Back to School Literature

Well it is again that time of year again when all students return to school and continue their education. It is with this in mind that I what to give everyone reading this a small lesson in classic literature. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, 1st Baron Lytton, was a very well known and well regarded poet, playwright, and novelist. He was born in 1803 and died in 1873. Very well renowned in his day, his novels now adays symbolize the overembellishment and extreme verbosity inherent in Victorian era prose. His most famous sentence was the line to the opening of his novel"Paul Clifford",

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

And in 1982, using the sheer weight and verbosity of this sentence, the English department of San Jose State University sponsored a small, whimsical literary contest entitled the Lytton-Bulwer Fiction Contest. The purpose was simple, "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels".

This year's winner was submitted by Garrison Spik of Washington D.C.,

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

It was with this gem that Mr. Spik won the vernable literature contest.


There are the other dishonorable mentions and runnersups that more than deserve their own spot in the literary limelight.

The Hugo Awards

Very big news for all those of the science fiction and fantasy variety. The winners of the Hugo awards were just announced this past weekend. Now for those who don't know the Hugo awards are the big name award given out every year for outstanding contribution to the field of Science Fiction and Fantasy, in a variety of categories. These people and works are the best of the best. So go out there and pick up either a nominee or a winner. You will be pleasantly surprised.

For some answers to any questions concerning the Hugos I would recommend consulting their official FAQ.

The full list of nominees are:
I have also put the winners in bold.

Best Novel

• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
• Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)
• Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)
• The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)
• Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace)

Best Novella

• “The Fountain of Age” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s July 2007)
• “Recovering Apollo 8″ by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov’s Feb. 2007)
• “Stars Seen Through Stone” by Lucius Shepard (F&SF July 2007)
• “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Dec. 2007, Subterranean Press) - I've read some good stuff by Connie Willis, she also won a Hugo for fill length novel in prior years.
  
• “Memorare” by Gene Wolfe (F&SF April 2007)

Best Novelette

• “The Cambist and Lord Iron: a Fairytale of Economics” by Daniel Abraham (Logorrhea, ed. John Klima, Bantam)
• “The Merchant and the Alchemist”s Gate” by Ted Chiang (F&SF Sept. 2007)
• “Dark Integers” by Greg Egan (Asimov’s Oct./Nov. 2007)
• “Glory” by Greg Egan (The New Space Opera, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, HarperCollins/Eos)
• “Finisterra” by David Moles (F&SF Dec. 2007)

Best Short Story

• “Last Contact” by Stephen Baxter (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, ed. George Mann, Solaris Books)
• “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s June 2007) - Greg Bear, bearing no relation to Elizabeth Bear but a very fine author
  
• “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” by Ken MacLeod (The New Space Opera, ed. by Gardner Dozois, and Jonathan Strahan, HarperCollins/Eos)
• “Distant Replay” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s April/May 2007)
• “A Small Room in Koboldtown” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s April/May 2007, The Dog Said Bow-Wow, Tachyon Publications)

Best Related Book

• The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Diana Glyer; appendix by David Bratman (Kent State University Press)
• Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium by Barry Malzberg (Baen)
• Emshwiller: Infinity x Two by Luis Ortiz, intro. by Carol Emshwiller, fwd. by Alex Eisenstien (Nonstop)
• Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press)
• The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Enchanted Written by Bill Kelly Directed by Kevin Lima (Walt Disney Pictures)
• The Golden Compass Written by Chris Weitz Based on the novel by Philip Pullman Directed by Chris Weitz (New Line Cinema)
• Heroes, Season 1 Created by Tim Kring (NBC Universal Television and Tailwind Productions Written by Tim Kring, Jeff Loeb, Bryan Fuller, Michael Green, Natalie Chaidez, Jesse Alexander, Adam Armus, Aron Eli Coleite, Joe Pokaski, Christopher Zatta, Chuck Kim. Directed by David Semel, Allan Arkush, Greg Beeman, Ernest R. Dickerson, Paul Shapiro, Donna Deitch, Paul A. Edwards, John Badham, Terrence O’Hara, Jeannot Szwarc, Roxann Dawson, Kevin Bray, Adam Kane
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Written by Michael Goldenberg Based on the novel by J.K. Rowling Directed by David Yates (Warner Bros. Pictures)
• Stardust Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Paramount Pictures)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• Battlestar Galactica “Razor” Written by Michael Taylor Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá and Wayne Rose (Sci Fi Channel) (televised version, not DVD)
• Doctor Who “Blink” Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)
• Doctor Who “Human Nature’ / “Family of Blood” Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Charles Palmer (BBC)
• Star Trek New Voyages “World Enough and Time” Written by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree Directed by Marc Scott Zicree (Cawley Entertainment Co. and The Magic Time Co.)
• Torchwood “Captain Jack Harkness” Written by Catherine Tregenna Directed by Ashley Way (BBC Wales)

Best Professional Editor, Short Form

• Ellen Datlow
• Stanley Schmidt
• Jonathan Strahan
• Gordon Van Gelder
• Sheila Williams

Best Professional Editor, Long Form

• Lou Anders
• Ginjer Buchanan
• David G. Hartwell
• Beth Meacham
• Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist

• Bob Eggleton
• Phil Foglio
• John Harris
• Stephan Martiniere
• John Picacio
• Shaun Tan

Best Semiprozine

• Ansible edited by David Langford
• Helix edited by William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans
• Interzone edited by Andy Cox
• Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, Liza Groen Trombi
• New York Review of Science Fiction edited by Kathryn Cramer, Kristine Dikeman, David G. Hartwell, Kevin J. Maroney

Best Fanzine

• Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
• Challenger edited by Guy Lillian III
• Drink Tank edited by Chris Garcia
• File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
• PLOKTA edited by Alison Scott, Steve Davies, and Mike Scott

Best Fan Writer

• Chris Garcia
• David Langford
• Cheryl Morgan
• John Scalzi
• Steven H Silver

Best Fan Artist

• Brad Foster
• Teddy Harvia
• Sue Mason
• Steve Stiles
• Taral Wayne

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (Sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered on their behalf by WSFS)

• Joe Abercrombie (2nd year of eligibility)
• Jon Armstrong (1st year of eligibility)
• David Anthony Durham (1st year of eligibility)
• David Louis Edelman (2nd year of eligibility)
• Mary Robinette Kowal (2nd year of eligibility)
• Scott Lynch (2nd year of eligibility)

Internet Trolls

The Oxford English Dictionary Definition for the word troll as in Scandinavian mythology, one of a race of supernatural beings, now, in Denmark and Sweden, as dwarves or imps, supposed to inhabit caves or subterranean dwellings.

Wikipedia Defines an Internet Troll as, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response^[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

The Encyclopedia Dramatica Defines a Troll as the term derives from "trolling", a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. As a verb, "to troll" is probably a corruption of "trawl." Troll is fine as a verb since trawling for comments and flames is innate troll behavior. A "Troll" is a mythical monster that lives under a bridge and surprises people who try and cross the bridge with some bizarre puzzle or challenge that they must complete before crossing. It has been suggested that people who lurk in groups and suddenly enter discussions with unwanted and provocative contributions inspire the same type of fear in law-abiding netizens. More rational people know that Trolls are, in fact, monsters who live under a bridge, probably in Utah, who flocked to the information superhighway after real superhighways were declared obsolete by Al Gore. Bad things happen when trolls meet IRL.

All of these definitions for the word troll are actually leading up to something. There was a very interesting article in this weekend's NYTimes magazine about Internet Trolls, malicious mischief they cause. There was even an update on the troll profiled in the article, Jason Fortuny, where one of his victims actually tracked him down and sued him. Accompanying all of this is a very interesting and lively discussion on slashdot about this whole affair which people might find interesting.

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera Mechanism is hailed by many archeologist as one of the most important finds ever discovered. It was discovered in 1900 off the coast of the island of Antikythera between the islands of and mainland Greece. The mechanism itself is the earliest computing device ever discovered, and has been accurately dated to 150BC - 100 BC.

Over many years of study the basic design, and purpose of the machine has been slowly gleaned from the various fragments that have been recovered and studied. The device itself is meant to model astronomical phenomena, and it does so to very accurate degree.

For more information about the device you can read the NYTimes article on it.
And for very detailed information there is the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.
And there is the wikipedia article also.
And for the latest research there is a published piece in the journal Nature.

CAPTCHAs Cracked by Spammers

Everyone knows those ubiquitous, squiggled, words in the text boxes at the bottom of signin/sign-up pages. Those squiggled little words, that can be very hard to read, are called CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). And CAPTCHA are for the moment still a vital security device used by companies in helping to secure our data. The purpose of the CAPTCHA itself is to authenticate someone as a human in order to not allow a computer program, most often called a Bot, to get past the security of the signin page

The general plan for a spammer would be to use a computer program to automate the process of signing up for thousands upon thousands of email accounts. Then to use those accounts to send out spam, with 99% of spam being scams of one sort or another.

What CAPTCHAs accomplish is to provide a very effective blocking mechanize against bots from setting up those spam accounts in the first place. One of the toughest problems still left to solve for computer science is that of image recognition for computer programs, and a CAPTCHA will capitalize on that because only a human will be able to read the text.

All of this is leading into a very interesting article in Computer World describing the downfall of the CATPCHA due to advances in computer algorithms utilized by spammers.

"How CAPTCHA got trashed" by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;489635775 - Interesting Link - Blog About this in morning.

ALA Gaming Grant

Well who would have thought that just randomly going to the ALA's homepage would result in really awesome news of the gaming variety. But there it is. The Verizon Foundation has given the ALA $1 million dollar grant to study how gaming can be used to improve problem-solving and literacy skills.

Students And Text Books

Tuition has always been the biggest single bill that has to be paid at college. But the other largest bill is often not seem until the first week of school when the student stops at the school book store is all the text books. A single semester's worth of text books can run anywhere from 400 - 600 dollars.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights the problem. But upon reading the article I noticed a lack of a response for the chief reason that students pirate text books in the first place. That being the excessive cost vs. that actual use that most students get from their text books in your average 4 month college semester.

There is a website which "is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation."

There are some schools that are doing things a bit unconventionally. Some sort of new business model like this is sure to be the future, with many schools now offering extensive material online