John Crowley's Blog, page 6

Fled is that music

Benedict Cumberbatch reads Ode to a Nightingale beautifully -- though he doesn;t know to, or doesn't care to, read final "ed" as accented when he should, and pronounces "poesy" as two syllables.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrAGCJJkNbE

Creeps

What modern novel do you think best represents the Gothic tradition?  Or maybe:  What's your favorite modern Gothic novel, one either set in former ages, or in the Gothic Novel period (early 19th c.), or nowadays?

Forbid forebode

Wehn did "foreboding" turn into, or adopt a new role as, an adjective?  A foreboding house.  A foreboding prospect.  Does it seem that new (mis)uses of words travel so fast that they outrun criticism, and are seated with the good uses before thay cna be called out?

Overlords

Okay fine with that last one.  Now: Where (if there is an original where) does the phrase "I for one welcome our new robot overlords"  actually occur?  And was it in that form or as "alien overlords" or some other form?

Word Search

What is the short old word -- it begins maybe with a p -- that means a brief spell or magic word?

Danger: Information

This appears at the bottom of a page taken from the Household Cyclopedia of General Information, 1881.  The entry also notes that "some of the methods may be outdated."   The entry describes how to plant and care for a thorn hedge -- a barrier made of thorn bushes, hawthorne or similar.

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No Limit to Paranoia

From the NY Times, anent Russian opinions about what happened to the the Malaysian airliner:

"One such theory holds that whoever shot down the plane was actually gunning for Mr. Putin, whose plane was over Eastern Europe at the time, returning from Latin America, for example.Another argues that the bodies were actually from the Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared four months ago — dumped only now to make the separatists look bad.'In Russia, no one thinks that Russia is guilty,' said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who specializes in studying Russia’s political elite."

Thanks

Thanks to all for the suggestions and in advance for further/future ones.  Several years' worth of reading there (for me; others swallow books far faster than I do).

ANother info request for my good readers

A student at Yale of African descent asks for new or recent SF/F books or authors dealing with diversity, gender politics, race, migration (not necessarily to US) and related issues.  She's read Octafvia Butler and that generation of SF writiers --but what's on now?

The future is the new past

"As he unlocked his office door, his superior, Police Inspector Harry Bryant, jug-eared and redheaded, sloppily dressed but wise-eyed and conscious of nearly everything of any importance, hailed him. 'Meet me at nine-thirty in Dave Holden’s office.' Inspector Bryant, as he spoke, flicked briefly through a clipboard of onionskin typed sheets."
It's 2019, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  I read this and tried to think how I would describe the meaning, derivation, and use of "onionskin typed sheets."   For SF of a certain age, it's the past that needs to be explained, not the future.