My 2015 Hugo Awards Ballot

Tonight (July 31) at midnight PDT is the deadline for voting in the Hugo Awards, which celebrate science fiction and fantasy. I'm short on time today, so I'm mostly keeping this post to a list of my votes. If you're curious why I voted "No Award" so many times, The Guardian posted a pretty good summary of the issues today, and File 770 has a fairly comprehensive log of the ongoing debate between what I'll call the reactionaries and the futurists. I'll just say I appreciate multiple viewpoints and fiction that reflects some thoughtfulness about issues, as opposed to straight action-adventures steeped in one dominant mindset. Also, I strongly favor voting one's conscience as opposed to slate voting designed to crowd out independent thinking.

Mind Meld: Writing in Another Author's Universe

For anyone who missed it, I participated in a Mind Meld at SFSignal with a number of other writers and editors, which was published on May 27. Here it is:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/05/mind-meld-writing-another-authors-universe/

The question posed:
"Recently, Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter announced that they were writing a story set in the Jupiter-diving “Medusa” world of the late Arthur C Clarke. Collections such as Songs of the Dying Earth feature writers trying their hand in Vance’s many universes.

With that in mind…
What fallow universe do you think deserves additional exploration, and who would you ask to write in that world?"

Follow the link and scroll down to see my reply.

(This item was published belatedly but scheduled as if on May 28, a day after the Mind Meld was posted, to keep it tidy in the blog timeline.)

Serendipitous moments: Libraries, Renoir, and Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party

Earlier this year, I was at the library looking for an audiobook to entertain myself during a long drive. To my disappointment, I had already listened to all the available P.G. Wodehouse works. I started skimming backward through the shelves, and my eyes fell upon "The Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Susan Vreeland.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir has long been one of my favorite painters (Dance at Bougival, Young Girls at the Piano, etc.), and Luncheon of the Boating Party (Le déjeuner des canotiers) is possibly his best, combining people, still-life elements, and a shimmering river landscape in one convivial scene. I borrowed a print of it from my father a few years ago, and it has hung in my bedroom ever since. So I checked out the 14-CD set, despite knowing nothing of the author.

That's one of the things I really enjoy about libraries: serendipitous finds! I love looking at the new arrivals, and I love wandering the stacks, discovering stories that have been waiting for me all along. And because they're free to users, I can try anything, however random and far that offering may be from my usual reading habits.

Podcastle Best of 2014 nominations

I posted last week about Pseudopod's nominations; this week, I'm sharing what I wrote on the Escape Artists forum about my nominations for Pseudopod's sister podcast, the fantasy-oriented Podcastle. It was another really good year for the podcast, one of my favorites, so I have quite a few honorable mentions too. I'm linking to the podcast pages, but they don't autoplay. Some were published elsewhere first and so those pages have links to their original text versions.

... [My] top pick for the year:
305: Heartless by Peadar Ó Guilín
This had a fascinating basis for the system of magic, with a well explored sociology; a strong female protagonist with the courage of her convictions, fighting to save her sister; and choices with real consequences. And the ending blew me away.

My second pick is a story that I didn't entirely understand, nor did I agree with all the protagonist's choices, but it was really powerful. 
302: Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints by Alex Dally MacFarlane
It's still in my head, like it is for [another forum member].

But Podcastle is not always heartwrenching and heavy, thank goodness! A lot of the episodes are just fun. Partly because of Alasdair's delicious delivery, partly because of the Wodehousesque worldbuilding, partly because of the charmingly not-strong protagonist, my third pick is the one story I went back and re-listened to later in the year when I needed cheering up:
322: Saving Bacon by Ann Leckie

Honorable Mentions:
328: The Old Woman With No Teeth by Patricia Russo -- great fun; I loved how the old woman kept interrupting the storyteller to make him revise the narrative.
324: Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy by Saladin Ahmed -- wonderful style and a really fresh perspective on an old tale.
320: Baba Makosh by M.K. Hobson -- Russian mythic figures during the Russian revolution, neat!
316, Giant Episode: The Meaning of Love by Daniel Abraham -- I loved the worldbuilding and the dialogue about the meaning of love.
315: Stranger vs. the Malevolent Malignancy by Jim C. Hines -- fantastic fun, fighting despair, and turning weakness into strength.
307: Out of the Deep Have I Howled Unto Thee by Scott M. Roberts -- the Easter werewolf!

Pseudopod Best of 2014 nominations

One of the free podcasts that I regularly listen to, Pseudopod, provides narrations of horror short stories, plus excellent, insightful intros and outros. The site's discussion forum recently called for nominations for its Best of 2014 episodes. After submitting my thoughts to the forum, I'm sharing them here, too.

Top Three:
Pseudopod 400: The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree Jr. read by Matt Franklin, Tina Connolly, Anna Schwind, Matt Weller, Rish Outfield, Eric Luke, George Hrab & Jarus Durnett 
        (sadly feels as though it were just as plausible and terrible now, if not more so, than it probably did when originally published)
***Pseudopod 399: The Wriggling Death by Harold Gross read by Veronica Giguere
        (disgusting, disturbing, fascinating worldbuilding, and a twisted sisterly relationship -- highly memorable)
Pseudopod 418: Shadow Transit by Ferrett Steinmetz read by Marie Brennan
        (that poor mom, struggling with her reluctance and guilt as her daughter seems happy training to fight eerie doom)

Honorable Mentions:
Pseudopod 393: West Gate by Mitchell Edgeworth read by Ron Jon
        (intense snapshot of panic in flight from an unknown menace)
Pseudopod 394: Summer Girls by Caspian Gray read by Robert A.K. Gonyo
        (mixture of uncanny yet taken-for-granted floater-ghost with real-life creepiness of an entitled-feeling guy)

As for best narrators, I'm afraid I rarely think to take note of the narrator when the reading is great but the story is only good, although that does uplift the experience and makes the story itself give a better impression. All of the above readers are great, but there are many other award-worthy readers, so I guess I won't nominate in this category.

I can't think of any stories this year that were less than good! Horror isn't my usual thing, and I only came to this podcast because of listening to the siblings, Escape Pod and Podcastle; however, Pseudopod selections are always interesting and often very evocative, and the characters and their reactions to impossible, horrific situations seem very real. I value the fresh perspectives I get from these "true" stories, even if they aren't comfortable listening!

*** The three asterisks in front of Pseudopod 399 indicate that the story was a podcast original. All others are podcast narrations of stories that were originally printed elsewhere (cited on the linked pages).

James Tiptree Jr. was a pseudonym adopted by a woman to help sell her stories (since women read both genders but men are more likely to read works by men). Much of her work explored gender issues; "The Screwfly Solution," which was published in 1977 and won the Nebula Award for best novelette, certainly did this. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't say more about that, other than to emphasize that all the conflicts over gender issues during the past year make it seem more horribly relevant than ever.
Bonus: It's in epistolary form, which is always neat when done well. (That's why so many narrators are listed.)

That skiffy and fanty thing

Although I've been tweeting links, I haven't mentioned here on my own blog that most of my writing activities lately have been for another blog, skiffyandfanty.com, which covers science fiction and fantasy. So far, I've written reviews about the Z Nation TV show (and a certain loaded phrase), Radiant by Karina Sumner-Smith, and Zombies & Calculus by Colin Adams. Here's my author page. 

Update, 1/17/2018:
After the skiffy and fanty website got redesigned, the above link doesn't include my old reviews, just things I wrote in 2017. Here are the individual links.

https://skiffyandfanty.com/blogposts/reviews/tvreviews/z-nation-and-a-chick-thing/

https://skiffyandfanty.com/blogposts/reviews/bookreviews/book-review-radiant-by-karina-sumner-smith/

https://skiffyandfanty.com/blogposts/reviews/bookreviews/book-review-zombies-calculus-by-colin-adams/

Also, here's a humorous "book review" I wrote in 2017, for the A Book By Its Cover category at skiffyandfanty, where we take a book and make up a review based solely on what we see on the cover, and what we speculate about it. I used the cover of Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism as the launching point.
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blogposts/blogseries/abookbyitscover/bookbycoverbestfriendsexorcism/

Hugo Awards 2014/1939: Shorts to Novels

It's only a month since the 2014 Hugo Awards and the 1939 Retro-Hugos were announced, so at least I'm doing better than last year with this final segment of my rundown on the nominees. There was quite a lot of controversy this year about a slate of nominations that some people pushed for reactionary reasons, but luckily for me I didn't have to decide whether or not to vote for the nominees on their own merits, or against because of their politics, because I didn't think any of them merited the awards anyway.  Onward:

Hugo Awards 2014/1393: Editors, Zines, Fan Writers, and Related Works

August has certainly flown fast! I read all of the Hugo Award nominees that I could and voted by the midnight PST July 31/Aug. 1 deadline, and then I spent time catching up with other things. Before I knew it, they were announcing the 1939 Retro-Hugo awards! The 2014 Hugos will be announced later today. I'll write this without reference to the results and add links later.

Hugo Awards 2014/1939: Audio and Dramatic Presentations

Once again, I'm explaining my reactions to the Hugo Awards nominees. It's a ranked vote; sometimes I'm voting in a preferential list, and sometimes I'm voting only once or twice and leaving the rest blank.

1939 Retro-Hugo Awards: 
Best Dramatic Presentation, short form (there is no long form category here):  The nominees are Around the World in 80 Days; A Christmas Carol; Dracula; R.U.R.; and The War of the Worlds.

R.U.R. isn’t in the packet. I don’t see any free audio versions in a quick Google search, although Librivox has a version in progress. I did find excerpts of a different group’s reading at http://www.sci-fi-london.com/news/festival/2010/10/rur-reading and a translation at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/capek/karel/rur/ but obviously that is not the nominated work; the vote is for that particular dramatic presentation, not the play itself. 

As for the other pieces, they're all Orson Welles productions on CBS Mercury Theater of the Air.

Dracula was unlistenable. Well, I made it through 10 minutes or so, but they blared the LOUD CHORD OF DRAMATIC REVELATION every couple of minutes, and I had to stop listening.

A Christmas Carol and Around the World in Eighty Days were quite listenable, but nothing special IMHO. 

What was outstanding was The War of the Worlds. This was the broadcast that reportedly panicked a lot of people, although it’s been disputed just how much of the panic was real and how much was after-the-fact hype. At any rate, it definitely had quite an effect. But leaving that aside, the work itself is really, really good. It starts out with dance music being interrupted with increasingly frequent and urgent bulletins, switches to a local affiliate at the scene of what turns out to be the Martian invasion, and then follows a survivor wandering the wasteland. It’s dynamic, gripping, and still very much worth hearing. 

My vote: War of the Worlds, the rest blank.

Hugo Awards 2014/1939: Art and Graphic Novels

This year, instead of writing one massive post about all the 2014 Hugo Award nominees, I'm going to write a few smaller pieces. Partly that's for my convenience, partly it's for the readers' (especially since this year, we're voting not only for works from 2013 but also Retro 1939 Hugos for works from 1938.
Today's chunk is for nominees in Art and Graphic Awards categories. As it's a ranked ballot system, I'll be listing my preferences in order.

1939 Retro-Hugo Professional Artist nominees: Margaret Brundage, Virgil Finlay, Frank R. Paul, Alex Schomburg, and H.W. Wesso. 

Finlay's pieces are fairly classic-style SF pulp covers. 

The Paul cover has more going on in it than Finlay does. 

Wesso has lots going on, good faces, AND interesting effects. 

Schomberg has some fun pieces to look at, very detailed, but they don’t draw me in as much as Wesso. 

The Brundage links provided in the voters packet don’t work for me, but an online search for her Weird Tales covers shows that in tone she's similar to Finlay, but better executed. 

My vote: Wesso, Schomberg, Paul, Brundage, Finlay.

Honoring more than one type of the fallen

A friend of mine reposted the usual Memorial Day image of a uniform with the text that starts off "It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech..."

I honor members of our military for their courage and sacrifices, including my uncle whom I never knew because he died in the Vietnam War. I do want people to recognize that Memorial Day is about remembrance, not just barbecues and appliance sales.

But soldiers by themselves don't give us a free society. Just look at North Korea or any other totalitarian country. Picture what your life would be like if all you knew was what the government and the corporations wanted you to know.

In 2013, at least 70 journalists worldwide were killed in connection with their work, and there was a 129% increase in abductions, along with countless acts of violence and intimidation, jailings, and other silencings. None of these martyrs charged a nest of machine guns, but I'm sure all of them knew that they were putting themselves in real danger through their attempts to shine spotlights on everything from corruption to war crimes.

This is the day to honor members of the armed services who gave their lives in service to the United States of America. They deserve it. But nobody should try to honor them by belittling people who, in their own ways, fight (or fought) for the same ideals of truth, justice, and freedom.

Belated Hugo Awards rundown

The Hugo Awards are fan-voted recognitions of the best writing, art, and related work in science fiction. As a member of LoneStarCon3, the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention held in San Antonio, Texas, over Labor Day Weekend, I was eligible to vote for the 2013 Hugos, and did so. I took notes while reviewing the nominated works, meaning to post about them, but never got around to it. Partly that was because I wanted to go back and read through the categories I hadn't had time for before, but that didn't work out due to the job and life and stuff.

This week, nominations are opening up for the 2014 Hugo Awards, to be presented at LonCon3, i.e. Worldcon in London. I won't be attending that con unless I win the lottery, but I'm considering getting a supporting membership anyway because that will give me access to electronic versions of most of the officially nominated works, which is a great value.

Regardless, I can submit nominations now for the 2014 awards because of my LoneStarCon3 membership. And before I start thinking about that, I want to finally clear away my thoughts about the 2013 Hugos.

"Sleepy Hollow" and a quick note on "lieutenant"

I watched the premiere of "Sleepy Hollow" (LOOSELY based on Washington Irving's story) on Monday and found it entertaining enough to keep watching for at least a few more weeks. My officemates also liked it, which will help keep the momentum going, along with the fact that it's being filmed near my hometown.

One thing I thought the show didn't explore enough was how disorienting it must have been for Ichabod Crane to find himself in modern times. (I did like that they gave him a moment to be puzzled by the paved road before he almost got run over.) To be fair, the pilot was just an hour long, and they had a lot of plot to cram in there, and it would have dragged the show down for him to be asking about how they can light up a room without candles, etc. He adapted awfully quickly, but I hope they keep using little points like his fascination with power windows to point out that he is a fish out of time. I expect they will, for comic relief if nothing else.

One of the ways they'll keep reminding us about his origin, without actually spending any time on it, is his accent. Ichabod was born back before America and England became "two countries divided by a common language," so although he's American, he has what sounds like a slight English accent (No, there isn't one English accent any more than there's one American accent, but you know what I mean.). The actor, Tom Mison, is English, so we shouldn't have to worry about his dropping it.

At one point during the pilot, Ichabod pronounces the policewoman's title as "lef-tenant" instead of "lew-tenant." Being a longtime fan of Masterpiece Theatre, Mystery and period dramas, I was not surprised by this British usage. But it did occur to me to wonder just why it's pronounced differently.

According to Google, many people have asked this question before me. I stopped looking after visiting about a dozen links. Ken Greenwald at Wordwizard seemed to have the most comprehensive explanation:

In any case, the pronunciations with "f" and "v" are reflected in various 14th-century English spellings of ‘lieutenant,’ which included ‘leef-,’ ‘leve-,’ ‘lyff-‘ and later ‘lief-,’ ‘live-,’ ‘liev-,’ and ‘uff-.’
Other early forms reflected a "w" pronunciation, among them ‘lu-,’ ‘lieu-,’ ‘lyue-,’ and ‘lew-.’ 

So people disagreed on the pronunciation of lieutenant long before the United States were born or thought of (yes, the U.S. took a plural back then, before becoming an it).

Greenwald went on to say that the U.S. settled on the "lew-tenant" pronunciation largely due to  Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, who "almost single-handedly promulgated American pronunciations as well as American spellings."

But before Webster, even with various people disagreeing for centuries on how to pronounce it, was there any preferential rift in pronunciation between the two sides of the ocean? I wonder if the English-American split may have arisen or broadened during the American Revolution when non-British Europeans came to help drill, advise, and lead the Continental soldiers. Baron von Steuben probably would have used the Deutsch "leutnant" (loit-nant), but the Marquis de Lafayette would have assuredly used the French pronunciation (as "in lieu of"). Lafayette was popular, so that could have helped his way of saying it to become preferred.

If anyone has better explanations or links, do let me know!

UPDATE 11/20/13: We found out several episodes ago that Ichabod was actually a British soldier who decided to fight on the American/anti-apocalypse side, not someone born in North America. So that explains the accent. And yes, the show has continued to give us merry-making moments of Ichabod agog and/or aghast at modern life, such as a 10% tax on breakfast pastries, whereas the 2% Stamp Act tax was enough to foment rebellion in his day -- oh, but it turns out that the Tea Party was actually just a fortuitous diversion for secret anti-apocalypse operations. I love the combination of action, emotion, humor, and crazy in this show.

Non-spoilery review of the Glamourist Histories series by Mary Robinette Kowal

I read Mary Robinette Kowal's debut novel, "Shades of Milk and Honey," a few years ago when it came out. It's a novel of manners set in Regency England, with the addition of magic. The form magic takes in this world is glamour, a limited form of illusion that is mostly women's work, used for adorning the ladies and their homes, although there are a few male professionals who basically combine art and interior decoration. Much of the plot is similar to a somewhat simplified "Pride and Prejudice," although some elements are reversed and it builds up to a dramatic action-adventure conclusion. I thought it was a good read, entertaining if a little light, and I planned to look for her later books.

Last week, I spotted her third book in the Glamourist Histories, "Without a Summer," and checked it out. I also tracked down SoMaH again and found the second book, "Glamour in Glass." I figured it would take a week or so to get through them.

I finished them in three nights, one per night. I couldn't put them down, not even SoMaH, which was better than I remembered.

GiG is similar in tone, and like the first, it has a slow, weaving build to a dramatic finish, but other elements are very different. Although the protagonists have interesting, character-based conflicts, they are in Belgium and are increasingly affected by world events, including Napoleon's return to France, rather than mere social mores and misunderstandings. The viewpoint character, Jane, has to make hard choices and endured real consequences. The implications of glamour are examined and expanded. Another satisfying read.

But it was "Without a Summer" that really sold me on the series and the author. We see more of the social strata of the world now, with prejudices (examined prejudices, obviously not the author's views) spurring some people's actions. Along with historically accurate class, racial, and religious prejudices, the public irrationally blames coldmongers, specialized glamourists who help preserve food and suchlike, for the unusually long-lasting cold weather of 1816. The coldmongers were seemingly a convenient throwaway element from the first book, but here they become a major plot element. I love it when backstory comes to the forefront like that.

Other elements from the first book are also revisited in the third book, and revelations about longstanding misperceptions occur. In fact, MRK uses a wonderful metaphor for this cascade of revelations, and I was gasping, "Oh! OH! Wow!" as they all coalesced and bound all three books together. A meta-metaphor, if I can use such a term.

I went through a number of passages from the first and third books today, and yes, there were some strong hints of the hidden truths there, so MRK definitely played fair with the readers. But like Jane, I had glossed over those things as I kept following the current main actions, and so they were simultaneous revelations for me.

Some significant mistakes and misjudgments are made by the viewpoint character, who is so smart and perceptive in other ways, and MRK acknowledges Jane's debt to Austen's "Emma" in her afterword.  I'd be a little disenchanted, so to speak, if I thought MRK were just going through Austen's canon and adding glamour; however, the second book is its own thing, and even in the first and third books, there are plenty of non-magical plot elements and character actions that Austen would never have dreamed of writing. MRK can and does thank Austen, and I also noticed a few fun Easter Egg references to other authors' works, but she is definitely building her own rich world here. I can't wait to see where MRK takes this series next.

My favorite Hugo nominee: Ken Liu's "Mono no aware"

I just submitted my Hugo ballot, a few minutes before voting closed at midnight CDT on July 31. Because I got my Worldcon membership just two weeks ago, I wasn't able to get through all the books and stories that were e-mailed to me, but I did the best I could, and finished roughly half. I'll post my more complete reactions later, but I wanted to go ahead and praise one of the nominees.

Ken Liu's "Mono no aware" moved me to tears. I had to stand up and walk around for about 10 minutes before I could return to my self-imposed reading reading marathon.

What an extraordinary work this is, heartbreaking, breathtaking, and inspiring. In this 32-page short, Liu packs an amazing amount of story, context, understanding, and poetry.

“The stars shine and blink.
We are all guests passing through,
A smile and a name.”

According to an interview with the author, mono no aware means an empathy for the inevitable passing of all things.  The protagonist draws strength and motivation from this concept, but his actions also exemplify some of the things from life that endure: courage and love. I must find more of Ken Liu to read. As far as I am concerned, this short story is the all-category winner, the Best in Show of the Hugos.

WorldCon56-Bucconeer Panels Appendix

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm swamped with reading Hugo nominees, so I'm too busy to write original material right now. Instead, I'm posting an e-mailed trip report from the 1998 WorldCon. This is the appendix, where I wrote about individual panels at the con.

OK, here it is:

Panels appendix to my report on the 56th World Science
Fiction Convention (WorldCon 56, "Bucconeer") Aug. 5-9
in Baltimore, by Patricia Elkins Matson.
I had a blast, although I was run ragged a lot of the
time.

Worldcon 56/Bucconeer

I had a wonderful, although short, vacation with my family last week. Now I am snowed under again. This time the duty is reading for pleasure: I have decided to go to LoneStarCon3, the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention, and I have about a week to decide on my votes for the Hugo awards. I've read some of the materials, but there's a lot more to try to get through.

I'll probably post about my votes and reasons after that, but I don't have time for original writing right now. Instead, I'll post the contents of an e-mail I sent out to friends and family in 1998 after Bucconeer, the 56th WorldCon. (Appendix will be posted tomorrow.)

What do you do with a graphic novel?

I was telling my sister about Kings in Disguise, a fine graphic novel that follows a boy as he rides the rails during the Great Depression, encountering The Ford Hunger March/Massacre and various other situations, but saying "I read it" seemed inadequate for how I experienced it. One reads a book or an essay, but a graphic novel uses art to inform the text, and text to inform the art. One views a painting or looks at a sculpture, but that's not how one describes the act of, well, going through a graphic novel. Is there a separate word for what you do with a graphic novel? I can't think of one, but it seems as though there should be.

Growing up, I never thought of what I was doing with comic books as anything but reading them, but then again, I was much more focused on the stories than on the artwork. Occasionally, I would stop and admire a particularly well-executed panel, but to me, they were basically densely illustrated short stories. I was more interested in what Spider-Man was doing than in what he looked like while he was doing it -- of course, subconsciously I was taking in many details about the atmosphere and situation and perspective while I was skimming through the pages, and I realize that many people did and do care much more about the art of comics/graphic novels than I did at the time, but the story was what I focused on then.

I stopped following comics regularly sometime after Marvel started publishing about five versions of Spider-Man and at least three of X-Men -- I couldn't keep up, monetarily or temporally. However, in college my friends introduced me to other, independently published comics (not Marvel or DC), expanding beyond superhero struggles to new stories ranging from A Distant Soil (dystopian SF featuring some openly gay major characters, revolutionary back then!) to the beginnings of "true" graphic novels such as the Pulitzer-winning Maus.

A couple of years ago, my county library started developing collections of graphic novels, and I caught up on some classics and began broadening my horizons with new ones. This is where I found James Vance's "Kings in Disguise" recently.

Lots of definitions of graphic novels exist. Some people just consider the term a pretentious renaming of comic books, and there are plenty of publications called graphic novels that are simply hardcover volumes that bundle runs of regular periodical comics. I prefer to use the term to refer to a novelistic, stand-alone story, or at least a well-defined, self-contained arc within a series, told through a combination of artwork and words.

But again, what is it that you do with a graphic novel, to experience the story? What naturally occurs to me is "read," although that seems too limited, so I'll do what I often do and check out definitions and origins.

The very first listing from Merriam-Webster is "to receive or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) especially by sight or touch." Huh, that's actually not very limited at all. There are about 30 other definitions and sub-definitions of the word. Maybe it's not that the word "read" is too limited, it's just that I've been thinking of it in unnecessarily narrow terms.

The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the word "read" comes from quite a number of roots, ranging from Old English to proto-Germanic to Old Church Slavonic, mostly meaning something along the lines of to advise or consider. It started to be seen in writing with the meaning of "to make out the character of (a person)" in the 1600s, and was gradually transformed into interpretation of written symbols after that. Aha, here's something pertinent: "Most languages use a word rooted in the idea of "gather up" as their word for "read" (cf. French lire, from Latin legere)." So other languages use different words -- obviously, but coming from different roots, to describe the act that English speakers call reading. Maybe they'd be even more applicable!


I'd be interested to find out what other languages do with the concept of graphic novels. I have a germ of German and a speck of Spanish, but neither kernel of knowledge extends to nuances. Do Japanese people simply "read" manga, or do they use some word separate from "reading" that explicitly combines interpreting text with looking at art? Can any of my multilingual readers tell me?

Edited to Add:
Coincidentally, I just ran across an interview with James Vance, the author of "Kings in Disguise."
Tom Spurgeon at "The Comics Reporter" interviews him about his recent KiD sequel, "On the Ropes" (which is actually based on a play he wrote before KiD), but he also asks him about KiD:
JV: "The truth is, I thought of it in terms of a collected work from day one, and that's the way we approached it. If you look at those individual comics, you'll see there's no concession to serialization in the story itself, no cliffhangers or any of the mechanics that you see in regular monthly comic books."
When he's asked about OtR, he discusses the labor movement as well as how his characters make their decisions and realize the consequences -- fascinating. I hope I get a chance to read OtR, too.

Memory and strings

"Tie a string around your finger."
This is an old-fashioned memory prompt from before when memos started arriving via PDAs, computer calendars and smartphones -- you tie a string around your finger to help you remember that you're supposed to remember something. It doesn't tell you what you're supposed to remember, mind you, but at least you'll be aware of the need. Sooner or later, it will chafe, or you'll just happen to notice it, and maybe at that point, you'll be able to buy milk on the way home, or otherwise accomplish whatever deed you could only remind yourself about before.

In the modern era, of course, strings have another meaning related to memory. A string is a linear artifact with a beginning and an end; in computer coding, a string is a sequence of characters. A character string generally stands for something; it can represent a variable or a constant, and you (or your computer code) can manipulate it or compare it with other strings in order to make a decision.

One type of character string that many people use daily is a password. You must enter all the password's characters in their correct sequence, like the numbers for a combination lock, except that here you're matching a data string instead of clicking tumblers.

I was thinking a few days ago about the character strings I hold in my own memory. I used to remember a lot of telephone numbers, for my office, my home, my parents, and several other relatives and a few friends. Now I know only two full telephone numbers -- my home and my cell -- and four-digit office extensions for myself and two other people. Everything else is stored in my cell or written down somewhere.

However, there's a lot else I have to remember: My work terminal password, my work software ID and password, my work email password, and a few other strings that I use daily for work; at home, I have a couple more e-mail accounts, four social media accounts, and several more log-ons that I use often enough to hold in my memory, all with different IDs and passwords, plus my Social Security number, PIN, and some more identifiers.

So even though I feel a little silly sometimes because I don't know anybody's phone number anymore, I need to remember that actually I'm giving my memory a pretty good workout most days. I'm counting 32 strings, although I may have forgotten one or two!

How about you? Can you count up how many character strings you use often enough to carry around in your head? Tell me! If you don't have time to tally them up right now, well, maybe you can just tie a string around your finger.

Compale (a portmanteau)

I was in a meeting Tuesday and the guy next to me stumbled over his words, saying something would "compale -- I mean, pale in comparison to" something else. I knew what he meant by "compale" before he went on to correct himself; it seemed perfectly obvious to me.
I rather like the idea of "compale" being a word of its own -- it's a little more efficient than the parent phrase, and I can't think of any other single word that already exists to fit this niche.  Although its spelling is nearly identical to "compile," the pronunciation is quite different, so I don't think it would be too confusing.
I am going to look for an opportunity to use this in conversation sometime, and see what kind of reaction I get.
I'm thinking of it as an intransitive verb, used with the preposition "to" -- e.g., Jean Grey's Marvel Girl compales to her incarnation as The Phoenix, at least as far as power is concerned. If I used it as a transitive verb, which takes and acts on a direct object, that would seem too active, as if I should be using it the other way around (The Phoenix compales Marvel Girl). I want to keep the subject as the weaker, more faded counterpart, as in the original phrase, so I'll make the verb intransitive, not transitive.
Compale would be an example of a portmanteau word, a new word created by combining parts of two or more words to make a new one that also fuses their meanings. This is a little different from a contraction, which uses an apostrophe to signal that two words that normally go in sequence are being compressed into one, or a compound word, which simply runs two words together, with or without a hyphen.
A portmanteau is similar to an elision, which omits sounds within a word or phrase for laziness, to fit a poetic meter, or simply because the speaker thinks it sounds better that way. However, eliding a word or phrase doesn't change the meaning, whereas a portmanteau often tweaks the meaning of the parent words so that the definition is also slightly different, although related. For instance, "spork" is a portmanteau word combined from spoon and fork, but it's a little different from each.
What do you think of my plan to try putting "compale" into usage? Do you have a favorite portmanteau word you'd like to share with me?