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Oh! Oh! Me first!
"Stan, the pig, and sexism."
Am I right? Am I?
I'll plug a law-school buddy's favorite responses to Jeopardy! questions he had no clue about:
"Saskatchewan, the Sputnik, and spotted owl."
(Just as he did, I know they are not the right answers.)
That fill-in-the-blank sentence reminds me of an unpleasant person I'm dealing with on a private board. After an initial bout of posting her opinions in casual conversational style, she is now smugly insulting all those who disagree with her. Her weapon of choice is using bold, coloured font to display sentences that are studded with ten dollar words that sometimes actually match her intended meaning.
I think this is something the board admins will eventually deal with, but I'd appreciate any help from any writers or editors here regarding this exchange.
[Poster #1]: "I don't agree with you. You're an annoying person. Buy a new thesauraus."
[Annoying person]: "Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule."
[Poster #2]: "Is there a verb missing? (such as, "you are compelled to spew banal ridicule"). If not, how do you banal ridicule?"
[Annoying person]: "Ridicule(noun)is the direct object of the transitive verb compelled(past tense). Banal is an adjective, describing ridicule. No additional verb is required. Comprende?"
[Poster #3]: "Split infiintive! Split infinitive!"
What annoying person has written just sounds wrong to me. She's made obvious errors before. And have I mentioned that she's annoying? My first impression was that she's missing a verb, but could this kind of highly contracted sentence structure be legit? Or is "You are compelled to banal ridicule" just a great blog name that someone should grab as quickly as possible?
Fran, could she be using "to" in the sense of "toward"?
Stupidity, the Right, and The Communist Manifesto?
Or is "You are compelled to banal ridicule" just a great blog name that someone should grab as quickly as possible?
That, certainly.
But at the risk of jumping in ahead of those far more qualified, I believe the infinitive "to ridicule" is indeed the object of "compelled," and a more correct wording would be "you are compelled to ridicule me in your usual banal fashion" to fit the annoying person's apparent style.
Aconite, she might be using "to" that way. I think that "toward" would imply that someone had not yet reached that point, which would not quite match what I think she had in mind, but that way lies nitpicking.
But is "You are compelled toward [adjective][noun]" grammatically correct?
I'd say she's well within the standards of English grammar, which are loose, but is failing the basic test of *effective* rhetoric: the more obvious it is that you're using Style, the more perfectly you have to pull it off.
I had this rueful thought while nearly buying a diadem at a summer festival recently; there is sufficient nerdiness in a diadem that it had better be perfectly designed and made, or no degree of sprezzatura in the wearer will carry it off. And while these diadems were good enough for earrings, if you follow me, they weren't good enough for headdresses.
Anyway, back to the annoying sentence: "you are reduced to petty taunts" would be idiomatic, yes? because slightly cliché we understand 'reduced' as 'forced' or 'compelled', and 'taunts' is as much a noun as 'ridicule', and slapping the adjective on it is fine.
"Death, the Knight, and the Devil"; or sometimes "and the Maiden".
Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything?
World, the Flesh, and Devil?
Rum, the Sodomy, and Lash?
Martin, the Barton, and Fish?
clew shoots and scores -- "you are reduced to petty taunts" is what [annoying person] would have said, could s/he write English. The introductory "thus," just seals my judgement of [annoying person].
Fran, I am not a Professional Language Expert, like our host and hostess, and many of the others here, but I'd say that this sort of compressed sentence structure is acceptable--it's a characteristic of Latin and its descendent languages; I don't know how much it is a quality of the Germanic ones.
However, Annoying Poster's use of "compelled" is idiotic. What does "compelled" mean, after all? It's really more appropriate for one of the respondants: "I am compelled to spew banal ridicule by your idiocy." The word Annoying Poster wants is probably "reduced"; "You are reduced to banal ridicule [because of your pathertically limited intellect and/or education]."
Butcher, the Baker, Candlestick-maker.
Belle, the Book, and Kandel.
---L.
[Widget] [Wadget] Boff.
I am too skiffy for my shirt.
Annoying person is overly stylistic, but not seriously grammatically errant, as others have elucidated. No infinitives have been fractured.
Life, the Universe, and Everything.
(I hate me.)
How about:
Philip A. Cooney, the White House, and decades of climate research right down the toilet? Whoosh!
relevant only to my current mood and life situation:
f*ck this sh*t and damn it all to hell.
(ok, liberties have been taken with the construction).
Fran, I think she's using "compelled" in the sense of "driven":
"Thus, you are driven to banal ridicule."
I flubbed when I wrote "toward." I had a handful of chocolate after months of none, and the sugar rush...well, I'm just coming down. Anyway, I meant "to" was probably being used as a preposition instead of a prepositional part of an infinitive.
Very good, Jack. This is, after all, open thread #42.
Now: how many of you already knew that? Anybody?
Did Patrick get it? I see an Everything in there. And, well, a Fish.
I put this up last week, I've been vaguely wondering who would be interested, this is an open thread, so the answer gets to be *you*:
The Rules of Moopsball. With illustrations! After clutching this article to my bosom for (er) 15 years, I finally got hold of the author's email address, asked him for permission to put it online, and he said yes. (Thanks!)
If you were reading Damon Knight anthologies in the 70s, you may remember this. Or if you were reading "Legion of Super-Heroes" in the 80s. I was neither, but I found a copy of _Orbit 18_ in my high school library.
Also, I know CSS2 now.
If I could find the person with the rights to _The Glass Harmonica_, and get *that* online, my past geek lightcone would be nearly complete. The only thing better would be the discovery of an untouched trove of _Vision On_ videotapes.
"15 years"
Or 20, by your feeble Earth mathematics. Er.
I was going to answer "Heaven, the Its Wonders, and Hell", after the three aliens so dubbed by the main character of the Theodore Sturgeon story, but "the Its" look terrible and I don't feel at liberty to edit the original past the blank lines provided to do so, so I won't.
The BBC is offering all of Beethoven's symphonies as MP3 downloads at specific times during this month and next:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/downloads.shtml
Mongo, the candygram, and ka-boom.
I know it's too late, but if I don't write it here it'll just gnaw its way out of my skull.
A Making Light award to Clew for writing an unforced sentence containing rueful, diadem, nerdiness, and sprezzatura.
Fran, your unpleasant acquaintance's grammar is unquestionably in error. Regard the sentence:
Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule.If she uses "compelled," the word in the position currently occupied by "banal" has to be a verb. One is compelled to do or be or [insert here the verb of your choice]. One is not compelled to noun or adjective: Thus, you are compelled to wiggly, or Thus, you are compelled to Secretary General of the United Nations. The nearest correct equivalent would be Thus, you are reduced to banal ridicule, or perhaps Thus, you are compelled to use banal ridicule. It would be rhetorically feeble, but at least the grammar would be correct.
Also, the person who was objecting to the split infinitive has committed the error of forgetting which language he or she is speaking. The badness of split infinitives is a non-rule erroneously imported into English by misguided Latinists. Infinitives may not be split in Latin because they're single words, but the language Latin that same thing as English not is. If said person argues with you, tell 'em it's actually a phrasal infix.
I came up with this on the walk to the BART station today...
"Lying, the Switch, and a Bored Rube: The Daily Life of Con Men"
That guy who posted the bookbinding instructions is planning to be at the MoCCA comics festival this weekend.
Verbs can easily be assumed in English. "Thus you are compelled to banal ridicule" communicates pretty cleanly to me (and the purpose of grammatical constructions is to elucidate communication, right?). "Compelled" is roughly parallel to "forced" -- and I can't see anyone objecting to "Thus you are forced into an untenable position", where the verb "assuming" is elided between "into" and "an". YMMV.
If I can be commanded to court to kneel before the King, then I can be compelled to banal ridicule. Or to derision. Or to Cleveland, for that matter.
I don't see a problem.
There's always the "two typos" explanation. The original composition didn't make it past the proofreading imp in my visual cortex. That little twerp is utterly unconcerned with meaning (comprehension not being his bailiwick, y'see) so he forwarded the following to the actual reading-and-thinking part of my brain:
Thus, you are compelled to ban all ridicule.
I personally am all excited for the new The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe movie. (When I was at E3, I went to their booth religiously every hour on the hour so I could see the trailer all big on their large screen. They had snow from a snow machine falling during the trailer showings.)
It doesn't quite fit with the blanks though. Too many articles. And I had quite overlooked the 42. :)
Fran: Your chum appears to be using the Insult Generators located here.
For orotund flaming, the blogumentary rant is hard to beat.
Now: how many of you already knew that? Anybody?Ooooh! Me, me!
It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the fill in the blank, and then I noticed the page header...if only my cursed employers didn't insist that I spend some time actually working, I probably would have been by sooner...
If said person argues with you, tell 'em it's actually a phrasal infix.
Teresa: Excellent advice (of course). Not only does this describe the grammar, but the phrase will also cause most people to stop in momentary confusion, thus allowing a quick getaway from a tedious argument.
Fran: If all else fails, simply refer the twit to this thread.
Now: how many of you already knew that? Anybody?
What was the question anyway ?
I knew this was the right place to ask about AP's forced rhetoric, even though there is no consensus yet. I agree that "reduced" is probably the best single word substitution for "compelled", but I'm still open to the argument that "compelled to [adjective] [noun]" is a permissible compression in the right hands.
Andrew, your example is intriguing, but the structural differences between the two examples is stopping me from agreeing with you right away. My formal education in grammar is minimal, so pardon my rudimentary attempts at diagramming.
"[You are] commanded to court to kneel before the King." = "You are commanded to [noun defining a location] to [verb]."
"Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule" = "You are compelled to [adjective] [noun]."
Thanks for the link to the insult generators, but those seem much more well crafted than AP's attempts.
Beth, I think you were mostly joking with your tempting suggestion to point AP to this thread, but I would want to wait for an explicit invitation from our hosts.
Phrasal infix? I like it!
Are you sure your nitpicker's first language actually is english ? To me the sentence seemed perfectly valid on first look because the verb "banaliser" exists in french. I actually had to double-check to realize what the problem was.
Gee, what I thought was:
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
but that's not sffnal enough.
And it doesn't fit the blanks.
I think Jack is correct, the answer is Life, the Universe and Everything, since this is open thread 42.
Compare:
reduced to fruitcake
compelled to fruitcake
and also
compelled to yield
reduced to yield
"Reduced to" wants a noun object. "Compelled to" wants a verb object. I'm sure there's a technical term for this, but it's plain to the ear.
Actually, I think this might explain it:
reduced to | fruitcake (verb + auxiliary, noun)
compelled | to yield (verb, infinitive)
The "banal ridicule" sentence makes perfectly good sense to me. It fits a pattern used often enough to be a recognizably English construction, for me. It's "highfalutin style" to some extent, out of place, etc. I can see why this person is identified as AP!
I never did learn to apply precise rules of grammar; just as well, since I don't think we *have* precise rules of grammar that actually describe English. But it's like "being reduced to water" or some such; there's an implicit verb.
"If I could find the person with the rights to _The Glass Harmonica_, and get *that* online, my past geek lightcone would be nearly complete. The only thing better would be the discovery of an untouched trove of _Vision On_ videotapes."
Also published as The Book of Weird. I do remember that book, see: http://www.wsfa.org/journal/j74/c/index.htm#bw
The 1994 reprint is listed at Baker & Taylor as "PERMANENTLY OUT OF STOCK" *sigh*
Of course, "Open Thread 42" only came from the Question, which is "What is 6 times 8?"
Zeno says it's:
PropertAryans,theocrats,androids
(he doesn't admit the existence of spaces).
I think what's going wrong in the "banal ridicule" sentence is the writer has mixed up ridicule (noun) with ridicule (transitive verb). "Banal" is an adjective, which makes sense if "ridicule" is a noun, but then "compelled" makes no sense. If "ridicule" is a verb, then "compelled" works, but "banal" should be replaced by "banally".
What I think is going on with Fran's correspondent is ellipsis which I'm quite likely to commit myself. Here's how the sentence should read for maximal sense
Thus you are compelled [by your lack of wit to utter] banal ridicule.
And it's that double damned passive construction which should be avoided at all costs if you really want to be clear to your listeners. (Yes, I meant to do that)
MKK
my possible conclusions:
a hip, a hop... no,wait.... that doesnt fit in here.
how about summer, the heat and mosquitoes?
Teresa, for the real nerds a giveaway is any use of #42.
What was the question anyway ?
as far as i can determine, it is "how many roads must a man walk down?"
SLATFATF, ladies and gentlemen
Teresa, it's not a split infinitive because there's no verb there. "to banal ridicule" is preposition-adjective-noun.
Jonathan Moeller: The question, as I recall from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" Which I don't think can actually be spelled out with the standard English Scrabble set -- too many y's.
almostinfamous: That's why I suspected Patrick's "Fish" was a hint. Except that there you've got the "and" and the "the" backwards.
What was the question anyway ?
Dude, it was the answer.
(I had a moment of social paranoia before I realized that all the "AP"s were not me.)
Fran: "[You are] commanded to court to kneel before the King." = "You are commanded to [noun defining a location] to [verb]."
Okay, that example was more ambiguous than I'd intended. I threw in the last clause for decoration, and to weight down the sense of the whole thing. It could equally have been "I am commanded to court", or "I am commanded to court, where I shall kneel before the king."
See also: "remanded", "tempted", and other words with consonants in them. Actually "tempted" is a good example. The usual use is "tempted to ", but if you say "tempted to lechery" -- or Cleveland -- it's the same stylistic angle.
I knew, but I saw Hitchhiker's last month with the SF discussion group -- the first movie I've seen in a theatre in years. I think our next field trip will be Howl's Moving Castle.
(This cursor is normal.)
Thanks to several Making Light folks who gave me comments by blog and email, my Westerns & Science Fiction paper has now passed 20,000 words. Drafts still available upon request, by email.
On my academic soap opera, good news. The Academic Vice President has finally succeeded, as of today, in demanding that the bizarre Dean step down, and remain as a mere Assistant Professor of Psychology on a 3-year contract. Now there is no power behind the illiterate and unpublishable Chairman, who deposed me without cause from my Adjunct Professorship. It should now be less of a Hostile Workplace for my wife, and a place where I might reasonably be rehired.
The Favor, The Watch, and the Very Big Fish
... wow. I haven't dusted off the neurons attached to that movie in a very, very long time.
Andrew -- that's an interesting use of 'to command', and not one I've ever heard actually used. I suspect it's archaic. In my experience of actual English usage, both 'to command' and 'to compel' always take a verb phrase in the the infinitive in place of an object (if they have one; one can command without specifying what the command is, and equally something can compel... which is usually a non-passive reconstruction of the common idiom 'to be compelling').
I've heard these described as 'causative verbs'.
Anderw: re: Moopsball.
I haven't played an actual game of Moopsball but I have attended many the Estrella War (SCA event). The rules some years were quite similar.
Tim, Compelled to Fruitcake sounds like it ought to be against the Geneva Convention.
Also: The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.
The Protector, the Ringworld, and the Confusion
(does anyone even have a clue as to what was going on in the last couple of Ringworld books?)
Grasp the mask firmly and breathe naturally?
(It's better when Garrison Keillor sings it to the tune of "Tell Me Why," but that's something else again.)
Oh, the holly, and the ivy?
The Girl the Gold Watch and Everything
TNH: Now: how many of you already knew that? Anybody?
I am mortified; I consider myself a serious Hitchhiker's fan and didn't spot that. (My first thought was the Sturgeon cited by cmk, but I remembered it needs a leading "The".) Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore
might be my favorite unposted "almost".
Andrew: you might also want to mention in your endnotes that moopsball (in an indoor version) also appears in Gene Wolfe's There Are Doors. This is not surprising as Wolfe was a frequent contributor to Orbit, but I was rather struck to realize that the book gives Wolfe and the late Jim Morrison a point in common.
Jules: the form may be archaic, but it's still known:
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commmander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
Through the wilderness I wander.
With a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end;
Methinks it is no journey
-- Tom o'Bedlam's song.
(referenced in SF by Bester, Brunner, and Anderson that I can think of offhand; any others?)
There's also a Mercedes Lackey/Ellen Guon collaborative novel called Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.
"...moopsball (in an indoor version) also appears in Gene Wolfe's There Are Doors."
It does? I've *read* that. I must have noticed, squeaked, and then forgotten.
Thanks. Will update.
Tom O'Bedlam's Song was also referenced in M.M. Kaye's historical romance Trade Wind, which is where I first ran into it as the child who would read anything. (Also my first occasion for running into Donne's Song, "Go and catch a falling star," which of course, I later rediscovered in Howl's Moving Castle.)
<humility type="all.due">Someone, in a Making Light thread since the merger, referred to a Murphy/Godwin-like law referring to the likelihood that a post criticizing an error in someone else's post will itself contain an error.
I've tried using the site search and Google search, but the problem is that "law" and "mistake" and "error" are not specific enough for search strings.
Can someone help me out? I need to refer to this principle for something I'm working on.</humility>
Wow, I copyedited There Are Doors, and I don't remember that. Not that I don't believe you.
HP, the comment you're looking for is here. As I said: "It is an iron law of online discourse that any post correcting someone else's spelling, grammar, or usage will itself contain an error of spelling, grammar, or usage."
Ah, I should have known it was my host's comment. That only deepens my embarrassment at not being able to find it on my own. Thank you, Patrick.
Research To Investigate Links Between Ancient Greeks And Modern Science Fiction
Source: University of Liverpool
Date: 2005-06-08
New research into the Ancient Greeks shows their knowledge of travel inspired early forms of fantasy and science fiction writing.
There is a long tradition of fantasy in Greek literature that begins with Odysseus' fantastic travels in Homer's Odyssey. Dr Karen Ni-Mheallaigh, at the University of Liverpool's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, is exploring fantasy in ancient literature, examining theories of modern science fiction writing and how these can be applied to texts from the ancient world.... Dr Ni-Mheallaigh's findings will be published in 2006.
This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Liverpool.
(My first thought was the Sturgeon cited by cmk, but I remembered it needs a leading "The".)
Bedad. I've Googled that, not that I don't believe you, but because the reason it stuck in my memory and the reason it was the first thing that came to mind was precisely the, ah, articular asymmetry.
My memory clearly is not what it was.
(I claim priority on the Sturgeon!)
Amy: I saw that movie half a dozen times when I was a studio projectionist (at least half a dozen times). The oddity was there were two different prints, one of which was missing changeover marks for reel four. I got pretty good at making the switch anyway.
TK
(I claim priority on the Sturgeon!)
Not to be picky, but--the record shows, me by two minutes.
When Rimbaud meets Rambo
Ben MacIntyre
The new French Prime Minister's grandiose poetic style won't cut much ice with the White House action men
“A SINGLE VERSE by Rimbaud,” writes Dominique de Villepin, the new French Prime Minister, “shines like a powder trail on a day’s horizon. It sets it ablaze all at once, explodes all limits, draws the eyes to other heavens.” Here is a rather different observation, uttered by George Bush Sr in 1998, that might stand as a motto for his dynasty: “I can’t do poetry....”
M de Villepin has set himself 100 days to restore French self-confidence, to infuse France with a sense of its poetic destiny: “We need a heart that beats for everyone.” For this poet, practical considerations are secondary. As he wrote in his recent 823-page treatise on French poetry: “What does it matter where this path leads, nowhere or elsewhere, if the furrow continues flowering, if the flash of lightning still inflames the night . . . If the poet still consumes himself, he refuses the enclosures of thought, certainties, to camp in the heart of the mystery, in the living spirit of the flame....”
Billy, the Dark, and the Mysterious Drip, or, Uncle Vlad Comes To Town.
"Jeeves, the twenty-year, and quickly."
Chris Quinones:
Oops. At least I didn't say six times seven. Poor Douglas Adams would've spun in his grave fast enough to generate an Improbability Field (of course, the very fact he's spinning in his grave due to an incorrect math problem is itself improbably the result of an Improbability Field).
It doesn't scan, but sprang to mind the moment I looked at those blanks, so I had to go look it up because of never having precisely memorized the title:
Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
And yet I can say from memory "The Lemon-Freshened, Active-Enzyme, Junior High School Witch" three times fast without batting an eye. Except I probably got my descriptors out of order. Sorry, Hildick...
"The Rain, the Park, and Other Things"
Fran, your unpleasant acquaintance's grammar is unquestionably in error. Regard the sentence:
Thus, you are compelled to banal ridicule.
Actually, as I read it, it may be awkward (or, if you refer, poetic), but it is not grammatically incorrect. I read it not as "compelled to [dance the limbo, bite your fingernails, whatever]" but as "compelled to[ward]. M-W online gives one definition of "compel" as "to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly," so one with a small vocabulary could, indeed, be compelled to banality.
In keeping with this week's cheery outlook on life and the future: "me, the undead, and a shotgun."
Thanks for the Rimbaud meets Rambo link, made me laugh out loud. Reminded me that in Heian Japan, being a good poet was a pre-requisite of a good statesman. Goes to show (whatever is shown I'll leave to your appreciation).
Of course the cynical might say that's why the Fujiwara took over...
I'm having serious doubts about Mr De Villepin's poetry, though.
Bedad, cmk, independent creation! Seriously, yours was unseen while I was writing and I didn't pull it out until just now. The perils of a not-completely-simultaneous system. I cede your publication priority, as JvP might say.
Let's see if we can both invent calculus.
Another submission, taken from the Bible Particle: "Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction and our toil and our oppression."
MD²:
"... Rimbaud meets Rambo link, made me laugh out loud. Reminded me that in Heian Japan, being a good poet was a pre-requisite of a good statesman...."
Similarly writing and interpreting poetry was part of the Mandarin Chinese exams for Civil Service, with those getting the very best scores almost automatically assigned to the court of the Emperor. The greatest court poet, Su Tung-Po was the head of the hydraulic engineering, canals and the like, and exiled to a remote island when an unfriendly Emperor was in power.
I also think that those unable to appreciate poetry, let alone write poetry, do not have the nuanced linguistic ability to play as adults on the world stage. Public information allows easy classification: which U.S. Presidents and presidential candidates wrote and published poetry; which were unable to handle prose adequately?
Tom Whitmore & cmk:
"Let's see if we can both invent calculus."
The first post has come, and they're passing Archimedes from the gate in approximating π from polygons approaching circles. Now Tom has the derivatives of polynomials, and cmk says that's not fair, as Tom has better access to used and new books. cmk has a breakthrough with antiderivatives, and found a haiku concealed in an equation of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Tom develops the improper integral, and Federal officers seize it... In jail, Tom finds clues in 16 Dec 1998 LIEBNITZ DESCENDANTS CHART as a fold-out of his signed limited edition of Neal Stephenson's "The System of the World" that lead him to crack the da Vinci Code. cmk meets in a Washington DC garage with "Deep Differential" -- a lineal descendant of Sir Isaac Newton, who says: "Follow the counterfeit money in the Tower of London." Tom Whitmore cracks the Differential Equations of "The Courts of Chaos" and sets off a 50-state manhunt when he mysteriously disappears from the high security jailcell. cmk discovers that Japan did not wimp out in discovering Calculus before Europe, then retreating, as popularly believed, via Geometric Calculus in Fukui - Portal... "for geometry, you know, is the gate of science, and the gate is so low and small that one can only enter it as a little child." [Attributed to William K. Clifford (1845-1879)]. Tom Whitmore emerges briefly with a press release with The Man in the High Castle. cmk reveals that Kobo Abe is still alive, and has been writing Philip K. Dick screenplays in Hollywood, but is thrown into the Bobby Fischer Jail Cell for revealing that the covert Calculus Service has built a manned Japanese Moon Base. Then things start to get strange...
"Compelled to court" is a genuine archaism (archaic not least because if the Queen of Gt Britain tried to compel anybody to court these days, they'd likely respond with a short speech about sex and travel). "Compelled to banal ridicule" is a pseudo-archaism which belongs in sentences beginning, "Lud!, i'faith, sirrah!" Anyone indulging in such usage should be challenged to pistols at dawn (if you're a better shot than them).
I'm not sure this is an appropriate use for an open thread; if it is not please feel free to reprimand me.
I wrote a poem (or "inherently shapeless bit of text separated into lines") yesterday that I think might be pretty meaningful. I would welcome criticism -- here is a link: Facets
Ah, what the blanks said to me finally surfaced:
"The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff."
Sturgeon's legacy is there.
OK, Open Thread: if anyone on here is a marine biologist, please email me if you're willing to help explain a few things about jellyfish. Need to know them for a story I'm working on.
chris:
You mean "a better shot than they" (or she, or he, but the point is that "better than" requires a subject pronoun).
I anxiously await the discovery of the error in this post.
Anyone indulging in such usage should be challenged to pistols at dawn (if you're a better shot than them).
Pistols? Tsk. Swords! More visceral.
Also, I didn't see it, but one might point out that if we're descending into the grammar critique of the argument, one might point out that while ridicule can be a verb, banal is deep in adjective territory.
He made a banal argument.
He argued banally.
CHip:
(referenced in SF by Bester, Brunner, and Anderson that I can think of offhand; any others?)
Robert Silverberg wrote a novel called Tom O'Bedlam, which included what seems to be to be the full lyrics of Tom O'Bedlam
(As opposed to Bedlam Boys, which follows the same melody but seems to have a complete discrete set of lyrics as some musicians play it - and to be a mish-mash of itself and the Tom O'Bedlam lyrics per others. Not a criticism, just folk process, though it does seem a pity none of the recordings I have seem to be the actual Tom O'Bedlam).
Can't help it:
Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe
From the treehouses page: “We’ve also had a lot of international enquiry regarding manufacturing the sphere’s under license..."
AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! [dies]
Cool spheres (NOTE!) though.
My first response to those dashes was: looks like something from Howard Dean's latest comments on Republicans, the expurgated version.
Another thread, and a link here, mention that horrible cult of teenage anorexics. SFGate columnist Mark Morford had a column about it yesterday: linked text
See also Jack Lindsay's Loving Mad Tom with lovely fantasy illustrations by his brother Norman. If, that is, you can find a copy at a price you're willing to pay....
Lenora Rose,
You can find a version of "Tom O' Bedlam" (set to a melody by Antonia Duren) on the Stampfel & Weber album Going Nowhere Fast. Stampfel & Weber are also known as the Holy Modal Rounders; in addition to their own albums, you can hear Stampfel's idiosyncratic vocal style on "Fingertips" by They Might Be Giants (he's the guy singing the title) and "New Amphetamine Shriek" by the Fugs.
I don't think Going Nowhere Fast ever made it to CD, alas.
Da Vinci Code fans note that since Pope Benedict XVI was installed, the Cardinals, Padres, and Angels are all off to impressive starts, although the Angels could use a few heaven-sent batters. [modified from Steve Harvey, "Only in L.A.", L.A. Times, 9 June 2005]
<delurking very humbly>
I've been following your conversations with great enjoyment and enlightenment for nearly two years, but have hitherto been too shy to introduce myself, until now. Rather in the spirit of "Mr Underhill" at Bree (except that I really am writing what I say I am!), and hopefully with the blessing of our kind hosts, I'd like to pick your estimable brains.
For my library degree at UCL (London) I have to write an MA dissertation, and for my research topic I've chosen to look at libraries in SF (loosely defined). The jury is out on whether this was inspired, or incredibly foolish - probably the latter, as I am not very well read in SF, but it seemed to me that there must be something in it. I am open-minded as to what constitutes a library for the purposes of the dissertation - scenarios where libraries as we know them have (God forbid) been entirely replaced by computer networks would also be useful, provided there is more to be said than "no library here either"! I am mostly interested in discussing the texts as literature - the library (or lack of it) as symbolic of attitudes to knowledge/culture/the written heritage - than in assessing how realistically the future of libraries has been anticipated.
I have a rag-bag list of titles I am aware of (ranging from Asimov to Jasper Fforde and Pratchett via Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but inevitably it is biased towards the books I've read since I began to think of myself as a future librarian, as I wasn't paying attention before.
Given that the regulars here clearly have vast and retentive memories (and libraries), I would be very very grateful for any reading suggestions of primary or secondary texts. Hence the nervous wait for an Open thread in which to delurk...
<holds breath and waits to see if this was a good idea or a dire social solecism>
Borges, to start with; at the outer edges, David McDaniel's The Arsenal out of Time and H. Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer for stories in which library research drives the plot (also Melissa Scott's Silence in Solitude and E. C. Tubb's Dumarest books).
You might want to go with a strict definition. Loosely defined, this is way too big a topic.
Pellegrina, the last time someone asked for book recommendations we ended up with this list. If you can find that old open thread, you'll find more there. Good times...
Niven's Ringworld Engineers has an extensive section on finding and using a library's resources.
I haven't read the Discworld series (yes, bad me) but the Unseen University and its library have been prominently mentioned... someone more familiar with the series want to recommend which novel is best for this?
Ugh. Brain browned out... will come back to this later.
I heard recently that Algis Budrys is quite ill, Teresa. Does anyone here know anything more? An email address to send best wishes?
Scorpio: Ah, what the blanks said to me finally surfaced:
"The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff."
You, me, and half the readership. What astonished me (when I brought the immense power of the Internet to bear on bringing the words to the top of my cranial eight-ball) was the overwhelming tendency to omit the brackets from The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff. Was it republished without the flourishes, or do people simply omit them?
I second tnh's appreciation of Tim's entry. John M Ford's is a valiant attempt, but I've never known Bertie to care about the age of his brandy, as long as it was not too diluted with soda. I also suspect that the first comma needs to be an exclamation point.
The true, the blushful answer embarrasses those of us who could have counted underscores, who could have noticed a remarkable number, and who didn't. All die.
I'd comment on "compelled to court" if only I could spell pheromones.
See Foundation's Friends for Orson Scott Card's "The Originist", largely set in a research library and in which research is an integral part of the plot. (I am not the fan of Ender's Game that so many people are--maybe I shouldn't've read Ender's Shadow first--but he may have written the best Foundation story ever there.)
In my game of humiliation, I'll admit I've never read Dune, or any other Frank Herbert.
Did anyone catch Michael Cunningham on The Diane Rehm show yesterday? Specimen Days sounds like a good book, but should I be happy that he sounds respectful (in a good way) of SF genre traditions? Or should I be mad that he said of the phrase 'speculative fiction' "Thank goodness for Margaret Atwood"? Or both?
Roland, the headless, Thompson gunner.
Oh, and if comic books count, Tom O'Bedlam (not the original) is a character in Grant Morrison's The Invisibles which, like David Byrne's solo albums, took me a while to like, then love.
I always enjoy the way Kimball Kinnison rewards the librarians with diamond bracelets .... wish that would happen more often around here.
Pellegrina, here's my short, messy, and very much incomplete list of libraries and librarians in fantasy and SF. Some are mere asides (but show how the concept of libraries evolves or more usually, does not evolve, in SF), and in some the library or librarian is central:
Librarians in Fantasy & SF
Smith, E.E. Doc. Lensman series
Pratchett, Terry. Discworld series
Wolfe, Gene. Shadow of the Torturer
Star Trek: All My Yesterdays; Lights of Zetar. Star Trek book Memory Prime
Eco, Umerto. Name of the Rose
Springer, Nancy. Fair Peril
Robinson, Spider. Callahan's Bar
Bes shahar, eluki. The New Britomart in Chicks in Chainmail.
Another short story in Did You Say Chicks?
Heinlein, RA. Have Spacesuit will travel.
Rowling. Harry Potter books.
Article in American Libraries May 2000, p.42 (a whole long list -- very good place to start your project)
Pellegrina,
A search for Gordon R Dickson's ultimate library (The Final Encyclopedia) led me to John Gunn's article on Libraries in SF. I can imagine you might rather avoid it for fear of being drawn into a plagiarism trap, but when there is prior art on the subject, your work must compare and contrast itself. Consider yourself compelled there.
You have my sympathy for any difficulties this information may cause you.
By the way, there was an article or story, somewhere in the narratonoetic region that stretches from popular maths to science fiction, about the dire results of the exponential growth in scientific libraries. I somewhat expect an authoritative ID from someone on Making Light within 90 minutes of this comment, unless my presumption puts them off.
Pellegrina--Neil Gaiman dreamed up the best library ever in Sandman.
Ray Bradbury is a GREAT lover of libraries, having written Farenheit 451 in one, that novel giving us the Living Library, and giving free talks in many. Busy as he is, he is also generous, hence he might give you a few wonderful quotations that would enrich your thesis, if you write to him (his daughter will take his dictation as reply).
Janet Croft:
You nailed it. I cannot resist correcting some of the typos (the b in Umberto ...):
Librarians in Fantasy & SF
Smith, E.E. "Doc". Lensman series
Pratchett, Terry. Discworld series
Wolfe, Gene. Shadow of the Torturer
Star Trek: All My Yesterdays; Lights of Zetar. Star Trek book Memory Prime
Eco, Umberto. Name of the Rose
Springer, Nancy. Fair Peril
Robinson, Spider. Callahan's Bar
Bes shahar, eluki. The New Britomart in Chicks in Chainmail.
Another short story in Did You Say Chicks?
Heinlein, R.A. Have Spacesuit Will Travel.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter books.
I can't recall the story that predicted the modern use of the word "web" for the electronicized library, and dealt with successive miniaturizations to storage on individual molecules, then atoms, then quanta, then "notched" quanta... Eventually the entire moon (?) is the index, but the orginal complete contents have been lost.
"The Enchanted Duplicator" is a sort of anti-library story.
"Memex" by Vannevar Bush was a theoretical predecessor to electronically readable libraries, albeit he envisioned something extrapolated from microfilm technology. Ted Nelson cites that concept as an ancestor of Nelson's invention of Hypertext, itself cited as an ancestor of the Web.
I regret that my keynote address at the Hawaii Library Association had the recording botched to total loss.
D'OH! I seem to have assumed an initial "the," in contravention of common sense. So much for *#&@ clevertude.
...do they still have that place when you can buy a used clue for a quarter?
At last, a chance to give an equation inoffensively:
Do the Math: Brits Concoct Sitcom Formula
Pilcher and her team analyzed two decades' worth of British comedies and came up with a formula that looks like this: [((R x D + V) x F) + S]/A. Pilcher explains to the paper:
"Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognizability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V), and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).
"The difference in social status between the highest- and lowest-ranking characters (S) is added, and finally the total is divided by the success of any scheme or stratagem in the show (A). Each term in the formula is assigned a value up to a maximum of 10 to give an overall scientific score."
I don't think there is a book called Callahan's Bar. Are you perhaps thinking of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon?
As this is an open thread, I'd thought I'd ask a general question:
When, if ever, is it appropriate to use italics for emphasis in text?
Ex: The last time Alice ate chilled monkey brains, the prince had been pleased but it had turned her stomach. She was definitely not interested in doing that again.
I've read half a dozen different rules in different places and thought I'd ask for a few dozen more opinions, just to make sure I'm thoroughly confused.
A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi
or
A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave
More libraries:
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Lirael by Garth Nix
Beauty by Robin McKinley
and I can't believe no one has mentioned Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell...
The first is definitely SF; the others tend more toward fantasy.
Dunno if this has been mentioned here, but the latest installation of Song Of Ice And Fire (the first half of the first draft of A Feast For Crows) has been sent to it's publishers.
Early s-f information-science story: "Ms Fnd in a Lbry" by Hal Draper, from 17 x Infinity edited by Groff Conklin. A problem occurs after the entire Galactic Libary has been archived into a very small ( one cubic inch?) area of storage space.
Probably a more compelling later story: "Picnic on Paradise" by Joanna Russ. This describes a "Planetary Library" that contains indexed psychic holograph rods instead of books. (I think this predates the 3-D "talking book" library that eventually showed up on Star Trek.)
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep has ancient, alien, inadequately indexed archives of information and programming located in deep space. ISBN: 0812515285 for the paperback.
Oops. "And Chaos Died" by Joanna Russ. Not "Picnic on Paradise."
Greg Egan's Diaspora had a library of sorts, although it was virtual and highly interactive. I think he called it the Data Mines, or something like that?
Ooh, thanks, Michelle! That reminds me of the library in Janet Kagan's Mirabile.
Pellegrina,
"... an article or story, somewhere in the narratonoetic region that stretches from popular maths to science fiction, about the dire results of the exponential growth in scientific libraries."
was Kurd Lasswitz's story "The Universal Library", which appeared in Fantasia Mathematica, edited by Clifton Fadiman. This long-out-of-print gem was reissued a few years ago, along with its companion volume, The Mathematical Magpie.
And the library in "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", and Piper's "Omnilingual"; we could list titles for a week and barely scratch the surface. Oddly, the Clute and Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction does not have an article on libraries (but does have one on major research collections!); the Clute and Grant Encyclopedia of Fantasy has a one-column article on the theme.
One of my favorite SF libraries is a hallucination of sorts, in Alan Dean Foster's "Paths of the Perambulator from the Spellsinger series. His Humanx Commonwealth books also have several scenes set in "data archive" storage facilities. Nor Crystal Tears on the Thranx world, and a couple of the Flinx and Pip books as well.
I'm as astonished as S. Dawson that it took that long for Norrell's collection to appear.
The Battle of the Books [1710]
By Jonathan Swift
Edited by Jack Lynch
The text comes from A Tale of a Tub, to which is Added the Battle of the Books and the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920).
"... They are known to the World under several Names: As, Disputes, Arguments, Rejoynders, Brief Considerations, Answers, Replies, Remarks, Reflections, Objections, Confutations. For a very few Days they are fixed up all in Publick Places, either by themselves or their *Representatives, for Passengers to gaze at: From whence the chiefest and largest are removed to certain Magazines, they call Libraries, there to remain in a Quarter purposely assign'd them, and thenceforth begin to be called, Books of Controversie."
"In these Books, is wonderfully instilled and preserved, the Spirit of each Warrier, while he is alive; and after his Death, his Soul transmigrates there, to inform them. This, at least, is the more common Opinion; But, I believe, it is with Libraries, as with other Cemeteries, where some Philosophers affirm, that a certain Spirit, which they call Brutum hominis, hovers over the Monument, till the Body is corrupted, and turns to Dust or to Worms, but then vanishes or dissolves: So, we may say, a restless Spirit haunts over every Book, till Dust or Worms have seized upon it; which to some, may happen in a few Days, but to others, later; And therefore, Books of Controversy, being of all others, haunted by the most disorderly Spirits, have always been confined in a separate Lodge from the rest; and for fear of a mutual violence against each other, it was thought Prudent by our Ancestors, to bind them to the Peace with strong Iron Chains. Of which Invention, the original Occasion was this: When the Works of Scotus first came out, they were carried to a certain great Library, and had Lodgings appointed them; But this Author was no sooner settled, than he went to visit his Master Aristotle, and there both concerted together to seize Plato by main Force, and turn him out from his antient Station among the Divines, where he had peaceably dwelt near Eight Hundred Years. The Attempt succeeded, and the two Usurpers have reigned ever since in his stead: But to maintain Quiet for the future, it was decreed, that all Polemicks of the larger Size, should be held fast with a Chain."
"By this Expedient, the publick Peace of Libraries, might certainly have been preserved, if a new Species of controversial Books had not arose of late Years, instinct with a most malignant Spirit, from the War above-mentioned, between the Learned, about the higher Summity of Parnassus."
"When these Books were first admitted into the Publick Libraries, I remember to have said upon Occasion, to several Persons concerned, how I was sure, they would create Broyls wherever they came, unless a World of Care were taken..."
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