Marie Brennan's Blog, page 217

more fun with Hebrew

What are the Hebrew words for "chosen" (or "elect" or anything else in that vein) and "temple" (as in Temple, comma, the)?

Any linguistic neepery concerning the triliteral roots for those words is welcome.

Thanksgiving Advent, Day Twenty-Three: Anne McCaffrey (and others)

As many of you have probably heard by now, Anne McCaffrey, one of the grand dames of science fiction, has passed away.

I came to her books through Dragonsinger, I think, and the rest of the Harper Hall trilogy, before moving on to Dragonflight and the other, more "mainstream" Pern books (by which I mean the ones that focused on the riders and Weyrs). From there I went onto some of the Ship books, and the Talents, and the Crystal Singer series, and more. She was never quite one of my DNA writers -- not a formative influence on me as a reader or writer -- but she was part of the step out of children's fiction and into adult SF/F. She was, however, a formative influence on a crap-ton of other people, and her oeuvre is one of the big islands in our archipelago.

And, although I never thought of it this way consciously, I think she helped print in my mind not the belief, but the assumption that writing this stuff was a thing done by both men and women. It never really occurred to me that anybody might think otherwise. If you'd asked Teenaged Me to list off important fantasy writers, I would have responded with Anne McCaffrey and Robert Jordan and Mercedes Lackey and David Eddings and Marion Zimmer Bradley and Raymond E. Feist and -- well, let's put it this way. I was a little nonplussed when I found out Terry Brooks was a man, because that was one of those names that could go either way, and women were prominent enough on my bookshelf that I thought nothing of dropping him in that category.

(No, I didn't pay much attention to the "about the author" bit. Why do you ask?)

(And yes, you can totally see the reading tastes of Teenaged Me in that list. Don't quibble over me putting McCaffrey in with the fantasy, though. I played the Might and Magic computer games. I was, and in some ways still am, firm in the opinion that slapping a bit of technology on a story otherwise stuffed with fantasy tropes does not make it SF.)

So anyway. I'm thankful for Anne McCaffrey, and for a whole host of other people like her, both for putting amazing and influential books into the world, but also -- in the case of the women -- for making it possible for me to cruise along in my blithe assumption of gender equality. That mindset has its shortcomings, but I really do believe it's enabled me to steamroll over any number of small speedbumps that may have appeared in my path.

Thank you, Anne McCaffrey.

Thanksgiving Advent, Day Twenty-Two: Hot Baths

I actually try not to take baths too often, for reasons both noble and not. The noble one is that I live in California, which is not the most well-watered state in the Union; driving down to San Diego for World Fantasy, I saw lots of signs on fences in the Valley railing against water shortages. Baths are kind of wasteful, and so I try to save them for occasional use. The less-noble reason is that, well, I've mostly lived in places with tubs that are Not Quite Big Enough to be really comfortable. Some day, my friends, I will live somewhere with a proper tub, both long enough and deep enough to accomodate an adult human of average size.

But baths, man. I may have a lot of feline characteristics in my temperament, but I'm the kind of cat who adores water. The ocean, a lake, a swimming pool, just let me at it. And it's lovely to be able to sink back in a hot tub or bath or whatever and let the tension just soak out of me.

And -- as I mentioned in an earlier post -- it's so easy now. Turn on the tap, and clean, hot water comes out. No need to stoke up the fire, haul water from the well, and fill the tub one bucketful at a time. I know this is not a luxury enjoyed by everyone in the world, and so I'd like to take a moment to be properly thankful for it.

The Aurors

Back on April Fool's Day, somebody posted this video, a "trailer" for a TV show that doesn't exist but should: "The Aurors."

starlady38 tried to nominate it for Yuletide, but it didn't make it through to the final list. However, that doesn't stop us from doing RENEGADE YULETIDE RARRRR a private exchange of our own. If you'd be interested in writing, basically, a "cop drama" story set in the Harry Potter world, leave a comment here and let her know. We don't have specifics yet, and there's no commitment; this is just to get a rough head-count before working out the actual mechanics of the exchange.

. . . man, I would love to see that show be real. Alas, this is the closest I can come. :-)

holy crap

<hands on hips>

Okay, who is/are the overachiever(s) that already uploaded three fics to the Yuletide collection? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PEOPLE, ASSIGNMENTS WENT OUT A FEW HOURS AGO.

Cat Charity

Originally posted by kylecassidy at postVia Citykitties (emphasis mine):

A good samaritan found this cat today in a gutter by Clark Park, half dead. He is now at the Cat Doctor with a body temperature of 90 (normal is 102) and blood PCV of 8. The Cat Doctor housecat, Diamond, is currently donating blood to save his life. During the exam, the vet found that this cat has a microchip. When called, his "owners" reported that he was acting sick, so they put him outside. If this makes you as angry as it makes us, please channel your anger in one of two ways: visit our website at www.citykitties.org and make a donation to help us pay for his care, or share this post and encourage others to do so.




Click to donate.





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Thanksgiving Advent, Day Twenty-One: My Date of Birth

No, not my birthday; my date of birth. Which is to say, September first. I was born early, though I'm not sure by how much (I used to think my due date was the eleventh, but recently my mother said otherwise, and now I can't remember what date she said). But really, the amount doesn't matter -- just the result.

Why does it matter? Because my school district, like most, had guidelines for determining when children should start kindergarten. You had to be five or older by the cut-off date. And what was that date?

September first.

I don't know how strictly that was enforced. Maybe if I'd been born a few days later, I still could have started school that year. As it was, they gave my mother the choice, to start me or hold me back. Given that I was already a ferocious reader, she opted to boot me out the door and into kindergarten. And for that, I am more thankful than I can say.

People who would probably not have been in my life if I had started school a year later: kurayami_hime . She would have been two years ahead of me, instead of one, and we likely would not have become friends -- at least not such close friends that these days, my parents refer to her as their other daughter. kniedzw : even if I still went to Harvard, he would have been more than a year out of college rather than recently graduated when I showed up, and by then would have distanced himself more from the friends he still had in school. We would not have begun dating, and I would not be married to him now. teleidoplex ; it's unlikely I would have gone to the Castell Henllys field school in 2000, which means we would not have met there. And while I still might have gone to Indiana University for graduate school (thus giving us a second chance to meet), I don't know that I would have ended up playing in the Bloomington Changeling LARP -- which created most of my social circle for six years, shaped my academic research, and led to me running Memento, the tabletop game that ended up inspiring the Onyx Court novels.

. . . to name just a few.

This is not to say I would have had no awesome friends, boyfriend/husband, or adopted sister had I entered school a year later. In both high school and college, I had friends a year behind me; I probably would have been closer to them in this alternate history, and they are very cool people, too. But you know what? I like my life. I like the path it's followed. And so much of it is the coincidental result of being at particular points in the educational system at particular times. Shift me back a year, and a lot of the things I'm happiest with suddenly vanish, to be replaced by god knows what.

Dear Mom: thank you for sending me off to kindergarten on my fifth birthday, rather than holding me back an additional year. And thank you to whatever gestational butterfly flapped its wings and caused me to enter this world on September first, just a little bit ahead of schedule.

Thanksgiving Advent, Day Twenty: Yuletide

I've talked about Yuletide before, but as signups for it closed this evening, I was reminded that it's a thing to be thankful for. Why? Because exchanges of that kind are a fun form of gift-giving, surprising somebody with a story written just for them. And while there are lots of exchanges built along these general lines, Yuletide is the two-thousand-pound gorilla on the scene -- if the gorilla was made of fannishness and squee, and flailed around being happy and excited, occasionally grabbing people and sweeping them up into great big hugs.

I'm thankful for it because, as I've said before, fanfiction is one realm where story goes back to being pure play. Not that I don't love my work -- I've already said that I do -- but it's valuable to have a realm in which I can chill a bit more, and not worry about all the concerns that go with writing fiction for a living. The end of the year is, for me, a particularly good time to do that. I'll be sending off the revised draft of A Natural History of Dragons soon, and once that's out the door . . . well, okay, there's something else after that which has a deadline, too. And technically Yuletide has a deadline. But my point is, writing my story for that will feel like a reward. Which is a thing to be thankful for, at this time of year.

Thanksgiving Advent, Day Nineteen: Travel Opportunities

I sometimes avoid bringing this up, because it can seem like bragging when talking to people who haven't been able, for one reason or another, to travel as much as I have. But I really am thankful for the amazing opportunities I've had to go other places -- particularly foreign countries.

Where have I been? The British Virgin Islands. Costa Rica. Northern England (South Shields), southern England (Winchester), Israel. Wales and Ireland. Ireland again. Japan, with a second trip nine years later. London, four times. Italy, Greece, and Turkey. India.

It's quite a lot for a thirty-one-year-old, especially when you figure in how many of those places I went before finishing college (hint: that list ends with the first Japan trip). I sometimes forget that, since various factors have combined to make my family in general kind of ridiculously well-traveled; I'm hoping kniedzw 's work sends him to Poland next year and I get to tag along, because it's rare for me to beat my parents or my brother to a country. (Er, none of you guys have been to Poland yet, right? Watch me be wrong about that.) They've been to Russia and Malaysia and Hong Kong and Laos and Mongolia and Switzerland and China and Germany and I won't bore you with the rest of the list. But I've been to a lot of places, too.

It's done so much for my mind, I can't even put it into words. Not only seeing beautiful and famous landmarks, though that's often been a cool perk; just seeing other places, and all the differences that go with it. It makes the inside of your skull a bigger place. Not always in a comfortable way; it's tiring, the constant mental effort that goes with being surrounded by a foreign language, and with changing your behavior to fit your environment. There's a reason that kniedzw and I, when considering honeymoon possibilities, opted for a Mediterranean cruise; it allowed us to get a taste of some places we were dying to see, while still relaxing and putting out a minimum of effort. I'd love to go to Macchu Picchu someday, or visit China, but the physical work of one and mental work of the other were not what I wanted on my honeymoon.

I have joked -- sort of -- that what I need to do is decide where I want to travel to, and then think up books to write that would justify the trip as a research expense. It's only sort of a joke because I really, really want to go on traveling. I don't have a lot of extravagances in my lifestyle; I don't drink alcohol or coffee, I don't smoke, I don't drive a fancy car or buy much in the way of fancy clothes. I'd rather save that money, and spend it going somewhere cool. The fact that I've been able to do so on so many occasions is a great joy to me.

The DWJ Project: Tough Guide to Fantasyland

This book is single-handedly responsible for a 900% reduction in the frequency of stew in fantasy novels.

(True fact: there used to be stew in the doppelganger books. I took it out because of Diana Wynne Jones.)

It is not, in the normal way of things, a book really meant to be read cover-to-cover. It isn't a novel; it's an encyclopedia, mocking the tropes and formulas of quest fantasy, from Adept ("one who has taken what amouts to the Postgraduate Course in MAGIC") to Zombies ("these are just the UNDEAD, except nastier, more pitiable, and generally easier to kill"). Oh, sorry -- you don't start with Adept, you always, always start with THE MAP. ("It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one.")

I decided to read it cover-to-cover anyway, because if I'm going to do a completist read-through of her work, then dammit, I'm going to be thorough about it. And it's still entertaining; it just takes a while, compared to a novel of similar length. It also forms useful, though not completely necessary, background for Dark Lord of Derkholm, which takes the idea of the quest-fantasy protagonist being a Tourist and runs for the end zone. But for that, you'll have to wait for another post.