.:. 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!

Yesteryear's Tree, by Nankichi Niimi.  English translation and accompanying artwork by the lovely Tongari.  A tiny and bittersweet tale, translated perfectly.

As a note, the original Japanese version is available at Aozora Bunko (青空文庫, or, "The Open-Air Library"), a Japanese digital library created "to provide broadly available, free access to Japanese literary works whose copyrights had expired." Do check out Nankichi's other works if you have the time; they are invariably lovely.

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.)

(Perhaps I should've saved this for Sunday ...)

I'd like to steer gentle readers towards An Angel's Guide To Bureaucracy, a hilarious and profound short story by Pei Yi.  Set in an afterlife where each religion has its own department to handle the souls of the dearly departed, the story takes the reader through the hijinks that ensue between the Taoism and Christianity branches when it's discovered that a soul has made a last-minute religious conversion.

"A deathbed conversion?" she echoed, skeptical. "But it wasn't captured by the system at all. How did you get this data? Are you sure it wasn't a mistake on your side?"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure it isn't. Deathbed conversions can be easy to miss, so we have special receptors for that. Maybe the universal system missed it?"

"But the funeral rites?" She paused. "Oh, the Final Act."

"Right, funeral rites can be overridden by prior religious affiliations at the soul's own discretion," he quipped. After a long history of souls complaining when they'd been ignored and given the wrong religious rites by family members, enough consensus had finally been reached for the revision seventy years back. It was still recent enough to be the last act listed under the universal post-mortem processing laws - and it would probably take two more inter-religion wars before any new laws got close to approved.

The rest of the story can be read here!

Went to London for the first time last week!  It was really wonderful and I'm already missing it and fruitlessly fantasizing about sending my CV over to UCL.  What, I'm allowed to dream.

1. I pre-gamed for the trip by mainlining as much London urban fantasy as I could*, so I tore through A Madness of Angels and Rivers of London -- which, by the way, Amazon neglected to inform me that a US edition existed, resulting in my ordering a UK copy which resulted in three weeks of shipping, and of course for consistency's sake I had to get the sequel in the UK edition as well.  I picked up a copy of Moon Over Soho in Oxford, along with a really pretty leather bookmark, and I may have ignored some gorgeous scenery in the Cotswolds because I was too busy inhaling the book.  No regrets.  Since I forgot to pick up Whispers Under Ground, so I guess there will be another three-week wait, shaking my fist over here.  (Not only were the books very awesome, they were also helpful for teaching this US resident some vocabulary.  Okay, watching all of BBC Sherlock twice helped, too.)

2. I spent some time idly pondering urban fantasy and its trappings.  As many have noted, Charles de Lint is probably the progenitor of all this, and interestingly, he didn't actually use the big city, which in our times is probably the first setting to come to mind when one speaks of urban fantasy.  Rather he used small towns and colored up their featureless solitude by importing folk tales and deities ... which Neil Gaiman takes on again in American Gods. And then in contrast there is Madness, in which magic is inherent to the city, is born out of the city and its rules, spontaneously generated out of and shaped by urban detritus; the city has now come alive if not aware.  I think it comes from what the writer is relatively more concerned with: the magic or the city?  Madness is all about London; the magic is a lens, a kaleidoscope through which we can turn the city inside out and shatter it into bits and see how it comes back together.  Rivers and American Gods lean towards being more about magic and myth and how they might hold together/tear apart a city or a world.

* Urban fantasy pretty much tells you what the city and the author wish it could be, up to and including the imperfections that make the masterpiece.  As Sabina pointed out, it gives you the dreams of the city, which I find to be much more interesting than anything found in a travel guidebook.