforementioned nephew, and I have my own take on the whole adoptee/family tree issue. As a quasi-adoptee, I don't quite have the same perspective as some of you who were adopted as babies, but I certainly have the same sense of "two families" that you do, since my mother and my biological father divorced when I was a baby, and my adoptive father was in the picture so early that I have extremely few memories (if any) of times before he was around.

I think some of the points made earlier are quite valid; that when you do have information on both sets of families, that's great. If you don't, that's fine also. I think too many people use the word "real" in relation to their parents, rather than "biological" or "birth." What is "real"? The "sperm donor" and "egg donor", whether originally legally related to you, or someone who was in the picture momentarily, or perhaps through a lab? Or the person that raised you from infancy through to adulthood? For me, my "real" father is the one I've had all my life; my biological father is the one that's been out of the picture most of my life.

I also would like to add that I used to teach, and I have had a class (albeit at the college level!) where I gave the family tree assignment. The reason why a lot of teachers give this assignment is because it not only is a good way to see where you came from (and yes, that can be uncomfortable!), but it helps the students to connect their lives to the larger historical and social changes of the past.

I also had the family tree assignment myself as a sixth-grader, but rather than dither over things, I submitted a genealogy done by my father's mother-- to me, that was my family-- they were the people who had cared for me, loved me, taken an interest in me, as opposed to my birth family/ancestors. For your children, you may want to do the same-- or not. After all, they are your children-- why not take pride in that, and instill the same sense of pride? They're a part of your family for all intents and purposes.

I can see where a child of a different race might bring up a different set of issues, but again, I think rather than dread the family tree assignment, use it as a time to use it to broaden everyone's understanding. For example, a lot of adoptions of foreign children in the past came about due to war or instability. That's an opening to discuss history, what happened in the past, and connecting the child/ren to the fact that the world is much larger and more interconnected than they think.

I must admit I do agree that perhaps for children at the elementary level, a chat with a family elder is a better assignment than a family tree, and would instigate the same type of investigations/exploration into the past and the history of countries, societies, and cultures that a family tree does. But I think for older students (definitely in college!), it's a great idea. But that's solely my opinion, of course...

I heard today from a friend that Bush is talking about calling back retired military to active duty status as a way to make up for the troop short-falls.

Has anyone heard anything about this? I can't find anything online.

I've written a paper on the simultaneity of these books, which is to appear soon in Bruce Gillespie's SF Commentary.

I would be glad to share any information with you on the other near-identities of the novels.