Jo Walton ([info]papersky) wrote,
@ 2008-11-26 08:14:00
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Wednesday
I sent Boskone both the DDB pictures and asked them to choose. I really appreciate everyone's input.

The sun is shining with that inimitable "early morning below freezing" light. It's instantly recognisable, but it would be very hard to describe.

San Francisco Chronicle mini review and recommendation of Half a Crown in their Holiday Reading section.

Very interesting article about Tor, SF, and the Prometheus Award in the Libertarian magazine Reason. I was interviewed for this ages ago.

Recent posts of mine on Tor.com Madeleine Robins, Cyteen, Anathem, Beyond America, Fantasy of Manners, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, The Fall of the Kings.

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[info]kalmn
2008-11-26 01:44 pm UTC (link)
early morning below freezing" light

sometimes i think that one of the reasons i don't move somewhere where they don't have winter is because the light makes it so damn beautiful. this one and snowlight, you know?

it's certainly not because i like cold ankles. for the record, cold ankles make me cranky.

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[info]calimac
2008-11-26 03:31 pm UTC (link)
Interesting indeed, but I notice a few odd things in the writing:

Makes it sound as if Jim Baen is still alive (maybe he was, if this was written when you were interviewed).

Makes it sound as if Poul Anderson and L. Neil Smith were a ticket for the Libertarian Party nomination. (There's an alternate history for you.)

Uncertain whether PNH's last name is NH or just H.

"Goateed"? Really? That's not how I'd describe it. Lester del Rey, maybe, but not PNH. "Eminence" otoh is pretty cool.

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[info]papersky
2008-11-26 05:14 pm UTC (link)
No, he was already dead. It was earlier this year.

I would so totally vote for Poul Anderson if I possibly could.

I think PNH is used to confusion about the NH thing. And I think people have a problem with how to describe neat beards, because if you just say "beard" it sounds like a great shaggy hippy thing, which would be even more wrong.

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-11-26 06:06 pm UTC (link)
"Dapper beard"

"It's what some people call a goatee, although strictly speaking that would not have a moustache. It could also be called a Van Dyke save that it differs in some critical details from a classic Van Dyke and also whenever I say the word "Dyke", a certain dateless faction of the audience snickers. I have prepared a simple, sixty-two page flow chart for the identification of facial hair pattens, which is as follows...."

The first is probably the best one. More words and all that.

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[info]calimac
2008-11-26 06:25 pm UTC (link)
PNH is certainly used to confusion about the NH thing, but I rarely see both forms being used interchangeably in the same article.

I think there's a name for the style of beard he wears - it's a common style these days - more specific than "dapper", which merely means "not shaggy" but would certainly be more accurate than "goatee".

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[info]agrumer
2008-11-26 08:32 pm UTC (link)
Except that "goatee" has somehow become the common name for that style.

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[info]calimac
2008-11-26 11:25 pm UTC (link)
Since when? Usually a goatee is without a mustache, too. I haven't heard this style called that; I do know there's another name, I just don't remember what. (It's closer to a Van Dyke, but not quite.)

The whole point of the name "goatee" was that it looked like the beard of a goat. This doesn't. I suppose that wouldn't stop the evolution of language, but it does seem odd.

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[info]agrumer
2008-11-27 03:13 am UTC (link)
Since it started to become popular again, a decade or more back.

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[info]james_nicoll
2008-11-27 09:08 pm UTC (link)
It was very popular in the 1950s in my father's circle (folkie engineers, people who can sing a song and build nuclear power station while doing it).

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[info]kathrync
2008-11-26 04:37 pm UTC (link)
I anticipate being accused of being associated with an anti-authoritarian propaganda machine at some random point in the future. Wish they hadn't used that phrase.

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[info]papersky
2008-11-26 05:15 pm UTC (link)
Surely "anti-authoritarian" is good? Except perhaps to authoritarians.

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[info]dd_b
2008-11-26 07:02 pm UTC (link)
But "propaganda machine" is not; even in a good cause.

At least, it's often viewed that way.

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[info]kathrync
2008-11-26 10:59 pm UTC (link)
I added the word machine. But just think of what insane Michelle Malkin followers could do with that. They exist. And at least one of them hates me.

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[info]bunsen_h
2008-11-29 03:47 pm UTC (link)
Re: the Small Change trilogy, have you had any more luck finding a British publisher? I mean, now that Doctor Who has shown a hard-times near-future Britain shipping foreign residents off to labour camps, perhaps the ice has been broken?

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[info]papersky
2008-11-29 08:05 pm UTC (link)
If I were to have any luck at that I'd certainly post it here immediately.

My agent is still trying.

I can't imagine that Doctor Who makes any difference to anything.

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[info]bunsen_h
2008-11-29 10:30 pm UTC (link)
I just have this odd notion that part of why you're having difficulty is that people are rejecting the premise that British people could fall into such horrible patterns of behaviour. Murder -- certainly, yes, that's traditional, but fascism?

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[info]mcpye
2008-11-30 09:24 pm UTC (link)
Britain was shown in a similar way in the film (& book) Children of Men (good film), but I don't know if it made any difference in publishing policies.

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