John Crowley's Blog, page 23

Hunchbacks and wicked witches

Another query to put to you all:  I've been asked to name some folk tales that feature people with what we would call today disabilities:  blind, deaf, lame, missing parts, etc.  I don't know what definition of "folk tale" is in play, so any and all popular (but originally oral) tales (and some written but effectually oral, I suppose, like Beauty and the Beast or Thumbelina) would be passed on.  

Me, SF Prophet

I revealed earlier how my 30-year-old story "Snow" predicted miniature flying drones capable of recording thousands of hours of a particular subject's life, and called (as at least one current model is) a Wasp.  I am absolutely (not) certain I was the first.

Now here's an article on Big Data and how we are to begin to understand the quasi-physics and quasi-biology of digital information increasing at the rate of 5 trillion bits a second, and how that understanding will produce, or require, a new set of laws of human behavior.  Hari Seldon is referenced, naturally, but a more pertinent picture was in my 1989 story "In Blue," which posited a number of new analytic tools (coincidence magnitude calculation, the differential social calculus, act-field theory) with which wise social engineers could enter and be usefully influenced by the universal data stream.  I didn't then own a computer and knew nothing about them, which of course does not inhibit the true prophet.  The fact that my analytics were entirely imaginary is no drawback either, surely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/science/big-datas-parallel-universe-brings-fears-and-a-thrill.html?ref=science

Marina Keegan

Last Saturday a brilliant student of mine at Yale was killed in a car crash on Cape Cod.  She had graduated the previous week.  She was perhaps the most promising and among the most talented students I have ever had, a beautiful, likeable, modest person who however knew pretty well how good she was and how much better she could get.  

This was a terrible shock.  Students die -- one a year at Yale at least, sometimes in dreadful circumstances, and I know the possibility exists.  Still the death of such a well-defended and careful and modest young person -- defended against disease, violence, disaster of every kind -- seems so unlikely that it almost seems impossible, though of course that's wrong.  I was like the poet in Wordsworth's poem -- "A slumber did my spirit seal/I had no human fears/ She seemed a thing that could not feel/The touch of earthly years."  

No motion hath she now, no force
She neither hears nor sees
Rolled round on earth;s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.

She had written a piece for commencement, a competition among students for whose would be read at the ceremony.  Hers wasn't chosen, but has gone viral as they say, and has been seen and read by some millions now around the world.  Here's s link to the original publication: 

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/ 

The pathos of it is nearly unbearable.

Gnostic Dick

Simon Critchley (who in the photograph attached to his series unnervingly resembles the Satanist Anton LaVey, but so do a lot of people) is running a series on the OpEd page of the NYTimes about Philip K. Dick (or PKD as his fans and adulators know him) as a Gnostic philosopher.  As Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, he knows whereof he speaks.   Interesting without being exactly earthshaking (as an appropriate response would have to be.)  

Here's Part 2, where we get to the Gnostics, with a link to Part 1:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html

Titular

I woke this morning thinking of movie titles.  Not exactly thinking them up, or on the other hand pondering the titles of movies I knew.  In a contemplative state I thought: Any Second Now is a mystery-thriller; Any Minute Now is a romantic comedy, possibly about a young woman come to the big city for adventure; and Any Day Now is a moving and uplifting family drama.  I actually remembered no films with those titles, but I assumed they existed.

Well, I just looked them up. Any Second Now is a murder-thriller.  Any Minute Now is a romance, but a horror-romance rather than a RomCom.  And Any Day Now is an uplifting family drama about a kid with Downs.  None were films I'd known about.    

James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice) used to complain about movie titles that could be anyting -- crime, musical comedy, slapstick. Your Money or your Life.  Hands Down. Up and Coming.  Etc.

Howdy neighbor

If it seems inconvenient or operose to look over the fence and wave to the lady in her garden, or exchange a few words in the elevator with the tenant next door, or swap news with the other locals shopping at the bakery or getting theri mail, here's the solution -- SOCIAL MEDIA!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/on-nextdoorcom-social-networks-for-neighbors.html?ref=technology

O Canada

 I enjoyed my visit to Boreal, the Canadian Francophone SF/Fantasy convetnion in Quebec City.  The city (my first visit) could in its old center and river battlements be mistaken for a European city, but actually it doesn't feel the same.  Maybe because, old as it is, it's still actually new -- nothing older than 1600.  I attended a couple of panels with an English-whisperer at my side, and participated in one too, with several smart and funny speakers, including the guest authors Heloise Cote and Jeanne-Philippe Jaworski, whose work has of course not been translated, shame on us.  The conference was held in a bastion of Anglophone Quebec, a former (very former) prison turned into a college and then a Literary and Historical Society with pictures of bewhiskered worthies offering lectures and improvement.  It now houses the only Anglophone lending library in Quebec.  I walked a few blocks to the Chateau Frontenac, an absolutely enormous hotel, like a Sleeping Beauty castle blown up to vast size; I had wanted to go there because my parents had their honeymoon there in 1938.  

The panel topics and discussions were, in general, much like those of similar cons I've been to (as far as I could tell) -- witty and contentious and a little inbred and a lot well-read.  But it didn't have a panel like one that apparently is to be offered at Readercon (to which several of the wtiters and readers at Boreal often come) this July; I don't think the COn will mind if I quote a sentence from the proposal:

"..as the romance genre becomes more welcoming of both the erotic and the undead, how will weird erotica maintain its identity as something separate from paranormal porn?"

How indeed?  I will be there to learn.

Aurora borealis

Hope it's not too late for anyone interested in coming that I'm going to be the guest and keynote speaker at Boreal in Quebec next weekend. That is, this weekend. Why con I never remekber to post these things in a timely fashion?

Your Next Book (Or Mine)

From an article in the TLS about wild and rowdy 18th century London:

"Fairs, spas (or "spaws"), gardens, gambling, drinking, prizefighting (including by women), cock-fighting, bear- and bull-baiting, and so on."

Seems to me you could get a publisher's advance with a single paragraph about a book that stars a bare-knuckle female boxing champion, her trials and tribulations and successes as she meets opponents and kicks ass in Merry Olde England.  Actually I'm serious.  Wouldn't that be great?  The book could be inflammatory and the movie would be more fun that Scorsese's Gangs of New York, with a pre-sold audience, even larger if you put the right stars into... well, what DID women boxers wear in 18th c. London?  

The book, which sounds terrific, is "London in the Eighteenth Century" by Jerry White (who's already done ".. in the Nineteenth Century" and "... in the Twentieth Century," working his way backwards.

Hard Questions

You'll see on the left hand of this page the sites I visit or like -- they haven't been updated lately, and some may be gone -- but the  Perpetual Interview attached to the 25th Anniversary Edition is still happening, and I've lately posted answers to some surprisingly tough questions there; also posted from earlier are Harold Bloom's questions to me, and other inquiries.