| When is a science fiction writer not a science fiction writer? |
[May. 31st, 2012|12:01 pm] |
Over at Tor.com, the person who writes their Genre in the Mainstream column—that is, the column which seeks to claim writers such as Brautigan and Millhauser as writers of the fantastic—has this to say about the fiction selections in this week's New Yorker, which is the science fiction issue:
But none of them are actually science fiction or fantasy writers...the lack of inclusion of an actual honest-to-goodness science fiction (or fantasy!) writer made me feel like we weren’t getting a fair shake.
Now, it seems to me that someone who writes a piece of science fiction or fantasy and gets it published is a science fiction/fantasy writer, at least at that moment. In this week's New Yorker is also Jonathan Lethem, who has had novels published by Tor Books, and stories in Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, one of the Starlight anthologies, etc. So even if "science fiction writer" now simply means "someone published by a science fiction publisher", Tor.com's columnist is wrong. Clearly, something else is meant by reading a work of science fiction and declaring its author not a science fiction writer. But what could be meant? You tell me!
Poll #1843971
Why Aren't The People In the SF Issue of the New Yorker SF writers
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41
There's something different about these people...
View Answers
| lack of visibile stink lines coming off their bodies |
   2 (5.0%) |
| not one of them was ever Guest of Honor at Skiffycon, down at the airport Ramada |
| 4 (10.0%) |
| their stories are too well-written, seem faggy |
| 6 (15.0%) |
| all fail to claim victim status as geeks; must therefore be "Cool Kid" oppressors |
| 5 (12.5%) |
| Junot Diaz works at MIT, where no self-respecting science fiction writer would ever be seen |
| 1 (2.5%) |
| not one story about overweight libertarian supermen saving the universe from the Insecto-Negroids of Sector 7G-Alpha |
| 4 (10.0%) |
| fifth-columnist Nick Mamatas agitating on behalf of the New Yorker; brain parasites at work somehow |
| 5 (12.5%) |
| I get nothing but form rejections from the magazine and these people get in! Conspiracy!!! |
| 2 (5.0%) |
| I've never heard of these people because I don't read very much. |
| 6 (15.0%) |
| it's just not a science fiction magazine if there aren't any space whales getting raped on the cover |
| 5 (12.5%) |
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| in which there are a couple more link-y things, and a return to Silver Kingdom. |
[May. 31st, 2012|01:40 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood | | |  cheerful | ] |
i recently read two exceptionally good articles on two heavily-debated topics: The Plight of the Honeybee and, on the subject of the end of the world, What Mayan Elders Are Saying about 2012. in case either of these things concern/interest you. :) i also found this awesome web page about swimming holes that i want to make use of while i'm on vacation in New England. unicorn needs water, badly.
on the subject of travel to New England, i'm planning to volunteer at Silver Kingdom Renaissance Festival on Sunday, June 17th. hope to see at least a few of you there. :D
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| Another of my ten words in Arabic. |
[May. 31st, 2012|01:29 pm] |
واسْطة (wasta). It's kind of close to 关系 (guanxi), and kind of close to блат (blat).
That these languages all have a word for a similar and overlapping concept is significant, I think.
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| in which there is more theft? |
[May. 31st, 2012|09:45 am] |
| [ | Current Mood | | |  exasperated | ] |
my mother woke me up this morning at 5:30 AM, creeping up the stairs, knocking on my door, and saying softly "Are you awake? Sorry to wake you up, but there's a rabbit in the garden..."
my eyes popped open and i ruefully swung myself out of bed, thinking all the time "The hell there is."
i stumbled into the bathroom, barely able to see since my eyes were so dry, and peered out the window down into the garden. a little furry brown shape was hopping around inside the fence. i thought "You little *expletive*."
i ran downstairs in my nightgown, out the door, and into the backyard. the mother rabbit was sitting on the mulch inside the garden fence, chewing something. she looked out at me with what i imagined was a smug rabbit expression. i pointed right at her and said "YOU. GET OUT of my garden! NOW."
i didn't expect her to listen to me, certainly. i expected i'd have to open the gate and chase her out. i'm still not sure how she got in there. but she got out on her own. when i yelled at her, she took a running leap at the fence in front of her and nearly cleared it, just clipping her back feet on it. she raced off into the front yard. i stared at the spot where she was, thinking "Superrabbit: able to leap tall fences in a single bound."
--
now i'm inside watching my dad. as soon as my mom gets back i have to go out and inspect my fence... the fence that protected the garden for only little over a week. *sigh*
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| "Secure Boot" and free software |
[May. 31st, 2012|01:37 am] |
| [ | Current Music | | | Steed Lord -- New Crack City | ] |
 Interesting, long post on how the hell Linux vendors make their product work now that MICROS~1 has enabled BIOS DRM. (The tl;dr version: running a custom kernel on modern hardware just became rocket surgery.) Fedora 18 will be released at around the same time as Windows 8, and as previously discussed all Windows 8 hardware will be shipping with secure boot enabled by default.Most hardware you'll be able to buy towards the end of the year will be Windows 8 certified. That means that it'll be carrying a set of secure boot keys, and if it comes with Windows 8 pre-installed then secure boot will be enabled by default. This set of keys isn't absolutely fixed and will probably vary between manufacturers, but anything with a Windows logo will carry the Microsoft key. [...] Secure boot is built on the idea that all code that can touch the hardware directly is trusted, and any untrusted code must go through the trusted code. This can be circumvented if users can execute arbitrary code in the kernel. So, we'll be moving to requiring signed kernel modules and locking down certain aspects of kernel functionality. The most obvious example is that it won't be possible to access PCI regions directly from userspace, which means all graphics cards will need kernel drivers. Userspace modesetting will be a thing of the past. Signed modules are obviously troubling from a user perspective. We'll be signing all the drivers that we ship, but what about out of tree drivers? We don't have a good answer for that yet. [...] If I take a signed Linux bootloader and then use it to boot something that looks like an unsigned Linux kernel, I've instead potentially just booted a piece of malware. And if that malware can attack Windows then the signed Linux bootloader is no longer just a signed Linux bootloader, it's a signed Windows malware launcher and that's the kind of thing that results in that bootloader being added to the list of blacklisted binaries and suddenly your signed Linux bootloader isn't even a signed Linux bootloader. So kernels need to be signed. Mirrored from jwz.org.
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| Nico Vega |
[May. 31st, 2012|01:13 am] |
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Awesome show. How does such a huge voice come out of such a tiny pregnant lady? I got a kick out of the "we're going to play an instrumental now because she has to pee" interlude. People who liked Concrete Blonde, Le Butcherettes and PJ Harvey also enjoyed Nico Vega. Mirrored from jwz.org.
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