The Mountain and the Tree

From sabethea

1. Science Fiction or Fantasy - which do you prefer/where do you make the separation/what do you like about them both. (*cheats with a three-in-one question* The general gist is, please ramble on about them.)

Let's see!

I rarely draw a hard line between SF & fantasy - I'm starting to prefer the catchall term "fantastika". When I do separate them, it's usually a contrast between what Darko Suvin referred to as a "novum", ie. the new thing which makes SF SF, and what I've started to think of as a diversa, a change in the metaphysical or moral way the world works, a way of narrativising the universe and justifying the Gods' ways to humanity. Whether that's "good will win out in the end", "the world rewards hard work and trust in your friends", "it's everyone for himself and all things will eventually decay and die", or "face it, everyone is a bastard deep down" that's... how fantasy seems to work. If we're talking about a change in physics or mechanics, or a new invention, that's a novum, but they can often overlap, as with universes where the Ptolemaic model of astronomy is real (since that's to do with the nature & importance of the world) or as with Valente's Habitation of the Blessed, which starts with an inversion of a classic Greek science text.

2. Photography or jewellry/other things making - which do you prefer?

The latter. I like photography, but I don't have enough... handles on it, I suppose... to be able to get the same level of absorbtion and complexity that I do with physical craftsmanship. I know it does have that level of complexity, and can be a fascinating analogue process, but I'm nowhere near that good. Whilst I can get good results, it's not from anything complex.

3. I gather you're coming up to three years dating [info]mirabehn. Congratulations, and how did you two get together?

We both played Satan in a readthrough of the radio series "Old Harry's Game" organised by midnightmelody.

4. Favourite Diana Wynne Jones book?

It's a tossup between Archer's Goon (the first one I read) and The Dark Lord of Derkholm.

5. Do you play instruments/sing? If so what?

I drum, though not with any great proficiency, and merrythebard is teaching me to sing.

I may or may not provide some questions to people who ask for them in the comments.

Ian Sales has compiled a list of 91 'science fiction mistressworks', a complement to the Gollancz Masterworks series.

Bold those you’ve read, italicise those you own but have not read
( long list )

I've written a longish essay on Cold Iron & Rowan-Wood, entitled "On the Meaning of Maps" - it's all about the use & purpose of maps in fantasy books, and you can find it here.

Not something I'd normally do, but have a Harry Potter fanfic recommendation, in which standard-issue whiny entitled Harry is replaced by a hyper-rational^[1] child genius.

Warning: Chapter 7 contains something that looks like a character making a rape joke. Reading on, thank goodness, it's a highly serious plot moment and his interlocuter is disgusted with him. The entire section is, however, both potentially very triggering, and generally a bit upsetting. [Edit: Also an actual rape joke in Chapter 11, which consists of eminently skippable random non-canon bits for some inexplicable reason. Not plot justified. F, see me after class, &c.]

As a whole, the story is extremely funny in places, genuinely moving in others, and quite interesting throughout. Bear in mind that I am only on chapter 17, so cannot either guarantee the quality or issue warnings beyond that.

NB: This story is not for fans of Ron Weasley.

"I only want power so I can get books." (I feel a T-shirt coming on...)

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[1] For "Less Wrong" values of hyper-rational. "Less Wrong" is a somewhat pretentious and very self-regarding website all about being cleverer than everyone else. Nevertheless, this Harry is an engaging character who may be somewhat familiar to Bujold fans.

The iconography involved is quite amazing. They're "born from molten steel", made from vinyl and CCTV cameras. And the names are utterly typical upper-upper-middle-class English.


It's as though someone had put out a casting call for the Home Secretary and Prime Minister in one of those uniquely British dystopias that were so popular in the 1980s, and after rejecting everyone who turned up decided that the best thing to do would be to put Tinkywinky and Po through a Cyber-conversion unit.

These guys have the names, they have right air of faux-benevolent omniscience, they have the smooth PR-friendly lines, and steel? When it comes to images of state control and oversight, that has unfortunate implications.

mirabehn and I will be at Odyssey 2010, staying in the convention hotel. I'm presenting a talk at 5pm on Sunday, on "Information Decay and Archiving", looking at (among other things) the ways information tries to escape, and the tradeoffs involved. It's clashing with a couple of things I would have wanted to go to, but that's always the way...

The draft programme is up here, thanks to watervole.

Who else will we see there?

[Poll #1533724]

(otherwise known as, I had to see it. Therefore, so do you)

Star Trek slash for kids, via harald387.

The methodology here is a bit dodgy (I'm using Google, with site:librarything.com "Author 1" "Author 2" - it's known to return a small number of duplicate results, and an unknown number of false negatives) but frankly it's the best I've got. The percentages for an intersection are the percent of the lower-ranked author who also had the higher-ranked one.

597 people list at least one book by Walter Wink.
5,530 list at least one book by Diane Duane.
44 (7%) list both authors.

I wanted to look at a couple of control groups, so I did this two ways. First, by picking two other authors who wrote Star Trek novelizations.

2,260 list at least one book by John M Ford. His intersection with Duane is 648 (29%).
782 list at least one book by Vonda McIntyre. Her intersection with Duane is 171 (22%). Ford & McIntyre intersect at 155 (20%).
58 (10%) list both Ford and Walter Wink; 1 (0%) lists both McIntyre and Wink.

A corresponding & connected religious philosopher seemed to me to be Rene Girard. His LibraryThing stats give him 298 fans, and his intersection with Wink is 54, or 18%.
Girard's intersection with Duane is 40 (13%); with Ford it's 33 (11%); and with McIntyre it's 2 (0%). (Neither of them the one who also has Wink.)

The second method I looked at was to find another religious philosopher who had similar stats to Wink, and another SF author with similar stats to Duane. It turned out to be John Polkinghorne (605) and Elizabeth Bear (5,780).

Polkinghorne's intersection with Wink is 49 (8%), and Bear's with Duane is 384 (7%) so they seem to be connected pairwise at about the same distance in L-space.

Polkinghorne's intersection with Duane is 32 (5%) while Bear's with Wink is 7 (1%). For completeness' sake, Polkinghorne's intersection with Bear is 17 (3%).

So overall, the Duane/Wink match does seem to be a bit more than random noise after all.

It turns out that the best thing for my (usually rather unpleasant) travel sickness is milkshake. McDonald's thick milkshakes particularly, but others will do, and "Primo Coffee" (if I'm remembering the name right - found one at a random service station) does one which is rather tastier. Five hours on a coach is still not fun, but at least I met a couple of other London fans on the way up.

The Midland Hotel is lovely - delightful Victorian interiors, comfortable quiet rooms, friendly staff, and very functional showers. Not staying in the con hotel was a bit of a pain, but on the plus side it meant I got a decent amount of sleep and could get up in the mornings. The Midland coffee, incidentally, is shite, but the breakfast is otherwise v. good.
( Friday - recreating history, and larping )( Saturday )( Sunday - paperblogging a steampunk panel )( Monday - upcoming book rec, realistic fantasy, trithemy )