(We got a good 7 inches of snow. The white fluffiness looks lovely, but it definitely turned my thoughts towards roasting your toes by a fire with a steaming mug of hot chocolate and something yummy to nibble on. After 3 rounds of shoveling the heavy wet stuff, however, I have no energy left for epic gingerbread builds. [So out of snow-shoveling-shape!] I’ll just admire the hard work of others.)
Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!
I have to write a biographical paragraph for a conference. Ugh. I hate writing about myself in the third person.
I’m trying to be all
but feeling more like
Oh well. It goes with the territory, I guess. I like to think that being awkward about your own accomplishments is one of the tests of being a decent person. (But, then, does congratulating myself on being a decent person mean I’m actually not..? Argh! Why is it so hard?!)
Oh well. That’s my dose of self-pity for the day.
Images: Bust of Caesar, photograph by Andrea Wahra via Wikimedia (Naples; 1st c. BCE; marble) and text from Caesar, Gallic War 1.54, collage by Erik Jensen. Harriet Jones via brittaperry
“Secrecy in Karhide is to an extraordinary extent a matter of discretion, of an agreed, understood silence – an omission of questions, yet not an omission of answers.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
In the country of Karhide on planet Gethen, acceptable modes of behavior and communication—and through them, people’s social standing—depend on what isn’t said as much as what is. In that sense, the world reminds me of Jane Austen’s novels, where discretion and the ability to read other people’s reactions are highly valued. And as a Finn, I certainly know and sympathize with an understood silence. In Finland, silence—even beyond an understood silence—is normal. In the U.S., for me, silence is a way to connect to my home country and therefore a solace.
Le Guin, Ursula K.: The Left Hand of Darkness. New York, NY: Ace Books, 1976 [originally published 1969], p. 287.
Now, I don’t typically go for horror or zombies, but I’m actually looking forward to this one: the trailers and clips make PPZ look kick-ass. Check ’em out:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies | official trailer #1 US (2016) Lily James Matt Smith via moviemaniacsDE
“My daughters were trained for battle, sir, not the kitchen.” – Mr. Bennet
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Official Trailer #1 (2016) – Lily James Horror Movie HD via Movieclips Trailers
(There seems to be a bit of perv cam action going on. I hope this is as much as there is.)
I know nothing of the 2009 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, but I do love some of the movie adaptation’s stars: Lily James as Elizabeth Bennet (James is no stranger to elegance based on her work in Downton Abbey) and Matt Smith (of the 11th Doctor fame) as Mr. Collins, and, finally, Charles Dance and Lena Headey (most lately, in genre interest, of the Game of Thrones excellence) as Mr. Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Ugh, pretty gruesome. Then again, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that to see and enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, one must be in a suitable frame of mind.
It’s a good time to be a Sherlock Holmes fan. There are now plenty of adaptations to choose from. There’s the BBC’s Sherlock if you like visual inventiveness and whip-crack dialogue. For a more traditional procedural that does interesting things with characters, there’s CBS’s Elementary. For Hollywood thrills you can go back a few years to the films starring Robert Downey Jr. as the great detective. For series in the Holmesian spirit without the same characters there’s the medical drama House or the mystery/comedy Psych.
However the setting may change, there are some key elements of Sherlock Holmes’s character that remain the same: the keen powers of observation and deduction, the cycles of intense focus on a problem and lethargic dissipation, the antisocial habits that make him near impossible to live with.
Oh, and Sherlock Holmes is a total jerk-ass.
The standard interpretation of Holmes in modern media is that he is an asshole with no patience for anyone else, either because he’s not neurotypical in some fashion or because he just can’t be bothered to care about anything so pedestrian as decent manners. He gets away with it because he’s just so brilliant.
Well, lately I’ve been rereading the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle, something I’ve been meaning to do for years. I’ve gotten very used to the modern Holmes, so I was surprised to rediscover that the original Holmes wasn’t like that at all. In fact, Conan Doyle’s Holmes is compassionate and generous.
My latest reading project rolls on with The Left Hand of Darknessby Ursula Le Guin (first published in 1969).
Genly Ai is sent to planet Gethen (also known as Winter due to its extremely cold climate) as an envoy for the Ekumen of Known Worlds, an interstellar conglomeration for trade and cultural exchange. His mission is to convince the planet to join the Ekumen, easier said than done on a world where the conditions are semi-arctic even at the warmest time of the year and where cultures and technologies change at a glacial pace. (Pardon the pun!)
I knew a little of Left Hand before reading it. I knew that it’s highly regarded, that the inhabitants of the world are androgynous (or something) and that there’s an arduous trek across a glacier (or snowy steppes or somesuch) that’s somehow significant.
I also knew that some people describe the book as being about gender. Gethenians are all of the same sex – or, rather, of no sex until their monthly reproductive cycle known as kemmer comes around. At that point, depending on who else is in kemmer nearby, a person may turn either into a Gethenian male or female, and it’s quite usual for someone to be both a mother and a father.
I’m not entirely sure yet what Left Hand is about for me. The Gethenian biology does get a lot of attention, but I suspect it’s because it’s so unfathomable to Ai. The importance of hospitality and cooperation in the cold climate is also significant, as are the balancing of opposite forces (like you-me or individual-society), the complex Gethenian honor system shifgrethor and their aversion to war. Karhide’s neighboring country Orgoreyn sounds like a communist regime, with its people described as units instead of citizens and its communal resources or endless bureaucracy; Orgoreyn may, in an unprecedented step, be moving towards starting a war with Karhide, and we might have a Cold War echo there.
Structurally, Left Hand avoids infodump by alternating the present-day narrative chapters with short chapters on Gethenian mythology. I was a little bothered by how much longer the primary narrative chapters were, for it made reading the novel choppy; I may well change my mind about that if I read Left Hand again.
I’ve seen Le Guin’s writing described as zen-like. The descriptor fits her style in Left Hand well, especially when she’s describing traveling across the icy landscape. A fascinating read, and one I may well like to get back to after mulling it over. Considering that I very much enjoy and have read Le Guin’s Earthsea stories several times in two languages, I can’t believe I haven’t read The Left Hand of Darkness before!
Image by Eppu Jensen
This post has been edited.
ICBIHRTB—pronounced ICK-bert-bee—is short for ‘I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read This Before’. It’s an occasional feature for book classics that have for some reason escaped our notice thus far.
At the end of last year, I wanted to make myself something fun. Since the new Star Wars release date was coming up, that something turned out to be a BB-8 bag.
I used an old pair of pants and various fabric scraps to make it, so the materials were completely free. The bag took me a few nights to make – combining all of those little pieces adds up surprisingly fast. The most time-consuming part for me, though, was deciding on the droid design.
Here’s a quick how-to in pictures:
1 of 4: Deciding on the droid design and cutting as large piece as possible from one pant leg. 2 of 4: Adding stripes and pieces of fabric to the outside to suggest pieces of the droid. 3 of 4: Making box corners, adding an edge binding strip to the top, and adding an inner pocket. 4 of 4: Finished bag.
Not bad for a little fur ball zero dollars! 🙂 If I were to make another, though, I’d probably try a different droid design and fiddle with the inner pocket so that it has more compartments.
Images by Eppu Jensen
This post has been edited.
In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
You ever leave a comment on someone’s blog, or at least try to, logged in your WordPress account already, happily press the “Post Comment” button, having already confirmed that your little Gravatar icon shows up correctly, only to have the &$%#&%* platform turn on you to ask “Are you [username]? You are being asked to login because [your email address] is used by an account you are not logged into now”?
WHY YES I AM ME, THAT’S WHY I’M FRACKING LOGGED IN ALREADY DID YOU NOT FRACKING SEE MY LOGIN!!!
Sure, there might be a solution to the problem, but it requires research that you don’t presently have the time for. As if you need another item on your to-do list, anyway, so you just put up with the stupidity. And besides, shouldn’t the point of saving your settings be that once you save ’em, they’re available for future use. RAAAAHHH!
Aerial view of part of the Great Zimbabwe complex, photograph by Janice Bell via Wikimedia
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city in Zimbabwe (and in fact has given the modern country its name). Built over centuries beginning in the 9th century, the site was a center of power for the medieval Shona (or Kalanga) kingdom and part of the trade networks that spanned the Indian Ocean. It was abandoned in the 15th century and stands in ruins today, but even in its ruined state it is impressive.
Wall of the great enclosure, photograph by Jens Klinzing via Wikimedia
The remains of numerous stone enclosures spread over hundreds of hectares. At its height, Great Zimbabwe may have housed between 15,000 and 20,000 people. The surviving walls reach heights of five meters and are built of stone blocks assembled without mortar. Several different complexes occupy different positions ranging from hills to near the river. The significance of these different complexes remains unclear, but it may indicate that the center of settlement gradually moved over time, away from the more defensible hill sites to the more accessible valley sites, perhaps to better engage with the oceanic trade networks. Ivory and gold were Great Zimbabwe’s major international exports and trade goods from the Arabian peninsula and China have been found at the site.
Interior walkway showing the quality of the stonework via Wikimedia
One noteworthy feature of the enclosures is their shape: neither rectangular nor circular but irregular curved shapes adapted to the forms of the landscape on which they sit.
In the colonial period, popular theories held that the site must have been built by ancient European or Asian colonizers. The biblical Queen of Sheba was often mentioned in connection with the site. Although archaeologists realized as early as the early twentieth century that Great Zimbabwe had been built by Africans, the colonial administration in what was then Rhodesia suppressed any such claim. The assertion that Africans were incapable of building such a complex site and needed European guidance to achieve any level of civilization was key to the justification of imperial domination. Colonial authorities could not tolerate any evidence that Africans were capable of creating sophisticated works of art and architecture on their own.
Part of the hill complex seen from the valley below, photograph by Macvivo via Wikimedia
Thoughts for writers
I have two reasons for sharing a little bit of Great Zimbabwe.
First, it is another example of architecture that does not depend on European examples. When doing our worldbuilding as writers, it is easy to fall back on the things that are familiar: European castles, Egyptian pyramids, Greek temples, and the other things we’ve seen before. Let yourself be inspired by the other amazing things people have built. I’d love to see a city inspired by Great Zimbabwe at its height turn up in a fantasy story, even one not set in an explicitly African-inspired world.
Second, this is another example of how politics can screw up good historical scholarship and so why you need to read broadly and get outside familiar frames of reference. Even today, while the Queen of Sheba is generally left out of it, claims that Great Zimbabwe was built by Arabs or Phoenicians still occasionally creep into popular histories.
History for Writers is a weekly feature which looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool. From worldbuilding to dialogue, history helps you write. Check out the introduction to History for Writershere.
Co-Geeking 
You must be logged in to post a comment.