Lois McMaster Bujold's Blog, page 69
August 11, 2013
Ivan addendum
Here's a better scan of the front cover of the trade paperback, unfoiled.
(Thank you, Geoffrey Kidd.)
Ta, L.
(Thank you, Geoffrey Kidd.)
Ta, L.
Ivan in September
The trade (oversize) paperback of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance will release in just a few weeks, Sept. 3 officially. Larry Smith Booksellers hopes we can get some early copies available at WorldCon in San Antonio the prior weekend, but we'll have to see how that goes. Meanwhile, the books have been printed, and my author's copies arrived in a box last week, still an exciting moment after all these years.
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Vorpatr...
The former back (now front) cover has taken a lot of heat, but I thought it was deeply amusing, especially in the context of the artist's Flandry covers for Baen, of which this is something of a parody. I'm sure the young Ivan wished in vain he could be James Bond, too (of which Flandry in turn was an SF homage, back in the day) or whatever the Barrayaran equivalent may be. The former front cover is now the back, with less of the art detail covered up by my Big Fat Name, much to its benefit.
(Baen's addiction to foil is what obscures the background art in this actual-book scan. I'll link to a better view of the original below.)
Front cover:
back cover:
I am especially fond of what I imagine to be the artist's rendition of the Imperial Residence, down at the bottom.
Better, clearer scans of the original art may be seen on Dave Seeley's website, here.
http://www.daveseeley.com/p78742369/h...
http://www.daveseeley.com/p78742369/h...
Dave sells prints of most of his art, by the way.
Ta, L.
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Vorpatr...
The former back (now front) cover has taken a lot of heat, but I thought it was deeply amusing, especially in the context of the artist's Flandry covers for Baen, of which this is something of a parody. I'm sure the young Ivan wished in vain he could be James Bond, too (of which Flandry in turn was an SF homage, back in the day) or whatever the Barrayaran equivalent may be. The former front cover is now the back, with less of the art detail covered up by my Big Fat Name, much to its benefit.
(Baen's addiction to foil is what obscures the background art in this actual-book scan. I'll link to a better view of the original below.)
Front cover:
back cover:
I am especially fond of what I imagine to be the artist's rendition of the Imperial Residence, down at the bottom.
Better, clearer scans of the original art may be seen on Dave Seeley's website, here.
http://www.daveseeley.com/p78742369/h...
http://www.daveseeley.com/p78742369/h...
Dave sells prints of most of his art, by the way.
Ta, L.
August 6, 2013
Dragonwriter launches today
I was asked last year to contribute a piece to this memorial anthology...
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/drago...
http://www.amazon.com/Dragonwriter-Tr...
We met only a few times, but she did have an impact, despite what seemed to me our generation gap. (Any writer I read when young seems to occupy a different headspace for me than my regular colleagues, somehow more magical.)
They got Michael Whelan back for the cover, too -- his cover for The White Dragon, back when, had an impact on both their careers.
Ta, L.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/drago...
http://www.amazon.com/Dragonwriter-Tr...
We met only a few times, but she did have an impact, despite what seemed to me our generation gap. (Any writer I read when young seems to occupy a different headspace for me than my regular colleagues, somehow more magical.)
They got Michael Whelan back for the cover, too -- his cover for The White Dragon, back when, had an impact on both their careers.
Ta, L.
August 5, 2013
not-so-quotidian quotes
So, a while back I was asked for permission to use a quote from one of my books in an academic tome, something that has come up a couple of times before, usually to my intense bemusement. Bujold readers do seem to get around. And their quality flatters me more than I can say.
Anyway, I asked for a photocopy of the pertinent chapter, and instead they generously sent me a copy of the whole book. At $160 a pop and weighing in at nearly five pounds, I doubt The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology is destined for bestsellerdom, but who knows? I also don't think, at over 1300 pages, I will be giving it a proper review any time soon, although I did just read "my" chapter, #53, "Personal Identity and Identity Disorders" by Stephen R. L. Clark. Whom I have never met, as far as I know.
http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook...
for a closer look.
To assuage the curiosity of other Bujold readers out there who may have less easy access to Interlibrary Loan than I do, here's a photocopy of the pertinent page:
albeit not the context, I admit. And context is Much. (Especially for that quote, I suspect. I cannot imagine what this book's intended audience will make of it.)
It's very nearly the entirety of Chapter Twenty-Six, I realize. Which was a chapter that didn't need to be any longer to do its job.
***
In other news, they're supposedly coming tomorrow to upgrade my internet connection. Last time I tried to do so, I was offline for four days, until we returned to square one (still not upgraded, mind you.) So if you all don't hear from me for a while, don't panic. I will merely be inadvertently revisiting an earlier historical and now half-forgotten age.
Ta, L.
Anyway, I asked for a photocopy of the pertinent chapter, and instead they generously sent me a copy of the whole book. At $160 a pop and weighing in at nearly five pounds, I doubt The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology is destined for bestsellerdom, but who knows? I also don't think, at over 1300 pages, I will be giving it a proper review any time soon, although I did just read "my" chapter, #53, "Personal Identity and Identity Disorders" by Stephen R. L. Clark. Whom I have never met, as far as I know.
http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook...
for a closer look.
To assuage the curiosity of other Bujold readers out there who may have less easy access to Interlibrary Loan than I do, here's a photocopy of the pertinent page:
albeit not the context, I admit. And context is Much. (Especially for that quote, I suspect. I cannot imagine what this book's intended audience will make of it.)
It's very nearly the entirety of Chapter Twenty-Six, I realize. Which was a chapter that didn't need to be any longer to do its job.
***
In other news, they're supposedly coming tomorrow to upgrade my internet connection. Last time I tried to do so, I was offline for four days, until we returned to square one (still not upgraded, mind you.) So if you all don't hear from me for a while, don't panic. I will merely be inadvertently revisiting an earlier historical and now half-forgotten age.
Ta, L.
August 3, 2013
French mmpb of Cryoburn
My mail fun for yesterday. It can be like Christmas every week when one is a writer, except that Santa wears blue and drives a white truck. (Or, sometimes, brown and a brown truck.)
"mmpb", by the way, stands for "mass-market paperback", meaning the regular small-sized ones. The over-sized ones, much favored for nonfiction and literary fiction, are called "trade paperback" in the, er, trade.
In the US, the two formats have different returns policies and economics, or did formerly. I don't know how it works in France.
Anyway, front cover:
and back cover:
On the North American continent, Canadian booksellers can sometimes be one's best bet for French titles. There is also, now, Amazon France, but I don't know how they handle overseas sales.
Ta, L.
"mmpb", by the way, stands for "mass-market paperback", meaning the regular small-sized ones. The over-sized ones, much favored for nonfiction and literary fiction, are called "trade paperback" in the, er, trade.
In the US, the two formats have different returns policies and economics, or did formerly. I don't know how it works in France.
Anyway, front cover:
and back cover:
On the North American continent, Canadian booksellers can sometimes be one's best bet for French titles. There is also, now, Amazon France, but I don't know how they handle overseas sales.
Ta, L.
July 31, 2013
another Estonian edition
You should have no trouble recognizing this title, even in Estonian...
The back cover may be more of a challenge.
Varrak Publishers, Tallinn
Ta, L.
The back cover may be more of a challenge.
Varrak Publishers, Tallinn
Ta, L.
July 30, 2013
Starship Sofacon in retrospect
So, that seemed to go all right on Sunday... Did anyone out there watch in real-time? How did it seem from your side?
Tony-your-Pilot will have links up to the files in a few weeks, which I will post when I get them.
My video reception cut out partway through, so I was looking at the home screen -- or mostly, at that little dot of a camera lens atop my home laptop screen -- for most of the last half, turning a video interview into an audio one from my POV. But they seemed to be seeing me all right, even if I couldn't see Amy or myself. It will take some experiment, I think, to figure out which way to look to give the best illusion of "talking to the viewer" in such efforts.
It put me in mind of, among other things, early television, when people were just first figuring out how to do it all. Besides my dad's early experiences (as the 2nd TV weatherman in the country after the one in Pittsburgh)I had watched a show on just that subject the other week from Netflix...
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Modern-M...
Interesting times.
Ta, L.
Tony-your-Pilot will have links up to the files in a few weeks, which I will post when I get them.
My video reception cut out partway through, so I was looking at the home screen -- or mostly, at that little dot of a camera lens atop my home laptop screen -- for most of the last half, turning a video interview into an audio one from my POV. But they seemed to be seeing me all right, even if I couldn't see Amy or myself. It will take some experiment, I think, to figure out which way to look to give the best illusion of "talking to the viewer" in such efforts.
It put me in mind of, among other things, early television, when people were just first figuring out how to do it all. Besides my dad's early experiences (as the 2nd TV weatherman in the country after the one in Pittsburgh)I had watched a show on just that subject the other week from Netflix...
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Modern-M...
Interesting times.
Ta, L.
July 26, 2013
Starship Sofacon this Sunday
Something new for me -- a real-time video podcast. I will be interviewed by Amy Sturgis, if there are no last-minute technical glitches. (Such as a summer thunderstorm and power outage in Minneapolis, etc.)
More info at the Starship Sofa Podcast website here:
http://www.starshipsofa.com/
Tickets were about sold out, last I heard, but I believe there will be non-real-time files up later. (Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that.)
Ta, L.
More info at the Starship Sofa Podcast website here:
http://www.starshipsofa.com/
Tickets were about sold out, last I heard, but I believe there will be non-real-time files up later. (Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that.)
Ta, L.
July 25, 2013
23andme and Me
So, a while back I popped for a gene-typing spit kit from these folks...
https://www.23andme.com/
The results were very interesting. Along with a lot of perhaps-pertinent (and some obsolete) health information (it's all playing the percentages in this sort of thing), they do deep ancestry including, now, one's Neanderthal contribution. This would have been unimaginable even ten years ago.
(I must say, it amused me just how fast the artistic representations of Neanderthals in science articles got upgraded when that genomic connection with H. sap came out.)
I've been trying to get my brother to sign up, so far without success, to see what interesting information his Y-chromosome results might add.
Among other things, they tell me my ancestry is
99.8% European
0.2% Sub-Saharan African
0.1% Unassigned
...which adds up to more than 100%, which makes me wonder a little.
I am also, tah-dah! 2.6% Neanderthal -- close to the average for persons of European ancestry.
I assume that percentage comes out of the European bin somewhere, otherwise I am more than 100% of a person.
I don't know how they count the mumble-percentage of their genome humans are supposed to share with, among other species, chimpanzees, bacteria, and oak trees, but perhaps that is too fine-grained a report for them to deal with.
Anyway, I found it all very fascinating, and recommend that one try the link and poke around.
Ta, L.
https://www.23andme.com/
The results were very interesting. Along with a lot of perhaps-pertinent (and some obsolete) health information (it's all playing the percentages in this sort of thing), they do deep ancestry including, now, one's Neanderthal contribution. This would have been unimaginable even ten years ago.
(I must say, it amused me just how fast the artistic representations of Neanderthals in science articles got upgraded when that genomic connection with H. sap came out.)
I've been trying to get my brother to sign up, so far without success, to see what interesting information his Y-chromosome results might add.
Among other things, they tell me my ancestry is
99.8% European
0.2% Sub-Saharan African
0.1% Unassigned
...which adds up to more than 100%, which makes me wonder a little.
I am also, tah-dah! 2.6% Neanderthal -- close to the average for persons of European ancestry.
I assume that percentage comes out of the European bin somewhere, otherwise I am more than 100% of a person.
I don't know how they count the mumble-percentage of their genome humans are supposed to share with, among other species, chimpanzees, bacteria, and oak trees, but perhaps that is too fine-grained a report for them to deal with.
Anyway, I found it all very fascinating, and recommend that one try the link and poke around.
Ta, L.
July 22, 2013
Finnish filk for Taura (in English)
So, last summer during my trip to Finland, I (and the rest of the Finncon convention) were taken off for an evening party in town in Tampere (pronounced, I discovered, TAM-pere-ae), at a wonderful old venue that looked rather like the interior of The Prancing Pony as seen in the LotR film. Among the ceremonies was an a capella rendering of the following filk song, written in honor of the occasion. Picture about a dozen Finnish fans on a low dais at the front of this crowded room, singing in tune (as I cannot).
(A more extended trip report may be found in Sidelines: Talks and Essays.)
I'd been meaning to post this for a while, but I'm rather glad I didn't, as it would have been lost in the MySpace meltdown.
Ta, L.
(A more extended trip report may be found in Sidelines: Talks and Essays.)
I'd been meaning to post this for a while, but I'm rather glad I didn't, as it would have been lost in the MySpace meltdown.
Ta, L.
