Items

[petronia]

Weekend architecture: New Haven was very pretty albeit damp, filled with classical New England-ish sort of houses, a curl of mist or three away from Cthulhu mythos. Vermont was icy on the outside and cozy on the inside, and the tap water was as good as anyone else's spring water. At Yale I saw a white building that has translucent marble slabs in place of windows so that the rare books it contains would never be exposed to direct sunlight, and a wooden building in the shape of a long overturned ship that recycles its own water and heat, and a very good oil bust of a lady over a disused fireplace in a stony chapel behind an iron grille with a knob in the shape of a dragon, where I wasn't supposed to be because it had been turned into office cubicle space for manuscript scholars.


In the mail today: 1 x Hugo Awards nominating ballot. Totally forgot about this part; it seems wrong to ignore it but o_o.

(Auroras too! Mind you, I'd really like to know what the best short-form SFF work in French by a published Canadian writer in 2009 was. Where to even look for that? In CEGEP - CEGEP? I just dug it up and it was '97 - I had an anthology of Quebecois SF short stories as required class reading. That was literally the only way I knew Elisabeth Vonarburg when I saw that she was a guest at Worldcon: I thought, "oh the one who wrote the one about cyborgs and mother-daughter relationships." Which I still remembered, AMAZING HOW I USED TO ACTUALLY REMEMBER SHIZ I READ.)


Fanfictional allegory: somewhere along the line of internet browsing someone genius posited that the characters of the Doctor, the Master, and Captain Jack represented the major subcategories of ficcer motivation; completion of the thought left as an exercise for the reader. It's poetically appropriate, though, how much fix-it fic this fandom contains. XDD Six impossible things before breakfast, and if the writing's good they even contradict each other.

Comments

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Okay, so Captain Jack is obviously the personification of the lust motivation, let's see everybody get it on; and the Doctor I'd put as the exploration ficcer, wanting to play with strange new life and new civilizations - but does the Master represent delight in torturing the objects of one's obsession, or the desire to rip apart the system and rebuild it to one's own ideal specs?

repost

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

The Doctor represents the Crossover motivation, wanting to put all of you favorite people in one story. And Jack represents the Crack motivation, wanting to have fun with a setting by wrecking havoc on it. Something like that? Ditto what xparrot said about The Master.

Feminist SF has a post about nominating for the Hugos, you've probably seen it already: http://blogs.feministsf.net/?p=1320.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I would have said:

Doctor: tinkering w/ canon and making it better (for var. def. of better)
Master: canon is mere raw material for my own (intricate and frequently disturbing) constructs
Captain: nakama and boykissing

But really the fun of these exercises is seeing what other ppl come up with. XD Delight in torturing objects of obsession certainly works...

[meril.livejournal.com]

I lost my nominating ballot for last year, so I kind of know how you feel. If you do need some sort of list of novels to nominate, I can always forward you mine (I was going to go to Melbourne for Worldcon this year, but, you know. *kicks vehicle*)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Please do, actually - if nothing else I'd appreciate the recs! (Petronia gmail if it's long)

[meril.livejournal.com]

shortish, w/o elaboration (I'm sick)

in order, 12 best non-series or first in series books of 2009:
1. The City & the City, China Miéville
2. The Other City, Michal Ajvaz (translated in 2009)
3. In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield
4. Elfland, Freda Warrington
5. This Is Not a Game, Walter Jon Williams
6. Usurper of the Sun, Housuke Nojiri (translated in 2009)
7. Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
8. Hand of Isis, Jo Graham
9. The Laurentine Spy, Emily Gee
10. Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter, R.J. Anderson
11. Midwinter, Matthew Sturges
12. Amazon Ink, Lori Devoti

As for later-in-series installments, no particular order:
The Price of Spring, Daniel Abraham
In Ashes Lie, Marie Brennan
Cast in Silence, Michelle Sagara
Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness, Nahoko Uehashi (translated in 2009)

I did read more, but these are the only ones that I'd actually recommend without much reservation. I keep promising Charmian that I'll finish a "best fantasy of 2000-09" post but the sad thing is that so much that I read is either crap or only works as id candy that it can't safely be recced.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I really haven't read any of these. XD;

[meril.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's not a failing; it just shows you how much of my time I waste on reading books. I don't post about them anymore (at LJ) either.

[cis.livejournal.com]

a white building that has translucent marble slabs in place of windows so that the rare books it contains would never be exposed to direct sunlight

this sounds so beautiful i can't quite even

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beinecke_Rare_Book_and_Manuscript_Library)

Inorite my friends were like "blahblahblah campus tour" and I was like wait what? can I go in there? well can I at least stand outside and touch it and stare at it for a while?

There's a Gutenberg Bible in there...

[vureoelt.livejournal.com]

Translucent marble. Wow... how lucky to see such inspirational sights!