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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/feed/~3/LymmFB3TFzg/merry-christmas-7.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=67352

The attached article is here, and here is more information.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544781/best-of-2015-why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/

Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets. but before they can become widespread, carmakers must solve an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality. From October …

When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking—features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the driving.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/feed/~3/spYRKOQuwMU/thursday-assorted-links-41.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=67339

1. Are bigger brains causing part of the Flynn Effect?

2. Which states are gaining and losing population?, new estimates.

3. Can animals engage in mental time travel?  Paper here.

4. Don’t trust the stars (statistics).  And moral blindness in Star Wars, sorry for the ads.

5. Interfluidity on why it is hard to deregulate housing.  And the political views of Matthew Belmonte, main personal page here.

6. Does China need more property taxes?

7. Poland’s constitutional crisis goes international.  This is perhaps the most important story of the last month or so.

http://feeds.nature.com/~r/news/rss/most_recent/~3/GiOxwNA7qu8/nature.2015.19098

Almost 100 manuscripts have appeared on the preprint server in the wake of last week's announcement.

Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.19098

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/24/i-cthulhu-neil-gaiman/

http://www.tor.com/2013/12/24/i-cthulhu-neil-gaiman/

Please enjoy what has fast become a quiet Christmas tradition in the Tor.com offices: the reading of Neil Gaiman’s original story: “I, Cthulhu, or, What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9’ S, Longitude 126° 43’ W)?”

Merry Christmas!

I.

Cthulhu, they call me. Great Cthulhu.

Nobody can pronounce it right.

Are you writing this down? Every word? Good. Where shall I start—mm?

Very well, then. The beginning. Write this down, Whateley.

[Read more]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/feed/~3/TkcrioZpx_8/avant-garde-candy-markets-in-everything.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=67355

“Everybody is always like Wonka this, Wonka that, but I just never relate,” said Maayan Zilberman, a lingerie savant turned conceptual confectioner and the creator of Sweet Saba, an avant-garde candy company.

…Behind her was a container of candy rings that resemble men’s sex toys, made with edible gold and pectin. Ms. Zilberman had prepared them initially for a baby shower. “It was for the parents’ friends, not the baby,” she said. Much to her amusement, the $10 rings are often misidentified as doll bracelets by young customers. “They’re some of my best sellers.”

There are also candies that look like gold Rolexes but taste like Champagne ($10), eucalyptus-flavored Q-tips ($8 for six) and pencils that taste like grass ($12 for four). Ms. Zilberman worked with a food technologist to develop about 30 flavors, which include bubble gum, bacon, whiskey and mother’s milk.

“It’s mostly just cream,” Ms. Zilberman said of the last one.

Here is the Joshua David Stein NYT piece.  Here is Zilberman’s Instagram page, try this photo of the candy.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/24/the-harry-potter-reread-the-half-blood-prince-chapters-29-and-30/

http://www.tor.com/?p=200657

We have reached the end of the penultimate book. Whoa. We should throw ourselves a pizza party, or something. It seems like a pizza party kind of accomplishment.

It’s time to mourn and figure out the final steps. Chapters 29 and 30 of The Half-Blood Prince—The Phoenix Lament and the White Tomb.

Index to the reread can be located here! Other Harry Potter and Potter-related pieces can be found under their appropriate tag. And of course, since we know this is a reread, all posts might contain spoilers for the entire series. If you haven’t read all the Potter books, be warned.

Chapter 29—The Phoenix Lament

Summary

Hagrid tries to get Harry to leave, but he refuses. Eventually Harry hears another voice and a smaller hand pulls him away—it’s Ginny. She is taking him to the Hospital Wing on McGonagall’s orders, all the people involved in the fight are already there. Harry asks who’s dead, but Ginny assures him that Draco stepped over Bill, who is alive. Bill was attacked by Greyback, though, and Madam Pomfrey has informed them that he might not look the same and they’re not sure what the aftereffects will be. Neville and Flitwick are also injured, and one of the Death Eaters got hit by one of the Killing Curses flying around. Ginny tells him that she thinks they all might have died without the luck potion, but they just kept getting missed. They arrive at the wing and everyone is gathered around Bill’s bed. Madam Pomfrey can’t mend the wounds with traditional magic, and Lupin believes that while Bill won’t be a full werewolf, the wounds are unlikely to heal fully, and that Bill might end up with some wolfish characteristics.

Ron suggests that Dumbledore might be able to do something, that he couldn’t leave Bill in this state. Ginny tells him that Dumbledore is dead. Lupin goes into a panic, collapsing into a nearby chair, head in this hands. Harry explains how Dumbledore died, and Madam Pomfrey begins to cry, but Ginny cuts her off—they can hear phoenix song in the distance, mourning. Eventually McGonagall shows up and asks Harry to explain what happened. When he tells her that Snape killed him, Madam Pomfrey has to conjure a chair quickly beneath her. McGonagall and Tonks are having a hard time with it, insisting that Dumbledore made it seem like he had an extra secret reason why he truly trusted Snape. Harry tells them what he learned—that Snape told Voldemort about his parents, that he told Dumbledore that he hadn’t realized what he was doing, and told him he was sorry for the Potters’ deaths. Lupin can’t believe that Dumbledore bought Snape being sorry for James’ death when he hated him so much. McGonagall insists it was her fault for having Flitwick alert Snape to the battle. Harry asks if Snape joined the Death Eaters then, but no one seems certain of the flow of events.

McGonagall tells him that Dumbledore told them to patrol while he was away and everything was quiet at first. When she mentions not understanding how the Death Eaters got in, Harry explains about the Vanishing Cabinet. Ron tells Harry he messed everything up, that they (he and Ginny and Neville) were watching the Room of Requirement, but Malfoy came out with the Hand of Glory (which only gives light to the person carrying it). When he spotted them, he used Fred and George’s Peruvian Instant Darkness powder to blind them, and got all the Death Eaters past them. They found Lupin and the rest shortly after and told them what happened, then they found the Death Eaters rushing toward the Astronomy Tower. One of them broke off to cast the Dark Mark, but didn’t want to wait alone, so he came back downstairs and was hit by a Killing Curse that was meant for Lupin. Hermione and Luna were watching Snape’s office, which was quiet until Flitwick came down and asked for Snape’s help. Snape came out and told them that Flitwick had passed out and that they should look after him. Hermione is upset over failing to realize that Snape Stupefied Flitwick, and that they let him go join the fight.

Tonks explains that they were losing. Malfoy has slipped away, several Death Eaters eventually followed and cast a curse at the foot of the stairs; Neville ran at it, resulting in his injury. Snape ran past all of them and up the stairs, straight through the curse barrier. (Harry figures you needed a Dark Mark to get through it.) The big Death Eater cast a curse that made part of the ceiling fall in, which broke the barrier. They let Snape and Malfoy pass, figuring that they were being chased by the Death Eaters. Then the rest of the group descended on them, and Voldemort’s crew fled.

Everyone goes quiet for a minute and then Molly and Arthur and Fleur arrive. Arthur and Molly ask about Bill’s wounds and get the same answer everyone has been given. Then they ask if the rumor about Dumbledore is true. Arthur is shocked at the news, but Molly begins talking of Bill, how the wounds don’t matter but he had always been so handsome, how he was going to be married—she’s interrupted by Fleur, who demands to know why she would say that. Does she believe that Bill won’t love her because of the changes after being bitten? Because she knows he will. Does Molly think that she won’t want to marry him now that his looks have changed? Because she doesn’t care. She takes the wound ointment from Molly and begins to care for Bill while everyone waits for Molly to explode. But instead, Molly mentions a goblin-made tiara owned by their Great-Aunt Muriel, and how she might lend it to them for the wedding. Fleur thanks her and the two women begin crying in each other arms, much to the shock of the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione.

Instead, it’s Tonks who explodes—at Lupin. She points out that Fleur has no problem marrying Bill after he was bitten, and insists she doesn’t care either. Lupin tells her that it’s not the same because Bill isn’t a full werewolf. Tonks still claims she does not care. Lupin tells her that they’ve been through this before, that he’s “too old for you, too poor… too dangerous….” Harry realizes that this has been the reason behind Tonks’ behavior all year, and the change in her Patronus. Molly and Arthur are on Tonks’ side, and when Lupin tries to tell everyone that they shouldn’t be discussing this right after Dumbledore has died, McGonagall is the one who tells him that Albus would have been pleased to know there was more love in the world. Hagrid walks in and tells them that he’s moved Dumbledore’s body, that Sprout got the kids back to bed, and Slughorn informed the Ministry. McGonagall asks Hagrid to tell the Head of Houses to meet in her office, with Slughorn representing Slytherin. Then she asks for a quick word with Harry first. She leads him to Dumbledore’s old office—technically hers to use now since she was Deputy Headmistress. The only thing that seems different about the place is Fawkes’ absence (he is singing over the grounds), and the presence of Dumbledore’s headmaster portrait.

McGonagall asks Harry what he and Dumbledore left the school to do, but Harry won’t tell her—Dumbledore had advised him to tell no one about the content of their lessons outside of Ron and Hermione. But he does tell her about Rosmerta being under the Imperius Curse. Then Sprout, Flitwick, and Slughorn enter the office. One of the portraits tell McGonagall that the Minster is on his way. She informs the Heads of Houses that she asked them here to determine plans for the school, including whether or not Hogwarts should reopen next year. Sprout is in favor, believing Dumbledore would want it, and that the school should open even if only one student wanted to attend. Slughorn is doubtful that they will have student after this, imagining that families will want to stay together. Flitwick insists that they consult the governors, going by procedure. McGonagall asks Hagrid what his opinion is, and when Hagrid demurs on the basis that it’s not his place, she tells him that Dumbledore always valued his thoughts and so does she. Hagrid says that he plans to stay, that the school is his home. McGonagall decides in light of this that they will consult the governors, who will make the final choice. She then talks of sending the students home, but Harry asks after Dumbledore’s funeral. There’s some concern about whether or not he will be buried on the grounds, as no headmaster ever has. Harry says that if he is, the students shouldn’t be sent home until afterward.

McGonagall notes that the Minister is arriving with a delegation, so Harry asks for permission to leave, which she grants. The Fat Lady asks Harry if Dumbledore is truly dead when he reaches her portrait, and he confirms it. The common room is packed, but Harry walks by everyone up to his dorm where Ron is waiting for him. Ron asks if they got the Horcrux, and Harry tells him they didn’t, showing the fake locket and note to him. Ron asks about who R.A.B. is, but Harry cannot bring himself to care. And then Fawkes stops singing, and Harry somehow knows that the phoenix has left the school for good.

Commentary

Man, talk about your visual metaphors, with the Gryffindor hourglass smashed and the rubies littered all over the floor. Ouch.

I always find it very telling that Ginny tells Harry she doesn’t think they would have survived the battle without the potion, but Neville and Luna both make it despite not having any. Ugh, I have too many feelings about Neville and Luna being the very best comrades that any human being could ever ask for. Everyone says the whole fight was a blur throughout, but I do wonder if any of the Order members had a moment where they realized that all these kids seemed to be just fine during this super dangerous fight—it’s certainly better than they fared last year.

So, Snape does a number of things during this battle that ultimately save lives. He’s pragmatic enough that he was likely getting people like Flitwick and Hermione and Ginny out of the way to minimize the potential for risk, and make his own mission easier, but it’s still worthy of note. But then there’s Draco…. I understand that he probably wanted to get the Death Eaters into the school quietly, but there’s no reason why he couldn’t have just let them kill anyone who was standing in their way—unless he really didn’t want them to. The use of the Peruvian Darkness Powder gives us an idea of what Draco truly has the stomach for, and it seems that he’d prefer to spare as many lives as possible in this process.

They make mention of letting Snape and Draco through before the other Death Eaters come down the tower stairs, saying that they thought they were fleeing from them. I understand that they thought Snape was on their side, but why would they have assumed that of Draco? Presumably the kids told the Order members they ran into that he was responsible for letting them into the castle…. I assume this is mostly a confusion oversight.

While it’s good to get all the facts, this chapter does drag a lot from the endless exposition. It seems like this whole situation didn’t need to be explained quite so carefully, or at least didn’t need to be told from the perspective of so many people. Or at least didn’t require Harry to repeat himself so much. I know Rowling wanted to show how various people reacted to Dumbledore’s death, but it still feels like overkill.

On the other hand, Fleur’s “I’m beautiful enough for the both of us” explosion is a nice reprieve from how serious everything has become. It seems ridiculous that something like this had to occur for Molly to finally believe that Fleur truly loves her son, but at least we’ve moved toward family bonding. This then moves us to Tonks shouting down Remus in the hospital wing, and while I get that there’s a purveying theme of love conquering all in spite of death (as McGonagall plainly states out loud because she is wonderful), I can’t help but feel awkward at their whole conversation, and find that I buy their relationship even less this time around. The problem is that we only see evidence of it from Tonks’ side, which makes it seem more like she’s badgering Remus; it would have been smart to show just a tiny bit of evidence that he was harboring feelings as well.

Still, the fact that it’s McGonagall and Arthur and Molly coming to Tonks’ aid is relevant, proving that the older generations understand better how important it is to live your life according to what you want, rather than what you believe you deserve. Arthur’s point about young and whole men rarely remaining so (with reference to Bill) hits home particularly hard. You cannot predict the future, so you might as well be happy now… and this becomes particularly relevant for Remus and Tonks, who of course do not have long at all.

McGonagall asks to speak to Harry and when they arrive at the headmaster office, he notes that Dumbledore’s portrait is already on the wall. So… it just magically appears there once he’s died? That has to be what happens. That’s the best. I wonder if any of the other portraits noticed and wanted a few words on that. They don’t seem fussed over his newfound presence.

The Head of Houses come into the office, and McGonagall asks them about whether or not they should keep the school open, and this time around I’m smacked in the face by how smart this passage is; this conversation is a reflection of the founders’ philosophies, with each Head of House standing in for their respective founder—except for McGonagall, who is busy acting as the arbiter in her position as headmistress, and so calls on Hagrid to stand in for Gryffindor (and Harry by proxy). So we have Sprout, who insists that even if only one child wants to be taught by them, it’s their responsibility to honor that, just as Helga Hufflepuff would have had it. Slughorn presents the shrewdness of Slytherin, considering first how the outside will react to Dumbledore’s death and stating plainly that perhaps no one will want to stay at Hogwarts after what has happened. Flitwick wants things done by the book, presenting a logical Ravenclaw argument that insists they speak to the school governors. Hagrid gives the emotional Gryffindor argument alongside Harry, that he won’t be going anywhere because the school is his home, while Harry points out the students have a right to attend Dumbledore’s funeral.

It’s such a clever way of showing how Hogwarts was meant to function, how the founders checked and balanced each other, creating an environment where everyone had an equal say and respected each other. (I really can’t say enough about McGonagall’s decision to let Hagrid speak on Gryffindor’s behalf because it’s just so right.) In the end, everyone’s opinion is taken seriously—the kids are allowed to stay for the funeral but classes are postponed. Still, the children aren’t immediately sent home, and they do agree to talk to the governors about the state of the school for the coming year.

Harry bolts out of there to avoid an encounter with Scrimgeour, and goes back to his dorm room, where Ron is faithfully waiting to talk things out with Harry, if that’s what he needs. Instead, Harry hears Fawkes end his song and leave the grounds, a pretty clear metaphor for death and rebirth if there ever was one—almost as though the phoenix’s life were tied to Dumbledore’s, and if he is no longer there, Fawkes must die and be reborn elsewhere.

Chapter 30—The White Tomb

Summary

Lessons have stopped and exams have been postponed. Some students are already gone, some don’t want to leave; Seamus has a fight with his mother in the entrance hall until she agrees to let him stay for the funeral. Witches and wizards have flocked to Hogsmeade to pay their respects. Madam Maxime comes in her giant carriage, and the Minister of Magic is staying in the castle with his delegation. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny have taken to spending all of their time together, and they visit the hospital wing daily to see Bill. The only thing about his temperament that seems to have changed is a sudden propensity for rare meat. One night after Ginny heads to bed, Hermione tells Harry that she has figured out that Eileen Prince was Snape’s mother, that she married a Muggle named Tobias Snape. Harry is still furious with Dumbledore for trusting Snape, but is forced to concede a parallel in the way the he refused to stop believing that the Half-Blood Prince was good. He laments not having shown the book to Dumbledore, but Hermione insists that he’s being too hard on himself.

The next day is the funeral, and everyone is meant to leave an hour after it is done. Harry keep his head down during breakfast, aware that Rufus Scrimgeour is looking for him from Snape’s old chair. Crabbe and Goyle are on their own without Malfoy, and Harry thinks that he does feel some pity for the boy. McGonagall gets to her feet and instructs the students to follow their Head of Houses to the funeral. They all head out to the lake where there are many chairs and a marble table. Harry recognizes some of the people there, including Lupin and Tonks (who are holding hands), Moody, Bill and Fleur, Arabella Figg, the Hog’s Head bartender, and even the castle ghosts. Neville and Luna also take a seat; they were the only ones who answered the DA summons, and Harry knows it’s because the two of them missed the group the most and probably checked their coins regularly. Cornelius Fudge, Rita Skeeter, and Dolores Umbridge are also in attendance. Once everyone is seated, the merpeople under the lake begin to sing. Hagrid carries Dumbeldore’s body, wrapped in purple velvet, and lays it on the table. Then he goes back and sits next to Grawp, who is dressed in a jacket and everything. He pats Hagrid so hard on the head that Harry has the sudden urge to laugh, but then the music stops. A small man in plain robes begins to give the eulogy, which Harry cannot hear most of. It doesn’t remind him of Dumbledore anyway, and suddenly Harry thinks of the strange words Dumbledore said on his first day at Hogwarts, and is struck with the urge to laugh again.

When he sees the merpeople and thinks of Dumbledore speaking in their language during the Tri-Wizard Tournament, it’s then that the loss hits Harry, and he begins to cry. He sees the centaurs paying their respects from the edge of the forest, and thinks of Dumbledore telling him how important it was to keep fighting. He thinks of how many people have stood in front of him, protecting him, and how no one else could stand between him and Voldemort anymore. The eulogy is over, and Harry expects more speeches, but instead there are screams as white flames ignite around Dumbledore’s body and the table, rising higher and higher until they vanish—and a white marble tomb has taken their place. The centaurs fire arrows in tribute and leave, and the merpeople depart as well.

Harry looks at Ginny, and knows that she understands what he has to do. He tells her that they can’t be together anymore. He insists that Voldemort will try to get to him through her. Ginny tells him that she doesn’t care. She tells him that she never really stopped liking him, that relaxing and dating some other people was Hermione’s idea, that she thought he might notice if she was able to act like herself and not get tongue-tied. She tells him that she’s not surprised this is happening, that she always knew he’d have to do this. Harry sees Ron holding Hermione while the two of them cry, and he can’t take it—he gets up and leaves. Scrimgeour catches up to him, gives his condolences and the rest, but Harry just keeps asking what he wants. Scrimgeour asks what harry and Dumbledore were doing the night of his death, but Harry won’t say. He insists that the Ministry can protect him, and offers to put a few Aurors on guard, but Harry laughs that off. He asks Harry again to support the Ministry, and Harry asks if he’s released Stan Shunpike yet. Scrimgeour realizes that nothing has changed, and leaves abruptly.

Ron and Hermione comes out to meet him and they sit under their favorite beech tree. Harry tells them what Scrimgeour wanted, and Ron asks Hermione to let him go back and hit Percy, making Harry laugh. Hermione can’t imagine the school closing, and can’t stand the idea of never coming back. Ron figures its not more dangerous there than anywhere else, but Harry tells them that he’s not coming back either way. He says he’ll go back to the Dursleys one more time because it’s what Dumbledore wanted, and then he thinks he might go to Godric’s Hollow, and then he’ll depart to track down the rest of the Horcruxes. After a pause, Ron assures him that he and Hermione are coming along, wherever he goes. Harry tries to tell them no, but Hermione insists as well. Ron reminds him that he has to go to Bill and Fleur’s wedding before Godric’s Hollow anyhow. Harry agrees, and feels suddenly comforted by the thought that he has one wonderful day left with the two of them.

Commentary

While it’s sad that Harry’s feeling guilty over the few days he has left with his friends and Ginny, it works as a helpful clue to prove that Dumbledore always knew he was going to die. From this point on, Harry’s on a mission. And it’s his own mission, one that he has to control and see through. Dumbledore had to get Harry to this point, and it’s doubtful that he ever would if he knew he could still count on Dumbledore to get him out of scrapes. Harry even thinks of it on those terms, of all the people who have died protecting him, and how there are none left. Dumbledore was the last barrier to adulthood. Without Albus’ guidance, Harry is forced to accept that his choices are just as good as anyone else’s, making it clear that he has to go his own way.

Dumbledore’s funeral is obviously an event of sorts, and as a event is attended by pretty much everyone. Of course, since Dumbledore was an important sort of guy not everyone attending his funeral is really a “fan” of his. We’ve got Skeeter, and Fudge, and Umbridge worst of all. But the thing that always stands out in this sequence as the most realistic to me is Harry wanting to laugh at odd moments. Extreme emotions often lead to extreme reactions, and wanting to laugh in the middle of such a somber affair is incredibly natural for many people. It’s an attempt to even out, to counter all the grief and anxiety.

Many more characters we’ve encountered throughout the books show up here, including the barman from Hog’s Head, who will later be revealed as Albus’ brother. Harry’s thoughts toward Luna and Neville are heartbreaking, but also relevant for their roles in the next book—their loyalty to the cause, the importance they place on their friendships with Harry and company, will be one of the primary reasons they win the day.

So, Harry tries to sort of break up with Ginny, and she’s not impressed by it. She also admits that this whole thing leading up to their relationship was kind of a tactic that Hermione thought up—that Ginny should chill out and maybe date some other people, giving Harry a chance to see what she was really like as a person without getting all awkward and scared shy. (Seriously, the longer we go on, the more I think that Hermione’s ability to be emotionally smart about other people while she’s terrible at handling them herself is one of my favorite character traits for her.) But this tactic led to a lot of fans giving Ginny crap for “leading on” the other guys in her life, and generally being and evil, cold woman who only care about getting her hooks in Harry Potter. Which is stupid because this is how people figure out how to navigate relationships. Sure, Ginny had an idea that she still wanted to date Harry at some point in the future, but even if she hadn’t, she probably would have gone through a few boyfriends exactly the same because she’s young and that’s what you do.

Anyway. What I’m saying is that Ginny is a smart person and Harry is kind of dumb to think that he’s going to be able to back away from that so quickly. On the other hand, the way he takes down Scrimgeour again is beautiful.

And at the end, it’s just Harry, Ron, and Hermione under their favorite tree, thinking about the precarious future. The idea that Harry thought he was going to be able to take this journey alone is adorable, but the instantaneous agreement to follow him on Ron and Hermione’s part still chokes me up. No question, no deliberation. You have to figure that they’re talked about this before, about what they would do if Harry took this path. Count on Ron again to bring it all back to family; they can take off, but only after they’ve gone to Bill and Fleur’s wedding. Love first. Life first. Family first.

Saving the world will have to wait until then.
Final Thoughts

Man, this book sort of crashes awkwardly at the end, doesn’t it? It all felt normally paced out until those last 6-8 chapters, and then everything got very swift and kind of muddy. In some ways, it feels like Rowling wanted the book over because she was more interested in the getting to the final volume. Also, I realize now that I headcanoned the heck out of this book; in my mind the nicer romantic stuff took up more of the story, rather than all the teenaged shenanigans and heartbreak. I think I prefer my brain version better? Harry barely gets half a breath to enjoy his time with Ginny, which doesn’t seem fair considering what he’s about to walk into.

It also loses some momentum when you know what’s going to happen in the final book, so that might be part of my letdown. I remember the internet being rife with little badges on profile pages and forums: “I trust Severus Snape” and the rest. It was two full years of speculation by people who were just adamant that he was unforgivably evil. A very interesting time for fandom, and for fan fic. (Hoo boy, the Harry/Hermione shippers were incensed after this book, and that was equally awkward). If you’re not a ship war person. I never have been. I’m a “enjoy your ships while I enjoy mine” person.

We’re taking a break next week, everybody! I’m going to be away and such, so we’ll adjourn for now and visit the new year with the sixth Potter film!

Emily Asher-Perrin is going to introduce her nose to a pine tree right now. Mmm, pine. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.

http://www.tor.com/2015/12/24/meta-irony-narrative-frames-and-the-princess-bride/

http://www.tor.com/?p=200128

I am not the intended audience for William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. Likely you’re not either, as you’re reading this on Tor.com. We read fantasy. We love books about heroes and villains and giants and princesses. We are not so cynical that we have to be coaxed into a story about true love and a wicked prince and a masked pirate.

Goldman isn’t a fantasy writer. He’s a literary writer, and his imagined readers are literary readers, and he wrote The Princess Bride with no expectation that it would fit on my shelves between Parke Godwin and Lisa Goldstein. It’s possible he’d be slightly embarrassed if he knew he was rubbing shoulders with them, and he’d be happier to see his work set between William Golding and Nadine Gorimer. He wrote The Princess Bride in 1973, after Tolkien, but before genre fantasy was a publishing phenomenon. And it’s not genre fantasy—though it (or anyway the movie) is part of what has shaped genre fantasy as it is today. Goldman’s novel is a swashbuckling fairytale. I think Goldman wanted to write something like a children’s book with the thrills of a children’s book, but for adults. Many writers have an imaginary reader, and I think Goldman’s imaginary reader for The Princess Bride was a cynic who normally reads John Updike, and a lot of what Goldman is doing in the way he wrote the book is trying to woo that reader. So, with that reader in mind, he wrote it with a very interesting frame. And when he came to make it into a movie, he wrote it with a different and also interesting frame.

I might be a long way from Goldman’s imagined reader, but I am the real reader. I love it. I didn’t find the book when it was new, but years later. I can’t even answer the question of whether I read the book or saw the film first. I read part of the book multiple times and then I saw the film multiple times and then I read all of the book.

I first came across The Princess Bride in Spider Robinson’s anthology The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980). This was a very odd theme anthology, where Robinson selected a bunch of stories from writers and asked the writers to choose another story by somebody else to go with that story. I still own the volume, and without going to the other room to pick it up I can tell you that what it has in it is Heinlein’s “The Man Who Travelled in Elephants” (which is why I bought it, because in 1981 I really would buy a whole anthology for one Heinlein story I hadn’t read) and an excerpt from The Princess Bride and a Sturgeon story and… some other stuff. And the excerpt from The Princess Bride is Inigo Montoya’s backstory, told to the Man in Black at the top of the cliffs, and then the swordfight. And I read it, and I wanted more, and when I went to look for it I discovered that the book had never been published in the UK and not only could I not own it but interlibrary loan was not going to get it for me. Reader, I wept. (Nobody has this problem now. The internet is just awesome. No, wait, fifteen year olds without credit cards and with non-reading parents still have this problem all the time. Fund libraries! Donate books!)

Then in 1987 when I was all grown up (22) and working in London. I saw teaser posters for the movie. First, they were all over the Underground as a purple silhouette of the cliffs, and they said “Giants, Villains. Wizards. True Love.—Not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum fairy tale.” They didn’t say the name of the movie or anything else, but I was reasonably excited anyway. I mean giants, villains, wizards… hey… and then one day I was going to work and changing trains in Oxford Circus and I came around a corner and there was the poster in full colour, and the name was there, and it was The Princess Bride that I’d been waiting to read in forever, and now it was a film.

You may not know this, because the film is now a cult classic and everyone you know can quote every line, but it wasn’t a box office success. But that wasn’t my fault. I took fourteen people to see it on the opening night. I saw it multiple times in the cinema, and after the first run I went out of my way to see it any time it was shown anywhere. (This was after movies but before DVDs. This is what we had to do.) My then-boyfriend said scornfully that it was the only film I liked. (That isn’t true. I also liked Diva, and Jean de Florette and American Dreamer.) Also in 1988 Futura published the book in Britain (with a tie in cover) so I finally got to read it. Sometimes when you wait, you do get what you want.

The book wasn’t what I expected, because I’d seen the film and the film-frame, but I had no idea about the book-frame, and so came as a surprise, and it took me a while to warm to it. It was 1988, and genre fantasy was a thing and my second favourite thing to read, and this wasn’t it. Anyway, I wasn’t the reader Goldman was looking for, and it was all meta and made me uncomfortable. I think Goldman may have meant to make me uncomfortable, incidentally, in his quest to make the adult reader of literature enjoy a fairytale he may have wanted to make the child reader of fairytales re-examine the pleasure she got out of them. Goldman would like me to have a little distance in there. I might not want that, but he was going to give it to me nevertheless. I didn’t like it the first time I read it—I would have liked the book a lot better without the frame—but it grew on me with re-reading. Thinking about the meta in The Princess Bride made me a better reader, a more thoughtful one with more interesting thoughts about narrative.

What Goldman says he is doing, in giving us the “good parts version” of Morganstern’s classic novel, is giving us the essence of a children’s fairytale adventure, but in place of what he says he is cutting—the long boring allegories, the details of packing hats—he gives us a sad story of a man in a failing marriage who wants to connect with his son and can’t. The “Goldman” of the frame of the novel is very different from Goldman himself, but he embraces the meta and blurs the line between fiction and fact. There are people who read the book and think that Morganstern is real and that Florin and Guilder are real places. How many more are deceived by the way Goldman talks about “himself” and his family here, the way he says the Cliffs of Insanity influenced Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the very clever way he leads in to all that, so that by the time he’s almost confiding in the reader the reader has already read between a lot of lines? It’s all plausible detail, and it does lead one to question the line between fictional and real.

The frame gives the imagined reader what the imagined reader is imagined to be used to—a story about a middle-aged married man in contemporary America who is dealing with issues related to those things. We also have the relationship between the child Goldman and his immigrant grandfather, as well as the relationship between the adult Goldman and his family. And it’s all sad and gives a sour note—and that sour note is in fact just what the story needs. The sourness of the frame, the muted colours and unhappiness in “real life,” allows the sweetness, the true love and adventure of the fairytale within the frame to shine more brightly, not just for the imagined reader but for all of us.

The frame of the movie—the grandfather reading the story to the reluctant grandson—is less sour, but more meta. The grandson is used to challenge the story “Hold it, hold it!” and thus to endorse it where it isn’t challenged. He stands in for the reader (“Who gets Humperdinck?”) and as he is lulled into enjoying it, so is the imagined reader/viewer. This frame also allows for the kind of distancing that brings us closer—the constant reminders that this is a story let us get caught up in it.

But while the frame of the novel keeps reminding us of unhappiness and mundanity in the real world to show the fairytale more brightly, the frame of the movie keeps reminding us of the real world in the context of narrative conventions. The novel frame blurs the line between fiction and reality by putting a dose of reality into the fiction, and the movie frame does it the other way around—it reminds us we are being told a story, and it comments on what a story is, and can be. I frequently quote it when I am talking about tension balancing—“She does not get eaten by eels at this time”—and “You’re very smart, now shut up” is my shorthand for the way of approaching stories that get in the way of appreciating them, whether as a reader or a writer. (Writers can get into their own light in that exact way.)

Goldman is interested in showing up the narrative conventions of revenge, true love, quests and so on, but also the way of telling a story. The kid approaches the story like the most naive kind of reader—he wants to know what’s in it that he likes, are there any sports? And then he dismisses the romantic element—“Is this going to be a kissing book?” He thinks he knows what kind of story he wants, and then he gets this one—he’s being seduced by the old-fashioned story from the old country, the grandfather’s story. And his presence shows us things about suspense, and involvement—it’s not just the reversal where it goes from the him condescending to allow the grandfather to tell the story to begging him to keep on telling it, it’s that when the story cheats us with Buttercup’s dream sequence he is there within the movie to express our outrage. And we can laugh at him and condescend to him—he’s a kid after all—but at the same time identify. We have all had the experience of being children, and of experiencing stories in that way. Goldman’s movie frame deftly positions us so that we simultaneously both inside and outside that kid.

I often don’t like things that are meta, because I feel there’s no point to them and because if I don’t care then why am I bothering? I hate Beckett. I hate things that are so ironic they refuse to take anything seriously at any level, including themselves. Irony should be an ingredient, a necessary salt, without any element of irony a text can become earnest and weighed down. But irony isn’t enough on its own—when it isn’t possible for a work to be sincere about anything, irony can become poisonous, like trying to eat something that’s all salt.

Brust is definitely writing genre fantasy, and he knows what it is, and he is writing it with me as his imagined reader, so that’s great. And he’s always playing with narrative conventions and with ways of telling stories, within the heart of genre fantasy—Teckla is structured as a laundry list, and he constantly plays with narrators, to the point where the Paarfi books have a narrator who addresses the gentle reader directly, and he does all this within the frame of the secondary world fantasy and makes it work admirably. In Dragon and Taltos he nests the story (in different ways) that are like Arabian Nights crossed with puzzle boxes. But his work is very easy to read, compulsively so, and I think this is because there’s always a surface there—there might be a whole lot going on under the surface but there’s always enough surface to hold you up. And like Goldman, he loves the work, and he thinks it’s cool, and he’s serious about it, even when he’s not.

Thinking about narrative, and The Princess Bride, and Brust, and Diderot, made me realise the commonalities between them. They’re all warm, and the meta things I don’t care for are cold and ironic. All these things have irony (“Anyone who tells you different is selling something…”) but the irony is within the text, not coming between me and the characters. There’s no “Ha ha, made you care!” no implied superiority of the author for the naive reader, there’s sympathy and a hand out to help me over the mire, even when Goldman’s telling me the story I didn’t want about “his” lack of love, he’s making me care about “him,” in addition to caring about Inigo and Wesley. Nor is he mocking me for believing in true love while I read the fairytale, he’s trying his best to find a bridge to let even his imagined cynical reader believe in it too.

You can’t write a successful pastiche of something unless you love it.

To make a pastiche work, you have to be able to see what makes the original thing great as well as what makes it absurd, you have to be able to understand why people want it in the first place. You have to be able to see all around it. This is why Galaxy Quest works and everything else that tries to do that fails in a mean spirited way. The Princess Bride is the same, Goldman clearly loves the fairytale even when making fun of it and that makes it all work. The characters are real characters we can care about, even when they’re also larger than life or caricatures. Because Goldman has that distancing in the frame, the loveless life, the cynicism, within the actual story we can have nobility and drama and true love. We could have had them anyway, but even his imagined reader can have them, can accept the fire swamp and the Cliffs of Insanity because he’s been shown a pool in Hollywood and a second hand bookstore, can accept Florin because he’s been told about Florinese immigrants to New York.

The Princess Bride in both incarnations has a real point to what its doing and cares about its characters and makes me care, including the characters in the frame. And you can read it as a fairytale with a frame, or a frame with a fairytale, and it works either way.

And I might not be the intended audience, but I love it anyway.

This article was originally published September 25, 2014

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published a collection of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections and ten novels, including the Hugo and Nebula winning Among Others. Her most recent book is My Real Children. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

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I have a few! Here are some, for you to pass the time with this Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

The Ten Least Successful Christmas Specials of All Time

Interview with the Nativity Innkeeper

8 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Favorite Holiday Music

Script Notes on the Birth of Jesus

Interview with Santa’s Reindeer Wrangler

Merry Christmas!

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A narrator well-known and well-liked in the world of science-fiction and fantasy, Mary Robinette Kowal was the perfect choice for the audio edition of Michael R. Underwood’s The Shootout Solution: Genrenauts Episode 1. A Hugo award-winning author of fantasy herself, Kowal brings Underwood’s excellent worldbuilding to life and does a brilliant job of voicing a strong heroine. She delivers ample feeling and sass in all the right places.

Kowal’s ability to immerse her audience in a new world is crucial to narrating Underwood’s The Shootout Solution. After a rough night on stage doing stand-up, Leah is approached and offered a mysterious job in what she will soon discover to be a very hazardous line of work. Her new employers, the Genrenauts Foundation, are tasked with ensuring that all stories play out as they should because all stories are real. Parallel worlds exist and all of Earth’s stories are played out on each genre-specific planet. If the Genrenauts are not there to set the stories that have strayed back on the right track, it could mean catastrophe for Earth.

Kowal has also voiced the works of authors such as Seanan McGuire and Jason Denzel. Mystic, the fantastic first installment in Denzel’s trilogy, is an excellent example of just how Kowal brings an entirely new world to life. Kowal uses emotion and attitude to illustrate the protagonist’s growth from a young girl with a lack of self-confidence to a powerful and triumphant heroine.

Listen to Mary Robinette Kowal reading an excerpt of The Shootout Solution below.

Michael R. Underwood’s The Shootout Solution: Genrenauts Episode 1 is available now in paperback, ebook, and audio formats from Tor.com! From the catalog copy:

Leah Tang just died on stage. Well, not literally. Not yet.

Leah’s stand-up career isn’t going well. But she understands the power of fiction, and when she’s offered employment with the mysterious Genrenauts Foundation, she soon discovers that literally dying on stage is a hazard of the job!

Her first assignment takes her to a Western world. When a cowboy tale slips off its rails, and the outlaws start to win, it’s up to Leah – and the Genrenauts team – to nudge the story back on track and prevent a catastrophe on Earth.

But the story’s hero isn’t interested in winning, and the safety of Earth hangs in the balance…

You can find the audio edition at Audible, or order the ebook edition at the links below!

Alex Calamela is an assistant working at Macmillan Audio. She currently lives in Staten Island, NY and can be followed on bookish Instagram @shadowsofshelf

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This German ad got me a little teary, and not just because I miss Christmasing in the Alps with my Oma and Opa: A pint-sized Star Wars fan courts his neighbor with Artoo and Threepio snowdroids (!) and with help from The Empire Strikes Back.

Of course, too bad they didn’t time it so that the girl could dress as Rey instead of Leia, but it’s still cute, especially the boy tromping through the snow as a Stormtrooper. (Which Target also did in their holiday ads, hmm.) But rather than be a movie tie-in, it’s for… a supermarket? Whatever Germany, you do you.

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Show of hands—who’s seen The Neverending Story? Okay, great. Now, who’s actually read the book?

An 80s children’s classic, chances are you’ve seen the movie or at least heard of it. And if you’re a child of the 80s like me, it may very well have a treasured place in the corner of your heart reserved for your favorite childhood nostalgia. While I loved the movie as a kid, it was only years later as an adult, when I chanced to pick up a copy of the book at my local library, that I learned there’s far more to the story than what I saw on the screen.

Sometimes all it takes for a book to hook us is a sentence. A phrase, a passage, or simply an idea that latches onto our minds and won’t let go. For me, that moment came a third of the way into the book, when Gmork tells Atreyu the secret of what happens to Fantasticans who are sucked through the Nothing into the human world.

“That’s right—and when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You’ll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. Do you know what you and your kind are called there?”

“No,” Atreyu whispered.

“Lies!” Gmork barked.

It was this moment when I first realized that The Neverending Story isn’t simply an imaginative tale; it’s a tale about the nature of imagination itself. What it means for us as humans to dream, to hope, and especially to wish.

Wish fulfillment becomes a huge theme in the second half of the book. The main character, a human boy named Bastian, is given a great gift: a gem called AURYN with the ability to grant any and all of his wishes. On the back of AURYN is inscribed a single line: Do What You Wish. Armed with the gem, Bastian sets off to do just that. But what he eventually finds is that doing what you wish isn’t nearly as simple or easy as it seems.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is merely a children’s fun adventure tale. Through Bastian, Michael Ende explores adult themes such as power—its usage, consequences, and ability to corrupt; freedom, and what true freedom really requires; the power of names, including issues of identity and memory; and the journey we all take to discover our heart’s true desires. As the great lion Grograman says:

“Only a genuine wish can lead you through the maze of the thousand doors. Without a genuine wish, you just have to wander around until you know what you really want. And that can take a long time.”

Is this not true of all of us at some point?

I often look back fondly on books I read in the past, recalling how much I enjoyed this one or that, but without really remembering much about them. Not so with this book. When I think back on The Neverending Story, I recall the haunting conversation between Atreyu and Gmork about the nature of human fantasy; the dark side of AURYN as it slowly steals Bastian’s memories away even as it fulfills his every wish; and the hopeful moment Bastian pulls an image of the father he forgot from the Picture Mine. For these scenes are embedded with ideas about the human experience, and this is what ultimately makes this story not just worth reading, but worth remembering.

This article was originally published May 28, 2015 as part of our That Was Awesome! series

Margaret Fortune wrote her first story at the age of six and has been writing ever since. She lives in Wisconsin. Her first novel, Nova, is available from DAW.

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There's a folk belief that domestic animals gain the power of human speech on Christmas Eve — and often have things to say that their human owners would just as soon not hear. I discussed some folkloric and fictional examples in a couple of earlier Christmas-eve posts: "Talking animals: miracle or curse?" (12/24/2004)and "Watch out for those talking animals tonight" (12/24/2013).

For most of us, talking animals are kind of cute, evoking memories of stories like Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester (1903). So I was not expecting a web search for "talking animals" to yield the following Product Warnings on a novel by D. Reneé [sic] Bagby, Adrienne:

This title contains adult language, talking animals, violence, and scenes of near rape.

As I observed in the cited earlier posts, the discourses of Christmas-Eve talking animals are often uncomfortable or even dangerous. Some of the (scholarly and fictional) citations:

Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen, The Tribulations of a Princess (1901)
Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Chapter IX  (1912)
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, "Christmas Customs in Many Lands", (Monthly Bulletin, December 1919)
H. H. Munro (Saki), "Bertie's Christmas Eve" (1919)

And I noted that this superstition might have something in common with what Horace called "December Liberty" — Wikipedia puts it like this:

Saturnalian license also permitted slaves to enjoy a pretense of disrespect for their masters, and exempted them from punishment. It was a time for free speech: the Augustan poet Horace calls it "December liberty." In two satires set during the Saturnalia, Horace has a slave offer sharp criticism to his master.

One of the cited passages is from Satyrarum Libri 2.7, starting like this:

Horatii servus libertate usus Saturnalitia festive illum et acriter obiurgat.  

'Iamdudum ausculto et cupiens tibi dicere servos  pauca reformido.'
'Davusne?'
'ita, Davus, amicum  mancipium domino et frugi quod sit satis, hoc est,  ut vitale putes.'
'age libertate Decembri,  quando ita maiores voluerunt, utere: narra.'

Or in Theodore Alois Buckley's 1869 revision of Christopher Smart's English translation:

One of Horace's slaves, making use of that freedom which was allowed them at the Saturnalia, rates his master in a droll and severe manner.  

"I have a long while been attending [to you], and would fain speak a few words [in return; but, being] a slave, I am afraid."
"What, Davus?"
"Yes, Davus, a faithful servant to his master and an honest one, at least sufficiently so: that is, for you to think his life in no danger."
"Well (since our ancestors would have it so), use the freedom of December: speak on."

Buckley's footnote on this passage:

The particular design of the Saturnalia was to represent that equality, which reigned among mankind in the reign of Saturn, when they lived according to the laws of nature, without distinction of conditions. Horace here introduces a slave, asserting that a wise man alone is free, and that real liberty consists in not obeying our passions, or being enslaved to vice. He boldly reproaches his master with his faults and follies. His reasoning is so natural, sensible, and pressing, that Horace, not being able to answer him, at last loses his temper, and is obliged to make use of menaces to silence him.

Animals endowed with the ability to talk, like servants given the license to talk freely, are a threat to their masters and indeed to humans in general. And Catherine Elick (Talking Animals in Children's Fiction: A Critical Study) notes, in reference to Alice in Wonderland, that

Alice […] does not typically win the verbal battles she wages with the animals of Wonderland. In her waking world, Alice has come to expect animals to be subordinate and silent, at least in terms of speech. Wielding the power of the word in Wonderland, they now compete with Alice as equals, especially since most of them speak in the same privileged sociolect that Alice and her creator Carroll use. […] Alice's exasperated comment late in the novel — "How the creatures order one about about, and make one repeat lessons!" (82) — acknowledges her recognition that she is engaged in a battle with the Wonderland creatures, one in which she who controls the language holds the power. […]

Alice's first line of defense against this violent discourse is to repress her rage and indulge in the polite expressions that her upbringing has equipped her with as weapons of dominance. […] However, as the novel progresses, Alice abandons politeness and finds that she competes best with the characters of Wonderland when she indulges in the same blunt, rude language that they speak. Ultimately, the familiarity of the carnival square gives Alice license to speak candidly, to give vent to what Bakhtin calls "the outspoken carnivalistic word". […]

[M]ost of the conversations in Wonderland are marked not only by anger but also by incompletion. In many cases, the conversations trail off, often accompanied by the threat of violence […]

Still, I wonder what elevates the talking animals in Ms. Bagby's novel to the level of "violence and near rape".

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=23011

It's become our tradition to list the Posts of Christmas Past:

2003 "'Twas the night before Christmas", "Same-sex Mrs. Santa: 'The semantics are confusing'"
2004: "Talking animals: miracle or curse?", "A boxing day election — or not?"
2005: "Christmas trees and holiday trees";
2006: "Merry … umm … Christmas, Will!", "Like, a Christmas gift card", "Happy tensing and coal in sex";
2007: "One Christmas too long", "Christmas and 'politically correct(ed)ness'", "'Tis the season", "The unkindness of strangers", "Victims and etymology", "Lexical repulsion", "Insert flap 'A' and throw away";
2008: "Seven fishes", "Happy Christmas";
2009: "No, Virginia";
2010: "Mele Kalikimaka";
2011: "Seasonal linguistic pun", "Calling Christmas Christmas";
2013: "Watch out for those talking animals tonight", "Reindeer talk";
2014: "Magi, myrrh, and mummies"

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/12/24/whatever-best-of-2015/

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I wouldn’t call 2015 a fantastic year for humanity in general — “not great years for humanity” has been a bit of a depressing trend recently, hasn’t it — but for me it was certainly a pretty good one, and here at Whatever, I wrote a number of pieces I think are worth remembering here at the end of the year, ranging in topics from writing to politics to online life to beloved pets. As is my tradition on Christmas Eve, here are those entries, this year arranged alphabetically.

• Always and Never
• A Book Sale at the Cost of Your Conscience
• Disorganized Thoughts on Free Speech, Charlie Hebdo, Religion and Death
• Duran Duran, Neil Gaiman, and Beginnings
• eBook Sales and Author Incomes and All That Jazz
• Eight Things About Donald Trump
• Frightened, Ignorant and Cowardly is No Way to Go Through Life, Son
• Ghlaghghee, 2003 – 2015|Lopsided Cat, 2000 – 2015 (two entries, related)
• How Many Books You Should Write In a Year
• In Which I Select a Current GOP Presidential Candidate to Vote For, 2015 Edition
• My Day in a Wheelchair
• My Non-Spoilery Review of The Force Awakens
• The Myth of SF/F Publishing House Exceptionalism
• Reading Authors Not Like Me
• Reader Request Week 2015 #1: Free Speech Or Not
• Reader Request Week 2015 #3: Raising Strong Women
• Standard Responses to Online Stupidity
• The State of a Genre Title, 2015
• This New America
• A Useful Moment From a Mentor

Let me also take a moment to again note the passing of my friends John Anderson and Jacqueline Kahn. Their memory is a blessing.

And here we go, into the last week of 2015.

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