Thursday, May 21, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Excerpted from: They're Moving Father's Sewer to Build a Graveyard. For Link On Line, March 15, 2015. Dan Goodman, dsgood@gmail.com or dsgood@iphouse.com. 612-298-2354
****
Books read include: Elizabeth Benedict, The Joy of Writing Sex: A guide for fiction writers. Henry Holt, 2002. The good parts: there's advice which seems useful; and a quote from Smilla's Sense of Snow contains an act I had never heard of before.
However, the intended readership is writers of literary fiction. And reading this reminded me of why I don't care for most literary fiction. Too much technique, too little life.
Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer. Ballantine, 2014. Part of the Rivers of London series. (Each river has its god -- except the Thames, which has two who don't get along well.) Peter Grant is half the staff of Scotland Yard's division devoted to fighting magical crimes. In this book, he's sent to a small town to help investigate the disappearance of two young girls.
There are twists I didn't expect. And I've been reading mysteries and fantasies long enough that I often spot surprises long before authors reveal them.
Aaronovitch is up on police procedures, and gets assistance from working cops. (I don't think he consults working magicians.) I recommend this book, and the entire series.
Note: This is the second book with carnivorous unicorns I've read recently. (The other is Charles Stross's Equoid.) Anyone who looked forward to being first with the idea will need to find another one.
****
A few months ago, four men were arrested for cheating at poker at Canterbury Racetrack. (One played, one peeked at other players' cards, the other two blocked surveillance cameras.) Their earnings were given as "above $200."
Say they grossed $60 each. Three of them traveled to Minnesota from Florida; add in other expenses, and they can't have netted much. Even if they'd gotten away with it, doesn't seem worth it to me.
If I recall correctly, three were in their 70s and one close to it. They had previous records. If they were smart, they would've gone into another line of work.
****
[Names of workshop members commented to are replaced by pseudonyms]
Lord Bearer: SF editor John Campbell once speculated that nitroglycerin had been invented before gunpowder -- several times, by alchemists who didn't live to document their results. As I recall, Campbell took for granted that gunpowder was a European invention; but it seems possible to me that it was invented before Muslims brought gunpowder to Europe.
Latin Herder: Actually, some genre stories begin slowly. For example, a group of men are playing cards; and after a while one begins telling the story. This used to be much more common, as did men sitting around in a bar.
A good recent fantasy story which starts off slowly: Neil Gaiman, "To Weep Like Alexander."// I'm used to seeing song lyrics quoted like this:
There was an old woman in our town,
In our town did dwell.
She loved her husband dearly,
But another man twice as well.
She went to the doctor
To see what she could find,
To see what he could give her
To make her old man blind.
Or:
First time I seen Darling Corey,
She was standing in the door.
.45 pistol in her hand,
And a dead man on the floor.
Each line of the song on its own line.
//Much of my thinking is in multi-sensory diagrams; usually in three dimensions, sometimes four, occasionally five. Which is rather difficult to get down on paper. //An immortal woman might consider anyone with an age less than a few thousand years young. Even if she's relatively young herself. //I remember things much better if I write them down; and often I don't need to look at them again. My ticker tape synesthesia is less useful, but will do in a pinch. (Ticker tape: Seeing spoken words printed out; in my case, also words I think out. Thankfully, I don't notice it unless I "look." Such things can be distracting. )
People have different kinds of memory, with more differences than can easily be imagined.
Former Medic: I found out I had diabetes by mentioning to my doctor there was an itch between two toes which wasn't going away. (Which is better than the first indication being a coma, as happened to someone I know and to someone I knew when he was alive.) Thought about a relative who had diabetes and wasn't controlling it; I then lost enough weight to be merely prediabetic.
****
Books read include: Elizabeth Benedict, The Joy of Writing Sex: A guide for fiction writers. Henry Holt, 2002. The good parts: there's advice which seems useful; and a quote from Smilla's Sense of Snow contains an act I had never heard of before.
However, the intended readership is writers of literary fiction. And reading this reminded me of why I don't care for most literary fiction. Too much technique, too little life.
Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer. Ballantine, 2014. Part of the Rivers of London series. (Each river has its god -- except the Thames, which has two who don't get along well.) Peter Grant is half the staff of Scotland Yard's division devoted to fighting magical crimes. In this book, he's sent to a small town to help investigate the disappearance of two young girls.
There are twists I didn't expect. And I've been reading mysteries and fantasies long enough that I often spot surprises long before authors reveal them.
Aaronovitch is up on police procedures, and gets assistance from working cops. (I don't think he consults working magicians.) I recommend this book, and the entire series.
Note: This is the second book with carnivorous unicorns I've read recently. (The other is Charles Stross's Equoid.) Anyone who looked forward to being first with the idea will need to find another one.
****
A few months ago, four men were arrested for cheating at poker at Canterbury Racetrack. (One played, one peeked at other players' cards, the other two blocked surveillance cameras.) Their earnings were given as "above $200."
Say they grossed $60 each. Three of them traveled to Minnesota from Florida; add in other expenses, and they can't have netted much. Even if they'd gotten away with it, doesn't seem worth it to me.
If I recall correctly, three were in their 70s and one close to it. They had previous records. If they were smart, they would've gone into another line of work.
****
[Names of workshop members commented to are replaced by pseudonyms]
Lord Bearer: SF editor John Campbell once speculated that nitroglycerin had been invented before gunpowder -- several times, by alchemists who didn't live to document their results. As I recall, Campbell took for granted that gunpowder was a European invention; but it seems possible to me that it was invented before Muslims brought gunpowder to Europe.
Latin Herder: Actually, some genre stories begin slowly. For example, a group of men are playing cards; and after a while one begins telling the story. This used to be much more common, as did men sitting around in a bar.
A good recent fantasy story which starts off slowly: Neil Gaiman, "To Weep Like Alexander."// I'm used to seeing song lyrics quoted like this:
There was an old woman in our town,
In our town did dwell.
She loved her husband dearly,
But another man twice as well.
She went to the doctor
To see what she could find,
To see what he could give her
To make her old man blind.
Or:
First time I seen Darling Corey,
She was standing in the door.
.45 pistol in her hand,
And a dead man on the floor.
Each line of the song on its own line.
//Much of my thinking is in multi-sensory diagrams; usually in three dimensions, sometimes four, occasionally five. Which is rather difficult to get down on paper. //An immortal woman might consider anyone with an age less than a few thousand years young. Even if she's relatively young herself. //I remember things much better if I write them down; and often I don't need to look at them again. My ticker tape synesthesia is less useful, but will do in a pinch. (Ticker tape: Seeing spoken words printed out; in my case, also words I think out. Thankfully, I don't notice it unless I "look." Such things can be distracting. )
People have different kinds of memory, with more differences than can easily be imagined.
Former Medic: I found out I had diabetes by mentioning to my doctor there was an itch between two toes which wasn't going away. (Which is better than the first indication being a coma, as happened to someone I know and to someone I knew when he was alive.) Thought about a relative who had diabetes and wasn't controlling it; I then lost enough weight to be merely prediabetic.
Monday, March 16, 2015
In which Planet of the Apes movie do gorillas celebrate National Human Suit Day?
Which Dr Who episode has aliens called Kardashians?
Which Peanuts character is highly interested in the Wester Bunny?
What conspiracy novel "reveals" that Popes never die, and former Popes are kept in the secret Vatican basements?
Which Dr Who episode has aliens called Kardashians?
Which Peanuts character is highly interested in the Wester Bunny?
What conspiracy novel "reveals" that Popes never die, and former Popes are kept in the secret Vatican basements?
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Writing Futures
Notes On Writing Future-Setting Fiction
-"Fiction always reflects the time in which it's written, not the time in which it's set. So what's the problem?"-
The same is true of Shakespearean criticism. But that's not what it's supposed to be about; it's supposed to be about Shakespeare in his own time and place. And it's true of historical nonfiction, academic or popular.
And: some people, including me, read fiction set in the future hoping to find something new. To us, "just like today" is no more satisfying than "They realize neither of them is interested in sex and both prefer to live alone" would be to most romance readers.
Not to mention that things might change before a story is published. For several months after the Soviet Union fell, "Soviets invade America" novels were still turning up in bookstores. There were probably others in the pipeline or being written which no one will get to read.
It's not possible to predict the future with total accuracy. But there are ways to cut down on bloopers.
1) If you graduated from high school thirty years ago, don't take for granted that nothing has changed. Check.
If you graduated last year, it still might be a good idea to check.
Yes, teenagers will still act like teenagers. But they won't wear the same clothing, listen to the same music, use the same slang. And for how long has it been possible for a lesbian couple to be elected Homecoming King and Queen? (See the March 2012 issue of Seventeen.)
Places you haven't been to in a while have undergone change. In 1965, some Paris restaurants had hectographed menus in their windows; this is probably no longer the case. (This wasn't mentioned in any guidebook I read. If you visit any place, and don't notice anything which isn't in guidebooks, I recommend an immediate medical checkup.)
2) Look at what's already happened which will have highly-predictable consequences.
When "Jennifer" became the most popular girl-baby name in the US, it was easy to predict that in a bit less than twenty years there would be a lot of college women named Jennifer.
It should have been obvious that the Baby Boom meant larger college classes down the road. I think most college administrators realized this around 1964, but it might have been later.
3) Certain predictions keep being made, and keep being wrong. "In a few years, everyone will have at least one flying car." "Once this law is passed, the problem will be solved forever." (If you want to write alternate history in which ground cars became obsolete in 1960, and Prohibition resulted in all Americans giving up alcohol, that's another matter.)
4) Check to make sure you know what's really happening now that will affect the future. By the late 1980s, it should have been obvious that the Soviet Union was in no shape to successfully invade the US.
5) Take account of moral panic cycles. Right now, nonconsenting sex is A Big Problem: in US colleges, in science fiction fandom, in religious organizations. Drunken driving is also seen as more of a problem than used to be the case. Such jokes as "If you drink, don't park. Accidents cause people" are no longer as acceptable as they once were.
Tobacco use has become much more restrictive. And there are no longer ads like "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet."
Conversely, marijuana has become acceptable enough to be legal in several US states; and various other countries (Portugal, for example) have decriminalized it.
And there are reciprocal cycles. In certain times, even clueless hard drug users realize that heroin is Bad News. Many turn to nice, safe cocaine. Later, such people realize that cocaine is Bad News and turn to nice, safe heroin. (Any resemblance to political cycles is left to your imagination.)
6) Eating habits will change. Once, most Americans had never tasted pizza. Pasties weren't always a Finnish-American dish in the Upper Midwest.
-"Fiction always reflects the time in which it's written, not the time in which it's set. So what's the problem?"-
The same is true of Shakespearean criticism. But that's not what it's supposed to be about; it's supposed to be about Shakespeare in his own time and place. And it's true of historical nonfiction, academic or popular.
And: some people, including me, read fiction set in the future hoping to find something new. To us, "just like today" is no more satisfying than "They realize neither of them is interested in sex and both prefer to live alone" would be to most romance readers.
Not to mention that things might change before a story is published. For several months after the Soviet Union fell, "Soviets invade America" novels were still turning up in bookstores. There were probably others in the pipeline or being written which no one will get to read.
It's not possible to predict the future with total accuracy. But there are ways to cut down on bloopers.
1) If you graduated from high school thirty years ago, don't take for granted that nothing has changed. Check.
If you graduated last year, it still might be a good idea to check.
Yes, teenagers will still act like teenagers. But they won't wear the same clothing, listen to the same music, use the same slang. And for how long has it been possible for a lesbian couple to be elected Homecoming King and Queen? (See the March 2012 issue of Seventeen.)
Places you haven't been to in a while have undergone change. In 1965, some Paris restaurants had hectographed menus in their windows; this is probably no longer the case. (This wasn't mentioned in any guidebook I read. If you visit any place, and don't notice anything which isn't in guidebooks, I recommend an immediate medical checkup.)
2) Look at what's already happened which will have highly-predictable consequences.
When "Jennifer" became the most popular girl-baby name in the US, it was easy to predict that in a bit less than twenty years there would be a lot of college women named Jennifer.
It should have been obvious that the Baby Boom meant larger college classes down the road. I think most college administrators realized this around 1964, but it might have been later.
3) Certain predictions keep being made, and keep being wrong. "In a few years, everyone will have at least one flying car." "Once this law is passed, the problem will be solved forever." (If you want to write alternate history in which ground cars became obsolete in 1960, and Prohibition resulted in all Americans giving up alcohol, that's another matter.)
4) Check to make sure you know what's really happening now that will affect the future. By the late 1980s, it should have been obvious that the Soviet Union was in no shape to successfully invade the US.
5) Take account of moral panic cycles. Right now, nonconsenting sex is A Big Problem: in US colleges, in science fiction fandom, in religious organizations. Drunken driving is also seen as more of a problem than used to be the case. Such jokes as "If you drink, don't park. Accidents cause people" are no longer as acceptable as they once were.
Tobacco use has become much more restrictive. And there are no longer ads like "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet."
Conversely, marijuana has become acceptable enough to be legal in several US states; and various other countries (Portugal, for example) have decriminalized it.
And there are reciprocal cycles. In certain times, even clueless hard drug users realize that heroin is Bad News. Many turn to nice, safe cocaine. Later, such people realize that cocaine is Bad News and turn to nice, safe heroin. (Any resemblance to political cycles is left to your imagination.)
6) Eating habits will change. Once, most Americans had never tasted pizza. Pasties weren't always a Finnish-American dish in the Upper Midwest.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Tuesday January 27, 2015 At Midwest Mountaineering, bought a more comfortable small backpack. (Thanks to Ken Konkol, I have a good large pack: military issue, comes with a user's manual.)
***"Based on the latest evidence and theories our galaxy could be a huge wormhole and, if that were true, it could be 'stable and navigable.' Astrophysicists combined the equations of general relativity with an extremely detailed map of the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way when proposing this possibility."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150121083648.htm
***From politicalwire.com: "Jimmy McMillan, former gubernatorial candidate of the fringe The Rent Is Too Damn High party, 'has been slapped with an eviction notice ordering him out of his $872-a-month rent stabilized East Village apartment,' the New York Daily News reports.
***comments: al_zorra 1/25 (replying to Don Fitch): "O gads YAH! Windows 8, Windows 8.1 whatever -- it's hideous rubbish."
[I find Linux considerably easier. I think partly because the free distributions are designed by hobbyists rather than professionals. The professionals are overseen by companies which think the trouble with the US Government is, it's insufficiently bureaucratic.]
"I used to be fairly good with computers, even troubleshooting. By now I've devolved with all their making it easier into incompetency.
"O well, I can't even recognize food, or how to get in or out of cars either any longer.
"Everything is geared to a smart phone, which doesn't work in either the real world or on a computer that is used for W-O-R-K because one is a working person, even if working from home."
***"Based on the latest evidence and theories our galaxy could be a huge wormhole and, if that were true, it could be 'stable and navigable.' Astrophysicists combined the equations of general relativity with an extremely detailed map of the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way when proposing this possibility."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150121083648.htm
***From politicalwire.com: "Jimmy McMillan, former gubernatorial candidate of the fringe The Rent Is Too Damn High party, 'has been slapped with an eviction notice ordering him out of his $872-a-month rent stabilized East Village apartment,' the New York Daily News reports.
***comments: al_zorra 1/25 (replying to Don Fitch): "O gads YAH! Windows 8, Windows 8.1 whatever -- it's hideous rubbish."
[I find Linux considerably easier. I think partly because the free distributions are designed by hobbyists rather than professionals. The professionals are overseen by companies which think the trouble with the US Government is, it's insufficiently bureaucratic.]
"I used to be fairly good with computers, even troubleshooting. By now I've devolved with all their making it easier into incompetency.
"O well, I can't even recognize food, or how to get in or out of cars either any longer.
"Everything is geared to a smart phone, which doesn't work in either the real world or on a computer that is used for W-O-R-K because one is a working person, even if working from home."
Thursday, January 29, 2015
January 23, 2015
***Received comments:
***1/23 al_zorra: "Pretending things are not what they are / were, destroys all sorts of integrits, and makes literature study irrelevant because one is studying phony content."
Further in the NYTimes piece: the word "rigger" was annotated, giving its meaning and other information about riggers.
The text has since been returned to what Faulkner wrote, including use of a similar word which begins with n.
***1/23 don_fitch: "I was a bit vexed by your assertion about non-native-French-speakers in France... until I realized that you'd said "cities". I suppose there are still plenty of villages and towns that have few or no Tunisian, Turkish, British, or other immigrants.
"Mind you, West Covina (here in California, mostly south of Covina) might possibly have a minority of native-English-speakers by now. In the Best Buy computer store, the other day, I was impressed by the child-like Enthusiasm displayed by four stocky Asian guys in their late 20s (I'd guess) as they played with various computer stuff. The were marvelously tattooed (in both area & quality) and each had at least one finger-joint missing. I was tempted to go over and ask them whether they were Yazuka [sic] (Japanese Mafia, approximately) or Seriously Dedicated Actors, but decided against it because actors can get dangerously temperamental."
1/23 thnidu: "Yikes.
"(Yakuza, not Yazuka. Doesn't rhyme with ;bazooka'; closer to "J'accuse".)"
***Received comments:
***1/23 al_zorra: "Pretending things are not what they are / were, destroys all sorts of integrits, and makes literature study irrelevant because one is studying phony content."
Further in the NYTimes piece: the word "rigger" was annotated, giving its meaning and other information about riggers.
The text has since been returned to what Faulkner wrote, including use of a similar word which begins with n.
***1/23 don_fitch: "I was a bit vexed by your assertion about non-native-French-speakers in France... until I realized that you'd said "cities". I suppose there are still plenty of villages and towns that have few or no Tunisian, Turkish, British, or other immigrants.
"Mind you, West Covina (here in California, mostly south of Covina) might possibly have a minority of native-English-speakers by now. In the Best Buy computer store, the other day, I was impressed by the child-like Enthusiasm displayed by four stocky Asian guys in their late 20s (I'd guess) as they played with various computer stuff. The were marvelously tattooed (in both area & quality) and each had at least one finger-joint missing. I was tempted to go over and ask them whether they were Yazuka [sic] (Japanese Mafia, approximately) or Seriously Dedicated Actors, but decided against it because actors can get dangerously temperamental."
1/23 thnidu: "Yikes.
"(Yakuza, not Yazuka. Doesn't rhyme with ;bazooka'; closer to "J'accuse".)"
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Thursday January 22, 2015 According to the Minnesota Daily (the U's student paper,)the Governor and others want to rebrand Minnesota as part of "the North" rather than "the Midwest." The change would supposedly make Minnesota more attractive to businesses and workers who might be looking for a place to move. This kind of word magic has a long history. for example, the naming of Greenland. ***Picked up 6 Linux books being held at Southeast Library. One of them turns out to be useful. ***Installed Chromium (non-proprietary variant of Google's Chrome browser.) So far, I like it better than the current version of Mozilla Firefox. ***ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholic and Otherwise Dysfunctional Families) meeting. This was the annual Group Conscience meeting. Mostly discussing and voting on decisions made in the last business meeting (held after a regular meeting); but with a bit of other business. ***Forthcoming book: "Political scientists John Ferejohn and Frances Rosenbluth's TUG OF WAR, tracing the evolution of modern democracy through centuries of warfare, concluding that, even today, democracy might need war to ensure its very existence..." From Publishers Lunch's daily newsletter. ***comment from al_zorra,: "O my goodness -- I literally just finished the last edits and revisions to the Faulkner section of my annual essay on the previous year's most significant reading! "I was reading along in what you had quoted and came full stop at 'riggers,' because that isn't Faulkner. I knew it immediately". [So did I, and I hadn't read Faulkner in years.] ***don_fitch (don_fitch) replied to a comment left by don_fitch (don_fitch) in your LiveJournal post (http://dsgood.livejournal.com/1298773.html). The comment they replied to was: "'Oooh, I _like_ that bit about statistics of birth re. May Day... and the practical reasons (-"it's too cold to screw in the woods on May Day"-) for them.' 'And yeah, I don't like to consider myself Alien to any or many non-sociopathic groups ...but for some reason a whole lot of the things Computer Geeks consider "helpful" are things I try to turn off as soon as possible. Unfortunately, they also turn off a lot of things _I_ consider helpful. '(I recently bought a new Macintosh computer. It has a big screen, and was ridiculously expensive. It does not have a way to plug into a telephone land-line to connect to the internet (or for highest-speed transmission via Usenet). It does not have a way to read, directly, CDs. It does not allow dropping documents into open windows but requires doing it into Icons, It does not do several other things that it used to do well & conveniently. Despite the presence of a Learning Curve, I expect to move to PCs in the future.)' Their reply was: "Oops! I seem to have hit 'Send' before mentioning that, yeah, many, many of the 'helpful' features on computers nowadays are annoying, at best." [As were "helpful" features on older computers.]
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