Bruce Lee’s screentest for his audition to play Kato for the Green Hornet tv series.
geekdom
Seventyfive years of fabulous writers
Women? Writing science fiction? Editing science fiction? Even *gasp* reading it? Don’t let the blurb writer of Sign of the Labrys hear about it… Sandra McDonald has put together a periodic table of 117 women in science fiction, available at her website as well as a youtube video. Below is the list of featured writers, authors and others. I’ve bolded the ones I own books of, italicised, the women I’ve read something of (short stories count) and starred those I never heard of. How many of the following do you know? And who do you miss? Myself, just looking at my own books, I don’t see Liz Williams, Patricia Wrede or Josephine Saxton.
- Andre Norton
- C. L. Moore
- Evangeline Walton
- Leigh Brackett
- Judith Merril
- Joanna Russ
- Margaret St. Clair
- Katherine MacLean
- Carol Emshwiller
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Zenna Henderson
- Madeline L’Engle
- Angela Carter
- Ursula LeGuin
- Anne McCaffrey
- Diana Wynne Jones
- Kit Reed
- James Tiptree, Jr.
- Rachel Pollack
- Jane Yolen
- Marta Randall
- Eleanor Arnason
- Ellen Asher
- Patricia A. McKillip
- Suzy McKee Charnas
- Lisa Tuttle
- Nina Kiriki Hoffman
- Tanith Lee
- Pamela Sargent
- Jayge Carr
- Vonda McIntyre
- Octavia E. Butler
- Kate Wilhelm
- Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
- Sheila Finch
- Mary Gentle
- *Jessia Amanda Salmonson
- C. J. Cherryh
- Joan D. Vinge
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
- Ellen Kushner
- Ellen Datlow
- Nancy Kress
- Pat Murphy
- Lisa Goldstein
- Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
- *Mary Turzillo
- Connie Willis
- Barbara Hambly
- Nancy Holder
- Sheri S. Tepper
- Melissa Scott
- Margaret Atwood
- Lois McMaster Bujold
- *Jeanne Cavelos
- Karen Joy Fowler
- Leigh Kennedy
- Judith Moffett
- Rebecca Ore
- Emma Bull
- Pat Cadigan
- Kathyrn Cramer
- *Laura Mixon
- Eileen Gunn
- Elizabeth Hand
- Kij Johnson
- *Delia Sherman
- Elizabeth Moon
- *Michaela Roessner
- Terri Windling
- Sharon Lee
- Sherwood Smith
- Katherine Kurz
- *Margo Lanagan
- Laura Resnick
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Sheila Williams
- Farah Mendlesohn
- Gwyneth Jones
- *Ardath Mayhar
- Esther Friesner
- Debra Doyle
- Nicola Griffith
- Amy Thomson
- Martha Wells
- Catherine Asaro
- Kate Elliott
- Kathleen Ann Goonan
- *Shawna McCarthy
- Caitlin Kiernan
- Maureen McHugh
- Cheryl Morgan
- *Nisi Shawl
- Mary Doria Russell
- Kage Baker
- Kelly Link
- Nancy Springer
- J. K. Rowling
- Nalo Hopkinson
- Ellen Klages
- Tanarive Due
- M. Rickert
- *Theodora Goss
- *Mary Anne Mohanraj
- S. L. Viehl
- Jo Walton
- Kristine Smith
- *Deborah Layne
- Cherie Priest
- Wen Spencer
- K. J. Bishop
- *Catherynne M. Valente
- Elizabeth Bear
- *Ekaterina Sedia
- Naomi Novik
- Mary Robinette Kowal
- Ann VanderMeer
Not a game
Sometimes the internet just works. Cause in point, a guy on MetaFilter asking for help with a Russian friend being lured to the US under false pretensions:
A Russian friend of mine may be in a dangerous situation in Washington, DC.
My friend and former student K arrived in DC yesterday, along with a friend. She came over on some kind of travel exchange program put together by a Russian travel agency called ‘Aloha’. They paid about 3K for this program.
The program promised a job offer in advance, but didn’t deliver. They said they would send one via email, but failed there, too.
Her contact in the USA barely speaks English, doesn’t answer her calls but does answer mine. He has asked her and her friend to meet in NYC tonight around midnight, with promises of hostess work in a lounge. Yes, I know how horrific that sounds- that’s why I am working all possible angles here.
She is not going to NYC but I need some help handling and understanding how to handle this- I have a friend helping them with a cheap hotel for the night, but that’s all at the moment. I am presently driving to LA and could fly her and her friend to meet me there on Saturday, but couldn’t house them indefinitely. I will be monitoring this thread over the next hour.
Guess what? In the next few hours and days the collective intelligence of MeFi does help and resolve the situation. Information is sought and found, contacts are established, people chip in to help — end result: everybody safe and sound. It’s fascinating to read in hindsight, when you know the outcome, though must of course have been incredibly stressful for the people involved. What struck me was how much it reminded me of the similar, fictional scenario in Walter Jon Williams’ This Is Not a Game, a confirmation of how well he gets internet culture…
Pay no attention to the software behind the curtain
Bit of a bother with my bike today. A couple of weeks ago I had finally gotten a new bike, after my last one had been stolen more than a year ago. At the hospital S. is unfortunately still in there’s a bike repair place which also sells secondhand ones and when I looked there they had a nice, proper Raleigh bike, one of those that you can’t help but ride sitting up ramrod straight, for less than 200 euro. In very nice condition and looking as if it came straight out of the fifties, I was a bit wary of leaving it out on the streets. Which is why I usually stall it in the underground automated parking at the ferry when I go to work. And this uses some sort of Windows based software to do all the work, which I know because the first time I wanted to use it, it had blue screened. Not a good start, but I had been using it without problems ever since.
Until today. Checked my bike in with no problems; wanted to check it out tonight, no go. The chip and pin machine, with which you pay and which uses your bank card to recognise which bike you’re attempting to collect, was borked. So I called the emergency line, they asked the usual questions, then got me called back by somebody with some clue, he asked for the last four digits of my bank pass, then used that to locate and get my bike. The video above shows the physical side of that process; thanks to the monitor screen normally used to explain the system, I got to see the software side of things. It could’ve been an old skool DOS programme, a light blue background with hideously big buttons, with a list of ticky boxes in red (occupied) or green (free) followed by the bank pass number (only the last four digits shown iirc) the customer had used. The admin checked mine and hit the button “get bike” et viola, there it was.
As a card carrying geek it’s always interesting to get such a look at the software behind the curtain — and because it was a nice hot day, I had no problem waiting a bit longer than normal to get my bike either!
The flatpack trebuchet
Unfortunately, not yet available at your local Ikea and it needs slightly more than just an allan key: the flatpack trebuchet.