Language glyph from The Arrival Paramount, 2016
Today’s word for Wednesday is misosophy, a noun, meaning the hatred of wisdom or intelligence. It appears in writing first in the mid-19th century by poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Books and Writing:
Intellectual Properties, ownership of content and copyright gets more complex daily, and this shake-up at the US Federal Copyright Office is one more example. It was a shock to me that Copyright resides with the Library of Congress not the Department of Commerce.
“I love the m-dash!” says Sarah Kuhn. Take a look at her longer response to the question of which punctuation is under-rated, and three other fun questions about books and writing.
Locus online shares excerpts with its interview with Cat Rambo, writer, gamer, game-designer, teacher and current SFWA President.
New Releases:
What looks especially cool among the New Releases? Kate Lechler is eager to see “A Taste of Honey,” a novella set in the same world as The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps” by Kai Ashante Wilson. Kate says of Wilson, “… He is a great new voice in fantasy, showing me a world I couldn’t have imagined for myself.”
Games:
Kotaku has some thoughts about Dishonored2. Polygon discusses the kerfluffle over the change of voice actor for a narrating character in the game, the Outsider.
Ars Technica reviews a new Star Trek themed board game.
Internet:
Looking for that perfect holiday gift? Think Geek has it; Star Trek themed garden gnomes.
The time-space travelers arrive in The Arrival. Paramount 2016.
I don’t usually post about sports, but this has a fantasy edge; Seahawks’ player Cassius Marsh had his Magic; The Gathering cards stolen out of his vehicle. If the cards are returned, the thief will get two tickets to a home game, no questions asked. To underline how important Magic; The Gathering is to Cassius, the article reports that his iPad was also stolen and there is no ticket offer for it.
Today in Crypto-History… Okay, this seems well documented, but it sure reads like an alt-hist fantasy to me. Carl Gustav Jung was an intelligence informant for the OSS, knew and worked with Allen Dulles, and predicted the fall of the Reich. Um… okay. It’d make a heck of a fantasy adventure.
Movies and TV:
And, no, it’s not too late to see the final trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which opens on Friday.
Here’s an article about how the beautiful curving extraterrestrial language for the movie Arrival was created. Designer Patrice Vermette worked with Ted Chiang, whose short story “The Story of your Life” was the basis for the movie. After Vermette commissioned five different fonts to provide the alien language, his wife, who is not named in the article (artist Martine Bertrand), did a series of paintings that became the basis for the beautiful flowing words.
Brian Tallerico reviews the film here.
In the Wishful Thinking Department; Nathan Fillion’s TV series has ended, so we can bring back Firefly now, right? Right? Here’s one way that could go…
The glyph for “Human.” Arrival, Paramount, 2016
Tor.com’s Robert Repino contemplates the role of the Everyman. That is the right noun since it’s largely a paean to one of our favorite character actors, Harry Dean Stanton.
Sky:
Here is some information for your meteor shower viewing this month and next.
Earth:
Haunted New Orleans? Suzanne Johnson names her personal most-haunted places in the Crescent City (and keeping it to five is a real challenge!)
Art:
You can see more of Martine Bertrand’s art here.
I don’t know what the most underrated punctuation mark is, but I can tell you that the most underused is the lowly N dash, as opposed to the M dash; it takes the place of the word “to” in expressions such as “9 – 5 job,” and is also used in compound adjectives, such as Los Angeles – based office.”
You are so funny, Sandy.
Actually, I was being dead serious here, Kat! I love the lowly N dash!
I agree with you — sadly unsung (or at least undersung). I can’t figure out how to do one, since, as the name implies, it is narrower than an M dash but wider than a hyphen.
Don’t ask me, Marion. But the people in the Production Dept. where I work as a copy editor and proofreader seem to know how to do it, when I request it on paper….