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.

Snow started locally midmorning and went on till just after lunch. It was very pretty. None of it lay locally, I’m glad to say, though fingers crossed that we don’t have any ice tomorrow. So far (touch wood) not quite the drama that the newspapers have been warning is us coming.

Gave way to temptation and ordered some art books from Dover Books, as follows:
http://www.doverbooks.co.uk/pp/Images_On_CDROM/Fine_Art_on_CD/120_Great_Fairy_Paintings_CD-ROM_and_Book.html
http://www.doverbooks.co.uk/pp/Images_On_CDROM/Art_Nouveau%2C_Deco/60_Great_Art_Nouveau_Posters_Platinum_DVD_and_Book.html
http://www.doverbooks.co.uk/pp/Images_On_CDROM/Fine_Art_on_CD/120_Great_Victorian_Fantasy_Paintings_CD-ROM_and_Book.html
I have some Cunning Plans about printing out some images from these on fabric and incorporating them in quilts. Time will tell if these Cunning Plans actually work. I already have a few other books in that series (Japanese Prints, Japanese Ghosts & Demons, and Decorative Butterfly Illustrations), and the theory seems sound, so we shall see. In between, you know, everything else I’m doing.

HMV is apparently about to go into administration. Dammit. I like being able to go to a high street store and look through new CDs/DVDs/etc. Even if one can download tons of stuff, or buy from amazon, it’s not the same.

The government has unveiled its new pension policy. Analyses seem mixed. I do not wish to be too prejudiced, but at the same time I would not trust the current government to pour its own piss out of a boot with instructions written on the sole. Therefore I am nervous. I know it’s about twenty-five years off for me yet, but even so.

The things I remember most about America and Canada (to be precise, Toronto and Boston) are rain. Rain and wind. Rain, wind, Sandy, snow, and delays at airports. Honestly, it’s a good thing that when I go to an airport I pack my shoulder-bag with at least four books, a notebook, my DS, my new Kindle, and possibly a couple of magazines . . .

Er, maybe too much information there. And I often sleep on the plane anyhow. But I need them! Even if it gives me a permanent list to one side!

Anyhow, I remember the rain, and the snow, and the wind, and the . . .

No, not really. What I do remember are my friends. And the book shops. And the Royal Ontario Museum. And the craft shops. And the shopping with friends. And the introducing one friend to Sherlock, and to Offenbach’s La Belle Helene, and oh dear god excuse me while I go and bang my head against the wall until I can get “Alors, pars, pars pour Cythera!” out of it.

Also, I should not be allowed into a book shop or craft shop together with enablers friends. But you knew that.

And I seem to have made a second sale on my etsy shop within a week. I can’t quite believe it. And should probably not count on it keeping up. But it’s still cool.

I swear (constantly) that when I was younger, I didn’t appreciate weekends or holidays. I even — shudder — got bored by them. The hours would pass by, slowly, and I could find nothing that I wanted to do: all my books read, the outside landscape of garden or common ground uninteresting, the helpful housework that my mother might suggest needing doing somehow unattractive, the various craft ideas that had been pushed on me unwanted . . .

(Yes, I did learn to knit and sew when I was a lot younger. I did have things like embroidery kits or basic knitting wool and needles given to me as presents, or in an attempt to get me interested. I’m not sure whether the reason why I knit and sew now, when I didn’t knit and sew then, is because I have more interesting materials and projects to work with, or, more embarrassingly, because of a porcupine/camel shan’t! reflex whenever anyone else suggests I do something or tries to get me interested in it. I like to think that I’m mostly over it now, but to be honest, I know there are books I’m never going to read or films I’m never going to watch precisely because people have pressed them on me so enthusiastically and irritatingly.)

But I’m wandering. I do appreciate weekends and holidays now. I wish they were longer.

What a good thing that I have a holiday coming up.