We’re officially ready to start writing the actual Alliance Rising book, and along with it, we’re going to put Finity’s End into Closed-Circle. That’s a hundred or so years on…some of the same bunch.
Making progress.
by CJ | Oct 15, 2016 | Journal | 48 comments
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YAY! Can’t wait for an Alliance-Union universe story.
I’ve been rereading the Alliance-Union books and marveling at how beautifully constructed they are.
I can’t wait.
Huzzah! Our local library system is light on the A-U books; this might be my best chance to get them and read them for myself.
It will crack. Rattle. Pop.
Yay! Good news also about Finity’s End, which I’d love to see finally in ebook form. I’m due for a reread of the paperback (pbook? 😉 ) soon besides.
And, of course, I’m right in the middle of a Foreigner rerereread. But it gives me the runway to make sure I have all the Alliance books prior to a reread.
Just sharing this for the hilarity.
http://www.tor.com/2016/10/17/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-so-central-in-star-trek/
The Spousal Unit is an MIT engineer. They have to know him or, at least, one of his soul-clones!
I’m still laughing about “a chronometric flux toaster that toasts bread after you’ve eaten it.”
I think I may have gremlins or house-elves or pookas…or something.
I have (weirdly, somehow) misplaced the black walking/tennis shoes I wear most often, and only noticed it today before an appt., because I’ve been wearing really cheap sneakers for housework/cleanup/packing. No idea where I moved my good (and comfy) black tennis shoes. Hope I find them soon.
I have _3_ copies of Finity’s End. I’m not sure where I moved the hardbound copy and the 2nd/newer paperback copy. The original/older copy (pb, if it’s not actually the 2nd) is sitting on the small shelf where it was supposed to be. The hb should be up with others I wantto keep, but was not with my other Cherryh novels. Hmm. And the pb is missing, though it might be under the bed.
Some chance the hb or pb is/are in a box near my bed or a drawer. – But I want to find both, to reassure myself. When I do, I will relocate the hb with the other Cherryh books.
Other things going on make me think it’s not just me, but a gremlin or the like. – Maybe they like black sneakers and black circles?
On the plus side, the “missing” frying pan turned up: It had gotten turned on edge behind other pans in a cabinet. It is now fine…but I like the replacement, a different kind, better.
I just finished Finity’s. Really good book.
Finity’s End remains fittingly elusive, but I did locate my shoes at a fixed-point in space-time. I have a couple of places to look for the book in the morning, so possibly Finity was in port for a layover.
I wouldn’t mind if the Downers wanted to read it, but it gave me pause to wonder, if gremlins or pookas read it, what they would do with / to a starship.
I think I need atroupe of hose elves for the remaining cleanup.111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Oh good grief…cat on keyboard…please disregard all those 1’s. It was not a long binary anything.
LOL I just figured it was the hose elves blasting all the cobwebs out
Grins at weeble. Now I wonder if the hose elves, as opposedto house elves, wear hose and motley, or some other pattern. Rather than, say, pantyhose. Mine not to question the fashion sense of hose elves or house elves. 😀
Located the spare pb of Finity’s End, plus the first pb, pls the hb. Also located the hb of Merchanter’s Luck. Yay. — But a box or two (and somebooks) are notwhere I thought. (May be the box by the bed, with items on top, to clear away this weekend or tomorrow).
My pb of Merchanter’s Luck is presumaly there, or got put with bjd stuff somehow. I will be looking,as I wantto read from the old pb. Sentimental reasons, notlogical.;)
The Finity’s End comments remind me how much I wish that we had a source for ship patches! Talk about a great inside joke…
I designed a bunch but then realized how much it would cost to produce them. If anybody wants a Finity’s End patch, however, it’s real simple. Solid black embroidery, circular patch. Finity’s patch is space itself. Maybe one could do them on needlepoint fabric. The stitch for needlepoint is dead simple and produces a tapestry fabric.
Oh, that’s right. They are so arrogant, they don’t even give the ship’s name on the patch, do they? Green border? 😉
Can’t remember. Could be silver thread. The jumpsuits and jackets they use on dockside are silver.
both Finity and Dublin Again have silver jumpsuits for formals dockside. Seems like Finity’s patch does have a silver border where the ship’s name would be, Finity. But does the patch *say* Finity, or is it plain, unlabeled? What diameter is the black circle and what thickness (radius) is the circular silver border? I think I can try Inkscape this weekend and produce a drawing.
My memory has Dublin Again’s patch with a four-leaf clover in green,.Dublin Again in the circular border,.but I don’t recall if the text says the other color(s) of the patch. Silver? Black? Orange? All likely for an Irish-origin ship family.
I don’t recall Lucy/Le Cygne’s patches, both the real patch and the faux patch Sandor uses to go incognito. Seems like for Lucy, it’s a 1840’s style swimsit girl, maybe black or auburn hair? and for Le Cygne a swan, but in what position? as in flight, seen from above? Or a more usual swanpose from the side? A heraldic pose?
Finity’s is a plain black disc. 2.5 inch diameter, I’d guess, no name ribbon, no other id. Dublin is a black background with shamrock, ribbon-name-below. Dublin Again has a the same design with one slightly lighter green shamrock laid slightly off-register over the other, to the right. Le Cygne’s patch is the constellation Cygnus with a greyed swan underlaying the stars, black background. Can’t remember if I specified Lucy’s patch. Could be pretty basic, since we never specified.
Lucy is a black patch with a pale blue-gray center, if I’m recalling correctly. Cheap, and as close to Le Cygne’s as Sandor felt safe using.
Thanks! For the Dubliners, is their name-ribbon straight or an arc along the circle? IIRC, the book says he’d picked Lucy’s patch from one of the ready-made logo patches and added the name, to be typical of a non-descript marginer or small ship. I *think* it may describe Lucy]s patch as a 40’s style girl, much like those used on WWII fighter planes and cargo-hauling trucks (18 wheelers etc.). I’d need to reread and take notes. Oh – the Dublin Again patch: the lighter shamrok is behind and to the right of the first.Is the secondalso downward or upward from the first?
Arc, with divoted tag ends. Re Lucy, something tatty and nondescript, I’m sure. Dublin Again–has one shamrock slightly slid sideways—to the right. As I envision in.
Found it, Sander and Alison shopping to outfit the ship..
“Lord, Reilly- does it matter?”
” I’d think it would.” She touched the misembroidered nymph on his sleeve.” You could do yourself a class job. Or they’ve got the over-the-counter stuff. If you really want.”
That was low. He scowled and she never flinched. “Mind your business,” he said. “If I like the tatty thing it’s my business.”
” You’re really going to go blank like that. They’ll think you’re a pirate for sure.”
” I’ll just get me a handful of the tatty ones. Thanks.”….
“I’ll get some blamed patch. I don’t care what. But no shamrock. I’ll promise you that.”
Love that scene, now I’m hooked and I have to re-read the rest of the book.
Yay! And now I want to reread Merchanter’sLuck.Last reread it a few months ago, earlier this year. Not sure if my Inkscape skills will be up to doing the nymph, but eventually should be up to the task. I know I could’ve drawn her in Macromedia Freehand. Rven if the Lucy patch takes me longer, it will get me up to speed in Inkscape with a fun project suited to typical design needs.
1) Carly Simon’s song “You’re so vain” has made its way into a campaign ad! 🙂 So I’ve read.
2) The “Higgs Bison” has been explained. 🙂 Until the last Ice Age the bison in Europe was the “Steppe Bison”, but mitochondrial DNA of bison bones since is basically from cows. Cave paintings confirm there was a hybrid “cattalo” running around.
With all the distress I enjoyed a little humor.
Our early voting begins on Oct. 24. I may go early, just so I can ignore the ever more frantic political flailings (rather Muppet-like, but less amusing).
I’ve been fighting a cold for the last few days; heavy coughing has given me a backache. Tempting to blame it on politics.
If you’re coughing up congestion, next time you feel a coughing fit coming on, lie prone on a bed or kneel and lie your torso prone (face down) with your head hanging off. Easier to cough sideways than uphill against gravity. If it’s a dry cough, breathing steamy air may help (like in a hot shower). Get better soon!
After a visit to Old Blighty several years ago, we determined that the cold preparations they sell at Boots (the British equivalent of Walgreens or CVS) are superior to US ones by an order of magnitude, possibly because they seem to double down on the active ingredients. When my mom played tourist in GB last year, the thing we requested she bring back for us was a couple of bottles of Boots cough syrup!
I’ve tried to shy away from so-called “shotgun” remedies, which contain ingredients such as antihistamines, decongestants, aspirin, cough control, all mixed with a bit of ethyl alcohol. Antihistamines make me dizzy at times, and sleepy.
If I’m coughing and it’s due to a lot of mucus in my bronchial passages, I’ll take guaifinesin (sold in tablet form under the Mucinex brand). If it’s a dry cough, I’ll use dextromethorphan in a cough syrup. I’ll regulate the congestion with a decongestant, but shy away from antihistamines because of those side effects. One-shot-cures-all isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially if I’m taking a pain medication that specifically states to avoid aspirin or aspirin-containing products. Ditto for acetaminophen, since the new maximum daily dose is somewhere around 3000mg. It’s bad enough that I have to take the pain medications I’m using now (500mg naproxen in the morning, 220mg at night).
OTOH, NyQuil’s effectiveness seems to rely on the fact that it knocks you out enough that coughing and not being able to breathe through your nose won’t wake you up. In our house, we refer to it as ‘Coma’. I do agree on trying to take the minimal amount of drugs (and the appropriate ones) that will alleviate your symptoms. The Boots version of ‘dry cough’ syrup uses glycerine and liquid sugar, not dextromethorphan, and appears to have been flavored with anise.
I’m with Joe on this. For the common OTC stuff, generally I’d rather have remedies for each individual condition, to be mixed as needed for the current symptoms. They don’t always occur together.
Might be codeine, which I think requires a prescription in the US now. That could lead to problems.
Yep, not only that, half the hoo-rah on Twitter in the campaigns is done by bots posting a random set of praise for one candidate and random blasts at the other, all to drive Twitter activity and encourage the faithful to keep posting. Isn’t it nice to know robots have political agendas, too? Not just your garden variety offering of live-stream piracy, but candidate puffery. Arguing with a bot online has got to be frustrating: the things can pick a buzzword out of YOUR post and select a counter-post just as effectively as a true believer. 😉 Welcome to the future of politics. Perhaps you can buy your own bot-time to go up and argue.
I came across an interesting article by David Malki, the author of Wondermark. He subscribed to the email lists of all the candidates in February. He analyses and reflects on the kind of emails he received.
“The email list is where the candidate speaks directly to their base, in terms they calculate are most likely to drive their base to take action — to actually open their wallet and send in a contribution. In other words, each candidate is saying “I think I have the kind of supporter who will respond most productively to this specific message.”
So the emails become an interesting lens through which to examine each campaign’s opinion of its supporters. Do they think they’re the type of people who’re driven by hope, or by fear? By sincere human appeals, or by stern orders? By pleading, or by threats?”
So which candidates sent their supporters mail which is indistinguishable from spam, except that they are selling politics rather than ‘male vitality products’ or fake university diplomas? (Three guesses.)
https://extranewsfeed.com/in-february-i-subscribed-to-all-the-presidential-candidates-email-lists-d9b10ca77b4d
Hmmm… There’s a light-hearted, short story in there about these (lucid/conscious) “bots” CJ describes above who develop their own political analysis, opinions… and then run (or maybe hack into the system and substitute, but that is less light-hearted) their ideal candidate for Botdom, rather than work for human candidates.
Any chance getting Rimrunners or Merchanter’s Luck on Closed-Circle? Would love to see all of the Alliance-Union books available on ebook, but these two are particular favorites. Look forward to a new story in that universe.
There’s an in-my-head universe where spacers wear blue denim and blue chambray, with some kind of ship patch, even if it’s just the name. Fleet (it has no other name at this point) wears gray instead of blue, with the ship name only; identity doesn’t go with the ship but with the whole. Maybe they’re dark gray, but not blue. (Fleet does law-enforcement, search-and-rescue, and exploration.)
Interesting concept! I would suggest that the uniformity works best for ships which always operate together. The more time they spend apart, the more they diverge, and in these cases, ships may go months to years by themselves; that turns you inward, I think. Also, I think it is human nature to compare ‘them’ against ‘me’–we are competitive by nature.
More to the point, the unique clothing enables each crew to identify their own at a glance when things go pear-shaped at dock!
Planet Nine is in the news again. Still hypothetical, but it explains anothe mystery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/10/20/the-mysterious-planet-nine-might-be-causing-the-whole-solar-system-to-wobble/
I am very excited about another story in the A/U universe! I hope they go past Eversnow.
coincidence? I ran across Rider at the Gate while looking for Merchanter’s Luck, but I’m still looking for my copy of Cloud’s Rider. However, I did set aside Visible Light and Alternate Realities; the latter pairs Merchanter’s Luck and 40,000 in Gehenna.
OT: Just how clever are ravens? I asked at the Tower of London
Scientists have found that these birds are as brainy as apes
Great article. Thanks for posting it.
I read an article several years ago in a copy of National Geographic about crows and ravens. Were you aware that corvids mate for life? That they’re very affectionate toward their mates? I’ve seen experiments where they put something the bird wants into a jar, or some other container that requires the bird figure out how to open the container and get the treat. They’re DARNED smart!
Between UI’s and my eyesight and being rusty at it, the patches are going to take longer than I’d thought. I could not get Inkscape’s Snap-To to work reliably for me. I have an old Windows Adobe Illustrator CS4 and am back to using that. But aarrgh, some things it does get in my way or don’t act like I expect or don’t act consistently, again, expectations. I will make it work. I want to try a challenging task like the Lucy nymph and the swan, Cygnus constellation, for Le Cygne, with flat-color and gradient faux 3D versions for each. Finity’s patch is just a start. I have Finity’s End out to rread also. researcg,;) Meanwhile, back to what I’m supposed to be doing; patches in my off hours. Cleanup and move prep in my on-duty hours.
That evening, I tried twice to get Illustrator CS4 to open and let me edit the file. No-go. So it’s Inkscape or maybe Sketchbook.
Goober did his disappearing act again. Not sure if he was outside or in. After much calling and looking around by me, finally, he did show up, then promptly disappeared because he was getting too much attention. Geez, kitty. Next time, I won’t e so easy to get worried or to fuss over you when you appear again.