Archeo-logical.

I'm currently reading Jack McDevitt's The Engines of God, which among other things deals with an archeological investigation of an extinct alien race. Although the archeological team has implausibly* managed to develop a partial knowledge of the alien language, they also rely on visual cues and dating techniques to establish developments and setbacks in the alien society.

At one point, there's a reference to the aliens losing some very basic knowledge due to dark ages at various points in their history, to the point of rediscovering twice that their world was not the centre of the universe. Really, thought I? I wonder if the later societies revere the earlier more accomplished cultures? This wouldn't require writing as a key - Western architecture owes a strong debt to classical Roman and Greek roots, via the British Empire and Napoleonic France. We also display frequent use of Roman numerals and Latin tags - again, information that could be observed and compared, rather than based on being able to read any of the words involved.

Later, they're examining an enigmatic alien structure, and one of the characters comments that "...you’d expect the central tower to be the tallest of the group. Not the shortest. They just don’t think the way we do.”  Part of the bias toward higher central towers in our culture is a legacy of our collective militaristic background. Castles are constructed with a higher central keep so that if the walls are taken by the enemy, the defenders can retreat to the central fortifications and still maintain the advantage of height.  Architecture with lower central features might well indicate a less bellicose cultural background.

Ha, maybe I should have been an archeologist - or a science fiction writer.

- Sid

* I'm sorry, but I'm completely sceptical about the possibilities of translating a completely alien language without some sort of Rosetta Stone.  For the alternative viewpoint, recommended reading is H. Beam Piper's short story Omnilingual, in which scientific constants such as the table of elements provide an initial point of access for translation.  Which might well work, but you'd be a long time figuring out Shakespeare from that.

Plus popcorn sales.

Here we are, the global financial situation is in a state of near-chaos, there's record unemployment in countless countries, and yet, and yet, there was enough spare money floating around for The Avengers to pull in an international box office total of over 1.25 billion dollars to date. 

Perhaps Greece should make a superhero movie.

- Sid

P.S.  Yes, that's right, the original 1963 lineup of the Avengers did not include Captain America, Hawkeye or the Black Widow, and Ant Man and the Wasp didn't make the cut for the movie.

The Other Change of Hobbit.

What I offered to do was to sit in the front window of a bookstore for a full week, and to attempt to write a complete story every day for six days.  The store I offered to do this gig for is the famous sf shop in Los Angeles, A Change of Hobbit....(We here in Los Angeles who work in the genre feel very protective about A Change of Hobbit, and we like to help out when we can.)

Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine

Okay, history lesson.  Many many years ago, back before Star Wars dragged science fiction kicking and screaming into the forefront of popular culture, being a science fiction fan was like living in a small town.  It was a relatively small community of writers and fans in which everyone sort of knew everyone else, or at least recognized their names when they appeared on a book cover.

And even though it was long long before Twitter™ and Facebook™ and their ilk turned everyone's lives into public events, it was easy to find out about what was going on just by reading editorials and letters to magazines and introductions to novels and so forth.  As a result, even though I was a teenager living on the fringe of northern Ontario in Canada, I was aware that there was a science fiction and fantasy bookstore in California called A Change of Hobbit, and later on some kind of related store called The Other Change of Hobbit.

Fast forward to 2012, and here I am on the BART train, headed north from San Francisco to Berkeley en route for The Other Change of Hobbit.  The original Change of Hobbit in Los Angeles has been closed for about a decade, and sadly, the Other Change of Hobbit web site indicates that they've been also having financial problems, and were in fact closed for six months, re-opening in March of this year.

I have to be honest and say that I wasn't very impressed by the store space itself, due to the plethora of banker's boxes blocking access to aisles and bookcases.  This may have been somehow related to the aforementioned money issues, but it made casual browsing a bit difficult.  However, the selection was good, and I was pleased to add a chapbook of Ursula K. LeGuin poetry to my collection, along with a couple of new paperbacks and an Ace Double.*

I was also pleased to meet the store cats, two affable shorthairs named Sam and Trouble. After some initial cautiousness, Sam concluded that I was a trustworthy sort and decided to hop up on my shoulders and ride around while I browsed. (We eventually came to a careful parting of the ways in the L section of the new paperbacks.)

Overall, I have to say that I preferred the genteel natural wood presence of Borderlands to the cluttered industrial feel of The Other Change of Hobbit.  Regardless, I hope that they successfully weather their monetary storm and keep their part of our collective history alive.

- Sid

* For those of you unfamiliar with Ace Doubles, I'm in negotiations with my sister about an explanatory guest posting.  Since these negotiations have been ongoing for the entire run of The Infinite Revolution, we may need to start discussing some sort of collaborative effort...