Subj: June 1997 L&SF Online Bulletin
Date: 97-06-03 09:45:23 EDT
From: ocls@ipa.net
To: ocls@ipa.net

Linguistics & Science Fiction Online Bulletin, June 1997

1. First I need to correct an error from page 5 of the May/June issue of L&SF. When I gave you the web page address for Steve Marsh, who has "Suzette Haden Elgin" (and other) stuff stashed there, I did it incorrectly. The address for the page is: http://members.aol.com/Ethesis/lingua.htm. The best way to send him materials is by email (with or without attachments); the email address is Ethesis@aol.com. I'm sorry about the confusion, and I send my apologies to Steve.

[Editors note, the mistake was not Dr. Elgin's  fault. Also, I seriously am interested in adding your thoughts, notes, comments and essays to this collection.]

2. Second, I have the flu, and heaven only knows what that will do to this document. I was on book tour for two weeks, as you already know -- and had the pleasure of meeting some of you along the way. Book tour means shaking hundreds of strange hands, it means using other people's gear -- microphones, headsets, coffeecuts, telephone, and so on, and it means being shut up in small quarters (like radio show rooms) with strange people for sizable amounts of time. It also means very exhausting work and an awful lot of stress.

Getting flu (or worse) is almost inevitable. The more cities you do, the more likely the flu becomes. How the people who do sixty cities survive the experience I cannot imagine; they're a lot tougher than I am! But tours are required, if books are to be sold, so you do them. Please be tolerant, therefore; when I have a fever, my typing suffers and I suspect my brain is substantially downshifted.

3. I had an email from one of you asking me for the list of *topics* for the Online Bulletin (like Women & Language for the September/October issue of L&SF, "editor's choice" for the July/August issue, and so on), and must answer that no such list exists. So far, the Online Bulletin is just an informal and unorganized set of bits and pieces that strike me as timely -- more like a letter from me to you than a publication. I want you to know, however, that if you would *like* to have specific topics dealt with, all you have to do is propose them and I'll do my best to oblige. (And while

I'm here, I think it's interesting -- I don't know what it means, but it's interesting -- that although I offered printouts of the Onlines to all our "unwired" members, only one request for them has ever  come in, in all this time.)

4. The people at amazon.com, while ordering a copy of our "Celebration of Ozark English" for somebody, were kind enough to tell me about the wonders they offer to the authors of the books they sell, and to suggest that I check them out. I did, and was astonished by both the splendour they offer and the depths of my ignorance -- I should have done it a long time ago, obviously.

All my books and audio programs are listed, including some I didn't know existed, like a Spanish edition of the tape set called "Mastering the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense," from Dove Audio. (You might think that publishers let an author know when something like this is done; mine often don't; I find out from reading the trades, stumbling over the item in a catalogue, or some such thing. Why should a Content Provider be told these things, right? All we do is type the product.)

Anyway... I filled in an author interview, and I had a wonderful time adding comments after many of the listings for my books -- giving me a chance to explain things to gazillions of people. You might want to take a look -- there is a crashingly negative review of Earthsong, for example, and a response from me. Wonderful. I also discovered that the amazon.com page, with out Netscape software, is much faster and easier to use as a research tool -- to hunt down books on musicology and psychoacoustics, for example -- than all the cumbersome places I've been resorting to. Wonderful, again.

5. If anyone among you has information about a subject called *theomusicology* I would be grateful to have some data. Amazon.com shows a book on the subject, but it's horrendously expensive, way beyond my budget, and would have to be found on interlibrary loan, for which there isn't enough time available. (I start working on the next issue in a couple of weeks.) Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

6. Recently I bought the set of four "Discworld" books by Terry Pratcher from the SF Book Club, with the plan of giving them to my two older grand-daughters for Christmas. I ordered them now because I know better than to give books to my grandkids without reading them first, and the reading takes time I have trouble finding. Well, I have now finished the first one, which is called "Equal Rites," and I'm both frustrated and baffled.

It's sort of like the Wizard of Oz written by Monty Python, and I am so sorry about that. The story -- all about a witch called Granny Weatherwax (who could have come out of my Ozark Trilogy), and a little girl who is out to become a wizard rather than a witch in spite of the "women can't be wizards" policy on Discworld -- is fun and fast-paced and full of action and anything but trivial. Big Issues are dealt with. On every page I was thinking, "Rosamond and Josepha would *love* this book!"

But I can't give it to my grand-daughters (and I suppose the other three will be the same story, though I'll check them out before making a final decision). The reason I can't is that every so often there is some *stupid* double entendre or smarmy seventh-grade locker room joke. Like setting the whole story in a little town named Bad Ass, which represents the level this humor reaches.

Does anybody know whether Pratcher has ever talked about why he does this? It would be different if the jokes and bad language and puns were needed to advance the plot; in that case, I could tell the kids that some unsavory stuff was in there but that there are good reasons for it, and we could discuss it. It would be different if the items were even *funny* -- they almost never are, so far as I can tell. It's bizarre.

I'd think people who would be interested in how witches raise little girls with magical tendencies would be uninterested in locker room jokes -- and vice versa. Any enlightenment you can offer me will be welcome here.

7. Next up is the Editor's Choice issue, which will have the linguistics/sf/music intersection as its focus topic this year. I could still use material, especially for the sf/music section, which is a tad slim. Any suggestions?

8. I've gone on too long already -- I'm going to stop. Let me just tell you that I will be at Conjuration (sf convention) in Jefferson City, Missouri, the first weekend in August; if you want details, let me know and I'll send them.( I had to miss WisCon because of the book tour, and I hated that; the reports on the net are that it was terrific. I wish I'd been there.) No other travel is scheduled right now because I have two books under contract -- a grandmothering book and a book on multilingualism -- and I have to stay home and write them.

My very best to you, beflued and befuddled,

Suzette