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Lynda Williams Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing Sumptuosity The Alien Next Door
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Sunday, January 20, 2002
Arena01B As uploaded, now incorporates the first scene I faxed. Some shuffling around early on, with taking out things previously explained while Perry chewed her nails. I'm sure some details are blurry, but I think we're getting closer. Only problem - 9284 words, expanded from 7010, and that was even with me going through with a paring knife (hey, I'm not purely hack and slash - have some smaller sharp instruments). But I'll be maurading with the machete again. But before you lock all our joint files (never alarm a sysop!) maybe we should ask for an Editorial Ruling: what is our absolute, inviolate, never-to-be-breached word limit?
Having had a wrestle with Perry's earthy tongue, next con I go to, I'm going to propose a panel on "appropriate profanity" - ie appropriate to imagined cultures. I shall research curses. Being a scientist by nature, I shall seek a classification for them. And I shall quote this wonderful passage from H. Beam Piper's Police Operation (his hero has just had to do an ouchsome first-aid job on himself after a run-in with an alien beastie): "He grunted out a string of English oaths and capped them with an obscene Spanish blasphemy he had picked up among the Fourth Level inhabitants of his island home of Nerros, to the south, and a thundering curse in the name of Mogga, Fire God of Dool, in a Third-Level tongue. He mentioned Fasif, Great God of Khift, in a manner which would have gotten him an acid-bath if the Khiftan priests had heard him. He alluded to the baroque amatory practices of the Third-Level Illaya people and soothed himself, in the classical Dar-Halma tongue, with one of those rambling genetic insults favoured in the Indo-Turanian Sector of the Fourth Level ... " Definitely not "Great Balls of Fire" - which should be the title of said panel. I think Rebecca should be able to come up with some curses in the same pan-cultural style.
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