John OverholtExtremely niche huge news--the English Short Title Catalogue, the definitive database of books printed in the English-speaking world before 1801, lost in the British Library cyberattack, is reborn (in beta) as a CERL database. https://datb.cerl.org/estc/
Piers Brown
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Renaissance literature, especially poetics, history of science, history of the book. Projects on Donne's Metaphysical Schemes; Shakespeare and Affective Ecology.
@cstross No, despite having grown up just outside Welwyn. How do I not even know my own history?
@OrionKidder Not sure, but I wouldn't be surpized if it happens some places given that in almost every state the highest-paid public employee is the football coach for the biggest state university.
@bookish "develop kebab" = "Wings of the dove"?
@cstross For a while when I was a kid (ages ~11-18), my bedroom at my mum's place was a sleeping loft in the eaves that had room for just a double mattress about a foot of carpet and then an eight-foot drop. If I had rolled off sideways, I would have fallen about 4 ft before the middle of my body was stopped by the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room. Felt absolutely safe, no worries. Only once did I accidentally climb backwards off the edge to be found crouching half-asleep on the kitchen counter having broken the teapot.
@cstross Rasselas! Also, plays, poetry, other fiction. Not just a harmless drudge.
Ryan CordellPlease share this CFP!
https://go.illinois.edu/BuildingaBookLabSymposiumCFP
We’re hosting a symposium 20-21 May 2025 at Skeuomorph Press on "Building Book Labs: Hands-On Research & Teaching in Book History"—we’re looking for talks, discussion topics, & hands-on activities—& we especially welcome novel formats or session ideas. More at the link!
(Thus far) the symposium is co-sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, the University of Illinois Rare Book & Manuscript Library, UIUC's Humanities Research Institute, UIUC's English Department, Skeuomorph Press & BookLab, & the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab.
As we were planning we learned that other colleagues around the continent were planning very similar events for the same time, so joined forces & now anticipate turning this into a symposium series that will run for 2-3 years at several institutions—more on those ambitions at the bottom of the CFP.
𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"The year is 3129. Humanity is extinct. The last LG SmartFridge is desperately emailing its last owner that they are low on orange juice. The satellites that are still left, their orbits slowly decaying over millennia, dutifully relay the message. The automated "away from office" response turns on, as it always does, notifying the refrigerator that it's owner will likely return to the office in 3-5 business days.
Somewhere in what used to be called Ohio, a pack of roombas, their local wind turbines giving out and creaking to a halt, begin searching for the next functional docking station. A washing machine in Argentina tweets: "anyone need to do a load 😏" every Saturday at 1:30 a.m. eastern standard time. The replies are filled with AI thirstposters and their hypebots.
In North America, raccoons have quietly entered the bronze age, while baboons riding domesticated battlewolves rule most of Asia. Unbeknownst to either, the octopi are mastering nuclear fusion. A weather balloon bobs and sways in the upper atmosphere, now almost entirely clear of lingering chloroflourocarbons, reporting conditions to weather stations long since destroyed in World War Five.
The Crab Nation are mostly hermits, but come out to greet their prophet every ten years on the 6th full moon of the year. A lone, curious octopus decides to observe this year's event, peering out at the festivities from her safe haven - the submerged, rusting hulk of an ancient Cybertruck. Then he appears: the hologram of Shia Lebouf powered by MetaAI. He beckons the octopus to follow. The crabs all start chittering excitedly. The time has come to invade Amazon HQ. The crows gather in huge numbers. They need more storage space for their Steam collections.
Naomi Klein can't catch a break: here's her being dopplegangered in a review of her book Doppleganger in the Guardian. (Article now updated to correct the error: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/18/steve-bannon-is-watching-us-closely-naomi-klein-on-populists-conspiracists-and-real-world-activism)
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.