Just casually appearing from the clock across the hall

[sovay]

I am at Readercon. I did not sleep more than an hour in the afternoon, but "Old Hollywood in Recent Speculative Fiction" was delightful and then I spent the next couple of hours with nineweaving and ashnistrike, eating honeyed salt cakes and potentially hooking up the latter with selkie's temple. I have already encountered several people whom I had not seen in far too long and I am looking forward to meeting ARCs of Forget the Sleepless Shores tomorrow, along with the majority of my panels. Saturday I have nothing but other people's programming and have fantasies of sleep.

1. Courtesy of selidor: some clarification (and a transcription) of that third-century CE clay tablet of Odyssey 14. I don't think I knew that the current oldest written piece of the Odyssey is a fifth-century BCE potsherd from what is now Ukraine. That makes me very happy.

2. Here is something that time cannot restore, but the present can still honor: Michael Bradley's Puaki reveals in digital photography the chiseled ink of Māori tā moko that disappears—effectively erased from the face that bore it—through the chemical idiosyncracies of the wet-plate photographic process, the European colonizers' major tool of visual record. Unlike the tarnished images of daguerreotypes, the lost tattoos of the past cannot be recovered, but the paired photographs of Bradley's project can serve as both celebration of the tradition's renascence and reminder of its loss.

3. Years ago in a discussion of the game "devil in the dark," ethelmay linked me to an amazing piece of early twentieth century idfic called "The Dark" (1909). Somehow it did not register with me until last night that the Rosamund Nesbit Bland who wrote it was E. Nesbit's daughter. I even thought of it while reading Nesbit's horror because "The Power of Darkness" (1905) depends on a protagonist's vivid fear of the dark. I wonder if there is any link or just proximity.

It is not helpful that I have to get up in eight hours and my brain thinks it would like to try experimenting with fic for Sapphire & Steel (1979–82).

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I very much hope you get sleep, but can't feel that S&S fic is a bad thing either!

[sovay]

I very much hope you get sleep, but can't feel that S&S fic is a bad thing either!

Thank you! I got sort of sleep and thought about transuranics!

[landofnowhere]

Thanks for the idfic! It left me wanting to find out about Rosamund Nesbit Bland -- and I was disappointed I couldn't find out more about her from the internet. She tried to run off with H. G. Wells but was stopped by her father. She ended up marrying Clifford Sharp, the first editor of the New Statesman in 1909, the same year that her story came out. It seems to have been a generally unsatisfactory marriage and she had to support the family by working at at advertising agency.

[sovay]

Thanks for the idfic! It left me wanting to find out about Rosamund Nesbit Bland -- and I was disappointed I couldn't find out more about her from the internet.

You're welcome! And ditto; I couldn't get much information on her at all. Wikipedia told me that she and Nesbit had collaborated on something called Cat Tales (1905), but I couldn't find a copy online to read.

[kore]

Oh I think I remember him, didn't he have an affair with Katherine Mansfield? Rosamund Bland was a student of Ouspensky's, who wrote about Mansfield and Gurdjieff (sp). (Rosamund and Mansfield also had affairs with Orage, who introduced both of them to Gurdjieff's teachings.) There is a little more info here

http://www.gurdjiefflegacy.org/archives/rosamundbland.htm

Sadly, after Bland died, both Edith and Rosamund tried to rekindle their relationships with Wells, who snubbed them -- Rosamund wrote him a love letter, reprinted in Julia Briggs' biography of her mother.

[sovay]

There is a little more info here

Thanks! That's more than I had.

She has a good face.

[pameladean]

*haring off on a largely irrelevant side track with enticing ferns on it* WAIT. There's a game called "devil in the dark"? I only know that phrase as the title of the iconic original Trek episode about the Horta. But of course the title ceases to be banal and weird and makes perfect sense if there's a game. Wow. My thirteen-year-old self is much enlightened!

I did make a brief attempt to search on the phrase, but the Trek episode and the 2017 horror movie confounded my efforts.

I'm glad you are having good convention things happen and hope sleep will deign to visit you.

P.

[sovay]

I only know that phrase as the title of the iconic original Trek episode about the Horta. But of course the title ceases to be banal and weird and makes perfect sense if there's a game. Wow. My thirteen-year-old self is much enlightened!

I am glad! I think I knew about the game first, because I remember reading a description of it in a sort of catalogue of children's games and folk songs in elementary school and I didn't even read the James Blish novelizations of original Trek before high school, but I have never actually played it myself.

(I did not know there was a 2017 horror movie. That's just confusing things.)

I'm glad you are having good convention things happen and hope sleep will deign to visit you.

Thank you! I slept four hours in pieces last night and am presently attempting to decompress from a surprisingly nice day in time to achieve more sleep tonight.

[gwynnega]

Yay Forget the Sleepless Shores ARCs! I preordered a copy yesterday.

[sovay]

Yay Forget the Sleepless Shores ARCs! I preordered a copy yesterday.

Thank you!

It's a beautiful book!

[kore]

I just ordered my copy!

[sovay]

I just ordered my copy!

Yay! Thank you!

[jesse_the_k]

THANK YOU for #2.

This is fascinating, and further proof that the passing of time is not = to progress.

[sovay]

THANK YOU for #2.

You're very welcome!

This is fascinating, and further proof that the passing of time is not = to progress.

People want to think it is a direct line, or a sweeping curve. I suspect it looks a lot more like a seismogram.

[ethelmay]

Nesbit's adopted daughter -- actually the daughter of Hubert Bland and Alice Hoatson. Apparently it was a great shock as she was often thought to be the most like Nesbit of the family. She said it was "convenient that we've all got these brown eyes."

[sovay]

Nesbit's adopted daughter -- actually the daughter of Hubert Bland and Alice Hoatson.

I knew not Nesbit's biological daughter, but I figure recognized-and-raised-by still counts. I didn't know that about their appearances, though.

[ethelmay]

I must have noticed that story was by Rosamund Bland, but I had forgotten. I still don't know the answer to steepholm's question about "out Ivalunk way."

[sovay]

I still don't know the answer to steepholm's question about "out Ivalunk way."

Ditto!