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some things I said on Baycon panels
Unfinished Tolkien: The Children of Hurin
It's a common criticism of Tolkien that Frodo and the Fellowship get every possible break from providence. Even acts of evil - the attack of Saruman's orcs on the party, the final treachery of Gollum - turn unexpectedly to good, and if the reader doesn't notice this, Gandalf points it out for you. But this isn't the work of a clumsy authorial hand. Providence, fate, luck, really are looking out for Frodo. Tolkien was a Christian and believed in these things. Frodo can't waft to the Mountain without exertion, but if he makes the supreme effort, then his fate will help him. In The Children of Húrin the exact opposite situation prevails. Morgoth has placed a mighty curse on Húrin and all his kin. It is the essence of this curse that Morgoth need not reach out and zap them on individual occasions. Their luck has gone all wrong. Where for Frodo and the Fellowship, even evil deeds done to them rebound for good, here even the kindest and most generous deeds rebound for evil; and Túrin's own character dooms him in the same way that Frodo's character saves him. Circumstances all go against Túrin despite all his efforts, and this story is far more explicit about the role of fate than anything Gandalf says, for Morgoth explains it all to the captive Húrin, and - in a frame of bone-chilling cruelty - binds him and makes him watch it unfold: all the sorrow that will strike down his wife and children.Plot Point Research
I absolutely agree that it's important to get details correct, and the best way to do so is not by research but by really knowing the subject. If it isn't something physical that you can learn by doing, but a matter of vocabulary and terminology, read lots of original sources and see how the terms are actually used. There seems to be a requirement that American fantasy authors can't write about British nobility without getting the terminology all wrong. The rules are very complicated, but you should make at least an effort to study them. In fact, if you follow just one simple rule it'll eliminate 90% of the errors, and that rule is: you can't be Lord Firstname and Lord Lastname at the same time. So if your character's name is Lord Peter Wimsey, he's called that or Lord Peter, but he can't be called Lord Wimsey. And if he were Lord Wimsey, it'd be just as wrong to call him Lord Peter. They mean totally different things.Energy Policy
My only personal connection with energy policy was a stint working for a pilot nuclear fusion project at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, pushing papers around rather than formulating policy. So I claim no expertise on fusion, but the impression I got there accords with the comments of the previous speaker, that fusion is a hopeful but technically tricky, rather Rube Goldbergesque proposition. So I'd just like to point out that we already have a tested, functioning, fairly reliable fusion reactor a mere 93 million miles away, which strikes me as a safe distance for it, and my proposal for an energy policy is a humble suggestion that we spend a little more time thinking about how best to utilize it.The Seven Wonders of the World
Two of the original Seven Wonders were Really Big Statues, so for the modern list I'd like to consider some of the really big, awe-inspiring statues I've personally seen. There's a reconstructed replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, and inside by the altar, as is speculated that the original once had, is a towering, forty-foot high statue of Athena, painted in bright, garish colors as is now believed the Greeks did. You walk into the building and see that thing looming at you, and you say "Oh my god!" which is the right reaction, as it is a god. Then there's a statue outside the Museum of Natural History in New York. To enter the museum, you walk up this long flight of outside stairs, and at the top of the stairs is a huge, monumental, oversize statue of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse facing out towards Central Park. You walk around the statue, and behind it are the doors to the museum. So when you're done in the museum, you open those same doors, and as you do so, right in front of your face is the biggest bronze horse's ass you have ever seen. This remains one of the most memorable sights I have ever seen in New York, and I would like to nominate that horse's ass as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
7 wonders and New York
(Anonymous) 2007-05-29 07:32 am (UTC)(link)Now almost every where you go in the world there is some attempt at a copy, and the bolder companies even advertise they are NY style, or for those really in the know Ray's Pizza. (and yes I know the story that it started in Naples but it was popularized by American culture.) And what about the knishes and the other assorted street foods?
Re: 7 wonders and New York
(Anonymous) 2007-05-29 06:01 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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Plot Point Research: On the other hand, Emerson!
Energy Policy: The 93-million-mile-away reactor is good but insufficient for our needs if we're going to go on flitting around the globe virtually and physically as you and I have both become accustomed to do.
The Seven Wonders: (1) I rather enjoyed the movie "Night at the Museum," but was pretty irritated at their turning the oversize bronze equestrian TR on the steps, into an indoor TR of normal proportions. (2) If we want "monumental" in our Wonders, may I nominate (in no particular order) Prince's ego, Bush's ignorance, and Nixon's gall.
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The reactor's output is nominally accessible; however, the engineering problems involved capture, transmission, and (perhaps) storage are quite as formidable as those involved in making fusion feasible as a source of usable energy. Solar power works great up to a certain point -- and my brother is designing a plant right now for a company that is going to help push it along -- but there are some serious pragmatic problems that liberal optimism about "clean power" kind of ignores.
Right now I've become a bit of a fission booster. New reactors are a lot better (safer, more efficient) than the heirlooms America is kind of stuck with, and new technologies make a large part of what we used to think of as "hazardous waste" potential fuel.
As for "foolish," basically, things like Louis Wu going the wrong way around the world -- things that really don't much affect one's enjoyment of a story. (Obviously if Wu's itinerary had been an important part of the plot that would be quite a different matter.) As I once heard Gardner Dozois say, "Disbelief is meant to be suspended, not hanged by the neck until dead." If an unfact gives disbelief that short sharp shock, then the inconsistency is not foolish.
I realize that's not a definition, but I'm finding "definitions" in the classic sense less and less useful as I get older.
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Possibly not, and for one important reason above all: the reactor is already built and we only need one of it. We don't really know how difficult it'd be, because we haven't really tried. My suggestion, remember, was to look in to it more, not that it was a perfect and ready answer.
New reactors are a lot better (safer, more efficient) than the heirlooms America is kind of stuck with
Yeah, yeah, that's what they said the last time. Sorry, but I don't believe these people any more. Nothing can possibly go wrong *click* go worng *click* go wonrg *click*
Fission has one other terminally serious problem ignored by the boosterism I've seen. We cannot possibly build enough reactors to fill the energy gap necessary to fight global warming. At best it's only a tiny part of a solution. Whereas the 93-million-mile fusion reactor is ready and built and supplies enough energy. Let's look more into how to utilize it.