| Interesting times (argh!) |
[Jan. 14th, 2012|11:45 pm] |
A lot of you will have seen D's posts about what happened to our household account two days ago. Ouch, a lot!
We, however, have seen what happened in the Interwebs when Diane let people know about it, and...
And, well, thank you all. I thank you, D thanks you and Mr Goodman the White Cat thanks you. (Brush off the shed fur in your own time.)
It was a straight-up fraud, so we WILL be recompensed by the bank ("in due course", as they say, which could mean all sorts of things.) You helped, more than helped, to get us out of a potential yawning hole.
Appreciated. A lot.
More later, and if I can get Calibre working properly, a story. Meanwhile, a good night's sleep for the first time in three days.
G'night - and thank you all.
P |
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| Anne McCaffrey, 1926-2011. RIP |
[Nov. 23rd, 2011|03:14 pm] |
Hugo winner. Nebula winner. The first great female SF writer. SFWA Grand Master. Grand Dame. Grandmother. Mother. Horsewoman. Dragon Lady.
She was the first big name SF writer I ever met to talk to, rather than nod in awe at. It was my second, or maybe third, convention, a smallish affair in Hull. Anne McCaffrey was GoH, so I bought all her books from the Sign of the Dragon bookshop stall and asked her to sign them. I behaved like a fanboy. She bought a copy of The Horse Lord and asked me to sign it. She behaved like a professional.
She'd given me her address, one pro to another, so when The Demon Lord came out I sent her a copy. In her letter of thanks was an invitation to visit, with directions. Unfortunately they were directions for someone who already knew the area, and this was before GPS, or indeed sensibly-sized road signs in Dublin. Sometimes all you could see was the capital letter. That's why I wound up heading for Waterford, or it might be Wexford, rather than Wicklow...
By the time I got my bearings it was nudging midnight, and I couldn't call (this was also before cellphones) because rural phoneboxes were rare as hen's teeth. In addition I'd learned (this still happens) that out in the country late at night, if you don't have exact directions for someone's house then you won't get much help from the locals. "Sure, and if she'd wanted you to find her wouldn't she have told you how herself..."
Finally I realised that Dragonhold - the old one - was down a long driveway between high hedges that looked more like a lane. A lane I'd passed three or four times already. Annie's directions were just fine. My navigation, not so much. So I drove slowly down the lane, wheels crunching on gravel, a car with Northern Irish plates crawling up to an isolated Southern Irish farmhouse at past one in the morning. I got out, backlit by the headlights, one hand raised for a timid I'm-so-late knock.
That was when the door opened and the Dobermanns came out, making noises that suggested I might be crunchy and good with ketchup. Or even without ketchup. I don't usually ignore dogs like that, but this time I did, because I had something else to concentrate on. Have you any idea how big a shotgun looks from the wrong end at that hour of the morning? Like a matched pair of railway tunnels, that's how big.
But the railway tunnels were shaking a bit, because the dressing-gowned, benightied lady at the far end was trying not to laugh. "I wasn't expecting company any more," says Annie, "and since I'm an old lady living alone-" except for the shotgun and the Dobies "-you know how it is." Uh-huh. Yup. "You can put your hands down now." I don't remember them going up. "And come on in. I'm sure you'd like a cup of coffee." There's a twinkle in her eyes. "With a little something in it."
Half an hour later I'm snuggled down on the sofa-bed in the living-room, Saffy the female Dobie has decided to be my friend, there's a peat fire settling into ash behind the guard and I've been assured that the gun wasn't loaded. So what Annie took out of it when she thought I wasn't watching was probably lipstick. BigPaws the cat ambles by, gives me a look and goes about his business. And somewhere down the corridor, beyond two closed doors, I can hear Annie laughing.
I made her laugh a lot, sometimes deliberately, sometimes not. Like the time she persuaded me onto a horse for the first reluctant time in ten years, and I sat there feeling pleased with myself for about two seconds before sliding smooth as a pivot off the other side. Comedians and stuntmen practice that trick for ages. I got it right first time.
Or there was the time when I brought her my mum's Chocolate Gateau of Doom, a cake so alcoholic (the sponge, the cream filling and the dense chocolate icing use up an entire half-bottle of brandy) that it has to be kept in the fridge to prevent evaporation. This one had spent nearly 3 hours on the back seat of my car, sealed in a big round Cadbury's "Roses" tin... Annie's stable manager Derval ambled over and popped the lid in hopes of a nice choccy. The near-visible cloud of brandy vapour that jumped out at her provoked a memorable cry of "Jayzus, does your mammy own a feckin' distillery?" and if she'd been smoking her usual thin roll-up, we'd be looking for her eyebrows yet. But the only explosion that time came from Annie, who laughed until she nearly burst.
Then there was the time when she suggested I meet up with her at Albacon '86, the Easter Convention in Glasgow, where she was one of the guests. And the time after that when she suggested I go to a very small one-day event in London, run by Sign of the Dragon. The same person was there both times, a tall, slender American woman with big glasses and a bigger perm. I'd already bought one of her books. It was called The Door into Fire...
Other people might say that Annie threw Diane and me together until we stuck, but twice is not until. What she did was to put us in proximity and wait to see what happened - whether we would be poles apart and repel, or if she was right about an attraction she'd already noticed and I hadn't, at least not enough to recognise. I recognised it pretty soon, though, and just over a year later her son Todd was my best man. That'll be 25 years ago, come February. Perceptive lady, Anne McCaffrey.
And now you're gone. I'm honoured to say you were my friend. You wrote books that made a lot of people happy. But what you did for me was something special. You made two people happier than any book could do.
I'll never forget you, Annie Mac. Sleep well. |
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| Creating Costume - words or pictures? |
[Oct. 6th, 2011|06:09 am] |
I saw a sketch of Lady Sybil Ramkin-Vimes on Diane's Tumbler account last night, and for once it wasn't (much) influenced by a Paul Kidby drawing. That resurrected a thought I've often had: to what extent do costumers, cosplayers and fan-artists feel constrained by professional visualisations of written characters and regard them as the "official" version, no deviations allowed?
D's Star Trek Next Generation novel Dark Mirror originated from a discussion in Dublin's Gotham Cafe pizzeria (back in 1991 when it was still Independent Pizza South) over, as the book's acknowledgement puts it, a large with extra cheese, extra sauce, pepperoni and hot chilies, and a medium with extra cheese, double garlic, hot chilies, and onions, along with two bottles of Orvieto Secco and a whole lot of Ballygowan water... The discussion had nothing to do with pizza, or (originally) a novel, or even STNG; I was speculating over what the Mirror Universe version of the Wrath of Khan-period uniform (the maroon wrapover tunic one) would look like, since no such thing had ever been made "canonical" by appearance on-screen (the ONLY acceptable ST canon is TV and film; novels, comics, games etc. don't count, and as far as we knew, no Mirror uniform of the WoK style had appeared in any of those, either.)
I was holding out for all-black with silver insignia, prompting an inevitable "Black and silver; it's always black and silver with you, isn't it?" response. A couple of sketches on the back of a napkin showed that black WoK Starfleet uniforms would look more than a bit like German WW2 Panzer-crew kit, and it was later clear that I wasn't the only one thinking that way: the flight-crew uniforms in Starship Troopers were deliberately based on German WW2 self-propelled gun crew tunics; same design, grey instead of black.
Once D suggested piratical thigh-high boots instead of the "official" calf-high ones, we had started down the road that led to the Next Generation novel (my English Literature Honours Degree helped write the bit of very nasty Mirror Merchant of Venice, giving Shakespeare the lavish love for gore seen in Jacobean revenge tragedy. Diane re-wrote it, though I think mine was best.) :-) And we still haven't seen my take on the Mirror uniform, because late Classic Trek never went there…
Star Trek, Star Wars, StarGate and many other Star things, as well as Aliens, Pirates of the Caribbean etc. and lots and lots of anime are all visual inspiration came first, so costumers, cosplayers and the rest are in large part restricted, if that's the right word, to representing what's been shown on-screen with painstaking exactitude.
Sometimes it's so painstaking that the fan-made costumes are of infinitely higher quality than "the real thing" (by which I don't mean the imaginative stuff, that's not real at all, but what you'll find hanging up in the studio Wardrobe Department.) Anime and cartoon costumes seem to stretch a bit further: there are few things quite as dopey-looking as the "Clodbuster sword" (it's apparently a metal plank with a handle) taken from its cartoon and made (ahem) real. But there was also a bunch of very fetching young ladies dressed as the humanized (thankfully non-furry) form of the new-version My Little Pony. D, having written for the original series, was Much Amused by my never-seen-before interest. in this aspect of the show.. :-P
However, too often when it comes to costuming or drawing characters which were originally words on paper, there seems to be a lot of the same default-to-professional-visual-source. Discworld characters are based on Paul Kidby art - I can't recall any based on Josh Kirby's chaotic (my opinion) and inaccurate (Word of God aka Terry) covers - though there’s increasing influence from the Sky TV adaptations, even more steampunky and neo-Victorian. German fan "Otto Chriek" has built an incredible, fully-operational iconograph – wood and brass exterior, digicam and mini-printer interior; the only thing that doesn’t work is the imp! But even this looks based at least in part on one of the elaborate Kidby drawings. (Wenn ich falsch bin, Robert, entschuldigen Sie mich!)
The clothing and accessories of Harry Potter characters originate exclusively from the movie series (at least so it seems, because I haven't read any of the books, so must default here myself;) and of course the standard Lord of the Rings image isn't Tolkien but Jackson, despite years of art from other sources, some high-quality, others…not so much. Were there ever costumes based on the ridiculous Bakshi toon? If there were, and I saw them, my memory has purged itself and thankfully so. I'm fairly sure that needles and thread have already been busy on Game of Thrones costumes derived from the recent TV show, even though George R. R. Martin's own descriptions are more than adequate.
Certainly "representing the screen/cover/supplementary portfolio material" properly means that the costumer isn't relying on a masquerade audience (and judging panel) having read the appropriate paragraph from a big novel or long series before deciding if their work is accurate or not. But when it's a hall costume worn for fun rather than formal masquerade (which are often amazingly elaborate and complex) then I wonder why people don’t swing out more.
Is it (a) reticence: no matter how carefully the writer describes characters and clothing, is a costume or drawing that lacks "professional visual imprimatur" somehow incorrect?
Or is it (treading carefully here, masqueraders are my friends) (b) a subtle sort of laziness, skilfully recycling a pre-packaged image to avoid the work of visualising a writer’s words in your own way? (with a sizeable unadmitted dash of (a) lurking at the back as well?)
I have a feeling this will be discussed more thoroughly at the next convention I go to – and if the subject hasn't already been done to death somewhere, it strikes me as a good topic for a panel. Any con organiser who wants to use it can be my guest. I’d be curious to hear the result! |
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| Choccies from long ago |
[Sep. 6th, 2011|09:03 pm] |
A long time ago, when my parents went "South of the Border," (from Northern Ireland to the Republic) they would always bring back Cadbury's "Rum and Butter" chocolate bars (and other stuff as well, obviously...) The odd thing is that this flavour of filled-caramel bar was - apparently - only available in Southern Ireland. It's one of those tastes that can flip you back years and years.
Looks like we've just discovered the secret of time travel, then.
Yesterday, EuropeanCuisineLady (aka Diane) made a bread-and-butter pudding so we could replace the PD place-holder photo with one of our own. It's seriously yummy (not like the one in my school dinners - ew!)
But when I said - to various "taste-tester" friends - "Now what about a chocolate custard and rum in the sauce instead of whiskey?" I got a yum! yes! go for it! enthusiasm well beyond just the fact it tastes good.
I think we may have discovered the flavour of being young and having no more to worry about than exams (rather than overdrafts, mortgages and other Grown Up problems.)
First, we need to find a good rum: D suggests Myer's Planter's Punch, I hold out for Pusser's Blue Label - but if we're stuck with Havana Gold, it'll do.
More info to follow... |
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| An unsettling image |
[Sep. 5th, 2011|12:45 pm] |
I'VE never been disturbed by a delivery of milk before. This morning's is an exception.
That's creepy enough. The use-by date made it much worse.
Not shopped in any way. And no further comment required from me.Posted via LiveJournal app for Android. |
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| The only man on Earth who gives a (insert noun of choice) about this! |
[Jun. 16th, 2011|02:43 pm] |
That's how D just described me. :-)
The reason: satellite channel Yesterday is (re)showing the classic BBC POW series Colditz, something I last saw back in 1974, when I was still in Big School.
I've been watching it on and off, amused by the stiff upper lips (you could use SBO - Senior British Officer - Colonel Preston's upper lip as an ironing-board), pleased by how well the claustrophobic atmosphere stands up (there are very few scenes outside the castle walls), and delighted to find that even to this much older, more cynical viewer, bad guy Major Mohn (played with icy relish by Anthony Valentine) is as loathsome as ever.
But a flub of lines in last night's episode "Very Important Person" made me laugh out loud, and prompted D's comment.
I've mentioned before that I used to make model kits; I also painted the figures that went with them, which meant research (which is now being put to use in a new book.) I could geek out about vehicles painted the wrong colour, or uniforms with outdated rank tabs, both of which I saw, but what I heard was the funny.
An SS officer hands paperwork to a motorcycle despatch rider. "Give this to SS-Brigadeführer Schreck," he says. At least, that's what he was supposed to say. It came out as "Give this to Fifty-five Brigadeführer Schreck..."
Um. That's not just a geek error, it's a line error, and should have been spotted by whoever was script supervisor for that scene. ("It is a geek error," says D; "Only a geek would know what it was supposed to be." Like the original scriptwriter, then.) Anyway, in all the times it must have been reviewed before transmission in 1974, nobody - director, producer, editor, writer - caught it.
All right, I noticed it just last night, and maybe I am the only man on Earth who gives a whatnot (though historical and costume consultants get paid good money, as do continuity people) - but at least I don't feel so bad about the occasional typos in The Horse Lord any more! :-) |
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| Oh, what a surprise - Not. |
[Jun. 14th, 2011|08:41 pm] |
Game of Thrones SPOILER below the cut.
(This warning wasn't in place earlier; the topic and response were high-profile enough I didn't think one was needed. Apologies to anyone affected.)
( SPOILER follows )
*There was a board game called "Kingmaker". I don't know if it still exists, but it was most wonderfully convoluted. I used to play it with my best friend Charles and his two brothers, and each game was litigous ("show me in the rules where it says I can't do that...") treacherous and thoroughly entertaining.
Oh, and young Edward of Westminster's behaviour in malevolent youth is another reason why Richard III might have wanted rid of his deposed nephews (if he did it.) Edward was passing death sentences at the age of 7, and though that might have been at his mother Margaret's urging, a few years later a foreign ambassador (Milanese, I think) reported that he was talking about little else.
If Richard's nephew the ex-king Edward V (people with the same names infest this period: Edwards, Richards and Henrys are all over the place, and it's safer to go by title though you then get a railway-timetable effect: York, Gloucester, Somerset, and the every-popular saucy Worcester) ever got his throne back, I doubt he'd be very sympathetic to the uncle who proclaimed him a bastard in order to pinch it... |
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| Using the blue pencil (and the red, and the green...) |
[May. 29th, 2011|07:05 pm] |
I've finally been able to confirm that the UK rights for the Horse Lord / Book of Years series have completely reverted to me (though not yet the US ones – or the Philippines; why there, I wonder, and not, say, Puerto Rico?) and I'm prepping them for release as e-books, as Diane has been doing with her Young Wizards. It's given me a chance – as the dead-tree versions never did – to do some re-working, because I doubt there's a writer on the planet who hasn't looked at their early work and thought "migod you didn't ort to write a sentence like that molesworth!"
Or several sentences. Or a paragraph. Or a continuity blunder.
I've always been good at spotting those, though it's a talent that's most useful before something appears in print; afterwards can be annoying, especially when (in a recent example) the writer's finished work has been through a series of test-readers, an editor, a copy-editor and a final check of the galleys.
So it's a bit embarrassing to find one that's been in every single edition of The Horse Lord, especially when it doesn't even have the excuse of a chapter or so of action between setup and dénouement. On p.90 (UK trade) p.91 (US mass) Aldric nodded, but slung Widowmaker round his shoulder nonetheless. Unfortunately on p.92 of both editions The girl's sharp eyes had noticed a fine taiken racked on the bedroom wall… And yes, the taiken longsword is Widowmaker. In two places at once. Oops. That's going to get fixed…
There won't be massive changes; this book's been popular for 28 years, and I had evidence of that popularity a couple of days back (for which many thanks, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92) la_marquise_de_ - gosh, I'm mentioned in some impressive company!) so if ever there was a case of Si Non Confectvs Non Reficiat, this is it. But after those 28 years I can construct a better sentence than some of those from 1982, I can certainly write better dialogue, I know not to call mail "chainmail" any more – and I can remove my own guilty example of a pet peeve from fantasy that's started creeping into supposedly historical work as well.
It's the business of a sword slung over the owner's back and drawn from that position. The question kept coming up on Swordforum and NetSword, and nobody was able to offer any historical evidence, never mind pictorial proof, that carrying a sword that way ever happened in Europe. Seeing it done in Braveheart and King Arthur is neither evidence nor historical. But in 1982, what do we find Peter writing?Aldric unhooked the longsword's scabbard from his weaponbelt and pulled its shoulder strap across so that the sheath rose slantwise to his back, well clear of his legs...then he gripped the long hilt rearing like an adder by his head, twisted it to loose the locking-collar and drew. Once again, oops. That too is going to get fixed, because after experimenting with some of my own replicas (gosh, isn't Polyfilla spackle useful stuff?) it's clear that neither Aldric nor anyone else could perform this trick without arms like an orangutan or gibbon. What I did in later books was to have the across-the-back carry as a commonly-accepted "peace position", thus producing a useful bit of dramatic "business" where releasing the cross-strap so that it slides down to "ready position" for a fast draw is a direct threat, and possibly an insult as well.
Fast draw, with a sword? Yes indeed, like Japanese-style iaijutsu, because the first incarnation of Alban swords, culture and customs was very samurai-influenced. In the late '70s-early 80s it was unusual, and a change from the more usual Celtic/Viking/Medieval settings, which is why I did it, and there weren't many others. Without checking the bookshelves, I can think of Richard Lupoff's Sword of the Demon and Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomoe Gozen, C.J. Cherryh's superb Morgaine Cycle (especially Gate of Ivrel), a surprisingly small number of short stories, and of course me.
The fun part is to see how my fictional society evolved into something different; honourable suicide seems like a great device for dramatic tension. When you discover that it means your protagonist (all right, hero and favourite character) won't reach the end of the chapter, never mind the end of the book, it's not such a good idea, and you start looking for ways to keep him alive. When that attitude starts to influence the entire culture, soon you're dealing with people who've laid a thin veneer of lip-service honour over a bedrock of ruthless, scary pragmatism.
And that's much more interesting than ersatz samurai... :-) |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 30th, 2011|05:25 am] |
I’ve been feeling pretty down, for two very good reasons, so today’s foofaraw left me colder than usual and I didn't watch it. Stuff to research, then stuff to write, and a quick Spellcheck correction to make sure there's always an umlaut in Obersturmbannführer and the other cumbersome SS ranks. I have my reasons... ;->
Diane recorded some of the material so I could examine Ruritanian ceremonial, uniforms and so on, though strictly ""Ruritanian" should read "Upper Saxon with a bit of Austro-Hungarian Bohemian", as pointed out by silverwhistle, one of the most intelligent and articulate analysts of the region's dodgy politics and dubious PR. All very nice, twinkly and shiny, but if TV commentators are going to use obscure terms, then they need to know that calling an "epaulette" a "shoulder-board" is forgiveable, but that an "aiguilette" is not just a different and more fancy word for the same thing.
In all the processional stuff, there were two images that made me smile: a close-up of The Littlest Bridesmaid, bored out of her tiny skull and not afraid to show it, and a shot of the groom going "phew" in a way I identified with, having done it myself in similar circumstances a bit longer ago than yesterday. (I'll try to screen-cap these and post them later.)
However, when I was in our local pub with Diane, cradling blisters from digging in ground that was a quarter rocks and glumly drinking to the memory of a fine cat, a very fine cat indeed, we heard someone make the waspish comment that England should send some of the Royal Wedding costs his way, because "I now pronounce you man and wife" would start the countdown to the next Royal divorce and a book should be opened forthwith.
We didn't think much of it at the time; west Co. Wicklow isn't a hotbed of Royalist sentiment at the best of times, but a look at Google suggests he's not the only one. Indeed, given the recent Royal record on Royal marriages that last (not many, and none of the high-profile ones at all) five quid each way would probably be a safe investment.
Mesdames et messieurs, faites vos jeux... |
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| "You keep using that word..." |
[Apr. 25th, 2011|12:35 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | "Schaufensterpuppen" - Kraftwerk | ] |
"...I do not think it means what you think it means."
Decimate. Decimation. Decimated.
I've just watched a documentary in which that word was used to describe the effect of air raids on cities during WW2. Once is forgiveable, a slip of the narrator's tongue that nobody caught before transmission, but it came up repeatedly, almost monotonously, and suggested that the writer of the narration had fallen in love with the way it sounded, but never bothered to check what it meant.
I hadn't realised the bombing campaign was so ineffective that it left 90% of the targets undamaged, because to decimate something means to reduce it by 10%. It was a Roman Army punishment in which a unit guilty of some serious offence, usually mutiny or cowardice, would draw lots and then one man in every ten would be executed by his nine companions.
It's not just this particular documentary that's to blame; the misuse happens a lot, to the extent that Diane's heard me applaud when I hear it used correctly. (Pathetic, isn't it?) I wish I knew why this error has become so common, because clearly the assumption is that something decimated has been massively damaged - though I wouldn't credit anyone with thinking it means that only 10% remains. That would be giving credit where it probably isn't due. More likely, the word really intended is devastate and its variants.
Either way it's one of those niggling annoyances, like an itch you can't scratch. |
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