Greer Gilman's Blog, page 65

The Great Wall of China...

...is Up!





"It is quite consummate, is it not?"
"It is, indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!"

Didn't my guy do a gorgeous job on this?  The mirror does wonderfully enlarge the room—walking in, dear BBW exclaimed, "Twice as many books!"—but it makes an awfully busy setting for the china.  I hope it works.

I need to get museum wax.

Nine

The overture is about to start...

Rather a small (but cherce) Readercon schedule this year.  Which means I'll get to see things I'm not on!

Friday July 12
12:00 PM
Of Gods and Goddesses
Richard Bowes, Lila Garrott (leader), Greer Gilman, Sandra Kasturi, Patricia A. McKillip, Sonya Taaffe.

Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light used gods and goddesses as modern characters. Powerful, imperious, vulnerable, gods seem to be everywhere again these days. In American Gods, Gods Behaving Badly, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms et seq., Discord's Apple, Going Bovine, and other recent works, we meet familiar and unfamiliar deities who behave more often than not in recognizably human fashion rather than with a god-like dignity, power, and majesty. What draws writers to bring gods to earth and readers to the adventures in the modern world of characters as old as storytelling? And why is this trend increasing at this particular time?


Saturday July 13
6:00 PM  
The Tropes of Tresses
E.C. Ambrose, Lila Garrott (leader), Greer Gilman, Liz Gorinsky, Veronica Schanoes.

Hair has shaped the lives and destiny of Samson in the Bible, Rapunzel (in all her iterations), and blue- and fire-haired heroines of recent YA fantasy. Hair can be a source of power, a means of communication, and a signifier of identity. Why is hair such a potent element in speculative fiction? What cultural and literary antecedents give hair its significance, and how does it connect modern SF/F with the world of religion and myth?

7:30 PM
Reading: Greer Gilman
Greer Gilman

Greer Gilman reads from "Cry Murder! in a Small Voice," a new novella forthcoming from Small Beer Press.

Sunday July 14
2:00 PM
Designing and Building a Book Collection
John Clute (leader), Ron Drummond, Greer Gilman, Jacob Weisman.

This panel will focus on how to shape a book collection as a meaningful embodiment of information that other people can access. Motives for collecting will be discussed, but the focus is on the books assembled, not the raconteur.

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Under the greenwood tree

Last night, I saw Flock Theatre's enchanting open-air production of As You Like It, with our own csecooney as Rosalind.  (The many-skilled negothick acted as dramaturge, répétiteur, and Johannes Factotum.)  It was magical.  The setting, as you see, was perfect, in an arboretum at the height of June:  a wind in the green leaves, bright shadow chasing brighter sun; and for the nuptials, a full moon rising.   Every scene was a living picture; it began in the Renaissance, but Arden was a sort of timeless paradise, east of Arcadia, peopled with blue butterflies and loving cranes.  The performances were vivid and mischievous; the pace, swift and sure.  The dance, the singing, and the music--a flute, a hurdy-gurdy, and a drum--were all marvellous.  All praise to Anne Flammang, whose vision (and hard work) this was.

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Hung fire

Which is what the sun did on Friday.  Coming back from the lovely New Blue and White exhibit at the MFA, I found a midsummer fair going on by the Yard, with morris-dancing and ice cream and telescopes.  There's a new sort of mylar now which lets you look straight at the sun.  I queued for some while to look at sunspots, because that's awesome--and just as I reached the head of the line, the sun set.  Damn.

Meanwhile, Time Machine is hanging fire as well.  As I said, I partitioned the new drive.  Transfer to the archival half goes at about 1 GB/minute:  not blazing, but respectable.  Via Time Machine, data moves at 1GB/hour--which is insane.  At that rate, it would take about three weeks to back up what I've got, running 24/7.  I've told my iMac not to sleep, but none the less, it's blinked twice, and started the whole thing all over again from square one.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?  I understand that this is a complex process, and I expected it to take, I don't know, two or three times as long as just copying.  Not 60.  Should I just give up and copy manually?

Reminds me of that old joke about the airplane:  they're over the Atlantic, and things keep failing.  At each new malfunction, there are reassurances from the crew, regrets for the unavoidable delay.  They're going slower and slower now, laboring to fly.  Finally, one guy turns to the other and says, "Gosh, if that last engine catches fire, we'll be up here all night."

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Midsummer

"In a launde, upon an hille of floures..."




I faintly remember drawing this Parliament of Fowls for my Chaucer class.  I must have given the original to my professor, as all I have is this slightly blurred photograph.  But the small birds have been singing themselves mad since three this morning, and their joyful racket waked memory.

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In little

Just got a long-needed back-up hard drive.  Two TB.  Heavens, I remember when megabytes were thrilling.  The box says the drive will hold up to 240 movies, 500,000 songs or 400,000 photos.  A little stack of these whirly-wheels could hold most books.  Ever.  The Library of Babel in little.  It's about the size of Harriet Vane's cigarette case and bright blue.

How big is the web (so far)?  Would it fit on a yottabyte?

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Toward midsummer

Tell me something cheerful!

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Rune-casting

Hey, wait, isn't Sundown eligible for the long form dramatic presentation Hugo? Could we get it on the ballot?

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Poetomachia

"Who wouldn’t like to see Bellum Grammaticale by Leonard Hutten (1581)? Its plot description starts like this: 'Love, King of the Verbs, has quarrelled with Poet, King of the Nouns, at a banquet. Now Poet intends a military response and sends the pronoun He to drum up support among the prepositions and interjections.'"

From a review of Martin Wiggins’s British Drama, 1533–1642: A catalogue in the TLS, which adds "The set will not be affordable ... but it will eventually be available online."

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Sea-changed

This was a story I'd begun to write...

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