assassins and monodromy
Gentle readers,
My story Closer than your kidneys is up at Frivolous Comma! This is the story of an assassin, Tashnur, who finds herself falling in love with her target, a starship princess.
One of the seeds of "Kidneys" is a fantasy short story by Larry Niven. This is counterintuitive on several levels (Niven, onetime advisor to the Reagan administration, inspiring queer space opera? The author of Ringworld writing fantasy?) In the original story, a barbarian attacks a wizard using a device that can absorb all the magical energy from an area. The wizard embeds an ethereal glass dagger in the barbarian's chest and warns him that if he enters a no-magic area ever again, the dagger will solidify and his heart will stop. Then the barbarian and wizard go off to have adventures.
This was far too romantic for Niven, so I stole it.
Other stuff I've been up to?
- Asimov's interviewed me about the ideas behind my story "The Fifteenth Saint":
The spark for this story is extremely erudite—maybe that’s fitting for a piece involving a judge obsessed with poetry! In his dissertation on the early modern Ottoman empire, Jonathan Parkes Allen describes a sprawling book written by a sixteenth-century Sufi mystic and equipped with a marvelous technology: an index. By consulting the index, a reader could find whichever piece of the holy man’s advice was most relevant to their specific problem. The book simulated the mind of the saint.
- I reviewed Ann Leckie's new novel Translation State, and talked about why it reminds me of the mathematical concept of monodromy.
- I experimented with ancient Greek face masks for a historical reenactment event.
And of course, Kosmas the cat has been doing his best to keep me company.
Yours,
Ursula.