text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Globalization;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using SIL.Extensions;
using SIL.WritingSystems.Migration;

namespace SIL.WritingSystems
{
	/// <summary>
	/// A folder-based, LDML writing system repository.
	/// </summary>
	public class LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository : LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository<WritingSystemDefinition>
	{
		public static LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository Initialize(string basePath)
		{
			return Initialize(basePath, Enumerable.Empty<ICustomDataMapper<WritingSystemDefinition>>());
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Returns an instance of an ldml in folder writing system repository.
		/// </summary>
		/// <param name="basePath">base location of the global writing system repository</param>
		/// <param name="customDataMappers">The custom data mappers.</param>
		/// <param name="globalRepository">The global repository.</param>
		/// <param name="migrationHandler">Callback if during the initialization any writing system id's are changed</param>
		/// <param name="loadProblemHandler">Callback if during the initialization any writing systems cannot be loaded</param>
		/// <returns></returns>
		public static LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository Initialize(
			string basePath,
			IEnumerable<ICustomDataMapper<WritingSystemDefinition>> customDataMappers,
			GlobalWritingSystemRepository globalRepository = null,
			Action<int, IEnumerable<LdmlMigrationInfo>> migrationHandler = null,
			Action<IEnumerable<WritingSystemRepositoryProblem>> loadProblemHandler = null
		)
		{
			var migrator = new LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepositoryMigrator(basePath, migrationHandler);
			migrator.Migrate();

			var instance = new LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository(basePath, customDataMappers, globalRepository);

			migrator.ResetRemovedProperties(instance);

			// Call the loadProblemHandler with both migration problems and load problems
			var loadProblems = new List<WritingSystemRepositoryProblem>();
			loadProblems.AddRange(migrator.MigrationProblems);
			loadProblems.AddRange(instance.LoadProblems);
			if (loadProblems.Count > 0 && loadProblemHandler != null)
			{
				loadProblemHandler(loadProblems);
			}

			return instance;
		}

		protected internal LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository(string basePath, GlobalWritingSystemRepository<WritingSystemDefinition> globalRepository = null)
			: base(basePath, globalRepository)
		{
		}

		protected internal LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository(string basePath, IEnumerable<ICustomDataMapper<WritingSystemDefinition>> customDataMappers,
			GlobalWritingSystemRepository globalRepository = null)
			: base(basePath, customDataMappers, globalRepository)
		{
		}

		protected override IWritingSystemFactory<WritingSystemDefinition> CreateWritingSystemFactory()
		{
			return new LdmlInFolderWritingSystemFactory(this);
		}
	}

	/// <summary>
	/// A folder-based, LDML writing system repository.
	/// </summary>
	public abstract class LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository<T> : LocalWritingSystemRepositoryBase<T> where T : WritingSystemDefinition
	{
		private const string Extension = ".ldml";
		private string _path;
		private IEnumerable<T> _systemWritingSystemProvider;
		private readonly WritingSystemChangeLog _changeLog;
		private readonly IList<WritingSystemRepositoryProblem> _loadProblems = new List<WritingSystemRepositoryProblem>();
		private readonly ICustomDataMapper<T>[] _customDataMappers;
		private readonly GlobalWritingSystemRepository<T> _globalRepository;

		protected internal LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository(string basePath, GlobalWritingSystemRepository<T> globalRepository = null) :
			this(basePath, Enumerable.Empty<ICustomDataMapper<T>>(), globalRepository)
		{
		}

		protected internal LdmlInFolderWritingSystemRepository(string basePath, IEnumerable<ICustomDataMapper<T>> customDataMappers,
			GlobalWritingSystemRepository<T> globalRepository = null)
			: base(globalRepository)
		{
			_customDataMappers = customDataMappers.ToArray();
			_globalRepository = globalRepository;
			PathToWritingSystems = basePath;
			_changeLog = new WritingSystemChangeLog(new WritingSystemChangeLogDataMapper(Path.Combine(PathToWritingSystems, "idchangelog.xml")));
			ReadGlobalWritingSystemsToIgnore();
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Gets the load problems.
		/// </summary>
		public IList<WritingSystemRepositoryProblem> LoadProblems
		{
			get { return _loadProblems; }
		}

		public new GlobalWritingSystemRepository<T> GlobalWritingSystemRepository
		{
			get { return _globalRepository; }
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Gets or sets the path to the writing systems folder.
		/// </summary>
		public string PathToWritingSystems
		{
			get { return _path; }
			set
			{
				_path = value;
				if (!Directory.Exists(_path))
				{
					string parent = Directory.GetParent(_path).FullName;
					if (!Directory.Exists(parent))
					{
						throw new ApplicationException(
							"The writing system repository cannot be created because its parent folder, " + parent +
							", does not exist.");
					}
					Directory.CreateDirectory(_path);
				}
				LoadAllDefinitions();
			}
		}

		public IEnumerable<ICustomDataMapper<T>> CustomDataMappers
		{
			get { return _customDataMappers; }
		}

		///<summary>
		/// Returns the full path to the underlying store for this writing system.
		///</summary>
		public string GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(string wsId)
		{
			return Path.Combine(PathToWritingSystems, GetFileNameFromLanguageTag(wsId));
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Gets the file name from the specified identifier.
		/// </summary>
		protected static string GetFileNameFromLanguageTag(string langTag)
		{
			return langTag + Extension;
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Loads all writing system definitions.
		/// </summary>
		protected void LoadAllDefinitions()
		{
			_loadProblems.Clear();
			ChangedIds.Clear();
			Clear();
			foreach (var filePath in Directory.GetFiles(_path, "*.ldml").OrderBy(filename => filename))
				LoadDefinition(filePath);

			LoadChangedIdsFromExistingWritingSystems();
		}

		protected virtual void LoadDefinition(string filePath)
		{
			T wsFromFile;
			wsFromFile = WritingSystemFactory.Create();
			var ldmlDataMapper = new LdmlDataMapper(WritingSystemFactory);
			if (File.Exists(filePath))
			{
				var errorEncountered = false;
				ldmlDataMapper.Read(filePath, wsFromFile, e =>
					{
						// Add the exception to our list of problems and continue loading
						var problem = new WritingSystemRepositoryProblem
						{
							Consequence = WritingSystemRepositoryProblem.ConsequenceType.WSWillNotBeAvailable,
							Exception = e,
							FilePath = filePath
						};
						_loadProblems.Add(problem);
						errorEncountered = true;
					});
				if (errorEncountered)
					return;
				foreach (ICustomDataMapper<T> customDataMapper in _customDataMappers)
					customDataMapper.Read(wsFromFile);
				wsFromFile.Id = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(filePath);
			}
			if (!StringComparer.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase.Equals(wsFromFile.Id, wsFromFile.LanguageTag))
			{
				// Add the exception to our list of problems and continue loading
				var problem = new WritingSystemRepositoryProblem
				{
					Consequence = WritingSystemRepositoryProblem.ConsequenceType.WSWillNotBeAvailable,
					Exception = new ApplicationException(
						String.Format(
							"The writing system file {0} seems to be named inconsistently. It contains the IETF language tag: '{1}'. The name should have been made consistent with its content upon migration of the writing systems.",
							filePath, wsFromFile.LanguageTag)),
					FilePath = filePath
				};
				_loadProblems.Add(problem);
			}
			try
			{
				Set(wsFromFile);
			}
			catch (Exception e)
			{
				// Add the exception to our list of problems and continue loading
				var problem = new WritingSystemRepositoryProblem
				{
					Consequence = WritingSystemRepositoryProblem.ConsequenceType.WSWillNotBeAvailable,
					Exception = e,
					FilePath = filePath
				};
				_loadProblems.Add(problem);
			}
		}

		private bool HaveMatchingDefinitionInTrash(string identifier)
		{
			string path = PathToWritingSystemTrash();
			path = Path.Combine(path, GetFileNameFromLanguageTag(identifier));
			return File.Exists(path);
		}

		private void AddActiveOSLanguages()
		{
			foreach (T ws in _systemWritingSystemProvider)
			{
				if (null == FindAlreadyLoadedWritingSystem(ws.LanguageTag))
				{
					if (!HaveMatchingDefinitionInTrash(ws.LanguageTag))
					{
						Set(ws);
					}
				}
			}
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Provides writing systems from a repository that comes, for example, with the OS
		/// </summary>
		public IEnumerable<T> SystemWritingSystemProvider
		{
			get{ return _systemWritingSystemProvider;}
			set
			{
				if (_systemWritingSystemProvider != value)
				{
					_systemWritingSystemProvider = value;
					AddActiveOSLanguages();
				}
			}
		}

		private T FindAlreadyLoadedWritingSystem(string wsID)
		{
			return AllWritingSystems.FirstOrDefault(ws => ws.LanguageTag == wsID);
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Saves a writing system definition.
		/// </summary>
		protected internal virtual void SaveDefinition(T ws)
		{
			Set(ws);

			string writingSystemFilePath = GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(ws.Id);
			if (!File.Exists(writingSystemFilePath) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(ws.Template) && File.Exists(ws.Template))
			{
				// this is a new writing system that was generated from a template, so copy the template over before saving
				File.Copy(ws.Template, writingSystemFilePath);
				ws.Template = null;
			}

			if (ws.IsChanged)
				ws.DateModified = DateTime.UtcNow;
			else
			{
				// no need to save (better to preserve the modified date)
				if (File.Exists(writingSystemFilePath))
					return;
			}

			var oldData = GetDataToMergeWithInSave(writingSystemFilePath);
			if (File.Exists(writingSystemFilePath))
			{
				File.Delete(writingSystemFilePath);
			}
			var ldmlDataMapper = new LdmlDataMapper(WritingSystemFactory);
			ldmlDataMapper.Write(writingSystemFilePath, ws, oldData);
			foreach (ICustomDataMapper<T> customDataMapper in _customDataMappers)
				customDataMapper.Write(ws);
			ws.AcceptChanges();

			if (ChangedIds.Any(p => p.Value == ws.Id))
			{
				// log this id change to the writing system change log
				KeyValuePair<string, string> pair = ChangedIds.First(p => p.Value == ws.Id);
				_changeLog.LogChange(pair.Key, pair.Value);
			}
			else
			{
				// log this addition
				_changeLog.LogAdd(ws.Id);
			}
		}

		public override void Conflate(string wsToConflate, string wsToConflateWith)
		{
			//conflation involves deleting the old writing system. That deletion should not appear int he log. which is what the "_conflating" is used for
			base.Conflate(wsToConflate, wsToConflateWith);
			_changeLog.LogConflate(wsToConflate, wsToConflateWith);
		}

		public override void Remove(string id)
		{
			base.Remove(id);
			_changeLog.LogDelete(id);
		}

		protected override void RemoveDefinition(T ws)
		{
			int wsIgnoreCount = WritingSystemsToIgnore.Count;

			//we really need to get it in the trash, else, if was auto-provided,
			//it'll keep coming back!
			if (!File.Exists(GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(ws.LanguageTag)))
				SaveDefinition(ws);

			if (File.Exists(GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(ws.LanguageTag)))
			{
				Directory.CreateDirectory(PathToWritingSystemTrash());
				string destination = Path.Combine(PathToWritingSystemTrash(), GetFileNameFromLanguageTag(ws.LanguageTag));
				//clear out any old on already in the trash
				if (File.Exists(destination))
					File.Delete(destination);
				File.Move(GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(ws.LanguageTag), destination);
			}
			base.RemoveDefinition(ws);
			foreach (ICustomDataMapper<T> customDataMapper in _customDataMappers)
				customDataMapper.Remove(ws.LanguageTag);

			if (wsIgnoreCount != WritingSystemsToIgnore.Count)
				WriteGlobalWritingSystemsToIgnore();
		}

		private string PathToWritingSystemTrash()
		{
			return Path.Combine(_path, "trash");
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Return true if it will be possible (absent someone changing permissions while we aren't looking)
		/// to save changes to the specified writing system.
		/// </summary>
		public override bool CanSave(T ws)
		{
			string filePath = GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(ws.LanguageTag);
			if (File.Exists(filePath))
			{
				try
				{
					using (FileStream stream = File.Open(filePath, FileMode.Open))
						stream.Close();
					// don't really want to change anything
				}
				catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
				{
					return false;
				}
			}
			else if (Directory.Exists(PathToWritingSystems))
			{
				try
				{
					// See whether we're allowed to create the file (but if so, get rid of it).
					// Pathologically we might have create but not delete permission...if so,
					// we'll create an empty file and report we can't save. I don't see how to
					// do better.
					using (FileStream stream = File.Create(filePath))
						stream.Close();
					File.Delete(filePath);
				}
				catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
				{
					return false;
				}
			}
			else
			{
				try
				{
					Directory.CreateDirectory(PathToWritingSystems);
					// Don't try to clean it up again. This is a vanishingly rare case,
					// I don't think it's even possible to create a writing system store without
					// the directory existing.
				}
				catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
				{
					return false;
				}
			}
			return true;
		}

		public override void Save()
		{
			int wsIgnoreCount = WritingSystemsToIgnore.Count;

			//delete anything we're going to delete first, to prevent losing
			//a WS we want by having it deleted by an old WS we don't want
			//(but which has the same identifier)
			foreach (string id in AllWritingSystems.Where(ws => ws.MarkedForDeletion).Select(ws => ws.Id).ToArray())
				Remove(id);

			// make a copy and then go through that list - SaveDefinition calls Set which
			// may delete and then insert the same writing system - which would change WritingSystemDefinitions
			// and not be allowed in a foreach loop
			foreach (T ws in AllWritingSystems.Where(CanSet).ToArray())
			{
				// Changes made while calling Set on a writing system during the save
				// could affect the ability to call Set on another writing system in the list.
				// So test again even though we've done a first pass filter in the foreach
				if (CanSet(ws))
				{
					SaveDefinition(ws);
					OnChangeNotifySharedStore(ws);
				}
			}

			LoadChangedIdsFromExistingWritingSystems();

			if (wsIgnoreCount != WritingSystemsToIgnore.Count)
				WriteGlobalWritingSystemsToIgnore();

			base.Save();
		}

		public override void Set(T ws)
		{
			if (ws == null)
			{
				throw new ArgumentNullException("ws");
			}
			string oldStoreId = ws.Id;
			base.Set(ws);
			//Renaming the file here is a bit ugly as the content has not yet been updated. Thus there
			//may be a mismatch between the filename and the contained rfc5646 tag. Doing it here however
			//helps us avoid having to deal with situations where a writing system id is changed to be
			//identical with the old id of another writing sytsem. This could otherwise lead to dataloss.
			//The inconsistency is resolved on Save()
			if (oldStoreId != ws.Id && File.Exists(GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(oldStoreId)) && !IetfLanguageTag.AreTagsEquivalent(oldStoreId, ws.Id))
				File.Move(GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(oldStoreId), GetFilePathFromLanguageTag(ws.Id));
		}

		public override bool WritingSystemIdHasChanged(string id)
		{
			return _changeLog.HasChangeFor(id);
		}

		public override string WritingSystemIdHasChangedTo(string id)
		{
			return AllWritingSystems.Any(ws => ws.LanguageTag.Equals(id)) ? id : _changeLog.GetChangeFor(id);
		}

		protected override void LastChecked(string identifier, DateTime dateModified)
		{
			base.LastChecked(identifier, dateModified);
			WriteGlobalWritingSystemsToIgnore();
		}

		private void WriteGlobalWritingSystemsToIgnore()
		{
			if (_globalRepository == null)
				return;

			string path = Path.Combine(PathToWritingSystems, "WritingSystemsToIgnore.xml");

			if (WritingSystemsToIgnore.Count == 0)
			{
				if (File.Exists(path))
					File.Delete(path);
			}

			else
			{
				var doc = new XDocument(new XDeclaration("1.0", "utf-8", "yes"),
					new XElement("WritingSystems",
						WritingSystemsToIgnore.Select(ignoredWs => new XElement("WritingSystem", new XAttribute("id", ignoredWs.Key), new XAttribute("dateModified", ignoredWs.Value.ToString("s"))))));
				doc.Save(path);
			}
		}

		private void ReadGlobalWritingSystemsToIgnore()
		{
			string path = Path.Combine(PathToWritingSystems, "WritingSystemsToIgnore.xml");
			if (_globalRepository == null || !File.Exists(path))
				return;

			XElement wssElem = XElement.Load(path);
			foreach (XElement wsElem in wssElem.Elements("WritingSystem"))
			{
				DateTime dateModified = DateTime.ParseExact((string) wsElem.Attribute("dateModified"), "s", null, DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal);
				WritingSystemsToIgnore[(string)wsElem.Attribute("id")] = dateModified;
			}
		}

		public override IEnumerable<T> CheckForNewerGlobalWritingSystems(IEnumerable<string> languageTags = null)
		{
			foreach (T ws in base.CheckForNewerGlobalWritingSystems(languageTags))
			{
				// load local settings using custom data mappers, so these settings won't be lost if these writing systems are used to
				// replace the existing local writing systems
				foreach (ICustomDataMapper<T> customDataMapper in _customDataMappers)
					customDataMapper.Read(ws);
				yield return ws;
			}
		}
	}
}


text:
'80s Child and Teen TV Stars Then vs. Now
Take a look at what the most iconic child and teen stars of the '80s are up to now.
Celebrities Who Should Compete on 'Dancing With the Stars'
'Dancing With the Stars' is an A-list opportunity for a B- or C-list celebrity.
Michele Bird
'Series of Unfortunate Events' S2: Nathan Fillion, Tony Hale
It's curtains for Count Olaf; lacy, gently-wafting curtains, as Nathan Fillion joins Netflix's Series of Unfortunate Events for Season 2. Also making an Unforutnate turn are Veep and Arrested Development favorite Tony Hale and more.
Kevin Fitzpatrick
9 Dream TV Actor-Actress Duos We Need Right Now
Will and Grace. Lucy and Desi. The small screen has given us a plethora of memorable tandems — here are more we need.
Netflix 'Series of Unfortunate Events' Trailer, First Photos
Even as early set photos of Netflix's Series of Unfortunate Events gave a quick look at Neil Patrick Harris' Count Olaf, the dastardly villain was nowhere to be seen in the first teaser. No longer, as a new trailer and photos reveal the latest Lemony Snicket interpretation in all its f…
10 Facts You Might Not Know About 'American Horror Story'
FX and Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story may reinvent itself each year, but did you know that each season shares at least some major connection? Or that major alum from The Walking Dead and Nine Inch Nails have worked behind the scenes? Lock your doors, and hide under the bed, the 26th epis…
We'll Miss You, 'How I Met Your Mother' (But, Please Leave)
Admittedly, I'm feeling much more melancholy today about the 'How I Met Your Mother' series finale than I expected. Which, on the surface, makes little sense because, boy, Season 9 has been a slog to watch. (I was once a religious viewer, but now it's come to the point where, over this past weekend…
'How I Met Your Mother' Creators Respond to Controversy
As if 'How I Met Your Mother' hadn't been under enough criticism in its ninth and final season, the most recent installment "Slapsgiving 3: Slappointment in Slapmarra" seemed to highlight several surprisingly racist Asian stereotypes that have appropriately caused an uproar. Following the …
Watch Neil Patrick Harris' Musical "Number in the Middle of the Show" at the 2013 Emmys
Neil Patrick Harris just couldn't help himself, could he? After telling the audience at the 2013 Emmy Awards that there's more to him than singing and dancing, he bursts out into song and dance!
Nick Romano
Supreme Court Gay Marriage Rulings: Neil Patrick Harris, Ellen DeGeneres + More React on T…
When there's big news in the world, the celebs who do the tweeting take to Twitter and do what they do best. Today, the Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings in favor of gay marriage -- and afterwards, most of the stars were super excited.
Kathy Landin

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


If you have found your Splitly tests to be inconclusive, there are some quick adjustments that you can make to find conclusive test results.
Your product's price and primary image are the most sensitive fields. Other fields can give decent results, but tests can take a long time to complete.
In order to see impactful growth more quickly, you will want to create significant and obvious differences between the two variants you are testing. These large changes to your listing are what create differences in consumer behavior. If your variants are too similar, it is difficult to determine a winner as the change was not noticeable enough to change customer behavior.
90% Significance is what we recommend for a test that is reasonably fast (about two weeks) and accurate.
However, to get a conclusive test result faster, adjust your Minimum Significance to 80%.
Tests take a longer to complete when you add more variants. Consider running a test using only 2 variants, then run further localised tests around that winner afterwards. The minimum test duration is (number of variants)*7. Every variant will be run on each day of the week at least once.
The most important thing to do in order to get the best test results is imply be patient. This allows you to get an accurate result that leads to a more optimized listing. We will advise you what to do as the test continues. We will automatically end the test when we find a winner.


text:
Strange at Ecbatan
Answers to BIPOC SF/Fantasy Quiz
Here are the answers to my quiz on SF and Fantasy by BIPOC creators ...
Here's the original quiz -- check it out if you don't want to see the answers first! I'll add covers from books by a couple of the more obscure authors featured here.
1. Ava DuVernay, the acclaimed director of Selma, became the first Black woman to direct a live action feature with over a $100,000,000 budget with which 2018 film, an adaptation of a beloved Newbery Award winner?
Answer: A Wrinkle in Time
2. Jeannette Ng, a British writer born in Hong Kong, won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2019. She used her acceptance speech to call out the "fascism" of Campbell, and also to support protesters in favor of democracy in Hong Kong. A year later they won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work for that speech, which had led to a new name for the Best New Writer award. What is that new name?
Answer: Astounding Award
3. The Artistic Director of Opera Siam is a native of Thailand who was raised in England and holds dual Thai and American citizenship. He has written multiple operas and symphonies, and is also a major writer of SF, Fantasy, and Horror in English, including the early stories that became his novel Mallworld, as well as the World Fantasy Award winning novella "The Bird Catcher," and the novel Vampire Junction. Who is this man? (Either his given name or surname will be accepted as answers, as he has published under pen names using both as "last name".)
Answer: Somtow Sucharitkul (or S. P. Somtow)
4. Set in the fantasy continent of Nyumbani, which is overtly based on Africa, the Imaro sequence is pioneering Sword and Sorcery (or "Sword and Soul") stories, created by what Pennsylvania-born Canadian writer, whose death in Nova Scotia in 2020 went unnoticed by the SF/F field for months?
Answer: Charles Saunders
(This one played quite hard -- I hope to write a review of Imaro in the near future, to do my tiny bit to spread the word (if belatedly) about him.)
5. SF and Fantasy have been much enriched over time by contributions from writers with reputations established in the broader literary field -- one might mention the Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing; or the Booker Prize winner Kingsley Amis. More recently, Jamaican writer Marlon James, who won the Booker Prize for his novel A History of Seven Killings, published which colorfully titled fantasy novel, first of a planned trilogy based on African history and mythology?
Answer: Black Leopard, Red Wolf
6. Contemporary Native American writers of speculative fiction include such luminaries as Stephen Graham Jones and Rebecca Roanhorse. One of the pioneers among Native American SF writers received Nebula nominations for his stories "Time Deer" and "The Bleeding Man" back in 1976, and also edited a magazine of Native American SF: Red Planet Earth. He has remained active, with novels such as Death in the Spirit House (1989) and The Mammoth Project (2019) (with Terry Izumi). Who is this writer?
Answer: Craig K. Strete
(This one played incredibly hard on the trivia site -- only two players got it out of over 350. It was a misjudgement on my part -- I remember Strete very well from his appearances in Galaxy way back in the '70s, but I guess the number of people in the general audience -- or even the SF audience of 2022! -- who read Galaxy in the 1970s isn't that high!)
7. Black writers made significant contributions to the SF canon even before the first genre magazines appeared in the mid-'20s. One great example from 1920 is "The Comet," about a Black man and a white woman who meet as perhaps the only survivors of a deadly encounter with a comet. Which prominent sociologist, the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard, wrote this story?
Answer: W. E. B. Du Bois
8. The author of Mexican Gothic, the 2021 winner of the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, was born in Mexico and now lives in Canada. In addition to several outstanding novels spanning genres such as horror, noir, and science fiction, she has made major contributions as the co-editor of magazines such as Innsmouth and The Dark, and of anthologies such as Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction. Name this writer/editor.
Answer: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
9. The first novel originally published in a language other than English to win a Hugo Award as Best Novel was translated into English by an American writer who shares his surname with the author of the original version. (The American writer has also had great success with his own writing, including a huge "Silkpunk" series The Dandelion Dynasty; plus winning multiple Hugos for his short fiction.) Please give the name of either writer, both surname and given name please. [Extra credit for giving both names!]
Answer: Liu Cixin, Ken Liu
10. The Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation usually goes to TV episodes or movies, so it was surprising to see an experimental rap group nominated in the Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category two years running for an album (Splendor and Misery) and a song ("The Deep"), both SF-themed. ("The Deep" garnered them a third Hugo nomination when Rivers Solomon turned it into a collaborative novella.) (One group member, Daveed Diggs, is probably better known for his work on a certain historical musical than for his SF-related work!) Name this group.
Answer: Clipping
11. The Canadian poet and short fiction writer Amal El-Mohtar has won a Nebula and a Hugo award. She is also a reviewer of SF on NPR, and also is Science Fiction and Fantasy columnist for what very important review outlet? (Her columnist role was previously held for many years by Gerald Jonas and later by N. K. Jemisin.)
Answer: New York Times Book Review
12. A key text highlighting the tremendous contributions of African-descended writers to speculative fiction throughout the 20th Century is Dark Matter: A Century of Science Fiction from the African Diaspora,which won the World Fantasy Award in 2001. The editor won another World Fantasy Award for Dark Matter: Reading the Bones in 2005, and was nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Award (now the Otherwise Award) for a collection of her own fiction in 2016. She is now the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Who is she?
Answer: Sheree Renee Thomas
13. Fandom in its early days was almost exclusively white (with the notable exception of Warren Fitzgerald, founder and president of what is often called the very first SF fan club, the Scienceers) -- so much so that in the late 1950s a group of Bay Area fans invented a Big Name Fan who wrote faanfiction such as The Cacher in the Rye and My Fair Femmefan and who happened to be Black. While this man was a hoax, his name was adopted for a Society founded in 1999 to address "the representation of people of color in the fantastical genres." This Society sponsors two awards, one for SF by POC writers and one for SF about racial and ethnic issues, the Parallax Award and the Kindred Award. What was the name of this hoax fan?
Answer: Carl Brandon
(I chose not to use this question in the main quiz -- nor the next one -- because they don't as directly highly BIPOC creators ... but I do love this particular bit of trivia.)
14. One way in which SF writers can address the racist history of some admired predecessors is to directly reconsider their work, as Victor La Valle does in "The Ballad of Black Tom", his 2016 Shirley Jackson Award-winning story that retells the events of "The Horror at Red Hook", a story by which notorious writer of the '20s and '30s, who is also namechecked in the title of a HBO series that debuted in 2020?
Answer: H. P. Lovecraft
15. One of the most versatile contemporary SF writers is the Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor, who has won awards ranging from the Wole Soyinka Prize to the Kurt Laßwitz Prize to the Eisner Award (not to mention the odd Nebula and Hugo!) for her work in young adult fiction, adult science fiction, and comics. She is also writing for films and TV, including co-writing the screenplay for a forthcoming Viola Davis-produced Amazon Prime adaptation of Wild Seed, a novel by which true giant of science fiction?
Answer: Octavia Butler
16. Shortly after the great Samuel R. Delany opened the tap for Black writers in SF, partly by publishing some of his early novels as Ace Doubles, a much less successful Black writer began publishing with a couple of Ace Doubles -- Crown of Infinity and The Age of Ruin. Alas, after two more novels this writer left the field somewhat bitterly, partly because of publishers' habits of whitewashing his characters on his books' covers. Who was this writer?
Answer: John Faucette
(This question was even harder than the Craig Strete question, I think! (Even with my oh so clever hint via pun in the first sentence!) So I didn't use it in the quiz, but I think Faucette deserves at least some notice, though if truth be told I don't love his novels. Here's the cover to one of his books, showing the blatant whitewashing of his heroes (something that may have contributed to his leaving the field.)
17. This writer was born in the US, to French and Vietnamese parents. She grew up in Paris, speaking French, but writes in English. Her published fiction includes series set in Paris, in Aztec-based worlds, and in futures with living spaceships and a polity based on Vietnamese culture. Her stories "Immersion", "The Waiting Stars", and "The Tea Master and the Detective" have won Nebula Awards. Who is she?
Answer: Aliette de Bodard
18. Native American writer William Sanders made a mark with his novels Journey to Fusang and The Wild Blue and the Grey, and with short stories like "Elvis Bearpaw's Luck", "Jennifer, just Before Midnight", and most of all "The Undiscovered", which imagines an alternate life in North America for which famous playwright? (The story could arguably be a sequel to a certain late-90s Best Picture Oscar winner.)
Answer: William Shakespeare
(This was a last minute question, too late for the quiz: an attempt at a question about an Native American writer that would be a bit easier than the Craig Strete question. Maybe too easy -- how many playwrights would come to mind, especially who might have been featured in a Best Picture winner?)
Posted by Rich Horton at 1:07 PM No comments:
Another Quiz: BIPOC SF and Fantasy
I've written another quiz for the trivia league I'm a member of. The subject this time is SF (and Fantasy and Horror) by Black people, indigenous people, and people of color. The quiz ran on Tuesday, so the results are in at the site. I figured, as with my previous quizzes, I'd post it here on my blog for anyone who is interested to try. I'll post the answers in a couple of days.
The official quiz had 12 questions, the first 12 posted below. I wrote a total of 18, and I've posted all 18 here. I tried to pick the best (by some heuristic) 12 to use ... not sure I succeeded! I had a lot of help from a group of playtesters in the trivia league; and I also asked for help from some of my SF friends, in this case Steven H Silver, John O'Neill, and Chris Barkley.
Caveats: The quiz ended up playing very hard -- harder than I wanted. But, hey, lots of y'all are SF experts, so it might be easier for you! But there are two extra hard questions in this set!
Go ahead and post your guesses in the comments if you want (but don't cheat and look at the comments first!)
[Addendum -- I've made a separate post with the answers now.]
Posted by Rich Horton at 5:54 PM 1 comment:
Fantastic fiction by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Miss Kelly and 3 F&SF stories)
I discovered the great mid-century noir writer Elisabeth Sanxay Holding several years ago when I ran across a copy of her Ace Double The Blank Wall/The Girl Who Had to Die in a Kansas City antique mall. I had never heard of her, but I soon learned that she had a major reputation as a writer of noir fiction -- though, like many noir writers, especially women, that reputation had been dimmed for many years before something of a revival in the past couple of decades. Here's what I wrote back then about her:
She was born in 1889, died in 1955. She began her writing career as a romance novelist, but switched to mysteries during the depression. Her novels sold fairly well, and she was well-praised. She wrote at least one YA fantasy, Miss Kelly, which Anthony Boucher praised in the pages of F&SF. But she did seem to be mostly forgotten after her death.
That said, The Blank Wall, generally considered her best novel, had already been filmed in 1949 as The Reckless Moment (starring Joan Bennett and James Mason). It was filmed again in 2001 as The Deep End, starring Tilda Swinton. (This was pretty much Swinton's "breakout" film, "breakout" here being relative to Swinton's career -- that is, she didn't become a major movie star, she just moved from a well-respected indie actress to an even more respected Hollywood actress, who would contend for Academy Awards (and, indeed, eventually win one).) More recently, a number of Holding's books have been reprinted by Persephone Press and by Stark House (the latter, neatly, are double editions). The Blank Wall was even featured in a Guardian list, in 2011, of the "Ten Best Neglected Literary Classics". She has been called "The Godmother of Noir". So she's not forgotten, and indeed I think her reputation is slowly increasing at last.
The Blank Wall, in particular, is first rate. But naturally I was intrigued by her fantastical stories, so I found copies of her one fantasy book, Miss Kelly, which is actually a middle grade book; and of the three issues of F&SF which feature stories by her. I suspect she was "recruited" to contribute to F&SF by editor Anthony Boucher, who was also, of course, a writer of crime fiction and a very prominent reviewer of crime fiction. I wonder how much additional fantastical work she might have done had she not died somewhat young in 1955. Here are some short reviews of those stories, plus one additional story cited in the ISFDB, even though it is not fantasy.
Miss Kelly
Miss Kelly is a a middle grade book, published in 1947 by William Morrow. It is illustrated by Margaret S. Johnson. It runs about 19,000 words.
It is a talking animal story. Miss Kelly is a cat, living in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, their two children, and their Black cook Janet. She is very happy with her family, and with Janet, and with their dog, Rover. (This was the era in which "Rover" and "Spot" seemed the default dog names.) Miss Kelly can understand and also speak English, as well as of course the language of animals, though her mother strictly warned her never to let humans know she can understand them, and especially not that she can also speak. Then the circus comes to town, and Miss Kelly is very interested, but of course cannot go herself. Her dog friends warn her, anyway, that circus animals can be dangerous, especially the tigers, which they describe as like Miss Kelly, only 100 times bigger.
But then, coincidentally, a tiger escapes from the circus, and comes right to the Clinton home, on a night where the parents are out and Janet is babysitting. It crashes into the house and threatens the children. Miss Kelly intervenes, and manages to talk the tiger down, as it were -- it seems he hates the circus (understandably) and want to kill as many humans as he can in revenge. She convinces him not to do so, and leads him outside to the woods, hiding him and promising to help.
But before Miss Kelly can return with food or additional help, the tiger is captured, and given to a zoo. Miss Kelly has become a celebrity, for saving the children from the tiger. But she feels compelled to live up to her promise and find and help the tiger. In the end she realizes she must disobey her mother's instructions, and talk to Mr. Clinton and convince him to take her to the zoo. And this, of course, leads to further and further complications: the Clintons are somewhat discombobulated (as her mother warned) by her speech; and when she gets to the zoo she eventually realizes that all the animals there need her help. Holding accepts her premise and works things out as logically as possible ... with an ending that is not exactly what Miss Kelly might have originally desired for her life but which seems to fit her responsibility.
It's an enjoyable read, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as Boucher. In part, even with Miss Kelly's input the zoo seems still not a great place for animals (I think zoos have improved greatly in intervening decades -- perhaps a result of Miss Kelly's influence? :) ) The book never seems to have been reprinted, and Holding wrote no more children's books.
"Friday, the Nineteenth" (F&SF, June 1950)
This a striking darkish fantasy. Donald Boyce is tired of his wife Lilian, and ready to have an affair with Lilian, his best friend's wife Molly. The story details the couple's friction, and Donald and Molly flirting at a couple of gatherings. The overall picture of Donald is not complimentary ... whatever issues he has with Lilian seem more a product of his attitude than her failings. Anyway, Donald and Lilian make a date for a drink after work one Friday, and agree to a rendezvous for more than just a drink the next day ... and then things get strange. For next day is Friday again ... This is a pretty fine story, with a real touch of eeriness by the end.
"Shadow of Wings" (F&SF, July 1954)
This is a rather curious science fiction story, fairly dark in its implications. One day, apparently, all the birds disappear. Which means they stop eating ... which of course will lead to ecological disaster, and all kind of trouble for humanity. This remains a complete mystery, until one man decides to try to follow the flocks of birds that are still seen sometimes ... and he finds -- well, I won't give it away. The actual solution is highly implausible in a number of ways; and it ends up involving aliens who want to take over the Earth, and who think humans unworthy of this planet. That message -- which is left unvarnished -- is disquieting, but the mechanics of the story, and the resolution, are rather clumsy.
"The Strange Children" (F&SF, August 1955)
This is a story that begins rather eerily, with Marjorie babysitting at the house of a couple unfamiliar to her. The children, who are nice enough, act very strangely. They won't have anything to do with her ... eventually she learns their story. They have a visitor, a youngish man named George, who comes and plays with them, but won't come for anyone else. Eventually Marjorie is also able to meet this young man, who tells her that he's a ghost -- he died five years earlier. The explanation eventually comes out, and this part resolves as a somewhat routine (but believable) crime story involving the children's mother and a lover; and the resolution turns rather darkly on the mother's character. All the parts of this story are pretty cool, and it's a good way to use a fantastical element (the ghost) to tell a crime story. Somehow for me they didn't quite fit together as well as I hoped, but I think it's solid work.
Boucher's blurb for this story mentions Holding's death, in February of 1955, and laments that this will be the last of her stories they can publish. And I regret that too -- her metier was the crime story, but I think she might well have continued to produce the occasional dark fantasy to good effect.
"The Married Man" (Munsey's Magazine, December 1921)
I'm adding a bit about this story, from early in her career, only because it is listed in the ISFDB, though it is not SF or Fantasy by any stretch. I can only assume they included it because they include the entire contents of a 2014 anthology called Psychology: A Literary Introduction, edited by Laura Kati Corlew and Charles Waugh. That anthology has a story by Philip K. Dick ("Second Variety") plus a couple more SF or SF-adjacent stories from the mainstream ("The Country of the Blind" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" for example,) which must be why it's in the ISFDB.
"The Married Man", subtitled "A Modern Comedy of Enlightened Thought", is about an ordinary '20s married couple, Andy and Marian, in their mid-30s, with three young children. But Marian, who presents herself as a very dutiful and perhaps somewhat dull wife, not interesting in literature or anything else intellectual, realizes her husband is not happy. And, indeed, on their 10th anniversary, instead of a present, he proposes that they separate. Not, he says, because he doesn't love her, nor that she has been unsatisfactory as a wife, nor that there is another woman. No, he has simply come to realize that men are not suited for marriage -- marriage is a prison for the modern man. Marian is crushed, but she agrees to go to her mother's house for a time, and she engages a babysitter for the children, while Andy goes off to give his lecture on "Marriage from a Man's Point of View". The rest of the story shows what happens to Andy's life without Marian -- in essences, he is pestered by other women who are perversely excited by his rejection of marriage, and who paradoxically seek to lure him into marrying them. Three women are presented: an innocent very young woman who decides that Andy would be an improvement on her conventional fiance, an immoral married woman who wants to start an affair with Andy, and the very modern babysitter, who wants to marry Andy and raise the children by her unconventional lights. We see where this is going from the start, with the inevitable conclusion as Marian returns and sets Andy's life back in order, so that he realizes how much he needed her.
It's actually kind of funny, and Marian is an interesting character (Andy is kind of a pompous nothing.) Very much a story of its time, and a touch hackneyed, but not badly done.
Old Bestseller Review: Bindon Parva, by George A. Birmingham
At last I return to the roots of this blog -- "Old Bestsellers", my term here for popular fiction of (mostly) the first half of the Twentieth Century. I use the term bestseller loosely -- many of the books I review were indeed huge bestsellers (even if many are all but forgotten today,) but others were more in the category of good sellers, and a few probably didn't sell well at all. The goal is to review popular fiction -- but I won't shy away from serious literature (and I'll note that that distinction can be pernicious -- much fiction that was very popular was very "serious" as well.) (For the record, I will continue posting about other interests of mine: Science Fiction, short fiction, Ace Doubles, etc.)
George A. Birmingham was an author I had never heard of until I stumbled across this book, Bindon Parva, in an antique store. For a couple dollars I figured it was worth a try. I learned that "George A. Birmingham" was the pseudonym used for his writing by James Owen Hannay (1865-1950), an Irish clergyman (born in Belfast) of Scottish descent. Hannay was a leading light of the Gaelic League, a generally Irish Nationalist organization that also advocated for the use of Irish Gaelic (instead of, or in a addition to, English) as a way of emphasizing Ireland's differences from England. As Hannay was a Protestant, and not of Irish descent, and his parents were staunch Unionists, he tended to be distrusted by both sides. Later in his life (after Irish independence was achieved) he did in fact move to England, taking a position at a church near London.
As a relatively poor curate in an Irish church Hannay needed money, and he began to write, at first some short fiction, then some theological works. As far as I can tell he used the name "George A. Birmingham" from the start -- perhaps he felt it best to dissociate his writing from his pulpit, even though his fiction and nonfiction seemed to generally be on religious themes. His first novel, The Seething Pot, appeared in 1905. His early novels seem to be on the subject of Irish Nationalism, and seemed to enrage both sides of the conflict, as they supporte the Nationalist cause but also portrayed some Nationalists in a negative light (not to mention having Protestant protagonists.) His later works seem less political (presumably in part because Ireland became independent.) He wrote some 60 novels and story collections, and another couple of dozen nonfiction works: travel books, theological books (including a book called Do You Know Your Bible?) and many others.
The book at hand, Bindon Parva, was published in England in 1925 by, of all houses, Mills and Boon, though it is not at all a romance novel. I have the US edition (probably the first), from Bobbs-Merrill. There is a preface for American readers in which "Birmingham" says that to his surprise the book was well received in England. In general, it seems to me that "Birmingham" was a fairly successful writer -- publishing over 80 books is proof enough of that, and he does seem to have been financially successful as well (buying a boat, for example.) I don't think he ever published an out-and-out bestseller, but I think this books were generally "well received". And for all that, he seems to me all but completely forgotten now.
Bindon Parva is a curious construct. It is at heart a collection of short stories, about four or five thousand words apiece, for a total of some 60,000 words. But the stories are framed -- doubly framed, really -- as, first, a set of stories told by Sylvester Maturin, the pastor of the Anglican church at Bindon Parva (a fictional town, on the southern coast of England, near Portland), to the narrator, an architect who has been engaged to restore some murals uncovered at that church. The second "frame" is that Maturin tells the stories of several (11, actually) of his predecessors at the church, from the 15th Century through the 19th Century -- and it seems that Maturin has these stories directly from the ghosts of those people. (This makes these technically ghost stories but really, the "ghost" aspect, though given some play, is really more of a framing device than a true supernatural element.)
Birmingham was a real writer, of solid if not spectacular prose, with a way of promoting his ideas, and a good grasp of character. Maturin -- an honest and convinced if somewhat shabby cleric, comes to life, as does the narrator, an intelligent man but (as portrayed) a somewhat empty cynic. The uncovered murals are of the Seven Deadly Sins and the corresponding Virtues. But the heart of the books is the stories of the various clerics -- which also in a way present a brief history of England from the time of Edward IV to Queen Victoria.
The first pastor is Hugh Freyne, who betrays his (then Catholic) vows to get a girl pregnant, and so abandons his priestly vows to marry the girl, and thus establish the (Anglicized) De Fresney family, becoming eventually baronets and essentially the Lords of the small fishing town of Bindon Parva. The succeeding tales recount crises in the parish of Bindon Parva, encompassing its (somewhat forced) conversion to Anglicanism, and subsequent eras of varying religiosity, a conflict of sorts with dissenters (Methodists) and the eventual revivification of the Anglican tradition, and the High Church. So there are a couple of episodes during the English Civil War, the Restoration, the Titus Oates anti-Catholic hysteria, et cetera. Other episodes deal more directly with crises of faith for individual pastors, involving their own sins, or their vainglorious attempts at hymn-writing, or their involvement in smuggling, or their dealing with a parishioner whose daughter has become a prostitute, etc. The resolutions are more or less what you might expect from a clergyman -- but really none the worse for that, emphasizing compassion and honesty and a true belief in God.
The book is quite readable throughout. It seems to me one of those once popular books that seem to have deserved the popularity they may have earned in their time, but at the same time not necessarily to require a revival. Even so, I enjoyed reading it, and though it will likely never have a wide readership, it's a nice book, and not by any means to be disparaged.
Happy New Year: and 2021 Awards Eligibility Post
Happy 2022, and let's hope it's far better than the previous 2 years!
I'll open with an announcement -- I have "retired" from my post as Locus Short Fiction reviewer. My final column will appear in the February 2022 issue, exactly 20 years after the first column appeared. I've written a couple of things that appear in Locus -- in the January issue (available now) and in the February issue, talking about my decision. But the reasons are simple: I've been at it for a long time, and I sort of feel it's time for a) a different voice; and b) for me to have more time to do some other things I want: concentrate more on some other projects such as my forthcoming anthology (with Eric Schwitzgebel and Helen De Cruz) on the best philosophical SF of all time, for MIT Press; to write more about other subjects (getting back to my project about Cele Goldsmith's Amazing/Fantastic career, for example); and just plain to read more -- to keep up with SF novels, to read more in other fields (Victorian novels, early 20th century popular fiction, contemporary fiction, etc.) I also still plan to contribute occasional pieces to Locus; and my Best of the Year anthologies will continue as long as my publisher wants them.
Also, there is a great personal reason: my grandchildren: Addy is 15 months old today, Gus is two weeks old, and another grandson is due May 31! I'll certainly be devoting plenty of time to doting on them! (And this is a reminder to me that even when things are depressing in the wider world, there is joy!)
Having said that, I figured I'd make a post about my awards eligibility. The only award I'm really eligible for is Best Fan Writer. (Whether I'm worthy is not for me to decide.) I think my columns in Locus are fan writing, for one thing, and I'm certainly very proud of them. In addition, there are my posts at this blog, which include a great many looks at SF novels, both recent and old; and occasional other discussions. And this year I contributed several pieces to fanzines, mostly to Black Gate, but also a piece on Firefly to the special issue of Journey Planet on the subject of SF TV shows that were Cancelled Too Soon.
Here are my Black Gate posts. I'm particularly proud of the several I've written (with more to come) taking a close look at how some notable (and maybe less notable) SF stories work. I'll start with the first of that series, which actually appeared in 2020, then the ones from 2021:
"The Star Pit", by Samuel R. Delany;
Three Stories by Idris Seabright;
"Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", by John M. Ford;
"It Opens the Sky", by Theodore Sturgeon;
(The next planned entry will be on "Winter's King", by Ursula K. Le Guin (both versions,) hopefully sometime this month; and then, I hope, one on "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain", by James Tiptree, Jr.)
Other Black Gate posts (a couple of reviews, a look at an old F&SF, and something slightly different):
Review of The Gentleman, by Forrest Leo;
Review of Underneath the Oversea, by Marc Laidlaw;
Snippet about finding a signed copy of the Twayne Triplet Witches Three;
Retro-Review of F&SF, Summer 1950;
Here's a few highlights from this blog (in my opinion):
The Complete Stories of Robert H. Rohrer (an obscure Goldsmith discovery);
Quiz: Aliens in SF (with Images);
Space Opera: Then and Now;
Review: Lent, by Jo Walton;
Review: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison;
Cordwainer Smith Award Review: The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, by D. G. Compton;
Review: Tropic of Kansas, by Christopher Brown;
Review: Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho;
Review: Beer! Beer! Beer!, by Avram Davidson;
Posted by Rich Horton at 11:23 AM 3 comments:
A Newly Discovered Avram Davidson Novel: Beer! Beer! Beer!
Beer! Beer! Beer!, by Avram Davidson
a review by Rich Horton
Avram Davidson is a favorite writer of mine. His prose is charming, eccentric in a good way. His esoteric interests, particularly in the odder corners of history, inform many or most of his stories, and also, for example, the essays making up the book Adventures in Unhistory. I think much of his best work is at short lengths, but he wrote in the neighborhood of 20 novels to go withe dozens and dozens of shorter fictions.
Davidson was born in Yonkers, NY, in 1923. He served in the US Navy in World War II, notably spending time in China. After the War, he spent some time in Israel, but soon returned to the US, and began publishing stories and essays, at first in Orthodox Jewish publications. By the mid-1950s he was regularly publishing SF, Fantasy, and crime fiction, and his novels began appearing in the early '60s. He was editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His fiction won him a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, and an Edgar. He spent some time in Mexico, and later settled in California. He and his wife, the writer Grania Davis, had a son, Ethan, in 1962. They later divorced, though they remained close, indeed collaborating on a couple of novels, and in fact Avram was godfather to Grania's son Seth, from her second marriage. He died in 1993.
Besides his published fiction, Davidson tantalized his readers with a great many abortive projects -- several series that were discontinued after one or two novels, and some hinted at but never finished works -- one of them a planned collaboration with Harlan Ellison (of which I believe perhaps 10,000 words were written.) And much of his work that was published is now hard to find -- many magazine stories were never collected, and those books that were published are mostly out of print. However, Avram has the benefit of devoted family and friends; and his aforementioned godson, Seth Davis, has taken on the ambitious project of reissuing many of Davidson's works as audiobooks, and some even in print. A collection of at least some of the uncollected stories is, I believe, in work. Seth is also producing podcasts, in which he and a guest discuss one of Avram's stories, as frame for an audio version (https://avramdavidsonuniverse.buzzsprout.com/). (Full disclosure: I am a guest on one of those podcasts, discussing "The Sources of the Nile". This is scheduled for February 2022.)
In among Davidson's papers there were some completely or nearly completed pieces -- for instance an account of a trip to Belize -- and at least one novel. This novel has now been published, by Seth Davis' imprint Or All the Seas With Oysters Publishing. Seth was kind enough to send me a copy.
This novel is set in Yokums, NY, in 1930. (Yokums, of course, is a stand-in for Yonkers.) In one sense it is a fictionalized retelling of a locally famous incident: a sewer-cleaning crew encountered a mysterious rubber pipe -- and from its open end beer came pouring out. This was still 3 years before the repeal of Prohibition. The flowing beer attracted a huge crowd, happy to sample it. Naturally there were investigations (and even another beer filled pipe was found) but nothing was ever officially determined about the origin of the beer. To be sure, the notorious bootlegger Dutch Schultz lived very close to one of the endpoints of the pipe ... Indeed, Davidson wrote an article about this incident, and it appears in his 1962 book Crimes and Chaos (which has also been reissued in trade paperback and audio by Or All The Seas With Oysters.)
Davidson took his account of the story, and expanded it into this novel. The novel retells the basics of the beer incident (changing the names of the people involved), but adds a fascinating cast of characters. Besides the principals (such as the renamed versions of Dutch Schultz and the Mayor and the Commissioner of Public Works, etc.) we meet the likes of Mary Mabel Moomaw, a crusader for Prohibition; and Elmer Dugan, a boy dealing with the stresses of growing up in the Depression; and Bill Bomberg and Stelle Wilson, beginning reporters for rival papers, who are hesitatingly entering a relationship; and H. Seymour Clack, Captain of the packet boat Sadie Howell, and his Black Chief Engineer, Preacher Babcock. And many more. What emerges is an affectionate portrait of Yonkers -- er, Yokums -- at that time; interspersed with details of the city's history; and plenty of snark about its politics.
The central story -- the discovery of the beer -- is a minor aspect, really (and well told in the Crimes and Chaos article.) But the ambling descriptions of the characters are the heart of it. It's funny; always interesting; warm. The prose is recognizably Davidsonian, and less convoluted than his prose became late in his career, but still readable. The characters speak in voices, several dialects rigorously captured. (Perhaps a bit too "rigorously" on occasion -- tics like representing an voiced "th" as "dth" for some of the speakers wore rather thin.) The side incidents are intriguing as well -- the Dutch Schultz character's dinner party, for example, or Elmer Dugan running away to sea; and even very minor characters, like the older newspaperman Peter Fogarty, come to poignant life.
This is a novel all of us who have cherished Avram Davidson's work will be delighted to find; and we can hope it will attract new readers for this great writer. It's not a lost masterpiece, but it's a warm and honest book; a well-told tiny slice of American history.
Posted by Rich Horton at 6:51 PM 4 comments:
Review: Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho
Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho
This was Zen Cho's first novel, published in 2015. Cho is a Malaysian writer, based in the UK, where she works as a lawyer. She caught my attention with some fine short fiction, and when this novel appeared, advertised as a Regency romance with magic, I was intrigued -- because I like Regencies, and I like magic. And the book was well-reviewed ... but I remain obstinately behind on my novel reading. However, in 2021, I have made a focused attempt to catch up on novels I've missed in the past several years, particularly novels by women; and I have been using my (new) Audible account to help. Sorcerer to the Crown, then, is the latest such novel I've listened too (the 12th, beginning at the end of last year with Piranesi.) It is read by Jenny Sterlin, very nicely. (As is traditional, I will mention the pronunciation I learned from it: "geas" is pronounced "gesh" (roughly), instead of "jee-us" as I had always read it.)
[Note -- I may misspell some names, not having the printed book to consult.]
The novel opens with Zacharias Wythe, a young black boy, demonstrating his magical abilities before a meeting of the Society of Unnatural Philosophers, sponsored by his master (and eventually adoptive father) Sir Stephen Wythe, who is Sorcerer to the Crown -- that is, the leader of English magicians. At least, of the acknowledged English magicians -- mostly gentlemen, and all men. Zacharias is a curiosity, because of his color. As for women, they are deemed too weak to perform powerful magic, though it is discreetly accepted that many women use household magics to help with cooking and cleaning, etc. But with Sir Stephen's influence, Zacharias is trained in magic, and becomes very accomplished. And then, some 20 years later, Sir Stephen dies suddenly -- and Zacharias inherits his staff, which makes him the new Sorcerer to the Crown. But his position is delicate -- many English magicians are offended by the thought that a lowborn former slave is now their leader. He is even covertly accused of having murdered Sir Stephen. And he is privately subject to a mysterious and painful malady -- in addition to the fact that the ghost of Sir Stephen continues to give him advice. And finally, this is a time of crisis for English magic -- its supply is diminishing, evidently because of some dispute with the King and Queen of Faerie. Moreover, the Sultan of Jondarbyke is demanding magical help from England, to deal with a plague of vampiresses on his island -- and England may not have the magical ability to do so.
Zacharias has few allies -- his stepmother, Lady Wythe, is one; and he has a couple of supporters in the Society, an older magician named Damerel, and a younger, rather foolish but quite pleasant man named Rollo. It is Rollo who prevails on Zacharias to give a lecture at a magical school for "gentlewitches" -- a school which aims to teach young women to suppress their magical abilities. One of the women at the school is Prunella Gentleman, who was sort of adopted by the school's headmistress after her father committed suicide. Prunella never knew her mother, though her looks make it clear that her mother hailed from India. This of course makes Prunella an outcast too, and she has been doing chores at the school, including teaching, in exchange for her keep. She is also, we quickly learn, an extremely accomplished magician -- as, indeed, are several other young women at the school, despite the efforts of the headmistress. On the day of Zacharias' visit, Prunella is set to cleaning the attic (in part of keep her out of Zacharias' way) -- and there she discovers an old valise that must have been her father's, containing (as she eventually realizes) several magical treasures, in particular seven eggs that might hatch familiars. As such they are incredibly valuable, especially as Faerie has cut off the supply of familiars to England.
Well, Zacharias' visit is something of a disaster, as some of the girls, instead of showing their docile suppression of their magical gifts, get into a fight, complete with hurled spells. Prunella gets quite unfairly blamed, and decides it is time for her to leave. And Zacharias is struck by the realization that it is really foolish for England to ignore the magical abilities of their women, and he hatches a scheme to force the Society to accept women as "magiciennes". At the same time he finds himself burdened with Prunella, who has decided that she will go to London, and that the best way to get there is to hitch a ride with Zacharias.
Things keep bubbling from there ... there are sorcerous assassination attempts against Zacharias ... there are visits from one of the witches of Jondarbyke (a delightful character!) ... one of the more powerful magicians in England mounts an attempt to dislodge Zacharias from his position, aided by his wife, who is more than she seems ... Prunella hatches some of her familiars, with the result that she is de facto the most powerful magician in England ... and, of course, Zacharias and Prunella, against their first inclinations, get closer and closer (I mean, this is a romance!)
Some of this, it seemed to me, is too much of a muchness. The ending, though in many ways satisfying, is kind of a mad jumble. Some plot strands more or less fizzle, though some are quite effectively resolved. There are a couple of out and out surprises, which both delighted me and rather tired me. There are some cliches, most notably the one in which the main character is a) inordinately beautiful; and b) the greatest sorcerer in the land. (The other main character is of course very handsome, and one of the greatest sorcerers in the land.)
The novel deals fairly effectively with the issue of race, which obviously greatly affects the social positions of both main characters -- yet even there at times I thought things not quite convincing. All in all, I'd call it a classic exemplar of a first novel -- a writer in love with her characters and concept, having a great deal of fun (which is transmitted to the reader) but not quite in control.
I don't want to understate things -- I really enjoyed this novel, even if I felt it didn't quite work completely. But how many novels do? Sorcerer to the Crown is a lot of fun, with characters it's nice to spend time with, and that you'll readily root for. The language is pretty solid -- a decent pastiche of early 18th century prose. There is certainly room for a sequel (and, indeed, one appeared in 2019, The True Queen.) Recommended.
2022 Book #2 – Bewilderment by Richard Powers
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW
'Maud had been a thoroughly nice, if elderly, girl before she had taken up bull-fighting': VIOLET TREFUSIS, Hunt the Slipper (1937)
Patricia Abbott (pattinase)
SF MAGAZINES
The Year's Top Science Fiction Stories #5 (2020), edited by Allan Kaster, 2021
FFMagazines: SPECIAL REPORT: FICTION May-July 1990: "Humor" issue; edited by Keith Bellows: contributions by Harvey Jacobs, Elizabeth Berg, Roy Blount, Jr., et al. (in progress)
Rich Horton
Fantastic fiction by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Mis...
Old Bestseller Review: Bindon Parva, by George A. ...


text:
Sun Sees Big Benefits in RFID
By Bob Violino
A senior executive recently told reporters that RFID will be not only be pervasive, but will bring major benefits to retailers.
Standards and Regulations
Aug 20, 2003By Jonathan Collins
Aug. 21, 2003 - Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems, is famous for having declared "the network is the computer." McNealy turned out to be prescient, but he never anticipated just how broadly the network might one day extend.
Sun's Schwartz
"We believed that everything connected to an electricity supply would be connected to the network," said Jonathan Schwartz, executive VP for Sun Software. "Automatic identification proves that objects don't even have to have electricity [to be connected]."
Speaking at Sun's recent Software Media Roundtable at the company's New York City office on Park Avenue, Schwartz said his company is committed to providing the technology and IT infrastructure to support RFID deployments, and that it's already seeing proof of the technology's potential. One blue jeans company that Sun has been working with recently tested RFID in its stores by sewing an RFID chip into the label inside each pair of its jeans. Customers were given wands so they could quickly find jeans in their size.
The benefits, according to Schwartz, have been impressive. "That company found that by making it easier for customers to find the right jeans, in-store sales rose 20 percent," he said.
Sun has not had a high profile in the RFID world, even though the company has been a leading player in the Auto-ID Center, which is developing the Electronic Product Code. Sun, in fact, was involved in some of the original work done by Procter & Gamble and Gillette, which led to the creation of the center. Dirk Heyman, head of Sun's global consumer goods industry segment, is the chairman of the center's Technology Board.
Sun has been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes testing on the network infrastructure that companies will need to look up information related to pallets and cases with EPC tags. It is also working on some of the earliest deployments of EPC technology. For instance, it is provided some of the infrastructure for managing data in Gillette's packing and distribution center in Fort Devens, Mass.
Sun was a hot company when its high-end servers were powering most Web sites during the Internet boom. But it has struggled since the technology bubble burst. Whether RFID is a catalyst for the company's revival, Sun clearly believes the technology will be ubiquitous.
"We used to think that smart cards were going to be the lowest common denominator on the Internet," Schwartz said. "But Auto-ID technology is going to subsume that."
RFID Journal Home


The flag of South Korea is rectangular in shape and has a circle and trigrams. The elements of the flag are colored with four colors white, red, blue, and black. Inside the two sections of the circle, the part above is red while the other blue. Each corner of the flag has a black trigram while the whole background is colored white. The flag is also known as Taegukgi (supreme ultimate flag). The current flag of South Korea was adopted in October 1997, while the first flag was adopted in 1883.
The white color covering the whole background symbolizes peace. The red (yin) and blue (yang) color on the circle represent the equilibrium of the universe where the red color symbolizes positive forces and the blue stands for negative forces. The four trigrams on each corner have a natural meaning: the four short trigram stands for earth, three long trigrams stand for heaven, two long ones and two short ones in the middle stand for fire and the four short ones with a long middle stands for fire.
The flag of South Korea was designed and created by Bak Yeong-Hyo. Ambassador Bak Yeong-Hyo had been appointed as the Korean ambassador to the UK. He drew the flag while on a ship to Japan after being appointed by Emperor Gojong. Ambassador Bak Yeong-Hyo created the flag without the Emperor's knowledge. Later in the same month, he notified the Emperor about the flag. The emperor went ahead and made it the official flag of Korea in 1883.
Previous flags of South Korea have been all the same. They were based on after the ambassador's flag creation. The only difference comes on the tone of colors used on the flags and shape of the yin and yang. Also, the kwaes used were different. The major difference was the tone used for the color blue.


By Our 50 Year Warranty!
Atlantic Roll Forming is committed to manufacturing and supplying high-quality metal roofing and cladding. Resulting in superior products that are backed by a 50-year Warranty. Each system is unique and innovative giving projects a distinctive look. Options include European Clay and Standing Seam. Atlantic Roll Forming proudly manufactures metal roofing and cladding in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Products are manufactured in a newly constructed state of the art facility.
We share our industry knowledge and expertise to the benefits of customer retailers and installers. Providing them with support and training to supply complete roofing and cladding systems. Atlantic Roll Forming's strength relies on our ability to know which materials will look good and function best in various building applications and climate conditions. We are also assisting architects and engineers in finding the right products for their specific building requirements.
Today's metal roofing and cladding systems offer better long-term value, style and durability. Designed to handle the worst of weather and backed with a 50-year transferable warranty. Atlantic Roll Forming has your roof covered. Find out more!
Atlantic Roll Forming's manufacturing facility is located in New Brunswick, Canada, which is fully automated and equipped with European technology. Resulting in optimal quality and precision. Find out more!
Error: Error validating access token: Session has expired on Thursday, 09-Aug-18 17:25:43 PDT. The current time is Sunday, 21-Apr-19 06:14:17 PDT.
Full list of Our Distributors here!
Atlantic Roll Forming products are distributed through retail stores serving many parts of Canada.
Full list can be found here!


text:
Capitol Hill controversy puts EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program in national spotlight
1173 words / VTDigger.org
Controversy on Capitol Hill this week shined a national spotlight on one of Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy's signature economic development initiatives — a program that plays a key role in Vermont's business strategy.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)
Monday, the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General revealed to a lawmaker an ongoing investigation into Alejandro Mayorkas. The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is President Barack Obama's nominee to fill the No. 2 position at the Department of Homeland Security.
Mayorkas, a tip from an FBI analyst alleged, had helped secure approval for a visa for someone whose application had previously been denied once, then again on appeal. The visa application was filed through the federal Immigrant Investor Program, also called "EB-5" for the type of visa it affords.
Further allegations implicated Mayorkas in mismanagement of the EB-5 program, and extended to other USCIS officials suspected of obstructing a program audit by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a letter to a staffer for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Inspector General's Office indicated that the preliminary investigation had found no criminal activity, but it also referenced a separate, ongoing audit of the EB-5 program that was in its "final stages."
Leahy is in the process of pushing Congress to make EB-5 permanent after 20 years in a pilot stage. The program — until Monday — had remained fairly obscure by national standards, despite a recent spike in use. But in Vermont, EB-5 plays a prominent role.
// Read More


text:
Home Politics and government Protest and reform Women Together Service Lower Hutt Women's Centre
Theme: Service
This essay written by the Lower Hutt Women's Centre Board of Trustees was published online in Women Together: a History of Women's Organisations in New Zealand in 2019.
In 1986 the Lower Hutt City Council, as a response to the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985), set up a series of seminars for the women of Lower Hutt to put forward ideas on what they needed. One of the ideas was a women's centre, for empowerment, education, ending discrimination and tackling oppression of women. Similar initiatives were being put forward at that time in many cities and small towns across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Several feminist women working in the Lower Hutt City Council's community development department were tasked with starting the Lower Hutt Women's Centre. Many groups gathered to get it underway, including Pacific Mamas Group, YWCA, Lower Hutt Women's Health Collective, Lower Hutt Women's Refuge, and Hutt Rape Counselling Network. All these organisations originally set up their offices at the Women's Centre. From 1987 to 1993, each of them grew, developed and found their own premises, all making significant contributions to the Hutt Valley community.
The centre began in a Lower Hutt City Council house in Laings Road. In 1990 the council purchased a house in Knights Road, with the centre having the obligation to buy it over time, on a long term loan. In conjunction with the YWCA National Office, with generous donations from many women and a loan from Prometheus Ethical Finance, by 2014 the house was at last fully owned by the centre.
Staff, volunteers, members and the Board of Trustees attending the Lower Hutt Women's Centre AGM, 2015.
The centre's purpose or kaupapa was worked on by the establishment committee. In 1990 the following philosophy was put into the constitution as the guiding purpose, and remained the central focus from then on:
We recognise and work in the spirit of Te Tiriti O Waitangi.
We confront women's oppression and empower women to take control of their own lives.
We oppose discrimination by those who have power against those who do not. This includes discrimination against women, especially Maori women, Pacific Islands women, women of colour, lesbians, and those who are differently abled, young, old, working class, and those with different spiritual beliefs.
We promote a safe and supportive environment for all women and children.
We promote the sharing of power and resources.
We act as a resource and information centre for the community. [1]
The centre aimed to provide opportunities for women to empower themselves, by increasing their sense of self-worth and helping them find their own voice. The centre's approach was focused on these core ideas: that an enhanced sense of connection and belonging helps women to be clear about their life choices and direction; and that everyone's wellbeing and liberation is inextricably tied to everyone else's. Through their work, the centre's staff and volunteers developed empowering relationships with the women and girls of the community, and gave life to these core ideas. The centre was an inclusive space which created fertile ground for healing within the wider community.
Women involved with the Lower Hutt Women's Centre in 2018 commented on the difference it had made for them:
Mary: 'I have discovered I am a decent human being and that makes a difference to how I live my life. It makes a different to my decisions and who I hang out with and how I look after myself.'
Julie: 'I grow bit by bit – just like the mosaic. It is hard but if I hadn't started I wouldn't be here. My boy is so important and I want to keep him, and be a good mum. That's what I'm going for.'
Jennifer: 'I will be less "nice" and more real – I will listen to me, I will choose how I want to act rather than "react", without conscious awareness.'
From 1987 on, the centre was involved in political campaigns and protests, including End of the Welfare State, 1991–1993; many Women against Pornography protests; Lesbian and Gay Liberation; Seabed and Foreshore Hikoi (Wellington, 2004); and many Reclaim the Night Marches.
Once the centre began to get government contracts, it was decided to focus on fundamentals of empowerment, based around what could be done with the time, income and resources available. This work was based around courses, workshops and counselling. The centre also worked with many groups, including DPB Action and Poverty Action, to provide workshops, support and information for women.
From the outset, the centre regarded itself as a feminist centre working to feminist principles. It provided a large range of courses, workshops and other activities, including Rape Survivors Legal Guide, self defence, anti-racism workshops, making submissions to government, free legal advice, and providing massage therapists and computer tutors. It also ran women's dances, women walking (tramping) groups, art programmes, weaving, singing, and running a very large range of workshops for other community groups.
For 2019, it was running groups for self esteem, assertiveness, anger, resilience, meditation, understanding the blues, parenting, and a range of therapeutic workshops on topics such as co-dependency, inner child, and self development. It offered support groups around drug and alcohol problems and sexual abuse. The centre also provided counselling, social work, support, information and drop-in space. All this and more was provided in a comfortable, safe and empowering environment, where cultural diversity was respected.
The centre continued to be a safe place for women and children. Its model specifically focused on human rights, in particular the human rights of women and girls. By 2019 its staff included a manager, counsellors, a social worker and several group workers, along with many volunteers. A board of trustees provided governance; He Huarahi o te Wāhine, the Māori Focus Group, provided resources and bi-cultural knowledge, and focused on providing services to suit Māori women.
Many women over many years contributed to the centre, as volunteers, paid workers, members on the board of trustees, occasional and long term donors. All the women coming to the centre brought their own energy and life, sharing these with the energy and life of other women, and thus continually giving life to the Lower Hutt Women's Centre.
[1] Lower Hutt Women's Centre Constitution, 1990.
Bindon, Pamela, Lower Hutt Women's Centre 1987–1997 [pamphlet], LHWC, 1998
Lower Hutt Women's Centre website: www.lhwc.org.nz
No comments have been posted about Lower Hutt Women's Centre


text:
From Our Blog / Henry Jenkins
I have never had interns before. In fact, I thought there was something wrong with using them. But I now have two.
I will call them Jarvis Rochford and Donte Cole. (Naturally, I can't use their real names, so I asked the name generator in Scrivener to make suggestions. It would take me a very long time to come up with something better than Jarvis Rochford. I'm just way behind on my historical romances.)
It occurred to me that there might be people out there who would like to act as virtual interns, to follow along at home, as it were. So this letter is to you, too.
Dear Jarvis and Donte
While we wait for your internships to begin in earnest, I thought I would suggest a couple of things we can do in the meantime.
When you are reading NYT, WSJ, blogs, aggregators, etc., please listen for that small note of surprise that heralds something that doesn't quite fit. Something on the page or the screen that has caught you by surprise.
The second step is to ask whether it is something or nothing. It's nothing if it is a "floater," as it were, a mote in the eye, an artifact of language or logic, but not something in the world. And it's also "nothing" (for our purposes) if there is some easy, obvious explanation.
It's something if on closer scrutiny it resists, defies our categories of explanation. The natural explanation here is to dismiss. If something doesn't conform to our categories, it can't be the category's fault. The datum is wrong.
But of course this is the beginning for insight. What would you have to think to make this something make sense, how would you have to change your explanatory models?
There is lots of stuff pouring around out there. I found this in the WSJ the other day.
This is what Marc Andreessen calls 'software eating the world.' Amazon consuming high street and the mall. An easy explanation then. The thing that struck me was the acceleration. See the data for 2017. The "why" is not mysterious but the "now what?" is. What does the world look like when retail vanishes more and more from the bricks and mortar world? I realize I haven't really thought about this. I have no obvious answers, no particular way of thinking about the problem. All I (now) know is that it approaches at speed…and I'm not ready.
Retail Reeling is not a perfect example of pure surprise, then. Marc Andreessen put us on notice years ago. But it is a chance to discover that my explanatory models, the sense making apparatus in my head, are not a reliable guide to the world in the works. I'm not ready for what happens to culture and the world once software eats them both.
Here's something that's, for me, weirder. I was at a media conference last week. (Thank you, Jacob Groshek for including me in the very interesting Streaming Television and Second Screening Workshop at Boston University.) I came upon a reference to Superwholock. I checked Google trend to see where it stands in terms of popularity. Gliding gently into obscurity by the look of things.
Lots of little questions: why was it invented in the first place? Why did it peak several years ago? Why is it now on the decline?
The categories that activate for me when I look at this are chiefly to do with fanfic. This is a fantastically interesting development, and one measure of the extent to which we are shifting from passive media consumption to something more Jenkensian: an inclination to appropriate and reinvent.
But there are more interesting and particular things to mine from the meme. Have a go at it (or any other meme).
That's always the game here at cultureby.com. What's happening "out there?" What are the first signals, the earliest indicators that something has changed? What can it tell us about what is happening "in culture." And what does that tell us about who and what we are becoming as a world and culture (not always the same thing but always interacting ferociously)?
This turns out to be a long note, and with your permission, Jarvis and Donte, I will put it on line at cultureby.com. There may be people who want to act as virtual interns…or real ones for that matter.
culturecamp / Uncategorized - 04/25/2017
how to make TV now (the "whole world" approach)
Natalie Chaidez is the show runner for Hunters (Mondays, 10:00 eastern, SyFy). Recently Sean Hutchinson asked her what she was aiming for.
Our idea of aliens is cliched, she replied. She wanted to "flip everything you think you know going into an alien series."
Mission accomplished. The aliens on Hunters are not your standard-issue "monsters from outer space." Monsters, yes, but complicated monsters. We can't quite tell what they are up to. Bad stuff, yes. But the exact what, how and why of their monstrosity is unclear.
Chaidez explains:
I wanted to do something different. That led me to a neurologist from Brown University named Seth Horowitz, and he and I collaborated about the planet, their anatomy, and how they'd operate on earth. It gave it a level of originality because we approached it from the inside out.
Hutchinson:
Why did you want to dive in and be that thorough if most people won't know those details?
Chaidez:
Because it's fun! But you also just want to know so it feels cohesive. 90 percent of the stuff Seth and I talked about will probably never make it into the show.
This is interesting because it breaks a cardinal rule of the old television. And this is do exactly as much as you must to fill the screen…and not a jot more. To invent a world and leave 90% of it un-shot, well, we can just imagine the reaction of a standard-issue producer.
"It's my job to make sure shit like this never happens! [Wave cliche cigar in air for emphasis] Artists! You have to watch 'em every goddamn second!"
This is a parsimony rule of the kind that capitalism loves. No expenditure must ever be "excess to requirement." Some producers are uncomplicated monsters. It's their job to make sure that creative enterprises are starved of the resources necessary to turn popular culture into culture. It's what they like to call their "fiduciary obligation."
The parsimony rule helps explain that dizzying sensation we get when we go to a TV production or a film set, and notice how "thin" everything is. Not rock but papermache! Not an entire world but just enough of it. An universe made to go right to the edge of what the camera can see, and not an inch beyond.
What Chaidez and Horowitz have done goes completely beyond requirement. They made an entire world, much of which we will never see.
This could be a case of the recklessness of the new TV. With the rise of the showrunner, people are no longer making TV as half-hour sausages. They have bigger ambitions and sometimes bigger pretensions. Budgets will bloom!
Or is there something going on here?
I think the Chaidez-Horowitz approach, let's call it the "whole world" approach, has several assumptions (each of which, if warranted, is a way to justify additional expenditure):
1. A pre-text is better than a "pretext"
Our standards of richness, complexity and subtlety on TV have risen. "Thin" TV is now scorned. We want our culture to feel fully realized and in the case of the story telling, this means that we want the story to feel as if it predates the production. Novelists are good at this. But TV, ruled by cigar-waving producers, has been less good. Too often, the story world feels served up. Something tells us that it will disappear the moment the narrative has moved on, that it will cease the moment the camera is sated. (For the pre-text impulse in the worlds of computers and cuisine, see my post of Steve Jobs and Alice Waters and their "exquisite choice" capitalism.)
2. a "whole world" approach is generative of fan interest
When we sense that the showrunner has taken a whole world approach, we engage. Shafts of light show through. We begin to try to construct the whole world from the available evidence. (We used to do this at the Harvard Business School. We would give students pieces of the spread sheet which they would then reconstruct.)
The "whole world" approach is a great way of turning viewers into fans. The moment we detect a whole world behind the narrative, we rouse ourselves from couch potato status and begin to examine faint signals very carefully. What does this stray remark tell us? If X, then we can assume the larger world looks like this. But if Y, we can construct something altogether different. (Remember when Star Trek viewers began to map the ship. The showrunners were astonished.) This is astounding engagement, one that every showrunner dreams of. And all we have to do, it turns out, is engage in complete acts of invention instead of "good enough for television" ones. And "good enough for television" (aka "partial world" TV) is a place no one wants to live anymore. It's always less than the sum of its parts. That way lies creative entropy and fan discouragement.
3. a "whole world" approach is generative of fan fiction
Whole worlds made available in shafts of light invite something more than engagement. They say to the transmedia fan, "here's a place to start. Make this glimpse your point of departure. Or that one." Whole worlds make a thousand flowers bloom. And this too is the stuff of showrunner fantasy. To have fans who love your work so much they seek to invent more of it. To make work so provocative it sends fans racing to their key board, can there be any greater compliment? There is a whole world paradox, too. It says "the more complete your world, the more worlds it will help birth."
4 a "whole world" approach is generative of transmedia
As Henry Jenkins has helped us see, transmedia is that extraordinary creation in contemporary culture where certain stories are so prized, they attract many authors. Eventually, the "one true text" gives way to a story that lives in all its variations, on all its media. Now that our whole world is generating lots of fan fiction, it has like William Gibson's Mona Lisa, slipped the confines of a single medium and put out into a vastly larger imaginative universe. Another paradox then. World worlds give rise to an entire universe. No, our cigar chomping producer cannot "monitize" all these variations but really that's no longer the point. This will come…but if and only if you make something that our culture decides is worthy of its contributions. The life of a cultural "property" depends as Jenkins, Ford and Green say, on the willingness of the fan to distribute it. But as I was laboring to say yesterday, it also depends on the willingness of the fan to contribute to it.
It's hard to write this post and not think how much it evokes the spirit of USC. First, there's Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the USC Annenberg School. Then there's Geoffrey Long, recently appointed Creative Director for the World Building Media Lab at USC. Geoffrey is my guru when it comes to the question of building worlds. And just today, I got the very good news that Robert V. Kozinets has been appointed the Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair in Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication at USC.
I am sometimes asked where people should go to study contemporary culture. Now I know.
The 'wicked grin' test (a new creative measure)
How do you know when something in our culture is really good?
I think it's when it makes us grin a wicked grin.
This is one of those: Dave Chappelle does imitation of Prince and Prince uses the imitation for his album cover. Dave becomes Prince. Prince becomes Dave becoming Prince.
For post-modernists, this is 'signs circulating.' Fair enough but not very interesting. It doesn't explain why we grin wickedly.
It's the relocation that does it. Daveness taking on Princeness. Princeness taking on Daveness as Princeness. These are meanings in motion. We grin wickedly because we can't believe that Dave dared attempt Princeness. It's not temerity that gets us. Dave is free to make fun of a genius like Prince. That's the privilege of his genius.
No, what makes us grin is astonishment. How did Dave do it? How is that possible? Daveness and Princeness share a claim (and a proof) of genius, but they come from very different parts of our culture. They are in a sense incommensurate.
And they just made themselves (for a moment, in a way) commensurate. This makes our minds happy…and our faces grin. I think it is at some level it makes our brains happy. Meanings attached to one thing now, astonishingly, belong to another. We can feel gears turning in our heads.
Dave and Prince have brought meanings together that are normally kept apart. And we thank them for this semiotic miracle by grinning our admiration, astonishment, gratitude. Who knew our culture could do that.
We make a lot of culture with acts of unexpected, unprecedented combination. (I have tried to map this process for contemporary culture in a book called Culturematic.)
Indeed, wicked grinning should be the new objective not just of comedy and album cover design, but of branding, design and advertising. We used to slavishly obey the rules of official combination (aka genre). Now we bore people with this predictability. If the user, viewer, consumer, audience can see where we're going, they won't come with us. (Susan Sarandon did an interview yesterday on Charlie Rose in which she said precisely this.)
Compare a culturematic to old fashioned marketing. The ad man and woman came up with a blindingly obvious message, stuffed it into one of the mass media (3 network TV, magazines, newspaper, radio) and fired it at the target over and over again until our ears bled. Everyone just wanted the "persuasion" to stop. This was cold war torture. And the worse part of this torture was how completely unsurprising it all was.
Every thing changes when we assume that our "consumers" are clever and interesting, and, chances are, making culture on their own. This means first that they can see the grammars we are using. Second, it means that they are looking for culture to make their own, for critical purposes and creative ones. Culture creative, assume you are talking to someone has smart as you are. Assume you are talking to someone who can do what you do. And go with the idea that we have no hope of success unless we are making content that makes people grin wickedly.
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green have invited us to embrace a new slogan: "if it doesn't spread, it's dead." The idea is that a message will die unless people take an act hand in distributing it by social media. I am proposed that before we apply the Jenkins-Ford-Green test, we apply "wicked grin test." Forget the focus groups and the audience testing. Just show your work to someone and look at the expression on their face.