Today we are welcoming another new contributor to the flock: Clara Cohen
Clara lives in
Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still
lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by
profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation.
You can see her right hand on Season 8, episode 3, of Outlander,
because they needed someone who could cut and wield a quill pen. During
figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating.
NAME: Clara Cohen
SECRET UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: Home. Always home. Never was a homebody more bodiful at home.
NERD SPECIALIZATION(S): Star Trek, linguistics, massive doorstop fantasy, scifi can play too
MY PET PEEVES IN NERD-DOM ARE:
a. The belief in strict genre boundaries between fantasy and scifi
b. The belief that romance is less rigorous or more trashy than other genres
c. 'Historical accuracy!' Pal, you've got DRAGONS.
d. The etymological fallacy: 'if only we could discover the true meaning of <word>' Pal, the true meaning is how people use it now.
e.
'What it means to be human', oh, god, please no, stopit. It's a cliched
piece of portentous-sounding zoom-out language that has been overused
and lost all meaning.
VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, ZOMBIES, ALIENS OR ROBOTS: Aliens
RIGHT NOW I'M READING: Battlestar Suburbia, by Chris McCrudden
...AND A COUPLE BOOKS I RECENTLY FINISHED ARE:
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Infernal Devices, by Philip Reeve
The Hidden Palace, by Helene Wecker
NEXT TWO ON QUEUE ARE:
The Hands of The Emperor by Victoria Goddard
WHEN THE WEATHER SUCKS OUTSIDE I'M MOST LIKELY TO BE... In my favourite armchair with a cup of tea, reading, or else at my desk doing Islamic Geometric Art and listening to an audio book
MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO AND SUPER-VILLAIN ARE: The Accountant (aka Anna Tromedlov), from Hench by Natalie Zina Walschotts (both for the price of one!)
IF I WERE A SUPERHERO/VILLAIN, MY POWER WOULD BE: Able to speak all/any language, including programming languages
THE BEST COMIC FILM OF THE PAST 5 YEARS IS: Black Panther (or do you mean funny movie? If funny movie, then Knives Out (the first one; second was good too, but the first was surprising.)
THE WORST COMIC FILM OF THE PAST 5 YEARS IS: Oh, I think you do mean like marvel/dc. Unfortunately, I've really fallen off that bandwagon. I couldn't begin to tell you.
I JUST WATCHED XXXX AND IT WAS AWESOME: Knives Out: Glass Onion was great! I mean, I expected it to be, but it did live up to my expectations.
I JUST WATCHED XXXX AND IT WAS TERRIBLE. The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (gave up after episode 2)
EVERYONE SHOULD SEE XXXX BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, Black Sails! (Don't know why it would be too late, but everyone should watch it. Great show.)
BEST SCIENCE/SPECULATIVE FICTION SHOW OF THE PAST 10 YEARS: The Expanse. (But can I put in another plug for the SF-adjacent show Black Sails. Pirates! It's genius.)
EVERYONE SHOULD SEE XXXX BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, Black Sails! (Don't know why it would be too late, but everyone should watch it. Great show.)
BEST SCIENCE/SPECULATIVE FICTION SHOW OF THE PAST 10 YEARS: The Expanse. (But can I put in another plug for the SF-adjacent show Black Sails. Pirates! It's genius.)
NAME A BOOK YOU *NEED* A MOVIE OF (OR VICE VERSA): Ooh, hmm. Saint Death's Daughter, by C. S. E. Cooney. Great visuals in that one. Or Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet.
The role of co-speech gestures in that one, along with the passage of
time and the characterization of the andat, would make for some very interesting filmmaker interpretive choices.
Welcome, Clara!
Welcome, Clara!
