British Science Fiction Association: News

Proposals made to solve Ares 1 rocket vibration worry

OK, that's the story written, I strongly suspect, from a NASA press release and putting, to say the least, a positive spin on things. Now, here's my take, and to establish my qualifications to pontificate, I have an MSc in space engineering and considerable experience in aerospace engineering analysis.

( Why I'm not nearly so upbeat as that article )

(via pds_lit)

"Among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor," says 73 year-old Fr. Jeremy Davies.

OMG DEMONS! OMG CATCHING!

Also, yoga is more dangerous than overt occult behaviour because it's the 'thin end of the wedge'. Riiiight. But, but, but evil thin-end-of-wedge practices are so much better for my back than church-going!

Am damned. Ah well.

I don't make a point of mocking people's faith, but this sort of thing provokes me to mockery or despair.

Heart-Shaped Box -- Joe Hill ( read on for non-spoilery review )

On transphobia in feminism but posted here mostly because it is Roz at her most lucid and elegant. That's a fabulous bit of writing.

Suggestions for places to send review copies of a collection of essays called _On Joanna Russ_?

I have the obvious:
SFS*
JFA*
Foundation*
Fem-Spec*
Feminist Review*

My duel review of Everything Is Sinister by David Llewellyn and The Heritage by Will Ashon is up now at Strange Horizons. Both are interesting novels but the Ashon in particular is well worth reading.

Happy Birthday bugshaw!

... to bugshaw!

... I did a wardrobe purge. Luckily, I still have a couple of jumpers left.

Reasons to wear long sleeves

1. SUMMER: DOEZ NOT WERK

2. Shiva thinks I should be paying attention to her instead of coding*, and keeps reminding me by swiping my bare arm with her spiky paw. Ha! Let's see how she likes it when she sticks.

*or, okay, spamming LJ.

Further to last week's poll on Weird Shopping Experiences, I can now -- post delivery of margotmetroland's birthday present -- highly recommend both Quaff (who didn't have the item in stock, but phoned around to locate a bottle, went online and printed me a map, and were generally Very Nice) and Toast, who did have a bottle or two in stock (plus Gosset candles!) and have the most marvellously decadent decor.

Quaff are especially good for deals on cases. Toast are good for range, gift-packaging and shiny black counters. Both are in Hove, but have online shops, and both have helpful, friendly, sympathetic and charming staff.

5th Aug: ordered EEEEEE, purple Linuxy EEEEEEEEEEE, for delivery 12th Aug.
12th Aug: after waiting in all morning: received email indicating that delivery had been delayed to 19th Aug.
19th Aug: wake early full of glEEEEEE.
- Check order: not despatched: est. delivery date still 19th Aug.
- Check item page. 'in stock, despatched by ADMI'.
- Contact ADMI who have no record of me.
- Contact Amazon, who put me on hold for ages, talk to me in American accents and tell me that my order is being fulfilled by another supplier and will not be despatched for another 1-3 weeks.
- Express my displeasure at poor communication + inflexibility of Amazon order system (you would think preorders might be assigned to suppliers who actually stock the item, no?).
- Cancel Amazon order. With prejudice. With a stroppy little note.
- Order EEEEEEEEE from ADMI, direct.
- wait. Not patiently. Until at least tomorrow.

#58 Everything Is Sinister by David Llewellyn

Read for review for Strange Horizons.

#59 The Edge Of Reason by Melinda Snodgrass

Read for review for Vector.

#60 Boy Meets Girl by Ali Smith

Another well written but ultimately disappointing installment in the Myths series from Canongate. Churlishly I don't like it because it is too much of a myth. Eve's Alexandria had a roundtable discussion of the novel and I find myself in agreement with Victoria Hoyle:

I'm not sure though that it really did enough to explore the myth at hand - like Atwood and Winterson (very much like Winterson) I sometimes felt it was more about parallels than something fresh. And is saying, 'Look, the myth has a similar resonance for us today as it did then' by rewriting it, exciting enough, or ambitious enough to warrant a novel? The Myth series is going to get old, pretty quickly if that is all there is at the bottom of it.

Also, as various commentators mention, everyone in the novel is a charicature. Unlike coalescent I don't think this makes it sexist but I do think it makes it a lot less interesting than Smith's other work.

#61 Junky by William Burroughs

A very odd book by a very odd bloke. This was clearly written as correspondence and no attempt has been made to turn it into anything other than dispatches from the frontline. Mostly the point of the book is it got there first. The world of mid-Twentieth Century junk is remarkably quaint from the vantage point of this century. Junkies score from doctors who write them dodgy prescriptions and make money by rolling lushes.

What is so odd about Junky is the combination of candour - such as the frankly bizarre couple of pages when he goes from declaiming fag bars to picking up a man for sex to trying to kill him to drinking himself unconscious - with a massive veil over his personal life. It is a shock when his wife appears unannouced halfway through the text because she has never previously been mentioned. The result is an strange, uneven fictionalised epistolary autobigraphy.

#62 A Maiden's Grave by Jeffery Deaver

I picked this up from a box of secondhand books knowing it would be preposterous and lo and behold it was. With every novel he writes Deaver seems to be having a competition with himself to make it as ludicrous as possible.

9,000 / 10,000 (90.0%)

That completes the actual discussion. I've just gone through the whole thing carefully noting errors, parts where the exposition isn't clear, and issues to note in the summary and conclusion. I probably have to add a couple of hundred words to clarify some areas, which if need be I can almost certainly trim out elsewhere, leaving me 800-1000 words to wrap it all up, summarise the legal position of using personal fabricators, and make my own suggestions as to where we're going and follow-on research.

For one thing, I've had to confine myself to European, UK and in some instances specifically English law. Clearly a huge forum for personal fabricator development is going to be the USA, and all the areas I've investigated need to be re-examined from the US legal perspective. And, looking at where personal fabbing might prove attractive, the Chinese and Indian perspectives as well.

And what will the actual response to this technology be? I shall note the temptation for commercial fab producers to incorporate some sort of DRM or anti-counterfeiting technology similar to that put into scanners and printers to stop people printing dollar bills, and how this will be futile in the face of open-source DIY fabs. Equally, any move to try to close the 'personal and private use' exemptions for design and patent law would be inadvisable - they were put there for a reason and the advent of fabbing doesn't invalidate it overnight. It's also worth explaining that there is a big difference between home fabbing and music file-sharing, as the latter delivered the ability to make and swap near-perfect copies right away, whilst home fabs will be making very limited substitutes for a fair while to come. There is thus the prospect of a much softer landing, so to speak, although this might equally mean that large rights-holders have more time to lobby for more restrictive design protection in advance of genuine 3D replicators actually being developed. As purplecthulhu noted when we were talking about this down the pub the other night, there's the prospect for more than one paper coming out of this...

Luckily I was only there for an hour...

Had generally good weekend -- fabulous to see lots of lovely people chez margotmetroland / drpete, and to catch up with people I haven't spoken to for ages. (And even people I had never met!) I need to get out more.

(Thanks to those who were sympathetic re Sam. I dreamt about him last night. And still no vet bill :))

Beach trip yesterday was hugely overambitious, as despite blazing sunshine in Suburbia, weather at Camber was decidedly autumnal. Bah. Stupid 'summer'.

Note to self
Dear Self, If you eat fried food you will be ill. Chips are nice. Ill is not nice. Love, me.

As some of you (particularly those of you who follow some of my other online presences) will be aware, I fell down the stairs yesterday.

I'm not seriously injured -- some scraped bits of skin, some large bumps, one particularly picturesque bruise, some places that feel like bruises but don't yet look like bruises -- because falling down the stairs is something I do routinely every now and then. I hadn't fallen down the stairs for a couple of years and I was probably overdue for another go, and when I'm falling down the stairs I don't usually pick up serious injuries. I'm actually quite good at falling down the stairs. I didn't hit my head, or damage my spine, or tear any muscles, and so the only injuries I have are those arising from impact.

I think there's a fanzine article waiting to be written about just how to fall down the stairs properly, achieving the maximum noise and comic effect coupled with the minimum of injury and lasting consequences.

Unless someone's already written it, and I haven't found it yet.

details here

The Moon will first enter the outer shadow of the Earth at 18:25 GMT (19:25 British Summer Time) - although, you may not even notice. An hour later, at 19:36 GMT (20:36 BST) the Moon begins to go into the dark heart of the Earth shadow, and that's when the eclipse really begins! The Moon is in the middle of the Earth's shadow by 21:10GMT (22:10BST), and has left the dark shadow by 22:44 GMT (23:44 BST). The entire eclipse ends at 23:55 GMT (00:55 BST).

Fingers crossed for clear skies. (Saw the moon while coming back from theatre the other night and actually couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it. Stupid summer.)