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I Heart My Town (#2)

2 Comments / Nattering / By Gwenda / May 31, 2008

Mrs. Peacock and a Professor
Originally uploaded by gwenda

1. The "Who Done It?" Alleycat race was last night, and we were checkpoint workers at Barbara Ann’s School of Dance. Tasked with eliminating Miss Scarlet in the ballroom from the list of possibilities, we mostly enjoyed checking out the costumes and chatting with interested passersby. (Only one of whom was disapproving, I might add.) I’m very, very sad that I was too out of it to come up with costumes of our own in time, especially since I realized this morning that my new hat would have been PERFECT. More photos on the Flickr.

2. Our first trip to the farmer’s market this year yielded a revolutionary new food that might just save the world: red velvet swirl ice cream. It’s what’s for breakfast.

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Fictionally Brief

Books / By Gwenda / May 30, 2008

Wigleaf has put together a top 50 list of (very) short fictions published online in 2007.

I haven’t read them all, but of the ones I have Martha Cooley’s "Siena, Italy, 9 August 2007" and Elizabeth Gumport’s "The Pool House" stand out. I also really liked Erin Fitzgerald’s "Four Sieges" from the "long shortlist" — in some of these stories, the voices can seem a bit samey when read back to back, but Erin’s doing something else.

Also? Robert Doisneau pictures.

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Friday Hangovers

1 Comment / Hangovers / By Gwenda / May 30, 2008

The NYT recently profiled video game legend Shigeru Miyamoto (he likes bluegrass): Mr. Miyamoto’s work is evolving from a reliance on invented characters and fanciful, outlandish settings like Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom or Zelda’s mythical Hyrule. With games like Nintendogs (inspired by his pet Shetland sheepdog), Wii Sports, Wii Fit and coming next, Wii Music, Mr. Miyamoto is gravitating toward everyday hobbies: pets, bowling, yoga, Hula-Hoop, music. It is as if an artist who had mastered the abstract had finally moved into realism.
Salman Rushdie on NPR on The Enchantress of Florence and the dangers of being perceived as ponderous: "The threat against me was arcane and theological and unfunny. There’s an assumption that I must be arcane and theological and unfunny," Rushdie says. "And I think it puts people off. When I go around lecturing at colleges and so on, every single time I do it somebody comes up to me and says ‘Who knew that you’d be funny?’ People have this expectation of a very dark, serious kind of burdened person. I’m just trying to burst back into Technicolor."
John Crowley considers an age-old question of terminology: Is there a term in SF — not "robot," not "cyborg." not "android" — for the Ironman concept — a man-shaped thng, suit or suit of armor, inside which a human sits, manipulating it?
Photos of one of the last uncontacted native tribes in Brazil. (Thanks, C!)
The sophisticated stray dogs of Moscow. They ride the metro! This is one of the most fascinating articles I’ve read in ages: Now, old factories are being transformed into shopping centers and apartment blocks, so strays have become more avid and skillful beggars. They have developed innovative strategies, zoologists say, such as a come-from-behind ambush technique: A big dog pads up silently behind a man eating on the street and barks. The startled man drops his food. The dog eats it. (Via a migratory Ed.)
Adrienne Martini writes an excellent, smart-as-hell review of Karen Joy Fowler’s Wit’s End for the Baltimore City Paper: With Wit’s End, you can feel the echoes of these books as Fowler pushes her story beyond all that she’s made before. She stacks each cup on top of the other, with sure and steady hands. And then she knocks them down herself, with a broad grin, because watching them fall is just too much fun. I can’t wait to see what her tower looks like next time.
Seven Imps turns the spotlight on Barry Moser.
Austin on maps of fictional worlds.
Dana on Chicago. (Please approach with a sense of humor.)

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Incoming!

Books / By Gwenda / May 29, 2008

Alan DeNiro just sold his novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, to Bantam Spectra (via the fabulous Colleen Lindsay, agent extraordinaire). As the kids say, w00t!

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What About Carhenge?

Science Project / By Gwenda / May 29, 2008

A new study has found that for centuries Stonehenge was a burial ground (perhaps also home to a drum circle or two?):

"Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge’s sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument’s use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead," Parker Pearson said in a statement.

The researchers also excavated homes nearby at Durrington Walls, which they said appeared to be seasonal homes related to Stonehenge.

Okay, I know I’m just in a goofy mood today, but I’m cracking myself up over here with seasonal homes of the dead stuff.

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Woe & Hope

1 Comment / Books / By Gwenda / May 28, 2008

Terri Windling has announced the demise of the Endicott Studio blog and the Journal of Mythic Arts — both of which are sad things. That said, I’m happy at the prospect of exciting new work from everyone involved (especially Terri and Midori) and look forward to seeing what happens next.

(My first real fiction publication was last summer in the YA issue– and I’ll always be glad it was published there, glad to be a part of small part of JoMA’s story.)

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Wiscon Thingeroos

2 Comments / Scientifiction / By Gwenda / May 28, 2008

I was going to post about what an amazing experience serving on the Tiptree jury ultimately turned out to be, particularly getting to discuss Carhullan Army and the honor list in an in-depth way with such smart people over the weekend. I’d been vaguely dreading the Judging the Tiptree panel, even more after Meghan and I both stayed up too late the night before at Dave and Sarah’s launch party; it turned out to be a fabulous, wide-ranging conversation with the folks who showed up. I feel grateful for the whole experience — even the singing. Anyway, I’d say more, but Meghan has already said it. So just read her post instead.
The one panel I wasn’t on that I made it to was the Magical Realism: Threat or Menace? panel, where Dora Goss, Jeremy Lassen, Cat Valente and moderator Delia Sherman quickly agreed the title and panel description were unnecessarily inflammatory and went on to have a truly fascinating conversation. At one point, Dora talked about how the academic establishment generally views secondary world fantasies as lesser than fantasies rooted in the "real" world. I’ve been wondering since if perhaps such readers essentially experience works of (especially) Latin American and Eastern European magical realism as secondary world fantasies, thus creating a big loophole.
Christopher and Cecil’s pattycake smackdown in the Governor’s Club was awesome.
Icon! Yum!
Barb fixed my dress. Yay!
As per everyone else’s complaints, not enough time with all the fabulous people. I’m avoiding the big list o names, because there are really and truly too many. Readercon — who’s going? We are.

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Post Office Famous

Nattering / By Gwenda / May 28, 2008

This morning I had to go in and pick up our mail because we had a "too much to fit in box" thingie, AND an express mail thingie (and the P.O. lady had even left a message about the express mail while we were traveling). We get a sizeable amount of mail–mostly books–and while a chunk comes to the house, quite a lot of it goes to the P.O. Box.

Anyway, it turns out that this has not gone unnoticed by the postal workers and that they refer to our mail as: "James Bond’s mail." The woman asked me about the name of my blog, and when she called to a co-worker to bring out our box’s accumulated box she added, "It’s James Bond!" and he came out to see me. "You guys get a lot of mail," she said, clearly wanting to know what precisely we were getting.

But I was coy and just said, "I know," because do you really think they’d keep calling it "James Bond’s mail" if they knew it was mostly books?

Me neither.

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(So) Hangovers

Hangovers / By Gwenda / May 27, 2008

So we’re still clear of the stomach bug, but both seem to have colds and general yuckiness. Blech. I do actually want to make a little post about a couple of Wiscon-related things, mostly to say how excellent it was to get to participate in such fabulous discussions about The Carhullan Army/Daughters of the North and the rest of the Tiptree list, and natter about a panel or so. (The best part, as always, was hanging with peeps new and old.) But that will not be happening today, not until I’ve managed some serious couch time. In the meantime, some links, mostly to obvious stuff…
Emily Gould’s confessional piece about the dangers of internet celebrity and oversharing (sometimes I really hate things online being open to comments).
Saint Death in Chi-town: For decades Santa Muerte has been present in the tough neighborhoods of Mexico City, where prostitutes and drug traffickers worshiped her mostly in secret. Last month, a group devoted to the icon made her over, giving the figure long, brown hair and a rose to hold in an attempt to change her image and win Mexican government recognition.
Of female fantasy writers and double standards. Over at the Horn Book Blog, many people are wishing the writer in question had chosen an example other than Rowling to make the case.
The Salon piece about The Death of Literary Criticism that has some people talking. Yawn.
Jeannette Winterson opens the Sydney Writers’ Festival. (Via Jeff.)
Stephany Aulenback is compiling an interesting list of books for adults about childhood. I’d add Jeff Ford’s latest, The Shadow Year.
Salman Rushdie returns to the fantastic, and the fantastically real: As the eight page bibliography in the back of the book reminds, much of this story is actually factually true – and not the parts one might think. "The people of this time were more interested in magic than in religion because they thought of it as real," Rushdie said. And then there’s the history itself. "At one point, I had to research what the Turks were up to, and they were going to war with Dracula!"

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Home Home Home

Nattering / By Gwenda / May 26, 2008

And so far no sign of stomach flu aka winter vomiting disease for either of us, and, anyway, here we are well-stocked with anti-nausea medication (which I usually travel with, so it’s a miracle we didn’t come down with it in Madison). Here’s hoping the coming multi-state outbreak limits itself in severity and those of you that are laid low rise up again soon. We should all have begun taking large quantities of tequila as soon as the word began to circulate.

More tomorrow after sleeping, but here’s to another great Wiscon that zipped by far too quickly. Also, Indiana Jones? So terrible you really must see it.

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