moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
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(and my Wish List)

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Fun & Fantasy in Bloomington, Minnesota  

Just In Case someone is reading this, here's some information about something you might enjoy, if you're able to be there.
Fourth Street Fantasy Convention (see www.4thstreetfantasy.com)

I’ve heard tales, … I know people who traveled to [it] … It is a place where conversations have depth, and plant seeds of thought, sometimes even seeds of creativity. A place with music which opens up vistas that words cannot. A place of companionship, small and comfortable, but varied and lively.
One unique thing about programming at Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is that there’s just a single track of programming, that way we’re all part of the same ongoing conversation.
I’ve gotten together many of the people who made Fourth Street Fantasy Convention happen before, and asked them to help me make it happen again.

From 1986 to 1995, Steven Brust and his friends put on a deep, intelligent, and intimate convention on the literature of the fantastic. In 2008, it will return.

June 20 - 22, 2008 at the Holiday Inn Select Airport Hotel in Bloomington (Minneapolis), Minnesota.

One of the people whose Livejournal I look in on a fair bit is having a party there, with readings and a book launch. Perhaps that will tempt you along, if that's physically possible.

Labels: information, links, science fiction, USA

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 7:33 pm

 
Old thoughts made new  
One of my reasons for reading science fiction (as opposed to sword & sorcery style fantasy or space-located varieties of westerns, &c) is that it can deal with all sorts of ideas & speculations about humanity, society, reality, &c. This edited extract deals with a subject that's been discussed very many times.

From "Inheritor" by CJ Cherryh
(p 365 of my paperback edition)
Third in a series set on an alien world where 'stranded' humans are co-existing uneasily with another race who are said not to have emotions in the same way as humans. CJC tends towards the 'higher' end of 'space opera' — lots of action & excitement, but touching on bigger themes — tho' she also does other sub-genres.

"Not love, he thought to himself. And then thought, ... maybe they'd had such rotten luck with the love and man'chi aspect of relations because that word in [English] blurred so many things together it just wasn't safe to deal with.
They were lovers. But Ragi said they were sexual partners.
They were lovers. But Ragi said they were associated.
They'd made love. But Ragi said there they were within the same lord's manchi.
They'd made love. But Ragi said there were one-candle nights and two-candle nights and there were relationships that didn't count the candles at all.
They'd made love. But a Ragi proverb said one candle didn't promise breakfast. ...
He was quite out of his depth trying to reckon that. But with Jago he certainly wouldn't count the candles. Whatever they could arrange, as long as it could last from both sides, that was what he'd take."

Labels: language, science fiction, scifi, SF, society

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:10 am