sovay | Sovay's Friends

I know I've been going on a lot about Charles R. Saunders for an author whose books I still haven't read but. Here's a podcast about him! Wizards & Spaceships' "Charles R. Saunders ft. Jon Tattrie" talks about his life, his works, his mysterious death, and the politics that shaped his life, from the Black Power movement to the Vietnam War to bigotry in SFF publishing and to Black Lives Matter. It's really a wide-ranging, fascinating discussion and I hope you'll give it a listen and maybe even share it with people.

Happy Black History Month everyone!

kore

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tamaranth

2026/025: The Dispossessed — Ursula Le Guin

... all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men’s acts, even the terrible became banal. [p. 130]

Technically a reread, but when I read this at the age of 14 or 15, I didn't really understand it: I recalled very little of characters, themes or incidents.

The brilliant physicist Shevek comes to realise that the collectivist society of Annares, a moon colonised by an anarchist movement, is not conducive to his work. He travels to the 'home world', Urras, which is ebulliently capitalist. Eventually he realises that Urras, too, stifles his scientific creativity.

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Current Mood: thoughtful

poliphilo

I believe the last senior royal to get himself arrested was Charles I. And we all know how that ended.....

Misconduct in a public office seems to be a pretty open-ended charge- covering everything from getting the tax payer to fund your use of sex workers to disclosing sensitive information to unauthorised persons....

Elsewhere Les Wexner was being deposed by Congress. He's a funny little old man by now, a cuddly grandpa, and he was being more voluble than his attorney/minder liked. At one point the attorney leaned in and whispered "I will fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words".....

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: calm

vass

Books
Finished (last week) Ursula Whitcher's North Continent Ribbon. As everyone said, it really is very good (and, moreover, I really liked it.) What impressed me the most was the structure: I was expecting a collection of short stories linked by theme and setting. I hadn't known the order of the stories and their timeline would amount to a novel in itself.

Finished (last week) Asterix and the Golden Sickle and didn't really... get it. I don't think I know anyone who read the Asterix books and didn't love them, but I feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe it's that the literary conventions of comics have moved on over the decades, to the extent that the level of exposition makes me feel like a modern science fiction reader reading pulp SF from the 1930s, or a modern TV viewer grappling with the stage conventions of Elizabethan or even ancient Greek theatre. As in: oh, you're explaining that again, alright. Oh, you're explaining that too? Okay.

Unfortunately I'm also unfamiliar with the history, societies, and cultures of Gaul in 50 BCE, so I'm probably missing most of the charm, to say nothing of the Easter eggs.

Read (this week) Balancing Stone by Victoria Goddard, and it was okay. I have now read all of the Greenwing & Dart books currently available, and have a clearer idea of what's happened yet in that part of the Nine Worlds, which is useful for fandom purposes. But I don't really like G&D. It's not for me. But I like some of its fans.

Finished (this week) KC Davis' How To Keep House While Drowning. Mainly a mixture of things that wouldn't work for me but which I could see working for someone else; concepts and skills that do work for me that I'd already learned but could have been absolutely vital if I hadn't learned them yet; and a few nuggets I didn't know as well as plenty that I knew but for which I could use a refresher or some reinforcement.

Reading Sarah Kurchak's I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder on audiobook. I forget who recommended it (Rydra?) but I'm surprised at just how much I'm relating.

Fandom
Received this lovely, meditative story by

justjourneys for Fanoa'ary: Love Beyond Definition.

I wrote Charting a Course for

Crackfoxx, on the prompt "I want the version of Kip being Fitzroy's wingman that includes the joy and the spreadsheets. Let me be very very clear. This expression of love must actually include spreadsheets.", went nearly entirely for rule of funny over characterisation or plausibility, and had way too much fun with the CSS and HTML.

Side note: who here knew what AO3's HTML parser does if you didn't close a <strike> tag?

...Bad, isn't it? (If you guessed "Everything from the open tag down to the end of the chapter is struck through", you're... well, you're not wrong, but you are underestimating the scope of the problem.)

Links

If only this discussion thread about a mathplotlib pull request were a mixed media work of fiction, and not a case in point of how things are going in tech at the moment, I would enjoy it so much.

Garden
Still alive, producing about a handful a week of tiny ripe cherry tomatoes.

Cats
Are a serious threat to the local plastic mouse from KMart population. Are also very good alarm cats when it's time to wake up in the morning and I don' wanna, very alarming.

ranalore

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Current Mood: silly
Current Location: out in the yin ting weeds again oh noes

aurumcalendula

The good news is The Unseen definitely has enough shippy footage for me to make a femslashy fanvid! The bad news is now I need a song (and nothing's quite clicking at the moment).

davidgillon

Beast Business, Ilona Andrews

The Amazon description says this a novella, but it's actually a shortish novella, a related short story, a short vignette, together with several short stories that were previously on their website. Everything's from their Hidden Legacy world, and if it fits into the existing pattern will be the primer for a trilogy focusing on the third Baylor daughter, Arabella, finding a partner. OTOH, Arabella really only makes a guest appearance in the novella and it instead revolves around a couple of secondary characters from the preceding two trilogies.

Diana Harrison, Prime of House Harrison, needs illusionist prime Augustus Montgomery, Prime of House Montgomery, and owner of massive PI company MII, for an urgent recovery operation. House Harrison's thing is animal magic, and someone has stolen a unique tiger cub from them. They have 24 hours to recover it because it needs its mother's milk, which means Diana needs Augustus personally, and she's coming along whether he likes it or not. But they both have their secrets, including the true nature of their magics, and they're going to have to cooperate closer than Augustus prefers. Shenanigans ensue.

The Masquerades of Spring, Ben Aaronovitch

It's the Roaring Twenties and Augustus Berrycloth-Young is enjoying the high life in New York, ably aided by his American valet Beauregard, and his friend Lucy, who can be trusted to know where all the best Jazz in Harlem can be found. Into Gussie's pleasant idyll comes a reminder that he is a keeper of the sacred flame of the Society of the Wise, in the form of the Folly's top magical troubleshooter, Thomas Nightingale. Nightingale is on a mission, pursuing the origin of an enchanted, possibly cursed, trumpet, and he's absolutely sure Gussie is the man to help him track it down.

I'd say this was meant to be a Jeeves and Wooster homage, Nightingale even introduces Gussie as 'Bertram Wilberforce' at one point, but Beauregard really doesn't get much to do. Instead it's Nightingale, Gussie, Lucy and the mysterious Cocoa against an escalating array of music agents, bent cops, and political operators, all complicated by Gussie trying not to let Nightingale know that he and Lucy - Lucien Biggs - are a couple. But never let it be said that a Berrycloth-Young failed to rise to the occasion!

IOW it's a very atypical Rivers of London novella, but Gussie makes for a thoroughly entertaining narrator.

The Vampire and the Case of the Wayward Werewolf
The Vampire and the Case of the Secretive Siren
The Vampire and the Case of the Baleful Banshee, Heather G Harris and Jilleen Dolbeare

Think Due South meets Northern Exposure, with the out-of-place protagonist role played by a London partygirl, rather than a Mountie or a doctor.

A fortnight ago Elizabeth Barrington - Bunny to her friends - was a partygirl about town, then she woke up dead and decided a century of servitude to the king of the vampires just wasn't going to happen. Now she's the newest recruit to the police force of the small Alaskan magical town of Portlock, bringing the total strength of the force up to three - Bunny, Gunnar the Nomo (chief of police), and Sidnee, a friendly siren. Bunny was theoretically hired as an admin assistant, but Sidnee mostly mans the office, and one man, even a man-mountain and alleged demi-god like Gunnar, can't manage 24 hour coverage on his own, so pretty soon Bunny, and Fluffy the rather too intelligent Alsatian, are neck deep in a complicated murder case, variously aided and hindered by the town's political movers and shakers, including smooth vampire Connor Mackenzie, rough-and-ready polar bear shifter Stan Ahmaogak, and human hunter Thomas Patkotak.

Book 2 has Bunny being formally sworn in as Officer Bunny, but she's barely had time to get used to that when an encounter with a new drug almost takes out Gunnar, turning Officer Bunny into acting-Nomo Bunny, and leaving her with a drug crisis to take care of, with the competing help of Connor and Stan. Gunnar's back for book 3, but Sidnee's definitely out of sorts, there's an arsonist about town, and there's an escalating series of thefts which threatens to bring down Portlock's protective shield, and there's definitely something dangerous out there in the wilds, waiting for its chance to feed.

3 down, 9 to go.

Current Mood: Sleepy
Current Location: Wherever the word takes me

thedarlingone

fic_rush is open! For the next 72 hours, please join us anytime at

fic_rush_48 and comment on the latest hourly post about your projects, progress, lack of progress, research, "research"... It's been a pretty quiet place lately but we're always happy to see new people!

lauradi7dw

NBC had hyped that they would show the women's hockey gold medal match live. It turns out that they meant live on the USA cable channel, because they are showing figure skating live on the regular NBC network. No doubt they will show a replay of figure skating in prime time too. Meanwhile in a moment of fury, I told the VPN to pretend I'm in Toronto and went searching for a way to watch the CBC stream. I clicked on the sport I wanted. I have been given the Inuktitut commentators. Apparently the word for puck is puck. I just checked and the Korean word is also puck (퍽). Also in French, one of Canada's other languages. I was surprised that to hear the clock time in English. If something is mostly in a language I've never heard before the English parts pop to my ears.

End of the 1st period USA 0 Canada 0

lauradi7dw

I have a compost bin in the back yard. Often I shovel a path to it when it snows, but I decided against that when faced with two feet of snow. In the meantime, I've had compost piling up in a bucket in the fridge. I decided it was time to stomp through the snow in my big boots. Then serious (but productive) mission creep occurred. I decided to generate some more compost before taking it all out. Last apple from November? Chopped, core into the bucket. Last squash? Roasted and eaten. Last daikon? Quick pickled. Squishy sweet potatoes? into the bucket. Art object that was lettuce but is now desiccated to paper texture by being in a mesh bag in the back of the fridge?

Also into the bucket.

I was going to claim that I have finally used up last year's stored harvest, but then I looked at the photo from November and realized I still have a few of the onions.
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/1006683.html

lauradi7dw

A year ago I mentioned wanting to watch a stream of the National Theatre Max Weber "Importance of Being Ernest."

https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/927550.html

It will happen next month.
https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/national-theatre-to-stream-the-importance-of-being-earnest-for-free_1712749/

conuly

and then read the books, and I gotta say, I think the author and I fundamentally disagree on a key principle of storywriting.

I believe, strongly, that if you have two viewpoint characters, or two love interests, or two viewpoint characters who are also love interests, then they need to have balanced problems - and, ideally, the interaction of those two characters should affect those problems in some way - by making them realize that they have problems, by making them realize that those problems aren't so bad, by solving or exacerbating those problems - who knows? But they need to start off with the same level of problems, and then by the end of the plot those problems need to have been changed in some way.

And pretty much that never happens in these books. Just look at the two that make up the TV show. We have two couples.

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This opinion on problems was brought to you by: The Overnight Shift! I have so much time on my hands, guys!

oracne

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones is gory historical horror set in 1912 Montana that's in conversation with Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. More importantly, it's both narrative and meta-narrative about settler colonialism and the genocide Americans perpetrated against the indigenous inhabitants of the American West, viewed through a lens of revenge, survival, and atonement. Finally, it shows a long, difficult attempt at justice, requiring sacrifice and suffering along the way.

This review contains spoilers.

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For those not well-versed in American history, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz would be good preparation for this novel, or as a readalong.

conuly

Why am I better than all other men?
I do not have to prove it. I admit it.
Here is the nail, and I am here to hit it.
A blow that glances somewhat now and then.
With pure intention I take up the pen
That writes the truth, if any ever writ it.
Venom is vulgar. I decline to spit it.
Still if I must—Well, nine times out of ten

I do. I am tired. That book must be a bore.
Jones wrote it. He was rude to me at lunch,
And nobody quite likes him in our bunch.
Smith said he liked my novel. In my bones
I feel that I like Smith. But more and more
My conscience tells me to eviscerate Jones.

********************

Link

garonne

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osprey_archer

As so often happens with nonfiction books, the subtitle of C. S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature is quite misleading. It suggests that the book is full of interesting tidbits about, say, Chaucer, whereas in fact the book is much more focused on the classical authors who shaped the medieval image of the heavens - hence “the discarded image,” largely swept away by later thinkers, but still surviving in odd phrases here and there.

I was particularly fascinated by the chapter about which ancient authors were popular and relatively accessible during the medieval period. For instance, their most direct access to Plato came through a Latin translation of Timaeus, but they had many works by neo-Platonists, and it was through this neo-Platonist filter that they had their own Platonic age of thought. (The neo-Platonists had actually been the last great holdouts against Christianity, so it’s fascinating to see them simply get folded into it here.)

The book also goes into great detail about the Image itself. I won’t try to summarize it all here, but a few bits I found especially interesting:

1. The medieval model was indeed geocentric, but Lewis points out that this does not mean that medieval thinkers considered the Earth especially important. In fact, they considered the Earth a mere infinitesimal dot, the lowest spot in the universe and the ultimate destination for the universe’s refuse. A person standing on Earth was looking up and up and up into infinitely more beautiful, perfect, higher and more important spheres.

2. The medieval thinker also thought the universe was suffused with sunlight and music (the music of the spheres); the idea of space as cold, dark, and scary came about later.

3. The belief in the influence of the planets on earthly life remained strong, and the Church had to exert a great deal of energy against the idea of astrological determinism.

4. There’s also a chapter about the longaevi, the Good Folk, with a fascinating discussion about the different meanings assigned to these beings - meanings so divergent that Spenser could write The Faerie Queen as a compliment to Queen Elizabeth, while at the same time people were sometimes tried for witchcraft on the charge of traffic with the fairy folk. (As Lewis notes, witchcraft trials were far more a Renaissance than a medieval phenomenon.)

Also, book gives insight into certain aspects of Lewis’s own fiction, in particular that bit in That Hideous Strength where Lewis starts talking about the seven genders and then just sort of wanders off in the middle of gender #4. “How can you tell us there are seven genders and then only give us four?” I demanded. Well, now I think that to Lewis (the medievalist) it was perfectly obvious that the seven genders were male, female, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. The other planets weren’t discovered till later and Earth of course doesn’t count on account of being the cesspit of the universe.

And he didn’t spend much time explaining what exactly Jupiter gender was like because, to his steeped-in-medieval-literature mind, this was perfectly obvious. The Jupiter character is “Kingly; but we must think of a King at peace, enthroned, taking his leisure, serene. The Jovial character is cheerful, festive yet temperate, tranquil, magnanimous.” I believe extrapolating this temperament into a gender is Lewis’s innovation, but he could be working off a classical source.

However, sadly, this book does not cast any light on what crimes the star might have committed in order to be banished to an island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. However, it seems likely these also have an ancient or medieval source, so perhaps someday I will find out!

selenak

In which we get what is clearly supposed to be the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy equivalent of the TNG episode Family - but is it?

( Spoilers want to watch meteor showers as well… )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: On the train