Here is some worthwhile stuff to check out, while it’s at the front of my mind: Ears First, a couple of excellent stories in podcast form, by my pals from Clarion West: Pesudopod‘s rendition of the very dark story “The Greatest Adventure of All” by Ian McHugh Beneath Ceaseless Skies‘ rendition of Tina Connolly’s fantasy “The God-Death of Halla” (and other excellent stories are available on the same page) Eyes A short article giving even more context to the context I provided for my story “Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands” has been posted over at his excellent blog Gusts …
Tag: history
Válka s Mloky
“Nowadays we simply cannot wait a few hundred years for something good or bad to happen in the world. Take the migration of peoples which used to drag on over several centuries: today, with our present organization of transport, it could be accomplished in three years; otherwise there would be in profit in it. The same is true of the liquidation of the Roman Empire, the colonisation of the continents, the extermination of the Red Indians, and so on. All these things could have been accomplished incomparably more speedily if they had been put in the hands of entrepreneurs with …
Stuff Going On
Well, lots of things going on… in a personal sense, too, though I’m not ready to blog my recent news. Instead: There’s some great fiction online that I need to link to. For now, just one story: the wonderfully nastyglee party that is Tina Connolly’s “A Day Out, with Stereoscopes” is up at Birkensnake. I’ve a copy of the zine, actually, and it’s lovely. You could do worse than to subscribe. Tina has a talent for mixing the cute with the horrifying. Ever heard of Drapetomania? It’s this disease that can be summed up as “longing to be free and …
Bwi~! and Buyeo Wives, &c.
That’s a word I think I made up myself, in Korean. At least, I’ve never heard anyone else say it, though Lime told me it sounds like the mopey protestation of a five-year-old. 븨~! This word is occasioned because my Sado Seja story did not make it into the Datlow/Mamatas anthology Haunted Legends. I’m sure competition was fierce, though, and they’re good editors. If only Nick had had the time to savage the story, I’d have learned a lot, I imagine. (But who has time?) Anyway, I’m going to do what I often don’t do… send the story out immediately. …
Last Bit on This Discussion
The wider discussion that The Korean and Rob have sparked off continues with two more recent posts on the subject, here and here. Along the way, a very interesting post was contributed by Matt, that reads almost like a “bitching expat blog” roundup, except all the complaints were made by foreigners in Korea a century or more ago, long before blogs ever existed. I loved this post, and I wanted to link it, but I had it in my head that I’d be posting it with another installment: that’s not going to happen, so I am posting the link as …
NCC-1492 and The Good Ship Daehan
This is part three in a series. You may wish to read the above links. If you don’t: Part 1 discussed reasons why so many expatriates complain about Korea. Part 2 seemed to rush off onto a tangent mostly focused on Iksan, a small city where I lived for a couple of years when I first arrived in Korea, and the unevenness of its development. I ended discussing a landfill crisis there, and describing how young locals were all dressed in their usual stunning finery, promenading serenely past barricades of trash bags blocking the sidewalk. Then, with promises to return …
The Iri Yeok Explosion, and the Iksan Landfill Crisis
As you can see from the links above, this is the second in a pair of posts responding to the question posed by Roboseyo and The Korean. If you haven’t read part 1, go check it out before reading this. If you’re not inclined to check it out, here’s the nutshell: To complain is human. I Whinge, Thefore I Am. To complain online is even more common. We’d be reading whining blogs from 1380 is blogs had then existed. Expats probably complain a lot because of a few specific reasons: Many expats are English teachers, a relatively stressful (and in …
Got China?
A couple of them in this post on a blog I just discovered (in the Columbus, was-already-there sense), The China Beat. Particularly cool are the piece on Li Wei at 1000 Words and Virtual Shanghai. Plus why Jonathan Spence absolutely, totally rocks like a motherf*cker. (More here.) Listen to Spence’s Reith lectures here… even if you do skip the long (and iffy) question periods. Or download the MP3s (from links listed) here. I’m listening to lecture #1 now — which is about Confucianism, by the way, and thus of interest to all you Korea-watchers — and the big question is: …
Gin Lane & Soju-ro: Part 1 — The Preamble
Right, so I said this would be a long time in coming, but yesterday afternoon and evening — during my train ride in and out of Seoul, as well as during a couple of breaks I took when the humidity and heat and human density proved too much for me at the protest I attended — I all but inhaled Jessica Warner’s Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason, a kind of legal and cultural history of the Gin Craze that swept through the poorer classes in London in the first half of the 1700s (and, to use …
Popular Gusts Blow Through Salon
Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling was mentioned in today’s installement of the column at Salon called How the World Works. I’ve long considered Matt one of the best bloggers on Korea, period, and would like to take a development history course from him if he were to offer one — I know I’d learn a lot — so if you haven’t checked him out, do so. (The Salon column was okay, too.) Thanks for the unwitting heads-up, Tristan!