.:. Another Likely Story

I used to have a running bet with myself whether I’d get published in Day Job (scientist, for a certain value of scientist) or Night “Job” (fiction) first. Well, that’s been answered by a review committee. In a few weeks my name will be part of the lineup for a paper in PNAS*. And some indeterminate time after that it’ll be on another piece of non-fiction writing that I’ve been working on.  Both pieces are utterly unrelated to anything fiction-wise (and, more to the point, are under my Nom de Science) so I won’t spam the links here.  Sorry to have made you read all this way before saying so, whups.

* Since I live within a reasonable distance, I plan to celebrate upon publication by taking the issue in question and perhaps a bottle of coke that has been … enhanced … and parking myself on the steps of a certain structure with both items. If you see a strange woman being dragged off the hallowed marble steps, stop and say hi!

As mentioned in the Peter Grant series, which is a brilliant work that everyone should read, the real life UK law enforcement/London Met has an IT system called called the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System = HOLMES.  At one point, it is remarked that when the Met put out an updated version of the database they wanted to name it SHERLOCK, but nobody could make up a good acronym, so it was named HOLMES 2.

Well, I think Aaronovitch should hold a contest to find the Best Acronym. My entry would be Services/Historical Emergency Records of London's Official Constabulary of the King. (WHAT. I'm allowed to dream.)

Also, this led me down the path of pondering what would be a good substitute for HOLMES in the universe of BBC's Sherlock series (see: Celebrity Paradox). Current top two contenders: DUPIN and WOLFE. Other contenders: MARPLE, POIROT, WIMSEY. I love Father Brown but that name is  too common, and the series isn't terribly well known.

(Where have I been?  I've been doing far more nonfiction writing as of late than fiction, due to my Actual Timesuck Job.  I don't know how everyone else in the blogosphere seems to balance the two so well, kudos to each and every one of you.  I'm getting a few things ready for submission, but it's taking ages.)

1. In 1979, Jorge Luis Borges edited a 33-volume anthology of fantastic literature, in Spanish, titled The Library of Babel (like his own marvelous story of that same name).  The Rumpus has found the titles -- though not all are available online, and many are only available in Spanish -- and amassed a number of reading links for one's pleasure here.

2. Borges being one of my favorite authors, if not the most favorite -- I once found out that there was a Borges museum, and was distraught that I couldn't go.  The Significant Other consoled me by pointing out that the Perfect Borges Museum would simply stand you in the lobby, ask you to imagine the most perfect museum to Borges, and then send you out the door saying that was the entire exhibit.

Tossed and turned when I tried to sleep yesterday, and my mind caught on this piece by Tin, discussing Bede's Ecclesiastical History Of the English People. Excerpt below.

Looking closely at the text, which is beautiful in itself, one perceives that the thane's thought opposes certain age-old habits of mind which persist even today. Those who, like Vigny, see life as a luminous interval between two infinite periods of darkness readily depict those two shadowy zones of before and after as inert and undifferentiated, a kind of frontier of nothingness. For Christians, despite their belief in a blessed or infernal immortality, what will follow after death (they pay little attention to what came before life) is perceived, above all, as eternal rest. Invideo, quia quiescunt, said Luther. For this unknown man, in contrast, the bird issues from a storm and returns into a tempest. Between these two storms, the thane interprets the flight of the bird across the hall as a moment of respite (spatio serenitatis). That's quite surprising. Edwin's thane knew perfectly well that a bird which has flown into a house of men darts about madly, running the risk of dashing itself against walls, of burning itself in the fire. Life as we know it is hardly a moment of respite. Yet, there it is.