The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt.2: Xian Mao

 

2024 Pleasures

by Xian Mao  

 

This was a year of changes: I finally finished medical school; I was officially diagnosed with autism; I started testosterone. And as I look ahead to 2025 where I will be entering into the next decade of my life, I am filled with trepidation and excitement at the prospect of becoming a human being. On more days than not, I feel less like a functioning adult and more like a puppet. Perhaps that is why this performance of “Confrontation” from Jekyll and Hyde by drag king Pippin Panic is so compelling, and why the story itself compels me out of all classic gothic monsters.

 

 Speaking of monsters, I loved the Dungeon Meshi manga and anime and its focus on the culinary preparation of fantasy monsters. Not only were many of the dishes delicious, but its ethos of consumption as a vital part of being alive was really stirring. I also related heavily to the protagonist and his struggles connecting with others, feeling closer to the monsters he is fighting compared to other adventurers. I had a similar reaction to My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book 2, and how marginalized identities lead to identification with the other.

The video that truly brought me to tears is the September Trilogy by Ava Hoffman, a series of Line Rider maps that tell the personal story of falling apart due to transphobia and abuse, and the arduous task of putting herself back together. The last song, which ironically was the video I found first, feels like the epilogue to I Saw the TV Glow, my (predictably) favorite new movie of this year. Because what can we do when we cut ourselves open and find the truth, except go back to living and living and living again?

 I always feel some nervousness when writing these retrospectives. My years change by summers, so winter is merely a continuation. In addition, I’m still struggling with the ultimate imposter syndrome of being an adult. I don’t know where this shame comes from, but in order to disassemble this panopticon, I want to spend a paragraph on YouTube object shows. Many of these were initially made by teenagers in the early years of the internet, but it’s incredibly gratifying watching animation and writing skills develop and becomes a playground for existential questions, such as how one can find meaning in a predetermined existence in Inanimate Insanity, or rage against an incompetent god in ONE.

As animation targeted toward adults, especially ex-mall goths like me, becomes more mainstream, I find myself drawn more toward imperfect projects made by small-scale creators. The animatics of JazLyte, especially Night Walkies, resonated with me in part because he includes extensive commentary on the process of creation.

 

Here are some last, scattered things I loved this year. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville made me jealous of the expansive, complex world he built. I took the first step in reading Isabel Allende with House of Spirits. Chappell Roan was my most played artist, but my favorite new artist was the British rapper Ren. And while I look forward to taking my niece to see Wicked, I’m more excited about Nightbitch, myself.

 

This is the year I take steps to further be myself. And that means embracing the weird, the childish, the overcomplicated, and the iconoclastic. To bring this full circle, I end with a quote from the first book I finished this year, Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven. “There is no end; there is only means.” And I mean to become unapologetically myself, especially in a world that threatens to destroy me. 

 

Xian Mao is a queer non-binary Chinese American writer and family medicine doctor whose works with Aqueduct Press include poetry in Climbing Lightly Through Forests, an anthology honoring Ursula K. Le Guin, and the novella Apollo Weeps, a 2024 

finalist in the novella category for The Subjective Kind of Chaos Award. They also have short stories published in Undercities (Dirty Birds Press), Rattus Futura (Manawalker Press), and Nobody Left to Blame (Owl Canyon Press). Their short play "Fantasy Roadtrip," focused on the relationship between a young adult and her uncle with schizophrenia, was produced as a part of the 2017 DC Queer Theater Fest. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, they have called the Northeast home for over ten years. In their (very limited) spare time, they enjoy knitting, making art, playing video games and spending time with their pets.

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt.1: Tara Campbell

 

The Pleasures of 2024

by Tara Campbell

 

 

 

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Lyrical, engrossing, sobering, and mesmerizing. I started this in written format, but switched to audiobook (read by Aja Naomi King) when I had to give the book back. All of the stories are whip-smart, but the eponymous novella is a singular feat. Written from the perspective of a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, Johnson has put her own singular spin on the apocalypse novel. A masterpiece.

 The Angel of Rome by Jess Walter

Audiobook: stories full of Walter's signature wry, winningly sad humor and nostalgia, set in the Pacific Northwest. The title story is enchanting, featuring a larger-than-life actor and an ensemble cast of unlikely fans who wind up working on a Hollywood script.

 Blue Skies by TC Boyle

A sobering look ahead in terms of climate change, but with enough humor and human connection to get you through the hard parts. It’s set in (present? near future?) Florida succumbing to flooding, but the focus is on human relationships, denial, and folly. No spoilers, but there's a persistent sense of foreboding about a certain pet, and Boyle teases the tension out expertly.

 Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

What a delightful journey! Seattle-based Buxton fully inhabits her main character, a feisty and delightfully foul-mouthed crow named S.T. (short for Shit Turd), making us cheer for him and his trusty hound-dog sidekick Dennis. She sends them on incredible adventures through a wonderfully detailed Seattle as only a Cheeto-addicted crow could see it. A love letter to both the grunge and the natural splendor of our fair city.
 

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

Another one I read in a matter of days. A slim novel that still feels full, like a meal that looks small on the plate but is satisfying because of the richness of its ingredients and the care of its preparation. There’s disturbing magic in the juxtaposition of decadence against the disintegration of the world, and tension in the relationships where the main character continually has to question who she can truly trust beyond herself. This is a perfect example of how closed settings can ramp up tension.


The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields

This book is mesmerizing and wonderfully weird. No wonder it won the Washington Book Award! Sasquatch lore expertly interwoven with a multi-generational family drama--truly unique.



And I'm currently re-reading (audio book) Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy. Love, betrayal, gene-splicing, and pandemic. What can I say, the woman is a genius, prescient and incisive. She's what I want to be when I grow up.

 

 Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse Magazine. She teaches flash fiction and speculative fiction, and is the author of a novel, two hybrid collections of poetry and prose, and two short story collections (Midnight at the Organporium and Cabinet of Wrath, from Aqueduct). Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles, was released by Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in September 2024. Find out more at www.taracampbell.com

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening -- the 2024 Edition

 

 Our annual Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening series will begin tomorrow. As someone firmly embedded in old age, I've become increasingly focused on the importance of pleasure. Granted, on difficult days, pleasure can be fleeting. But for those of us old people who don't believe we will achieve immortality or super-longevity, there can be no contest between pleasure and its economic opposite, capital accumulation. 

(Hmm... Does that mean that old people are akin to Aesop's grasshopper? It's complicated, I guess. But it certainly does suggest that spending a lifetime playing music, writing books, making art doesn't count as productive work...)

Not that the writers and readers of these year-end pieces are all old people blessed (or cursed) with a heightened awareness of their mortality. I think pleasure--and an outright emphasis on it and a recognition that it is necessary for any human's flourishing (which includes the recognition that making other human beings miserable is an attack of their very existence)--is especially important now. 

 The Pleasures series includes more than the pleasures offered by books, although books are the general focus of this blog. In past years the series has shown that reading, viewing, and listening pleasures vary widely. And that is what has made me keep this series going. I love the variety of tastes and practices it repeatedly reveals. This year's iteration will include posts by Andrea Hairston, Christopher Brown, Nisi Shawl, Sarah Tolmie, Sofia Rhei, Cheryl Morgan, and others.

I hope you'll enjoy reading the pieces in this year's series as much as I do and that they'll swell the list of titles you want to read, view, and listen to yourself. We all know that the volume of books published is so tremendous that that really wonderful work often slips below one's personal radar. 

Part 1: Tara Campbell

Part 2: Xian Mao

Part 3: Cheryl Morgan

Part 4: Lesley Wheeler

Part 5: Nisi Shawl

Part 6: Kendal Simmons

Part 7: Erin K. Wagner

Part 8: Joanne Rixon

Part 9: Holly Wade Matter

Part  10:  Sofía Rhei

Part 11: Rebecca J. Holden 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!