Reading

Worldcon, 13 – 16 August, Seattle

Posted by Nicola Griffith

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/10/worldcon-13-16-august-seattle/

Next week there are lots of things happening downtown at the Seattle Convention Centre, August 13 – 17, when Seattle hosts the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention, that is, Worldcon. Guests of Honour include Martha Wells (author), Donato Giancola (artist), and Bridget Landry (scientist). To attend, paid registration is required.

I’ll be doing a handful of things.

Wednesday, 13 August, 2025 — in-person

Event: Table Talk. Room 430. 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Description: Come chat with me in a small, casual group. Chat about what? Well that’s the thing—anything you like. The conversation is determined by the group. So if you want to talk about books—mine or other people’s, already published or still to come, great! If you’d rather ask who I think should star in a screen adaptation of a certain books, or want to know about Charlie and George’s latest adventures, or want info on the Early Medieval or some basic self-defence tips, also great! You get to decide.
Notes: You need to be registered for the convention and I believe you also need to sign up in advance because there are only 6 slots. See ‘small’ and ‘casual’ above.

Thursday, 14 August, 2025 — in-person

Event: Autographing. Garden Lounge (3F). 3:00pm – 4:00 pm.
Description: Me and a dozen or so other writers (Robert Silverberg, Seanan McGuire, Mur Lafferty, Curtis Chen, Terry Brooks, more) will autograph things that you bring.
Details: I can’t speak for the other writers but I’m very happy to sign novels, stories, magazines, anthologies, etc.—old and new—for readers, collectors, and resellers. I’ll personalise for readers and very selectively for collectors, but not for resellers. I’m happy to chat, too, assuming it’s not hectic. (Frankly I don’t expect my line to be hectic.) All I ask is that if there is a queue, and you have an entire box of stuff for me to sign, you let let those with fewer things go first.

Thursday, 14 August, 2025 — in-person and virtual

Event: Panel. “Worldbuilding Through Geography and Environments”. Room 433-434. 6:00pm – 7:00pm.
Description: Me, Martha Wells, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Morgan Smathers (m). “Geographic determinism provides a powerful element for worldbuilding, informing the audience of the wide-ranging world beyond. Join our authors as they explore the fundamentals qualities and techniques that secure this soundly for the audience.”
Details: I imagine I’ll get to talk about my favourite bits of writing: how my characters move through their environment, how that environment changes and is changed by them, and how I persuade the reader to believe me. It’ll be a great discussion!

I’ll also of course be found attending a few things like the Tor party on Friday, and hanging out in the bar at the convention hub hotel, the Sheraton Grand.

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/10/worldcon-13-16-august-seattle/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86911

Help finding someone to type a short manuscript written in cursive

Posted by Nicola Griffith

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/09/help-finding-someone-to-type-a-short-manuscript-written-in-cursive/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86887

My stepfather-in-law, Art Woodbury, has written a short but excellent how-to book on jazz improvisation.¹ The problem? It’s written in pencil. In shaky cursive. With many alterations, erasures, and insertions. Plus a mix of photocopied and hand-drawn musical notations. Some pages are easy to read, others, well, not so much.

Here are a few sample photos to give you an idea:

Page of difficult to read cursive written in pencil on lined paper by someone who learnt to write in the first part of the 20th century—there are several difficult to parse emendations

Page of difficult to read cursive written in pencil on lined paper by someone who learnt to write in the first part of the 20th century, with hand drawn musical notion

It occurred to me that perhaps those who work in archival curation might know some people who—for a reasonable fee—might be willing to turn these handwritten pages into editable, digital text. It’s hard to estimate the length but I’d be surprised if it were over 20,000 words, and I’d guess closer to 12,000.

This is the work of Art’s heart—and mind, and expertise—and he would dearly like to see it published. Time is not on his side (he’s 95). So if anyone has any ideas about where to look so we can get this initial part of the process rolling I’d be most grateful.

Here’s the thing, it’s not just that I would like to please my stepfather-in-law but I genuinely believe this handbook would be a useful manual. So, again, I’d really be grateful for any suggestions anyone has. Please leave a comment below or reach out via the contact form.

And thank you!

He knows whereof he speaks—he’s toured with the Harry James Band; done a lot of studio session work (he’s a saxophonist); taught musical practise, and theory, and improv at various universities. He was the first person, I think, to use the Stanford mainframe to compose—one of the first people to work on artificial intelligence there. He edited the first incarnation of Source magazine. He even played with Blue Cheer once at the Fillmore. ︎

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/09/help-finding-someone-to-type-a-short-manuscript-written-in-cursive/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86887

Current Mood: calm

Entry tags:

Three Weather Apps: Windy, MyRadar, Today Weather

I'm a weather nerd and have been so since childhood, when I discovered a Golden Nature Guide about weather in our family's home. This is going to be a very brief rundown of the apps I currently have. I have a Android phone, but I believe all three are also available for iPhone.

Windy

Windy is a sort of Swiss Army knife, and it has so many features that there are some I've never learned to use. The app opens to a map showing the winds blowing over a large area, expressed as animated arrows showing the direction of the wind and (by the thickness and length of the arrows) its force. The map can be zoomed by pinching or spreading, and panned by dragging. Coverage is available wolrdwide. A hamburger menu in the lower right gives access to a number of different views for the area shown on the map: weather radar, satellite, rain/thunder, temperature, and more. An interactive bar on the bottom of the map shows date and time; you can slide the bar to display past conditions or forecasts. Windy also has a website with many of the same features, if you want to check them out before downloading the app.

MyRadar

I got this one because Windy's radar map didn't give the level of storm detail I wanted for winter snowstorms or summer thunderstorms (weather in the Washington, DC, area is notoriously hard to predict at the county by county level, and even within our county, there can be crucial differences between the north and the south). MyRadar is good for what it does.

Today Weather

There are lots of general weather forecast apps out there. I wanted a functional on-screen widget, specific local forecasting, and a minimum of ads. Today Weather delivers. The widget is customizable, and the internal display shows your current location's temperature, UV index, etc. in a summary block, followed by a week of brief day-by-day predictions, an hourly precipitation forecast for the next 24 hours, AQI, pollen counts, sunrise/sunset, moon phases, wind, and radar. I usually see only a single inline ad after I bring up the app.

The one thing that's mildly buggy is that the widget takes a minute or two to reappear after you've restarted your phone.

I should note that in the case of a fast-moving weather situation near to home, I still refer to the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang feature. As disappointing as the WaPo's recent editorial changes have been, it's still my hometown paper and it still has the best weather coverage for the DC Metro area.

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Super Boba Cafe # 1, by Nidhi Chanani

A middle-grade graphic novel about a boba shop with a secret.

Aria comes to stay with her grandmother in San Francisco for the summer to escape a bad social situation. Her grandmother owns a boba shop that doesn't seem too popular, and Aria throws herself into making it more so - most successfully when Grandma's cat Bao has eight kittens, and Aria advertises it as a kitten cafe. But why is Grandma so adamant about never letting Aria set foot in the kitchen, and kicking out the customers at 6:00 on the dot? Why do the prairie dogs in the backyard seem so smart?

This graphic novel has absolutely adorable illustrations. The story isn't as strong. The first half is mostly a realistic, gentle, cozy slice of life. The second half is a fantasy adventure with light horror aspects. Even though the latter is throughly foreshadowed in the former, it still feels kind of like two books jammed together.

My larger issue was with tone and content that also felt jammed together. The book is somewhat didactic - which is fine, especially in a middle-grade book - but I feel like if the book is teaching lessons, it should teach them consistently and appropriately. The lessons in this book were a bit off or inconsistent, creating an uncanny valley feeling.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

Fantastic art, kind of odd story.

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The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister

The Haddesley family has an ancient tradition: when the patriarch dies, the oldest son summons a wife from the bog. Now living in Appalachia, the current patriarch is dying and a new bog wife must be summoned soon, but their covenant with the bog may be going wrong: one daughter fled years ago to live in the modern world, the last bog wife vanished under mysterious circumstances, the bog is drying up, and something very bad has happened to the oldest son...

Isn't that an amazing premise? The actual book absolutely lives up to it, but not in the way that I expected.

It was marketed as horror, and was the inaugural book of the Paper & Clay horror book club. But my very first question to the club was "Do you think this book is horror?"

The club's consensus was no, or not exactly; it definitely has strong folk horror elements, but overall we found it hard to categorize by genre. I am currently cross-shelving it in literary fiction. We all loved it though, and it was a great book to discuss in a book club; very thought-provoking.

One of the aspects I enjoyed was how unpredictable it was. The plot both did and didn't go in directions I expected, partly because the pacing was also unpredictable: events didn't happen at the pace or in the order I expected from the premise. If the book sounds interesting to you, I recommend not spoiling yourself.

The family is a basically a small family cult, living in depressing squalor under the rule of the patriarch. It's basically anti-cottagecore, where being close to nature in modern America may mean deluding yourself that you're living an ancient tradition of natural life where you're not even close to being self-sustaining, but also missing all the advantages of modern life like medical treatment and hot water. I found all this incredibly relatable and validating, as I grew up in similar circumstances though with the reason of religion rather than an ancient covenant with the bog.

The family has been psychologically twisted by their circumstances, so they're all pretty weird and also don't get along. I didn't like them for large stretches, but I did care a lot about them all by the end, and was very invested in their fates. (Except the patriarch. He can go fuck himself.)

It's beautifully written, incredibly atmospheric, and very well-characterized. The atmosphere is very oppressive and claustrophobic, but if you're up for the journey, it will take you somewhere very worthwhile. The book club discussion of the ending was completely split on its emotional implications (not on the actual events, those are clear): we were equally divided between thinking it was mostly hopeful/uplifing with bittersweet elements, mostly sad with some hopeful elements, and perfectly bittersweet.

SPOILERS!

( Read more... )

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Gender Census 2025 - Signal Boost

Direct link to the survey and a description below; the Gender Census website has more info, including a FAQ. Please share widely, anywhere that nonbinary/genderqueer/nth gender/etc folks might be. You are welcome to gank this post for the purpose.

From the census start page:

'Welcome to the twelfth annual gender census!

I'll start by making it as clear as possible who's invited to take part.

According to one model of gender called the "gender binary", everyone fits tidily into one of these categories:
- Woman/girl - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender for the purposes of this survey)
- Man/boy - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender for the purposes of this survey)

This survey intends to collect information about everyone who DOESN'T fit into this system. Anyone who doesn't feel like they fit into one of these two boxes is invited to participate. There are no geographical restrictions.

If you hesitate or struggle to place yourself into just one of the two boxes, or if you know for sure that these boxes were not made for you, please do continue!'

Yorkshire Day!

Posted by Nicola Griffith

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/01/yorkshire-day/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86854

Ay up, it’s Yorkshire Day! (Also Lammas or Lughnasadh; also the Feast Day for a couple of dozen saints, none of whom I feel are worth mentioning.)

This is a repost from my research blog last year which—for Reasons—seemed like a good idea to post here today.

So, what is Yorkshire? Well, it’s a large chunk of the north of England, the heartland of what in the Late Iron Age would have been Brigante territory.

Map of Britain in the late Iron Age sowing fenland in green, Brigante territory in purple, Carveti in blue and Parisis in pink — Selected late Iron Age tribal territories—the coastline looks weird because I’ve taken into account the fens and marshland that would have formed barriers and boundaries between polities and peoples

To some it’s God’s Own Country. To others simply the most beautiful land on earth. To an ignorant few, an uncouth, untutored place where the accent is incomprehensible. It’s the biggest county in the UK—by a factor of… Well, when it was the historical county of three ridings, by a factor of a lot, and even now that it’s been divided into four ceremonial counties, North Yorkshire, on its own, is still the biggest in the UK. It encompasses moors, mountains, dales, cliffs, coasts, forests, lakes… Every landscape you can think of. So Yorkshire is big, and beautiful, and, well, belligerent.

It has always had its own identity. Lots of people born and bred there—like me—would think of themselves as Yorkshire folk first, and ‘English’ or ‘British’ second. It’s the UK equivalent of Texas: it inspires fierce loyalty. It has it’s own dialect, and several distinct regional accents—a mix of Iron Age Celtic rhythms, Old English, Norse, and, from the second half of the 20th century, Caribbean and South Asian, with a sprinkling of Polish.

The Domesday Book, compiled about a thousand years ago, noted which steadings, hamlets, demesnes etc stood where, and if you tot up all the mentions, to the tax-hungry Normans Yorkshire looked something like this:

Map of England Wales sowing Yorkshire in purple as a big hunk separating north and south — *Domesday Yorkshire*

From 1889, Yorkshire had three administrative regions or Ridings: West (the largest), North, and South. Like this:

Map of englandn and wales showing yorshire in purle, divided ito three parts, the westernmost of wich is almost as big as the other two put together — *The three Ridings of Yorkshire*

There was a Sheriff of Yorkshire until 1974 when there was another reorg which frankly is best forgotten—they took part of Yorkshire away and called it something else!—and then in 1996 that miserable reorg was itself reorged, and Yorkshire was reconstituted and then split into four ceremonial counties: West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire.¹ Like this:

Map of england and Wales wit Yorkshire in purple, divided into three small chunks and one large chunk — *Administrative counties: South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire.*

Why did I originally talk about all this on my research blog? Because I got tired of historians airily describing seventh-century Elmet as Basically West Yorkshire to which I’d always want to respond, Yes, but *which* Yorkshire?? That of course, will be the subject of an essay—though by ‘essay’ I suspect we might be reaching monograph territory: it will be at least 20,000 words long, with scores of maps and diagrammes—on all things Elmet. Where it was. What it was. Why it was, and when. The more I work on it the more I realise I’m really writing a summary of all I know and suspect about how The Britain of Imperial Rome became the Britain of Hild by the early seventh century. In other words, it may never be finished but it’s a deliciously knotty project.

But today is Yorkshire Day! I banish knottiness, exile it to the outer darkness of The South! Today we unproblematically celebrate all things Yorkshire: a strong brew, chip butties, and a pint or two of Tetleys. And if any you mardy buggers has owt to say to that, I’ll bray yer!

Yes, those in the east have always been a bit different; their accent’s pretty different too, probably because they were never Brigantes but Parisi—see that first map. ︎

https://nicolagriffith.com/2025/08/01/yorkshire-day/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=86854

Entry tags:

ebooks,
sales

Today only -- Aug 1st -- big ebook sale.

As in the title. Sale ends at midnight; I assume USA Eastern time (GMT -5, I believe). Links to all the booksellers -- Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google, Kobol.

This is the main link; you can filter by genre in the top menu.

Happy reading!

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Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang

Katabasis releases at the end of August. I read an advance copy.

I have to conclude that R. F. Kuang's fiction is just not to my taste. This is the first book of hers that I even managed to finish, having previously given up on both Babel (anvillicious, with anvillicious footnotes) and The Poppy War (boring) quite early on. However, a lot of my customers love her books, so I will buy and sell multiple copies of this one.

The structure and concept of Katabasis is quite appealing. Alice Law is at magic college, obsessively determined to succeed. When exploitative working conditions lead to her making a mistake that gorily kills her mentor Professor Grimes, Alice still needs his recommendation... so she goes to Hell to fetch him back! She's followed by another student, Peter, who is a perfect genius who she doesn't realize is in love with her. Their journey through Hell takes up almost all of the book, interspersed by flashbacks to college.

Lots of people will undoubtedly love this book. I found it thuddingly obvious and lacking in charm. The humor was mildly amusing at best. The magic is boring and highly technical. Alice is frustratingly oblivious, self-centered, and monomaniacal - which is clearly a deliberate character choice, but I did not enjoy reading about her. Hell was boring - how do you make Hell boring?!

Spoilery reveal about Peter: ( Read more... )

The entire book, I felt like I was sitting there twiddling my fingers waiting for Alice to figure out that it's not okay for college to be exploitative and abusive, that it was bad for Professor Grimes to have sexually assaulted her, that Peter loved her, and that success isn't everything. Though at least it didn't have anvillicious footnotes [1] like Babel!

[1] Legally and morally, Professor Grimes sexually assaulted Alice. It is common for survivors of sexual assault to not recognize it as such at the time, especially when the assault involves an abuse of power. [2]

[2] It is an abuse of power for a professor to make any sexual overture to a student, even a seemingly consensual [3] one.

[3] Due to the power differential, no sexual relations between a professor and a student can ever be truly consensual.

I will continue to stock Kuang's books but this is probably the last time I will attempt to actually read one.

I do love the cover.

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(no subject)

Poll #33444

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 126

View Respondents

Which of these books that I've recently read would you most like me to review?

View Answers

Red Rising, by Pierce Brown. SF dystopia much beloved by many dudes.
19 (15.1%)

The Daughter's War & Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman. Dark fantasy featuring WAR CORVIDS.
36 (28.6%)

The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister. Very hard to categorize novel about a family whose oldest son can call a wife from the bog. Maybe.
36 (28.6%)

Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang. A descent into Hell by a pair of magic students.
51 (40.5%)

The Bewitching, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Three timelines, all involving witches.
23 (18.3%)

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Exactly what it sounds like.
41 (32.5%)

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. It's so much harder to write reviews of books I love.
38 (30.2%)

Troubled Waters, by Sharon Shinn. Small-scale fantasy with really original magic system; loved this.
59 (46.8%)

Hominids, by Robert Sawyer. Alternate world where Neanderthals reign meets ours.
32 (25.4%)

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Yes I will get to this, but it'll be a re-read in chunks.
13 (10.3%)

A round-up of multiple books (not the ones in this poll) with just a couple sentences each
24 (19.0%)

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

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The Husbands, by Holly Gramazio

This book has a hilarious premise: a single woman's attic suddenly starts producing husbands! A husband comes down from the attic of Lauren's London flat, and she's instantly in an alternate reality in which she married that guy. The decor of her flat shifts, sometimes her own body or job shifts depending on whether she now works out regularly or some such, and sometimes there's wider ripple effects. Lauren is always aware of the changes, but no one else is. If the husband goes back into the attic, he vanishes and a new husband comes down.

I adore this premise, and the book absolutely commits to it. It is 100% about husbands coming down from the attic. Unfortunately, I didn't really like the way it explored the premise. It's largely a metaphor for dating in a time when you can swipe on an internet profile and instantly get rid of a possible match, so Lauren cycles through hundreds of husbands, often rejecting them at a glance, and we only ever get to know a very small number of them. Of the ones we do get to know, they're mostly fairly one-note - handsome and nice and American, handsome and nice but chews with his mouth open, handsome and nice but boring, or mean and hard to get rid of. The falling Ken dolls cover is apt in more ways than one. Lauren is also pretty one-note - shallow and frantic.

I also had an issue with the pacing. There's so much repetition of the same actions. A husband comes down, Lauren examines her text messages and photos for evidence of their history together, Lauren calls her friends to see what they know about him. A husband comes down, Lauren takes one look at him and sends him back. Some of this is funny but it gets old. The book felt at least 50 pages longer than it needed to be.

I would have liked the book a lot more if there had been way fewer husbands, and more time spent with each one. I never really got a sense of what Lauren wanted in a man, apart from some surface-level characteristics, or what she wanted in life. Her lives were also generally not that different, which didn't help.

There was one part that I really liked and was actually surprising.

( Read more... )

Rec by Naomi Kritzer, who liked it more than I did. But thanks for the rec! It was an interesting read, and not one I'd have found by myself.

My absolute favorite alternate lives story remains the novella And Then There were (N-One), by Sarah Pinsker, available free online at that link.

Current Location: Yon Bonny, Bonny road
Current Music: Thomas the rhymer

Hello

Per request:
Name you would like to go by: Verdelet

-Present path or tradition: Traditionalist Witchcraft, NECTW flavor, mainly, been simmering in that Cauldron for half a century or so.

-Interests: easier to point you to my user info.

-Age (not mandatory): old enough to no longer give a damn?

-Brief Bio: Green Vine, daughter of Qayin. Bearer of Lantern and Keys. Fifty years in the cauldron and still simmering. Tradition-rooted, bullshit-resistant, and usually correct.

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.” – Terry Pratchett.