tamaranth | miscellaneous links

I have so many tabs open (in two browsers) that Weird Shit is starting to happen. ergo, I must close some tabs. (And, soon, start using that applet that pops del.icio.us links into LJ automagically).

Writing

Justine Larbalestier's 'writing process' posts
For me learning to critique other people’s writing has been the single most important way I have improved my writing.

Shadow Unit Revealed (interview with Bull, Bear, Monette)
... she was encouraging her writer friends to write fanfiction, to reconnect with the sense of play that most of us had started writing for in the first place. ... what I wanted was to write fanfiction for a show that didn't exist

It's been done -- so just do it (on writing and originality)
I’m not suggesting that you spend your writing talent entirely on imitating and borrowing from other writers. What I’m saying is that you can’t avoid doing it to an extent. Nothing grows in a vacuum. Originality springs from many sources, and no writer can claim to be 100% uninfluenced by anything he has ever read or seen or been taught. It’s natural for the artist in a writer to shy away from imitating. You want to be your own creator and make your mark. What new writers need to cull from the writing process is the fear of being seen as an imitator, because we’re already imitators, all of us.

Short story competition: Genomics Policy and Research Forum: <=3K: deadline 31st March 2009

Science

The Abyss: Music and Amnesia -- Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker
Though one cannot have direct knowledge of one’s own amnesia, there may be ways to infer it: from the expressions on people’s faces when one has repeated something half a dozen times; when one looks down at one’s coffee cup and finds that it is empty; when one looks at one’s diary and sees entries in one’s own handwriting. Lacking memory, lacking direct experiential knowledge, amnesiacs have to make hypotheses and inferences, and they usually make plausible ones.

Number of alien worlds quantified
The current research estimates that there are at least 361 intelligent civilisations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000. (Gotta love those numbers: not 'around 350' or 'over 30,000'.)

"Your Family May Once Have Been A Different Color" -- on skin-colour
for many families on the planet, if we look back only 100 or 200 generations (that's as few as 2,500 years), "almost all of us were in a different place and we had a different color."
Over the last 50,000 years, populations have gone from dark pigmented to lighter skin, and people have also gone the other way, from light skin back to darker skin ...

Literature, reviews, criticism

Adam Roberts reviews Anathem (I disagree with him -- yes, my friends do have that kind of conversation -- but enjoyed this review)
WORLDBLING A variety of worldbuilding in which a great many details of an imaginary world are put on rather showy and vulgar display in order to impress upon the ridder the prodigious imaginative wealth of the author. The imaginative wealth of the author, it can be added, is not usually in doubt, although some critiasses, especially those that value restraint, subtlety and inflection, question the judgment of authors who indulge too blatantly in worldbling.

Science Fiction: the genre that dare not speak its name (grauniad blog piece by David Barnett)
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has just had its paperback release, and is a tour-de-force of ninjas, truckers, Dr Strangelove-type military men, awe-inspiring imagery and very clever writing. It's also undeniably science fiction. Harkaway is an unrepentant fan of the genre, but his publishers William Heinemann have taken a lot of care not to market the book as such.

'Sociology, Genomics and Science Fiction' - Ken MacLeod
Mass media works (in SF and other genres) have reflected genomics in ways that range from the thoughtful (GATTACA) through the merely unrealistic workaday (CSI) and the sensational (Jurassic Park) to the loopy (Heroes). Written SF (whose core readership and reviewers are more scientifically informed than the general public) usually has to hew to stricter standards of scientific plausibility – though it should be clearly understood that plausibility is not the same as accuracy. Link-rick article.

Fanfiction / fan engagement / transformative works

'Mad Men' Twitter: viral / online presence of fictional characters from show set in 1962 ...
While the act of writing a Twitter update might not be remarkable at all, the fact that they're in 1962 makes it really quite impressive. ... people noticed the characters starting to pop up on the social networking service Twitter, filling people in on the minutiae of their day. Things like what fictional Madison Avenue meetings they were having; or what fictional lunch they were having with other fictional characters. They even messaged each other – about work, or what time they might be home for dinner – all without breaking character. It was a social network that filled in the gaps around the lives seen on screen.

Yale in Pop Culture -- Yale grads writing about Yale
... narcissism is only the most obvious side of Yalies consuming Yale culture. There’s a broader way that our awareness of these products (whether we’ve sought them out or not) allows us to enter a kind of magical proximity to fantasy. Yale is an electric point of intersection. Yale — like New York City, for example — is a place densely packed with myths and pasts and present realities, all rubbing up against each another. To participate is thrilling.
The most dramatic and unusual kind of participation Yalies have is making their own contributions to the pop-Yale canon — writing fan fiction about their own world, if you will.

Short fiction

WikiHistory, by Desmond Warzel (short fiction)
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.

'Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction', by Jo Walton. (short story set in the world of Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown)
In the Papers (3)
TIME FOR A NEW TUNE
Why are the bands still playing Cole Porter?
SECRETARY OF STATE LINEBARGER SAYS THE BRITS WANT PEACE

'Rosemary for Remembrance', by buymeaclue (Hannah Wright Bowen) -- short story
Rosemary can only know what's been lost and so I don't ask her what I want to know. Only two of us were there on that day, in that moment, my mother inside with the baby, me and my father on the porch as he walked away. If Rosemary remembers, that means he's forgotten.

FutureFeedForward (future news stories)
Anna Kournikova Deleted by Memeright Trusted System
December 6, 2067
JAKARTA--Local officials today confirmed that celebrity guru Anna Kournikova died on Wednesday from injuries sustained when a satellite designed to protect intellectual property rights attempted to 'delete' her.

Miscellanea

If $programminglanguage was a literary style, it would be $style
Java: Divorce in the suburbs, cancer of the miscarriage, and how God will punish you for having sex. That's right, it's the big, predictable Literary Fiction Gorilla, coming to destroy a gated community near you. Java is the mainstream of the mainstream ...

Norfolk tigers playing in the snow -- video

Principles of the American Cargo Cult
I. Ignorance is innocence
Your opinion matters as much as anyone else's
When a person has studied a topic, he has no more real knowledge than you do, just a hidden agenda.