Human vs. Parrot

Posted on March 1, 2023 by JE

A great piece by Elizabeth Weil about Emily Bender, who is waging a war of ideas against stochastic parrots.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

Emily Bender sitting on a stool, looking at a parrot sitting on her shoulder.

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Sticker Shock

Posted on February 27, 2023 by JE

Um. Geeze. I guess I won’t be pursuing my interest in collecting Shel Silverstein’s cartoons any time soon.

Two listings from ABE Books: Silverstein's 1960 collection "Now Here's My Plan", priced at US$350.00, and "Playboy's Silverstein Around the World" priced at US$250.00.
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Diana in the News!

Posted on February 26, 2023 by JE

My partner in crime is interviewed in this piece on improv and therapy in the Toledo Blade. Some people say she’s great; some people say she’s amazing; others aren’t sure, but think ”Maybe both!”.

https://www.toledoblade.com/health-well-being/2023/02/26/laughter-best-medicine-some-doctors-say-it-can-t-hurt/stories/20230221075

Diana DePasquale standing in front of the “Glass City Improv” banner in the Valentine Theater’s Studio A. glasscityimprov.com
uncredited photo of D accompanying the Blade piece,
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The Tedium of Infinity

Posted on February 24, 2023 by JE

Maybe the suits at Marvel should have read Niven’s “All the Myriad Ways” before going all-in on the Multiverse. It’s not as if you can’t make a good movie with the concept (e.g. INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE), but it does have its depressing aspects.

Dean Ellis’ cover for the first edition
of Niven’s collection.
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Romance and Murder: DOROTHY L. SAYERS, HER LIFE & SOUL by Barbara Reynolds

Posted on February 21, 2023 by JE

In summary: This is the best biography of Sayers that I have read, or am likely to read.

cover of the 1st US edition, featuring a photo of Sayers as a young woman
The 1st American edition of Reynolds’ biography
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Invasion of the Stochastic Parrots

Posted on February 20, 2023 by JE

Apparently enough fatheads were taken in by the chatbot hype this winter to flood electronic submission portals with chatbot-written fiction.

At last there’s an option for the person who’s too dumb or lazy to read but who thinks they can write. They’re living in their own personal heaven, i.e. our hell.

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Swords Against Redundancy: Leiber’s TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE and SWORDS AGAINST DEATH

Posted on February 20, 2023 by JE

In summary: these two books collect the earliest stories Fritz Leiber published about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, ergo one or the other is essential reading for the sword-and-sorcery fan. Both are probably essential only to the Leiberian completist, so if you’re only going to read one I’d recommend Swords Against Death, a recommendation I’ll complicate below.

The cover on the left show a large barbarian warrior in front of a smaller swordsman dressed in gray; they are being menaced by a dismbodied skull. The cover on the right shows a small ship in a stormy sea with an angry sea-god above.
The covers to Two Sought Adventure (art by Leo Dillon) and
Swords Against Death (by the thrice-greatest Jeffrey Catherine Jones)
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Two Too Similar

Posted on February 16, 2023 by JE

Today a post on Scott Edelman’s Facebook page got me thinking about short-lived TV shows I loved as a kid, a train of thought that led eventually to a bizarre discovery of a series of attempted murders.

In 1967 two nearly identical shows appeared on different networks on the same weeknight in the same hour: Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice. They were futile attempts to cash in on the short-lived Batman craze—the type of show that could only appeal to a six-year-old fan of Batman and Underdog. That’d be me.

Left: Williams Daniels as Captain Nice and Ann Prentiss, I say Ann Prentiss, as Candy Kane. Right: a newspaper ad celebrating the premiere of Mr. Terrific.
Left: Williams Daniels as Captain Nice and Ann Prentiss, I say Ann Prentiss, as Candy Kane.
Right: a newspaper ad celebrating the premiere of Mr. Terrific.
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WHOSE BODY? by Dorothy L. Sayers

Posted on February 13, 2023 by JE

In summary: Whose Body? (Fisher Unwin, 1923) is worth reading if you like Golden Age detective novels and/or Dorothy Sayers. But novices to both might be well-advised to start with the second novel in the series, Clouds of Witness, a much better book. Spoilers follow. (Whose Body? is now in the public domain and you can get the text from The Internet Archive and elsewhere.)

Scan of the Avon Books edition of WHOSE BODY? from the 1970s. The cover depicts a clawfooted bathtub with a man's arm hanging out of it.
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SWORDS AND DEVILTRY by Fritz Leiber

Posted on February 11, 2023 by JE

Summary: this is essential reading for the fan of sword-and-sorcery, written by the guy who coined the name of the genre. Some mild spoilers follow.

In terms of internal chronology, Swords and Deviltry (Ace, May 1970) is the first volume of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. However, it collects three origin stories that were written fairly late in the series, published after Leiber had been writing about the characters for more than 20 years.

There’s two schools of thought about long-running series: read the stories in order of internal chronology, or read them in publication order. Either way is fine with me, really, but (as it happened) this is the first volume of F&G stories that came into my hands, sometime in the early 1970s when I was 13 or 14, in a used copy of the 1st Ace edition with its gloriously pulpy cover by Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

cover of the 1st Ace edition of SWORDS & DEVILTRY In Jeffrey Catherine Jones' cover painting, a male figure in the foreground (wearing a brown cloak and holding a drawn sword) turns to look at a supernatural being behind him appearing in a cloud of flame.
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