A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Was talking to the late doctor_atomic just now about the new movie, and asked for her thoughts about the miniskirts. Unlike me, she noticed them right away, and found herself hoping that they were going to show unisex minis as an official Star Fleet uniform option for everyone. Apparently, these existed for the first few episodes of TNG, which depicted several pants-free male Enterprise crewmembers.

I have no memory of this, but apparently 'tis so. This cosplay dood is the only evidence I could dig up through Google Images. I could go unearth my Season 1 DVDs, I suppose, but I'll just take their word for it.

(Needless to say, the movie didn't take this tack.)

Hee hee, I got a nod in the body of a Making Light post today.

It's worth a handful of fannish XPs. I don't collect those every day.

Because I felt like it: my BSG Miis, which I designed last spring.



( Five More... )

Went to a William Gibson reading and signing of his new novel Spook Country at the Brattle yesterday. I often attend readings at SF cons, but it's been a long time since I stood in line for a signing, since I usually don't go for that sort of thing. But what the heck. I bought a book and thanked him for his work, and he thanked me for thanking him.

dougo warned me that he's not the best reader and it's true; his reading-voice is oddly monotonous and I found myself overlaying an imaginary soundtrack of how I'd read it, though I'm sure he pronounced all the long Eastern European names and words better than I would. The Q&A was fun, and he ended on the anecdote (to back up his claim that prescience isn't his strong suit) that he's seen a 12-year-old read through the first 15 pages of 1981's Neuromancer and declare "Oh, I know what's happening; there's something wrong with the cell phones!"

To me, the main delight of observing Gibson's career in SF is that he started out by writing about a fantastic-scary digital age that was 20 or so years away, and subsequent novels tended to stay at that absolute position in the future, with their depicted technology gradually coming into synch with real life's developments. In his current series - whose settings are now the year before each book's publication year - the characters have adventures with Web forums and Final Cut software. It's nonetheless as much a Gibson novel as ever, because the characters' relationship with the online world is as important to them and to the story as it was to any goggle-wearing "decker" in his first books.

Not going to start the novel until I finish I am a Strange Loop, though.

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Have heard nuthin from my one client for two weeks now, which is a little strange, even given my mail to them halfway through that I didn't mind the break because of a period of intense Volity work. Just mailed em to say that I was RW&A for more tasks, and to please tell me how they foresee deploying me as we move into autumn. If they're going to put me on hold, I'm going to have to look for another income source.

I have started reading Deathly Hallows, after cthulhia read the same copy in less than 24 hours. It is the third thing down in a stack of SF I am in the middle of reading (within PKD's Eye in the Sky, given to me by Ricky, itself within Dogland, an American magical-realism story that R. Cory was breathless about on Boing Boing a couple weeks ago). So far I'm finding it as nice a confection as the last book, which I enjoyed a great deal just a couple of months ago.

Yesterday stumbled across dictator555's copy of "The End of Harry Potter?" an exegesis written by Dave Langford, one of the B-est BNFs in SF and the publisher of Ansible. While sold as speculation about the final book, it's actually a fun, breezy tour through how the merits and flaws of the first six books line up against the whole genre, and Langford's admiration for the series seems to lie less in the story itself and more in watching Rowling mature as a writer over its course. I might like to borrow it later.

(Also he spends a few pages at the start grumbling about mainstream critics' frequent insistence that the series transcends the fantasy genre because it's actually about real human issues and not just sweaty dudes stabbing giant lizards, and this echoes other grumbling I've read recently...)

Some DragonCon photos found via friendsfriends. I had to laugh at the progression from one to three to four to five Fischer-clones. How many ARE THERE

When I put up that poll last week I thought that attending Boskone and the thon on the same weekend was the least likely of the things to happen, but it's what I ended up doing anyway.

Two things caused this: First, I met with daerr to go over the Boskone programming schedule, and we discovered that it actually looked really good. This sold me on the idea of attending at least one day, so made plans for Saturday. Later I wrote dictator555 to ask if she had any interest in coming to the thon. I intended this to be a token effort that would allow an honorable withdrawal from the event, since it was already Thursday and therefore I didn't expect her to respond as affirmatively as she did. Writing my response to her initial questions was all it took to hook me on the idea of initiating another newbie into the fold, and so that was that.

I had a great time at both events. I may or may not note my memories here about the panels and presentations I attended at Boskone and the films and features I saw at the thon. We'll see.

Thon: The dictator and I arrived with an hour to go, and were fortunate to find good adjacent seats. kyroraz joined us few pictures in, but I didn't spot derspatchel, despite my occasional scanning of the Cinema 1 crowd. I didn't spend any time wandering around Cinema 2 or mingling in the lobby; as with most cons and con-like events I actually do attend more for the programming than the schmoozing. (And more to the point, leaving or returning to my seat meant climbing over several other people, since we were parked right in the middle of our row.) However, I did find myself sitting next to "L.A. Connection", the perennial procurer of much of the thon's prints (he scored nine of them this year) and I got to shake his hand. He's very friendly and I thought he looks kind of like Jerry from It's JerryTime!.

The thon venue was fine, a nice theater in a nice Newton neighborhood. I found the seats quite comfy. Though I didn't avail myself of their services, I appreciated that a little deli next door decided to join us in staying up all night. The main negative aspect of my experience was the temperature, which became sauna-hot towards midnight. Someone finally adjusted the thermostat before I could complain, but it still stabilized at a degree or three higher than I would have liked.

Boskone was also great, featuring eight happy hours spent wandering between different events with various combinations of J, radiotelescope and meerkitty around me. Was also in an unacknowledged accidental-stalker relationship with Cory Doctorow, who kept showing up at like every place I went to, including food places. (At one point he did turn to me and describe a detail of a current WiP after J and I were talking about the light-bulb-cube-output computer at the Mathematica exhibit at the Museum of Science.)

Came home with energy to attend to certain aspects of the company, and a half dozen old paperbacks. The nice old gentlemen selling them for a buck each had a 6-for-$5 special, and when I picked two and had trouble choosing any more, he (based on my selection and a brief interview) pulled out four more books from his collection and thrust them at me. I thought that was pretty awesome. We talked about other stuff for a while... he grunted in disgust when I confessed ignorance about a certain publisher that was infamous for being crappy (well before my time), and really wanted me to go find a certain Poul Anderson novel, "The People of the Wind". When I was recounting this story to my friends later that day, a random woman overheard and agreed that, yes, this is a very good book. So I guess I'll go look for that sometime.

Age: after I attended Boston's Worldcon 17 months ago, I wrote about how old everyone was compared to, say, Arisia. At Boskone, there were a few knots of teenagers and slighty-older-thans, and the median age was younger than Worldcon's, but not by much. At a glance, the crowd was, again, largely middle-aged and older, and you can't really blame high attendance fees this time. I have (optimistic) thoughts about this -- J and I had a conversation on this topic while taking a coffee break at the adjoining Ur Ban Pain -- but suspect they are too half-baked to stand alone as yet.

[Poll #672657]