Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 7
Jul. 23rd, 2025 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
( Read more... )
Bundle of Holding: Neon Lords
Jul. 23rd, 2025 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

The all-new Neon Lords Bundle featuring Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland, the gonzo slime-punk post-apocalyptic cassette-future tabletop roleplaying game from Super Savage Systems.
Bundle of Holding: Neon Lords
I Am Proud To Announce
Jul. 23rd, 2025 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Also went through the DW inbox recently, and it's back down to reasonable numbers.
- Finn Amara (he/him)
Wednesday wishes that certain institutions did not insist on doing business by phone
Jul. 23rd, 2025 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
What I read
Finished This House of Grief, which is not the sort of thing I normally read much of (grim true crime in Australia) - and I started it and it languished for a bit and then I was reading it on the train and it became compelling, and I had to finish it before going on to anything else.
Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb (The Trials of Gabriel Ward Book 2) (2025), which was absolutely lovely, just so good.
Then got back to Selina Hastings on Sybille Bedford, which was a competent enough biography -
- except, I then read Norma Clarke, Brothers of the Quill: Oliver Goldsmith in Grub Street (2016) and she just does so much with context and making a literary living and Irish identity in the English literary world and issues of status and class and so on. And okay, part of that is because there's actually not a lot of reliable material on Goldsmith, so it makes sense to look at him in this wider view - and as part of the bro culture of the time (I admit this was rather less appealing than her earlier studies of women of the same era).
- so I looked back and thought there were quite a lot of questions around Sybille and what it meant to her to have all those affairs with women and yet be a bit iffy about claiming Lesbian identity - not to mention the economics of her situation - and class and nationality and so forth. But I guess that wasn't the book she was writing.
Then read Anthony Powell, The Valley of Bones (1964), which is sort of the male equivalent of those women's novels of the early stage of WW2 when it's all waiting round and preparation rather than anything actually happening.
On the go
Picking things up and putting them down, trying to decide what to read next.
Up next
Vide supra.
Five SFF Stories About Editing and Storing Memories
Jul. 23rd, 2025 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

From magical memory wipes to space-based mind erasure...
Five SFF Stories About Editing and Storing Memories
The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, volume 1 by Haruo Iwamune
Jul. 23rd, 2025 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Fifty years after the Great Disaster, special investigator Saya searches for survivors. There are a few... but none are human.
The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, volume 1 by Haruo Iwamune
Wednesday Reading Meme
Jul. 23rd, 2025 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Valenti Angeloâs Nino, a 1930s Newbery book of one of my favorite genres, âa thinly fictionalized memoir of the authorâs childhood in Ye Olden Times.â Angelo emigrated to the United States at the age of eight, but he remembered his early years in Italy in great detail, especially the delicious food, like polenta with cheese and honey.
Iâve been looking for a Louisa May Alcott book to read for my postcard project, and rather stymied because Iâve read all the main ones at this point, but Tasha Tudor came to the rescue: she illustrated A Round Dozen, twelve short stories by Louisa May Alcott collected by Anne Thaxter Eaton. Alcottâs moralistic tendencies grow somewhat more concentrated in short story form, and although I have generally a high tolerance for that sort of thing, by the last story I wanted to eat an entire indigestible mincemeat pie while sitting in a hayloft reading something unwholesome.
And I read Dorothy Gilmanâs The Tightrope Walker, a recent Little Free Library find! Our heroine Amelia Jones, unwilling to follow her therapistâs recommendation that she find some purpose in life by taking a typing class, instead acquires a secondhand shop. While tidying up her new wares, she discovers a note inside the hurdy-gurdy, which purports to be from a woman who is about to be murderedâŠ
If you like Gilman, youâll like this. An excellent mystery story that grows increasingly tense, with a couple of twists that delighted me.
What Iâm Reading Now
In Lord Peter, I just read a short story that appears to be Sayersâ first go-round for the mystery plot of Have His Carcase, followed by a short story where Lord Peter fakes his own death and goes undercover for two years in order to round up an evil secret society of criminals.
This is particularly funny because in the story immediately preceding, Lord Peter announces that he always loses interest in detective stories featuring evil secret societies of criminals. So do I, Lord Peter! And yet here we are!
What I Plan to Read Next
I have a mere THREE Newbery books left! Lois Lenskiâs Phebe Fairchild: Her Book, Jeanette Eatonâs Leader by Destiny: George Washington, Man and Patriot, and Dorothy Lathropâs The Fairy Circus. Full speed ahead to the end!
Readercon: Book Club: The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed
Jul. 22nd, 2025 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Book Club: The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed
Newly reprinted under the author's current name, The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed is a post-cyberpunk novel about brain modification, being queer in an oppressive society, the media, species extinction, and the possibility of changing human nature. In 2010, Jo Walton called it "one of the most important books of the last 20 years." We'll discuss what made this novel groundbreaking in 1996, what makes it still fresh and relevant today, our favorite lines that aren't the beginning and ending, and the throwaway worldbuilding detail that most caught our attention.
Kate Nepveu (moderator), Marianna Martin PhD
Last panel report! ... with so much extra.
The audience said they were okay with spoilers, so we included general spoilers for premise and worldbuilding from the beginning of the discussion. I will have a separate clicky arrow for ending spoilers. (Very gratifyingly, when we got to that point of the panel, someone in the audience got up and left, saying something like, "I decided I want to read it myself after all!")`
I gave a little summary of the premise for the couple of people who hadn't read the book, which I will try to recreate/improve upon now.
The book is set in Russia about 300 years in the future. Previously: America ("the Guardians") conquered most of the world [1], committing genocide through lowest-bidder concentration camps and ruling for 50 years. They were defeated probably 75 years ago, mostly by an army of ordinary people who were mind-controlled by a computer virus that erased itself from their minds once it detected victory. (Africa, which is now a walled-off technological paradise, took Egypt back from the Guardians without the virus.) Maya is a camera, which means she broadcasts news as her senses experience it—except with a screener to filter out not just distracting bodily urges, but also forbidden topics, lest she attract the Weavers (immensely scary censors who live in the internet to prevent another mind-control virus). Screeners instantly know their cameras' minds in full. Cameras have no such reciprocal knowledge. As the book opens, Maya is broadcasting a series about why the reign of the Guardians is barely remembered, unlike the Holocaust and the Terror-Famine [2]. And she has a brand-new screener, Keishi. [1] North America, Eurasia, Egypt, and Japan, as far as we can tell. Hat tip to the Wizards versus Lesbians podcast for pointing out that the rest of Asia doesn't seem to exist; after I heard them say that, I looked and didn't see anything about South America either. [2] No other information is ever given about this, just the way none is given about the Holocaust. But actually, the book does not open there. It opens with Maya writing to her audience: The whale, the traitor; the note she left me and the run-in with the Post police; and how I felt about her and what she turned out to be—all this you know. What a first line. The prologue ends with another banger: I will give you my thoughts since that time, but not on moistdisk. I will not let you explore the twining pathways of my thoughts as I explore them—not again. I will hide instead behind this wall of words, and I will conceal what I choose to conceal. I will tell you the story in order, as youâd tell a story to a stranger who knows nothing of it: for you are not my friend, and what you know is far less than you think you know. You will read my life in phosphors on a screen, or glowing letters scrolling up the inside of your eye. And when you reach the end, you will lie down again in your indifferent dark apartment, with the neon splashing watercolor blues across your face, and you will know a little less about me than you did before. (In addition to the narration, it's useful to know that the book moves through different modes, and some people find the last half to be a jarring change, for expectation-setting purposes.)
summary of the premise, with quotes
footnotes
With that background, we got into the discussion proper. Marianna: ways in which book is about camera and editing reminded of Dziga Vertov, 1920s Russian cinema, had a manifesto about how in the future we would become cameras. Maya is a camera, constantly making decisions that are directing and editing her broadcasts: pan here, add background information there. Marianna cont'd: anticipating current social media, when livecasting everything: are we actually seeing what they are? not only that, but the asymmetry in the screener-camera relationship predicted parasociality. as does Maya's relationship with her audience: she needs them, she's uneasy about their demands, they think they know her and they don't—they don't even know what she looks like, she uses a false userpic because she's older and scarred with old-fashioned sockets drilled into her head—and there's literal emotional feedback between them. (also, the camera is preemptive censorship like using euphemisms on TikTok.) audience member: thought about "veil of Maya" in Hinduism, which is a false reality. me: oh, so that's what Keishi was referencing! me: going back to Vertov, that reminded me of the book's terrible monomaniacal old man, Voskresenye, who had idea that true teleprescence, that is, what cameras broadcast, can save humanity: overcome the "sins of locality" that arise from being trapped in our own skulls and unable to achieve empathy. Marianna: Vertov was propagandist documentary maker, believed that if people just saw what was really happening, would get on board with the Russian Revolution. not only that but "Cine-Eye" technique would help improve/evolve humanity. Marianna cont'd: thinks there are three themes that underpin SF in general: memory, identity, trauma. they all come together in this book so powerfully. but doesn't argue for universality in sense of uniformity, Voskresenye is also very angry about enforced homogeneity and exclusions. (later on, we talked about the book's pondering of whether love results from, or is stifled by, intense mental intimacy.) Marianna cont'd: all that and we haven't even mentioned the dead psychic whale yet! so this may have been where I talked about Moby-Dick, which I re-read specifically so I could talk about how it relates to this book! it's name-checked by the text, given to Maya as a memory: The novel seeped into my mind, like milk into a sponge. A man tattooed with frogs and labyrinths; a leg of polished whalebone; duodecimo, octavo, folio whales; a coffin bobbing among the waves; and in the blue distance a white mass rising, unknotting its suckered limbs, and sinking: unearthly, formless, chance-like mockery of life. But it's a lot more in conversation with it than that quote may indicate. They both have a central queer relationship. For those who haven't read Moby-Dick but have heard vaguely of Queequeg (the tattooed man), you may not know that Ishmael meets him because there is literally only one bed at the inn. The next day, Queequeg says that they are "married," and they go up to bed and talk, "in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cozy, loving pair." This is text. They both have terrible monomaniacal old men, as previously noted. They are both narrated after the fact by narrators with specific agendas. Ishmael is desperately trying to understand what happened and to make us understand what happened. Maya is also trying to understand what happened, revisiting Keishi's actions and her own decisions; and she says she's trying to reduce our understanding, but I'm not so sure about that. Also, so much foreshadowing. There is a whale, who is intelligent and filled with hate of humans, but only because humans keep bothering him or her. They both are surprisingly funny. (I liked when Maya needs to insert a really gross public plug into her head—this is the very embodied kind of cyberpunk—but doesn't have anything to clean it: "I settled for wiping the plug on my shirt, to replace some of the unknown dirt with dirt I was on intimate terms with.") My notes get a little sketchy here. I see that Marianna said that the novel is still frighteningly relevant, and there were times during this reread where she had to put it down. I'd previously noted on Bluesky that the Wizards vs. Lesbians podcast thought that the homophobia in the book seemed exaggerated, even though the book was set in Russia, because we'd come so far in overcoming that ... which was not an unreasonable thing to say, all the way back in 2021. Ouch. And as for the McGulags, well. I mentioned that asexuality doesn't seem to be a concept that the characters have (again, published in 1996), so at least one of them treats the ability to feel love and desire as the same thing; this is extremely relevant and in-character but the conflation was noticeable to me and would be a good thing to note in recommending the book to people. (Significant trans themes, though.) Someone mentioned the Richard Matheson short story "The Box," about whether you really know the person you married (originally "Button, Button"). (Also, I just realized that this Tumblr short story might be a riff off that.) I think at this point, all that's left of the panel discussion is talking about the ending. Marianna noted that the conflict between Keishi and Maya is, in addition to a fundamentally different understanding of love, very much a 1990s argument about coming out and whether people have an obligation to do so audience: political dynamic of the decision, Keishi claiming that they will represent hope me: the way Maya presents things throughout the book seems to me to trying to justify her distrust of Keishi and her decision to leave her, which results in her death. I'm not sure she convinces herself, based on those haunting last two paragraphs: And if I could, I would freeze that instant forever. But itâs no use. I can trap the young rose in the hologram, but the rose is long since dust. And what I most want to conceal from you, youâve always known: That I went up into the world and left her there, in the prison camp beneath the ocean, with the ruined mind of the new Iscariot and the body of the whale. (Emphasis added.) I think Maya has shame, or regret, or doubt, or all of the above. and I don't know that I would do the same in her shoes. all through the book, Maya is highlighting how Keishi is lying to her and manipulating her—this is even clearer, more painful, and more infuriating on a reread, but is explicit on a first read nonetheless. On the other hand, at the very end, Keishi says that she was forced into all the pre-whale manipulation by Voskresenye, who does not deny it. On the third hand, it was Keishi who took over Maya's mouth—which she did before and Maya specifically told her to never do again—and forced her to recover her memories before she was ready. Even if she didn't know that Voskresenye was going to broadcast them, that is a huge violation of trust, on top of agreeing to let Voskresenye broadcast the memories that Maya was in. and now, writing this, I've talked myself back around into thinking I would have done the same: because I don't think that I could trust Keishi to leave my brain, ever. or to stay quietly tucked away like she promised, because she said over and over that she doesn't want that, that she wants their minds to lie next to each other, and she shows over and over that she takes what she wants. including by controlling my body. and that is a very literal horror story, to the point that I may have just given myself nightmares. Okay! I think that's about all the panel discussion, or discussion directly related to it.panel notes, plus some more thoughts
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST 30% OF THE BOOK
I was going to do a really thorough dive into my many, many ebook bookmarks, but I must sleep. So here's just three things I already had prepared. First: you start looking up one chapter title, you end up with a zillion links. My suggestions for your consideration: Ashes, Ashes: we all fall down. The Platypus: Oliver Herford? A Faster Cable: impossible to search; suggestions? To Make Much of Time: Robert Herrick. As a Wife Has a Cow: Gertrude Stein. The Word: was God. Khristos Voskrese: as the text says, "Christ is risen." A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves: E.E. Cummings. All the King's Horses: couldn't put Humpty together again. My Man Sunday: impossible to search; suggestions? A Property of Easiness: Hamlet, act 5, scene 1, lines 67-68. Immediate Touch: as quoted at the start of the section, Paradise Lost. Icarus: too close to the sun, etc. Tea and Sympathy: the Classical movie? Phaeton: as Wikipedia puts it: "See also: ... Icarus; Lucifer" Very Like a Whale: Hamlet, act 3, scene 2, line 382; possibly also Ogden Nash, though that would feel more appropriate for a later chapter to me? Fallen Like Lightning: Luke 10:18? You Must Remember This: Casablanca, of course. Orpheus: now you see why explaining the reference in the prior panel would have been impossible. Penelope: faithfully waiting, or not, for a spouse who came home twenty-odd years later. (edited because I got this totally backwards at first) Sorrow's Springs: Gerard Manley Hopkins. Second: as I said on Bluesky, the contrast between Maya and Ishmael's last reported words is just brutal. Ishmael: "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee." Maya: âI donât know,â I said. âI donât think so.â Both the last things they said to the loves of their lives, but one is wholehearted affirmance that he means everything, and the other is equivocation and denial. Third: a text to a friend after I finished rereading: The Fortunate Fall shitpost: additional SPOILER thoughts
one of the things it foresaw, in addition to going viral, McGulags, and the death of print,
is the meme about the mortifying ordeal of being known.
Two post-panel things:
Afterward, the person who recommended the book to the Wizards vs. Lesbians podcast came up and said hi, so that was very cool.
And I took a selfie of my white whale earrings, which I forgot to mention on the panel.
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
Readercon: The Next Great Gatsby?
Jul. 22nd, 2025 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Next Great Gatsby?
At Readercon 33, Max Gladstone mentioned that The Great Gatsby flopped upon publicationâand therefore was cheap to send to American soldiers abroad in WWII, which resulted its revival. He asked the audience to imagine how great a world would be in which, for some reason, copies of Sarah Caudwell's Thus Was Adonis Murdered were suddenly everywhere. What other books ought to be suddenly ubiquitous?
Ellen Kushner, Kate Nepveu, R.W.W. (Rob) Greene (moderator), Len Schiff
Rob started the panel by talking about the reasons Gatsby was sent abroad, its canonization, and what that might mean for our panel. And, delightfully, he's put up a longer version of that in his newsletter, so that saves me so much typing right there. Anyway, as Rob says over there, the first question was: "What book would create the most positive chaos if it suddenly appeared in every American household?" Len: (who is a high school teacher, among other things): something Daniel Pinkwater, like Young Adults or The Education of Robert Nifkin Ellen: mine! (Swordspoint, specifically.) because I've had a long time to collect reactions to it. remembers getting a negative reaction from Steven Brust, who said something like, "I didn't really like it, am I homophobic? No, everyone's just completely immoral and I couldn't handle it." Thinks some queer immorality would be good chaos. Also, even today still gets people remarking on how much of a difference the representation in it made to them me: I don't know if it would be chaos exactly, but I had previously prepared the answer of Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison so I'm going to go with that, for the reasons in Amal el-Mohtar's essay: it's about a young girl who loses three homes and chooses the open road; it's beautiful, it's short, it's in conversation with other literature and a gateway into the author's other works. Rob: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle, which is horror novel about gay conversion camp with demons. (my notes are a bit of mess in terms of chronological order, I'm afraid, so I hope I haven't reconstructed things in a way that distorts) me: I'm not sure how much I agree with the premise. when I was looking at just the text of this description and thinking about the panel—well, first I thought how great Thus Was Adonis Murdered is. (we did talk about that, but for the sake of time and my hands, I'll refer you to my old booklog posts and move on. (Except that Ellen knew Caudwell! She met her on one of Caudwell's U.S. signing tours and then visited her in London. I was so starstruck.)) me cont'd: and I immediately started making rules for myself, because I'm like that, and one of the rules I made was that I could not use "this book could fix the world" as a criteria. partly because that's a hole I'd just never climb out of, and partly because it's just too unpredictable. books get misunderstood, they get taught to kids who aren't ready for them, people take away such personal things. of course books affect people, but maybe because I'm not a writer, my goal for this was much more humble: "wouldn't it be great if I could say to people, 'remember when Selena got super high at an orgy and ignored everyone in favor of reading Pride and Prejudice?', and they did." me concluding: that said, when I eventually picked titles to write down, I deliberately chose all women authors. (I do not give myself a cookie, however, because they were all white.) Ellen: I think a way to approach your objections is to think about ubiquity. everyone's read Gatsby (me: I haven't!); even if they haven't, it's part of assumed knowledge, the cultural conversation. (just to be clear: she was entirely correct about this and I was being a little bit silly.) Ellen, a bit later: conversations about ubiquity have shifted to movies. Lord of the Rings has far more power/reach culturally now than it did except at its first wave of popularity in U.S. (where did massively influence environmental movement), and people always quote (Ian McKellen as) Gandalf saying, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." Ellen and Len also defended Gatsby as a work against the negative effects that Rob laid at its feet (see his essay). Rob: mentioned something about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn being the second-most-taught book in the U.S., but I didn't write down the context for that I think this is when Rob asked what the first book was that changed our lives/opened our minds/showed us what books were capable of? Ellen: "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," by Harlan Ellison, for anarchy and chaos. Len: The Dispossessed. the utopian impulse is not a thing to be dismissed. dystopia is culturally determined; what we have now in the canon is because people were disappointed by Stalin. it confirms shitty things we believe about people and self-propagates. instead foreground utopia. that said, discovered the book in a counterculture used bookstore, and canonizing things risks losing a lot of their charm Len, later: did teach The Dispossessed to high schoolers and it went over like a lead balloon, they were just not interested in it. (I did not jump in on this, though I thought of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor, which I read like twenty times in fourth grade or so.) me: asks Len about a passing mention he made of The Hunger Games being taught in high schools. that seems like a good thing? inequality is bad, and the revolution needs more than a single teenager? Len: haven't taught it, but thinks that as long as make authority abstract, can depoliticize it. I'm sure there's a reading of The Hunger Games in which the Capitol are all SJWs. Rob: Ender's Game is one of the most popular books to be taught. used to be (?) taught as leadership in Marine Corps University. me: Some Desperate Glory is in conversation with Ender's Game and is very specific about the fascist nature of the leadership someone: ideally read them together Ellen: just found out about Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful, with regard to Gatsby maybe in here is when Rob asked about dropping something else in place of Gatsby in high schools? Len: refers back to Pinkwater me: Piranesi, because Travel Light seems a little young for high school; Piranesi is also short, wonderfully written, has lots to chew on, is in conversation with other works (specifically The Magician's Nephew), and: "The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite." Ellen: wants to keep all the old difficult books being assigned in high school, because that's the only time get help reading them! know someone who was assigned Dan Brown in high school, come on me: I had two books on my list that I thought were too dense and complicated, maybe I should put them back on! (Cyteen, C.J. Cherryh, and—of course, are you surprised by this point?—The Fortunate Fall, Cameron Reed) but also, some things seem like high school is just too early; shudder at idea Moby-Dick in high school, it's so long and I can't imagine the teachers would like explaining the chapter that's just a dick joke Rob: Parable of the Sower Rob to audience (copied from his essay): If you were designing a new book-distribution program for todayâs challenges â climate change, polarization, technological disruption, nationalism â what would be your first five titles? responses: never know what's going to speak to you, needs to be lots of titles (like the original) almost anything by Terry Pratchett (this was from Delia Sherman, and she and I discovered that we read Night Watch very differently in terms of what Pratchett, or more fairly the text, thinks of the revolutionaries in that book, which was delightful) Le Guin The Mahabharata! "it covers it all" of course books can change the world, Costa Rico has no standing army because a key figure there read Aldous Huxley. (I would love if someone could suggest more reading on this! Wikipedia is pretty bare-bones, and this article I found might be from a somewhat conservative-leaning publication?) Anyway, that was very fun and juicy. The final book on my list, which I did not get around to mentioning, is The Interior Life by Katherine Blake/Dorothy Heydt, which Jo Walton reviews usefully and which is free to download.)panel notes
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
Think they should be obliged to READ a certain percentage, hmmmm?
Jul. 22nd, 2025 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Paging the ponceyness police, what?
In an age of constant scrolling, there is social capital to be gained by simply looking as if you are a cultured person who listens to music on vinyl and reads lots of books. And creating an aesthetically pleasing bookshelf is now easier than ever, thanks to an increase in booksellers who trade in âbooks by the metreâ.
You know, I would be just slightly more sympathetic with people who are about The Aesthetic of BOOOX if they would ever demonstrate a touch of quirkiness and have shelves of (okay maybe nicely preserved copies) old Penguins? or those rather nifty little volumes of The Traveller's Library. Or just something that would suggest that this is more than just a step up from manifesting your Posh by having a lovely set of Heron Books Collectors Editions (bound in sumptious leatherette).
I think that if you're going to have Randomly Chosen For the Decorative Vibe books scattered about your pad, you should actually have to read at least some of them. And be able to respond to somebody asking about them without having to resort to whatever garbled wifflewoffle some AI engine serves up.
Okay, I am now meanly recalling the complete set of the works of Bulwer-Lytton in very good condition that lurked on a shelf in a bookshop I used to frequent. And also wondering as to whether there are collected editions of CP Snow's yawn-worthy 'Strangers and Brothers' sequence.
On the other hand, they might pick up something that they enjoyed and found engrossing, and develop the habit of reading. I would be there for that, in fact.
My own aesthetic is, the books have taken over, what do you mean, curated? maniacal laughter.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 6
Jul. 22nd, 2025 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Spoilers ahead for the earlier works.
( Read more... )
Readercon: Take Your Novel to Work
Jul. 22nd, 2025 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Take Your Novel to Work
In the genre of fanfic known as "take your fandom to work," favorite characters are placed in the author's work environment, often resulting in delightfully concrete and minute details about ecological field research or running a bodega or being a summer camp counselor. How do stories of everyday vocation enhance the experience of reading and writing fiction, and what works of speculative fiction take best advantage of the granular details of work life? What can bringing characters to work tell us about both the characters and the work itself?
Ken Schneyer (moderator), Marianna Martin PhD, Melissa Bobe, Sarah Pinsker
Ken, who writes short fiction, amended the title of the panel to "Take Your Story to Work." And asked the panelists to talk about their work in their introductions. Melissa: children's librarian Sarah: writing professor, have been many other things including camp counselor, working with horses, nonprofit administrator, SAT tutor, singer/songwriter Marianna: currently academic. formerly development executive for film and TV production, administrative assistant, film projectionist, IT, bartending training but not experience Sarah: bartending experience but no training! Ken: currently professor of humanities. previously IT project manager, ad hoc computer programmer, clerk typist, judicial clerk, lawyer in corporate law firm, dishwasher at deli, actor, director. several of those have found way into stories. asks: particularly good examples you've read, yours and/or not? Marianne: caveat did not read novel Discovery of Witches, but TV really got minutia of academia right. Stross, Laundry Files, vibe of working in IT. le CarrĂ©, sounds very plausible! (anyone interested in academia and/or Discovery of Witches must, must read this fic in which the author's note reads, "i'm not so much taking this fandom to work as i am meeting it next to the dumpster behind my workplace and engaging it in hand-to-hand combat for the honor of the field of human genetics" pachytene phase (9096 words) by magneticwave Summary: The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics is pleased to invite you to the annual Clarence Berrigan Lecture. This yearâs speaker is Matthew Clairmont, DPhil, who is giving a talk entitled: âInterspecies compatibility, meiotic flexibility, and the end of the infertility myth: insights from the southern red muntjac.â Please join us after Dr. Clairmontâs talk for a reception in the McNeil Family atrium at 5pm. Refreshments will be provided!panel notes
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Diana Bishop/Matthew Clairmont
Characters: Christopher "Chris" Roberts, Matthew Clairmont
Additional Tags: Epistolary
you don't need to know the fandom and it is hilarious)
Sarah: office vibes: Jeff Vandermeer, Authority (second one in trilogy that began with Annihilation); Several People Are Typing, Calvin Kasulke, someone gets uploaded into work Slack
Sarah cont'd: music: Randee Dawn's new one, The Only Song Worth Singing; really picky about those, good details about gritty. Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall
Melissa: read T. Kingfisher, A House with Good Bones, obsessed with research and entomology. own profession: Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, Bruce Coville (alas no dragons at their library), probably led to becoming librarian
Ken: moments where certain details ticked off
Sarah: curse of being immersed something, is when encountering books where author learned by research. some do well: Dick Francis, glassblowers and meteorologists, seems like got it, at least from outside those professions. it's things that don't think to research that grate. music, people can only picture what rock star is like, not what slugging through every day. also categories where if write thing, prepare to get letters: guns, horses (I'm the one writing the letters), sailing, U.S. Civil War (and if you've done primary source research, often letters you get are wrong)
Melissa: authors try to get librarians right because know we'll buy the book
Melissa cont'd: remembered work meant to mention: The Public, movie, Emilio Estevez, made after watching interactions at LA public library. only thing not believable: entire staff but one person were all men (so much laughter)
Marianna: try to condense rant of many years. authors are like: I went to school, I know what faculty do, I don't need to look that up. get overly focused on research (academic conduct thereof). nothing about hiring, tenure, career track, which is what academics mostly care about: I don't care how in love you are, you are not leaving MIT to follow your lover and teach at an Arizona community college.
Ken: bias toward academia in mainstream novels, so think lot is accurate there. re: law: people view procedure through mainstream TV, movies, think understand. part is that day to day of law work is exceptionally boring. sitting for 12 hours a day in a library (me, to myself: Ken is showing his age: I sit for 12 hours a day in front of Lexis => ). almost threw book across room: passage in Orson Scott Card novel, character obtains divorce AND the arrangement of bifurcated child custody WITHOUT spouse's knowledge (caveat, not set in US and in future, suppose could imagine, but)
Ken cont'd: flip around other way: examples of juicy details re: something otherwise unfamiliar, what did that do for you as a reader?
Marianna: le Carré, spoiler alert I'm definitely not a spy, not just telling you that to throw you off scent. made me want to write spy novels, so good at lot of details but not overwhelming with. particularly love when get book like Perfect Spy: how does this person spend their time on an average day? what is the macro running in the back of their head? everyday stuff that you might not think about.
(le Carré came up so much at the con and every time I have to google his name to remind myself of the capitalization and also copy the accented e)
Ken: and we know that he had experience in British intelligence. can you remember particular detail?
Marianna: how much time he spent with radio when holed up in safehouse, had code keys, sitting around waiting to hear message
Melissa: because in hotel, thinking about Kate Stayman-London's Fang Fiction—
—at this point, I very rudely interrupted to ask for a repeat of the title, which caused her to completely lose her train of thought. I apologized then and also after. wait until people are done talking to ask for repeats of titles, self!
anyway the publisher's page on Fang Fiction indicates that the main character is a hotel manager, and also it sounds fun.
Sarah: talking about a lot of jobs that do exist, but made think of jobs that don't but believe that do: Peter Beagle, I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, about dragon exterminator, like mice in the walls. hates his job because loves dragons, makes reader believe in this guy who knows he has to do, emotions resonant. mild spoiler for early part: protagonist tries to save some, sneaks away as pets.
Ken: The Martian, the book. main character has master's in botany and engineering conveniently. remember being struck by the thought process. no idea what experience author has, not point: I do know enough about electrical circuits to know that you need to know what gauge of wire, so completely sold that character knew what talking about, and did make me feel like I was there.
Melissa: A Magical Girl Retires, Park Seolyeon, very short, characters are all working as magical girls of X or Y, get sent on jobs, very much feels like 9-5 in hilarious way
Ken: more completely imaginary jobs?
Marianna: Stross' Laundry Files. wonderful balance between grounding familiar IT work but for government agency dealing with paranormal stuff
Sarah: all those little jobs in Terry Pratchett novels, e.g., candle snuffer. looks at Melissa: the Librarian though
Melissa: look, we take all representation
Ken: even the witches, does mundane detail so well, yeah, a real witch has to do that, more of a human interaction than anything else
(me, to myself: also, research witches.)
Ken: 15 years ago, talking with Elizabeth Hand, who said how in Glimmering, included nitty-gritty details of boat building which made real effort to research, surprised by great number of positive responses to that part specifically, not necessarily by boat builders, people who just really enjoyed. readers in general, American in particular, love to know how stuff is done, procedural details
(me, to myself: which is the joke in the Field and Stream review of Lady's Chatterley's Lover)
Ken cont'd: is detail good in and of itself, or does it have to advance plot/character/theme to be worthwhile?
Sarah: love granular detail and think is a danger of too much, either "I've suffered for my research and so must you", or because genuinely love the subject—haven't written horse novel because of risk get too in weeds. new novella Haunt Sweet Home, protagonist is working at reality show as production assistant (PA), very bottom of ladder. got lots of feedback from ex-PAs, used to live from someone who was a set dresser got some flavor from her. the things sometimes skip between big plot moments, are what make the job and character pop, so that when get to plot, believe in fully rounded character and ability/inability to do thing
Ken: remember in your A Song for a New Day, early on, step by step to get into venue and set up, played really real to me, felt like there and put me on her side
Sarah: makes it really hard to read those in public readings, not most dynamic
Marianna: just crystallized, what really sells me on details being necessary, is when feels like answering question already had, or didn't know needed until got. joy of discovery for reader, not only having fun but just learned something. can get away with a lot
Melissa: always comes back to how well written. joke never want to represent someone going to toilet, but that's first story in Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, really works. as writer, always worry that losing audience when writing library
Ken: been moments where you as reader has been lost?
Melissa: hard to lose me, find a lot of things interesting
Sarah: if I do one good thing this con, it's getting people to go read Molly Gloss, in particular The Hearts of Horses, horse trainer novel; sequel of sorts, Falling from Horses, Hollywood stuntman. details ARE the story. not SFF, basically Westerns. nobody does it better than her.
Ken: granular details about occupations as tool of worldbuilding. thinking about economy of language, classic example "the door dilated"
(me, to myself, once again: can I tell you about The Fortunate Fall????)
Melissa: Evil, CBS series, investigating Catholic Church, which everyone gets wrong (never heard priests complain, think happy to have people talking about). does get details wrong of church, but climbing and motherhood details were really interesting and well done (in the same character)
Sarah: from writer's perspective, stuff make sure to show to beta reader, especially someone who knows field really well if not your area, or if your area, to someone who doesn't know
Marianna: one of best pieces of advice ever seen, if in situation where danger of infodump but exposition needs to happen: get two characters having intense emotions, maybe even conflict, about information. can get away with so much more and also tell readers about stakes
Ken: decades ago, reading SFF story about lawyer, remember character bemoaning that his pleading-generating software was so outdated and running so slowly; opened up entire world of, what does law practice look like when there's genuinely good AI that can generate pleadings. no big commentary on that in the story, just one little detail
Sarah: going back to annoys: music related: describing music in way that music critic would. stories that do music right, talk about emotions of playing, hearing. Lewis Shiner always gets right, also LaShawn M. Wanak
Ken: reminds of TV show M*A*S*H. there are lots of doctors shows, almost always have consultant on set to ask questions of. one for M*A*S*H said, usually actors ask how to hold this instrument, they always asked how would it feel. showed in series
Ken: asks Marianna about mundane occupations in fantastical setting
Marianna: always fascinated by genre as magnifier, makes things bigger. only way to do that is to ground in mundane in one way or another. PhD dissertation about Whedon in Buffy would have outrageous situations but mundane jobs like bartending at demon bar, or inverse, to really push contrast
Ken: reminded of very short story, 15 years ago, "Accounting for Dragons" by Eric James Stone, very tongue in cheek, also satire. when look at fantastical through lens of mundane, casts light both ways
Melissa: ongoing manga, Kowloon Generic Romance, about realtors: feels very grounded but in a fictional city where things shift and disappear
(me, to myself: is manga particularly good at this? or do I just happen to hear about examples there?)
audience: reality is stranger than fiction. experience is that weird shit happens more often in real life than is written out. sparks some of my best ideas. any of that that forms heart of why you write?
Sarah: hard thing is that because so much stranger, sometimes don't read as true; wife works for liquor board, her stories are so weird (snakes falling out of ceiling onto fire marshal who was trying to figure out what rustling noise was), haven't found way to make fiction
audience: Snow Crash opening: the Deliverator was speculation, but sheer terror and anxiety is all of our delivery services now
Marianna: genre wonderful tool for laundering these things
In the rush to get notes out, I haven't been saying, "this panel was great," but if I didn't say something, they were. however, it's worth saying, and it's true: this panel was great.
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
Book Review: The Whispering Mountain
Jul. 22nd, 2025 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
When The Whispering Mountain takes place, Captain Hughes is still lost at sea dealing with the etc. Meanwhile, his son Owen is living unhappily with his grandfather, who manages a museum in a small village in Wales. Said museum has just come into possession of the legendary golden Harp of Teirtu, which is coveted by the local lord Malyn, a wicked man who owns a vast collection of golden objects.
When Owenâs grandfather refuses to hand over the harp, Malyn sends a couple of thieves to steal it. They not only steal the harp, but kidnap Owen, and frame him for the theft in the process.
And weâre off! We gallop through a typical Aikenian melange of fierce wild animals (boars, wolves, a couple of tiger snakes), also a fiercely loyal pet falcon named Hawc who likes to ride around on the head of his owner Arabis, Arabisâs poet-father who is too absorbed in writing an epic poem of King Arthur to quite notice the Plot swirling all around him, and of course Prince Davie.
âWeâre finally meeting Prince Davie!â I crowed, because we never did manage to catch up with him in Is Underground before his tragic death. But no, this is a different Prince Davie: Davie Jamie Charlie Needie Geordie Harry Dick Tudor-Stuart, known in The Cuckoo Tree as King Dick, the father of the Prince Davie of Is Underground, who will remain forever a golden shadow.
We also meet a bunch of small furry people who live under the Whispering Mountain, who I believe are drawn from the same substrate as Sutcliffâs Little Dark People: the theory that Britainâs fairies are in fact memories of an older race that was driven underground by successive waves of invasion.
Except Aiken being Aiken, she takes this in a wildly new direction: the little dark people are not the original Britons at all, but were in fact kidnapped by the Romans from their original homeland for their gold-working skills. After the Romans left Britain, the goldworkers hid under the mountains for two thousand years, becoming small and furry as a result of environmental pressures, making beautiful golden objects (including, for instance, harps), and longing for their warm sunny homeland.
Do they make it back to their warm sunny homeland? Of course theyâre on their way by the end of the book. This is Aiken! The good are rewarded, the bad are punished, and sometimes one of the good ones dies too just to add a bit of spice to the proceedings.
And here, for now, we come to the end of the Aikens. She wrote many, many more, and we may swing back around someday to read some of them, but right now we are on to our next adventure: a reread of Philip Pullmanâs His Dark Materials.
Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman
Jul. 22nd, 2025 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than the series' reputation would lead one to expect.
Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman
Readercon: The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction
Jul. 21st, 2025 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction
In an article of the same name, Elizabeth Minkel discussed how "2024 was the year [fanfic] truly broke containmentâeveryone seemed to want a piece of the fanfiction pie, leaving fic authors themselves besieged on all sides." Attempts to steal and monetize fanfic proliferated, as did reviews treating living authors as distant and unreachable. What do these trends say about larger changes in attitudes toward stories and creators? How can fans of all kinds nurture supportive connections to authors?
Claire Houck/Nina Waters, Kate Nepveu (moderator), Laura Antoniou, Victoria Janssen
This was my last panel of Saturday and I was so much more tired than I realized. At one point, maybe halfway through, I went looking for my next thought and found only an empty brain. So I took basically no notes beyond the setup, my apologies. I will see what I can reconstruct now, and invite anyone else who was there to chime in!
I started by saying that I read the article in question, thought it was interesting and Readercon-ish, and dropped it in the panel suggestion box. Then I started outlining it as panel prep and wasn't sure that I agreed with it! and I knew that at least some of the panel also did not, so I hoped for a lively discussion. I suggested that the problems in the article could be put into two groups: problems of intellectual property (IP), and problems of scale. Problems of IP: scraping fic sites, for text and also AI-generated audiobooks. selling bound copies of fic. these are problems caused by design of fic sites but more importantly, fic authors having much less power to protect their own works. Problems of scale: the greatly increased number of readers means that readers come to fic as fiction rather than fan fiction. this ties into ongoing conversations, as the article notes, about fracturing of fandom communities and shortening of fandom life cycles, and about distance between authors and readers. I asked the panel what they thought about these problems, and what problems they saw that weren't addressed by the article. Victoria: is really very mad that fan and pro fic has been scraped. really can't do much about it, just feels worse. Claire: interesting that article didn't mention plagiarism of fic by the kind of author who releases a new novel every two weeks to flood the market in a romance subgenre. many of those are legit, they're house names or groups of authors. but many are plagiarizing and filing off the serial numbers, and romance novels are so trope-based already that it's hard to definitively identify the plagiarism. happened to friend, was only able to demonstrate because had very distinctive setup. and that author just keeps reinventing self. Laura: have had professional work plagiarized. giggled manically about AI scraping pro erotica and fic: poisoning the data set! maybe reaction is too muted but it's capitalism. can't really protect fanfic. Claire: harassment of fic authors. started Duck Prints Press because wanted to publish fic authors, knew could be the firewall between authors and harassers. (aside: theory was that fic readers would like reading fic-style stories without fandom characters, and turns out no: people want those characters. they're making it work nonetheless.) lots and lots of discussion about this; see anti-shippers on Fanlore for a primer. we generally agreed that we had not heard of any writers modifying their own writing in hopes of being plucked out of the fic websites for professional publishing, as suggested in the article. I mentioned seeing efforts to educate new fic readers on Tumblr, where I spend a lot of time, but it's hard to tell what effect they have. I asked people how they've connected in fandoms, or maintained connections, or seen people fostering connection. Claire: people need to understand that it takes work and time. built up community around small fandom, by creating fandom events, setting up references for the fandom's fanartists and writers, creating a Discord. have to find people who seem cool and interact with them regularly and in a chill fashion over time: find a fanartist, comment on their stuff. may not get immediate response, but will eventually become familiar to them as a person who is not going to be weird. Victoria: used to be active in Blake's 7 fandom, dormant for long time, participation revived recently because discovered (or was invited to?) a Discord for it, and was even meeting people from it this weekend. panel notes
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?