bohemiancoast | Reading

Because I've been ill, my dentist requires before dental surgery of any kind - even something as non-intrusive as replacing a crown which fell out, my current concern - a verification from my physician that I'm OK for such procedures.

If you go through the medical center's formal procedure for such verifications, the medical records department will send out (with the patient's HIPAA approval) a long list of all the medical procedures you've undergone, but without anything saying that it's OK to go ahead. They're just the records department, after all, and apparently judging that your procedures aren't counter-indicative to dentistry is left to the dentist. But the dentist is no physician; how would she know?

Fortunately, my primary-care physician - who isn't actually much involved in my current treatment, though he's following its course - is willing to bypass the formal procedure and fill out the form himself. However, this time it took three attempts to fax it to the dentist before it came through.

Meanwhile, a pain while chewing, elsewhere in the mouth, is revealed as a probable fractured tooth, and a periodontist will have to look at it to see if it can be saved. It's three weeks until I see the periodontist, and another week before I get the temporary crown, so patience is a virtue.

james_davis_nicoll

And I know 700 pages PDFs are a vote-loser.

Any of my reviews from 2025 that people especially liked?

james_davis_nicoll

                  2022   2024   2025   2026   
Novel             1151   1420   1078   1153
Novella            807    962    739    807
Novelette          463    755    394    414  
Short Story        632    720    610    507
Series             707    677    621    687
Graphic/Comic      340    457    265    362
Related            453    775    431    479
Dramatic, Long     597    763    610    650
Dramatic, Short    386    490    451    471
Game               --     334    298    357
Editor, Short      319    530    322    305
Editor, Long       182    254    162    234
Pro Artist         233    270    214    228
Semiprozine        312    338    334    324
Fanzine            243    286    243    224
Fancast            384    693    376    370
Fan Writer         368    363    329    308
Fan Artist         230    180    186    176
Poem                --     --    219    202
Lodestar           451    345    268    244
Astounding         416    349    341    290

james_davis_nicoll

Congratulations to the finalists!

2026 Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Award Finalists

( Read more... )

james_davis_nicoll

How much of the universe does *science as we know it* open to us?

The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories by Poul Anderson

andrewducker

1. The Types of Board Game: (tags:games boardgames funny ontology )

tamaranth

2026/058: Hidden in Snow — Viveca Sten (translated by Marlaine Delargy)

All these fucking men, exploiting vulnerable women. [p. 386]

First in a new series of crime novels set in the Swedish town of Åre, a quiet ski resort surrounded by mountains and forest. Hanna Ahlander's life has imploded, both professionally and personally: her boss has 'sent her home to think things over' and clearly wants her gone, and her boyfriend has broken up with her -- leaving her homeless.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: disappointed

ffutures

This is a bundle for the RPG Land of Eem, the "whimsical tabletop fantasy roleplaying game of colorful characters exploring the Mucklands from Star & Flame Games and Exalted Funeral." The elevator pitch is "Lord of the Rings meets The Muppets as whimsical adventurers young and old make perilous journeys across the Mucklands"

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/LandOfEem

The rules emphasise role playing and negotiation, while still allowing for combat where necessary, and the most dangerous monsters of the game are tycoons who dominate and exploit everyone else. Any resemblance to modern life is, of course, purely coincidental.

I'm not convinced it's one I want to play, but there are some fun ideas and it's fairly cheap, and if you like whimsical settings it's probably worth a look.

james_davis_nicoll

GRT bus drivers will be in a position to strike on May 1. In the event of a strike, buses will not operate. The Ion will.

james_davis_nicoll

A bundle for Land of Eem, the whimsical tabletop fantasy roleplaying game of colourful characters exploring the Mucklands from Star & Flame Games and Exalted Funeral.

Bundle of Holding: Land of Eem

james_davis_nicoll

Congratulations to the finalists!

2026 Aurora Award ballot announcement

The nominees are ( Read more... )

andrewducker

Would you like your mind blown?

To imagine the number of ways a standard pack of playing cards can be uniquely shuffled, follow these simple instructions:

Go to the equator with a deck of cards and start shuffling them. Shuffle them so that every second you produce a new and unique ordering of cards. Keep shuffling them over and over, a new ordering, every second, for a billion years.

At the end of a billion years take a single step forward.

Keep shuffling.

Every billion years keep taking a single step forward.

Once you have circumnavigated the Earth, take a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean. Keep shuffling. Keep taking a single step every billion years. Keep taking a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean each time you walk around the Earth.

Once the Pacific Ocean is dry, refill it and place a single piece of paper on the ground.

Keep shuffling.

Keep taking billion year steps. Keep taking a drop out of the Pacific Ocean with each return to your start point. Keep refilling the Pacific Ocean once dry. Keep building your tower of paper one sheet at a time.

Once your tower of paper is as tall as Mount Everest, throw it away and place a single grain of sand on a weighing scale.

Don't stop shuffling.

Don't stop taking a step every billion years.

Don't stop emptying the Pacific Ocean and refilling it to build an Everest of paper.

Don't stop throwing your paper tower away to place another grain of sand on your weighing scales.

On the other side of your scale is a bull elephant. When it raises off the ground you will be half way done.

To see the maths behind this, click here.

(With thanks to my brother Mike, who saw a version of this which wasn't as good, rewrote chunks of it and did the maths.)

james_davis_nicoll

Looking for more romance in your SF? Look no further...

Five Science Fictional Solutions to Finding Your One True Love

james_davis_nicoll

tamaranth

2026/057: You Dreamed of Empires — Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer)

It never occurred to them, of course, that half the sauces of the dishes they had just eaten were moderately hallucinogenic, and thus their delectable sense of relaxation was in truth a welcome to the esoteric between-place where the Colhua permanently resided. [loc. 278]

I had been expecting a fictionalised account of Hernán Cortés' 'conquest' of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the so-called Aztec empire. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: jubilant

calimac

The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem, Julie Phillips (Norton, 2022)

I hadn't known that Julie Phillips - author of that fabulous biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree - had published another book until I heard her mention it in the course of reading an entry from Ursula K. Le Guin's blog, an online project that's going to involve a lot of guest readers.

It's an analysis of how women writers and other creative artists have balanced their work and the practical job of being a mother, mostly illustrated by example. There's a full chapter on Le Guin, which is why I immediately sought this book out. Phillips is working on Le Guin's biography, and this is the third article I've read of hers on that subject, all written with the same assuredness and insight into character that characterized her Tiptree book.

Each of the featured subjects took an entirely different approach to the problem addressed by the book. Phillips describes Le Guin's method as separating out her two jobs. Once her children were in school, she could write during the day, and taking care of the children and household tasks the rest of the time could be handled because, while her husband had a full-time job, when he was at home he was fully involved in household tasks. For instance, he took the children to all their appointments because Ursula didn't drive. She writes that, while one person can't do two jobs, two people can do three.

The other full-chapter subjects are the writers Doris Lessing, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Angela Carter, and the painter Alice Neel. Interstitial chapters bring in other subjects, including the likes of Susan Sontag, Margaret Atwood, and Shirley Jackson whom I'd like to have read more about. Unfortunately there's no index to enable the reader to dig these nuggets out.

andrewducker

I'd been hearing talk about how good Frieren was for a while. It seemed to have come out of nowhere to instant acclaim, and to actually be about things. So a month ago, when I was looking for something to watch during the occasional 20 minutes when I get lunch alone, I thought I'd give the first episode a go. And while it didn't make me cry it came very close, and it had an atmosphere I hadn't encountered anywhere else, so I was completely grabbed from the beginning, and now that I've finished the first season I feel somewhat bereft.

It is, in background, a bunch of totally standard fantasy tropes. But it does something interesting with them, which is to base itself after the point most stories end. This is the story of what happens to Frieren, an immortal* elven mage, after her adventuring party defeat The Demon King. And how she lives in a world where the friends she makes live much shorter lives than her, how she connects with the people around her, and what she does when she realises that this matters to her.

There is plot, and action**, but mostly not that much of it. The point is the people, and watching them orbit each other, learn from each other, or completely fail to. The characters are interesting, and I love feeling that there is much more to most of them than is obvious on the surface. I particularly loved the first few episodes, which set everything up, but even once we get past past these in to the ongoing arc*** I have found myself looking forward to the next episode more than in almost any TV I've seen in the last decade.

I suspect some people will get put off by some of the tropes, both the ones taken straight from fantasy/roleplaying and the ones that are stock anime conventions. But I could happily look past those and enjoy the meat of the show, which was excellent. I eagerly await season 2. The only nervousness I have is that the original manga has been on hiatus since October, and the creators have clearly struggled with the production schedule, so I don't know whether it will ever be completed. But, frankly, it's not (at this point) the kind of show where I need an ending, I'm delighted just to be along for the ride.

* It is not clear how long elves live. But it is clearly at least thousands of years.
** And when it happens it is gorgeously animated
*** I'm not sure it's a plot, as such. Things are happening, but I'm not convinced that it's going somewhere in particular more than it is just following characters around to see what they get up to.