Magenta Griffith:
Lucrative FOR THE PUBLISHER! The silly Mathematicians (and scientists in general) get paid zero, and often have pay "page charges" (extra if color illos). The publishers pocket the $$$, and thgen charge arms & legs to the colleges and corporations that employ the silly authors. The journal publishers net over $100,000,000. That's enough to attract organized crime (in my story, at least). Why do authors do this?
(1) Psychological ownership. "I'm a Mathematician (Chemist/Biologist,...) writing for an audience of my fellow Mathematicians (Chemists/Biologists,...) with papers edited by yet more Mathematicians (Chemists/Biologists,...), so it's all cool.
(2) Geoff Landis claims that there must be a value per average paper published per average author, maybe in the $2,000 to $10,000 range in lifetime earnings (hired/promoted/tenured earlier) including salary, grants, benefits.
I've learned from Patrick & Teresa & my parents to be VERY skeptical of such reasoning.
"Writing should not be easy. Bowling should be easy. Writing should be hard." -- Harlan Ellison
I've been having trouble for over 6 months writing a story ("Playing the Numbers") about the Mafia trying to muscle into the lucrative Mathematics journals. Not every human being has an equation inside them struggling to emerge!
Lucy Kemnitzer:
Unless Bradbury were of Irish aristocracy, a chess champion, a pistol champion, and... oh, I see. Well, they HAVE both had theatrical success, many publications, fame and fortune (albeit Dunsany was born into Nivenesque wealth), and have several books of poetry published as loss-leaders because their prose sells so well. And, yes, they both are very enthusuastic (enough so that one tends to forgive self-indulgences), widely self-educated, and are delighted to break any rules as their muse demands. I'm giddy myself, but where's your problem with Ray?
Inversely, there's Poetry 4 Physicists
The only poetry that has a dual wave-particle nature, until you observe it, of course.
Hannah Rose Baker
Hark! The quark! Wilson Laboratory hosts first-ever poet-in-residence, By Franklin Crawford
David Cassel, Cornell physics professor and associate director of Wilson Laboratory, shows Bridget Meeds, the lab's new poet-in-residence, the synchrotron's vacuum status panel in the facility's control room. Charles Harrington/University Photography
POETRY FOR PHYSICISTS
About a year ago, while conducting Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy experiments in the 2 MEV Van de Graff Accelerator Lab, I was seized by a startling revelation. I am sure that I will look back on the insight as the happiest thought of my life. "What," I wondered to myself, bathed in the soft green glow from the controlling terminal, "would it be like if words meant things?" I was caught off guard. For in such an imaginary world, one could use words to say things that meant something! Emotions could be captured, laughter could be preservered, and thought could be expressed! I quickly recorded this profound discovery in my lab notebook before it had a chance to fade from my mind. The proof of my theorem was trivial in one and two dimensions, but I had a hard time extending it to the twenty-four dimensions in which we live. It wasn't until 6:00 AM the next morning that I realized the magnitude of what I had discovered. I had discovered the New Conservative Literature.
I might not be encouraged (or allowed) to have posted this article in Making Light, but it is an amazing amalgam of Literature, Math, History, and Biography:
"Tolstoy's Integration Metaphor from War and Peace", Stephen T. Ahearn, American Mathematical Monthly, 112 (Aug-Sep 2005) pp.631-638.
===================
The Converse of Making Light
===================
You ask: "What goes faster than light?"
I know, sure as day follows night.
It's the inverse of spark,
that old demon Dark,
It always gets there first, alright?
Sean McMullen, GOH Jane Yolen, and her guitar-god son Adam Stemple were the non-no-shows at the Worldcon panel: "The Family Business: So Maybe it's In the Genes?"
"Why do some familes produce more than one writer? What's it like? Can you share worlds?"
Briefly onstage, I mentioned some of the 9 professional writers in my family, but need not provide detail here. But it would be cool if Jane, Adam, or Sean could write up their observations!
Geneology meets Bibliography.
Metaphor: a parallelogram in the space of ideas.
"A is to B as C is to D" locates four points in the Ideocosm (the space of all possible ideas). Sometimes, in literature, one of these points is implicit.
"A is to B" is a vector, with tail at A and head at B (I note that metaphors occur in Mathematics). The vector has a direction; it points in a particular way.
"C is to D" is a vector.
"A is to B... AS... C is to D" tells us that those two vectors are parallel.
When one says "figure of speech," one may analyze the laws of figure (Geometry), as well as the laws of speech.
No actual polygons were injured in the writing of this PARAble.
Harry Potter and the genetics lesson
Scientists say popular books can be used to teach about recessive genes
By Matthew Herper
Forbes
Updated: 11:55 a.m. ET Aug. 16, 2005
"... The idea is set forth in a short letter in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature, by Jeffrey M. Craig, Renee Dow and MaryAnne Aitken, experts in treating and counseling children with genetic diseases at Royal Children's Hospital in Australia...."
"... In the scenario, there are two versions of the gene for magical ability — the M version, which creates muggles, and the W version, which is needed for wizardry. But everyone gets two copies of the gene — one from each parent — and even a single M scuttles any hope for a magical career...."
Stefan Jones:
I think that you are right in ascribing the John Dos Passos/USA Trilogy approach to John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar -- I'd discussed that with him.
I also think you're right that Dave Brin used it in "Earth." Brin was attracted to the journalistic sweep of this because, for one thing, his father, the late Herb Brin, was a newspaperman. The elder Brin had worked side by side with Leonard Wibberly in Chicago (the Tribune?), and then the Los Angeles Times, and then founded and ran Heritage, one of the great Jewish newspapers of America.
Dave Brin set Earth 50 years in the future because he felt challenged by this as the most difficult era for Science Fiction -- far enough in the future to make linear extrapolation unreliable, and technological prediction difficult, but not so far in the future that anything could seem plausible.
Dave Brin would also feel some kinship with the political stance of Dos Passos, in that Dave is an unreconstructed Mondale Democrat, with Progressive feelings, and self-described Feminist slant.
Stylistically, I see some parallels between Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer and the USA Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money), that major work of American realist novelist John Dos Passos. Global events as background, epic scope, huge cast, newspaper headlines, impressionistic or pointillistic montage (as Larry Niven tries for at times).
Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little:
"... The main identifying symptom being that in magic realism, the intrusion of magic into reality is not the point and is treated as ordinary by all the characters."
One can either take this as a marker for the genre or, if I may be perverse for a moment, that Magical Realism is Science Fiction set in an alternate universe where human nature is different, in terms of curiousity, or approach to identifying lawfulness in the cosmos.
In that case, it is parallel to the genre of pornography, which (as has been discussed somewhere in an earlier thread) is Science Fiction set in an alternate universe where human nature is different, in terms of willingness to please strangers, lack of incest taboo, nature of orgasm, refractory period, deficiency of STDs, and other aspects.
PiscusFiche: I hereby politely decline the tempting request to launch into a lecture...
adamsj:
WORLD COMES TO AN END: no more civilization, or people, or worse...
Totally apocalyptic novels may have started as a subgenre of science fiction with "The Last Man", by Cousin de Grainville (1805), the author being a rather a heretical priest. In terms of literally destroying the planet Earth, we may start with astronomer Camille Flammarion's "Omega: The Last Days of the World" (1893).
Some simply smashing books:
* "The Last Man", by Cousin de Grainville (1805)
* "The Last Man", by Mary Shelley [18??]: Plague
* "Omega: The Last Days of the World" by Camille Flammarion (1893)
* "Etidorpha: on the End of Earth" by John Uri Lloyd [Lloyd, 1895; Sun, 1975; Pocket]
* "The Purple Cloud" by M. P. Shiel (1901): volcanic gas kills everyone except the protagonist
* "The Second Deluge" by Garrett P. Serviss (1912): Earth flooded by watery nebula, a few people saved by a second Ark
* "The Poison Belt" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1913)
* "The Scarlet Plague" by Jack London (1915): disease permanently ends civilization....
Marilee:
"Big Fish wasn't magic realism. It was a set of fairy tales from a father to a son."
Well, yes. But the final scenes, on two levels, in terms of the son's final story told back to his father, and in terms of who is at the funeral (he said, carefully avoiding spoliers) provide the nuance that led me to ask the question.
I mostly agree with you about Discworld as "really satire, set in fantasy because it gives [Terry Pratchett] more room to move," except for the effort that he makes to provide consistency, structure, and almost axiomatic interrelationships between magical objects, beings, and processes. In some sense, he seems to be simultaneously critiquing and participating in the "Fantasy with rivets" program.
Not all satire is so carefully thought through. It is one thing to demolish a system; quite another to hint at an alternative, or joke that one is hinting.
Paula Lieberman:
You're right, even when you politely explain how I'm wrong.
Warbird Alley: McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk
"Initially dubbed 'Heinemann's Hot Rod' after chief design engineer Ed Heinemann, the A-4 Skyhawk is one of the best jet aircraft to have served with the US Navy and Marine Corps. Chosen to replace the A-1 Skyraider, the A-4's small design and light weight gave it the speed and power to exceed the Navy's specifications and fight on until today in air forces around the world."
"The delta wing aircraft houses its avionics in the nose, along with a pair of cannons for dealing with aerial adversaries. The wings hold the fuel tanks, and the Pratt & Whitney turbojet fits snugly in the fuselage. Ordered during the Korean War, the A-4 was delivered to the US Navy VA-72 attack squadron on October 26, 1956...."
Warbird Alley: Grumman F4F Wildcat
"In 1936 the US Navy evaluated a number of designs which were competing to be the Navy's new carrier-based fighter. Grumman built a design which, after several re-designations and airframe modifications, won the contract and eventually became the F4F Wildcat. The prototype, the XF4F-2, first flew on 2 September 1937. The prototype of an improved version, the XF4F-3, was renamed the F4F and was ordered by the Navy in August of 1939. The first five aircraft off the assembly line were sent to Canada, with the next 90 (designated 'Martlet Mk I' going to the 804 Squadron of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm where, in December 1940, two Martlets made history by becoming the first American-made aircraft to down a German plane in WWII."
"The first US Navy F4F-3 was flown on 20 August 1940, powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engine with 1,200 horsepower. The subsequent F4F-4, incorporating several improvements including folding wings, six guns and self-sealing fuel tanks, was delivered in November 1941. It was then that the name "Wildcat" was first given to the F4F. As war raged around the world, the Wildcat's reputation and utilization grew immensely. It flew with the US Navy and US Marines in all of the major Pacific battles, and in North Africa with the Navy...."
There was an acceptance speech (I cunningly disguise the recipient here with vagueness) at the Science Fiction Research Association's annual conference in Las Vegas this June.
In said speech, said recipient at one point said: "a solar system is bigger than a galaxy. Or is it the other way around? I can never remember."
Afterwards, this being a banquet, I thanked said speechifier for that passage. "I'm assuming, as a former Astronomy professor, that this was a clever joke about academics and the 'Two Cultures' hypothesis, and alluding to Sherlock Holmes telling an astonished Watson that he didn't know if the Earth revolved around the Sun or vice versa, and didn't care unless it was germane to a case...?"
"Oh, right," came the awkward reply. "A joke. Yes. Of course..."
I believe that there were roughly 1,000,000 Jews in the world in 1600 A.D.; so that, if you can trace your ancestry to one of them, the odds are good that you can tap into rabbinical records.
I tell my son that he's a direct descendant from Aaron, brother of Moses, son of Jethro, having found that 1600 link.
Ship? Who neds a ship? See, there was this Red Sea, and...
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