Stop Plosive by Cesi Davidson

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release of Stop Plosive by Cesi Davidson as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series, in both print and e-book editions. Stop Plosives is the fourth book Aqueduct has published in Cesi's Short Plays to Nourish the Mind and Soul sequence. You can purchase it now at http://www.aqueductpress.com.

And you can read a sample from the book at  http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-266-4.pdf.

 

 

 

Cesi writes in the introduction:

 Why not?

In this collection of plays, I play. Why not? I explore how we can become more human with perspective-taking by giving an object, food, or animal, human characteristics. I place humans in unusual circumstances with time and space, and with mixed intentions. What can we discover? Come play with me. Let’s laugh and have fun together. Let’s acknowledge our sadness. And let’s cry together. Let’s admit that we don’t know all the answers but still know the importance of asking questions. Why not? 

 

Advance Praise for Stop Plosive

The plays in this collection will elicit a mosaic of emotions. There's joy ("Potato Chip Race"), and laughter ("Mrs. Brown's Dilemma"), anger ("Where's Becky?"), and bewilderment ("Clockwise"). You'll meet yourself, your family, your friends, and even your frenemies. You'll know that we are seen and immortalized in print. Allow these feelings to course around your body through the magic of plays on a page. Cesi Davidson has done it again, in this, her fourth collection. We can always depend on this prolific playwright to deliver us to ourselves in all our messy glory.--Celeste Rita Baker, World Fantasy Award Winner, author of Back, Belly & Side

Why Not?
At the very beginning of her new collection of plays, Stop Plosive, Cesi Davidson asks her readers, old and new, to explore each and every play asking, “Why not?” And as I read each play in the series, I suspend all preconceived notions, which may cloud my ability to play within her plays!!

One particular play, “Bus Talk,” really spoke to me. “Bus Talk” shares the story of a New York City bus driver on his last day of work before retirement. The play begins with the bus driver lamenting that despite his 33-year stellar safe driving record, his employer is more concerned with weeding out bus drivers who are deemed too old and making too much money. This metaphoric scenario is familiar to those of us who have experienced a career in which our deep and personal connections with our core constituency, the “passengers on the bus,” are not appreciated by the administrators of the “bus system.”

The genius of Davidson’s play is in creating an uplifting story in which the bus driver realizes his true gift in connecting with specific passengers on his bus and then magically bestowing his gifts on each passenger without the constraints that the bus system imposes on him.

The bus driver essentially is living his last workday in the realm of “Why Not?”. In other words, Davidson is asking her readers to contemplate this compelling question: Without systemic constraints and barriers, imagine what we could do with our life? Imagine what we could do if we lived life in the sphere of “Why Not?”. For example, why not use our true gifts which are grounded in love for one another?

Thank you Cesi Davidson, for your many gifts, which fill my heart and head with your inspirational “Why not?”.--Tobie Stein, PhD, Visiting Distinguished Professor, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan

In Stop Plosive, Cesi Davidson’s wildly imaginative short plays continue to astonish. In this slender volume, she had me laughing at her hilarious take on superbad sex machine/soul brother James Brown. She had me crying as a retiring bus driver doles out random acts of kindness to his passengers. She had me thinking about the insidious way white privilege works in “Where’s Becky,” a politically enlightened homage to Waiting for Godot. And she gave me hope in “Bringing Tiny Home” when white and black stepsisters overcome their differences and figure out a way to care for their recently deceased father’s dog. What more can one ask of a playwright? And yet there is more, much more. Read or watch these plays. You will be very happy you did.--Zachary Sklar, Oscar-nominated screenwriter (JFK, with Oliver Stone), author of The Work: A Jigsaw Memoir

 

 

Queering SF Comics by Ritch Calvin

 

 

 

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of Queering SF Comics: Readings by Ritch Calvin in both print and e-book editions from Aqueduct Press. It's available now at http://www.aqueductpress.com.

 You can read a sample from the book here:  http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-264-0.pdf

 

The 45 essays contained in Queering Science Fiction Comics build on the work of Queering Science Fiction (2022). The Introduction provides a concise history of comics and of the ways in which queer writers have made use of the comic form. These essays focus on queer SF comics published between the years 2010 and 2023, and show that queer writers take a variety of approaches to both science fiction and comics.

The comics featured in Queering Science Fiction Comics were published by well-known companies, by lesser-known companies, and via self-publishing, and were selected to highlight queer content creators, queer characters, and the ways in which both creators and characters can work to queer the content and form of SF comics.

This is an exciting time to delve into queer SF comics, and these essays provide a rich and wide introduction to this creative genre.

 

The First Computer Program

 I'm pleased to present here a guest post, one that will be of special interest to anyone interested in the history of computer science and women programmers' role in that history.

 

 The First Computer Program

By Greg Alt

With thanks to Kristin King, pair debugger for this essay

I had been hearing for years about the first programmer, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, now commonly referred to as Ada Lovelace. I learned that in 1843 she wrote and published the first computer program, for the never-completed, steam-powered mechanical computer known as the Analytical Engine. It’s an odd coincidence that this was just about a century before the first electronic computers were built and the first programs were actually run in the 1940s.

 After I had learned of this, it was many years later that I first saw Lovelace’s program itself. I found it fascinating and I needed to keep digging in until I really understood it. With her program itself in an archaic table-based language and Lovelace’s commentary using unfamiliar technical jargon mixed with her nineteenth century prose, it’s not surprising that few articles touch on it. The vast majority of articles that do touch on her program typically start with Byron, Babbage, and Bernoulli and spend little time on the code itself.

 As a software engineer, however, I found her program fascinating. My respect for her grew as I read the insights in her writing on software development in her “Notes.” I became interested in running and debugging her program, and documented my process on the blog “Pair Debugging With Ada Lovelace” [https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/].

 “Pair Debugging” in the software industry involves two programmers, sitting at the same keyboard and looking at the same screen while they talk through the fixing of a bug.

 With going on two centuries between us, I couldn’t sit down with Lovelace, but I tried to get the next best thing—reading what she has written, both in her famous Notes and her available private letters. While getting her program running, I used her goals and intent as my guide.

 

Lovelace’s Program

At the age of 17, Lovelace met Charles Babbage and became fascinated with the possibilities of the Analytical Engine that he was in the process of designing. This would have been the first computer, fully mechanical and driven by steam, and with extraordinary capabilities. Its storage was planned to support 40-digit fixed point numbers or more, and as many as 1000 of them. Babbage predicted it could perform one multiply every minute.

 A few years later, after a pause in her studies and after Ada and her husband had their third child, Ada was ready to get back to work on her scientific efforts. In 1842, at age 26, she started translating an article by L.F. Menabrea on the Analytical Engine. Charles Babbage had given a talk in Turin, and Menabrea was so impressed that he published a full account in French.

 At the time, women were restricted from scientific publications, but it was considered acceptable for Lovelace to publish an English translation of a man’s work. She set to work translating Menabrea’s article for publishing in English.

 As a bit of subterfuge, Lovelace added a series of “Notes” to the translation, signed with just her initials. These “Notes” dwarfed Menabrea’s translated text both in length and in scope.

 Lovelace's program is encoded in the table accompanying her famous “Note G”, as published in 1843. The title summarizes the purpose of the program: “computation by the Engine of the Numbers of Bernoulli.” This, of course, refers to Charles Babbage’s planned Analytical Engine.

 

 The “Numbers of Bernoulli” are a series of rational numbers that come up a lot in mathematical theory. They are useful and make some calculations easier, such as the sum of powers, and they are slow to calculate by hand and well-suited to a computer. Lovelace chose this “rather complicated example” of computing Bernoulli numbers because it was a fresh topic being discussed by mathematicians of the day. Showing that such a complicated calculation could be carried out automatically, and accurately, by a steam-powered machine would concretely show the value of the Analytical Engine.

The source code language was a table, first hand drawn and then typeset for publication. Bold horizontal lines between rows had semantic meaning, as did the English text for the loop. Variables had both subscripts and superscripts and two dimensional mathematical notation was used.

 Her stated goal was “computing the Numbers to an indefinite extent, from the very beginning,” and “without having been worked out by human head & hands first.”

Running and Debugging the Program

It is a bit of a conundrum to talk about a program satisfying goals if the computer it was designed for was never built. All programs have bugs, and running your code for the first time always gives you new thoughts about how it could be improved. For this reason, I consider my investigation to be a bit speculative and subjective, even as I have tried to keep it concrete and objective. All programs require some modifications after they are first written. Sometimes those changes might be extensive rewrites, and sometimes they are more minor adjustments.

 My intent has been to focus on the most minimal adjustments needed to satisfy Lovelace’s goals and intent as written in her own words.

 As I’ve methodically walked through this process, I’ve shown that her program can be made to satisfy all of these goals with minimal adjustments:

 "Compute the [Bernoulli] Numbers"

1. "to an indefinite extent"
2. "from the very beginning"
3. "without having been worked out by human head & hands first"

Before starting the process, I simplified her program for the purpose of understanding it and found that it looked a lot like modern-day assembly code. It includes variables, conditional branching, and loops – all features of non-trivial programs.

 Next, I transcribed her program as-published into a non-simplified spreadsheet and then performed an automated transliteration of the first six columns of the numbered rows in the table into legal C code. Then I used an online debugger to see how it worked. Aside from the lack of fire and steam, this is much like how an operator might run a program on an Analytical Engine.

 Then I set to work fixing the bugs, and found that it could meet all four goals with minor adjustments, which I describe in my blog.

Along the way I’ve appreciated getting a better understanding of her program and her thoughts around it and around programming in general. Researching this one program has, in turn, brought to my attention its place and Ada Lovelace’s place amongst other notable programmers and hardware designers from her time through to the birth of the computer revolution in the 1940s.

Seemingly simple questions like “what is a computer?” and “what is a program?” took on complex significance as I dug into the details of the work of my other heroes including Charles Babbage, Grace Hopper, and Alan Turing, among others.

 

Is it the First Computer Program?

Before asking whether Lovelace’s Note G is the first computer program, we need to define a computer and a computer program.

What is a Computer?

My blog has a more thorough answer to this question, but here are a few key points that differentiate a computer from a simpler device. 

 Programmable means that you can give the computer one set of instructions and it will carry them out. If you want the computer to do something entirely different, you can give it a different set of instructions and it will carry those out as well. This allows an extreme amount of power and flexibility. There will always be a finite number of possibilities for a program of a given size, but even with just 100 instructions, that number might as well be infinite.

 General-purpose means that it’s not limited to solving one kind of problem. It’s related to programmability in that a large enough set of operations are made available and the programmer can choose to arrange them as they see fit.

 Turing-complete can be thought of as having a powerful enough instruction set to allow it to be equivalent to any other computer. This distinction largely ignores speed and resources. Early computers were very slow and had few resources in modern terms, but a program written for a modern computer could still be adapted to run on an early Turing-complete computer. In practice, what this means is that the computer supports a conditional branch. At runtime, if some condition is found to be true, the computer jumps to one sequence of instructions. If the condition is false, it runs another. It doesn’t sound like much, but this unlocks a universe of possible programs that are otherwise completely out of reach for a non-Turing-complete computer.

 

What is a Computer Program?

The intuitive and sloppy definition of a computer program is “a set of instructions for a computer.” But here are two important questions.

Does the Program Require a Turing-Complete Computer?

A set of instructions for a computer can be trivial or complex. As an example, many modern computers have a “NOP instruction, short for “no operation.” And it does exactly that – nothing. The most trivial program would be a sheet of paper with “NOP” written on it. This program might run on a Turing-complete Windows laptop, but the program itself doesn’t intrinsically use enough features to require a Turing-complete computer.

A Turing-complete computer doesn’t require a lot of possible instructions, as complex behavior can be built up from a surprisingly small set. For example, the 1948 Manchester Baby was Turing-complete with only these seven instructions supported:

●     JMP S - absolute unconditional indirect jump (to location specified in memory S)

●     JRP S - relative unconditional jump

●     LDN S - load memory into accumulator and negate

●     STO S - store accumulator to memory

●     SUB S - subtract memory from accumulator

●     CMP - skip next instruction if accumulator is negative

●     STP - stop

 

Like my NOP example, a program that consists entirely of STP is too trivial to be taken seriously. On the other hand, a program that consists only of JMP, LDN, STO, SUB, and CMP instructions requires a Turing-complete computer, even being only 5 instructions long.

This leads to a crisp, concrete dividing line between “trivial” and “complex” programs. Look at the set of operations used in a program.

 

Does it Have to Run?

Talk to any programmer, and they will tell you that their code rarely works perfectly on the first try. Unless it was trivial or they were exceedingly careful, something always goes wrong and something needs to be fixed.

At the same time, a program that is runnable with possibly some minor bugs is still a computer program even before it has been run. “Is it runnable?” is intrinsic to the program, while “has it been run?” is extrinsic.

 

My Definition of a Computer Program

Putting it all together, my definition of a computer program is:

A series of instructions to be run on a computer that is programmable, general-purpose, digital, and also Turing-complete. Together the set of instructions is enough to require that the computer be Turing-complete.

Notably, my definition does not require that the computer yet exist and does not require that the program be run.

While this is my preferred definition, it doesn’t make sense to say that one is “correct” and others are simply “wrong.” It would be reasonable to use either a broader or more narrow definition. When thinking about what was the “first computer program,” the answer depends on your definitions. Most definitions are about the same as mine, above, differing only on the question of whether it must first be run to count and whether Turing-completeness is strictly necessary.

 

Three Other Candidates

If one’s definition requires that the computer program must have been run, the first program was written somewhere between 1938 and 1948. This was a period of rapid innovation, marked by intense competition and collaboration. 

Program for the 1938 Z1

One possibility is Z1, built in 1938 by a little-known German inventor named Konrad Zuse.  The Z1 ran programs from a punched tape made from celluloid film. It was driven by an electric motor, but fully mechanical. Mechanical stresses and problems with synchronization meant that it couldn’t run reliably for more than a few minutes. That was probably long enough, though, to run a short test program, if not reliably. None of Zuse’s computers were Turing-complete until 1950.

Program for the 1945 ENIAC

If one’s definition requires that the program must run on a Turing-complete computer, that computer would have been ENIAC. ENIAC was Turing-complete and became operational in 1945, one year before the Harvard/IBM computer became Turing-complete. Thus, the first program would have been a test program run on ENIAC before the larger and more famous nuclear physics simulation.

Charles Babbage’s Series L Table #1

If one’s definition does not require that a program be run or use a Turing-complete instruction set, a few of Charles Babbage's “Series L” tables, created between 1836-1840, including #1, would fit. These tables had everything needed to run, but were not Turing-complete. The rest of the tables were missing essential details that would be needed to run at all. One table, though, was an exploration into conditional branches, a required feature for Turing completeness, but the table did not include variables and was therefore not runnable.

 

The First Computer Program is Ada Lovelace’s 1843 Table

By my definition, a computer program must be runnable but is not required to have been run. It must also require a Turing-complete computer.

 Ada Lovelace’s program meets my definition. As my blog series shows, it is runnable with minor adjustments. I also explore in depth its use of conditional branching, a key requirement for Turing-completeness. This means, then, that Ada Lovelace’s 1843 table from Note G is the first computer program.

 

The First Programming Language

After seeing Lovelace’s Note G table, Babbage’s Series L tables can be seen in a new light. Together, they document the evolution of a programming language. He started by inventing the table language as means to document the hardware processes of the mechanisms of the Analytical Engine itself. When he started to document sequences of operations that might be fed to the engine as cards, he adapted the table language from a hardware process language to a software programming language.

 Babbage’s tables from Series L that might be seen as incomplete programs were complete investigations of specific functionality with extraneous details omitted. When the different pieces of notation are used together in Lovelace’s 1843 table, the combination of notations becomes a complete programming language.

Ada Lovelace as the First Programmer

Ada Lovelace had befriended Babbage at a party in 1833, and over the course of many years she learned about his design for the Analytical Engine. The potential excited her. In 1841, she approached Babbage about dedicating herself to work related to the machine, writing:

I am very anxious to talk to you. I will give you a hint on what. It strikes me that at some future time […] my head may be made by you subservient to some of your purposes & plans. If so, if ever I could be worthy or capable of being used by you, my head will be yours. And it is on this that I wish to speak most seriously to you. (p. 140)

 

She saw her opportunity in 1842, when L.F. Menabrea wrote the article in French about the Analytical Engine. The notes she attached to her translation of the Menabrea article are a fascinating read into her visionary thoughts. As a programmer, though, what I found most interesting in her notes was her example program and all of her concrete discussions about the program and the process of creating it. In a letter from June 26, 1843, she wrote to Babbage:

 I want to put in something about Bernoulli’s Numbers, in one of my Notes, as an example of how an implicit function, may be worked out by the engine, without having been worked out by human head & hands first. Give me the necessary data & formulae. (p. 198)

 As she requested, Babbage gave her the algebraic formulae—included in Note G as equations numbered (1)-(9). The first three give alternative math for calculating Bernoulli numbers. The remaining six, (4)-(9) derive an equation that can be used as a starting point for her program. This would be the one “algebraic working out” that Babbage supplied and that Lovelace corrected.

 From this math, Lovelace methodically developed her program, the table included with and described in great detail in Note G.

 

Crunch Time Communication

In the course of developing the program, Lovelace stayed in constant communication with Babbage. It’s a bit surprising to learn that mail was delivered multiple times a day, giving them something like a modern experience of rapid back and forth communication through email.

 Amidst dozens of letters to Babbage, most of the talk is about various edits to the text, along with frequent confusion about who had the originals for one section or another. Unlike email, they were unfortunately unable to virtually copy attachments.

 Lovelace frequently wrote about her hard work on the program and the problems she encountered. Modern programmers would be familiar with getting bogged down and having to explain missed deadlines.

On being delayed by finding new errors:

I have been hard at work all day, intending to send you the Diagram & all, quite complete. Think of my horror then at just discovering that the Table & Diagram, (over which I have been spending infinite patience & pains) are seriously wrong, in one or two points. […] I shall be up betimes tomorrow morning, & finish off the Table & Diagram; so as to send it [to] you by post; (p. 198)

After completing a new draft:

I have worked incessantly, & most successfully, all day. You will admire the Table & Diagram extremely. (p. 199)

After spending the day getting bogged down and needing to step away from the writing desk to clear one’s mind:

I am in much dismay at having got into so amazing a quagmire and botheration with these Numbers, that I cannot possibly get the thing done today. I have no doubts it will all come out clean enough tomorrow; & I shall send you a parcel up, as early in the day as I can. So do not be uneasy. (Tho’ at this moment I am in a charming state of confusion; but it is that sort of confusion which is of a very bubble nature). I am now going out on horseback. Tant mieux. (p. 207)

As a programmer, I can empathize. Sometimes going off for a walk or a bike ride is exactly what is needed to come back and attack a bug with fresh clarity.

 

The First Bug

Despite the care she put into the table, it’s not surprising that some bugs persisted. One was especially interesting. The calculation of each Bernoulli number requires negating the result before storing it, but her program omits this operation. It’s more than just a typo. It’s clear that the bug was introduced in the handoff of the math from Babbage to Lovelace. The math that Babbage gave Lovelace was correct, but it left the negation implicit. Lovelace missed this, and in several places in the text of Note G, she talks about simply storing the result without mentioning negation. The bug persists in every step of her process, culminating in her program that preserved it.

To be clear, this is a minor bug, of the sort that programmers make all of the time. It is the kind you find quickly the first time you run. That’s how I found it.

I find it fascinating, though, to see this bug and her thought processes from over 180 years ago frozen in the text like an ancient bug caught in amber.

I set out to pair debug this program with Ada Lovelace so that I could learn how it worked. Finding her bug and helping her run her program as she intended collapsed the 180 years that separated us. We were two programmers, sitting at a writing desk, together. It works! Check it in.

 

Citations:

Toole, Betty A. Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection of the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer. Mill Valley, California, Strawberry Press. 1992.

Babbage’s Series L: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/documents/aa110000065

 Lovelace’s Notes: https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html

Sinking, Singing by Gwynne Garfinkle

 

 

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release of Gwynne Garfinkle's wonderful new collection, Sinking, Singing. Aqueduct Press is publishing it in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now at http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-270-1.php.

 You can also read a sample from the book here: http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-270-1.pdf.

In these stories a young girl hears unsettling messages in the grooves of an old record album. A washed-up horror star gets a second chance at stardom, but at a great price. A robot rebellion is fueled by the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde. In this collection of short fiction, some characters seek to escape (often through music or magic), while others choose to remain in the beautiful, albeit damaged, present moment.

Cul de Sac Stories by Tamara Kaye Sellman

 

 

I'm pleased to announce the release, in both print and e-book editions, of Cul de Sac Stories by Tamara Kaye Sellman, as a volume in Aqueduct Press's Conversation Pieces Series. It's available now at http://www.aqueductpress.com. The volume includes an introduction by Cat Rambo.

 

 Read a sample from the book here: http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-262-6.pdf

 

The neighborhoods of Cul de Sac Stories are not precisely the safe spaces you might expect. This collection of quirky exurban tales houses the whispered fears of mothers and daughters, crones and maidens, neighbors both familiar and aloof. Here you’ll find the codex through a believably terrifying apocalypse, a primer for new mothers managing newborn shadows, sacred scriptures unspooled by a handmade doll’s magic promise, a village’s record of a fantastical war against mother nature, witness to a town’s sudden choreography with catastrophe, transcripts of prescient dreams from humbled charlatans, notes from a suburban commandeering, and a romantic liaison left hovering in the eaves.

“Maiden, mother, crone—the women in these stories are filled with magic and wonder, vengeance and tenacity. Keep an eye on Tamara Sellman—she knows how to cast a spell, weaving a grand tapestry filled with mystery, love, horror, and hope.”
 —Author and editor Richard Thomas (Incarnate, 2024), Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller Award finalist

 

Congratulations to LaToya Jordan!

 

 

 Big congratulations to LaToya Jordan: her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat just won the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award in the novella category!

 

 

Feraltales by Couri Johnson

 

 

 

 

   I'm pleased to announce the release from Aqueduct Press of Feraltales, a collection of dark fantasy by Couri Johnson. It's available now in both print and e-book editions at www.aqueductpress.com.

 

  

Read a sample from the book.

Not all women are sweet and docile princesses. Sometimes they are witches, foxes, or dogs gone wild and looking to bite. The retelling of old tales in this collection recognizes the feral lurking within them. And so, a young woman, abetted by a griffin, seeks to free herself from a literally heartless man, twelve dancing sisters lure men to their doom, business-minded witches peddle everything from moonshine to manufactured tragedies, and the desperate wife of a king demanding she bear him a son makes a deal with a fox. 

 

Johnson presents five thought-provoking stories that reimagine the framework of the European fairy tale with a focus on women’s perspectives and a sense of rewilding....[H]er prose evokes the timeless rhythms of folklore and the stories work even without familiarity with their referents. Balancing the timeless and the contemporary, Johnson’s latest is sure to win fans.-   (Read the whole review)
  —Publishers Weekly, April 3, 2024

Tales from Mnemosyne by Dennis Danvers

 

 

 

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of Tales from Mnemosyne by Dennis Danvers as volume 90 in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now at www.aqueductpress.com.

 

Tales from Mnemosyne retells Classical myths, largely known from Ovid, in the voice and tradition of an Appalachian storyteller, in this case, the goddess Mnemosyne. As the goddess of Memory and mother of The Muses, she is uniquely qualified to set the record straight—to tell the true stories without the usual patriarchal propaganda, all the while keeping things fun and only slightly blasphemous. Mnemosyne as a timeless goddess knows now and then backwards and forwards and has as much to say about the here and now as way back when. These fourteen tales include the most famous—Daphne and Apollo, Europa and Jove, the Birth of Athena, Cupid and Psyche—along with some too-often-forgotten ones, such as Tiresias and his daughter Manto, and Oenone, the abandoned wife of Paris. Charon, appropriately, concludes the proceedings.  

 

Advance Praise for Tales from Mnemosyne

This cool little book came in the mail yesterday, from Aqueduct’s Conversation Pieces imprint. It’s by the author, Dennis Danvers. Tales From Mnemosyne. These stories were originally told by Ovid but here they are told with the local trappings and voice of an Appalachian story teller. I heard him read one of these at World Fantasy — what a unique and effective blend of influences. Check it out.—Jeff Ford, author of The Drowned Life and Pretty Good Neighbor      

                                     

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 32: Cynthia Ward

 

 

2023 in Review: The Godless, Pop Gods, and Others
by Cynthia Ward

 

Another less-than-stellar year, so on to the (mostly) good stuff

 

May we all have a vision now and then (Music)

 "Happy New Year" by ABBA - In hopes of a better year ahead.

 "Journey to the End" by Haliok - My favorite song by Norwegian death-metal band Windir lends itself well to techno/electronica interpretations, as this cover version demonstrates.

 Omega Funk 10,000 by Benjiphonik - If you were wondering (as I'm sure we all do) who stands at the intersection of P-Funk, Run-DMC, Slayer, B-movie sci-fi, and Weird Al Yankovic, here's a link to a free streaming EP by SoCal singer/rapper/musician Benjiphonik (although this particular collection is, to be fair, short on metal).

 The Story of Zamrock! The Zambian Rock Sound 1972-1978 - Thanks to the writer Manjula Menon for introducing me to this short documentary and the fantastic psychedelic rock of 1970s Zambia.

 

It was strange to discover the world was a better place that you’d believed (Books)

 Nonfiction:

 

ABBA: Bright Lights Dark Shadows (updated 2014) by Carl Magnus Palm - Very thorough and mostly interesting, but probably not for the casual fan (or for someone who wants an update that includes ABBA's recent reunion)

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot - So everyone read it back in the '70s except me, and I wish I had, because I could have reread this charming account of a rural Yorkshire veterinarian's adventures and misadventures many times in the intervening years.

 

An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks - In this justly praised

(though now dated) book from 1995, the late neurologist sympathetically discusses (from an outsider perspective) several individuals we would now describe as neurodiverse, including, most famously, the autistic animal behaviorist Dr. Temple Grandin.

 Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman - Fascinating and enlightening book by one of the leading scholars of the early Christian era.

 The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin and Richard Panek - Excellent (though dated) book on autism from someone on the spectrum--which makes this something of a rarity in mainstream-published books, in my experience.

 Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H - In this collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays, the pseudonymous queer Muslim immigrant author explores her relationships with her religion, her deity, her sexuality, her culture, her partners, and her family.

 

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis - A classic sociocultural history of L.A. from an author whose political perspective is much like mine, but I didn't finish it because I wearied of the nonstop negativity.

 

Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian Moms Tell All! edited by Harlyn Aizley - This anthology of essays by queer nonbirth mothers is wide-ranging and well-written (if somewhat dated), and it gave this childfree reader much food for thought about motherhood, parenting, pregnancy, birth, child-raising, and family.

Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith by Richard Bradford - By all accounts, the brilliant mystery/thriller writer and trailblazing lesbian romance author Patricia Highsmith was a reprehensible human being, but the author of this biography is so busy making sure you know he doesn't like her that I abandoned the book, overcome by the sound of axes grinding.

The Family Outing: A Memoir by Jessi Hempel - What if nearly everyone in your family, including you, turns out to be queer and/or genderqueer, and oh, yeah, you might be involved in a cult?

Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life by R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick - A thoughtful, nuanced, non-insulting view of religion and irreligion in American life, and their iterative interactions with U.S. law and custom and with one another; the authors' reasonable thesis is that nonbelief has generally failed to provide much to fill the role (meaningful action/activism) of religions and faith groups, and they speculate on a more coherent approach to secular morality.

 Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe by Greg Epstein - A thoughtful and thorough exploration of not only the possibility, but the necessity of atheist morality and ethics, written the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University.

I Am a Bacha Posh: My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan by Ukmina Manoori with Stephanie Lebrun, translated by Peter E. Chianchiano, Jr. - A fascinating first-hand account (in translation) from a person who was assigned female at birth; was temporarily designated a boy so her family would have a male child, in accordance with Afghani custom; and refused to resume life as a girl--of interest to readers of Anna-Marie McLemore's novel When the Moon Was Ours (2016) or Jenny Nordberg's The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan (2014), or to anyone interested in gender, identity, feminism, Afghani culture, etc.

 Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America by Dahlia Lithwick - The gut-clenching account of how women lawyers across the U.S. fought back the Trump administration assault on democracy, and let's hope Lithwick never needs to write a sequel.

 Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions by Phil Zuckerman - This carefully researched (if now somewhat dated) exploration of the United States' fastest-growing religious/ontological demographic ("nones") is written with grace and balance by a leading secularist; the book's a useful guide, whether you're writing the other as a believer, or just looking for better understanding, whether as an outsider or as an insider.

 

 

 Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer - A complex, candid, and sometimes deeply uncomfortable exploration of art, creativity, monstrous creators, our relationship with them, and other relationships.

 NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman - The best book (and the most recent) I've read so far on autism.

The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us About Love, Life, and Mortality by Karen Fine - The memoir of a woman veterinarian and pet owner who entered the field when it was male-dominated and built a successful practice in a sexist profession that guarantees much suffering and death; if you don't cry, your heart is harder than mine.

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts - An aging Maine farm woman diagnosed with terminal cancer loses her home to the tax man and sets out to cross 1950s America on a horse--Annie Wilkins is a quintessential Mainer, the author understands Maine better than any other out-of-stater I've ever read, and this is one of the best books I read all year.

 Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now by Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang - This impressive, comprehensive, and sometimes very funny exploration of Asian American pop culture and historical/political/sociocultural issues includes a handy "appreciation-or-appropriate" flowchart for those of us who are writing the other, or who just want not to be assholes.

 

 

 She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boyle - A literate, insightful, candid, and drily funny memoir by the novelist, trans activist, and former Colby College professor.

 Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli - The subtitle is truth in advertising.

 Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein - The title and foreword make this engaging work sound like a true-crime book; the subtitle might have injected more accuracy by including the word "memoir."

 We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too) by Kate Cohen – This thought-provoking book covers considerably more ground than just whether a nonbeliever should identify and publicly come out as atheist.

 

What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life by Phil Zuckerman - Why morality dependent on divine command isn't moral, among other subjects addressed logically and eruditely.

 

Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn't Enough by Dina Nayeri - Odds are, if you're reading this blog, you are or have been part of a demographic or several whose experiences are routinely disbelieved and dismissed, and therefore might find this book of interest; but I have known people who couldn't finish it, because the dismissed people on which it is centered are refugees and torture survivors.  Harrowing and necessary.

Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora edited by Saraciea J. Fennell - A nonfiction anthology of graceful, powerful essays from a fairly diverse, broadly defined group of Latinx authors.

 

Fiction - Anthologies and Collections and a Story or Three:

 "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" by Arthur Conan Doyle - A fine winter mystery featuring an oft-stolen gem, Christmas geese, and an almost merry visit with Sherlock Holmes, who embodies the generous spirit of the season (included in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)

Bicycles & Broomsticks: Fantastical Feminist Stories about Witches on Bikes edited by Elly Blue - If you read the full title, you know exactly what you're getting; and they're fun and gentle visions.

 Futures That Never Were (Broadswords and Blasters Presents) edited by Cameron Mount and Matthew X Gomez - Jam-packed, pulse-pounding anthology/special issue of sword & planet and related pulp space adventure stories (disclosure:  I'm a contributor).

 The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh: A Society of Gentlemen Short Story by KJ Charles - What if you lose everything, only to gain what you really want?

 So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan - A slim collection of three graceful, insightful, deceptively simple fictions which serve as a corrective to any starry-eyed illusions about male-female romantic relationships, and which I should not have read back-to-back due to a certain monotony of theme; your mileage may vary.

A Sweet Yuletide by EE Ottoman - This short, gentle, historical holiday FF romance may leave you hungry.

 

Fiction - Novels and Novellas:

 All the Right Notes by Dominic Lim - Kind of uneven, this ambitiously structured, Filipino/Japanese American, MM romance novel is not a "hilarious comedy" as misleadingly promoted, but it is a lyrical love letter to musicals.

 The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison (who also writes as Sarah Monette) - A gaslight fantasy, a sort of re-envisioning of Holmes and Watson after significant alterations, set in a world of werewolves and vampires and angels, fallen and unfallen; sometimes a mess, but an entertaining novel.

 Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail (Bright Falls Book 2) by Ashley Herring Blake - In this insightful and sexy sequel to small-town Oregon romantic comedy Delilah Green Doesn't Care, Delilah's interior-designer stepsister/fellow monster-mother-survivor must stake all on a reality-TV remodel, but the cute lesbian head carpenter proves an obstacle to her goal, her identity, and her heart.

Babel by R.F. Kuang - Brilliant magic system, audacious novel, deserving Nebula Award winner.

 Bard: Book 1 by Keith Taylor - This Arthurian sword & sorcery fix-up novel about a wandering Irish musician/warrior/Druid is a compelling if sometimes dated page-turner, with as harrowing a werewolf as I've ever seen.

 Black Orchid Enterprises series by M.R. Dimond - With four titles released so far, this cozy, diverse, contemporary small-town Texas mystery series combines crime, cat rescue, an ABBA tribute band, the occasional holiday, and romantic pining to entertaining (and sometimes sobering) effect (two of the four titles are collections, not novels).

 Bowlaway: A Novel by Elizabeth McCracken - I was primed to like this literary fantasy/magic realist novel centered on the endangered New England sport of candlepin bowling, but the prose was so busy being arch and clever that I gave up.

 By Way of Sorrow (An Erin McCabe Legal Thriller Book 1) by Robyn Gigl - Page-turner/voyage of discovery about a trans lawyer seeking justice, which left me wishing the character had queer/genderqueer found family instead of operating in painful isolation.

 Can't Spell Treason Without Tea (Tomes & Tea Book 1) by Rebecca Thorne - I finally tried some cozy fantasy, and found this gentle, romantic (FF), secondary-world novel a pleasant way to while away an afternoon, as well as a welcome change from ten-tome epic fantasy trilogies; it's worth a look if you love books or tea and don't mind anachronism.

 Chef's Kiss and Chef's Choice by TJ Alexander - Despite my lack of cooking skills, I greatly enjoyed these queer and genderqueer culinary romance novels, and found Book 2's Frenchman annoying but, yes! also charming.

 

 Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen - This terrific feminist literary caper novel should be marinating in mystery/suspense awards, but sadly isn't; don't miss it.

 

A Coup of Tea (Tea Princess Chronicles Book 1) by Casey Blair - This recent entry in the recently named cozy fantasy subgenre has a low-key (MF) romance and a narrator so keenly attuned to political and social subtleties that the novel might also qualify as fantasy of manners.

 

Death by Silver and A Death at the Dionysus Club by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold - Happy to see this alternate-Victorian fantasy mystery series (featuring characters loosely inspired by Holmes & Watson) back in print with gorgeous new covers, and delighted to read them again.

 

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie - The classic Hercule Poirot whodunnit now also serves as a window into the colonial English view of Egypt.

 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - This ambitious Pulitzer Prize winner has a wonderful voice that pulls you right along (which makes this grittily realistic contemporary literary novel no less dark or lengthy).

 Feel the Bern: A Bernie Sanders Mystery by Andrew Shaffer - Set in Vermont (who'd have guessed?), this light cozy mystery from the author of the Obama/Biden mysteries features the U.S. Senator as an enjoyable if cranky amateur detective.

 The Fiancée Farce: A Novel by Alexandria Bellefleur - When a lie blows up in this Seattle-set FF rom-com, a publisher's heir and a failing bookstore's owner agree to wed, a quick fix which proves not the simple solution they were hoping for.

 

Fire Logic and Earth Logic by Laurie J. Marks - Judging by the first two of its four books, Elemental Logic is a gracefully written epic fantasy series which considers imperialism, colonialism, and magic not as elements for a sweeping adolescent power fantasy, but intimately and thoughtfully--the first two titles are difficult, beautiful, sometimes aggravating, and always demanding and rewarding.

 

Have You Seen Luis Velez? by Catherine Ryan Hyde - This diverse novel stays too close to the surface of its difficult intersections and issues to avoid clocking out as Representation Lite.

 Hen Fever: A Sapphic Victorian Romance by Olivia Waite - For the holiday I re-read this historical Christmas romance novella, which offers just the right level of detail to feel wintry, yet cozy and warm.

 Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie - What's the holiday spirit without a bloody murder, a family riven by hatred, and a fiendish locked-room mystery?

 How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow - In this Hanukkah/Christmas romance, a young palaeoichthyologist/dog walker/trauma survivor literally runs into the girl of her dreams; can they work past their youthful awkwardness and inexperience as a DC blizzard piles the snow higher around them?

 Idol Minds by KT Salvo - A captivating (not to mention steamy) contemporary MM romance in which a closeted, Oscar-winning Korean American actor with secrets relocates to Seoul to coach a closeted K-Pop superstar fleeing his own secrets.

 Infamous: A Novel by Lex Croucher - Fun, interracial, sapphic Regency rom-com which felt rather more like Zoomers running with a Boho/hippie crowd than I suspect is strictly accurate.

 Iris Kelly Doesn't Date (Bright Falls Book 3) by Ashley Herring Blake - In the conclusion to the FF rom-com Bright Falls trilogy, a writer's deliberately single life runs afoul of an irresistible actor and an entire monster family; despite the novel's many strengths, it seems not nearly aware enough of the absolutely toxic levels of familial meddling.

 An Island Princess Starts a Scandal (Las Leonas Book 2) by Adriana Herrera - As this hot historical FF romance novel makes clear, Herrera really knows how to put her romantic leads--and her reader--through the wringer.

 Kiss Her Once for Me: A Novel by Alison Cochrun - Fun fake-engagement FF love-quadrangle romance that's a love-letter to the Rose City and the first portrayal of a demisexual character I've seen that resonates with my experience.

 K-Pop Confidential by Stephan Lee - Riveting romantic YA novel of a young Korean American woman who may land her dream job, if the try-out and training don't kill her first; I hope this is an exaggerated fictionalization of life in Korean entertainment, but fear it is not.

 Love & Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love by Kim Fay - I don't expect white American characters to be aware of cultural appropriation in writing professionally about Mexican food and recipes in the 1960s, but the additional material appended to this interesting but uneven short epistolary novel from 2022 make it clear the author is either oblivious to this ethical gray area or ignored it, which, together with some other issues, leaves the work as Representation Lite.

 Luke and Billy Finally Get a Clue by Cat Sebastian - A low-key yet riveting historical MM romance novella in which two prominent pro baseball players navigate possible attraction in 1953.

 The Master of Samar by Melissa Scott - In this terrific stand-alone queer fantasy, loosely inspired by Renaissance Venice, curses and genii loci are nothing like you imagined.

Masters in This Hall by KJ Charles - In this historical MM romance novella, there's no place like home for the holidays, especially when it's your uncle's grand house in Victorian England and you're on the trail of the thief who loved and double-crossed you, with far more dangerous men pursuing you both.

 Mecca: A Novel by Susan Straight - As good a writer about California as Steinbeck; a novel that's a master class in writing the other and the knowing chronicle of an Inland Empire native; a cri de couer against the injustices of race and class and gender and citizenship at the core of the Golden State and the United States; an ending that is unresolved yet all too clear.

 Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery by Agatha Christie - Short, tricksy mystery and thriller tales which are mostly, but not all, set in the winter season.

 Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall - An amusing historical fantasy romance (FF) novel, but your enjoyment may hinge significantly on your reaction to the narration.

 Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang - This recent release (2023) was published as a literary novel and I found it on a list of crime/mystery/suspense novels by Asian writers, but my primary impression is that it is a science fiction novel of body horror...and an unpredictable, thought-provoking, and deeply creepy one.

 Night Sky Mine by Melissa Scott - Excellent far-future cyberpunk novel of artificial life and the relationship of union and corporation.

 One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - Seeking distance from her boundaries-challenged mother, a queer virgin Southern woman relocates to New York and becomes fascinated by the butch Chinese punk she sees on the subway...a woman who seems from another time, and perhaps is.

 Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell - The sequel to romantic (MM) far-future novel of political space opera Winter's Orbit is at least as strong as its predecessor.

 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee - This decades-spanning National Book Award finalist, a historical novel of Koreans in 20th-Century Korea and Japan, is gorgeously and sensitively written, and a stone bummer.

 The Postcard by Anne Berest, translated by Tina Kover - In the alternating past and present storylines of this chilling novel/thinly veiled memoir, 21st-Century fascism and Antisemitism rise around a Jewish Frenchwoman barely aware of her heritage as she investigates an anonymous, threatening postcard sent to her bearing only the names of her ancestors killed in the Holocaust.

 The Princess Stakes: A Multicultural Regency Romance (Daring Dukes Book 1) by Amalie Howard - As part of my quest for the elusive feminist MF romance of consent-conscious equals, I started this romance novel; I abandoned it unfinished because I got tired of waiting for something feminist to show up.

 A River Runs through It and Other Stories by Norman MacLean - Graceful, elegaic, infused with love for the West and family and fly-fishing; reminds me greatly of Hemingway, except for leaving somewhat less grit in my gears.

 The Rivals of Casper Road (Garnet Run Book 4) by Roan Parrish - Parrish returns to her popular small-town Garnet Run series for a strong Halloween-set MM neurodiverse/neurotypical romance.

 The Romantic Agenda by Claire Kann - As in her previous ace/allo interracial MF romance novel, Let's Talk About Love, Claire Kann presents a complex, difficult Black woman character who may leave you tearing out your hair and/or wondering why the guy might stay with her; points for creating characters and relationships which really leave you thinking.

 Season of Love by Helena Greer - As Hanukkah and other holidays pass in this sapphic romance, the Jewish heir to a Christmas tree farm clashes and sparks with the Gentile manager.

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (The Doomsday Books Book 1) and A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (The Doomsday Books Book 2) by KJ Charles - Crimes and secrets, sex and romance, manly love, KJ Charles--what's not to like?

 The Secret of the Lost Pearls by Darcie Wilde (who also writes as Sarah Zettel) - In the 2022 installment of the Austen-inspired Regency mystery series, "useful woman" Rosalind Thorne becomes entangled in a complex mystery that quickly moves far beyond a missing necklace.

 Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (Remixed Classics Book 5) by Anna-Marie McLemore - A gracefully written YA trans Hispanic take on the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic of the Roaring '20s, but perhaps not the novel for those who want no anachronism.

 Seoulmates by Susan Lee - Fun if kind of uneven YA MF rom-com with K-Drama.

 Shadow of the Rock: A Spike Sanguinetti Novel by Thomas Mogford - This opening novel of a Gibraltar mystery series turns out to be set mostly in Morocco, which is something of a disappointment, given the historical, ethnic, and sociocultural complexities of the Rock; additionally, the lead is a bit too much of a lucky cishet white guy that the women can't resist.

 

 Show Girl by Alyson Greaves - A modern spin on the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady trope, but also not really like anything else I've never read, and lovely, too; highly recommended.

 

 Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni - Well written FF rom-com of finding self and of finding a love that may be shunned in the Bay Area Armenian American community; the narrator can be intense and irritating, so I would have preferred to see the PoV alternating with her more centered love interest.

 Sword-Dancer (Tiger and Del Book 1) by Jennifer Roberson - I wondered about mentioning this superior but trigger-filled heroic fantasy novel from 1986, because I wondered if anyone significantly younger than I could tolerate the entitled, misogynistic male narrator; of course, for a woman of my generation, his kind was legion, except typically less open to the possibility of change than the damaged Tiger is.

System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries Book 7) by Martha Wells - Another fine novel featuring everyone's favorite snarky construct (but better appreciated if you do what I didn't, and read or re-read Book 6 right before this one).

That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey - In this enjoyable FF contemporary romance, a premonition ends in a far different place than the viewpoint character expects when she attends a summer camp for adults.

 A Thief in the Night by KJ Charles - So you're desperate enough to rob a guy on the highway and assume a valet's identity, only to find out said valet's new employer is the guy you robbed--what could go right?

 The Verifiers by Jane Pek - In this superior literary mystery/thriller novel that may also be science fiction, a keen-witted queer Asian woman who scorns online dating, investigates online daters and can't seem to connect to anyone in real life uncovers a possible crime, with potentially deadly consequences.

 Water Horse by Melissa Scott - A terrific epic fantasy novel, which is unusual for the subgenre in being queer and possibly unique in completing its complex story in one (!) volume; the inspiration appears to be Celtic, but reading this novel as a Celtic fantasy would be confusing at best.

 The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang - This wuxia novel, which is set in an alternate Song Dynasty China and based (in queer and genderbent ways) on the classic Chinese novel Water Margin, is an exciting and thought-provoking sword & sorcery adventure, but if you have any triggers, they are probably in this book; and if you want your reads to comfort or reinforce your Western expectations, moralities, or pieties, you are in the wrong place.

 Wear It Like a Crown: A MM Royalty Romance by Zarah Detand - A gay prince threatened with blackmail takes on a handler who urges the prince's coming out while keeping his own secrets.

 We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian - In a 1950s New York newsroom, it can be a challenge to stay closeted; and what is it with this rather intrusive co-worker, anyway?

 

 Cynthia Ward has published stories in Analog, Asimov's, Nightmare, Weird Tales, and elsewhere. For WolfSinger Publications, she edited the anthologies Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West Volumes 1-2. With fellow Aqueductista Nisi Shawl, Cynthia coauthored the Locus Award winning fiction-writing guide, Writing the Other: A Practical Approach. In 2021, Aqueduct Press released the concluding novella in her Bloody-Thirsty Agent series, The Adventure of the Golden Woman.