meeting the Master

It's a nice feeling when you meet a Grand Master of Science-Fiction and not only does she recognize you from previous encounters, but she also knows your name.

flipping to a new month

With the new month comes the ritual of flipping my office's calendar. April's art, taken from Startling Stories's February 1952 issue, features, not a spaceship being sliced in half but a scantily clad lady standing in the palm of a giant hand. Either that or she's even tinier than Judi Dench. No matter what, based on her body's reaction, I'd suggest that Mister Hand isn't generating much heat.

"Glamour in Glass"

What happens to a Jane Austen heroine after the tale has been told of how she met the Love of her Life?

Scientific inquiry, of course.

In 2010 we first met Jane Ellsworth in Mary Robinette Kowal’s novel “Shades of Milk and Honey”, which is best described as Jane Austen with magic. The heroine was the Ellsworths’ eldest daughter, who saw herself as plain, compared to her younger sister who was their mother’s only hope of marriage. All that Jane had in her favor was her intelligence, and her mastery of glamour, a form of magic involving the manipulation of light. That didn’t prevent her discovery of Love, in the person of Mister Vincent, glamour artist to England’s High Society.

Coming out next week is Kowal’s followup, “Glamour in Glass”. Jane and Vincent live in a state of bliss both marital and professional. They have just completed a commission for the Prince Regent and are at last free to go on their much-delayed honeymoon. With Bonaparte now exiled in Elba, things are quieter on the Continent so off they go to Belgium, to stay at the school of another glamourist, where they’ll combine romance with scientific research into the mechanisms of their magic. Or so it should be. Jane makes an important breakthrough, but finds her husband becoming secretive and distant. To complicate matters even more, Bonaparte has come back, and Vincent has been taken prisoner by the French military, and Jane of course will stop at nothing to rescue him. As Vincent later tells the Prince Regent…

”I have learned that it is to my folly to do anything without my wife.”

Recommended.

synchronicity

With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shared romance
Synchronicity

Today's example of synchronicity, unlike Sting's, didn't involve romance, but it sure made Sue and I very happy. Not only did she receive a very nice royalty check, but the mailbox contained our tax refund from the state AND Uncle Sam's. Woot.