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This afternoon I voted Miss Jessel from Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) one of my favorite ghosts on film, a tall order but a true one. A masterstroke of sound design and suggestion, she's not spectral, she's uncanny: as real as the reflection she casts on the sunlit shiver of the lake, as motionless in the heat as the bulrushes she stands so far out among, she could be walking on water, though we will learn she drowned herself in it instead. Her slight, dark-haired figure in long shot gives no impression of a threat, nor even any particular emotion such as hunger or melancholy that would make her apparition easier to read. Her incongruity becomes its own eeriness, the noonday drabness of her presence more frightening than its disappearance between one look and the next, which is after all only characteristic of her kind, though part of the film's chill is that really it has no such rules by which a haunting may be mapped and governed, only the inexplicable facts of things that should not be. Once we have heard that she grieved sleeplessly for her rough, flaunting lover until she died of him, the governess played like a doorway of possession by Deborah Kerr can hear her sobbing, a desolate, gulping, wretchedly echoing sound that when finally traced to the schoolroom has nothing to do with the smooth-faced, dry-eyed imprint of Miss Jessel at her desk and yet when the governess rushes to the empty chair and touches the slate left by her own earlier lesson, it is wet with tears. Without a parapsychological conversation in sight, it gives the effect of a ghost that has stained through time in all its layers, desynched to perpetuity. The parallel sightings of Peter Wyngarde's Peter Quint with his cock-strut and his bestial snarl of a smile, always smeared through sun-mist, night-glass, steam-sweat until he can cast his unfiltered shadow from a crumbling ring of statues at last have their own rude potency, as malignantly charged as one of the more explicitly libidinous legends of Hell House, but it is his ruined lover who looks as though you could never scrape her off the air, so soaked into this patch of reality that trying to part her from the grounds of Bly would be about as efficacious as trying to exorcise an ice age. Their voices whisper like tape loops on the candlelit stairs. The children are watching. The children are watching. The children are watching. Like the uncredited radiophonics of Daphne Oram that accompany her first, summer-humming manifestation, Miss Jessel or whatever has been left of her belongs to the weirdness of time just really starting to flower in British film and TV, more Nigel Kneale than Henry James or even Truman Capote and yet she fits as exactly into the sensibilities of the Victorian Gothic as she would into the bright horror of that lakeside to this day. She was one of three images left on film by the artist and director Clytie Jessop and I doubt you could get her off the print, either. This excellence brought to you by my watching backers at Patreon.Current Music: The Poppies in the Field, "The Teardrop Explodes"
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A selection of Dozois' best, from the first half of his half century career.
Geodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois by Gardner Dozois
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The Central Plaza Mansion tower offers palatial 900 square foot apartments for a mere ¥35,000,000. It is a deal too good for the Kano family to turn down... although they should have.
The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
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I just had my first opportunity to shower in four nights, even without washing my hair, so I just had the same opportunity to free-associate in the shower.
I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).
As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).
Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).
Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.
Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.Current Music: Donald Swann, "Say Who You Are"
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When I heard tonight about Robert Redford, I did not think first of the immortal freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the righteous paranoia of All the President's Men (1976) or even the perfectly anachronistic jazz of The Sting (1973) where I almost certainly first saw him, effortlessly beautiful even before he shines up from street-level short cons to the spectacular wire of the title grift. I thought of The Hot Rock (1972), a freewheelingly dumb-assed caper film of which I am deeply fond in no small part because of Redford. Specifically, his casting makes it look at first like the inevitable Hollywood misrepresentation of its 1970 Donald E. Westlake source novel, a cool jazz glow-up of the canonically, lankily nondescript Dortmunder whose heists always look completely reasonable on paper and in practice like a Rube Goldberg machine whose springs just sprang off. Only as the setbacks of the plot mount past aggravation into absurdity approaching Dada, of which the attempt to sneak into a precinct house via helicopter must rate highly even before the crew land on the wrong roof and the siege-minded lieutenant mistakes their break-in for the revolution, does the audience realize that this Dortmunder has the face of a screen idol and the flop sweat of a shlimazl, a man whose charisma is not an asset when it makes people think he knows what he's doing. "I've got no choice," he says doggedly of the eponymous diamond which he did at least once successfully steal, whence all their troubles began. "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes, but that stone's jinxed me and it won't let go. I've been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed, and worse is going to happen before it's done. So I'm taking my stand. I'm going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me." When he acquires an incipient ulcer at the top of the second act, who's surprised? He glumly chews antacids as one of his meticulously premeditated schemes trips over its own shoelaces yet again. It may be the only time Redford played so far against his stardom, but he makes such a gorgeous loser with that tousle of coin-gold hair and an ever more disbelieving look in the matinée blue of his eyes, the Zeppo of his quartet of thieves who only looks like the normal one and no slouch in a stack of character actors from Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel through Lee Wallace and even a bit-part Christopher Guest, not to mention George Segal by whom he is characteristically almost run into a chain-link fence, trying to collect him from his latest stint upstate in a hot car with too many accessories. "Not that you're not the best, but a layman might wonder why you're all the time in jail." Harry Bellaver figured in so many noirs of the '40's and '50's, why should he not have retired to run a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue patronized by exactly the kind of never-the-luck lowlifes he might once have played? The photography by Ed Brown goes on the list of great snapshots of New York, the screenplay by William Goldman is motor-mouthed quotable, the score by Quincy Jones never sounds cooler than when the characters it accompanies are failing their wisdom checks at land speed. Watching it as part of a Peter Yates crime trilogy between Bullitt (1968) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) may induce whiplash. It may not be major Redford, but it is beloved Redford of mine, and worthwhile weirdness to watch in his memory. This stand brought to you by my jinxed backers at Patreon.Current Music: Antler Joe and the Accidents, "Words"
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Ah yes, one of the three or four times a year I remember I have a Dreamwidth.
Hello creator, and thank you for creating for me! I will enjoy whatever you make, I promise; if I have more ideas for one fandom than another, it has nothing to do with how much I love them. I only pick fandoms I will be thrilled with. :D
Overall I have asked for treats, not tricks, but tricks are fine for extra gifts. I will do my best to add some art prompts to this letter as well; I am bad at talking about and requesting art but I enjoy it, I promise. Alternate universes and canon divergences are fun; I like backstory, future fic and canon-set fic. Any rating is fine. You can get an idea of what I like from my other letters, but don't feel obligated to research me, heh.
Under the cut: Nimona, Scum Villain, The Untamed, Weiss Kreuz
( Read more... )
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The Young People review Michael Swanwick's debut Nebula finalist stories.
The Feast of Saint Janis & Ginungagap by Michael Swanwick
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If not friend, why friend-shaped?
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
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100 lair entries in two succinct pages apiece, from Aboleth's Sunken Lair to Wyvern's Nest.
Bundle of Holding: Dread Laironomicon
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2014: Creationism is banned in British schools, the first same sex marriages in the UK are conducted, and Canadian Mark Carney helps the UK navigate challenging times. What ever happened to Carney, anyway?
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 72 Which 2014 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
View AnswersAncillary Justice by Ann Leckie
69 (95.8%) God's War by Kameron Hurley
25 (34.7%) Nexus by Ramez Naam
10 (13.9%) The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
5 (6.9%) The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann
1 (1.4%) The Machine by James Smythe
3 (4.2%)
Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.
Which 2014 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
God's War by Kameron Hurley
Nexus by Ramez Naam
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
The Disestablishment of Paradise by Phillip Mann
The Machine by James Smythe
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For anyone who may be Dark Souls-curious, here is a very long video essay of which I've only watched part (because I'm trying to limit spoilers) and of which I mainly want to rec part -- the first 30 mins or so, where the essayist discusses something that the mythology about the game’s supposed uber-difficulty tends to obscure, namely the gorgeous, generous array of different tools and options that it gives you for engaging with its difficulties, and how it tries to teach you to use them:
I think this is some of the stuff that prompted me to declaim “Dark Souls loves me and wants me to be happy.”
The game is difficult, it is intended to be difficult (and I still don't know if, for me, it will at some point be insuperably difficult), and progressing and learning through difficulty and failure is the core gameplay loop. As mentioned, it took me a total of seven hours to beat the most recent boss, the Capra Demon. I am currently camped out in the Depths, where I intermittently fall through holes and get cursed by basilisks. I recently got invaded for the first time, by a player who watched as I ran directly under a slime and got enveloped, facepalmed*, and then waited politely while I extricated myself before murdering me**.
And yet my major feeling at this particular moment is of being spoiled (in the pampered sense, not the knowledge sense): I have too many good weapons to try (my beloved halberd, now upgraded to +7, a Balder Side Sword -- a rare and coveted drop -- and a Black Knight Sword)! I'm having to actively try not to over-level! I have so many upgrade materials! I have the world's largest stockpile of charcoal pine resin (purchased on my endless boss runs back to the Capra Demon, so I'd spend any souls I was carrying and not distract myself with losing or trying to retrieve them) so I can make my weapons burst into flame any time I want! I have opened the latest incredibly-convenient shortcut! There's a handy new merchant just before the next boss! I am holding an armful of presents and Dark Souls keeps trying to pile more on top!
{*I went off immediately afterwards to Google "dark souls how to facepalm”, but it looks like you have to join the Forest Hunter covenant to learn that emote and I have other plans. Still tempted, though.}
{**I had expected to loathe being invaded — and had initially planned to play offline mainly to avoid that, but did not for reasons which need to be a different post — but in the event, it was brief, non-inconveniencing, and actually pretty funny.}
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So, yesterday, the wheelchair ramp on the Rt 8 bus I was on developed a bug. Or the system that detects if it is deployed did. The ramp retracted correctly but the bus thought it had not, and would not move.
Ha ha! I pick my routes to maximize alternatives in case of break-downs. I just disembarked and talked over to the LRT. Which, I discovered, was having a minor service delay.
My contingency plans can handle two delays, but not three. Good for me there were just the two. It did mean I was only a little early for work.
On the way home, just after I disembarked from the LRT, an SUV cut the LRT off so the SUV could reach the parking lot ten seconds earlier. If the train had not stopped, I'd have had to stick around, both as a witness and because the accident would blocked the sidewalk between me and the stop I needed to get to.
Less than five minutes after the LRT near-miss, three SUVs tried to turn into the same lane at the same time. I don't think they hit each other but there was a short discussion between the drivers before they all left. I'd have had to stick around for that as well, because it would have blocked the route my bus uses.
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Bureau of Sabotage agent Jorj X. McKie is assigned a legal and ethical trap: a planet of victims, who, whether rescued or left to their impending doom, present a danger to the ConSentiency.
The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert
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I had not thought there were any meteor showers of consequence this month, but it seems that the swift pale streak between the telephone wires southwest of Cassiopeia belonged to the September Epsilon Perseids, so named despite their radiant in β Persei, the demon-star of Algol. I can hope it was not wildfire drift that accounted for the candle-tint of the half-moon, which was doing its autumnal trick of hanging like a lantern in the not yet leafless trees. The last of this summer's monarchs flew just before sunset, the twenty-second of her name.Current Music: Suzanne Vega, "Left of Center"
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Six works new to me: two fantasy (one a roleplaying game), four science fiction. The roleplaying game is part of a series but otherwise, they all seem to be stand-alone.
Books Received, September 6 — September 12
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46 Which of these look interesting?
View AnswersDaughter of No Worlds by Carissa Broadbent (October 2025)
8 (17.4%) Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey (November 2025)
20 (43.5%) Champions of Chaos by Calum Colins, et al
1 (2.2%) Slow Gods by Claire North (November 2025)
24 (52.2%) The Divine Gardener’s Handbook: Or What to Do if Your Girlfriend Accidentally Turns Off the Sun by Eli Snow (August 2026)
22 (47.8%) Death Engine Protocol: Better Dying Through Science by Margret A. Treiber (April 2025)
13 (28.3%) Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%) Cats!
30 (65.2%)
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I am glad to read that a classicist on Tumblr whom I do not know feels validated by a poem I wrote a dozen years ago, because she's right in turn about the linkage of ideas that led to its writing: the evocatio of Juno from Veii in 396 BCE, the evocatio of Tanit from Carthage in 146 BCE, the assimilation of Tanit to Juno Caelestis rather than Ištar-starred Venus, the self-fulfilling loop of enmity that a double-thefted goddess makes of the Aeneid and under it all the irony that Vergil even in his Renaissance aspect as magician could not foresee, that Carthage-haunted Rome was itself built on the needfire of the most famously sacked city of the ancient world, Troy whose gods Aeneas salvaged from the night of its destruction and now we remember Rome as the epitome of decadence, the eternally, contagiously falling city.
Also I had just been turned down by a housing situation that I had painfully wanted, but the classical stuff was all still bang on.Current Music: Frank Turner, "The Next Storm"
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I'd been posting reviews to LiveJournal since April of 2014 but on September 12, 2014, James Nicoll Reviews went live, with a review of Robert A. Heinlein's Between Planets.
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It's time for Bo to leave doomed San Francisco behind... just as soon as she completes one final task.
Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan
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Not having read any of the source novels, approximately twenty minutes into the first series of Poldark (1975–77) as I lay on the couch self-medicating with the late eighteenth century, I remarked to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) spatch, "Is there any aspect of this homecoming that is not going to be a clusterfuck?" on which the answer turned out to be no, whence it seems the engine of the plot. Since I came to this show by having to wait for the third season of Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–17) to arrive at my local branch library, I was more than ordinarily entertained by the line pertaining to the hero's soldiering past, "Shocking business, eh? Losing the Colonies." The bomber leather frock coat is as impressive as advertised.Current Music: Slow Pulp, "New Horse"
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