Out of Ambit
  • Home
  • Writing
  • Travel
  • Home life
  • Media
  • Obscure interests
  • Hobbyhorses and General Ranting
2021 Hugo nomination eligibility: the Young Wizards series
Maluns
Owl Be Home For Christmas
Vintage Scots Christmas recipes: “Good Fare Christmas”
From the Young Wizards universe: an update
Irish life: The things you don’t discuss, Halloween...
Q&A: Why is my Malt-O-Meal lumpy and how...
From the Baking-While-You-Write Department: Spicy Apple Pie
Peter Morwood on Moroccan preserved lemons
Greek mythology, feminist reclamation of lost/ancient tradition, and...
Changes coming at YoungWizards.com: your opinion(s) solicited
Outlining: one writer’s approach
A project in progress: translating “La Patissière des...
Pulling The Lever
Weird bread
Peter’s Isolation Goulasch
  • Home
  • Writing
  • Travel
  • Home life
  • Media
  • Obscure interests
  • Hobbyhorses and General Ranting
Out of Ambit

Diane Duane's weblog

Category:

Fantasy and SF

On the desk...
Fantasy and SFWritingYoung Wizards

From the Young Wizards universe: an update

by Diane Duane November 6, 2020

Let me start by thanking everybody who saw the previous posting  discussing the changes to come to the YoungWizards.com domain, and who took the time to get back to me with their thoughts. Some response to those (and action on them) will turn up in this post.

So first of all, let me answer what are likely to be some of the most immediate questions, and then get into some detail on present forward planning.

Is there another Young Wizards novel in the offing? Yes, there is! YW #11 (as yet untitled) is plotted, and is in the process of being written.

How soon will we see it? The simplest answer to this right now is “Not in 2021.” The book is not presently under contract to any publisher, and I’m not inclined to go much further forward with it until that situation is sorted out. Also, I’ve set aside the 2019-2020 period to deal primarily with other fictional universes of mine — specifically the Middle Kingdoms LGBTQ universe — and that work will be going on through the end of this year and into early 2021.

Okay, how soon will YW #11 happen after 2021? Right now there’s no telling. I’m sorry not to have anything more definite for you at this point. I think, though, that I can safely promise you that the book will turn out to have been worth waiting for, when it does finally go to press… as issues are being resolved in this work that have been hanging fire since So You Want To Be A Wizard. As regards this one, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night…” seems like the right note to strike.

Are we going to see anything new in the Young Wizards universe in the shorter term? That’s the plan, yes! Also in the writing process right now is Interim Errantry 3: A Day At The Crossings. This book will contain (as UK/Irish people might say) “what it says on the tin”:  a detailed look at a 27-hour day at the Crossings intercontinual worldgating facility—an 80K-100K-word “braided novel” with several main storylines. The plan at the moment (assuming that other presently-running projects don’t interfere) is for IE3:ADATC to be published (in print and ebook form) in Q3 of 2021. (If you don’t know about the previous works in this group, they are Interim Errantry and Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal.)

…About those other ongoing projects, BTW: besides Tales of the Five #3: The Librarian, which is (finally!) nearing completion, I do have other work on my desk that’s either too early in its development to be discussed, or that I can’t talk about for contractual or similar reasons. Sometimes stuff under contract unavoidably interferes with stuff I’m doing on my own nickel… so please bear that in mind.

…Now on to less “new”, but still interesting issues. Some of you will have seen the post that went up at Ebooks Direct a couple/few weeks back regarding the effects of Brexit on our ebook sales business. The Young Wizards books went into their first non-North American English language editions via the UK’s Transworld/Corgi all the way back in 1991… and the thought that the UK YW fans (a steadfast, patient and faithful bunch) were going to be shut out of access to the YW-verse by the irrationality of their government has been bothering me.

That said, there’s no avoiding the likelihood that the UK government is having too much fun painting itself into an increasingly Europhobic corner to see sense before the end of the year and cooperate in establishing something like a Brexit-with-deal, as opposed to the catastrophic no-deal option yawning before them. So this has become an opportunity to advance some plans that have been bubbling around here for a while.

Therefore: as of January 1, 2021, we’ll be launching the revised-and-updated Young Wizards New Millennium edition novels in both paperback and ebook formats worldwide*, via Amazon. (And yes, I know: I share a lot of people’s ambivalence regarding using this particular distribution entity. But right now it’s the best way to go forward with this effort and still maintain control over which countries and territories are in play—as I must do to be in compliance with my existing contracts.)

A bit more detail on this. I can’t independently release the NMEs in print format in North America and the Philippines, because those rights are held by the present US/Canadian traditional publisher, Harcourt. Nor can I “go wide” on the NME ebook rights in the North American market: similar (if a bit more complex) reasons. But, that said… both print and ebook rights in the rest of the world are another matter.

So starting January 1, 2021, if you’re in any country that is not the USA, Canada or the Philippines—barring any unexpected difficulties at the big-river end of things—you will be able to buy print versions of the Young Wizards New Millennium Editions via Amazon. (Hardcovers remain an exercise for some time in mid-2021.) Amazon is presently putting in place ways to deal with the UK’s Brexit madness, which will relieve me of the effort of handling the paperwork-and-VAT complications at my end.

An additional bonus: this tranche of books and ebooks will also include Games Wizards Play, which until now has not been available through sales channels anywhere outside of North America. …In countries which have previously had English- or other-language versions of the Young Wizards texts (France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Russia, China…) the books will be branded as New Millennium editions. In other countries, the NMEs will be the default editions and will not need to wear any additional branding.

We are also looking at doing outside-of-North-America audiobooks of the NMEs… but since there’s no publisher to finance them (or more accurately, I’m the publisher), I must bear the cost. And if we’re going to match the quality of the US-based Recorded Books audiobooks, it’s not going to be cheap. (In particular, I would really like to retain the fabulous Christina Moore, who has done all the YW books so far. We’ll have to see if that’s possible.) This side of the project, therefore, is one that is unlikely to start up before 2022, and will depend on the success of the NMEs’ world publication to finance them. So we’ll discuss this aspect of things further in a year or so.

Anyway: news about the progress of this project as a whole (which involves creating new print versions of the ten main-sequence books and new cover art, etc., for all of them) will be posted on YoungWizards.com and the soon-to-open YoungWizardsSeries.com as it becomes available. So watch those spaces for more details! This is going to be a ton of work, but it’s been waiting in the wings for a long time and I’m excited to be able to get it going at last.

Other somewhat less-fraught YW news: After some consideration, I’ve decided that the Young Wizards discussion forums should indeed be retained, updated, and polished-up preparatory for a relaunch. This work will take place over the next couple/few months as events permit, as it’s going to be (technically speaking) a bit challenging and will also require a moderately significant cash input for new software and augmented server space.

…So, to finish up: Some of you will be wanting to know how you can assist or speed one or more of these efforts. Right now the best thing you can do is go to Ebooks Direct and buy stuff. (In particular, the YW NME box set, which remains on sale at 50% off.) Or, if you’re all stocked up, you can always use the buy-the-writer-a-coffee option over here. (Among other things, now I have to run off and buy a couple of blocks-of-10-ISBNs for the new YW paperbacks/ebooks, yay…) If those aren’t methods of assistance that suit you at the moment, I’d ask that you’d pass the link to this post on to others who might be interested. Retweet it if you saw it on Twitter: reblog it, if you saw it on Tumblr: share it, if you saw it on Facebook. Please and thank you!

And thanks for being interested, everybody! It’s a pleasure to be doing this work for you. 🙂

*Except for North America and the Philippines. Weird, but that’s how it is.

(meanwhile: early noodling with YW NME International cover design and concept art is already under way…)

Nita, Kit and the Lotus

November 6, 2020
5 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
A Terragen work screen
Digital artEuropeFantasy and SFSwitzerland

Playing with Terragen: the Jungfrau Massif

by Diane Duane February 13, 2020

I’ve been using Planetside Software’s Terragen program/app for cover work and concept art for a long while, with varying levels of success. (Mostly having to do more with my own learning curve than any inherent problem with the software.) Terragen is a high-end tool used by professional film production companies and digital artists all over the place, and is both insanely powerful and fairly challenging to get to grips with. To see what someone really adept can do with it, check out — as an example — the Terragen-based Paramount 100th Anniversary logo animation. Clouds and atmospheric effects have always been one of Terragen’s strongest suits: they get beautifully shown off in that clip.

…Anyway, this particular piece of digital art goes back to cover work I was doing ten years or so ago, on the initial ebook editions of Raetian Tales: A Wind from the South. As I now have much better equipment to work with, a lot of these early files are getting re-rendered at much higher resolutions than were available to me then.

This one’s a particular favorite in that creating it involves using actual terrain data derived from aerial or (in some cases) space-based radar. Pictured here, under some midsummer dawn, is the Jungfrau Massif — the three-mountain group whose downsloping south sides meet in what the Swiss call Konkordiaplatz or Place de la Concorde. These three massive snowfields give birth to the Aletschgletscher:  one of the world’s great glaciers and a UNESCO World Heritage site. (…While it lasts. Climate change is already eating away at its magnificence.)

The Swiss national mapping service has made digital elevation model (DEM) terrain data openly available for those who might want to use it. Since some parts of RT:AWFTS take place near the Aletsch (or indeed in it…) and in the neighborhood of the Jungfrau, I made it my business to glom onto the digital data as quickly as I could and started playing around with it. The bare terrain comes courtesy of the Swiss: the snow is added using a “clip file” — kind of a Terragen plugin.

I’m storing this image here (and the link to the page where it can be seen at full size) so that I can find it quickly, as right now my graphics collection is in a state of flux. Many thousands of images in various states of processing have piled up over the years, to the point where it’s become necessary to develop a multiply-tagged, cross-indexed, opus-number-based management system for them before I can’t find anything any more. That work is starting now, so every now and then some favorite image will pop up here. Just so people know…

The Jungfrau massif in digital format

 

February 13, 2020
1 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
The Five contemplate a Hugo Award
BooksDublin 2019ebooksEbooks DirectFantasy and SFMiddle Kingdoms

2019 Hugo Nomination Eligibility: the Tale of the Five Series

by Diane Duane January 16, 2019

(Above: the Five contemplate a Hugo Award, or at least something that looks like one)

So it’s that time of year when nominations open up for the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Awards, and it turns out that work of mine is eligible to be nominated for one in 2019. (I confess to being a little excited, since some of my earliest work is involved — not to mention my very earliest award-nominated work — in a universe for which I have something of a soft spot.)

The award in question is the one for Best Series. And the series in question is the Tale of the Five series (also known as the Middle Kingdoms series or “the Door Into…” books): The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset. Also involved here is the first of a bridging series of five novella-length works dealing with events occurring between the original trilogy and the main series’ upcoming completion in The Door Into Starlight.

The WSFS rules say:

To be eligible for nomination for a Hugo award for Best Series in a given year, a series must comprise at least three works totalling at least 240,000 words, and one work in the series must have been released during the previous year.

The first three works in the Tale of the Five series total approximately 330,000 words. The first bridging novella, Tales of the Five: The Levin-Gad, was published in August 2018. (The other four works in the bridging sequence will be published during 2019 and 2020.)

To make it easier for people to decide whether they’re interested in nominating the Tale of the Five for the 2019 Best Series award, all the nominatable (…’nominable?’ whatever…) works are available at a deep discount (75% off) at our store at Ebooks Direct. Please use this link so you’ll see the info on how to get the discount. (The trilogy is also available at Amazon, but not discounted. The first bridging novella is available exclusively at Ebooks Direct, and while it will become available at Amazon when the other four are complete, by then nominations will have closed.) The discount will last until Hugo nominations close on March 15th at 11:59 (US) PST.

…So there you go. Many thanks in advance for your interest and/or award consideration!

(Looking for more information about the series in general? Check out MiddleKingdoms.com.)

January 16, 2019
3 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
The Feline Wizards novels
booksFantasy and SFFeline WizardsWritingYoung Wizards

The full Feline Wizards series now at Ebooks Direct

by Diane Duane December 12, 2017
It’s a pleasure to be able to let everyone know that all three of the Feline Wizards books — The Book of Night with Moon, To Visit The Queen (published in the UK as On Her Majesty’s Wizardly Service), and The Big Meow — are now available in ebook form from Ebooks Direct. The delay on this has been due to the rights for the first two books still being held by their original US publisher. They couldn’t be reverted until sales fell below a certain point. A month or so ago it transpired that they’d finally crossed that threshold, so reversion proceedings could begin… and those are now complete. I’ve taken the opportunity, while the paperwork was being sorted out, to go over the text of both of the first two books and make some textual corrections. Nothing major — just some tidying to bring the copy more into line with my present writing style. Right now the Feline Wizards ebooks are only available at Ebooks Direct. It’ll take a month or so for the major online retailers to be notified about the reversion by the previous publishers, and for those editions to be pulled. Once this has happened, early in the New Year the (slightly) revised ebooks will be made available through Amazon and other online sources. Watch this space, or the Ebooks Direct news blog, for more information. For those of you interested in an omnibus edition of the ebooks: there isn’t one yet, as I’m still looking into the pros and cons. (Among other things: I have to spend some time crunching the numbers to see whether omnibus publication of ebooks is actually making sense in terms of sales at this point.) New paperback editions of all three books, with unified covers, will also appear via Amazon’s CreateSpace arm some time between next week and mid-January. (I have to think a little more about what kind of covers are going to work best at Amazon. The new EBD ebook covers are nice enough, but they aren’t necessarily the ones that will work best for the paperbacks.) The prospect of hardcovers is still hanging in the air, as Lulu has proven itself annoyingly difficult to deal with and I haven’t yet had time to adequately evaluate other options. Thanks again for your patience, everybody! I’ve been waiting a while to get all these reverted to me, and it’s so satisfying to have them sorted out at last. One other note:  if you’re a subscriber to the original Big Meow subscription project who hasn’t yet done so, please use this link to add your contact data to our MailChimp contact list. We’re in the process of reaching out to all original subscribers to make sure they’ve received all their subscription materials. Thanks in advance for your help!
December 12, 2017
7 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
Fantasy and SFHome lifeWriting

That Feeling When

by Diane Duane July 17, 2017

…you’re tidying up some paperwork and you stumble across a (1999) printout of a novel proposal that you had completely forgotten about, including outlining, notes, and detailed timelining for the six main characters…

LIGHTNING IN THE CUP first page

(here’s the text if the image gives you trouble)

LIGHTNING IN THE CUP tells the story of the deadly culmination of a three-hundred year war between two mighty nations, and the end of the world…all caused for the amusement of an angry god and goddess.

The world is in its Renaissance: art, literature and magic are flowering as never since the great Triple Empire was destroyed in mysterious catastrophe, three thousand years before. Poised at either side of the great continent which surrounds the Central Sea are the nations VOROSHEN and MIROKH, provinces of the old Empire, now finally grown into their pre-eminence as rulers of the known world. Their ancient rivalry—Voroshen is the more populous nation, Mirokh the greater naval power, controlling the Sea—has been flowering, too. For the better part of the last millennium, they have practiced war against one another as another kind of artform, a violent and lucrative one, using the armies and territories of their various client nations as their battleground.

Now this graceful, amused, habitual aggression is growing into something more deadly. Each country has begun to feel it has the right to be the most powerful in the world. The old mindset, which would have seen life as not worth living without the existence of the essential, noble enemy, is passing away. The new rulers coming to power—a less poetic, more opportunistic lot—believe that it would be better if there was only one “greatest country”. And the only way to manage that, each side now feels, is by wholesale destruction of the other….

People on both sides—powerful lords, wizards, politicians—are beginning to realize that the means may be within their grasp. Mastery of the theory and technology of magic is growing by leaps and bounds, fostered by the patronage of Voroshent and Mirokhel lords for great theoretical sorcerers like ARDAN and ELIEGRI. Things which would have seemed great wonders even a hundred years ago—cloudcastles, soaring-ships, scorchfire—have become commonplace: magic has been turned to the service of man in peace and war, and makes the exchequers of both countries fat by its taxation and control. Riches and prosperity are more widespread than ever: on the surface, at least, because of magic, peace reigns in both the Great Lands.

But each nation secretly is looking to magic for the answer to the question of how to get rid of its great rival…and one of them is on the brink of finding it. Mirokh’s genius-mage ARDAN has learned of the existence of a sorcerous relic so potent that, properly altered and manipulated, it could cause the earth to open and swallow a whole country down to ruin. Eagerly, Mirokh’s lords send an expedition into the Debatable Lands to find this thing and bring it home, for their glory and the final destruction of their enemies.

What none of the Mirokhel suspect is why this relic has now been found.

…And then things get interesting.

Note to self: import into Scrivener. Add to ToDoIst project list. Schedule for more research after completion of YW#11 draft. Possible scheduling: spring/summer 2018.

(sigh) Just what I needed before I’d even had my tea. Another novel.

Save

Save

July 17, 2017
5 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
For your consideration for Best Series Hugo Award, 2017
Fantasy and SFYoung WizardsYoung Wizards meta

2017 Hugo Eligibility and the Young Wizards Series

by Diane Duane March 13, 2017

I’ve been busy handling work at home while recovering from a back injury, so I’ve left this posting a little late. That being the case, let me be brief.

The 75th World Science Fiction Convention is being held in Helsinki this year, and as per usual, the Hugo Awards will be given out there. The Helsinki convention committee has elected to trial a new category of Hugo: Best Series. The qualifications for this award are as follows:

An eligible work for this special award is a multi-volume science fiction or fantasy story, unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation, which has appeared in at least three volumes consisting of a total of at least 240,000 words by the close of the calendar year 2016, at least one volume of which was published in 2016.

The Young Wizards series, containing elements of both science fiction and fantasy, has since the publication of So You Want To Be A Wizard in 1983 appeared in ten volumes totaling approximately a million words. The most recent volume, Games Wizards Play, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in February of 2016.

So the Young Wizards series is eligible to be nominated for the 2017 Best Series Hugo Award. If you’re a Hugo nominator (and / or possibly a Young Wizards fan), I cordially invite you to consider nominating the series — long praised both by critics and by a cross-generational audience who’ve grown up with the Young Wizards, and are now introducing them to a new young readership as the series continues to grow in depth and complexity..

Per the Hugo Awards page at the Worldcon 75 website:

Members of Worldcon 75, and also of MidAmeriCon 2 (the 2016 Worldcon) and Worldcon 76 (the 2018 Worldcon), will have the right to nominate up to five candidates in each of the Hugo categories. Nominations will close on 2017-03-18 06:59 UTC (at 11:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time on 17 March).

 

Those who joined one of the qualifying conventions before the start of January will have already received their unique personalised link to make nominations. (31 January was the cutoff date to join the qualifying conventions in order to nominate; Worldcon 75 members who join after that date will be able to vote on the Final Ballot when it is announced, but will not have nomination rights.) You can also vote by post using a paper ballot: please download and print the A4-size paper ballot (PDF, 160 kB) or the letter-size paper ballot (PDF, 160 kB). Postal ballots must also be received by the same deadline.

 

The final ballot will be announced in April, and voting for the Hugo Awards will continue until July. Only Worldcon 75 members can vote on the final ballot. Because Worldcon 75 is in the first half of August, it is likely that the deadline for Hugo votes will be in mid-July.

Whether or not you intend to nominate the Young Wizards series, thanks in advance for your support of one of SF’s oldest and most prestigious awards: and thanks for your time and consideration!

March 13, 2017
1 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
ArtBooksebooksFantasy and SFRaetian Tales

Cover work: RAETIAN TALES

by Diane Duane November 22, 2016

Covers. Even when they’re almost done they’re not that almost done…

Here the mountain girl Mariarta dil Alicg and her great-stag Grugni look down at a bewitched Aletsch Glacier in a color “sketch” of the wraparound cover for the forthcoming paperback (and the re-cover for the ebook version) of Raetian Tales: A Wind from the South.

The character rendering is in DAZ Studio: the background rendering, in Terragen 3.0. The terrain is derived from Swiss radar data of the Jungfrau region, accurate to about a meter: the three-glacier junction known as “Place de la Concorde” is directly below.

…Yeah, I know, Mati needs a winter coat. I’m working on it. The trouble is that most of the women’s coats available at Daz seem designed to show as much of the woman as possible.  (In fact 98% of the women’s clothing there constitutes the most blatant proof possible of the Male Gaze concept.)  Right now Mariarta’s wearing men’s clothes (which is fine since she’s doing that in the book as well), but finding a decent men’s winter coat that also looks like something you might have worn in the 1100s is proving a little bit of a challenge.

And forget cloaks. I refuse to put Mariarta in a cloak. Every damn pre-medieval heroine seems to wear a cloak. And this is a huntress who doesn’t need a damn cloak flapping around while she runs around the Alps shooting chamois and hunting down rogue goddesses.

(sigh) Back to it. There’s work still to be done on the glacier and some of the snow, and I’m not sure I’m happy with the lighting yet…

November 22, 2016
6 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
Blue macarons
Fantasy and SFfictionYoung WizardsYoung Wizards meta

Kit Rodriguez, Percy Jackson, and the Blue Food

by Diane Duane December 8, 2015

Blue macarons

I’ve got a question, and I’m throwing it open to the general readership because answering it at the moment is beyond my competence.

The Young Wizards series often gets compared to other YA series, past and present — sometimes with good reason and sometimes not. The most frequent comparison is to Harry Potter, as some of you will guess, though it always makes me laugh when this happens, as it’s hard to imagine two series that are less alike except for the fact that they both contain young wizards.

Anyway, something new and different has come up for consideration lately. In the YW books, there’s a running joke that’s been going on for a while about blue food. Kit Rodriguez has something of a pig-out on it at the Crossings while on the way to his and Nita Callahan’s excursus / “exchange student” holiday on Alaalu in book 7 of the series, Wizard’s Holiday. In subsequent books the issue resurfaces a number of times, often as a joke, sometimes just in the form of another wizard teasing Kit about this repeatedly-indulged tendency.

Recently, though, somebody brought it to my attention that Percy Jackson in Rick Riordan’s books also has a blue-food thing going on. Apparently the reasons behind this haven’t been dealt with in canon, though it is apparently stated there that Percy’s mom will make blue cake, or other desserts, for him on occasion*.

Now I’m assuming it’s some kind of obscure parallel development. (I know that George Carlin had a riff he did on blue food: whether I internalized that and it then popped out to be played with, I have no idea. And even less idea in Riordan’s case.)

That said: Wizard’s Holiday was published in 2003. I have no idea when this trope started turning up in the Percy Jackson books. Does anybody who’s a fan of the Riordan books know when the blue-food thing first appears? I’d be glad to satisfy my curiosity about this.

Thanks in advance!

*Disclosure, if needed: To date I haven’t read any of Rick Riordan’s books. It’s not that I have anything against them: it’s just that this hasn’t been a priority. I have  seen the films, though, and enjoyed them.

December 8, 2015
10 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
Hal-Con 2016 logo
ConventionsFantasy and SFTV and filmTV in general

We’ll be at Hal-Con 2015 in Halifax, Nova Scotia!

by Diane Duane September 26, 2015

Hal-Con 2016 logo

They say that Hal-Con is “the biggest, geekiest SF convention in Atlantic Canada, a sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention run completely by much-too-dedicated volunteers…”, which makes it a perfect place for us to go.

We’ll be two of many guests (headliners including John DeLancie and John Rhys-Davies, among many other notable actors, artists, writers, comics folks and cosplayers). It’s our first time in Halifax and we’re really looking forward to it.

Besides a fair number of panels and signings, Peter and I will be doing — at least once, maybe twice — the two-hour “Screenwriting 101” microworkshop: a beginners’ guide focusing on how to write a script and what to do with it once you’ve got it. Workshopping is always a high spot for us at an event like this, and we hope it’ll be the same for the attendees.

The convention runs from October 30 to November 1 and will be held at the World Trade & Convention Centre + The Scotia Bank Centre in Halifax.

See you there!

September 26, 2015
1 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
Fantasy and SFMediaOnline lifethings that piss you off

Dinosaurs and Dinosaur Shit

by Diane Duane April 6, 2015

dinosaur-asteroid

This last weekend has been spent reading, working on this and that, making a lot of waffles, and attempting to deal with some thorny issues, the least important of which has been “How on Earth did we eat that Valrhona chocolate syrup and not remember doing it?”

The most important of the issues, though, has been increasingly occupying my mind since the Hugo Award nominations came out a couple of days back.

I suspect that most writers don’t mind being nominated for awards. It’s happened to me every now and then: I still remember with considerable pleasure (even though I didn’t win) the crazed adrenaline rush that came with being nominated for the Campbell two years in a row.

Being nominated for a Hugo is something that’s not likely to happen to me in the near future — at the very least, for various logistical reasons. But now, with the circumstances surrounding this year’s Hugo nomination ballot, the thought that keeps recurring is this: “I am so, so, so, so, SO glad that this year I wasn’t in a position to be nominated for anything.”

This is because this year the Hugo Awards nomination system has been nastily and cynically gamed, much to the detriment of various people who deserved to be considered for the awards — and whose nominations are now more or less irrevocably tainted by the approbation of the bloc voters supporting one or another set of nomination “slates”.  Some writers were put on one or another of these slates without their knowledge or agreement, and are now horrified by the ugly situation they’re in.

The Book News page at the online version of the Telegraph has a roundup of the general / basic facts of the situation. Also, if you check the #HugoAwards tag on Twitter you will find plenty of links discussing what’s been going on.

As I said, while this has been unfolding I’ve been wondering what to say about it, and am not surprised that others (i.e., those less preoccupied with screenplay work and waffle irons) have been quicker off the mark and have summed up much of what I was thinking more gracefully or incisively than I can at the moment.  Most specifically, I’m very much on the same page as Elizabeth Bear, whose LJ posting speaks very clearly about the intersection between fandom and prodom and how this situation seems to her to affect it. (Also worth reading are Matthew David Surridge’s quite long but beautifully comprehensive reaction to being nominated via one of these slates and how he declined the nomination, and Sarah Chorn’s “lamentation”. Charlie Stross’s post about a publisher that no one’s ever heard of but which suddenly has nine Hugo nominations also makes interesting reading.)

Meanwhile, my only worthwhile contribution to these alarums and excursions is to say: I now and forever decline to be placed on any Hugo (or other) nomination slate, by anybody. If I get put on such a slate without my knowledge I will immediately decline any actual nomination that happens.

Nor will I ever vote for anyone or anything that achieves Hugo (or other) nomination via being put on such a slate. …And in company with many other potential Hugo nomination-voters this year, I can see a whole lot of “No Award” (or “No Vote”, I need to get clear on the detail…) votes being marked on my ballot in the near future.

One last thing: I think, finally, that what we’re hearing behind this ugly fooforaw is what Chuck Wendig memorably describes as “dinosaurs losing their collective dinosaur shit and waving their tiny ineffective arms at the coming meteors (and subsequent mammal survival party).“ And leaving their little proto-coproliths scattered all over the landscape, for good measure.

Well, this too shall pass. And this particular batch of dinosaurs, no one will miss.

April 6, 2015
4 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
A pizza of Rassilon
Dr. WhoFanficFantasy and SFFood, restaurants and cooking

The Effect of Dimensional Transcendence on Mozzarella Cheese

by Diane Duane March 27, 2013

Foreword:

Something that happens to most working writers over time is that they get asked to contribute writing to charitable ventures (as opposed to being asked to write things for free, a pernicious and annoying habit which the sane jobbing writer gives short shrift).

This happened to me thirteen or fourteen years ago, when the people gathering together material for the charity anthology that would become Perfect Timing 2 contacted me and asked if I would consider donating a little something Whovian to the cause.

As it happened, I already had something. Years and years before — when dinosaurs walked the Earth and CompuServe was about all there was in the way of online life — I had been in the grip of a longstanding love affair that predates the one with my husband and was, in its own way, nearly as strong. Come to think of it, I’m still in the grip. I love the Doctor dearly.

Back then my fave was Five. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Tom Baker, the first Doctor I became acquainted with in the 70’s via the good offices of PBS (and our local affiliate, the splendid WNET). But for me there was something peculiarly attractive about Peter Davison’s portrayal of the Time Lord: something about the way he handled his personal ethos. These days it’s hard to be clear about the reasons in any more detail. In any case, eventually I did what I had done for a long time when I liked a character: I sat down and committed fanfic. The first short story, “The Effect of Dimensional Transcendence on Mozzarella Cheese” — which I wrote mostly as a joke — and later its sequel, wound up in the files area at HOM-29, the venerable SF and Fantasy Forums at CompuServe; and there they sat for ever so long, fading gently into obscurity.

So when the Perfect Timing people came to me, I thought, “Hmm: no need to write anything new: how about giving this an airing?” I submitted the story, they liked it, and it got published. So much for that.

A bit later, another anthology came along, and I fished out the second story, “A Dinner in Belgravia,” which scratched not only the Whovian itch, but another one of even longer standing — my deep love for the original Sherlock Holmes. (Not that I don’t have the writer-hots for the new incarnation, you understand. It’s impossible not to admire such a masterly reboot. But old loyalties die very very hard.)

And finally, to my great joy, the chance came to work in the Who universe under official auspices, and I jumped at it… but not without my own very muted back-reference. Readers of “Goths and Robbers” in Short Trips: the Quality of Leadership will note a certain concern with food: and indeed with pasta, which was a core issue in “Belgravia”. I think we have to assume that at that point, Five had run through the not inconsiderable amount of fettucine-or-whatever that five pounds Sterling would have bought in Holmes’s London, and needed to restock. Though personally I have to assume that the characteristic selfwilled swerve into the outfield of Time (if not Space) that the TARDIS takes during “Goths and Robbers” is about more than just concern over a Time Lord’s carb intake.

In any case, there’s no telling if or when I might ever again have anything to do with the Who universe in a professional capacity. Obviously I’d love to write for them. Who knows what future years will bring? …But if it ever happens — they’re going to have to work pretty hard to keep me from putting my nose into the TARDIS’s galley. — DD


 

The Effect of Dimensional Transcendence on Mozzarella Cheese

You usually find the TARDIS’s galley by accident, if at all. That was the way Nyssa found it that morning. She had actually been on her way to the Orrery Room — she always found a good long session of staring out into the time vortex to be a pleasant way to put her thoughts in order after a trying day with Cybermen or other annoying fauna — but the sound of the crash down at the end of the long corridor distracted her. She headed for it at a run.

It was a bright, pleasant room in which she found herself: sunlit (impossible) through big French windows (equally impossible) with a small, formal herb garden visible through them, and sweet spring air coming in and moving the curtains. (Nyssa sighed and resigned herself for the thousandth time to the possibility of nearly anything happening aboard this craft.) The room was done in brick and quarry tile; it had an open hearth at one side, with chairs and a sofa drawn up to it, and several books laid open face down on the cushions. There was a large free-standing “island” with a cutting-board top of blond wood, and all around the walls stood tall handsome-looking cabinets and appliances. Hanging from the ceiling was a wrought-iron rack festooned with pots, utensils, hanging plants, and several blasters, all very dusty.

Off to one side was the source of the noise — a welter of pans, bowls, and other junk that one of the cupboards had dumped when opened; and standing in the middle of them, a slender fairhaired shape in the usual striped pants and white shirt and suspenders, but without the fawn-colored frock coat. It had been replaced by a white linen barman’s apron with a question mark tastefully embroidered on one deep pocket. The Doctor’s sleeves were rolled up, and he was holding a large disc of metal in his hands, and examining it, first one side, then the other.

“Roundel problem, Doctor?” Nyssa said, curious, for the disc looked rather like a roundel’s inner back plate.

He looked up at her in total shock.

“Wrong?” he said. “With what?”

“With that,” she said, and pointed.

“Yes,” he said, sounding mildly annoyed, “it’s been scratched. I expect Tegan’s been using it as a teatray again. I keep telling her, the nonstick coating — ”

“Doctor,” Nyssa said, “you’ve lost me. Roundels don’t need a nonstick coating, their atomic structure — ”

“My dear Nyssa, who said anything about roundels!! I’m making pizza.”

“Pizza?”

“Pizza,” the Doctor said, with an air of intense satisfaction. He stepped out from among the fallen pots and pans and headed for the chopping block. “An ancient Gallifreyan dish, invented by Rassilon himself. Making pizza is a source of uplift to the soul.”

“And your soul needs uplifting?” Nyssa said, a little mischievously.

“No,” the Doctor said, “I’m just hungry. And for the moment you can leave my soul out of this.” He put the pizza pan down on the chopping block and went to a cupboard, from which he took down a canister of flour.

“I’ve heard Tegan mention pizza,” said Nyssa. “She says it’s fattening.”

“Just like her to ignore the philosophical aspects,” the Doctor muttered, stopping by the sink and turning the water on to let it run hot.

“She also said it was a Terran invention.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, looking a touch bemused as he opened the refrigerator and scouted about inside, “they would say that, wouldn’t they? Though before he laid down the Laws of Time, who’s to say that old Rassilon didn’t pop ahead a few tens of thousands of years and have a look at the recipe, and then nip back home and invent it first? Prior claim is everything.” He shut the refrigerator, grabbed a small bowl from the dish-drainer by the sink, filled it about half full, and put it down on the chopping board along with a small foil-wrapped cube. “But even if they did invent it,” said the Doctor, looking smug, “Gallifreyan pizza has something that no Earth pizza ever will.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

The Doctor unwrapped the foil cube and crumbled its contents into the warm water. “Sentient yeast,” he said. He peered down into the bowl. “Wake up, lads! Work time! …And no anchovies,” he added. “Rassilon hated anchovies. And capers too. All those fiddly bits, sausage and prosciutto, ridiculous.”

Nyssa put a tentative hand to her head. “What’s that buzzing?” she said.

“Just the yeast, they’re on a pretty low wavelength,” said the Doctor, opening the flour canister. “Just above celery. No fiddly bits in this pizza! Just a good crisp crust, and tomato sauce, and plenty of cheese. The elemental building blocks of life.” He paused and looked around a touch guiltily, as if Rassilon might overhear him, then added, “Maybe some garlic. He was a good chap, but he liked it so bland!”

The buzzing in Nyssa’s head was getting more intricate: it began to sound like a chorus. “They’re singing,” she said in wonder. “What are they singing about?”

The Doctor cocked his head up for a second, listening, as he measured out flour into another bowl. “Oh, the usual. How nice it is to turn sugar and flour protein into carbon dioxide and alcohol, and fulfill their purpose in life, all that sort of thing.” He looked back down at his work, smiling.

“Nice to listen to, isn’t it? I told you it was uplifting to the soul.”

“Yes, but — Doctor, when you bake the crust, won’t they die?!”

“Of course they will.” He reached over to one side for a long-necked oilcan and splashed a little olive oil into the flour. “And a lot more mercifully than they would if you just let them drown in their own alcohol. Hand me the saltcellar, will you please? Thank you. Death by fire,” he said, salting the flour. “They find it — well, you’ll hear how they find it, I suspect. Are they bubbling yet?” He peered into the yeast bowl. “So they are. Here you go, gentlemen.” He poured the yeast and water into the flour bowl, and began to knead.

Nyssa leaned on her elbows at the edge of the chopping-block, watching the kneading and listening to the soft incessant litany of the yeast. “Looks sticky,” she said.

“That it is,” the Doctor said cheerfully. “Too many Time Lords are afraid to get their hands full of dough… that’s probably why they only make pizza on state holidays. As a memorial to Rassilon, you understand.” He snorted softly. “So busy looking to see who’s dropping sauce on themselves at the state dinner that they don’t even notice what they’re eating. Shameful. Here, while you’re not doing anything, there’s some garlic already peeled in the ‘fridge. Would you get it out? Thanks. The garlic press is in that crock. Just do me three or four cloves, if you’d be so kind.

“And anyway, is it so awful,” he added, more reflectively, “to die when you’ve got the job done that you came here for? Whatever it is.”

“Not if you know what you’re here for,” Nyssa said, putting a clove through the press and into a handy cup.

“Ah, yes,” the Doctor said, and smiled to himself. “I suppose it’s wise to find out, then. Here we go.” He turned out the dough on the floured board and kneaded it a few minutes more.

“Won’t it need a while to rise?” said Nyssa, finishing with the garlic.

“Well, yes,” said the Doctor, reaching for another bowl, one lightly greased with olive oil. He turned the ball of dough into it and covered it with a teacloth. “But I’m hungry now…so I shall cheat a bit.”

He picked up the bowl and carried it over to a small appliance that Nyssa took for a microwave oven. “Surely you’re not going to…” she said, as he slipped the bowl in and turned the appliance on. The buzzing in Nyssa’s head abruptly scaled upward in pitch.

“Doctor, what is that?”

“A rising box,” he said, going to wash his hands. “Actually a selective tachyon-packet field accelerator. It speeds up time in a tightly localized area.” The Doctor shook his hands off, dried them on another teatowel, and went back to the appliance. “It’s been about two hours in there for them.” Ping! said the accelerator, and the Doctor opened its door and took out the bowl. The dough had more than doubled in size.

“Here we go, then,” said the Doctor, and turned the dough out on the board, where he began to stretch it out flat.

“Wouldn’t a rolling pin be better?” Nyssa said.

“Never roll,” said the Doctor. “Ruins the texture. Now then.” He lifted the dough into the pan, rolling its far edges slightly around the pan’s to hold it in place. “Olive oil, please, and a brush.”

Nyssa handed him the necessary equipment; he brushed the dough lightly with the oil. “In the ‘fridge there’s about a pound of sliced mozzarella; would you get it for me please?”

Nyssa fetched it. The Doctor took out about ten thin slices and began to lay them over the crust. “I thought the sauce was supposed to go on first,” she said.

“And that,” the Doctor said, looking sharply at her, “is why almost every pizza crust you ever taste is soggy. Cheese first, always….it seals it. Then sauce. Then more cheese on top.” He finished the first layer.

“Garlic, please. Just scatter it around. Thank you.”

He reached over to the stove, where a large pot sat simmering quietly. When he took the lid off, such a sublime aroma filled the galley that Nyssa broke out in a smile. “It’s marvelous!”

The Doctor flashed her a delighted grin. “The tomatoes in the greenhouse have been quite good lately,” he said. “It’s giving them the kitchen scraps that does it, I suspect.” He poured sauce over the cheese-covered crust, then began the second layer of cheese until the whole pound of mozzarella was used up. “Hand me that oregano, will you? Our own,” he said, looking affectionately at the spice jar. “K9 used to sit in the garden and talk to it all the time. He did that with the basil, too… improved it tremendously. Remind me to make some pesto some time. Is the oven ready?”

“It says so.”

“Good. In we go, then. — I shouldn’t mind,” he said, “just the slightest nip before it’s ready.”

The Doctor went over to another cabinet, opened it, and stared in thoughtfully. “There’s hardly a thing in here worth drinking,” he muttered. “I really must run down to the wine cellar. Always assuming we still have one after that last reconfiguration. Oh well.” He came out with a bottle. “California,” he said, holding out the bottle for Nyssa to read the label. “Infinitely superior to the continental varietals. And besides, I have friends at Krug…they keep sending it to me free…”

He reached down wine glasses from the rack, uncorked the bottle with the sonic screwdriver, and poured for both of them. Nyssa sat down on the couch by the brick hearth; she was feeling a little strange.

The Doctor sat down across from her, his eyes all of a sudden gone oddly expectant and intense. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, cupping his wineglass in his hands.

That was when the singing began in good earnest; and Nyssa was glad not to be holding her own glass, for she would have dropped it. Her head began to fill with crashing choruses, gaining moment by moment in intensity and number: multitudinous song, delighted at doing, at being, at having been: piercing joy, growing by the second, as passage from here-and-now to otherness came closer and closer: acceptance of having been: acceptance of some indescribable about-to-be-ing: and then, then, the passage, the shift, out of life, out of time, into something else, something ineluctably more —

— and then gone, all gone: silence.

She looked up at the Doctor, the tears of the yeast’s unbearable joy blurring her vision. He looked back at her, gentle-eyed.

“For what we are about to receive,” he said with a somber smile, “may we be truly thankful.” And he drained his wineglass, and smashed it in the fireplace, and got up to take the pizza out of the oven.

It was the best pizza Nyssa ever had. She took several slices to Tegan, who was in the console room, browsing through the TARDIS databanks. Tegan ate two and a half of them while she worked. (The slices, not the databanks.)

In the galley, the Doctor did the washing-up, smiling still. But it was a quieter sort of smile, one his companions rarely ever saw; a musing look, as he stood wondering to whom his lives might be meat and drink. It was in the middle of these reflections that several of the TARDIS’s remote alarms went off. The Doctor dried his hands hurriedly, flung down the tea-towel, and raced out to see what the matter was.

Tegan had put her last slice down on the console while reading a particularly juicy bit of gossip about Catherine the Great.

The Doctor discovered that it can be extraordinarily difficult to get melted mozzarella out of the time rotor.


GALLIFREYAN PIZZA

(aka Pizza alla Dottore)

CRUST: 4 cups sifted flour

1 cake Fleishmann’s or other fresh yeast (unless you can get the Gallifreyan sort)

1&1/3 C water at about 85 degrees (for the yeast)

2 tbs. salad or olive oil 1 tsp. salt

Crumble the yeast: add the water to it and stir, and let it be for about ten minutes, or until it starts to bubble a bit. (To hurry it, or just in a good-natured attempt to help it along, you might add about half a teaspoon of sugar. This is also wise if the yeast is old.) Add the yeast/water mixture to the flour, salt and oil, and knead. Put in a greased bowl, covered with a towel, and let rise in a warm place for two hours.

Have ready two 12-inch pans, or one large one (oiled, if not already nonstick). Flatten and stretch the dough to fit. Brush with olive oil.

CHEESE: For maximum effect, no pizza should ever contain less than half a pound of a good skim or part-skim mozzarella. (Fontina is also good for a change.) The Doctor, having growing companions to feed, uses rather more. Remember to lay down a layer first to seal the crust. The crumbly kind is all right, but mozzarella (because of its long chain molecules) works best sliced.

SAUCE: Everyone has their favorite (the Doctor’s recipe will follow at a later date). Pour on enough to suit your taste. Bake the whole thing in a preheated 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes, or until the crust is light brown.

And whether it sings or not, appreciate the yeast. It gave you the best hours of its life.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

March 27, 2013
6 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
Alien lifeformsBiologyNature

The Case of the Clandestine Cephalopod

by Diane Duane August 6, 2011

The best camouflage you will ever see. This guy comes out of cloak like a startled Romulan warbird, then fires (ink) and hurriedly makes off for a more, ahem, neutral zone. (Also does a great imitation of a walking rock.)

August 6, 2011
8 FacebookTwitterTumblrEmail
Newer Posts
Older Posts

The blogger


40 years in print, 50+ novels, assorted TV/movies, NYT Bestseller List a few times, blah blah blah. Young Wizards series, 1983-2020 and beyond; Middle Kingdoms series, 1979-2019. And now, also: Proud past Guest of Honour at Dublin2019, the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland.

Archive

On sale at Ebooks Direct

Recent comments

  • From the Young Wizards universe: an update - Out of Ambit on Changes coming at YoungWizards.com: your opinion(s) solicited
  • Review: <em>A Wizard Alone</em> by Diane Duane – Disability in Kidlit on Young Wizards New Millennium Editions: a little more info
  • Top Ten Tuesday ~ Books that Make Me Hungry – BookWyrm Knits on Seed cake: a recipe
  • Dr. John Watson's CV: Searching for the Secrets on Dr. John Watson’s CV
  • Dr. John Watson's CV: Searching for the Secrets on The Starship and the Upstairs Flat

Now at Ebooks Direct

 

Feel like buying the writer a coffee?


That's kind of you! Just click here.

Popular Posts

  • 1

    What part of the cow does corned beef come from

    March 16, 2006
  • 2

    Lahey No-Knead Bread recipe: one baker’s experiences so far

    December 9, 2006
  • 3

    Seed cake: a recipe

    January 1, 2013
  • 4

    Young Wizards New Millennium Editions: a little more info

    May 30, 2011
  • 5

    The Affair of the Black Armbands (or, The Death of Sherlock Holmes and How The World Took It)

    January 17, 2012

Associated websites


...all divisions of the
Owl Springs Partnership

Previously on “Out Of Ambit”…

2021 Hugo nomination eligibility: the Young Wizards series

Maluns

Owl Be Home For Christmas

Vintage Scots Christmas recipes: “Good Fare Christmas”

From the Young Wizards universe: an update

Irish life: The things you don’t discuss, Halloween...

Q&A: Why is my Malt-O-Meal lumpy and how...

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Flickr
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
Footer Logo

(c) 2020 Diane Duane | all rights reserved | WP theme: PenciDesign's "Soledad"


Back To Top