geekdom

Fanboy mouth strikes again

Comix, geekdom
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Oh gods that’s what I would be doing:

I emailed Howard Chaykin a single sentence one time and he wrote a single sentence back correcting my grammar, and it was at that moment that I knew I had won the contest of who gets to have the best conversation with Howard Chaykin, because I would rather have that one sentence back and forth than any long conversation where I told him about how much I liked The Shadow and he pretended he cared and then maybe I brought up some random part of his career that I bet not a lot of people ask him about and oh aren’t I so clever that I asked the question that a lot of people don’t ask, unlike all those proles who bring up American Flagg, everybody talks about American Flagg, look at me how special it is that I know the name of the thing that is different from the other thing and now maybe I can be best friends with the comics artist or cup my hot mouth on him or just hold his head down in a bowl of warm sand or whatever, however that fantasy plays out.

Rappers delight

geekdom, video
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Did you know rappers are not just people singing hiphop, but can also refer to a traditional English dance originiating from the coal mining villages of Northumberland and Durham? The rappers in this case being flexible swords used in the dance? First described in 1715, it’s one of those dances that was slowly dying out until a group of students, under the leadership of Bill Cassie, a professor of mechanical engineering at King’s College in Newcastle decided to revive it for their rag week in 1949. Over sixty years later and the Newcastle Kingsmen are still going strong:



One of those things you just have to share with people when you stumble across it on Youtube…

Women to Read Wednesday 04: 100 great sf stories by women

Feminism, geekdom, science fiction
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Irritated by an old science fiction anthology, where out of the hundred stories only five were by women, Ian Sales put together the list below of a hundred great science fiction stories by women. A list like that is always a good way of hearing about writers you haven’t encountered before, so I want to keep this simple. Bold if I’ve never heard of somebody before, italics if I’ve read something of them.

  1. ‘The Fate of the Poseidonia’, Clare Winger Harris (1927, short story)
  2. ‘The Conquest of Gola,’ Leslie F Stone (1931, short story)
  3. ‘Water Pirate’, Leigh Brackett (1941, short story)
  4. ‘Space Episode’, Leslie Perri (1941, short story)
  5. ‘No Woman Born’, Cl Moore (1944, novelette)
  6. ‘That Only a Mother’, Judith Merril (1948, short story)
  7. ‘Contagion’, Katherine Maclean (1950, novelette)
  8. ‘Brightness Falls from the Air’, Margaret St Clair [as Idris Seabright] (1951, short story)
  9. ‘All Cats are Gray’, Andre Norton (1953, short story)
  10. ‘The Last Day’, Helen Clarkson (1958, short story)
  11. ‘Captivity’, Zenna Henderson (1958, novella)
  12. ‘The New You’, Kit Reed (1962, short story)
  13. ‘The Putnam Tradition’, Sonya Dorman (1963, short story)
  14. ‘Lord Moon’, MJ Engh [as Jane Beauclerk] (1965, short story)
  15. ‘Weyr Search’, Anne McCaffrey (1967, novella)
  16. ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’, Pamela Zoline (1967, short story)
  17. ‘The Steiger Effect’, Betsy Curtis (1968, short story)
  18. ‘The Power of Time’, Josephine Saxton (1971, novelette)
  19. ‘And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side’, James Tiptree Jr (1972, short story)
  20. ‘When It Changed’, Joanna Russ (1972, short story)
  21. ‘Sheltering Dream’, Doris Piserchia (1972, short story)
  22. ‘Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand’, Vonda N McIntyre (1973, novelette)
  23. ‘Clone Sister’, Pamela Sargent (1973, novelette)
  24. ‘The Violet’s Embryo’, Angélica Gorodischer (1973, novelette)
  25. ‘Stone Circle’, Lisa Tuttle (1976, short story)
  26. ‘Eyes of Amber’, Joan D Vinge (1977, novelette)
  27. ‘Cassandra, CJ Cherryh (1978, short story)
  28. ‘The View from Endless Scarp’, Marta Randall (1978, short story)
  29. ‘Scorched Supper on New Niger’, Suzy Mckee Charnas (1980, novelette)
  30. ‘Abominable’, Carol Emshwiller (1980, short story)
  31. ‘Sea Changeling’, Mildred Downey Broxon (1981, novelette)
  32. ‘In the Western Tradition’, Phyllis Eisenstein (1981, novella)
  33. ‘Her Furry Face’, Leigh Kennedy (1983, short story)
  34. ‘Bloodchild’ Octavia E Butler (1984, novelette)
  35. ‘Symphony for a Lost Traveller’, Lee Killough (1984, short story)
  36. ‘All My Darling Daughters’, Connie Willis (1985, novelette)
  37. ‘Webrider’, Jayge Carr (1985, short story)
  38. ‘Out of All Them Bright Stars’, Nancy Kress (1985, short story)
  39. ‘The View from Venus: A Case Study’, Karen Joy Fowler (1986, novelette)
  40. ‘Reichs-Peace’, Sheila Finch (1986, novelette)
  41. ‘Daily Voices’, Lisa Goldstein (1986, short story)
  42. ‘Rachel in Love’, Pat Murphy (1987, novelette)
  43. ‘Forever Yours, Anna’, Kate Wilhelm (1987, short story)
  44. ‘Stable Strategies for Middle Management’, Eileen Gunn (1988, short story)
  45. ‘War and Rumours of War’, Candas Jane Dorsey (1988, short story)
  46. ‘The Mountains of Mourning’, Lois Mcmaster Bujold (1989, novella)
  47. ‘Tiny Tango’, Judith Moffett (1989, novella)
  48. ‘Identifying the Object’, Gwyneth Jones (1990, novelette)
  49. ‘Loose Cannon’, Susan Shwartz (1990, novelette)
  50. ‘Dispatches from the Revolution’, Pat Cadigan (1991, novelette)
  51. ‘The Road to Jerusalem’, Mary Gentle (1991, short story)
  52. ‘The Missionary’s Child’, Maureen F McHugh (1992, novelette)
  53. ‘The Story So Far’, Martha Soukup (1993, short story)
  54. ‘The Good Pup’, Bridget McKenna (1993, short story)
  55. ‘California Dreamer’, Mary Rosenblum (1994, short story)
  56. ‘Last Summer at Mars Hill’, Elizabeth Hand (1994, novella)
  57. ‘Coming of Age in Karhide’, Ursula K Le Guin (1995, novelette)
  58. ‘De Secretis Mulierum’, L Timmel Duchamp (1995, novella)
  59. ‘Merlusine’, Lucy Sussex (1997, novelette)
  60. ‘Noble Mold’, Kage Baker (1997, short story)
  61. ‘All the Birds of Hell’, Tanith Lee (1998, novelette)
  62. ‘Rain Season’, Leanne Frahm (1998, short story)
  63. ‘Echea’, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1998, novelette)
  64. ‘Patient Zero’, Tananarive Due (2000, short story)
  65. ‘Knapsack Poems’, Eleanor Arnason (2002, short story)
  66. ‘State of Oblivion’, Kaaron Warren (2003, short story)
  67. ‘Inside Out’, Michaela Roessner (2004, short story)
  68. ‘Griots of the Galaxy’, Andrea Hairston (2004, novelette)
  69. ‘Riding the White Bull’, Caitlín R Kiernan( 2004, novelette)
  70. ‘The Avatar of Background Noise’, Toiya Kristen Finley (2006, short story)
  71. ‘Captive Girl’, Jennifer Pelland (2006, short story)
  72. ‘The Bride Price’, Cat Sparks (2007, short story)
  73. ‘Tideline’, Elizabeth Bear (2007, short story)
  74. ‘Arkfall’, Carolyn Ives Gilman (2008, novella)
  75. ‘Legolas does the Dishes’, Justina Robson (2008, short story)
  76. ‘The Ecologist and the Avon Lady’, Tricia Sullivan (2008, novelette)
  77. ‘Infinities’, Vandana Singh (2008, novelette)
  78. ‘Chica, Let Me Tell You a Story’, Alex Dally Macfarlane (2008, short story)
  79. ‘Spider the Artist’, Nnedi Okrafor (2008, short story)
  80. ‘Cold Words’, Juliette Wade (2009, novelette)
  81. ‘Eros, Philia, Agape’, Rachel Swirsky (2009, novelette)
  82. ‘Non-Zero Probabilities’, NK Jemisin (2009, short story)
  83. ‘Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast’, Eugie Foster (2009, hort story)
  84. ‘It Takes Two’, Nicola Griffith (2009, novelette)
  85. ‘Blood, Blood’, Abbey Mei Otis (2010, short story)
  86. ‘The Other Graces’, Alice Sola Kim (2010, short story)
  87. ‘Agents of Repair’, Rosie Oliver (2010, short story)
  88. ‘Amaryllis’, Carrie Vaughn (2010, short story)
  89. ‘I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno’, Vylar Kaftan (2010, short story)
  90. ‘Flying in the Face of God’, Nina Allan (2010, short story)
  91. ‘Six Months, Three Days’, Charlie Jane Anders (2011, short story)
  92. ‘Nahiku West’, Linda Nagata (2011, novelette)
  93. ‘The Cartographer Bees and the Anarchist Wasps’, E Lily Yu (2011, short story)
  94. ‘Silently and Very Fast’, Catherynne M Valente (2011, novella)
  95. ‘Jagannath’, Karin Tidbeck (2011, short story)
  96. ‘A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel’, Yoon Ha Lee (2011, short story)
  97. ‘Immersion’, Aliette de Bodard (2012, short story)
  98. ‘The Lady Astronaut of Mars’, Mary Robinette Kowal (2012, novelette)
  99. ‘The Green’, Lauren Beukes (2012, short story)
  100. ‘Significant Dust’, Margo Lanagan (2012, novelette)

Carnivale brettanomyces

beer, geekdom
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Frank Boon talks about lambic at In de Wildeman

Some of the best pubs in Amsterdam joined forces this weekend to celebrate wild yeasts, the kind that gives a beer like lambic its particular flavour and characteristics. As part of that, In de Wildeman had Frank Boon give a presentation on the history of the lambic and related beers like gueuze and kriek. Which is fitting, because it was his brewery that was instrumental in saving these beers from extinction.

A short recap. Lambics are beers traditionally brewed in the Senne valley near Brussels, using various wild yeasts of the brettanomyces families (as well as others). It’s a sour beer, not very hoppy and cloudy. Gueuze is a mixture of young (one year old) and old (two-three years) lambics that undergo secondary fermentation in the bottle, slightly sweeter than proper lambiek. Faro is lambic with added sugar, while kriek is lambic with sour cherries added, anything from 350 grammes a litre and upwards. Lambics were originally brewed as a regional beer, as a tax dodge even to escape French taxation on spirits, one of those styles of beer that seemed old fashioned in the twentieth century but which has become hip again as more and more craft brewers are looking to traditional beers like this for inspiration.