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Happy day!!
Minerva Fest reveals...
3 November 2013 06:05 pm...are up, so I can now cop to being the author of Untidy Beginnings! I was immensely pleased to get this prompt, partly because Minerva as headmistress is an area I like to see explored, and partly for the double challenge: how to make Dudley a sympathetic character without taking him completely out of character, and how to make Minerva, who obviously cared very much for Harry, feel any sort of warmth for one of the people who was cruelest to him?
I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this odd, rather fraught, relationship between Minerva and Dudley, and in working through it I discovered more than one point of connection.
This year's fest was an excellent one with many top-notch stories, and I'm proud to be in such fine company. Unfortunately I was insanely busy the past few weeks and have had almost no time to read the other Minerva Fest entries; I'll be on a train for a good chunk of next week and hope to catch up then.
Title: Untidy Beginnings (on LJ) (on AO3)
Original Prompt: #47. I would like to see how Headmistress McGonagall informs Dudley Dursley and his wife that their child has been accepted to Hogwarts, and what that means. How do each of the family members react? Do they have any contact with the Potters? Bonus if we see the shopping trip to Diagon Alley and the Sorting.
Rating: G
Characters and/or Pairings: Minerva, Dudley Dursley and family, cameos by Severus Snape and Hannah Abbot, two original characters
Description: When Minerva finds the name of Dursley written in the Book of Admittance, surprises ensue for everyone.
I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this odd, rather fraught, relationship between Minerva and Dudley, and in working through it I discovered more than one point of connection.
This year's fest was an excellent one with many top-notch stories, and I'm proud to be in such fine company. Unfortunately I was insanely busy the past few weeks and have had almost no time to read the other Minerva Fest entries; I'll be on a train for a good chunk of next week and hope to catch up then.
Title: Untidy Beginnings (on LJ) (on AO3)
Original Prompt: #47. I would like to see how Headmistress McGonagall informs Dudley Dursley and his wife that their child has been accepted to Hogwarts, and what that means. How do each of the family members react? Do they have any contact with the Potters? Bonus if we see the shopping trip to Diagon Alley and the Sorting.
Rating: G
Characters and/or Pairings: Minerva, Dudley Dursley and family, cameos by Severus Snape and Hannah Abbot, two original characters
Description: When Minerva finds the name of Dursley written in the Book of Admittance, surprises ensue for everyone.
There is simply nothing to say to this, it just demands your instant and utter enjoyment. I mean really, look at that puckish grin, right? All one can do is just giggle hysterically. And perhaps wish for a bucket or two of clarified butter.
I put it down to too much Ian McKellen. Or his new wife, maybe.
(Click through to read some very funny comments...)
I put it down to too much Ian McKellen. Or his new wife, maybe.
(Click through to read some very funny comments...)
My short SSHG piece Poetic License has been nominated for Best Comedy!! I'm so tickled. This is the first time I've been nominated, and it's quite the thrill :) Thank you, mystery nominator!
THE HP FANFIC FAN POLL AWARDS - FALL-WINTER ROUND 2013
Rules, Timelines, and How to Nominate a Fic
To Make Nominations/Ask Questions: hpfanficfanpollmod@gmail.com
Nomination period: October 1st - October 28th, 2013
Voting period: November 1st - December 31st, 2013
Winners announced: by January 10th, 2014
"O large being or beings of whatever gender or branch of the animal kingdom, who did something great and is now someplace where we aren't, please forgive us for whatever you deem bad, and help us to do whatever strikes you as good, whether that be to work hard, eat no pork, or wage a holy war. Grant us whatever you tend to grant, unless you don't interfere with earthly concerns. Watch over us, or save us from evil, or let us find out for ourselves, or damn us randomly. Amen. Praise Allah. Have a nice day."
From Worshipers-R-Us
Also, Generic All-Purpose Last Rites:
From Roger Zelazny
From Worshipers-R-Us
Also, Generic All-Purpose Last Rites:
Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.
From Roger Zelazny
Heffalumps
20 October 2013 01:04 pm"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of the year," said Pooh.
Lots of elephant-y things have crossed my path lately. A recent issue of The Economist focused on biodiversity and conservation included a fascinating piece on the success of a demand-side approach to reducing elephant poaching. Back in the 1980s Japan was the largest importer of ivory, at something like 500 tons a year. A group called Traffic launched a campaign to basically make ivory uncool:
[Traffic] worked on the newspapers and helped persuade them to write anti-ivory editorials. But the big breakthrough...came when Britain’s Prince Philip gave a rousing speech at an event organised by the World Wildlife Fund, which encouraged Japan’s crown prince to speak out. “It was the first time that Japanese royalty had taken a stance on a wildlife issue. It was an amazing moment,” says Mr Milliken. Ivory became uncool.
Japanese ivory imports today are down by 90%, to roughly 5 tons a year. Isn't that incredible?? ::does happy dance::
So after that the elephant population rebounded pretty well, but in recent years two things have caused elephant killings to go up again. One is demand in China. To combat this, a group called WildAid is trying the same approach as was done in Japan, only using celebrities, sort of the Chinese version of royalty, I guess. (The picture of the giant basketball player next to the baby elephant is just adorable!) WildAid was really successful in a recent campaign to reduce demand for shark fins in China, so there's a good chance this could help. ::does hopeful dance::
The other problem, though, is terrorists -- Al Shabab, for example, who killed all those people at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. They're using poached ivory to fund their activities. And these aren't some local yokel with a 20-year-old rifle. These guys are organized and they have higher-tech equipment, like night vision goggles and laser scopes, and their effect on the elephants is devastating. The LA Times and Huffington Post both recently ran stories about the ivory/terrorism connection. If there were no market for ivory, these guys couldn't make money on it and they'd leave the elephants alone. Sadly, this also has an indirect death toll because it leaves orphan baby elephants who aren't old enough to survive on their own. ::does sad dance::
This is the sort of thing that makes me wish that homo was more sapiens, or at least that our position at the top of the food chain was automatically accompanied by compassion and rationality...
Well, then yesterday I got a newsletter from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an elephant rescue operation I've contributed to for years in honor of my grandparents. The DSWT is an organization in Kenya that rescues/raises orphan baby elephants and then returns them to the wild. They're a fantastic organization, founded by a British woman (Dame Daphne Sheldrick) but staffed and run largely by native Kenyans, and the work they do is incredibly important. The newsletter mentioned that they're currently doing a fund-raising campaign -- sponsored by Kristen Davis of Sex and the City, of all people! -- on crowdrise, including a video with some beautiful footage of elephants in the wild. This gave me mixed emotions because yay! publicity and they're doing well with their campaign, but sad :( that they are busier than ever with so many orphaned elephants to care for.
Christmas is coming -- maybe you know somebody who's hard to buy for? You could contribute to the campaign in their name, or foster a baby elephant in their honor!
Very cool!!
"Over six hundred historic photographs of London, never seen in public before, have been published for the first time...The collection features images of most of London's landmarks, churches, open spaces, statues and buildings, alongside social and cultural scenes from the Victorian to the inter-war period..."
read full article
The entire set of images is published in The Gentle Author's London Album.
"Over six hundred historic photographs of London, never seen in public before, have been published for the first time...The collection features images of most of London's landmarks, churches, open spaces, statues and buildings, alongside social and cultural scenes from the Victorian to the inter-war period..."
read full article
The entire set of images is published in The Gentle Author's London Album.
What are you reading Wednesday
16 October 2013 11:02 pmSnagged from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
igrockspock. Looks like a good time to catch up on my book reviews.
Immediately upon finishing Windeye, I added three or four more of this author's books to my to-read list. That should tell you something.
A collection of did-that-happen-or-didn't-it? and what-just-happened? stories, the tales in this book range from the odd and eerie to the downright horrifying. The author's command of language and range of styles are remarkable, from fairy tale to classic monster/demon to magical realism to the completely surreal, and there's a nice sprinkling of unreliable narrators which are always fun.
In the title story we're not sure whether or not the narrator had a sister, and in a later one a man may or may not have a brother; there's a classically sinister monster tale and a very peculiar piece about what I thought was a spacesuit, but on googling it found out it's actually an old diving suit ("The Sladen Suit", whose nickname apparently was "Clammy Death"!!). There's an fairy tale about a young man whose inheritance of a fabulous horse turns out to be not quite what he expects, and a short-short about bees. All are very different in tone, style, setting, and narrative voice, but all are equally high quality. I highly recommend it.
I'm not sure what to say about The Children's Hospital. It's...extremely odd, a combination of surrealism, post-apocalypse, religious rapture, and a really really long, boring boat ride. It was published by McSweeney's, which should tell you something right there. There are so many things about this book that should have turned me off: it's overloaded with medical jargon, the main character is annoyingly passive and her fear that anyone she loves will die is completely irrational, every single thing about the apocalypse is completely opaque, most of the characters are one-dimensional and wholly unlikable, and weirdest of all everyone in the floating hospital seems to just Keep Calm and Carry One despite the seven miles of water and the loss of the ENTIRE PLANET...
And yet, and yet....
I was sucked in. I felt Jemma's brother's pain, even though I didn't comprehend it. I cared about these people, even while I didn't like them very much and was not infrequently irritated by them. And I cried at the end, surprising even myself. (N.B. According to the Washington Post, the author is a pediatrician studying at Harvard Divinity School. That explains a lot.)
Ah, The Necromancer's House. Been waiting for this for MONTHS. I got hold of an advance reading copy of this, so was lucky enough to read it before it was officially released. Well, actually Mr Psmith got the ARC and I had to wait until he was done with it before I could get my greedy little hands on it. Longest two weeks of my life.
Given that the author's previous two books were "period pieces" -- although from wildly different periods -- I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, a very contemporary story complete with classic cars, AA, chat rooms, and the interwebz. Happily, I was not disappointed. The main character, Andrew, is a complicated man with a strong sense of integrity but, one quickly suspects, certain secrets in his past that are coming back to haunt him. This turns out to be true, but in more ways than are at first obvious.
I do love non-obvious.
There was quite a bit of non-obvious in this book which meant that I was frequently surprised -- and for somebody who reads as much as I do, that's not easy to do. The surprises were not so much in the broad arc of the story, which is a classic (and I mean that in a good way) tale of redemption, as in the details and the execution, and in what one might call the inflections of the ending, the way it’s shaped and carried out.
Two things I particularly liked about the book's treatment of magic. First, magic isn't free. One doesn't simply shout some garbled Latin and wave a wand -- this magic takes some serious effort, both mental and physical, to learn, to control, to use (safely), in some cases simply to understand. And there's no question that magic is potentially very dangerous stuff in this world; it can blow up in your face if you're not careful. Second, the story didn't get bogged down in the mechanics of the magic -- recipes, spells, how you do it, how it works. There's just the right amount of detail, and nicely modernized (Andrew’s particular skill is with cars and film footage, for example, while chicagohoney85’s are with computers), that the flavor permeates the story without overwhelming it.
Which is good because, despite the fact that magic is wound thoroughly about this tale, in the end it’s all about the people. And I like these people, Andrew and Anneke (and Chancho and Michael and even chicagohoney85), enough that I want to know more about all of them. (Here’s where I admit that I’m hoping for a sequel, or maybe Michael’s backstory...shhhhh...) They aren’t perfect, but like most of us they’re good people doing their best to muddle through, and deal with their past mistakes in a stand-up way without compromising what they believe.
Oh, and he made my cry over Salvador. Thanks, buddy.
Buehlman’s novels have all been billed as horror, but clearly they aren’t horror for horror’s sake. It’s not about a high body count or creative methods of killing people off (although he’s good at that, and Between Two Fires had a lot of them!). It's about applying horror to characters -- putting them in horrifying situations -- to see how they respond, the way an engineer applies heat or pressure to a substance to see if it will break. "Test to destruction" is how you learn what something is really made of, and this seems to be a recurrent theme, first with Frank Nichols in Those Across the River, then Thomas in Between Two Fires, and now Andrew and Anneke.
I'm looking forward to his next test.
Alas, everything about Regina's Song annoyed me, and I do mean everything. The dialog is flat and artificial, crammed with cliches and bad/outdated slang, despite the fact that the narrator is supposed to be a PhD in English [1]. The characters are one-dimensional and uninteresting, and the male characters consistently demonstrate a condescending 1950s-era attitude towards women (and others) [2]. The plot is full of holes and irrelevancies [3], and a fairly appalling lack of any sort of moral or ethical sense is exhibited across the board [4]. Examples hidden to prevent spoilerage. Although really I'm sure it wouldn't matter to anyone.
[1] "It's not as if we're going to rat him off...He knows that he can trust us to keep our mouths shut. I'm not all that interested in cop-shop secrets when you get right down to it. But we need to know what Burpee's up to. Bob's cut him off at the pass on this case and Burpee's probably eating his own liver by now. Let's face it guys, Bob stuck his neck way out with that protective custody scam, and Burpee's most likely trying to blindside my big brother. If we want to keep Bob on our side, we're going to have to help cover his buns."
That's eight, count 'em, EIGHT, in one speech. And that's fairly typical. If I never read the phrase "hit the bricks" again it will be too soon.
[2] male characters (the good guys, whom we are supposed to like) call female characters "babe" and "sweet-cakes" and "Mama Trish" to their faces. And the girls don't object. Also the girls aren't allowed in on the investigation and do all the cooking while the menfolk do the home and auto repair and come up with good ideas and hunt down killers. Oh, and the one Japanese character is referred to as "an oriental gentleman." Please.
[3] the license plate, the curare, the dogs/wolves (wtf?), a vast plethora of legal irregularities, and the presentation of DNA as a Big New Technology -- in 2002. Srsly? Also, there is no villain. Or mystery. Or song, which made even the title of the book annoying.
[4] The fact that the residents of the boarding house collude to protect a psychotic killer is a little unnerving, but when a priest hears about a murder and actually cheers the killer, you know something is seriously amiss.
Most vexing of all is that all of this derailed an excellent premise that had a lot of potential. The first few pages, with the backstory between the narrator and the twins, is pretty gripping. But it deteriorates pretty fast from then on.
I also read The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson, which was excellent but I haven't written a review for it yet, so maybe next week. And yay, I will at last be able to use my "fox sex" tag again!! (It's the little things that can make your day...)
igrockspock. Looks like a good time to catch up on my book reviews.Immediately upon finishing Windeye, I added three or four more of this author's books to my to-read list. That should tell you something.A collection of did-that-happen-or-didn't-it? and what-just-happened? stories, the tales in this book range from the odd and eerie to the downright horrifying. The author's command of language and range of styles are remarkable, from fairy tale to classic monster/demon to magical realism to the completely surreal, and there's a nice sprinkling of unreliable narrators which are always fun.
In the title story we're not sure whether or not the narrator had a sister, and in a later one a man may or may not have a brother; there's a classically sinister monster tale and a very peculiar piece about what I thought was a spacesuit, but on googling it found out it's actually an old diving suit ("The Sladen Suit", whose nickname apparently was "Clammy Death"!!). There's an fairy tale about a young man whose inheritance of a fabulous horse turns out to be not quite what he expects, and a short-short about bees. All are very different in tone, style, setting, and narrative voice, but all are equally high quality. I highly recommend it.
I'm not sure what to say about The Children's Hospital. It's...extremely odd, a combination of surrealism, post-apocalypse, religious rapture, and a really really long, boring boat ride. It was published by McSweeney's, which should tell you something right there. There are so many things about this book that should have turned me off: it's overloaded with medical jargon, the main character is annoyingly passive and her fear that anyone she loves will die is completely irrational, every single thing about the apocalypse is completely opaque, most of the characters are one-dimensional and wholly unlikable, and weirdest of all everyone in the floating hospital seems to just Keep Calm and Carry One despite the seven miles of water and the loss of the ENTIRE PLANET...And yet, and yet....
I was sucked in. I felt Jemma's brother's pain, even though I didn't comprehend it. I cared about these people, even while I didn't like them very much and was not infrequently irritated by them. And I cried at the end, surprising even myself. (N.B. According to the Washington Post, the author is a pediatrician studying at Harvard Divinity School. That explains a lot.)
Ah, The Necromancer's House. Been waiting for this for MONTHS. I got hold of an advance reading copy of this, so was lucky enough to read it before it was officially released. Well, actually Mr Psmith got the ARC and I had to wait until he was done with it before I could get my greedy little hands on it. Longest two weeks of my life.Given that the author's previous two books were "period pieces" -- although from wildly different periods -- I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, a very contemporary story complete with classic cars, AA, chat rooms, and the interwebz. Happily, I was not disappointed. The main character, Andrew, is a complicated man with a strong sense of integrity but, one quickly suspects, certain secrets in his past that are coming back to haunt him. This turns out to be true, but in more ways than are at first obvious.
I do love non-obvious.
There was quite a bit of non-obvious in this book which meant that I was frequently surprised -- and for somebody who reads as much as I do, that's not easy to do. The surprises were not so much in the broad arc of the story, which is a classic (and I mean that in a good way) tale of redemption, as in the details and the execution, and in what one might call the inflections of the ending, the way it’s shaped and carried out.
Two things I particularly liked about the book's treatment of magic. First, magic isn't free. One doesn't simply shout some garbled Latin and wave a wand -- this magic takes some serious effort, both mental and physical, to learn, to control, to use (safely), in some cases simply to understand. And there's no question that magic is potentially very dangerous stuff in this world; it can blow up in your face if you're not careful. Second, the story didn't get bogged down in the mechanics of the magic -- recipes, spells, how you do it, how it works. There's just the right amount of detail, and nicely modernized (Andrew’s particular skill is with cars and film footage, for example, while chicagohoney85’s are with computers), that the flavor permeates the story without overwhelming it.
Which is good because, despite the fact that magic is wound thoroughly about this tale, in the end it’s all about the people. And I like these people, Andrew and Anneke (and Chancho and Michael and even chicagohoney85), enough that I want to know more about all of them. (Here’s where I admit that I’m hoping for a sequel, or maybe Michael’s backstory...shhhhh...) They aren’t perfect, but like most of us they’re good people doing their best to muddle through, and deal with their past mistakes in a stand-up way without compromising what they believe.
Oh, and he made my cry over Salvador. Thanks, buddy.
Buehlman’s novels have all been billed as horror, but clearly they aren’t horror for horror’s sake. It’s not about a high body count or creative methods of killing people off (although he’s good at that, and Between Two Fires had a lot of them!). It's about applying horror to characters -- putting them in horrifying situations -- to see how they respond, the way an engineer applies heat or pressure to a substance to see if it will break. "Test to destruction" is how you learn what something is really made of, and this seems to be a recurrent theme, first with Frank Nichols in Those Across the River, then Thomas in Between Two Fires, and now Andrew and Anneke.
I'm looking forward to his next test.
Alas, everything about Regina's Song annoyed me, and I do mean everything. The dialog is flat and artificial, crammed with cliches and bad/outdated slang, despite the fact that the narrator is supposed to be a PhD in English [1]. The characters are one-dimensional and uninteresting, and the male characters consistently demonstrate a condescending 1950s-era attitude towards women (and others) [2]. The plot is full of holes and irrelevancies [3], and a fairly appalling lack of any sort of moral or ethical sense is exhibited across the board [4]. Examples hidden to prevent spoilerage. Although really I'm sure it wouldn't matter to anyone.That's eight, count 'em, EIGHT, in one speech. And that's fairly typical. If I never read the phrase "hit the bricks" again it will be too soon.
[2] male characters (the good guys, whom we are supposed to like) call female characters "babe" and "sweet-cakes" and "Mama Trish" to their faces. And the girls don't object. Also the girls aren't allowed in on the investigation and do all the cooking while the menfolk do the home and auto repair and come up with good ideas and hunt down killers. Oh, and the one Japanese character is referred to as "an oriental gentleman." Please.
[3] the license plate, the curare, the dogs/wolves (wtf?), a vast plethora of legal irregularities, and the presentation of DNA as a Big New Technology -- in 2002. Srsly? Also, there is no villain. Or mystery. Or song, which made even the title of the book annoying.
[4] The fact that the residents of the boarding house collude to protect a psychotic killer is a little unnerving, but when a priest hears about a murder and actually cheers the killer, you know something is seriously amiss.
Most vexing of all is that all of this derailed an excellent premise that had a lot of potential. The first few pages, with the backstory between the narrator and the twins, is pretty gripping. But it deteriorates pretty fast from then on.
I also read The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson, which was excellent but I haven't written a review for it yet, so maybe next week. And yay, I will at last be able to use my "fox sex" tag again!! (It's the little things that can make your day...)
Just discovered not one but TWO interviews with one of my favorite authors, Ted Chiang! If you don't know Ted Chiang, you are missing out on some truly stunning work. He's a technical writer by trade, but on the side a writer of science fiction or possibly fantasy or perhaps speculative fiction, depending on your definition). A consistent theme of his work is the interplay between science, religion and magic, and many of his stories explore the places where these three intersect or blur into one another. This also happens to be a big interest of mine, so of course I devour anything he writes. As someone famous once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and Chiang's stories often play with this idea, pushing the boundaries or rather showing that the boundaries are perhaps fuzzier than we think. You can read several of his stories, including the wonderful "Hell is the Absence of God," here.
In the first interview, he says this:
I find this an interesting observation. Time was, in the not-so-distant past, one could be both a good Christian and a good scientist (*koff*Jesuits*koff*). Even during the Enlightenment, a scientist working diligently to fully understand the natural world was not (necessarily) seen as a threat to belief in God but as paying tribute to it, by uncovering new marvels and demonstrating the incredible complexity and beauty therein. Likewise, no scientist felt obligated to denounce religion as a bunch of hokum and say that anybody who believed it was a fool. But these days it's not uncommon to run across some fairly strong rhetoric that makes the two seem fundamentally (ha ha) incompatible, such as the anti-science stance of some on the far right.
On the other hand, just last week I learned that my former home state is trying to remove evolution from the curriculum on the grounds that science IS a religion, so perhaps the two are closer than we think...
But I digress. I was talking about how masterfully Chiang explores this in his writing. I don't want to give away any spoilers (because I REALLY want everyone I know to go and read him for themselves!), but the best examples are in his collection Stories of Your Life and Others. The title story manages to combine alien linguistics with the problem of free will AND will make you cry, an impressive feat for a single story. "Tower of Babylon" and "Seventy-Two Letters" are excellent examples of the religion of magic, or the magic of science, or the science of religion, however you want to think about it, each with a twist at the end that makes you go "woa..."
To leave questions of religion aside, the last story in the book is particularly pertinent to women, I think, since we live in a society that places an abnormal priority on female beauty, and one narrow form of it to boot, with photo-shopped models and the constant selling of beauty products. The story is called "Liking What You See: A Documentary" and is about a near-future invention that allows people to switch off their perception of whether a person is beautiful or not. (This is not as far-fetched as it sounds -- scientists are increasingly fine-tuning their knowledge of where in the brain things happen.) The story is written as a documentary, with interviews with college students, parents, scientists, religious figures, business people (advertising!), etc. all arguing for or against it on one or another grounds. All of the interviews are interesting, but the most poignant is perhaps the main character, a college-age girl trying to decide which is right for her. Like most of Chiang's stories, the purpose is more to make you think rather than convince of a certain way of thinking. It's fascinating and eerie and discomfiting all at once.
In the second interview, which actually was first since it was in 2002 and the other one was in 2010, he has this to say:
What do you think about this distinction, of magic as elitist and science as egalitarian? If, for example, in the world of Harry Potter, some mutation made everyone magical, would it no longer be magic since it's available to everyone? Or what if magic were attainable by anyone willing to work really hard, or pay a certain price?
In the first interview, he says this:
There is a similarity between science and religion in that they're both attempts to understand the universe, and there was a time in the past when science and religion were not seen as incompatible, when it made perfect sense to be both a scientist and a religious person. Nowadays there is much more of an attitude that the two are incompatible. I think that's sort of a 20th century phenomenon.
I find this an interesting observation. Time was, in the not-so-distant past, one could be both a good Christian and a good scientist (*koff*Jesuits*koff*). Even during the Enlightenment, a scientist working diligently to fully understand the natural world was not (necessarily) seen as a threat to belief in God but as paying tribute to it, by uncovering new marvels and demonstrating the incredible complexity and beauty therein. Likewise, no scientist felt obligated to denounce religion as a bunch of hokum and say that anybody who believed it was a fool. But these days it's not uncommon to run across some fairly strong rhetoric that makes the two seem fundamentally (ha ha) incompatible, such as the anti-science stance of some on the far right.
On the other hand, just last week I learned that my former home state is trying to remove evolution from the curriculum on the grounds that science IS a religion, so perhaps the two are closer than we think...
But I digress. I was talking about how masterfully Chiang explores this in his writing. I don't want to give away any spoilers (because I REALLY want everyone I know to go and read him for themselves!), but the best examples are in his collection Stories of Your Life and Others. The title story manages to combine alien linguistics with the problem of free will AND will make you cry, an impressive feat for a single story. "Tower of Babylon" and "Seventy-Two Letters" are excellent examples of the religion of magic, or the magic of science, or the science of religion, however you want to think about it, each with a twist at the end that makes you go "woa..."
To leave questions of religion aside, the last story in the book is particularly pertinent to women, I think, since we live in a society that places an abnormal priority on female beauty, and one narrow form of it to boot, with photo-shopped models and the constant selling of beauty products. The story is called "Liking What You See: A Documentary" and is about a near-future invention that allows people to switch off their perception of whether a person is beautiful or not. (This is not as far-fetched as it sounds -- scientists are increasingly fine-tuning their knowledge of where in the brain things happen.) The story is written as a documentary, with interviews with college students, parents, scientists, religious figures, business people (advertising!), etc. all arguing for or against it on one or another grounds. All of the interviews are interesting, but the most poignant is perhaps the main character, a college-age girl trying to decide which is right for her. Like most of Chiang's stories, the purpose is more to make you think rather than convince of a certain way of thinking. It's fascinating and eerie and discomfiting all at once.
In the second interview, which actually was first since it was in 2002 and the other one was in 2010, he has this to say:
[M]agic is always esoteric, whereas science and technology are fundamentally egalitarian. Magic's something for the few, the elect, the anointed, or someone who has a gift, but science is ultimately amenable to mass production, so we can all enjoy the benefits.
What do you think about this distinction, of magic as elitist and science as egalitarian? If, for example, in the world of Harry Potter, some mutation made everyone magical, would it no longer be magic since it's available to everyone? Or what if magic were attainable by anyone willing to work really hard, or pay a certain price?
This is the most amazing -- and sensual -- pair of dancers I've seen in a very long time, if ever. Their athleticism is astonishing, and yet it doesn't detract from the beauty of their movements by turning it into a gymnastic exercise (and wow, is she bendy!). I was spellbound by their performance; it made me want to cheer and cry at the same time.
(skip to about the 1-minute mark if you don't speak Russian!)
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“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is
translated through you into action, and because there is only one of
you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it
will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham
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“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is
translated through you into action, and because there is only one of
you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it
will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham
How's that again, Pandora?
7 October 2013 10:51 pmSo we have a subscription to Pandora, the "music genome project." The idea is that you "seed" a channel with one or two songs and then it extrapolates from those to play others that you might like. You can thumbs-up or thumbs-down a given song to sort of train it on what you like. Generally, it isn't bad and I've discovered two or three new groups (e.g., Oysterband) that I really like through them.
When it plays a new song, it offers you the option to query it, "Why is this song playing?" Normally you get answers like, "This song has close harmonies and a folksy sound" or "This song has a strong melody line and a complex backbeat."
This evening we queried a song Pandora played on our Pretorius channel.
The response was, "This song has amazing sackbuttlery."
I can't even bwahahahaaaaaaa type that without laughing :D
When it plays a new song, it offers you the option to query it, "Why is this song playing?" Normally you get answers like, "This song has close harmonies and a folksy sound" or "This song has a strong melody line and a complex backbeat."
This evening we queried a song Pandora played on our Pretorius channel.
The response was, "This song has amazing sackbuttlery."
I can't even bwahahahaaaaaaa type that without laughing :D
One of my stories, A Price Beyond Rubies, is part of the 300th ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
quiz_sshg! I am so tickled, partly for me but even more so for the artist who did such a lovely piece based on it. Go check them out and take the quiz!
quiz_sshg! I am so tickled, partly for me but even more so for the artist who did such a lovely piece based on it. Go check them out and take the quiz!
THE HP FANFIC FAN POLL AWARDS - FALL-WINTER ROUND 2013
Rules, Timelines, and How to Nominate a Fic
To Make Nominations/Ask Questions: hpfanficfanpollmod@gmail.com
Nomination period: October 1st - October 28th, 2013
Voting period: November 1st - December 31st, 2013
Winners announced: by January 10th, 2014
Well, this is fun
29 September 2013 01:04 pmI Am A: Neutral Good Human Wizard (6th Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-12
Constitution-13
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-11
Charisma-11
Alignment: Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.
Race: Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Class: Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?
Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-12
Constitution-13
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-11
Charisma-11
Alignment: Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.
Race: Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Class: Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?
1. Kenneth Branagh (squeee!) will be directing a live-action version of Cinderella. Helena Bonham Carter plays the Fairy Godmother (so, presumably, not a crazy hag -- surprise! Though she's also playing Miss Havisham, so maybe this is an anomaly).
2. Chickens: the Steadi-Cam of the animal kingdom
3. Miss Piggy wearing the Hope Diamond. Yup, the actual Hope Diamond.
4. The Secret Life of Bees and The Necromancer's House (yeah, I need to write a proper review, but trust me on this: they're both -- in very different ways -- fantastic.
5. New Pope rocks.
6. Queen + physics = Bohemian Gravity:
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2. Chickens: the Steadi-Cam of the animal kingdom
3. Miss Piggy wearing the Hope Diamond. Yup, the actual Hope Diamond.
4. The Secret Life of Bees and The Necromancer's House (yeah, I need to write a proper review, but trust me on this: they're both -- in very different ways -- fantastic.
5. New Pope rocks.
6. Queen + physics = Bohemian Gravity:
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Why am I seeing pictures of Miley Cyrus naked on a wrecking ball everywhere I go online? Is this some sort of metaphor for what she's done to her career or what?
Also, the winner of the "Best Spontaneous Reaction" contest is "Oh, sweet Jesus on a breadstick..." for this atrocious violation of a beloved classic. I'm sorry, Carrie what? And Captain von Trapp is being played by Stephen who??
Thank god for today's google doodle, otherwise I would despair of modern culture.
Also, the winner of the "Best Spontaneous Reaction" contest is "Oh, sweet Jesus on a breadstick..." for this atrocious violation of a beloved classic. I'm sorry, Carrie what? And Captain von Trapp is being played by Stephen who??
Thank god for today's google doodle, otherwise I would despair of modern culture.
Signups for hp_holidaygen have been extended -- w00t! This is always a great fest, with intriguing prompts and some terrific stories. So what are you waiting for?
Molly and Tonks
15 September 2013 01:45 pmReveals went up a little while ago at hp_friendship so I can now cop to being the author of "To Understand and To Be Understood," which explores the friendship between Molly Weasley and Tonks. squibstress (thank you!) wrote the most wonderful prompt which allowed me to incorporate different aspects of friendship, bits of canon, wolves in fairy tales, and some pet theories about magic, power, gender and Muggle-borns. It was great fun to write and I got some lovely thoughtful comments, which is always a joy for a writer :)
Title: To Understand and To Be Understood (on LJ) (on AO3)
Characters: Molly Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks; cameos by Mad-Eye Moody, Fred and George, Dumbledore and one or two others.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Character death (canon)
Word Count: ~8800
Summary: "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood." -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Original prompt, fromsquibstress: "They appear to be close-ish in canon. What kind of friendship is it? A few ideas: Maybe Molly sees Tonks as the woman she might have been if she'd made different choices. Does she urge Tonks to pursue Lupin, and maybe get pregnant, out of supportive friendship, or is it something else? Or take the opposite approach: Molly sees Tonks making the same choices she did, and tries to talk her out of it. Or maybe Molly wants to convince Tonks that she doesn't have to choose one or the other--maybe Tonks has choices that weren't open to Molly."
Author's Notes: Thanks to my speedy and eagle-eyed beta,nursedarry, for her Britpicks and excellent suggestions. Text in bold was taken directly from Rowling's books. Molly's line about having children being "to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body" is from author Elizabeth Stone. The information about what happens when two werewolves mate under the full moon comes from pottermore.com.
hp_friendship so I can now cop to being the author of "To Understand and To Be Understood," which explores the friendship between Molly Weasley and Tonks. squibstress (thank you!) wrote the most wonderful prompt which allowed me to incorporate different aspects of friendship, bits of canon, wolves in fairy tales, and some pet theories about magic, power, gender and Muggle-borns. It was great fun to write and I got some lovely thoughtful comments, which is always a joy for a writer :)Title: To Understand and To Be Understood (on LJ) (on AO3)
Characters: Molly Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks; cameos by Mad-Eye Moody, Fred and George, Dumbledore and one or two others.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Character death (canon)
Word Count: ~8800
Summary: "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood." -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Original prompt, from
squibstress: "They appear to be close-ish in canon. What kind of friendship is it? A few ideas: Maybe Molly sees Tonks as the woman she might have been if she'd made different choices. Does she urge Tonks to pursue Lupin, and maybe get pregnant, out of supportive friendship, or is it something else? Or take the opposite approach: Molly sees Tonks making the same choices she did, and tries to talk her out of it. Or maybe Molly wants to convince Tonks that she doesn't have to choose one or the other--maybe Tonks has choices that weren't open to Molly." Author's Notes: Thanks to my speedy and eagle-eyed beta,
nursedarry, for her Britpicks and excellent suggestions. Text in bold was taken directly from Rowling's books. Molly's line about having children being "to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body" is from author Elizabeth Stone. The information about what happens when two werewolves mate under the full moon comes from pottermore.com.Friday humor
13 September 2013 07:29 pmToo crazy busy to be able to think of anything sensible to write, so instead I offer this awesome thing:
