A truly beautiful post here at Making Light today:

In coming up with a creed, the biggest question was “What is the Nature of Christ?” One side, led by the pious and scholarly Arius, held that Jesus was the first and greatest of God’s creations (that is, essentially, Top Angel). The other side, championed by Athanasius, held that Jesus was actually Totally God Since Forever. Both sides had copies of old fanzines to support their position.

(When Constantine heard this he said, “Can’t you guys just get along? Why not agree to disagree like every other friggin’ philosopher since Plato was a pup, and get on with your lives?” to which both sides answered “No!!!!eleventy!!!” and thus Nicea.)

At the time Athanasius was best known for his blog, Athanasius Contra Mundum. (The top of every page was marked with a flashing icon labeled “Breaking!” while the bottom of each page said, “Must credit Athanasius!”)

Did you ever hear of Giovanni Battista Piranesi?

He was born in Venice, and lived from 1720 to 1778. He was an artist famous for his etchings and engravings of Rome. He measured a large number of the ancient monuments. He supervised the restoration of a church, published ingenious and bizarre designs for chimney-pieces and original furniture, and after his death his son published a collection of his plates, which came out at twenty-nine folio volumes containing about 2000 prints. (Thank you, wikipedia.)

But the interesting thing, from my current point of view, is his Prisons.

Piranesi’s Prisons (Carceri d’invenzione or ‘Imaginary Prisons’), is a series of 16 prints that show enormous subterranean vaults with stairs and mighty machines. They’re validly described as Kafkaesque or Escher-like. The pictures are the sort of thing that would be filmed by a crossover effort between Peter Jackson and Clive Barker. They show huge dark ruined arches, stairs, machineries, cells.

Piranesi started the series in 1745, when he was in Venice (from 1743 to 1747 – after that, he was in Rome). The first state prints were published in 1750 and consisted of 14 etchings, untitled and unnumbered, with a sketch-like look. The original prints were 16” x 21”. For the second publishing in 1761, all the etchings were reworked and numbered I–XVI (1–16).

Here’s a complete set, on a Russian site: http://gravures.ru/photo/dzhovanni_piranezi/tjurmy/10

And here’s a set of the first state 14 etchings: http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/Dutch/Renaissance/Facsimiles/PiranesiCarceri1750/

This is Plate VII: The Drawbridge:

Plate VII: The Drawbridge

I’m writing about a dreamlike dark Venice. These really should come into it.

When running a roleplaying game with a group of players, they will often want their characters to specialise in different areas. It’s a bit like a caper movie – you have the one who’s in charge, the one who’s the tech specialist, the one who does the fast-talking con job, the one who handles the physical stuff or who’s a gun expert, etcetera. (A classic form of this would be the A-Team: planner, face man, vehicle driver, physical/tech expert.) In this case, it’s the GM’s job to make sure that all the characters have a chance to show off their skills and get a few neat moments in the limelight. (Well, the GM can’t always make sure that it happens, but she can at least try to make sure that there will be opportunities for doing so in the story/game.)

If one character chooses to declare that she’s a linguist and a specialist in translation, then the GM will no doubt give her a few moments in the limelight where she has to talk to someone whose language nobody else in the group speaks, or translate a vitally important document, or whatever. Which is fair and good. However, the GM can’t make every point in the game hang off her linguistic skills. It would be unfair to all the other players. It would also be unrealistic to force every scenario/campaign to have a vital linguistic component – well, possibly if you’re playing Call of Cthulhu or Bookhounds of London, but otherwise it can feel a bit forced.

The nice thing about being an author rather than a GM is that you don’t have to comply with such a principle.

(rubs hands together)

I was watching original series Star Trek earlier this evening (the Horror Channel is showing reruns – don’t ask me why they consider Star Trek to be appropriate to the Horror Channel, I have no idea, I simply take what I can get). It was the episode The Devil In The Dark. For those not quite as enthusiastic as I am, that’s the episode with the Horta (not Horla – that’s a different story, and an entirely different crossover if they ever wrote it), the rock-creature who is apparently committing wholesale murder on a mining planet, but who is only trying to drive the miners away because they’re smashing her eggs. As the story progresses, Kirk and Spock establish communication with the creature, find out that she is a mother and that her eggs are at risk and that she is intelligent, and end the story by convincing the mob-minded miners of this, and establishing a relationship of mutual toleration, where the miners don’t smash any more eggs and stay out of the Horta’s way, and she and her offspring dig tunnels which the miners can then use for their mining.

Quite a standard episode, you might say.

I’m just trying to think of the last time I saw a plot along those lines in more recent science fiction.

I suppose part of the problem is that these days, it is assumed that your nice kind good Federation-type exploring spaceships are going to have automatic guidelines/protocols along the lines of “assume other forms of life can exist”, “don’t wipe out the native race”, “check to see if there is a native race before you send in the miners”, “examine the mysterious egglike nodules that are turning up all over the place”, and so on. Plus, Star Trek did the story first. All reasons not to see the story elsewhere, or for it to have a lot more camouflage/additional material if it does show up.

Or perhaps we’re just all too cynical these days.

All right, I am now slightly over the first manic rush of “I got my book/s accepted!” and the first manic fear of “how can I possibly live up to what people are expecting from me?” and can get back down to work.

A lot of work.

Write write write.

Where’s a Watson when you need one?

And this is the news.

http://torbooks.co.uk/2013/06/06/tor-acquires-new-series-think-doctor-who-with-librarian-spies/#more-9960

Pan Macmillan’s Tor imprint is delighted to report  the acquisition of The Invisible Library by debut UK novelist Genevieve Cogman. Senior Commissioning editor Bella Pagan bought World rights in this novel and two others by Cogman from Lucienne Diver at The Knight Agency. These were acquired in an enthusiastic pre-empt.

The concept behind these hugely entertaining books has inspired comparisons such as ‘Doctor Who with librarian spies’. The redoubtable Irene is a secret agent for the ultimate inter-dimensional library, a covert organization that gathers knowledge from parallel worlds. Irene’s latest assignment posts her, and her enigmatic assistant, to an alternative Victorian London. Their goal being to retrieve an extremely dangerous book. But  when she arrives, it’s already been stolen – and soon she’s up to her eyebrows in thieves, murderers and secret societies – with a dash of the supernatural in store.   

I still can’t believe it. But yes. Winter Irene is coming!

I really shouldn’t buy that whisky sea salt fudge from that shop in town. I go through a single bag in a couple of days and then wonder why I’m feeling as if I’ve been overeating.

I’ve been tidying my bedroom/study. A number of large piles of RPG supplements and beading/patchwork magazines are now carefully organised stacks of RPG supplements and beading/patchwork magazines. So much better.

Now that I’ve got a bit further with “making up a bag using cotton scraps via foundation piecing”, I need to move on to trying the next step, which is “making up a bag using silk scraps via foundation piecing”. On the negative side, this will produce a much more fragile bag. On the positive side, some people may want a more-fragile-but-made-of-silks bag. It’s hard to satisfy a taste when you don’t really share it. I know I’d always go for the more solid bag.

Have had some fantastic news. Can’t talk about it yet, but will babble like a maniac once free to do so.

According to a friend of mine who has just started keeping bees, “if you want a dozen opinions, ask ten beekeepers.”

My first thought on reading that was to remember the Lord of the Rings reference about “… go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.” Or something along those lines. Ambiguity was definitely involved. Though that was in counter-quote to “do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” (This is again mostly from memory, so I apologise for any errors in the quotation. I hate errors. Errors are bad. Errors have to be publicly forced to confess their crimes and executed… er, wait.)

And there’s the line from Babylon Five somewhere about understanding being a three-edged sword.

Modern culture – offering “multiple viewpoints” as the norm. Yes or no? Or is there another viewpoint on the subject?

I’m just back from Amsterdam, and while many things have impressed me about the city (the wide open streets, the small narrow streets, the canals, the cutting cold wind and occasional snow sweeping down those wide open streets, the book markets, the prints, the stamps, the coffeeshops, the restaurants, the museums, the apple tart for breakfast) one of the things that will stay with me is the sudden sweeping attack of cyclists.

Honestly. You’re just strolling down the pavement, nice and casually, and possibly you might be in the marked cycle lane but that isn’t always very clear, or you’re turning to cross the road and looking to right and left, and then suddenly there is an explosion of cycle bells and half a dozen cyclists are swooping towards you, and you need to rapidly reconfigure your current geographical location.

Cycles were everywhere. There was a cycle rack in the elevator lobby of the hotel where I was staying, and there were always half a dozen bikes chained up in it. And you had interesting varieties of bicycle: not so much the racing type, but the sort with large baskets, suitable for carrying things – and I mean practical things, not just a teeny little rack-let on the back – or even a pram-attachment on the front of the cycle, so that mother could cycle along briskly with her babies stashed in the pram in front of her. I even saw one which had twins in it.