Words: 2088
Total words: 2088
Music: Three Double Concertos
Tea: Jon Singer's Green Pu Er, followed by London Tea Company's White Tea with Apricot and Elderflower.
Files: 3
Reason for stopping: bedtime

I've given up for the time being on getting Protext working properly in the emulator and gone back to the 386 laptop. I'm still planning to write the Talleyrand thing but I've been doing research on it forever and it still needs research, and I'm quite excited about this and I thought I'd sit down and write it and see where it wanted to go.

It's about the middle generation of a generation starship, and it's inspired by a panel at last year's farthingparty (Info on this year's here and here) and something Z said when we were in Florence.

So there was sewage on my lawn.

There is not sewage on my lawn any more.

Nor are there roots in the sewer pipe, thanks to the nice fellas in the quickly-dispatched utility truck. Yay city services! Also yay plumber who said on the phone "Where outside? Hm... try calling the city, they may take care of that for you." (Non-yay for the disconnected "if you are experiencing a sewer backup, call this number," but the woman who answered the main Public Works phone got me immediately transferred to the right place so that worked out okay.)

I know it's the very last minute, but things sneaked up on me. And honestly, I'm fine with driving by myself, too. But if anyone still needs a ride, drop me an e-mail at carbonel@livejournal.com.

I'll be leaving early Friday morning, returning Monday.

So I'm doing this thing.

Well, okay, I'm doing a lot of things. I'm a Mris; even when one of the obligatory things is resting (and oh, is it ever), I'm still doing a lot of things.

But there's this thing coming on the horizon. I feel it like a storm, and now papersky knows how you can feel a storm coming days and days away across a prairie. This thing is large, and it's science fictional, and it's mine, my precioussss.

But this thing is not close enough that I can see the sheets of rain and the individual bursts of lightning and the bits where the sun peeks through. No. (I like storms. This is a positive metaphor.) This is far enough away that I'm only starting to get the shape of it.

So I'm working on other things, and those are going well, and for this thing, I call what I'm doing cantilevering. It's how I write SF at the small scale; for something this big it's...daunting and exhilarating and lots of fun.

So when you have a cantilever, you go leaping on out into space anchored at one end, right? We do that! That's what we do! But you have to have a darn good anchor at the end. You have to know where you've been to know where you're going. You'd think this was called doing research, but doing research is when you say to yourself, "My book is going to have all kinds of geology in it! I will read up on geology!" Or else, "My book is going to be set in Ukraine! I will read up on Ukrainian history and culture!" When I am cantilevering I am trying to figure out what the heck. And so I am just taking in data and taking in data so that I have the best deep-sunk foundation I can get. I just start grabbing nonfiction and kind of humming to myself and turning it over and seeing where it fits and whether it fits.

Eventually some of it starts to look like it's more important than others of it. Here is what I know I need more of so far: 1930s, worldwide; science of sense of smell and perfume chemistry; neurology; cultures on very large rivers. Here is what I do not need a lot of: major central large war-type military history. The entire rest of, um, whatever I might get my hands on? I do not know. We'll see what proves useful. I will keep just getting things from the library and seeing what they tell me. And some of the things they tell me will be very interesting things that go into other stories or just go into my brain for later. And some things will not show up on the surface in any way that anybody else can identify for this book, because it's not like I'm writing historical stuff here, where the 1930s are going to be useful that way. It's...patterning. It's having good footing for taking a leap.

Or possibly it's just very comforting to the parts of my brain that go whirrr while they're trying to figure out the bits of a very large project. Either way. Whirrrr. Hee. Whirrrr.

I'm delighted to announce that Among Others is nominated for the Mythopoeic Award, along with an excellent list of other nominees:

Lisa Goldstein, The Uncertain Places (Tachyon)
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus (Doubleday)
Richard Parks, The Heavenly Fox (PS Publishing)
Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless (Tor)
Jo Walton, Among Others (Tor)

complete list of all categories here.

I feel slightly overwhelmed with all the love my book's getting this week!

I'll be off to the wonderland of WisCon bright and early tomorrow. Juan stays home to mind the fort. If anyone is interested in table-sitting or helping with the Haiku Earring Party or such things, stop by my table in the dealers' room and we'll confer.

Yay! WisCon!

I can't find anything online that lists Chinese animal/element years into the future. What I actually want to know is what year it would be in 2212, and I'd also like to know the complete cycle of where it would be around then.

(It's really frustrating to click on something that says it's a ten thousand year calendar but which actually only goes up to 2019.)

We got home from Paris last night and had about 12 hours sleep. It’s morning and it feels like morning, yay! Here’s a photo from Piazza Navona in Rome.

Originally published at Carpe DMM. You can comment here or there.

It does, it does! Origins, as an aghast look at my desk calendar reminds me, is just eight days away! Here, as far as the event grid on the website can tell me anyhow, is my seminar schedule for the show:

Thursday, May 31

11:00 a.m.: History (Invented, Alternate, Dramatic, and Real) in Game Settings:

When it comes to game worlds, the best-mapped with the thickest sourcebooks is good old Earth. From ancient astronauts to Nazi Mars colonies, starting with history lays foundations for even the wildest fantasy worlds. Kenneth Hite lays out some principles for using history in game settings, whether starting from scratch with fantasy or SF worlds, or pure historical gaming in the Wild West or WWII. What can you change for variety? What should you change for drama? Where should time travelers go to get a good deal on cinematic violence? (C212)

1:00 p.m.: Game Design Panel

Discussion with James Ernest, Kenneth Hite, and Mike Selinker (C212)

4:00 p.m.: Fundamentals of Setting Design

The setting -- be it a whole galaxy or a single palace -- helps define your game, your story, whether you're a game designer, a writer, or a GM. Designing a good setting helps you shape the experience you want; it can make the difference between a great game and a bunch of twisty passages all alike. This seminar takes setting design down to its fundamentals, and builds up from there. (C212)

Saturday, June 2

11:00 a.m.: Game Design Panel

Discussion with James Ernest, Mike Selinker, Kennith Hite, Peter Lee, and Chris Dupuis. (C212)

3:00 p.m.: Genre Emulation in Game Design

How do you make a game feel like pulp, or like a martial-arts movie, or like a spaghetti Western? Recreating a genre experience in a game begins before the dice come out. This seminar examines ways to design genre feel into a game -- whether a whole RPG or just your campaign -- from the jump. (C212)

When I'm not in C212, I'll be rambling around the Dealer's Room or maybe playing wargames with Doug Sun. I'm not sure where I'll make my base camp at just yet, so if you need a booth cat, leave me a chair!

There will be craft beer and craft cider at the MnStf / Minicon room party at Convergence.

I am curious about everyone's opinions about room party food.

How important is food at the party? Are cheese and crackers enough, or should there be something special?

I've added fifteen-inch prints of most of my photos to my online store, including fifteen new photos from this month which are 33% off until the end of May.

I got 200 feet of paper rolls in the mail today, so it's time for you guys to make me work.

I don't know much about social media. I don't have a facebook or twitter account. But I've been told a few people have them, and that some of those people like to play social media games. I'm told the biggest social media game involves running a farm.

Surely, I thought, there must be something one could do on social media that would be more fun that growing turnips and feeding chickens. Like, say, scheming and plotting, murders and marriages, contesting for power.

HBO shared the feeling, and together we have granted the license for a social media game based on GAME OF THRONES to a great new start-up company called Disruptor Beam ((http://disruptorbeam.com/ )) Game development is already well under way.

Jon Radoff, CEO of Disruptor Beam, says:

"This will be the first Facebook game based on the TV series and books and, trust me, this game isn’t just going to be another Farmville! George RR Martin is working very closely with Disruptor Beam to ensure the game will deliver an authentic experience. I can tell you that it will not only be highly story and character-driven, but Game of Thrones Ascent will give you the chance to experience the world from your own perspective and with your own friends."

"Sounds fun, right!? Want to know more? Well, additional information about the game will be released in the coming months, including details about how to participate in a pre-release beta program. To follow its progress, be sure to “like” Game of Thrones Ascent on Facebook (http://facebook.com/gameofthronesascent) or follow on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/GoTAscent)."



I saw several early versions of the game demonstrated, and Jon and his designers took great pains to make sure the flavor of the novels is here. I saw alliance building, treachery, marriages, murders, and most of all the constant struggle to be the greatest house in Westeros.

So create a character, pick a liege lord to swear to, and start playing the game the way Tyrion would, because in this game you win or you die.

(No turnips will be involved).

A quiet day to roar ahead on Second Draft. All the sub-plots of Mr. J Goes to Washington (working title) are coming together more clearly - in rough draft, I'm often still thinking things through, so there's a lot of obvious re-stating of things, and rambling conversations that don't go anywhere. (This is the reason people re-write!)

Since January sort of stumbles into the murder-mystery part while he's investigating (for pay) the disappearance of a mathematician, the story is basically two cases: body-snatching and secret codes on one side, and early baseball, slavery, and loving inappropriate people on the other. The trick for me is to make both cases very clear and un-confusing to follow.

A lot to do, since starting tomorrow I'll have a boatload of research-papers to read through, and finals after that. It's a time of gray mornings, when the red flowers outside the study window seem blazingly bright. MAJOR kitty drama continues, with yowling, hissing, cat-fights and harsh language.

I look forward to summer, when I get to clean up after the Easter luncheon.

1. What are the names of Odin's two ravens, and what do their names mean?

2. What 2000 film featured Denzel Washington as the coach of a football team?

3. Grizabella is probably best known for singing what song?

4. Who was the mother of the nine Muses?

5. What is the opening line of the poem traditionally associated with Guy Fawkes' Day?

6. Give us the opening line(s) from your memoirs!

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

So I finally took the plunge and purchased a Nook last month. I’ve had it for about a month now.

I like it. I admit it.

Pros:

People have been  giving me ebooks for various reasons (reviews, etc.). This makes them much easier to read. It’s fairly comfy. I’m not having too much trouble with the reading experience onscreen. It’s okay.

So. Many. BOOKS! <3 Without having to find shelf space!

I’m downloading a few public domain novels via Google Books that I had not gotten around to reading yet. Also, probably good for me. Even if it cuts into “current things I ought to be reading.” The temptation to reread some old favorites is also overwhelming.

I have failed to sell my soul completely to Amazon. This is probably a good thing. Our only bookstore in town is a Barnes & Noble (other than the college bookstore–no indies here!), and we end up ordering from Amazon a fair amount between conventions. (We still buy at conventions, too.) The way I deal with the choice between two chains that may or may not be evil  (since I don’t have the option of NOT shopping at them at all) is to split the difference and shop at both, thus not giving either a competitive advantage with my hard-earned moolah. (Because MY money will make the difference. Riiight.)

We’re turning off the tv in the evenings more often, and reading more. This is probably good for me in the long run. And has caused us to delay upgrading our cable, which is probably also not that bad for us.

I expect it will get a decent amount of use as our travel computeresque-not-a-laptop-thingamabob when we are conventioning at places with free wifi. So I might actually be able to tweet and stuff when on the road more easily than I can with my phone.

Cons:

As expected, it’s much easier to pay for an ebook than to get a free one onto the Nook by sideloading it from, say, a library ebook account. Oddly enough. *sigh* But one of my goals here is to use the ereader as a way to read things that I want to read, but don’t necessarily want to KEEP, so that I can save shelf space for the dead tree versions of things I want to keep. So, still working on that.

I am still figuring out how to get library ebooks. I started the process, got distracted, and now need to find the time to sit down and figure out how to do it correctly. I expect to use this feature quite a bit once I set it up for real. Michael has been busy putting together the Hugo Voter Packet, so he’s been on the laptop quite a bit (which is right and good and proper), but it means that I haven’t had the opportunity to sort out this stuff.

I am realizing that there will never be enough time to read all the things I want to read. People may think that being a librarian means sitting around and reading all the time, and having an ereader means that I WISH IT WERE TRUE so I could sit around and read ALL THE TIME. Not that I don’t want to do that all the time with paper books, too, but having ebooks means that I’m doing it In The Future!

Still trying to work myself up to actually purchase things like apps and ebooks. Much of my focus has been on free content, which is FINE, but only goes so far.

I also need to figure out the whole “can use it as a media player” thing. I know I can, I just haven’t taken the time to sort out how best to achieve that. But my goal is to always have Certain Things I Never Tire Of Rewatching available on my Nook. Mmm…Colin Firth on demand… *sighs*

It's been a while since I bored into a book like a hopped-up literary woodpecker, so here's some brain spillage originally written last year and never posted.

Left: "Black Destroyer," 1939

Right: Current edition from Orb Books.

Hot jets, Kinnison! What a jaunt in the way-back machine this is. I first became aware of The Voyage of the Space Beagle via Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials as a kid, and once again waited a mere two decades before reading the source material. At this rate, I'll have all of my seventh-grade math homework turned in by December, 2013.

Voyage is a 1950 fix-up of four previously published short stories, forming a loosely chronological account of the titular Space Beagle's multi-year exploration beyond the confines of the Milky Way. Its thousand-man crew, chemically castrated for the duration to keep their minds firmly on Doing Science, is preyed upon by a series of increasingly dangerous creatures, and must also deal with internal pressures, scientific disputes, and a case of dreaded SPACE MADNESS.

The Voyage of the Space Beagle was influential as all hell, out of proportion to what's actually on the page. Philip K. Dick claimed van Vogt as a major influence; so did Harlan Ellison. You can see it here, a distinct flavor that was carried into Ellison's early SF work. You can also see this book's profound effect on Star Trek, with its strange planets, predatory aliens, and mysterious threats to the ship. Van Vogt even took legal action against the producers of the 1979 movie Alien, a suit that was settled out of court, based on arguable similarities between xenomorphs and his own egg-implanting Ixtl.

Voyage is an affable relic of the Big Science Done Big era of SF. The ship jaunts about at hyperluminary speeds, courtesy of Whoosh-Zoom engines powered by authorial whim. There are all the expected toys... gigantic heat-rays, semi-portable atomic furnaces, visiplates, vibrator guns. It has the same ludicrous-but-lovable feel of Doc Smith's Lensmen series, where scientific progress is almost always just a matter of dumping more power into a bigger thingamajig (if you yelled "BUS BARS!" just now, bless you).

What it isn't, curiously enough, is a true log of a voyage and its voyagers. The episodic nature of the story would be less stark if there were some context provided, some glimpse of home, some notion of how the Space Beagle compares to anything else humanity is doing. Exploring vacuum in a vacuum is not as interesting as it could be. No real narrative integument was provided when these short stories were stitched into the vague shape of a novel.

Also, the real heart of the book, for which the voyage is merely a framing device, is how an advanced interdisciplinary approach to the sciences called Nexialism proves the best solution to each of the Beagle's challenges when the more stratified and traditional sciences allegedly fall short of the big picture. This is all well and good as far as hobbyhorses go, but it would have helped the story if some of the solutions implemented to fend off each alien attack weren't so conveniently dim-witted.

For example, in the novel's first major incident, adapted from the short story "Black Destroyer," a panther-like creature called coeurl feigns harmlessness to get aboard the Beagle. Coeurl is actually a ravenous, ultra-strong, life-draining predator, with the ability to detect and manipulate energy using whisker-like appendages. It can neutralize the deadly force of human weapons, a fact the humans realize once the thing is on the loose and killing people. So, when coeurl (constantly referred to by the men as "pussy")* locks itself in the Beagle's engine spaces, what do they do? Do they even attempt to poison it? To asphyxiate it? Nope. They wheel out their gigantic heat-ray projectors and start melting their way into the engine room.

Yes. To deal with an energy-manipulating creature, they hurl more energy at it! While it's mucking with the ship's engines, no less. The Beagle is described as having a truly impressive workshop capacity, but even so, you'd think the notion of blasting apart your own engine compartment when your ship is thousands of light-centuries from home would give sober and non-libidinous men pause. What do they expect to do if they melt their propulsion center, break out the oars?

There is also a puzzlingly gimlet-eyed overuse of purely speculative social science (though van Vogt deserves props for making his social scientist, Korita, Japanese in a time when the Japanese were not exactly sympathetically portrayed in much American media). Korita is constantly brought on stage to speculate on the social structure and cultural foibles of the singular aliens the Beagle encounters, always in the complete absence of any shred of context or evidence. Yet Korita is made to accurately diagnose potential weaknesses in the hearts and minds of these creatures (nobody even brings up the possibility that these entities might be outcast or atypical) This ain't science, even in a context that generously allows for atomic rayguns and Whoosh-Zoom engines. It's bullshit without a scaffold.

Despite this, The Voyage of the Space Beagle still moves smoothly across the eyeballs in a way too many of its contemporaries couldn't aspire to even when they were fresh. It's reasonable and penetrable fun; penetrable, perhaps, because it had such a hand in defining a certain geometry of space opera still quite familiar to us decades later.

Damon Knight was often criticized for his perceived harshness toward van Vogt's work, but I think Knight judged fairly in 1950 when he wrote: "...this department's thesis on van Vogt is (a) that the man has a very respectable talent as a writer, and (b) that he consistently misuses it." Van Vogt operated energetically in both the thoughtful and thoughtless modes of invention, and if he fell short of constructing mature narratives, at least he had the ability to occasionally evoke real feelings of mystery and awe.

*****

*It is an exceptionally juvenile cheap shot, I admit, but it's difficult to keep a straight face at frequent reference to how the voyagers "beat pussy" and "chased pussy off the ship." They're two million light-years from the nearest woman and drenched in libido-deadening drugs; no shit they chased pussy off the ship.