Derek

Comment Threads

• PrivateIron commented on Sitrep
  If you called it the (Robert) Howard Poe Lieber award, you could make everyone happy. TrotteIreiner: I don't get the rationale for adding "arguably consensual" and thus I probably don't get the point of the statement at all. Unless you think that HPL was so gynophobic, that his wife was sort of forcing him. I have not read much of her testamentary essays on her marriage; so was the "missionary" thing another hang up of his? She is known to have opined that he was a reasonably excellent lover or some such thing. I guess if he did do something...
• PrivateIron commented on Sitrep
  In case it was not completely obvious, that was not a serious suggestion, as I am aware they would all still be white, male and anglophonic. I think for the sake of propriety/tradition, "dead" should continue to be a necessary qualification. The Scheherazade suggestion is actually quite good, in my opinion, though some might argue that a women who is known to have existed historically might make a better statement on equality. I could go either way....
• Trottelreiner commented on Sitrep
  Err, "Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position between a consenting married couple with the purpose of bonding and procreation" is a meme on 4chan: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Heterosexual_Sex_in_the_Missionary_Position (Note, though pegged unter "NSFW", the page is quite safe; which might not be the case with some other pages on 1d4chan. Don't say I didn't warn you) As for the "arguably consenting" angle, Sonia Greene described HPL as an "adequately excellent lover", which seems to have baffled even Joshi somewhat: http://www.contrasoma.com/writing/lovecraft.html My reading of this and similar issues is that HPL was maybe asexual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality but in any case he was not that likely...
• David L commented on Sitrep
  Roughly 1,700 private jets are arriving in Davos... Hmmm. That certainly beats the annual Keeneland Sales gathering at the Lexington, KY airport. Which is quite impressive if you go by the airport during the sales. Small to middling sized. Appears to have 13 gates now. Had 4 when I was last there in the 80s. Lots of rich people, with a large concentration of middle east oil wealth, fly in for a few days of spending millions to buy horses....
• Elderly Cynic commented on Sitrep
  Well, maybe - but, by then, scientists knew that simplistic approaches like that would not work. Anyway, the terms always have been pretty fair nonsense for a lot of works (e.g. why aren't Utopia and Gulliver's Travels called science fiction?) There would be no difficulty in removing the anglophone element, though a lot of the early works are anonymous; but, for some reason, fantastical and philosophical romances were mainly a male province before Shelley even when the wider field of fiction was more open). I have no idea why, or whether that also applied in the Far East....