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25th June 2006: Tangled Web

Posted on by Jo Walton

“Your nightmares are somebody’s daydreams, Your daydreams are somebody’s lies. Lies ain’t no harder than telling the truth, The truth is the perfect disguise.” Kris Kristofferson. I’m not in HP fandom, and I’ve been reading the MsScribe kerfuffle with bemused…

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Posted in Among Others, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

6th June 2006: Best Tombstone Ever

Posted on by Jo Walton

After spending most of the morning reading pretty much all the extant Phoenician there is, both online and in Harden’s The Phoenicians which is the only thing I have in the house — must get something more recent — I…

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Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

3rd June 2006 Tolkien’s allegory of WWII

Posted on by Jo Walton

was asking about Tolkien’s allegory of WWII in the foreward to LOTR when he says what would have happened in Middle Earth if it had followed the course of WWII: The real war does not resemble the legendary war in…

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Posted in Books, Human culture

22nd Feb-Mar 2st 2005 Concussion updates

Posted on by Jo Walton

[I think this is worth having, because reading through these makes it really apparent what fixed my concussion. Spoiler, it wasn’t Western medicine.] 22nd March So I listened to all you lot and went to the doctor. I never go…

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Posted in Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

21st February 2006: Another @#$%ing research experience (My concussion post)

Posted on by Jo Walton

So, there I was sitting in a Chinese cafe on Ste Catherine half way through a bowl of won ton soup — indeed, half way through a won ton — with a pot of tea in front of me, with…

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Posted in Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

15th February 2006: Why I love SF

Posted on by Jo Walton

I love the way SF can take something I thought I knew and turn it around on me, without cheating. I love the way you can have completely new societies, thought experiment societies, with their own extrapolated mores and ways…

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Posted in Books

2nd February 2006: Why fantasy is easy

Posted on by Jo Walton

When I say fantasy is easy, what I mean is that writing in a background you already know intimately is easier than figuring out every little thing about the background. It’s easiest to put this in terms of tech levels…

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Posted in Poor Relations, Small Change, Writing

2nd December 2005: Scattered thoughts on fantasy

Posted on by Jo Walton

Kate Elliott posted an interesting piece saying that SF has a finite knowable universe and fantasy an infinite and unknowable one, That’s actually really close to my instinctive definition of SF, made up to exclude Christopher Priest’s early work which…

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Posted in Books, Writing

21st October 2005: Contains obscenities (Emily Dickinson guy)

Posted on by Jo Walton

I was in Argo yesterday evening, a little independent new bookshop on St Catherine West, near the second-hand bookshops Westcott, Vortex and Astro. I went in to see if they could order Noel Streatfeild’s reprinted 1930s adult novel Saplings for…

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Posted in Books, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

23rd September 2005: Venting about copyedit

Posted on by Jo Walton

Dear Copyeditor, Contrary to your base assumption, I am not a moron. When I use mixed metaphors — and you may note I only do it in the first person section — I am using them as a form of…

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Posted in My Books, Small Change, Writing