The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Anne KG Murphy:

On maps...

When my sister and I went to Spain, we took the train to Cordoba, where we had a reservation to stay in a hostel in the historic quarter near the Mezquita. At the train station we stopped to get a map of the town, but though the street we were staying on was listed in the index, the area on the map the index referred us to did not show the street.

The woman at the information booth told us she could not help us, that we should go to that area, and then ask. There were many little streets too small to show on the map.

So we walked through the narrow white streets of Cordoba. We stopped at a bookstore to see about getting a bigger map, but it still did not show our street. So we walked past La Mezquita, and we were as near as we knew how to get. I stopped next to a cab and asked the driver (in Spanish) if he knew where our street was. He was not sure. He pointed in a direction away from the Mosque, and told us to go that way a few blocks, and then ask again. Baffled that a cab driver could not be more specific, this is what we did. A few blocks later, a store clerk told us which fork of the road to take (roads split off at random angles in this district) to find the road we sought.

In the end it worked, and we found the little hostel, and had a very nice stay in Cordoba. And I am secretly delighted to see that although the satellite view shows the intricate mess of narrow streets and walkways, google maps cannot report on the street names to a fine enough resolution to support the inquiry we had to this day. Even with my iPhone I would still have to go there, and ask. And maybe that's a good thing.

Hugs and further well-wishes from rainy Michigan. Here's hoping Teresa finds the motivation to rest not only in the hospital but after it, boredom aside.

John, I thought Deutschland as well, but the letter e comes through anyway. However, I went from there to ewe to light brown... Which admittedly isn't the animal name in the same way as many of these...

Before the days when cell phones were so common I was in the second car behind a car that rolled off the road in heavy snow on highway 80 in Iowa. After a quick conversation the driver of the first car behind it (we both stopped) drove on to get help from the next town and we stayed to offer help onsite. The car had rolled onto the passenger side and then upside down; the driver and the passenger both got out of the car and were walking away from it by the time we got to it (it was behind where we'd managed to stop, and down in a ditch). The driver showed no signs of impact but the passenger had clearly hit the side of her head against the window of the car, which had broken either from that or impact with the ground. Luckily she was protecting her face with her hand at the time, so the hand was more badly cut and her face was relatively fine, but I was very concerned about her neck.

The driver and the other two guys with me stood outside our car and chatted (the driver wanted to smoke to settle his nerves) while I sat the girl in the back seat of our car, made her keep her head perfectly still, looking forward, put my coat over her lap as the nearest thing I had to a blanket (we may have put an additional coat over her shoulders, I don't remember), and had her raise her arm so her hand didn't bleed as fast (it wasn't badly cut, but still), and then proceeded with the making of small talk to find out about her and help keep her conscious and distracted/less shocky if possible.

When the EMT got there and decided she really did need an ambulance, she then made me hold the girl's head in the position I already had her maintaining, which was really really awkward and hard for me to do without introducing motion to her head and neck, until the ambulance got there. I don't know how long that took but it was one of the loooongest waiting periods of my life. Then they put a neck brace on her and took her out of the car. Because I wasn't related the hospital wouldn't give me details about them the next day, but said they were all right.

It really seemed to me that it was easier for the girl to immobilize her own head than for me to do so, though it would have been different if I'd had her lie down, I suppose, but that would have been tactically difficult in a small car. When a person is conscious and calm (unlike the patient in the video), is it really more effective for another person to try to hold their neck still (inline) than for them to do so themselves?

One of my clearest memories from when I was a teen is of my father coming home and hitting the sixth step listed. He walked into the house looking fine, put his back to the kitchen counter, and leaned against it, and all the blood drained out of his face, leaving him pale and frail looking. My sister and I were immediately concerned, but he was all right, he'd just waited until he got home to let go and process the stress of being the first responder to an accident in which a kid on a bike crossing the street (with the light) hit a car coming in the opposite direction that turned left right in front of him (driver failed to see the bike).

Somehow the kid and the bike went over the car in such a way that both the kid's legs were broken - in my memory, this involved his legs getting wrapped around the handlebars of the bike, so when I crashed my own bike into a car years later I was so intent on getting away from the bike the bike went one way and I went another as I jumped off of it.

My body taught me to expect to need downtime after extended stress as well after an international move in 1998 that took four days - cleared and cleaned the apartment (day 1), hit another city to pick up some things, had trouble with regard to my visa at the border (Canada), though we eventually did clear it up (after I was sternly warned they didn't have to let me in),(day 2) cleared our stuff through customs into the new country, moved into the new apartment,(day 3) then came back to the States to my parents' house (day 4) and were about to leave the next day for a trip down Route 66 and my body had had it - I threw up and started hyperventilating that morning. A walk-in clinic doctor took one look at me and asked if I'd done anything stressful lately, and prescribed 3 days' bed rest... you really do have to let yourself recover.

Not re: TV shows, but I'm not sure this has been mentioned here yet so I'll bring it up. The SF Editors wiki will hopefully be helpful to people pondering the question of what editors (and possibly also reminding them of what books) should be nominated for the Hugo Awards.

The presentation is not that dramatic, being a straightforward wiki, but Kathryn Cramer's taken a swing at it and Steven Silver's had a hand in as well, so the information is already much more fleshed out than it was a mere week ago (which is greatly appreciated). A few editors have emailed me books to post and I continue to encourage people to do that (to akgmurphy (at) gmail) if you'd rather not play in the wiki code yourself.

Fen who are not editors are also welcome to post information (from reliable sources, please). And I will note with delight (tickling my own interest in history) that the wiki has taken an historical turn; people are welcome to enter information for former sf editors as well as those currently active in the field.

Caloo Calay!

Congratulations to Patrick and to all the Hugo Award winners, and also to Ms. Novik for getting the Campbell and for her wonderful fashion sense. (Thanks for the link to Chris' photos, Patrick.)

PS. *love* for the spelling reference under the html tags in the "Post a comment" instructions.

Speaking of editorial credits being on the copyright page, in case people haven't noticed, on many editions amazon.com has started offering a view of an image of the copyright page. That's how I confirmed some of the books I added to Teresa's wikipedia page. On books that have this on amazon, there's a group of links at the top of the book entry. as in:

Explore: Citations | Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats | SIPs | CAPs
Browse: Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Go to the copyright page of the 1st edition to see if there's an editorial credit.

Bill Higgins just emailed me a quote from Teresa to put up, which is a good idea, and I thought I'd mention to folks in general that as a wiki editor I'm happy to add things (articles/additions/corrections) to wikipedia, wikiquote, or even conrunner.net for people (please provide source references if possible). My username is Netmouse in all of those places, and you can email me at that username at netmouse.com.

mmm... Nothing like a good excuse to update Teresa's wikipedia entry. (Raising all kind of issues in my mind about how to properly represent the work of a book editor in Wikipedia, noting for instance that the only things listed in David G. Hartwell's bibliography on wikipedia are Anthologies (though some of his more notable book projects are mentioned in his initial biography). I suppose it should be Bibliography, split into Editor and Nonfiction? Does Tor even keep records of who edited everything?

I like the way you listed your projects, in that it reflects the fact that there is still editorial work to be done in further editions. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that consideration for the new Hugo Award for Best Editor Long Form will be based on newly introduced books.


(And for those of you who haven't noticed it, the WikiQuote Project's page for Teresa longs for your favorites to be added. )

Er, um, guess I've just decided I have time, and Cheryl Morgan will give me space. I'll let you all know if and when we have this short fiction review system of which I speak up and running.

Lis mentions the NESFA list, which gets very useful near the end of the year (right now, already nearly 3 months into this year, there's almost nothing on it - literally nothing in any fiction category shorter than Novel). I find it valuable for a Hugo-nominations "ought to read" consideration list, just like Locus' recommended reading or the recommendations list Cheryl puts up on the Emerald City site (which is open to input from anyone), but it doesn't really serve as a during-the-year what-shall-I-read list, I find.

I'm not sure people would be interested in a database-driven ratings-based short fiction review system, but if I had the time that's what I'd build.

Belated wishes for a most excellent year. We will celebrate you throughout.

Yes, congrats Patrick, and Teresa, and everyone else. It's nice to see a Novel ballot that looks up in the air because it holds so many excellent candidates.

Will, as for short fiction, it is a dificult challenge to keep an eye out for high quality short work, partly because it's a really wide field. Not only are there both print and online magazines, but also many anthology editors solicit original works from specific authors, an area of short fiction publishing that can be less likely to get award attention than the big three and other magazines. And, some of our authors are getting published in non-genre publications as well.

Locus maintains lists of web and e-zines as well as magazines on their links and portals page, but I note that SCI FICTION is no longer an active publication and the list of print magazines is missing Subterranean Magazine, a newcomer by Subterranean Press. Subterranean published what I thought was one of the best short stories of last year, "Last Breath" by Joe Hill.

You will read a lot of good fiction if you read Analog, Asimovs, and F & SF but there is also excellent fiction being published elsewhere. I'm not sure there's an easy way to stay abreast of the whole field, however. Reading reviews in magazines such as Locus may help, but is its own time commitment. Fandom could really use a short fiction index/recommender system. In the meantime, if you have authors you favor, I recommend following their blogs to see where and when they are published.

Call Oprah. Get Nader and Teresa on the soundstage together with a live audience...

Charlie, you're right we're looking at different sources, but I was also misreading my source, a debriefed US soldier, who spent spent 7 months at "Camp Blue Diamond" in Ramadi. His father's report of his debrief of his son said "Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe). Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in "sacrifice squads". Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters."

but then went on to say,

"In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. [...] Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago."

While I would agree that the current situation is largely of our own making, I would also agree that the current presence of coalition forces is helping prevent genocide. I wish our administration were of the sort that would encourage a completely secular government, but I'm afraid it is not. Still, schools and hospitals are being built, power and other services are being restored. That's good progress, it just doesn't mean we really have a plan.

So far as I've heard, there is a problem with insurgents joining the military or the police in Iraq - they get free training and equipment, and find out who the loyal police are so they can arrange to kill them...

I doubt this was an official police action... it sounds like an action intended to make the police look bad while also forwarding some other agenda. But it could certainly have involved people who are, in fact, police. And they could also be "insurgents" - these people don't wear labels you know.



However I would tend to disagree with Bob's reference to an Iraqi civil war. From what I've heard from the front, a *lot* of the so-called insurgents are imported terrorists from other countries. Having people like that fight over control of your country doesn't seem to me to qualify as a civil war.

Jonah: That post from Steven was June 17 - the revisions referred to in that post were the ones he wished to make before sending a draft to Teresa. Now he will wait for Teresa's comments, then the book will no doubt be revised again. This is a not uncommon way in which an author interacts with an editor. After all, Teresa may not take to the goofy antics of young Melvin, no matter how many times Loiosh hurts him, or threatens to.

There is little way of knowing how many cycles this will go in or how much time there is from now until the book comes out, but I join you in hoping it will not be long.

Nice so far. The font size is at the low end of what's comfortable for me, but still in it.

Amused to note that the title piece of the welcome to Making Light, incorporating Electrolite post has no indication of the author and yet I could tell Teresa wrote it.

-I know it was Teresa because I checked and, as I expected, the front page of the blog indicates author, but then when you go to the comments page, the author indication is lost. I came here through the Making Light RSS feed on LiveJournal, which took me straight to the comments page. Considering all the discussion of it beforehand, I suspect you'll want to change something about that so that those who continue to subscribe to the notification-rather-than-fulltext feed will be able to see which of you wrote the post. (It may be an issue for the fulltext feed as well, I don't know, I haven't seen it.) Also handy for those following any other type of direct link.

And once you're settled a bit, don't forget to change the text in http://www.blogads.com/qoiqbojydpn/electrolite/advertise and http://www.blogads.com/qoiqbojydpn/electrolitemakinglighttextads/advertise

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