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Announcements and general wafflings
Apr. 2nd, 2008 12:59 pmI keep forgetting to post things that probably belong on LJ. I resemble the remark of an elderly person on tv, who cheerfully announced, "We all have C.R.A.F.T disease. Can't Remember A Fricking Thing."
I think she said "effing" which was probably to get past the censors but "fricking" looks better :-)
So. Things:
I won a Tin Duck at Swancon, which I have been thoroughly congratulated on already. That's the award for genre fiction published by West Australians. It's a great bookend but I'm disappointed that it's blank; no name and story title on it like my Ditmar of years ago :-) Thanks to Helen Patrice, who allowed me to feature her as the leader of the Blood Drinking Cannibal Drainers in my story Sun People and to Alisa Krasnostein for publishing it in Shiny.
As of last Sunday, my pond has tadpoles. It is Proto-Frog World. I hope they live to grow up as they aren't, as Leece commented, the sharpest marbles in the bucket. The recent rain caused the pond to rise over its beach and some tadpoles snoozed there in the sun and the small amount of water. When the water receded, they became beached! I thought I'd lost them but they revived when I put them back in the water. Thanks to Rob and Leece for the contribution! You didn't give me your Special Needs tadpoles, did you?
My problems of nothing to read abated over the con but I'm running dangerously low again now, despite visits to the library and borrowings. One such was the Edgar Rice Burroughs' original Tarzan of the Apes (1914), which I found surprisingly readable despite its age. His writing style is rather rough and he glosses over things which a modern writer would explain more about but there are some unexpected finds. Tarzan's ape tribe are presented as an sf-ish missing link, a larger, more aggressive and more intelligent version of gorillas. It's clearly stated that they aren't gorillas and by the description, can't be any of the other large apes. They have a primitive spoken language and ceremony for special occasions.
Tarzan himself is presented as super-intelligent and able to learn written English without help or even understanding of what reading is. When he does have a human to teach him, that human teaches him French, his own native language, before he learns English. This isn't much like the monosyllabic musclebound movie version, "You Jane, Me Tarzan!"
I wondered why the 80-odd years old "absentminded professor" has a 19-year-old daughter and why Burroughs didn't just write her as his granddaughter but this was one of the somewhat rough, unexplained oddities. You don't learn how the prof's wife died or anything about her, including how the prof ever managed to wake enough to chat her up. Still, a worthwhile read.
I think she said "effing" which was probably to get past the censors but "fricking" looks better :-)
So. Things:
I won a Tin Duck at Swancon, which I have been thoroughly congratulated on already. That's the award for genre fiction published by West Australians. It's a great bookend but I'm disappointed that it's blank; no name and story title on it like my Ditmar of years ago :-) Thanks to Helen Patrice, who allowed me to feature her as the leader of the Blood Drinking Cannibal Drainers in my story Sun People and to Alisa Krasnostein for publishing it in Shiny.
As of last Sunday, my pond has tadpoles. It is Proto-Frog World. I hope they live to grow up as they aren't, as Leece commented, the sharpest marbles in the bucket. The recent rain caused the pond to rise over its beach and some tadpoles snoozed there in the sun and the small amount of water. When the water receded, they became beached! I thought I'd lost them but they revived when I put them back in the water. Thanks to Rob and Leece for the contribution! You didn't give me your Special Needs tadpoles, did you?
My problems of nothing to read abated over the con but I'm running dangerously low again now, despite visits to the library and borrowings. One such was the Edgar Rice Burroughs' original Tarzan of the Apes (1914), which I found surprisingly readable despite its age. His writing style is rather rough and he glosses over things which a modern writer would explain more about but there are some unexpected finds. Tarzan's ape tribe are presented as an sf-ish missing link, a larger, more aggressive and more intelligent version of gorillas. It's clearly stated that they aren't gorillas and by the description, can't be any of the other large apes. They have a primitive spoken language and ceremony for special occasions.
Tarzan himself is presented as super-intelligent and able to learn written English without help or even understanding of what reading is. When he does have a human to teach him, that human teaches him French, his own native language, before he learns English. This isn't much like the monosyllabic musclebound movie version, "You Jane, Me Tarzan!"
I wondered why the 80-odd years old "absentminded professor" has a 19-year-old daughter and why Burroughs didn't just write her as his granddaughter but this was one of the somewhat rough, unexplained oddities. You don't learn how the prof's wife died or anything about her, including how the prof ever managed to wake enough to chat her up. Still, a worthwhile read.