Journal of No. 118

 A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin - A fictional look at the lives of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing (with a guest starring role from Wittgenstein). It sticks fairly close to real history (with remarkable faithfulness to material from letters and recorded events), but obviously it's the psychology that's of interest. The book plays with some interesting ideas, but (not that I'm any great scholar of either of them) the picture presented doesn't feel accurate. But there is some artistic flair in the idea that Turing favored the idea that thought could be mechanized and Gödel revolted from that idea to the extent of starving himself to death -- to avoid following his programming with the force of will.

September House, by Carissa Orlando. A slight twist on the haunted house genre. A woman loves the house so much, she's willing to stay and put up with the ghosts. From the concept, I imagined it was going to take a light touch, but it was anything but. There is a brain-crawling simile between 'not upsetting the ghosts' and 'tiptoeing around the house so daddy doesn't hit me'. A lot of thrilling action in the last act, even if the book works a little hard to achieve the ending it wants. Despite that, still a winner.

Dust Tracks on a Road, by Zora Neale Hurston. Her 1942 autobiography, tracing her life from childhood to adulthood. I can't think that I've ever read any of her fiction, but the possibility has risen dramatically. She grew up in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-black communities in the US. And wound up studying anthropology under Franz Boas at Columbia. Trained in ethnography, she studied the folklore and songs of people in the South and Caribbean, and I think that soaking in story-telling makes her a storyteller in her own autobiography. A great ear for dialogue and dialect, even if some of the latter may be hard to decipher 100 years on. Lots of great observations of culture, both 'black' and 'white', in the early 20th. The one sour note (particularly to a modern ear) is her general take on 'the race problem' in the US. Though interesting to read, particularly from that time period, it reminds me of some black figures today who are mega-successful and thus dismissive of the struggles minorities face. By all accounts, Hurston was smart and talented, but she didn't quite do it 'all on her own'. One of the early events in her life is being helped by two white ladies from the North who came to visit a black school and found her to be the best reader. They later sent books and clothes to her personally, setting her on a path that led to Howard, Barnard and beyond. Other white patrons were also part of her story. Not to take anything away from her accomplishments, but just that she had many opportunities others didn't.

Three Problems for Solar Pons, by August Derleth. One of the slim 1950s volumes from Arkham House (or their mystery imprint Mycroft & Moran) when the publishing house wasn't doing so well. Pastiches of Sherlock Holmes stories aren't my thing, but I do like the little crossover with Fu Manchu.

Step 0: Own a copy of Arkham House's 1947 collection of poetry, Dark of the Moon with the first state DJ.

Step 1: Bid on 3 copies of Arkham House's 1947 collection of poetry, Dark of the Moon. One copy with the first state DJ, one with the 2nd state DJ, one with no DJ.

Step 2: Win auction for $144. With hammer gauging and shipping: $186.03

Step 3: List a copy of Arkham House's 1947 collection of poetry, Dark of the Moon with the first state DJ on Ebay. Set a reserve of $125, and a Buy it Now price of $200.

Step 4: Sell it through Buy It Now for $200.

Step 5: Enjoy two free copies of Arkham House's 1947 collection of poetry, Dark of the Moon, one with the 2nd state DJ not previously owned.

Step 6: Gloat brazenly on Dreamwidth.

I loved the TV show, a 3-part miniseries. The book was also good, but maybe not quite as tight and engaging as the show. Neil Shubin discusses the lead-up to his discovery of Tiktaalik (one of the great successful predictions of evolutionary theory (and geology)), and then goes on from there to explain how certain features of human anatomy had their origins in fish. A nice blend of palaeontological, anatomical, and genetic evidences. The last chapter I thought a bit weak -- sort of a scattershot approach of listing human features and expounding on the evolutionary linkages. It felt disconnected.

A couple quotes...

"One of these creatures has the dubious distinction of almost never being seen in the wild. In the late 1880s, a strangely simple creature was discovered living on the glass walls of an aquarium. Unlike anything else alive, it looked like a mass of goo. The only thing we can compare it with is the alien creature in the Steve McQueen movie The Blob. ... Shringk the Blob down to between 200 and 1000 cells, about two millimeters in diameter, and we have the enigmatic living creature known as a placozoon."

"It turns out the pattern generator responsible for hiccups is virtually identical to one in amphibians. And not just any amphibians -- in tadpoles, which use both lungs and gills to breathe. Tadpoles use this pattern generator when they breathe with gills. In that circumstance, they want to pump water into their mout and throat and across the gills, but they do not want the water to enter their lungs. To prevent it from doing so, they close the glottis, the flap that closes off the breathing tube."

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The Memoirs of Solar Pons collects yet more of August Derleth's Sherlock Holmes pastiches. I'm obliged to read them, since they were issued by Arkham House's sister imprint for mysteries: Mycroft & Moran. The first one gives away (to the non brain-dead among us) the solution in the title. A few rise above Derleth's usual hack job.

It was in Pasadena, as it had been two years ago.

Always an amazing show, I saw all the usual suspects. Some of the new things to drool over were a first separate publication of "The Raven" in a wee little book.

I had never noticed how handsome Stanley's In Darkest Africa is. It helps that this copy is immaculate.


Nor did I know they marched the Ark of the Covenant around.

One seller specialized in botanical illustrations, and I was tickled that he had a section (albeit small) dedicated to Fungi.



There was a ridiculous group of about 40 little 'fan' booklets from Russia, featuring Hollywood movie stars like Gloria Svenson and Gresha Garbo.



And of course, there was the wall o pulps:


They actually had two racks that size, and a lot of other good stuff. I got off real cheap with the Night Shade Press issue of Iain Banks' The Algebraist for less than the original price.

At another shop, I did fill a couple of the last holes in the Arkham House collection, not so cheaply. They also had a signed copy of A Hornbook for Witches, one of the rarest (if certainly not the best) Arkham House titles. Drake had written a kind of sad inscription, praising someone for being an author's favorite kind of reader... one who buys a book from the author. As wiki notes, "'Lin Carter once told me that he was, some years ago, in a small midwestern city and saw Drake toting a shopping bag overflowing with copies of Hornbook, which she was autographing and selling for $1.50 per copy.'"