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I was a bit surprised to come across this as Hartwell wasn't really the go-to editor where women's SF was concerned. An interesting snapshot of SF in a sixteen-year period. The end is the fall of the American republic. Not sure what was significant about 1984.
( Read more... )
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One very small step for a man, one giant leap for Her Majesty's Government.
Cold War in a Country Garden (Dilke, volume 1) by Lindsay Gutteridge
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Apparently I can no longer re-toast myself a signature half pastrami, half corned beef sandwich from Mamaleh's without spending the rest of the evening singing the same-named hit from a 1917 American Yiddish musical. The Folksbiene never seems to have revived it and if the rest of the score was as catchy, they really should. (I am charmed that the composer clearly found the nickel conceit tempting enough to revisit in a later show, but that line quoted about the First Lady, didn't I just ask the twentieth century to stay where we left it?)
At the other end of the musical spectrum, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) spatch maintains it is not American-normal to be able to sing the Holst setting of "In the Bleak Midwinter," which until last night I had assumed was just such seasonal wallpaper that I had absorbed it by unavoidable dint of Christmas—it's one of the carols I can't remember learning, unlike others which have identifiable vectors in generally movies, madrigals, or folk LPs. Opinions?
Thanks to lunisolar snapback, Hanukkah like every other holiday this year seems to have sprung up out of nowhere, but we managed to get hold of candles last night and tomorrow will engage in the mitzvah of last-minute cleaning the menorah.
P.S. I fell down a slight rabbit hole of Bruce Adler and now feel I have spent an evening at a Yiddish vaudeville house on the Lower East Side circa 1926.Current Music: Bruce Adler & Joanne Borts, "Fifty-fifty"
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I am not aware of any big name authors who got their start with a work published by Baen Books after 2006. If there are recent analogs of Bujold or Weber, I do not know of them.
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Huh
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Dec. 13th, 2025 @ 09:39 am
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So, I asked on Bluesky:
Aside from Larry Correia, are there any big name Baen authors who debuted at Baen, after Jim Baen's death?
(So, Tim Powers wouldn't count because he debuted not at Baen and also long before JB died)
I got three names: Chuck Gannon, Jason Cordova and Mike Kupari. Gannon actually debuted at Baen in 1994 but only two (I think) short pieces, after which there was a long delay until his novels began appearing. I don't know the other two but SF is huge and it's perfectly possible for me to overlook BNAs. Still, granting all three, with LC that makes four... and in 2028, Toni Weisskopf will have been running Baen for as long as Jim Baen did.
This could, of course, be the natural consequence of the Del Monte approach.
[added later]
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Apples
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Dec. 12th, 2025 @ 05:00 am
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Little Known Galaxy is a farming sim IN SPACE I ended up with an extra key for in a bundle. I have played a little and it didn't grab me but it wasn't terrible and has good reviews. Mac and PC compatible.
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I got much better at spelling his name once I realized it contains "lie".
Embattled CPC leader's Christmas card list gets one name shorter.
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Where to start reading — or rereading — Varley's many series and stories.
Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025
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The visitors might be Bird Island's salvation or simply the next step in its doom.
The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson
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At this point if I have a circadian rhythm it seems to be measured in days, but last night after two doctor's appointments and an evening of virtual seminars through the euphemistically designated career center, I fell over for something like a cumulative thirteen hours and still got through this afternoon's calendar of calling more doctors and the next stage of the career center in time to run out into a cold pastel sunset out of which the occasional flake of snow drifted with insulting singularity. I am delighted by the rediscovery of silent Holmes and also by my camera's cooperation when trying again for the beautiful fungi I had spotted on an earlier walk, clustered on the stump of what used to be a sidewalk tree and has now pivoted to Richard Dadd. I dreamed intensely and have no idea what Alex Horne was doing in there.
 Current Music: Paul Westerberg, "Dyslexic Heart"
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Multiple sources report the death of SF author John Varley.
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Posted by therealmorticia https://www.transformativeworks.org/resignation-of-otw-directors-december-2025/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=273724 The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors is saddened to announce that Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm have resigned from their roles as Board Directors for personal reasons. Their resignations are effective as of December 11, 2025.
Erica was elected to her seat in 2024, and her term was set to end in 2027; her seat will be filled in the upcoming election as a one-year term. Kathryn was elected to her seat in 2023, and was already scheduled to be replaced in the upcoming election. In the meantime, both of their seats will remain vacant.
We would like to thank Erica and Kathryn for their service as members of the Board and for their years as OTW volunteers. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors. https://www.transformativeworks.org/resignation-of-otw-directors-december-2025/ https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=273724
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A 2567 blueblood travels back to the Summer of Love to save one very special 16-year-old.
Summer of Love (Zhu Wong, volume 1) by Lisa Mason
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Magical Kitties Save the Day, the all-ages introductory storytelling game from Atlas Games.
Bundle of Holding: Magical Kitties
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As the title indicates, "Threnody for Five Actors" is a ghost poem for its subjects and its inclusion in On Actors and Acting: Essays by Alexander Knox (ed. Anthony Slide, 1998) is maddening because it is accompanied only by the note, "This poem is from an unpublished manuscript titled Screams and Speeches. The five actors named here were all victims of the Blacklist." First of all, you can't drop the existence of an entire manuscript at the very end of a slim selected works and expect the interested reader not to scream, especially when the only copy the internet feels like telling me about seems to be held in a collection in the Library and Archives of Canada, which feels currently even less accessible than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Secondly, and speaking as a person who has been called out for the density of allusion in their stories and poetry, this poem could have done with some notes. The editor was obviously concerned enough about name recognition to parenthesize Julie Garfield as John and Bud Bohnen as Roman, but then why not list their dates so that the reader can see for themselves that all five actors died between 1949 and 1952, mostly of heart ailments, stressed by the hounding of the FBI and HUAC, at the grandly superannuated ages between 39 and 59? If you don't know that Mady Christians originated the title role of John Van Druten's I Remember Mama (1944), then her verse will make much less sense, but catching that one makes me wonder what other references I may be missing, such as in the stage work of Canada Lee or J. Edward Bromberg. Lastly, since it's the only poem I have ever read by Alexander Knox—instantaneously in October, but it's been a rough fall—if he wrote any others I'd like to be able to read them, even if just for comparison. Slide mentions his wicked limericks in the introduction, but unforgivably includes none.
( We know by now that time does not take sides. )
With this one example to go by, he was a better playwright than poet, but except for the self-deprecation which should definitely have hit the cutting room floor, it's hard to want to edit much out of a poem with so much anger at the injustice of a country that wastes its artists in scapegoating xenophobia, besides which there's at least one good line per actor and sometimes more. He wouldn't even have been living in the United States by the time of its writing, having burned off the last of his contract with Columbia by the end of 1951. He hadn't burned off his anger. No reason he should have. I may be confused by the existence of his Hollywood career, but I'm still pissed about the politics that snapped it short. The twentieth century could stop coming around on the guitar any measure now. On Sunday, I'll be at the HFA.Current Music: Brandi Carlile, "Human"
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Could safety from the global pandemic be found in desperate flight towards a land of banditry and violence?
To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young (Translated by Soje)
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