Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 214

The “H-word”

At Terrible Minds, this guest post from Alan Baxter: The H-Word

I often used to have conversations that went something like this:

Some person: So, what do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

That person: Oh, cool! What do you write?

Me: Horror, mostly, usually mixed up with a lot of crime and thriller stuff.

But they already narrowed their eyes at the first word. Everything I said after “horror” was a blur to them, and I just know they’re visualizing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Freddy Kruger, slicing knives and gouting blood. 

Baxter discusses this phenomenon and then segues to his newer conversational gambits:

Some person: So, what do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

That person: Oh, cool! What do you write?

Me: Supernatural thrillers mostly, often mixed up with a lot of crime and noir stuff.

Or

Me: Dark fiction, thrillers with weird supernatural and crime elements.

Much discussion then ensues. It’s worth reading, so click through if you have a minute and find the topic interesting. I do find it interesting, partly because I have exactly the reaction Baxter describes … oh, wait, no, not exactly.

When I hear the word “horror,” I do think, How gross is this going to get, because I hate too much disgusting imagery. That obviously overlaps with the slasher flick idea, though spurting blood is not gross. I don’t feel inclined to describe the kinds of things that are too gross for me, but violence alone is not what I’m thinking of.

But more importantly, when I hear “horror,” I also think, Probably too grim and awful for me. When I hear “supernatural crime thriller,” I think, Oh, that sounds like it might be pretty keen. I don’t think of horror as a code word for slasher flicks, I think of horror as a code word for “Characters you really like are probably going to die in terrible ways and the ending may be completely awful and tragic.”

Baxter points out that Steven King is (a) the best-known horror writer, and (b) not writing slasher novels, which is true, but you know what King does write? Books where characters I really like are probably going to die in terrible ways, no matter how he has to contort the plot to kill them. He didn’t used to predictably do that, but then all his books started to include this element, and now I never touch his novels because I simply hate that. I never watched enough slasher flicks to have much of an association with them, but I read enough King novels to have this other association set in pretty firm concrete.

When I hear “dark fantasy” or “supernatural thriller” or something like that, I don’t have the same reaction. This is largely because I expect dark fantasy and thrillers of all kinds to have positive endings, and I can at least hope the gross-out factor might be low-ish. So, though I have no problem if Baxter wants to try to reclaim the word and get people to think of something less awful when they hear “horror,” if he wants to make readers like me click through to Amazon and check out his books, he really ought to continue saying “supernatural crime thriller.”

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Wow, amazing costumes

Just saw this, link from Twitter: 

Halloween Costumes that won the holiday

Click through and admire. 

My favorite is … the little green soldiers. I had completely forgotten about those, so I think the nostalgia kick made them stand out for me. I wasn’t keeping track yet, but they’re pretty near the front.

The three-headed Cerberus is also a complete standout. It’s number 35, so if you don’t want to click through that many, you might enter the number and take a look at it.

The headless bride is very impressive. That’s number 45.

Also, “Starry Night.” That’s number 57.

Also, the guy who cut himself in half. I have no idea how he did that. That’s number 60 and the very last one. Definitely take a look at that one.

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How to reset your clocks

Normal strategy, I suppose: Recite “spring ahead, fall back,” and reset your clocks the night before the time changes.

My personal strategy, post smartphone: Wait till the day after the time changes, consult my phone to see what time it claims it is, set my clocks and watches to reflect that time. Forget to set my car’s clock until I’m really startled to see how late I am for work.

My other personal strategy, of long standing: Ignore the fall time change until Christmas or so. I like getting up super early in the morning — more time to write / bake something nice / take the dogs for a run / read / do housework. I don’t mind going to bed super early, plus the dogs don’t understand sudden schedule changes, so I’m now getting up at 4:15, not 5:15. I’ll gradually shift that around when I get to it.

My personal ambition when it comes to changing times:

Never work for the InSight mission to Mars.

The way that we operate the spacecraft is that we basically write commands. Each one is a piece of code that we send up to the spacecraft to tell it what to do when it’s on the ground.

And then we uplink it, right before it wakes up in the morning. Then we go to bed and the spacecraft does its work.

When the spacecraft is sleeping at night, we work. So we get all the data down, look at it and tell the spacecraft: “Hey InSight, tomorrow these are the tasks I want you to do!”

But because the Mars day shifts every day, we also have to shift our schedule by an hour every day. So the first day we’ll start at 6am, and then [the next] will be 7am… 8am… 9am… and then we take a day off.

While interesting, that sounds like a total nightmare for someone like me, who likes a very straightforward, completely unchanging day/night schedule.

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Bulwer-Lytton Contest SF/F Winners

From File 770, these Bulwer-Lytton winners in SFF genre fiction.  

The winner in Science Fiction:

The professor had constantly warned his protégé about the time travel related risks of meeting a past version of yourself or killing your grandfather, but unfortunately he’d never mentioned the worst time machine risk of all — sticking your head out of the window.

My favorite:

She stood out like a fifth appendage on the prehensile glandular dorsal fin of a love-sick marmoset from the twin-mooned planet of Hades VII in the Alpha-Centauri star system, but I thought she looked damned cute anyway because of the sailor cap she wore so jauntily.

It’s hard to beat the phrase “prehensile glandular dorsal fin.”

The winner in Fantasy:

His steel sang as Dothrak, mighty thews febrile with barely-checked power, drew Aelthmor (the blade forged in eldritch shadows by the Zdrahali adepts) and declared, “All who have sworn allegiance to the False Duke will feel my wrath!” yet he was summarily admonished to silence, for it is at the Reference Desk of the Skokie Public Library that our story takes place.

Hah!

My favorite:

The wars between the Aarbollethi and the Deffalecci was now in its seventh haelon, and it is difficult to imagine they began when the Aarbollethian Ambassador to Deffalecci, when addressing the Deffaleccian Secretary of State, pronounced their nation’s common greeting, achdazar u zynthio as ashadar y thynzio, which, in the Deffaleccian tongue is an insulting reference to a hero from their classical mythology named Ashadarythyn, who was supposed to have murdered his Vareto and lain with his Amunna.

That’s pretty bad! Fourteen hard-to-pronounce words in that one paragraph. 

The grand prize winner is also provided at the link, and it’s hilarious, so if you have a minute, you should definitely click through and check it out.

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Top Halloween Candy by State

From a candy distributor, so by golly they KNOW.

For over 11 years, we’ve been delivering tons of bulk candy around the country. As preeminent bulk candy dealers, we’ve got a lot of candy sales data to comb through. …

I am delighted to see that Missourians are too sensible to waste all their money on candy corns, when anyone knows that chocolate is involved in all the best kinds of candy.

Although I am absolutely shocked at the second choice in MO. I mean … really?

I will say, as far as I’m concerned, Alaska has the best top three choices, hand’s down. Twix is my absolute favorite.

Also, ha, look at this! Via File 770:

A vending machine that lets you exchange Halloween candy you don’t like for Reese’s candies you prefer!

Brilliant! (Even though I do not actually like Reese’s peanut butter cups, this is still brilliant).

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What scary book should you read for Halloween?

At Book Riot, another of those little quizzes: Based on your taste in horror movies, what scary book might suit you?

I don’t really like horror movies much (or horror novels), but I do like quizzes, so sure, why not?

One of my answers was chosen completely at random. “What horror movie from 2018 have you liked best so far?”  Um, haven’t seen any movies of any kind in 2018, so, who knows?

However, the suggestion I got at the end actually sounds pretty interesting: The Hunger by Alma Katsu, which blends a historical novel about the Donner party with a supernatural explanation of what happened.

As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains…and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along.

Probably won’t read it because, you know, horror. But on the other hand, historical horror does strike me as more inviting than many other kinds of horror. 

Whether you pick up a horror novel or not tonight, happy Halloween!

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The virtues in fiction

I saw this quote at The Passive Voice blog and shamelessly stole it to post here because I really like it:

Literature embodies virtue, first, by offering images of virtue in action and, second, by offering the reader vicarious practice in exercising virtue, which is not the same as actual practice, of course, but is nonetheless a practice by which habits of mind, ways of thinking and perceiving, accrue.

~ Karen Swallow Prior

I never heard of her before. Karen Pryor, the famous dog trainer, sure. She’s one of the most influential figures in the development of modern positive training methods, which naturally every dog owner should be using, though I guess some are still into the jerk-and-drag school of training.

But moving on to Karen Swallow Prior. She’s an English professor and a writer. Here’s another quote on the same topic, this one from her website:

Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue. Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to practice numerous virtues, such as patience, diligence, and prudence. And learning to judge wisely a character in a book, in turn, forms the reader’s own character.

I like that as well. Of course it ties into the idea that reading helps the reader develop empathy, or at least that reading good books ought to do so. 

All right, these quotes seem to be drawn from a book of Prior’s called On Reading Well, which evidently encourages readers to read and reflect on various literary classics. Let’s take a look at the table of contents via Amazon’s handy “look inside” feature … 

These readings are organized thus:

The Cardinal Virtues:

Prudence: The History of Tom Jones. Never heard of it.

Temperance: The Great Gatsby. Didn’t like it.

Justice: A Tale of Two Cities. Always regretted not having read that one.

Courage: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Good choice.

The Theological Virtues:

Faith: Silence by Shusaku Endo. Never heard of it.

Hope: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Hmm. I don’t know. I’m thinking there are surely many books on this theme that include more actual hope. Though there is a spark of hope right at the end, so there’s that. Even so.

Love: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy. Haven’t read it.

The Heavenly Virtues:

Chastity: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Haven’t read it.

Diligence: Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Haven’t read it.

Patience: Persuasion by Jane Austen. Good choice.

Kindness: “Tenth of December” by George Saunders. Haven’t read it.

Humility: “Revelation” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Conner. I have read these. They stood out to me among assigned readings because I actually liked them.

Okay, that’s interesting, but it makes me want to do this list over again, this time with works I’ve actually read and think embody each virtue. I was trying to think of SFF choices, but in fact quite a few literary novels leaped out at me. I’m not sure if that’s meaningful; surely plenty of genre novels would also be good choices for these categories. Yet here’s a list startlingly full of literary novels.

The Cardinal Virtues: 

Prudence: Sense and Sensibility by Austen.

Temperance: Not sure. Maybe a novel where a powerful character has to, and does, exercise considerable restraint at all times … I’m actually thinking that my first-person obsessive-experience WIP would work, but since it’s not published, it’s hardly fair to put it in here. Any ideas?

Justice: The Count of Monte Christo. You are not going to get through that one without thinking a great deal about justice and revenge and the difference between the two.

Courage: Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein.

The Theological Virtues:

Faith:  In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. I love this book. You should all totally read it. It expressed to me what having a vocation might actually feel like, something I would otherwise find incomprehensible. Thus we see that reading the right books certainly can increase empathy.

Hope: The Chalion series by LMB.

Love: Perhaps one of the really good Beauty and the Beast retellings, probably Beauty by McKinley. Or do we want a broader, less romantic love here? 

The Heavenly Virtues:

Chastity: Um, coming up blank for this one. 

Diligence: The Steerswoman by Kirstein.

Patience: Cotillon by Georgette Heyer. I’m thinking of the male lead here, Freddy.

Kindness:  The Goblin Emperor.

Humility: Les Miserables. I’m thinking of Jean Valjean here, of course, but the bishop also counts as exemplifying this virtue.

If you have a great suggestion for one of the categories I filled in, share that in the comments as well! 

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Today from science —

A few headlines caught my eye today, including this one:

World’s largest deep-sea octopus nursery

How cool is that? 

Octopuses. Hundreds of them. Huddled on a rocky outcrop at the base of an underwater mountain.

“We went down the eastern flank of this small hill, and that’s when—boom—we just started seeing pockets of dozens here, dozens there, dozens everywhere,” says  Chad King , chief scientist on the  Exploration VesselNautilus .

All in all, King estimates that more than 1,000 octopuses known as Muusoctopus robustus were nestled among the rocks, most of which appeared to be inverted, or turned inside out. For this species, that inside-out pose is common among females that are brooding, or protecting their growing young. In some cases, the submersible’s camera could even spot tiny embryos cradled within their mothers’ arms.

Not to be picky when we’re talking about something as neat as a giant nursery of octopuses, but tell, me, did a particular sentence in the above paragraph make you blink? Here it is:

 …more than 1,000 octopuses known as Muusoctopus robustus were nestled among the rocks, most of which appeared to be inverted, or turned inside out.

The author, Jason Bittel, needs to decide whether it’s the octopuses or the rocks which are turned inside out. I actually laughed out loud. Quietly, but out loud.

Moving on:

The incredible seasons of Triton

Again, very cool headline.

… frost continues to travel northward from the southern polar cap of Triton. The frost, which is generated by the sun heating and sublimating volatile material before it travels northward, has been observed since the turn of the century. However, the new findings help shed light on how Triton’s frost budget varies over the world’s full season, which lasts 84 years.

So, the cold season lasts 84 years, I guess? Or the full year lasts 84 years? Oh, Google says Neptune’s year is 165 years, so 84 years is just one season. Pretty snazzy to think about.

Closer to home:

Chocolate has a new origin story

New archaeological evidence suggests humans were cultivating and consuming cacao—the crop from which chocolate is produced—as long as 5,300 years ago, which is 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. What’s more, cacao was initially domesticated in the equatorial regions of South America, and not Central America.

Very sensible of the people living 5,300 years ago, that’s what I say.

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Free till Halloween

By the way, Black Dog is free until Halloween.

If you already have a copy, great! Still, this would be a great time to give a nudge to a friend who might like it.

Also, I notice Black Dog has 47 reviews on Amazon. Three more would take it up to 50. Just saying. 

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When did that word appear in print?

Here’s a “time traveler’s post” from Merriam-Webster.

Some of these words have either since disappeared — without my ever noticing them — or are not in widespread use in the circles I frequent. I mean, what is “abandonware”? That term appeared in 2000, apparently. I kind of like the sound of it. It must be a computer term. I don’t remember ever hearing it, but I’m not into computers, so I wouldn’t have, necessarily.

Let me see, what words were introduced in 1990? Ah, nutriceutical! There’s one that’s become pretty common since that time. Also crytocurrency and malware and a bunch of others.

I question “archaea.” The three-domain taxonomic system was introduced, as I’m sure you all know, by Carl Woese in 1977. He defined the domains of Eukarya, Bacteria, and Archaea. Woese received the Leewenhoek Medal, given once every ten years, for his work in defining the Archaea domain and for his work on “horizontal” transmission of genetic information between organisms. Very famous guy in some circles, and some of us have been using Archaea as a taxonomic term since at least that time.

So I’m guessing this Merriam-Webster thing must refer to the first time a term is used in print … what, in the popular press, maybe? Except that’s not what the Time Traveler post says. Well, then, I don’t know, this entry is just mysterious to me. I think they must mean to exclude scientific use, or this simply makes no sense.

Nevertheless, let’s take a look at the words it says were introduced fifty years ago … oh, big list … let’s see … tough love, squeaky clean, pulsar — pulsar, really? — noninvasive, nonconfrontational — that one gets a red line under it, so WordPress doesn’t think it’s a real word even fifty years on. Oh, I see Goggle mostly thinks it should be hyphenated. Crytozoology, there’s a good one. Consciousness-raising, hmm, yes, 1968 seems like a likely year for that one to appear.

Well, it’s interesting. Take a look. If you immediately find an obvious explanation why this list thinks Archaea wasn’t used until 1990, let me know, because I’m stumped.

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