BrooklynWriter

Out this afternoon/evening at the ChiZine Publications double-barrelled two-part book launch -- one at the bookstore, one at The Central on Markham -- wherein I saw a good bucket of people, conversed on subjects from publishing in general to the difference between swear words in Quebecois French and France French to how Lester B. Pearson is a superhero but nobody seems to realize it, and had a nice cup of tea (Tuscany Pear). In between these things was dinner with devils_exercise and Karen and friends of theirs who have the awesomest 13-year-old daughter, and a trip to Romni, where yarn fell into my bag and money fell out. Oops.

(This was technically only half a yarn accident: I had gone specifically for the bamboo stuff I bought and saw Fitted Knits there and had already decided I wanted it, so that was fine. It's the two skeins of Punta Yarns Merisock at $20 a skein that brings the accident into yarn accident. It was really, really blue. I couldn't help it. It just happened.)

Headed home because it was stuffy and I was getting a monster headache, but I seem to actually like and enjoy extended bouts of social these days. Go figure.

And now, going to make some hot chocolate, take something to stave off the headache, and see if I can't squeeze some words out. Stay tuned.

Yes; I'm still in Florida with my folks. Not doing much but hanging out, going out to meals and reading for Best Horror #2. Helped my mom get onto facebook, which means I need to be discreet (hi mom!) in case she actually reads it.

The dial up is better than previously. I hope that by the time I'm here next they'll have wireless throughout the community. Right now, it's only in the clubhouse.

The weather is gorgeous. Sunny, hot, cool in the shade. Eat your hearts out northerners :-).

At World Fantasy there was a one-hour panel on the Google Book Settlement with Russell Davis, Karen Wester Newton, Charles Petit, Jay Lake, Christopher Kastensmidt, and Dan Gamber moderating. Though all agreed that the panel was too short it covered some good ground.

Sorry you missed it? Not to fear, Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column has the full podcast of it.

Here’s what the website/little book had to say about this (death) panel:

“The Google Books Settlement has caused worldwide controversy and will have a marked effect on every author and publisher. Hear various viewpoints on this issue.”

It’s sort of like saying, “Well, you can throw this match in that pool of gasoline, but there might be some side effects.”

Animated does not do this panel justice. So, let me say, up front, that, whatever they’re paying Russell Davis for being the Prez of Sifwa (Science Fiction Writers of America): It ain’t enough. It ain’t nearly enough. That guy is a rockin’ firebrand, folks and if you doubt my words, well …

Click through to read the rest of his review of the panel or follow this link to the MP3 of the full panel.

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The annotations for the next chapter, Gene Dreams, are

The annotated version of this chapter will be completed after I get off book tour—in November and December, 2009.

—SB

Should I keep going or wait until the annotations are up?

"Thatcher has died."

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The New Orleans Museum of Art people told us they expect a big jump in the sales of TWTMNO and TYBTF in the museum's store in a few weeks, after the Disney release, The Princess and the Frog, opens, because this is the first "American" princess (Pocahontas?), and because she's location specific, and these two books are easily reader accessible in explaining about a place that most Americans really know nothing about.

I don't know what to think about this.

There WILL BE a humongous gumbo dinner tonight, to celebrate the participants of the Congo Square Symposium, and I DO know what to think about that!

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2009) — Penguins that died 44,000 years ago in Antarctica have provided extraordinary frozen DNA samples that challenge the accuracy of traditional genetic aging measurements, and suggest those approaches have been routinely underestimating the age of many specimens by 200 to 600 percent.

Reading along in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) by David Hackett Fischer.  The second folkway is that of "South of England to Virginia,", i.e. a/k/a the Chesapeake region of the New World Atlantic coast. 

In the section titled "The Cradle of Virginia: The South of England," pp. 241 - 43 Hackett states:

"During the early middle ages slavery had existed on a large scale throughout Mercia, Wessex and Sussex, and had lasted longer there than in other parts of England.  Historian D.J.V. Fisher writes that "the fate of many of the natives was not extermination but slavery." (5)  This was not merely domestic bondage, but slavery on a larger scale.  During the eighth and ninth centuries, the size of major slaveholdings in th south of England reached levels comparable to large plantations in the Americn South.  When Bishop Wilfred aquired Selsey in Sussex, he emancipated 250 slaves on a single estate.  Few plantations in the American South were so large even at their peak in the nineteenth century. (6)  Serfdom also had been exceptionally strong in this region.  Painstaking analysis of the Domesday book by historical geographers has shown that the proportion of servi was larger in Wessex than in other parts of England. (7)

By the time of American colonization, both slavery and serfdom were long gone from this region.  But other forms of social obligation remained very strong in the seventeenth century.  A smaller part of the population were freeholders in the south and west of England than in East Anglia. (8)"

Which set me wondering why so.  Which naturally leads one to Rome as all roads will.  Even prior to the Roman colonization of Britain they were trading with southwestern Britain, principally for iron, tin and copper, as well as the gold in Wales.  Mining is almost always slave labor.  Rome is characterized as one of the 5 historical slave-based economies (interestingly, to me, at least, one of the reasons the staunch republican, Lucius Vorenus, in the HBO Rome series (2005 - 2007) gives for supporting Julius Caesar's coronation as dictator for life is that the soldier believes Caesar when he says he will create jobs - work, for the Roman citizens, which they are starved for, since almost all the labor is performed by slaves.  This is a further irony since Caesar's conquests were responsible for so many affordable slaves in the markets.) As well, all around the Mediterranean, post the 'fall' of Rome, slavery remained intact through the 18th century -- it was particularly strong in the 15th century, prior to Colombo's first voyage to the New World.

So I went looking, and this is what I found:  Rome conquered the southwest of Britain first, and stayed there the longest, and built the most extensive network of villas and markets there.  Thus the extensive and persistent practice of slavery, serfdom and then other forms of class-social subservience.  This might also, then, explain why this region was most connected, and thus loyal to the English kings and throne.  This is the region of the Cavaliers, and these are the same elite families that settled Virginia, many of whom are still in positions of ownership, power and wealth today.

History provides many painful pleasures in the revelation of the persistence of cultural identity and folkways.

Brand's annotations

Actually, this chapter might annoy environmentalists even more than the previous one did.

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See? I do like some things. I even like a few things everybody else likes.

But I have a question. Apparently the movie is based on a series of five books called The Crane-Iron Pentology by Wuxia novelist Wang Dulu. Why have these books never been translated into English? Are they written in Manchu or Cantonese?

Anyone out there know?

I must have these books.

In an announcement that has scientist and science-fiction authors alike reeling with the new possibilities, NASA announced today that it has found a “significant amount” of frozen water on the moon.

Preliminary data from a dramatic experiment on the moon “indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater,” NASA said in a statement.

“The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon,” it added, as ecstatic scientists celebrated the landmark discovery.

Read the full article for more details. Our question is: How many science-fiction books and stories have just become out-dated, do you think?

via Brandie Tarvin

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Jo Walton's enthuses about Fred Pohl while K Tempest Bradford does much the same for Dollhouse's deserved cancellation.

Poll #1485343
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 68

The statement "in 1966 the British government banned rock 'n' roll on the radio" is

by Juliette Wade

Neural networks are really amazing things. In my last post I talked about how a word brings up all of its meanings simultaneously; today I’m going to talk about how that’s not all it brings up.

I’m talking about connotations and allusion.

Along with all of its meanings, the mention of a word can bring up all the contexts in which we’ve encountered it. With exceedingly common words, there may not be a particular context that stands out, and the word may have a more generic feeling. With less common words, we may really notice how they evoke the context in which they were created (Quidditch, anyone?) or in which they were used. Regardless, these contexts always tag along, and they influence the way we hear a word.

Has anyone ever tried to use the word “ejaculate” as a dialog tag? No? It used to be common enough, but I’m guessing you can see why we don’t use it so much that way any more. (Dialog tags are out of fashion anyway because they can be distracting.)

This reminds me of a discussion I had on the Analog forum about euphemisms. They tend to get “used up” and replaced by others quite quickly. Why? Because of the contexts in which they are used. If those contexts are considered dirty or low, then the quality of the context will be evoked in the speaker or writer’s mind with every occurrence of the word, and eventually the word will be sullied by its association with that context.

In my classes at the school of Education at UC Berkeley, occasionally the word “intertextuality” came up. It essentially means that a word will evoke in the reader’s mind all the texts in which they have seen it. “Monster” can bring up Frankenstein, or Monsters Inc. or any number of other things. This is one of the reasons that my friend Paul Carlson was able to put together his list of words that evoke particular genres (find it here).

When you’re writing, it might be daunting to remember that there are a million layers floating behind everything you say, particularly when you choose a word that doesn’t occur so frequently as to become semi-generic. Almost any word can become more than it is, much like the few critical words used in ancient Japanese poetry (I’m thinking primarily of tanka, not haiku).

Daunting, sure – but what an opportunity! This stuff can allows you to imbue a scene with a sense of foreboding or excitement. The other thing it can do is allow you to illuminate your point of view character. All of the judgments of value inherent in a particular word will reflect on the user of that word. We see this all the time in oral language when we judge people based on their use of cuss words or insulting words for others. In a piece of narrative writing, all those judgments will be associated with the point of view character. It’s one of the ways that point of view can extend into your writing far beyond the simple first and third person pronouns.

That’s it for today, but stay tuned for the next installment.

Juliette Wade is an author of science fiction and fantasy who loves language and its cultural consequences. Her fiction appears in Analog and other short fiction magazines. She has degrees in Linguistics, Anthropology and Japanese.

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While hanging out in the hall at WFC, I bumped into Terry Bisson and excitedly introduced myself.  In a weird way, Terry is responsible for several writer-related things in my life.  In early 2003 I took his class at the New School on writing science fiction, fantasy and horror after deciding I wanted to devote more of my life to writing.  Terry had just taken a leave of absence and so the class was taught by editor Alice Turner.  Through Alice, I was hooked up with my current writers group, Altered Fluid, which formed after taking Terry’s class.  Alice and Terry were also the founders of the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series, of which I am now the co-host with Ellen Datlow.  Plus I also happen to be a huge fan of Terry’s writing.  So it was really cool to run into him in the hallway.  Mercurio Rivera suggested we take a picture for posterity, so here it is:

Where Charles Martel is victorious but dies at Tours? I'm looking for a No Charlemagne timeline where Charlemagne's career is aborted before it happened (but not one of the Culture Wars "and the Muslims swept north to the very pole itself" timelines).

Bring me little water now

Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

Nicked from mckitterick

Sybil’s Garage, the acclaimed speculative fiction magazine, will be opening to submissions for our seventh issue on January 15, 2010.

Guidelines can be found here.

1. VNEART WAR #2 has gone off to the editor, only a month late. It's got good bones, but it needs to spend some time in the gym and spa, if you know what I mean. Thankfully, we have a good trainer. Now I get an hour to rest, and I have to start revisions for MUSTANG. Some day I will get a whole day of nothing but writing new stuff?

2. LIbco, whoever you are, sending people to spam the "Why do Catholics" post isn't going to win you any point. Conversations are treated with dignity, trolls and spam gets deleted.

3. I am amused to note that, on the story that was rejected, the editor found the first part intriguing and well-done. I note this because that very same opening got panned by a majority of my writers group, who didn't like it at all, for many of the reasons the editor DID like it.

Listen to advice, but trust your instincts.


And now I am away, possibly for much of the weekend. Play nice, y'all!

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