# Science Fiction Evolution: A Comprehensive Report

## Introduction

Science fiction as a literary genre has undergone significant transformation since its early days, evolving from the pioneering works of authors like H.

G.

Wells to encompass diverse voices and perspectives from around the world.

This report examines the evolution of science fiction literature, exploring its early influences, contemporary developments, and the impact of underrepresented voices on the genre.

## Early Foundations and Influences

### The Pioneers: H.

G.

Wells and Early Science Fiction

The genre of science fiction was fundamentally shaped by early pioneers like H.

G.

Wells, whose works in the late 19th and early 20th centuries established many of the foundational elements that would define the genre.

Wells' novels, including "The Time Machine" (1895), "The War of the Worlds" (1898), and "The Invisible Man" (1897), introduced readers to concepts of time travel, alien invasion, and scientific

# Science Fiction Evolution: A Comprehensive Report

## Introduction

Science fiction as a literary genre has undergone significant transformation since its early days, evolving from the pioneering works of authors like H.

Title:

Content: Space Species: In the experiment of writing, “space ” is a doubt.
What we want you to know is
For Perec and this book, “writing ” means not simply words, nor mere words, but the use of the body to leave and read traces of memory.
In this, there will be a kind of “space ” that expands and manifests itself, allowing people to re-shape their own or others ’ past.
In terms of the first impression of reading, Space Species may feel like a difficult book to understand.
But for those who don ’ t want to read anything at all, Species of Space may be a fascinating book, full of interesting associations and many “places ” that people think are worth playing with.
This book is by the French novelist George.
Georges Perec ’ s 1974 book was first published by the French thinker Paul Paulista.
Invited by Paul Virilio.
It is not a novel with a well-defined narrative, but a mental note about space, “place, ” or more like a collection of essays and sketches of associations related to space.
The "space" he talks about is often not what we generally understand, a physical space with a clear geographical location and a certain size, but something that does not have an entity, but seems to be like space, such as: memory, "self" or the so-called "inner space".
The first chapter of "Space Species" is "Paper Pages", the author quotes a Belgian writer Henri Michel as the opening: "I write, in order to travel around the self." The first thing that people think of is that writing is an idea that allows people to explore themselves, but the interesting thing is that under the operation of Perec, he also makes people wonder that people need to write themselves because they have themselves. Not writing is a tool for exploring the self, but the self is a tool for writing to express itself, and writing is the goal that the self is pursuing.
In the process of writing and reading, people imagine a space that is like a “self. ”
Before this, what is written may never be a "self", but a "space" in which the self desires to live.
Perec then wrote several pages of text (see Figure 1) that had little or no real meaning because they were a language of constant self-referencing.
In the first paragraph, he kept writing "I write", "I write", as if he wanted to write a lot of things, but in the end he wrote nothing but "I write".
Below is “I ’ m drawing words on a page. ”
One letter after another, the article gradually took shape, established, stabilized, fixed, fixed... "is the same, he came to write the" article ", these words that said he would write a" article "themselves.
Perec portrays a void in a language, a meaninglessness that exists in the meaning of language.
What he wants us to read, it seems, is not the meaning of the text itself, but the space in which the text is located: the paper page.
This is what the author wrote in the foreword:
To read space; this is because our so-called daily life is by no means one-eyed, but opaque, or close to a blind form, a state of anaesthesia.
If you just give a blank sheet of paper, instead of using this seemingly meaningless, self-referential text, people may not even notice the space in which the text is located.
Does this imply that the meaning of language is often an anaesthetic? We read meaning and therefore ignore the space in which the meaning lives? In this case, what is “space ” and how is it perceived?
Perec's writing in "The Pages" is not about writing the meaning of writing, but about the traces left by the writing itself, including the appearance of these symbols and their place in space.
These traces are like the ruins of a building, the original building itself is what, we no longer know, the only can rely on, only in the new scenery, looking for the traces of his remnants, has lost meaning, can let us observe something, from which to imagine a former "space".
"Space" in this book, therefore, is often not a place for people to simply move and walk, but more like a period of lost time and space, is no longer there "space".
The next two chapters of "Paper Pages" are "Bed" and "Bedroom", which at first glance are observations and analysis of the two places of the bed and the bedroom, but in fact, Perec talks more about these two chapters, but they are a variety of previous memories.
Include which bed he liked best in his impression, why? Which friend gave him it, what he did on it, what was placed next to it, and so on.
In the bedroom chapter, he talks about his experiences as a young student and the bedroom in which he lived.
The resurrected bedroom space is enough to awaken, redeem, and evoke memories, whether the most momentary, the most inexplicable, or the most refined.
The very definite general feeling of my body lying on the bed, and the very certainty of the bed ’ s position in the room, can activate my memory … It is like recalling a word from a dream that, once written, revives the whole memory of the dream.
Here we see the book “written ” again.
It seems that "Space Species" is not just asking: What is "space"? It is also asking: What is "writing"?
For Perec and this book, “writing ” means not simply words, nor mere words, but the use of the body to leave and read traces of memory.
In this, there will be a kind of “space ” that expands and manifests itself, allowing people to re-shape their own or others ’ past.
Gaston Bachelard wrote well in The Poetics of Space: "Space, is the oscillation of images", and memory is such a "space", an inner, imaginary building that allows us to live with the "other" in our hearts.
However, the appearance of this "space" is often expressed and stimulated through various traces left by things in life.
Once the traces disappear or are unrecognizable, they may be forgotten.
Unless we write it down in writing and let it be a memory — the traces left by this invisible space.
The following chapters of Space Species are: Apartment, Building, Street, Community, City, Countryside, Country, Europe, Old Continent, New World, World, and Space.
We can notice that Perec is slowly moving from private space to public space, from private memory to the “space ” where collective and historical memories are born.
These collective and historical memories are time and space that are no longer there, yet they still leave some traces.
But Perec not only pays attention to the "space" of history, but also wants us to question whether the "space" of the present really exists.
In "Countryside", he immediately told us that "Countryside" is actually an illusion, such a "space" does not really exist, just a kind of scenery that people choose to see.
In addition, in the seemingly huge "space" chapters of "country", "Europe", "old continent", "new continent" and so on, Perec unexpectedly did not write anything, in "Europe" he only wrote: "one of the five major parts of the world"; "old continent" he only wrote: "Europe, Asia, Africa". There is nothing to write about, and even like "country", it may not exist at all, but the scenery we think we are.
In “State, ” he asked,“ What is the border? ”
It is clear that he is only a line in the picture, but in order to cross this line, many people have lost their lives, and some people just cross this line, and people on the other side can no longer shoot him.
I want a solid place to be, immovable, immovable, untouched and almost untouchable, unalterable, deeply rooted; a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place to be, a place of origin, a source …
Such a place does not exist, space is no longer a problem, no longer taken for granted, no longer can be merged, no longer owned.
Space is a question: I must constantly mark it, identify it; it is never mine, it is never given to me, and I must conquer it.
My space is fragile: time will consume it and destroy it; everything will no longer be as it used to be, my memories will betray me, and forgetfulness will seep into my memory.
Space dissolves like sand is lost between fingers.
Time won, but left me only the shapeless pieces:
Write: Carefully try to keep a little something, let them live; grab a little piece of reality from the emptiness, and leave a trace, a trace, a sign, or a few symbols somewhere.
This is the last paragraph of the last chapter of Space Species.
He said, “Space is a problem. ”
It has never been a fixed place of a certain size, but like “countries ”,“ Europe ” and “continents ”, it is always changing, dissolving and merging, and people can only constantly identify and mark their past, present and possible future.
This is probably why this book is called Space, but he began writing and finally wrote the topic. As if to tell us, "space species" is actually a writing species.
People leave their traces in all parts of the world in order to portray and create the space where they once lived.
It is in people ’ s different writing that “space ” becomes a strange kind of doubt, oscillating in people ’ s hearts.
And literature, it is from the birth of the written experiment.
As in this book, create and recreate public and private spaces that are no longer available and possible in a scripted experiment.
Extended reading
Editor-in-Chief: Pang Bohan
Editor ： Weng Shihang
Tags:

Title:

Content: Pixel Scroll 2/10/23 Jetpack Failing, Must Attempt To Pixel To A Safe Scrolling

(1) VINTAGE OR VINEGAR? At Young People Read Old SFF, James Davis Nicoll tasked the panel to read Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson. Click through to hear what they thought about it.

Young People Read Old Hugo Finalists focuses on Spider Robinson’s 1982 Hugo-winning “Melancholy Elephants”. Readers of my vintage might remember Robinson as the author of the once-popular Callahan’s stories (to which series “Melancholy Elephants” does not belong) as well as a prolific reviewer whose pieces appeared in Galaxy, Analog, and Destinies Magazine and no doubt elsewhere. “Melancholy Elephants” is a stand-alone focusing on the issue of perpetual copyright. It’s a subject still relevant today. I am curious what the Young People make of Robinson’s story….

(2) IT’S A RISKY BUSINESS. And at Tor.com, James Davis Nicoll picks out “Five SF Stories About Space Scouts and Cosmic Exploration”.

Of all the career paths offered to player characters in the venerable tabletop roleplaying game Traveller, few were as memorable as that of the scout. Stalwart explorers of empire’s hinterlands, scouts could expect a charmingly informal command structure, a good chance of a loaner starship on retirement, and, oh yes, the life expectancy of a newborn puppy in a crocodile-filled swamp. Classic Traveller was notorious for its character generation system: player characters could and often did expire during the process. Few careers offered the harrowing mortality rate of the scout class.

Traveller author Marc Miller drew inspiration from classic science fiction, whose authors delighted in dropping explorers into situations for which the explorers soon discovered they were insufficiently prepared. Here are five tales of the sort  that inspired Traveller….

(3) UNION AND HARPERCOLLINS ANNOUNCE AGREEMENT. Vox’s overview “What the hard-won HarperCollins union contract means for the future of books” actually does little to answer its own question. But it does supply this snapshot of how the strike ended.

…On January 26, HarperCollins management agreed to enter federal mediation with the union. Five days later, it announced that it would be laying off 5 percent of its workforce. A HarperCollins spokesperson attributed the layoffs to supply chain pressures and declining revenue, saying, “The timing had nothing to do with mediation.”

Because HarperCollins is the only union shop among the Big Five, the stakes here are high. It is pushed by necessity to set the labor standards for the rest of the industry: when it raises its wages, Penguin Random House raises its wages too. The hope among supporters both in and out of the union was that the new agreement would spark similar structural changes at the other Big Five houses, and maybe even inspire other houses to unionize.

Finally, at 8 pm on February 9, the union and HarperCollins together announced they had reached a tentative agreement. “The tentative agreement includes increases to minimum salaries across levels throughout the term of the agreement, as well as a one-time $1,500 lump sum bonus to be paid to bargaining unit employees following ratification,” said HarperCollins in a statement. Currently, there’s no word on whether the union also succeeded in bringing in new diversity initiatives or in getting a union security clause. The contract doesn’t become official until it’s ratified….

Publishers Weekly’s coverage put the agreement in perspective with HarperCollins’ recent business reverses: “Deal Reached in HarperCollins Strike as Publisher Has Another Bad Quarter”.

…News of the tentative agreement came shortly after HC parent company News Corp. released financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. The company reported that earnings tumbled 52% at HC, falling to $51 million, from $107 million in the comparable quarter a year ago. Sales dropped 14%, to $531 million.

News Corp. attributed the revenue decline to slowing consumer demand for books, difficult comparisons to a strong frontlist performance a year ago, and “some logistical constraints at Amazon.” In the first quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, HC attributed the decline in sales and earnings largely to a steep drop in orders from Amazon, and in a conference call, News Corp. executives said the negative impact of Amazon on second quarter sales was less than in the first quarter. Sales were down in both print and digital formats.

In addition to lower sales, News attributed the plunge in profits primarily to “ongoing supply chain, inventory, and inflationary pressures on manufacturing, freight, and distribution costs.” A change in the product mix also depressed earnings, with the share of e-book sales falling in the second quarter as that of the the less-profitable print books rose.

With financial results also down in the first quarter, in the first six months of fiscal 2023, profits declined 53%, to $90 million, and sales fell 12%, to $1.02 billion.

Last month, HC began implementing a program to cut its North American workforce by 5% by the end of the fiscal year ending June 30. In a conference call announcing results, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson said News is making a 5% workforce cut in all its businesses, which will result in the elimination of about 1,250 positions….

(4) KGB. Ellen Datlow shared her photos from the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series event on February 8 at Flickr. Jeff Ford and Marie Vibbert were the evening’s readers.

(5) SKY HIGH DINING. The Torrance (CA) Public Library hosts a Zoom presentation by Richard Foss, “Food in Space in Science Fiction and Reality”, on February 15 at 6:30 p.m. Pacific. Email [email protected] for the invitation link.

Early science fiction stories about space travel ignored the most basic need of any pioneer – what did they eat, and how? The science fiction authors did get around to addressing this question, their solutions were sometimes novel but impractical.

How do their fantasies match up with reality, and are authors getting it right now? Join Richard Foss, author, culinary expert and lecturer as we explore this fascinating subject.

Please email [email protected] for the invitation link to join this discussion on Zoom.

(6) START YOUR OWN INKLINGS. “Writers Need Writers: In the Footsteps of the Inklings” at Inspire Christian Writers.

… Writing is a solitary pursuit. Only the writer understands the intent. Hunched alone over our notepads and computers, we snaggle our words and graft them onto the page, prayerfully hopeful they will touch hearts. But we can’t know the true strength of our writing unless we are willing to share those words with another who will render kind and honest feedback. Our mothers don’t count. Neither does a stranger. One lacks honesty, the other an understanding of the writer’s heart.

Twelve members of the Inklings steadfastly met for almost twenty years. Weathering war and broken friendships, they left us with poetry, Christian essays, and stories that delight and instruct to this day. That’s what I want. I want their journey. How? Here’s some gleanings from Bandersnatch.

[Dr. Diana] Glyer believes it’s possible to have what the Inklings had. Start small but keep at it, she says. The Inklings began with just two, Tolkien and Lewis….

(7) MANTELL OBITUARY. The New York Times marks the passing of the co-creator of a spoken word record business: “Marianne Mantell, Who Helped Pave the Way for Audiobooks, Dies at 93”.

Marianne Mantell, who in her early 20s helped start the audiobook revolution by co-founding a record company [Caedmon] that turned recordings of countless literary giants, including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Dylan Thomas, into mass-market entertainment, died on Jan. 22 at her home in Princeton, N.J. She was 93….

… In an era when American business was dominated by Fortune 500 companies, it was rare enough for two recent college graduates to create what was in essence a tech start-up aimed at disrupting two industries, book publishing and the record business. And in an era when those corporate giants were run largely by men in Brooks Brothers suits, it was even more unusual for two women to do so.

“Caedmon was the era’s only female-owned record company, and its remarkable success stood out in a male-dominated record industry,” Mr. Rubery said. “At the time, only around 5 percent of record industry employees were women, and those women were almost all in marketing and retail roles. The rise to the top by two female entrepreneurs represented a remarkable exception.”

As Ms. Mantell wrote in a 2004 remembrance for AudioFile magazine, “Although poets had been recorded before as vanity efforts, it was Barbara and I who realized that there was an audience of literate people and made a business out of it.”

… The labels had no interest, so Ms. Mantell and Ms. Holdridge scratched together $1,800 to start a label of their own, which they christened Caedmon after the seventh-century cowherd considered the first recognized English poet. The company’s slogan: A third dimension for the printed page.”

…“We were not just out to preserve celebrity voices (to the extent that a poet is a celebrity),” she wrote. “Our purpose was literary: to capture on tape as nearly as possible what the poet heard in his head as he wrote.”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1974[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

I think I read Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed in University when a classmate recommended it. I had a keen interest in politics, particularly those on the Left, so the politics of the novel interested me.

I think it works much better for its politics than it does for the strength of the character therein. The politics and the set-up of two planets was fascinating though I admit that it’s not a novel by her I’ve re-read, unlike her exemplary Earthsea series.

It won both a Hugo and a Nebula, and deserved them.

And with that, here’s the Beginning…

THERE was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple of large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory. The dormitory looked durable, grimy, and mournful; it had no gardens, no children; plainly nobody lived there or was even meant to stay there long. It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.

Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 10, 1904 Lurton Blassingame. Literary agent for Heinlein. He makes the birthday list because Grumbles from the Grave has more letters to Blassingame than to any other correspondent. And even some of Blassingames’s letters to Heinlein are included. (Died 1988.)
  • Born February 10, 1906 Lon Chaney Jr., 1906 – 1973. I certainly best remember him as  playing Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man but he has a lot of other roles as well: The Ghost of Frankenstein as The Monster (hey, correct billing!), The Mummy’s Tomb as The Mummy Kharis or Son of Dracula as Count Dracula, he played all the great monsters, often multiple times. (Died 1973.)
  • Born February 10, 1920 Robert Park Mills. He was the managing editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine beginning in 1948 and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction the following year. He also edited Venture Science Fiction for several years. Under him, F&SF won an impressive three Hugo Awards for best magazine in 1959, 1960 and 1963. (Died 1986.)
  • Born February 10, 1929 Jerry Goldsmith. Composer whose music graces many a genre undertaking including, and this is not complete listing, AlienStar Trek: The Motion PicturePoltergeistPlanet of the ApesThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. series, Star Trek: VoyagerThe MummyThe Twilight Zone (need I say the original series?) and he even did the music for Damnation Alley! (Died 2004.)
  • Born February 10, 1953 John Shirley, 70. I not going to even attempt a complete précis of his career. I read and much enjoyed his first novel City Come A-Walkin and oddly enough his Grimm: The Icy Touch is damn good too in way many of those sharecropped novels aren’t. I see that to my surprise he wrote a episode of Deep Space Nine, “Visionary” and also wrote three episodes of the ‘12 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His latest novel which I’ve not read so do tell me about it is A Sorcerer of Atlantis.
  • Born February 10, 1967 Laura Dern, 56. I’m going to note she’s in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet as Sandy Williams which is not genre but which is one weird film. Jurassic Park where she is Dr. Ellie Sattler is her first SF film followed by Jurassic Park III and a name change to Dr. Ellie Degler.  Such are the things movie trivia is made of. Star Wars: The Last Jedi has her showing as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo.  I think her first genre appearance was on Shelley Duvall’s Nightmare Classic.
  • Born February 10, 1970 Robert Shearman, 53. He wrote the episode of Who called “Dalek” which was nominated for the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form at L.A. Con IV. (There were three Who entries that year and “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances” won.) His first book, a collection of short stories called Tiny Deaths was a World Fantasy Award winner. He’s written a lot of short fiction since then, collected helpfully into two collections, Remember Why You Fear Me: The Best Dark Fiction of Robert Shearman and They Do the Same Things Different There: The Best Weird Fantasy of Robert Shearman. Some, but by no means all, of his works are up at the usual suspects.
  • Born February 10, 1976 Keeley Hawes, 47. Ms Delphox/Madame Karabraxos in my favorite Twelfth Doctor story “Time Heist”.  She also played Zoe Reynolds in MI5 which is at least genre adjacent given where the story went. She has also provided the voice of Lara Croft in a series of Tomb Raider video games.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side is present at the Creation.
  • Edge City tries to figure out what all the remotes are for.
  • Sheldon predicts who will be AI art’s mortal enemy.
  • Sheldon also illustrates the limits of dog science.

(11) SHORT REVIEWS. Lisa Tuttle supplies “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup” for the Guardian. The four titles covered this time are Hopeland by Ian McDonald; Ten Planets by Yuri Herrera; Observer by Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress; and Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett.

(12) PLAYING GAMES. Them is reporting that “Hogwarts Legacy Features the Harry Potter Franchise’s First Trans Character”.

Now that the review embargo for Hogwarts Legacy is up, more details about the forthcoming Harry Potter role-playing game, set to release on Friday, are surfacing. One particularly noteworthy new fact? The inclusion of a transgender non-playable character (or NPC) named Sirona Ryan, whom players can find at the Three Broomsticks pub.

The news came courtesy of a gameplay clip shared by YouTuber Doctor Gramma, in which Sirona serves a pair of characters Butterbeer and remarks upon a recent, unspecified attack on Hogwarts. Although Sirona was not confirmed as trans in the clip itself, Entertainment Weekly and other outlets have since reported on in-game dialogue referencing her transition. Speaking about her former classmates, the barkeep reportedly says,  “Took them a second to realize I was actually a witch, not a wizard.”

Given Potter author J.K. Rowling’s well-documented transphobia, Sirona’s presence is unexpected, to say the least. Some in the video game world are even claiming the character was included in hopes of quelling a boycott from gamers who have chosen not to play the game based on Rowling’s dangerous anti-trans platform.

“An old acquaintance did some work on that Hogwarts game,” YouTuber Stephanie Sterling tweeted early Monday morning. “I’m told they added a token trans NPC to pivot the conversation away from JKR. They’re barely in it.”

“Did You Know Gaming” contributor and video game historian Liam Robertson backed up Sterling’s account, writing, “I was also told this. There was apparently some trans representation added after some of the initial controversy. I don’t know how it appears in the final product but one of the sources I talked to described it as ‘performative bullshit.’”…

(13) YOU’RE FIRED. While Elon Musk was making news for firing a Twitter engineer, his SpaceX was getting attention for test-firing an engine: “SpaceX Test Fires 31 Engines on the Most Powerful Rocket Ever” in the New York Times.

SpaceX moved one step closer to its future on Thursday with a successful ground test of the engines of the most powerful rocket ever built.

The company, founded by the entrepreneur Elon Musk, conducted what is known as a static fire of Super Heavy, a massive rocket booster. Super Heavy was made to send SpaceX’s next-generation Starship vehicle toward orbit before returning to Earth.

More than 110,000 people watched a livestream broadcast by NASASpaceFlight.com, an independent space media company that has cameras monitoring the Starship test site in Boca Chica, Texas. The video feed showed clouds of vapor enveloping the launch stand when propellants started flowing into the rocket, and rings of frost forming around the rocket as the tanks filled with ultracold propellants.

Then the clouds mostly vanished when the fueling was complete — for the brief test, the tanks were not filled to the brim.

At 4:14 p.m. Eastern time, on a video feed provided by SpaceX, the engines roared to life for a few seconds and shut down, kicking up that rose clouds above the rocket and prompting masses of birds to flee the area. An update on Twitter from SpaceX indicated the test was a success, lasting as long as intended. The booster and launch stand appeared to be in good shape afterward.

(14) APOLOGIES. JUPITER-SIZED ERROR. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have to correct a stupid error I made in yesterday’s piece about one of the most distant exo-planet detected and first space-based detection of an exo-planet using gravitational lensing. It was not the close to smallest theoretical-sized Jupiter — close to the host mass threshold below which Jupiters are not expected to form.  Instead, it was somewhat surprising to find a Jupiter-sized exoplanet around such a small star (a little over half the mass of the Sun).  It is thought that the planetary mass around small stars is smaller than the planetary mass around larger stars. So to have a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting such a small star is a little unusual and close to the theoretical limit.

The error came about because I only quickly scan/read the abstracts of papers of interest at a cybercafé and then blat an e-mail off to Mike, and I only subsequently read papers in detail when I get home.  Also, since we (SF2 Concatenation) lost our much missed physics and space science editor, I have taken over that coverage in addition to that of the bio- and geosciences about which I am more sure-footed.

See Specht, D. et al, (2023) “Kepler K2 Campaign 9: II. First space-based discovery of an exoplanet using microlensing”. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, stad212.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Honest Game Trailers gives its brutally frank opinion of “Fire Emblem Engage”.

…Discover yet another fantasy Kingdom on the brink of inevitable War as you take control of a protagonist so anime that they are actually a dragon, an amnesiac, and also a God who looks like a deviantART character where you took two cheesy anime protagonists and smashed them together in a hydraulic press…

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Ellen Datlow, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Dann, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day by Andrew (not Werdna).]

Title:

Content: Alien Trek: Don ’ t forget the original intention of being curious about different cultures, alternative sounds, and willing to travel out of the comfort zone.
Photo Credit: Reuters
What we want you to know is
As more and more people say that the anthropological perspective is like a “stratosphere, ” I am optimistic that it is because we have moved to more topics and reached more readers of different fields and life experiences.
As to whether it can be accepted, whether the link can be produced, whether the story is good or not, of course, it is worth judging, but at least we have sailed out, not kept in the field.
After officially embarking on anthropology, Lin Ho-li entered the Fiji Islands and the wider Pacific world, regaining his passion for hip-hop in ballet anthropology, writing about pop culture phenomena such as music, movies, sports and, of course, his favorite Pacific.
He currently teaches at Human Resources Institute, Tsinghua University)
Travelers in the Exotherm
Agent Bale HL
I like to hear stories, but the reason is not the story itself, but the story can spread out, through the brain and heart of the path, call me into the story.
This does not need to be a monumental work, but can be achieved by a glimpse of the true stories of everyday life.
My mother is such a storyteller, good at the subject is the human tragedy, from my grandmother before the marriage across the province of love to a local Vietnamese mother to pull the child's struggle.
These are not neighborhood gossip stories, but confessions that come after close contact and reflect the possibility of how to deal with various problems in different relationships, which even my first grade son often heard with interest.
There is no moral warning, and some people of all colors, familiar or unfamiliar, have made choices because of their unique life course.
And when my experience of life overlaps with it, I imagine what I would have done if I had been in it.
In this way, other people ’ s stories become my own, and the past and the present mirror each other.
Jonathan Gottschall, author of the book “The Brain Tells Stories ”, believes that the desire for stories is an important evolutionary trait that makes humans capable of constantly projecting themselves in different situations to manipulate reactions and adjust cognition and action on the world.
Although he emphasizes fictional stories, it is a rare experience to be able to bring the stories of the real other into his own life.
The same is true of anthropology for me.
While reading classic ethnographic cases, such as the cockfighting in Bali, the shell-ornament exchange in the Tiburan Islands of the Pacific, the cattle of the Nur people in Africa and the institution of marriage, I was able to “understand ” even though it had taken place in a very remote place and depicted behavior that was unheard of before.
What I understand is not the interpretation of anthropologists and the cultural, social, and structural concepts they want to explain, but the people who appear in ethnographic materials, why they care so much about certain things, and why they create corresponding words and rituals.
I can understand why it is necessary to know the vague collective self through activities with strong sensory stimulation, and I can understand why the acquisition of precious objects should not be forced, but more carefully adhere to the rules of the game, because these are the common human experience I have or can understand.
I remember that in a class at the Institute, when discussing the ethnographic "How to Think in the Forest", which involves the ontological turn and is quite difficult to read, a classmate said that he could "understand" the different levels of communication between the indigenous people of Ecuador's rainforest and the non-human actors such as dogs, monkeys, jaguars, and even souls: Never be alone.
The word is simple, but it is so profound.
The fascination of anthropology is here, not in admiring cultural diversity, but in opening up avenues of empathy in a distant, alien world.
Become a Traveler
While it ’ s wonderful to find a connection to one ’ s own culture or personal experience when reading ethnography, most of the time, readers get lost in the tedious ethnographic material.
And when anthropologists who have long been immersed in the field, obsessed with open dialogue, subtle symbols, and multiple connections want to talk about it, the results are comparable to the murals in the Sistine Chapel.
Once upon a time, disciplines that had a close dialogue with public issues seemed to have gradually become an independent and self-indulgent secret.
But as cultural researcher James Cli  ord reminds us, the essence of anthropology is not living in a field, but traveling, moving, walking.
This action certainly has the burden of Western privilege, but it also allows privileges to be challenged, borders to be disturbed, and relationships to continue to be established because of the non-stop movement.
This kind of travel movement takes place not only in physical space, but also in the written world.
As a result, anthropologists, as travelers, have the ability to respond immediately to events of a large or small nature that are taking place in the world.
On the one hand, anthropologists have the flexibility to shift between notes, diaries, and reports in the field; on the other hand, there always seem to be traces of ubiquitous anthropologists moving around where events occur.
What Barak anthropology is, perhaps, can be explained in this way: a group of travelers willing to leave their homelands to live in a foreign culture, and then leave the field again, to move between the world and the world in an instant book, even if these new relationships bring new questions and challenges.
When I returned to Taiwan in 2011 from my field in Fiji to write my doctoral thesis, the Barbican Anthropology blog had been in operation for more than a year, but I was far from the tropical Pacific islands to keep up with the new wave of launch.
This year, Wei Desheng ’ s “Sediq Barley ” was released, which aroused widespread response from all walks of life. There are many scholars who have long been concerned about the issue of aboriginal people in the Baruch Anthropology Writers lineup, and naturally there is no absence.
The one that impressed me the most was Chiu Yun-fang ’ s “Meditation among the Bale ”, which expressed uneasiness about the complex history of many of the film ’ s plot arrangements over the sects of the Sedek.
After the article was published, there were 128 responses in the comment area below, including ethnic groups, scholars, journalists, local literary and historical workers, and readers who called themselves "ordinary small audiences". Yun Fang also responded to each message once. Although some of the comments were sharp challenges, most of them were good discussions.
As a graduate student who has just returned from a foreign cultural field and is about to embark on a lonely writing journey, I am shocked by the many interactions that Barak ’ s anthropology can cause.
In that message area, it was as if I saw a path that spread all over the place, although not every path was smooth, but at least it led to the other side. Yun Fang moved from her field of Taiwanese aboriginal “heterosexual ” culture to a popular film that was seen as sharing“ same ” knowledge, and then opened up a dialogue of a more “heterosexual ” nature.
Because of the unwritten requirement that the handler with a doctorate degree was established at the time of the founding of Baroque Anthropology, becoming a Baroque handler can be said to be one of the driving forces for me to complete my studies.
In March 2015, I completed my oral examination for my doctoral dissertation, and immediately reported the good news to the editor-in-chief Guo Peiyi, and was immediately invited to write my first ballet essay, Rap, Revolution and Islam, and officially joined the community of ballet farmers.
I have accumulated a variety of unhealthy interests in the monotonous sea of study, and I think that I have been delayed full of heroes, and finally got the stage to play.
I write passionately on topics ranging from music, movies, novels, comics, sports, to anthropological anecdotes, editorials, book reviews, and films.
It really feels like traveling in multiple worlds.
Many Baroque writers have this kind of writing experience of leaving their own fields and then traveling across borders and moving.
We have a lot of current events, which are the immediate response of the writers who are connected to major events. For example, at the end of July 2015, a student chose to end his own life in the anti-high school syllabus fine-tuning movement. Peng Renyu, who has been concerned about trauma and healing, immediately published “Healing trauma with listening and action: A speech for anti-classics students and other adults. ”
We only share the experiences of people in everyday life, but we can make a real impact by walking into the home of the reader.
I am talking about Chen Ruzhen, also included in this book "I am not your family": the knowledge of Filipino domestic helpers eating in Hong Kong ", in response to the enthusiastic comments, many readers said that they know how to get along with domestic helpers and even company employees.
We have a speech by Lin Kai-shih, who is the head of the department, urging anthropology graduates to “be a hesitant listener ”, but it can also be of great use to life.
We also have two foreign writers, Stella Rui and Shi Yongde, who are willing to leave the comfort zone and write in Chinese, which is why there is an additional language conversion path.
And in the epidemic that swept the world last year and the protest movement that spread across the world, many writers were able to jump out of their fields and provide comments from real and private daily experiences.
It can be said that these are written journeys with different vitality.
Blogging experience of course is not always good, sometimes the article will attract a sharp response, and the dedication of the work is not enough.
Blogging also has limitations on the length of words, unable to develop their arguments more fully.
In addition, the “lifespan ” of web articles is short and will soon be overshadowed by other events and comments.
However, these sacrifices would be worthwhile if more anthropological perspectives from the diaspora could be brought into public discourse.
Most importantly, co-blogging gives writers the opportunity to go out and be travelers, communicate their views more effectively, become better authors, and connect with their readers.
Travel from book to book.
There are about 70 permanent members of Barak Anthropology, and more than 140 authors who have published articles on the blog. These are mostly cultural anthropologists, but they also include archaeologists, sociologists, psychologists, geographers, historians, and others. Experts from different sources.
Yes, having a doctorate degree is indeed their common denominator, but this unwritten rule comes from the beginning of the blog, hoping that professors and researchers in the college can do more pure merit, no performance, and can not help the public to write to promote anthropology.
In the future, whenever I hear of a new doctor coming out, the editorial team will try to contact the invitation, just like I did at the time, as if invited into an intermediary ritual of changing identities.
Here you can practice putting aside the familiar language of the dissertation, introducing your research results in an easy way, or choosing to reinvent yourself and develop a different academic personality as I do.
As a result, this community is more like an organic network of people who don ’ t know each other and are filled with multiple identities.
Nevertheless, the anthropological story, which refers directly to the universal experience of mankind, does speak of certain common values: curiosity about the small things that are not captured by mainstream discourse, the repeated examination of seemingly dead phenomena, the fascination with alternative possibilities and the hope and power to challenge the status quo, and then to reflect on larger questions of organization, structure, and history.
What I want to say is that anthropology itself is a constant dialectic of “difference ” and“ same ”, but this dialogue can only continue through flight.
Therefore, if you cling to the “same ” of Baroque anthropology, you will ignore the“ different ” that comes out of the organic handwriting network and its extended care.
When the project began to hit the road, I curated the unrecorded and potentially published articles of Barak Anthropology on my blog, categorizing them according to emerging themes, including tourism, architecture, physical medicine, religious rituals, museum cultural heritage, community development, consumer economy, kinship family, sex, performing arts, cartoons, and movies. Academic institutions, musical voices, diplomacy, environmental species, languages, digital games, archaeology, diet, sports, protests, electoral politics, etc.
If the opposite ‘ stratosphere ’ refers to a vast expanse of sky beyond a single reality and experience, then travel-dynamic anthropology is always trying to leapfrog in and navigate in it, trying to find a common direction.
This is the attitude of this discipline to produce knowledge, always trying to penetrate all kinds of seams and surpass all kinds of boundaries.
When storytellers simulate and imagine possibilities in their minds, anthropologists often make it possible to travel between the field and the world, even pushing the boundaries of what can be discussed into non-human territory.
Therefore, when more and more people say that the anthropological perspective is like a “stratosphere, ” I am optimistic that it is because we have moved to more topics and reached more readers of different fields and life experiences.
As to whether it can be accepted, whether the link can be produced, whether the story is good or not, of course, it is worth judging, but at least we have sailed out, not kept in the field.
This is the original value of the Barber Anthropology blog, and the purpose of the book Alien Trek.
The book is about understanding the anthropological knowledge of this multiple world, the pandemic that has caused global change, the politics of resistance against all kinds of beasts, the sexual family that shows the possibilities of relationships, the spatial community action that knocks on the local patch, the food of the species that can eat, the sound of music that can be heard, and the clouds of self-righteousness. "Imagine that after the earth and human beings are finally reunited, a quiet manifesto poem is played out in the air," which connects these worlds with a catalog poem.
We hope that these anthropological stories from the field experiences of different writers, different corners of the world, and different scales of things are more likely to enter the lives of readers through the weight of physical books.
It ’ s certainly an unstable journey, but anthropology is willing to take this leap and tell stories that may fall on deaf ears.
We should always remind ourselves that we are curious about different cultures, alternative sounds, and are willing to leave the comfort zone to travel.
I guess that ’ s how we ’ re dealing with the “cold ”.
Lin Hao-li
On August 24, 2021, during the trip
Related book excerpts ▶ "Anthropological Trek": Offshore Wind Power Apocalypse, Creating a Friendly Sea Space for "Fishing and Fish Together"
Book Introduction
This excerpt is from "The Anthropology of Ballet 2", published by Left Bank Culture
Author: Zhao Enjie, Lin Haoli (Editor-in-Chief)
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29 Anthropologists 35 Field Notes on the Trek Anthropology
From different cultures to different strata, from seeing, feeling, understanding to learning
Exothermic Trek continues the usual daily nuances of Baroque anthropology, answering questions with questions.
The book is divided into seven sections.
The “Anthropology of Connecting the Athermals ” is a great complement to anthropology ’ s approach to today ’ s rapidly changing world and its analysis of a“ single path to happiness. ”
In the face of COVID-19, a topic that cannot be ignored by the world in the past two years, “In this Epidemic Time and Space ” provides valuable field notes on the epidemic of the century, starting from border epidemic prevention, distance education, mask ideology, local life support system, and Taiwan ’ s indigenous people.
"Many struggles continue" is a politics and struggle that Baruch anthropology has never missed, talking about Hong Kong, black Americans and Okinawa, Japan, and the offshore wind that is close to us, and the presidential election that we are no longer familiar with.
Anthropologists trek, return, and re-trek in the stratosphere, and share with us the bizarre, vibrant, active, and blessed.
Share the saddest, darkest, and happiest possibilities.
This is a field note that goes astray in an alien atmosphere.
From there, we imagine the possibility of reconciliation with the stratosphere.
Editor-in-Chief: Luo Yuanqi
Editor ： Weng Shihang
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Content: The golden sentence of Sherlock Holmes' reasoning novel is the best annotation of Bayesian statistics and logical philosophy.
What we want you to know is
“I have envisioned seven different explanations, each applicable to what we know so far.
But either of them is right and can only be decided upon with new information that is undoubtedly waiting for us.
These two words can be regarded as an excellent commentary on Bayesian statistics.
After listening to Miss Hunter ’ s account, Holmes, after much thought, has developed seven explanations that can infer known facts using his good “retrospection. ”
Many people have read Sherlock Holmes stories from an early age, and I have reread them in recent years with the perspective of Bayesian statistics and Wittgenstein ’ s Logical Philosophy.
These two reading angles are also applicable to reading other detective stories, including the widely influential cold hard reasoning novels in the United States since 1930.
If Bayesian statistics is the methodology of reasoning fiction, then Logical Philosophy is the metaphysics of reasoning fiction.
This article combines the two to discuss the logical structure of the reasoning novel.
Methodology of Reasoning Novels: Bayesian Statistics
My previous post on my personal blog, "Retrospection, Bayesian Theorem, and Reasoning Novels," has detailed the Bayesian inference methodology used by Holmes.
In addition to the case of the "soldier with white skin" mentioned in the article, the "bronze beech case" included in the "history of adventure" series is an excellent case of Bayesian reasoning.
(Copper beech is a kind of tree, the English Copper Beech, this kind of tree leaves like polished metal.)
In this story, the residence at the crime scene was planted with a lot of copper beech, hence the name "copper beech".)
The client of this story, Miss Hunter, was offered a job as a tutor with a very high salary and some unusual demands from her employer.
She is attracted to the high salary, but the strange demands of her employer to cut her long hair and wear his daughter ’ s clothes make her uneasy, so she seeks counseling at 221B Baker Street.
Holmes also felt that there must be something in it, and promised her to help her when she was in danger.
Holmes did not immediately say what he thought after hearing Miss Hunter's preliminary statement.
He sat down and frowned.
Watson couldn't help but ask him, and he shouted impatiently, "Data!
Data! Data!
Data!).
And he said, "Without clay, I can't make bricks!"
Soon after, Miss Hunter called Holmes to help.
On a train ride to Winchester, where the Bronze Beech is located, Holmes finally revealed his thoughts to Watson:
I have envisioned seven different explanations, each applicable to the facts we know so far.
But either of them is right and can only be decided upon with new information that is undoubtedly waiting for us.
These two sentences can be regarded as an excellent commentary on Bayesian statistics.
After listening to Miss Hunter ’ s account, Holmes, after much thought, has developed seven explanations that can infer known facts using his good “retrospection. ”
At this stage, all seven explanations are possible, in other words, there is a probability that all seven explanations are not equal to zero.
This probability distribution is the "prior probability" of Bayesian statistics.
The function of Bayesian statistics is to calculate the probability distribution of the posterior probability by using Bayesian theorem after obtaining further data.
The posterior probability updates the prior probability.
If the new information is useful, the posterior probability distribution usually has a smaller standard deviation than the posterior probability, which means it is more focused on fewer explanations.
If there is insufficient data at first, a Bayesian statistician may assume that all explanations have the same probability of being true, which is what statistics call uniform distribution.
When useful data is taken into account, if some explanations are not fully consistent with the new information, the probability is reduced, or even completely excluded.
In this way, the posterior probability becomes a distribution that concentrates on a few explanations.
In this story, Holmes and Watson meet in Winchester with Miss Hunter, who reports her meeting at her employer's house.
This new data was sufficient for Holmes to concentrate the positional probability distribution on a single interpretation.
He said to Miss Hunter:
Of course, there is only one plausible explanation that you are invited there to impersonate someone, and that person is actually imprisoned in that room, and that is clear.
As to who this prisoner was, I can say for certain that it was the daughter, Miss Alice Ruckasel.
If I remember correctly, she was said to have gone to the United States.
There is no doubt that you were chosen because of your height, stature, and the color of your hair.
A good hair cut is likely because she has had a disease, so naturally you have to sacrifice your hair.
You see that lock of the hair is entirely by chance.
The man on the road was undoubtedly some friend of hers, probably her fiancé.
And doubtless, because you were dressed in that girl's clothes and looked so much like her, whenever he saw you, he believed from your smile and then from your posture that Miss Rucastle was indeed happy, and that she no longer needed his care.
When the posterior probability is 100% focused on a single explanation, in Holmes' mind, the case has been broken.
However, he still needs to have evidence acceptable to the court in order to bring the offender to justice.
The Metaphysics of Reasoning Novels: A Theory of Logical Philosophy
In the reasoning novel, the detective uses logic to investigate the case, and ultimately has to go to court to make a verbal statement and accept the test of factual evidence.
I saw Earl Stanley.
Readers of Erle Stanley Gardner ’ s Perry Mason novel or television audience must be impressed by this.
What we want to talk about here is that the relationship between language and fact in the reasoning novel is the relationship between language and fact in the early Weigenstein ’ s Logical Philosophy.
In Philosophical Logic, Wigenstein argues that language consists of propositions, which are "images" of facts in the world.
What Wigenstein calls an "image" is a "model."
He wrote in Logic Philosophy 2.12: “The picture is a model of reality. ”
In fact, Wigenstein ’ s use of the words “image ” and“ model ” to describe the correspondence between propositions and facts comes from actual practice in court.
It turned out that he read in the newspaper that the Paris court used models to present the scene of a traffic accident during the trial, and he thought that he could use the correspondence between images and facts to describe the correspondence between propositions and facts.
The world is made up of basic facts, which are reflected in language in what he calls “atomic propositions. ”
In language, these atomic propositions make up more complex propositions.
Compound propositions can be used to determine the truth of a logical truth table.
Logic is not only the structure of language, but also the structure of the world.
The propositions that can be derived by logic in language must also have corresponding facts in the world.
Conversely, only if there are propositions corresponding to facts in the world are propositions that have “meaning ” in language.
Wittgenstein's theory is often referred to as the "image theory of language" or the "image theory of meaning".
This "logical philosophy" is the basic principle of Holmes' reasoning.
After you have ruled out all the impossible, the rest, however bizarre, must be true. (The Four Signatures)
This is to say that the logically established hypothesis is necessarily the only explanation of the case.
No matter how impossible this hypothesis may be, there must be factual evidence to support its passage through the court.
This method of reasoning is not, of course, the patent of Sherlock Holmes.
Raymond Chandler, through his detective Marlowe, said:
Some things are facts: facts in a statistical sense, written on paper, recorded on tape, as evidence.
And some things are true because without it other things cannot be explained.
Dashiell Hammett ’ s “Skinny ” also features this conversation between Detective Nick and his wife Nora:
Nora: “So you ’ re not sure he robbed Vernon? ”
Nick: “Of course we know.
If it's not like that, there's no way to get things together.
Nora: “So you ’ re not sure he — ”
Nick: “Don ’ t say that.
Of course we are sure.
This is the only way to get things together. "
In other words, the conclusion of an inference is not a known fact, but a proposition derived from a logical inference.
However, according to the metaphysics of the Philosophical Theory of Logic, this proposition must have corresponding facts in the world, and only in this way can it be "connected" with other known facts.
The “click ” is the logical link; without this link, the case cannot be explained.

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The Man Who Cannot Say a Name: 20 Years of Harry Potter and the Blackening of JK Rowling?
"How dare you use my inventive spell against me, Potter?" This quote by Professor Snape is really bloody reflected on "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling? On New Year's Day 2022, HBO max released "Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts" special. The special is a grand commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the "Harry Potter" film series, which was the masterpiece of Warner Bros. under the epidemic last year.
In addition to inviting the main cast members to reunite to remember the various aspects of the film, there are also various influences that "Harry Potter" has brought to their lives.
However, not only does the trailer not have Rowling's figure, the film also only quotes her past data picture, triggering a lot of media speculation - "Rowling should not be 'cancelled' by her own works" - related discussions.
"Even Muggles can see it, it's definitely related to her transgender battle with the stars of the series in recent years."
Many media believe that Rowling has angered transgender people and their supporters around the world since 2019 because of her participation in the "Maya Voice Event" of the transgender controversy. Even Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter, and Emma Watson, who plays Miriam, have publicly refuted Rowling's stance, and many surrounding products and business activities have followed. It seems that she wants to "cut" with Rowling.
Harry Potter Magic: The Contemporary Meaning of Love and Courage
Although last year marked the 20th anniversary of the Harry Potter films, the original novel was actually published in 1997.
For many fans, although the film adaptation is not necessarily the best version of everyone's mind, it is undeniable that the three main protagonists in the novel, Harry, Hermione, and Ron, through the interpretation of the film, the image of these three people has been deeply corresponding to the protagonists in the novel.
For people who are not fans or movie fans, they must have heard some words related to Harry Potter, such as "Muggle", which means ordinary people without magical ability; the biggest demon in the plot, "Voldemort", usually can not say this name, can only use "that person", but also become an allusion to the works that most people know.
“Harry Potter ” has been translated into 75 languages and sold in more than 200 countries, and countless people have come to know the world view and plot charm of this work because of the film.
"Harry Potter" has given this generation many new messages, even the old "love and courage" and "precious friendship" often appear in literary works, and so on, have given many new contemporary meanings in the pen of the original author J. K. Rowling.
Joanne Rowling, known as J. K. Rowling, was born on July 31, 1965, Harry Potter ’ s birthday.
From a young age, Rowling was interested in literature and often wrote her own stories. In college, she majored in French and Classics. After graduating, she worked as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.
In 1990, she was inspired to write "Harry Potter" when she appeared to see a "little wizard with dark hair and glasses" outside the window on a train that had been delayed from Manchester to London. She was then struck by the death of her mother, and completed the first three chapters of the book at the same time.
In 1992, Rowling married a Portuguese journalist, taught English there for a time, gave birth to a daughter the next year, but because of her husband's domestic violence, the mother and daughter moved to Edinburgh, and at that time became the "single mother who waited for her daughter to sleep, then slipped into a cafe and wrote the novel on napkin". "The Stone".
The novel was not initially favored by mainstream publishers, but was published by Bloomsbury Publishing after four publishers rejected it.
Rowling ’ s rich and diverse life experiences have given her a new interpretation of many traditional viewpoints when she creates.
For example, in the works, you can find a rich and varied image of female characters in the magical world.
Whether positive or negative, women in the magical world, there are plenty of opportunities to achieve themselves, such as the smart and hard-working beauty, the vice chancellor of Professor Mak, or even the display of strong political ambition, and even the story of the "Death Eaters" group, there is also Voldemort's important confidant Bella Reström.
Some people have also analyzed that the role of "mother" in literary works has always been easy to stereotype, but in "Harry Potter", Rowling is able to show a different kind of mother - Lily Potter, who died tragically to protect her children, Molly Weasley, a strong housewife, and even abandoned her life because she was not loved by her husband, leaving her children in an orphanage. "Myrtle Gant".
Even Professor Mak, who is usually 800, also summoned the Knights of the Stone Statue to present her lively and naughty side in the final battle against the Buddha.
As for the male characters also have a variety of expressions, such as Hagrid although the appearance is rough, but the heart is very soft; at the beginning, Draco, who is not very pleasant, showed his cowardly and cunning character during the development of the story, but you can also see the human side of his family.
Women are not weak, men are not strong, and gender temperament is not equal to the gender of the role, which is an important reason why Harry Potter characters can be vividly presented.
In addition, Rowling has also pointed out that Professor Lu Ping from childhood because of the werewolf bite and become a werewolf, she deliberately arranged to portray the stigma of the disease, especially HIV infected people, often because of social discrimination has to hide their identity - even in the magical world, people's prejudice and fear of specific diseases still exist.
These detailed plot arrangements are showing the thinking and ideology behind Rowling's creation.
In addition, Rowling revealed in an interview with The Times in 2000 that the craziness of absorbing all happiness and leaving people with nothing but a soulless shell was inspired by her experience of depression before she became famous, which felt like:
"I can no longer imagine that I will be happy again. Despair — this feeling of dying — is very different from sadness."
In "The Fugitive of Azkaban", Harry and Miriam return to the past with the Timer and see themselves and Sirius being attacked by a demon at the edge of the lake.
Harry thought that his father had appeared and summoned the Protector to save them, but he was unable to wait for James to appear, so he rushed out to call the Protector himself.
It was then that Harry and the audience realized that it was not his father who had saved them, but himself.
If this clip is used as a metaphor for depression, it is like encouraging the reader: the future you are your own savior.
Rowling in "Harry Potter", many times stressed the power of "choice", want to become what kind of person, can rely on the day after tomorrow to choose.
Dumbledore once said, “It is not our talents that determine who we become, but our choices. ” Sirius also said:
"The world is not just divided into good and bad people. Everyone has light and dark inside. What really matters is how we choose and who we really are."
The most obvious contrast is that Voldemort ’ s identity before becoming a demon was Tom Riddle, who had a very similar background to Harry. Both parents died early, were ostracized, and had a strong sense of identity towards Hogwarts after entering school, believing that this school was the first society to accept themselves. Completely different results.
The plot and characters of the story encourage this generation of young people, how to recognize and accept themselves, courage in the face of difficulties, and sincerity in friendship, are the "Harry Potter" series of contemporary inspiration to us.
When Rowling became the "one who can't say a name"
It is also because Rowling's creation of "Harry Potter" is so inspiring, so that readers in the cruel real world as if to get Hogwarts admission notice, can regain the courage to continue to fight with the real, so for Rowling in recent years for transgender speech, but also feel such impact and injury.
In 2019, Rowling took part in a campaign to support Maya Forstater on Twitter, drawing attention to Rowling ’ s remarks and thoughts on transgender issues.
And then in June 2020, she published the "people who menstruate" article, "'menstruating people' - I am quite sure there was a word originally used to describe this ethnic group, who will help me think, is it female? Feminine? or Lu Ren?" The original intention is to express the transsexual "encroachment" of female titles, space and resentment. Fear - alluding to the past clearly can use "woman" to refer to all biological women, and now even in order to "transgender" and give out the name of "woman" - however, such a sarcastic attitude, but also immediately let her in the Internet.
Two days later, she wrote an article on her website, “Why I Talk About Sex and Gender, ” pointing out five reasons why she had to come forward to raise concerns about transgender people: including that she has a trust that helps women and children, and also sponsors medical research on“ Multiple sclerosis, ” which she believes makes a significant difference between men and women. It reinforces her argument for the heterogeneity of "sex" in nature.
In addition, Rowling, as her own writer, pointed out that she values freedom of speech to express her right to speak out.
She also wrote that she is “concerned that more and more people seem to be regretting their transgender choices and want to return to their original gender. ”
One doctor was quoted as saying, “Transgender ideas are going to spread. ”
She also hinted that women may want to "become men" in order to avoid gender discrimination:
“If I was born 30 years late, I might also be trying to be transgender. ”
The temptation to escape female identity is enormous.
I struggled with severe compulsive disorder when I was a teenager.
If I could find support and compassion online that I couldn ’ t find in the environment around me, I ’ m sure I would be willing to make myself the “son ” my father wanted most. ”
Finally, she mentioned that as a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault, on the one hand, she stressed that she agreed that transgender people and women are vulnerable to attacks, and also supported and expressed sympathy for them, but she said, "I believe that most transgender people not only pose zero threat to others, but I also do not want to make people born girls and women less safe... Women ’ s men open the bathroom and locker room doors … As I said, there ’ s no need for surgery or hormone therapy to get a certificate of gender confirmation right now — and you open the door to everyone who wants to come in … It ’ s very simple. ”
This argument, after being broadcast by the media, has led many people to call for "the removal of Rowling", believing that Rowling has violated the taboo, involving discrimination and attacks on transgender people.
And some of the actors involved in "Harry Potter" also jumped out to refute.
For example, Redcliffe, who plays Harry, wrote: “Transgender women are women, and any statement to the contrary will erase the identity and dignity of transgender people, and go against the advice of the Medical Professional Association, whose expertise is far more important than Jo ’ s or my opinion. ”
“Transgender people who say they are who they are, deserve to have their own lives, and should not be constantly questioned or told that they are not what they say they are. ”
However, the conversation at the time was not too specific, and this year, Rowling Twitter still generated a lot of discussion, including in November, Rowling tweeted that she was threatened with death by "radical transgender activists", they also exposed her address, she joked on Twitter:
"I have received so many death threats that I can decorate my house with them."
In December, Rowling spoke again as the Scottish Police said they were working on a future plan to register the sex of the offender based on his or her gender identity.
On Twitter, she deliberately rewrote the famous quote from “1984 ” to satirize this almost“ right and wrong ” world:
"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is power, and the man who sexually assaulted you is a woman." (War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.)
For many sexual minorities, confused and injured is that Rowling, who has always supported women's rights and gay rights in the past, has not only failed to express the same understanding in this matter, but also often made statements that are materially harmful.
And Rowling herself, after things gradually burned down, also suffered a lot of spiritual pressure from the opponents, and even various threats, so that the whole war became like a woman and the transgender choice of the hurt and torn each other.
This state of contention is also reminiscent of Dumbledore ’ s reminder to Harry in “The Deathly Hallows ”:
“Language is an endless source of magic, with the ability to harm and heal. ”
Could Rowling really be "canceled"?
And compared to the high emotional damage suffered by both communities, some people are concerned that from the perspective of the commercial market, Rowling ’ s speech may cause the so-called “cancellation culture ” to burn again? Is it really possible that this huge cultural product with high commercial value and the efforts of countless workers is“ cancelled ” from this?
In fact, Rowling ’ s own influence, whether in society or in the Harry Potter series, is still so large that it is almost impossible to really “cancel ” it.
Her tweets are still followed by 14 million people, and her works continue to be listed in multiple publishing houses, and she is still the target of the media competition.
The Daily Telegraph also notes that she is able to collect royalties of 15-20% per year on her works, which, as The New York Times estimates, would have generated at least $7.7 billion in cumulative revenue.
At a 15% royalty rate, she has earned at least $1.15 billion for her Harry Potter books alone.
As for the film adaptation, Business Insider believes that the Harry Potter film grossed more than $9.1 billion.
If calculated on an average standard 10% net profit agreement, then she gets at least $910 million on the movie side.
In the face of such a torn controversy and a very different stance, how can we understand the complex relationship between the author, the actor, and the work of the reader and the audience who grew up together with "Harry Potter"?
What is interesting is that even Daniel, who did not agree with Rowling's position, wrote about how many important memories the Harry Potter series had brought to people in his article at the time, and he believes that the feeling that the work itself brings to you is the most sacred and private connection between you and the work.
He wrote:
“I really hope that you haven ’ t lost the precious feeling these stories bring to you. ”
If "Harry Potter" taught you that love is the most powerful force in the universe, if it taught you that strength can only be found in diversity, and dogmatic "purity" will only bring oppression to the underprivileged; if you believe that one of the characters is transgender, non-binary, gender fluid, or gay; if you find these stories, in the middle of your life At any given moment, it resonates with and inspires you — that ’ s the divine connection between you and the book. ”
Perhaps, trying to find a “standard answer ” in the world of fiction that can be compared to the real world, although it is undeniable human nature, it is also very likely to achieve nothing.
In recent years, with the increase in the discussion of "political correctness" and "abolition of culture", although it has made some people impatient, it also reflects that we are angry and tired of the injustices of the past social order, and are willing to rise to change the status quo.
But when the old order disappears, what will the new one be? What kind of world do we want?
There doesn ’ t seem to be a very clear answer.
The fact is that we may only be able to continue to reflect and adjust in our lives and discussions step by step, and it is possible to gradually explore and try to shape a society in which we can co-exist.
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Content: November 16, 2022
16 November 2022 ° C
When do they disbelieve in science?
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The human science is developing, this is a fact that does not contradict anyone, and the meaning of its development is that it accumulates and regenerates, so to reach new scientific discoveries requires continuous research, intensification of efforts, accumulation of experiences, succession of failure and success, right wrong, correction and correction..
This clear fact has many dimensions and results in serious facts, the clearest and most obvious of which is that science is exploratory, that is, whenever it develops discovered what was unknown, and corrected what was wrong, and this explains to us the emergence of a scientific theory on the ruins of another scientific theory, criticizes it and comes with a new interpretation entirely, alternative to the previous theory or a relatively new interpretation of it fundamentally or outwardly.
What does that mean?
It means that the scientific facts, including what is categorical people do not differ, and some of what is relative can not be cut, and may invalidate future research and may prove and may modify, science is the agreement of the wise and scientists is not all categorical, and does not represent the absolute truth, this is the first fact.
The second fact is that science, despite its terrible development in the last few centuries, and especially in the last decades, is still very little compared to what is unknown.
The majority of scientists agree and agree that the percentage of what they know of the universe is very little, estimated by most of them about: about 5%, which is almost negligible, and the truth of God Gal in the above: {And what you were given of science only a little}, and who is ignorant more than he knows, but what he knows is not worth anything in front of what he is ignorant, he has no right to argue science, and he has no right to infer science. Because the probability of his error — due to the amplitude of his ignorance — is greater and greater and greater than the probability of his injury!
This cannot be contradicted by reason.
The third fact is that science is only a discovery of the laws that made this universe run in extreme accuracy and harmony and miraculous greatness, science explains natural phenomena and seeks to discover the laws that govern them, only, and scientists often make mistakes in deciding these laws because of their limited minds and limited possibilities. Or change it!
Islam is the true religion that Allah has revealed to man so that he can follow his law until he achieves his interests in his world and his last. He does not know the truth of things as they are, and his knowledge is a minor very limited, because if humans do not know about the universe and it is at their disposal they study it and search for its secrets only 5% they do not know about man himself and his soul much less, but the world of the unseen they know nothing about him except what the miraculous revelation told them!
The fact that Islam is the laws of God Almighty, which made it regulate the relations of man with others, and what science discovers by nature are the laws made by God Almighty to regulate the course and rhythm of the universe confirms that it is impossible to contradict the facts of Islam with the facts of science except when ignorant, ignorant of Islam or ignorant of science.
In fact, there are some people who claim that they believe only in science, and they say, “I don ’ t believe in science. ”
However, this is a blatant fallacy, as its owners seem to start from the premise that what is decided by revelation and religion is ignorance, and science is what is produced by laboratories and research only...!
Although all rational people and all scientists, as we mentioned, agree that research, studies and theories may be wrong in whole or in part, and that researchers and scholars, whatever they reach from science, are prone to error, shortcomings and bias, and that what is decided by revelation and religion facts are often far from what science is involved in, and the field of science is often far from the field of religion and its provisions!
Which shows us the absurdity, the small minds and the limited horizon of those who try to imagine a battle between the definitive facts of religion and the theories of science!
But the most important question here is, do they really believe in science?
Or is it just a matter of God ’ s judgment?
The obvious truth is that these are flocks of people who have filled the world with noise: We believe only in science!
We believe only in science!
They are the first to disbelieve in science if it is an argument that supports the legitimate rule and confirms it!
The proof of this is that everyone knows that Islam considers alcohol from the major: {O you who believe, alcohol, gambling, monuments and Islam is an abomination of the work of Satan, so avoid it so that you may succeed * Satan wants to cause enmity and hatred between you in alcohol and gambling and repels you from mentioning God and prayer are you finished}, and all scientific studies confirm the damage of alcohol on human health and dangers to families and societies. He knows the heavy cost of curing the devastation caused by alcohol and addiction.
But here they are disbelieving in science, they are hostile to Islam!
And everyone knows that Islam prohibited homosexuality, and promised him from the great sins and the most terrible obscenities and disgusted: {And Lot said to his people, Do you come to obscenity what preceded you from one of the worlds * You come to men lust without women, but you are a people extravagant}, and all scientific studies proved that homosexuality is a cause of deadly sexual diseases, and its psychological and social effects are more deadly. Science is against Islam!
And Lot said to his people, "Do you come with indecency while you see?" They do what they know is harmful and dangerous, and that is true ignorance.
Like sodomy, adultery, usury and all that Islam has forbidden, scientific research and repeated studies carried out by the Westerners themselves proved that it is a destruction to mankind, but they disbelieve in the science that they claim that they do not believe except in it.
If only our young people knew the truth of this scientific hypocrisy, and if only they understood the phenomenon: when do they disbelieve in science?
* Imam and Professor of Sharia at the High School of Professors
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Content: Does science conflict with faith?
Al Jazeera Net is breaking into the thorny area.
When Reverend Dr. Catherine Pritchard, a member of the Church of England ’ s Bishops ’ Council, told her church-going friend that she was working on an event featuring distinguished physicists passionate about both science and the Christian faith, she raised her eyebrows surprised that there would be a joint project bringing together scientists and clergy.
Catherine was not surprised by her friend ’ s reaction, based on a popular narrative that constantly repeats that science and faith are at odds and have little in common.
But in an article published on the scientific site "Nature", she said: "The effectiveness succeeded, and what some thought impossible was achieved, and the bishops listened to cosmologists talk about research on dark matter, particle physics, the rate at which the universe is accelerating, and the possibility of the existence of multiple universes."
There was much to explore with scientists regarding the big questions about man ’ s origins, purpose and destiny, what faith in God means, where the universe is headed, and what that tells us about man ’ s purpose and destiny.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net via email, Kathryn, a member of the project “Preparing Christian Leadership in the Age of Science ” at Durham University, said:“ We need such lively and engaging conversations that immerse church leaders in science and the issues it raises, to have rich, positive and challenging conversations that the theology process associated with science becomes normal for church leaders who may lack the opportunity to do this kind of thinking. ”
Unfortunately, there are still some members of the scientific community who see it as difficult to envision a useful interdisciplinary conversation with church leaders, because they recognize that there is a big difference between the scientific method and the way theology works. They really want to get close enough. ”
Catherine does not deny that at some point in her life she believed in the impossibility of science and faith: “I had a journey full of obstacles on this path, full of questions and fears about getting all the answers, and as I grew up, I hope, I became less interested in the things I do not understand, because I know that at some point these things will become clear. ”
Ignoring incomprehensible things.
Ahmed Suleiman, an Egyptian researcher at the Caltech Institute in America, works with the same approach mentioned by the Reverend Catherine, which is to "overlook the incomprehensible things" that were hidden by divine wisdom that we have not yet reached, stressing that the commonalities between science and faith are too great to be able to think of questions without answers.
Solomon gave the example of the "Big Bang" theory, which he sees as having much in common between science and faith, contrary to what some might imagine.
The Egyptian researcher participated two years ago in an experiment in the South Pole was looking for "inflationary gravitational waves" of the Big Bang, and was keen at the time to share his followers on his Facebook page his diaries during that task, which included the performance of five prayers, which prompted some of his followers at the time to raise eyebrows of surprise such as the friend of the Reverend Catherine Pritchard, wondering that a Muslim researcher participated in this experiment.
Suleiman said in a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera Net: "This astonishment was based on the fact that the theory of the Big Bang talks about the formation of the universe within 14 billion years, while the verses of the Quran talk about the creation of the heavens and the earth in six days. It is accurate. ”
This theory states that the universe was at first a single point, and then expanded over billions of years to form the universe that exists today, which is consistent with the Qur ’ anic verse, “Did not those who disbelieved see that the heavens and the earth were tenderness, so they mastered them? ”
Ideologically, Suleiman believes that “science, sooner or later, must prove what is in religion, because religion came from the Creator, but he is not a proponent of the school that seeks to find a religious explanation for every scientific theory, because if we do not find an explanation we will criticize science, and if we find an explanation and then change the scientific theory to another newer theory, then the lurkers will exploit it and abuse religion. ”
Suleiman concludes from this to say that "religion is constant and science is variable," pointing out that the most famous example of the change of science is the theory of the scientist Isaac Newton, which was saying that time is constant and does not change anywhere in the universe, which is contrary to many of the temporal verses in the Quran. It was demonstrated by measuring gravitational waves in 2016.
“Suppose another theory came to contradict Einstein ’ s religiously celebrated theory, what would be our justification then? ”
“In this sense, we should not associate science with faith in order to try to find a religious explanation for every scientific theory, but the link between them comes from the fact that the more man knows, the more he believes that behind this universe there is a great Creator. ”
In his work with NASA scientists, Suleiman does not try to impose his vision of faith, nor do others try to impose their vision, he says: "There was a conversation between me and a Nobel scientist who does not believe in the existence of God, he told me that the reason for his lack of faith is that he does not find physical evidence of the existence of God, but the scientist himself respects my faith and is keen to congratulate me on Islamic holidays."
Contradictory Atheism and Objectivity
The physical evidence of the existence of God sought by the Nobel scholar, who conducted a dialogue with Suleiman, is a reflection of what Dr. Younis Makrab, director of population and genomic medicine research at Sidra Medicine, Qatar, calls the “paradox of atheism and objectivity. ”
Makrab says in a telephone interview with "Al Jazeera Net": "The link of creation from nothing to the transcendent Creator on matter is an absolute axiom, and many scientists who reject this fact for the sake of objectivity and the search for physical evidence are in the essence of the matter completely, and this also affects their ideas and interpretation of reality in the light of the science reached, if you are convinced that everything is random and without purpose, Infinite symmetry and integration from the level of atoms to cells and organisms to objects and galaxies."
Dr. Makrab believes that material science and belief in God and the moral obligation it requires are complementary in fact, because the practice of the science of matter needs beginnings, ends and ethics, and docility to the Creator of the park qualities of perfection is the channel that protects him from being lost in all this, because the ultimate goal of science is to reach the wisdom that is the desire of man, otherwise he is only passionate about knowledge and experiences.
He adds that "the greatest characteristic of man is the mind, which is the basic tool by which he recognizes existence and the creator of this existence, and what we see of the conflict between belief in God and science, especially with the perceived impact of science in the modern era is mainly due to the old schism in the West between church and state due to distortion and corruption of clerics who fought freedom of reason to preserve their status. However, this did not dissuade many influential scientists in the history of science from their belief in God, including Albert Einstein, who famously said that God does not play dice, which he said in the context of his rejection of the theory of quantum mechanics based on randomness.
Dr. McCrab explains that belief in God has an occult aspect in itself to enable choice and human employment of reason, and this is the wisdom in the absence of explicit physical evidence that shows the divine self clearly and ends any controversy between science and faith.
He adds: "If the revelation was revealed detailing everything accurately, faith would become compulsory and the choice was canceled, and what God revealed to us of the heavenly books, which were stamped by the Koran are not historical, scientific or technical books, but are constitutions of life that include in their entirety faculties even if detailed in some transactions and worship, and thus open to man a wide door of diligence that may affect man or make mistakes. purpose of his creation."
A fake fight.
While agreeing with Dr. McCrab ’ s attempts to approximate and explain, Dr. Ahmed El Guindi, a professor of physics at the University of Texas El Paso, did not feel during his work the attempts to raise the debate of science and faith, everyone works in science, and the same research team may include the owners of heavenly and terrestrial religions and non-religious, united by one common denominator is the implementation of scientific research tools.
El Guindi describes the discussions he follows on the issue on social media sites as attempts to create a conflict that does not exist in the workplace in pursuit of a "trend", and called on the authors of this debate to focus on "science that works" so that people do not lose faith in science.
“The average person who follows the social media pages doesn ’ t care so much about the details of this debate as it does about telling them that science is on its way to finding a cure for cancer or improving computer performance to work faster and with less energy, ” he says.
Although he was not keen to follow and participate in this debate, he spoke after insistence of his personal convictions: "As a physicist, he believes that the more he learns, the more he realizes that this universe has a great Creator, who created everything in order and in order, not by chance or random."
The soldier does not seek to impose this particular vision on his peers, nor do they seek to impose their own vision, and what they have in common is the use of scientific research tools.
Science supports faith.
Like the soldier, the leader of one of the research groups at the University of Geneva in the field of precision medicine, Haitham Shaaban, during his work in more than six universities in the West and the United States, did not feel any attempt to create a controversy of science and faith, because the stability of faith and the change of science from one theory to another makes the relationship between them academic divergent. He left nothing to chance. ”
Shaaban does not express this personal vision to his peers and professors, because what unites them is scientific research and commitment to its tools, and says: "Most of those I worked with are atheists, who did not care about my religion as much as they care about my ability to carry out serious scientific research leading to scientific results."
“Contrary to what some may think, these atheists did not object to my eagerness to perform my religious rituals such as Friday prayers and fasting Ramadan, so I remember that my professor at the French Institute of Fresnel in France, who is an atheist, insisted that I leave the laboratory early in the month of Ramadan to get some rest before Iftar, because what concerns her relationship with me is my research performance and not my religion. ”
Atheist scientists.
Wrong impression.
Shaaban and al-Jundi ’ s talk that most of the people they dealt with were atheist scientists is a misconception, according to Ellen Howard Eklund, an American sociologist at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Over the past 20 years, Eklund has studied scholars ’ attitudes toward religion, and what she has found through more than 40,000 polls and nearly 2,500 secret interviews is that there are far more religious scholars than many people expect.
In one of her studies, at least 30 percent of respondents declared their religious affiliation, which polled scientists from eight countries and regions, including the United Kingdom, India, Hong Kong, Turkey and the United States.
Eklund ’ s studies explained why Shaaban and al-Jundi believed they were working with atheists: “Scientists aren ’ t always open about their faith at work or in educational settings, because there ’ s a perception that other scientists won ’ t take you seriously if you talk about your faith. ”
But the secrecy that Eklund maintained in her research allowed scientists to be more open about talking about their faith.
“They felt some relief talking about their own approach to religion in a safe environment, and the results of one study were quite telling, with two-thirds of scientists saying that they do not view the relationship between science and religion as a conflict, but that many see them working harmoniously as a way to understand the world. ”
In sum, the area of agreement between science and religion is greater than the areas of disagreement imagined by some, which may not exist in the minds of scientists themselves when they are allowed to speak freely away from scientific conferences.
Source: The Island

G.

Title:

Content: Solarpunk – a worldview that imagines hopeful futures of social justice, planet-friendly technologies, decentralisation and harmony – has come quite a long way since its first appearance in an online article in 2008. Today this genre of science fiction is being explored by multiple authors, poets, academics and critics all across the world. The ultimate goal of these stories and the associated politics is to imagine and work towards a future of coexistence, which acknowledges our kinship and interdependence with all beings big and small, as an alternative to wandering about a zombie apocalypse or sinking in dystopian gloominess.

After the publication of the much-acclaimed anthology Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, the editors decided to publish another anthology focusing on creatures, the more-than-human allies who would live with and among us in a possible future. The editors, Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri and Sarena Ulibarri have collectively brought this second offering, a second anthology titled Solarpunk Creatures, three years after the first.

A multispecies imagination

Explaining the rationale for this collection of stories, the editors write in their introduction, “Where Multispecies Cities sought to broaden the spotlight and highlight the multitude of actors on the stage, Solarpunk Creatures introduces a whole new cast of more-than-human protagonists: organic and digital, alien and fantastic, tiny and boundlessly large.” These creatures are not only restricted to animals and plants but also include AI who take the role of the main protagonist in some of these engaging tales. “The AI characters that made it into the anthology are gentle and loveable – not disturbing and often a malevolent presence that is unsettling the role and value of artists around the globe,” explains the introduction. In these stories, AI creatures do not try to destroy or dominate humankind but often are companions and co-participants in humanity’s engagement with a hopeful and sustainable futures.

Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Norie Tamura and Rajat Chaudhuri have efficiently and strategically framed the “Introduction” by referring to other critics and writers who have discussed multispecies communities such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’s memorable Braiding Sweetgrass. It would also not miss the careful reader’s notice that the team of editors, true to the sense of community harboured by Solarpunk, represent far-flung regions of the world and that the book also includes at least two stories written by collectives. The editors have also provided tasting samples of the stories in the anthology which will intrigue and draw the readers to explore the book.

“Multispecies imagination can heal us from our chronic isolation from nature,” the editors write. The lucid introduction, which will interest academics and genre-readers alike, ends with this possibility of healing, it says, “breath-taking encounters and a sense of wonder, await not only among the stars, but at the end of every one of the countless threads connecting us to the world and its inhabitants.”

Indian writers

Apart from writers from advanced industrialised countries, this anthology, like the one before it, has also featured stories from the Asia-Pacific region among which we have three stories by Indian writers, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Rimi B Chatterjee, and Tashan Mehta. Casting its net wide this anthology has managed to portray multifarious perspectives, problems and ideas of people spread out across the globe, weaving them together into thought-provoking tales.

Tashan Mehta’s “Leaf Whispers, Ocean Song” is a beautiful tale about the influence of Opi, a deep sea creature on the life of humans when it arrives on the coastline of Goa. Opi is showcased as a humongous yet loveable creature who somewhat transforms the lives of humans. Here, this alien creature does not come from the sky but from the ocean and as soon as it reaches the shore, Opi is perceived differently by different people. While the local fishermen call it “a visiting God from the sea”, marine biologists, conservationists and researchers wish to study and understand this creature. On the other hand, the linguists in the story, Jen and Lu are interested in studying Opi’s language and Jem soon admits that the speech of this creature is “too vast. Its sound, scent, song, feeling, thought – just everything…” The presence and effect of this creature are beyond human understanding because Opi somehow seems to unite animals like dogs, crabs and starfish – something unimaginable to humans. This story, rejecting anthropocentric beliefs, reiterates the fact that humans are just a tiny part of the wide unknown world around us. This is best conveyed by Jen when she says, “…[Opi] is a reminder of how insignificant we are, of how life plays out in a magnitude we cannot imagine.”

From a sea creature, we move on to a comet in Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s story “Flyby”. Comet Izumi is the protagonist of this memorable tale which blends poetic language with a capacious imagination, to portray the dynamics of non-human beings which are boundlessly large. Chabria writes, “Unlike planets, beautiful and rounded as melons, with moons circling and circling them, comets are loners, each speaking a unique language of elliptical orbit and ellipses from sight. Pilgrims of the universe, they plunge in and out of the neat orbital paths of the planets, streaking their immense fiery tails over unknown skies”

Readers can also visualise the future of the Earth through the eyes of Comet Izumi, “A series of climatic changes has altered Earth’s topography; begun by Capitalocene greed in the brief human geological epoch…Earth’s invisible armour that protects life, the radiation shield is temporarily ripped.” Though the story may seem to showcase destruction in the beginning, it gradually takes a soothing turn towards hope and most importantly, towards the importance of sound which has the power to regenerate life. The author has beautifully blended the wisdom of ancient texts in this unique solarpunk narrative which will definitely help us think far beyond our limited human and planetary sphere of being.

After Mehta’s sea creature and Chhabria’s comet, we travel to the land of our four-legged friends, in Rimi B Chatterjee’s “Hopdog” which is reminiscent of her “Arfabad” in the previous volume. The story begins with “Dog number 834” who is rescued from a dogfighting ring where “her masters would watch as she and her competitors tore the prey to shred and wolfed down whatever they could snatch from each other’s jaws.” Dog number 834 is finally rescued from a place that smelt of fear, trouble and death by the survivors of Zigsa’s Nest, referring back to Chatterjee’s “Arfabad”. Arfabad is a land inhabited by dogs and everything is dog-sized there, which is where the central character, Zigsa had created a survivarium where dogs could be protected.

The dog of the present story, after trials and tribulations, arrives in this gentler, kinder place of love and happiness. Here, “…for the first time since she could remember, Peaches was sharing space with other breathing creatures that manifestly did not want to kill her.” But can she continue to live there and be protected from all dangers lurking outside? You have to read the story to find out.

AI and other friends

Apart from these engaging and thought-provoking stories by the three Indian writers, Solarpunk Creatures includes a wealth of tales from other parts of the world. “An Inconvenient Unicorn” by Geraldine Briony Hunt is a Solarpunk fantasy set in a distant corner of Arcadia where nothing had grown in the last twenty years due to war: “It was not the sort of war where soldiers take up arms and march against one another, but a war waged in peoples’ kitchens, local pubs and schoolyards.” This land had faced a lot of adversities until a magical creature, a unicorn arrives to rejuvenate the land, bless it with harmony and greenery. “An Inconvenient Unicorn” evokes hope, telling us the importance of preserving the wild and being wary about the false dreams of ecomodernism.

Lyndsey Croal’s “Hunting for Rain”, is written from the perspective of a robotic dog who hunts for rain in a world affected by drought. This AI-guided creature has the ability to geolocate an area even before it begins to rain, hence it can signal people to head for those areas. Here, a robot has not been projected as something alien, industrial or dangerous, instead, it behaves like kin, fulfilling the common responsibility of sustaining life by pointing out where it will rain. When it finally begins to pour, the drought-stricken people give credit to this mechanised dog by patting its head and scratching behind its ears and it absorbs all the love from its beloved humans and wags its mechanical tail. This beautiful tale gives us hope that AI and robots can also be kin and can join with us in more-than-human connections of life-giving, reciprocal care.

Another story, “The Business of Bees” by Andrew Knighton is simple, funny, and memorable. Told from the perspective of the cat, Luna, who is frustrated about the fact that her human hosts don’t seem to notice some weirdness about the bees. Luna gets so curious that she leaves home to find out what the bees are up to. This will definitely be a memorable journey for the curious cat.

This is a necessary collection for a time in the planet’s history when shifts in collective imagination are the need of the hour. In these times of climate doom, growing inequity and injustice, books like Solarpunk Creatures help us think and imagine differently, beyond our insular selves, together and in community with others, human and non-human, visible, invisible or fathomless.

Sayantani Sengupta is a PhD student at St Xavier’s University, Kolkata. She is researching Solarpunk literature and movement.

Solarpunk Creatures, edited by Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Rajat Chaudhuri, Sarena Ulibarri, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Norie Tamura, World Weaver Press.

Wells to encompass diverse voices and perspectives from around the world.

Title:

Content: - A plus A.
Ben-Yahya Fadl's charity.
Books and paper publications remain the main source of science, culture, and knowledge in general, despite this huge development in electronic means, which enabled readers to own entire small offices, in a slice, no larger than the size of a human ’ s brain.
These developments have also made it easier for readers and researchers to get any reference, or document, they need, in minutes.
However, printed matter still has advantages, which I think will ensure that it continues to be a source of knowledge, even for a while.
One of the manifestations of the progress of our dear country, and its keeping pace with global development, especially scientific, technical and cognitive, is the abundance of cultural publications and their development, both quantitative and qualitative.
This is what has been observed recently.
Almost every day, a writer publishes an academic, scientific, technical, literary, artistic, etc.
It is a good habit to dedicate books and exchange them among friends and acquaintances.
But our reading is still limited, and understated, as some studies suggest.
Unfortunately, this progress and development in publishing has not been matched by an expansion in reading.
As I write these lines, I am delighted to see so many books on my desk, dedicated to me by dear friends and colleagues.
Given my assumption that they are valuable works, my hard work in producing them, my close knowledge of their authors, their high level of thinking, and my familiarity with this book (in principle, I think it is a book on its subjects), I decided to read them, book after book.
Write a quick summary of each book.
I hope that the reader will find in what I write some useful.
In fact, the analysis of the content of a book in a newspaper article does not fulfill the book's right, and does not clarify the most important advantages and disadvantages, but sheds light on it, and draws attention to its subject, to whom it may concern, especially in our cultural situation, which is characterized by a reluctance to read.
The scientific analysis of any book (Book Review) is in the place of scientific journals, not newspapers.
I hope that time and health will allow me to write scientific analyses, at least for some books.
I do not mean to write here as a compliment to anyone, or as a favor to his production.
The point is, as we shall see, a quick critical assessment of the content of each book, and a reference (and perhaps praise) to the information that the intellectual is best acquainted with, even for the sake of knowledge of the thing.
Writing about books may also take us a little further away from going into “politics, ” this thorny field, although I believe that politics is involved, either by length, by width, or by length and width, in everything.
* * * *
I will start today with a book by His Excellency Ambassador Abdullah Abdul Rahman Alam, entitled: My Reflections and Harvest of Years (Jeddah: Author / Dar Almanhaj Publishing and Distribution, 2021).
The book is 416 pages long.
About a third of the book is full of photographs of the author ’ s private and professional life.
At first glance, the book looks like an extended biography of his happiness.
It was found to contain a brief but informative CV, experience and knowledge to the benefit of those with similar experiences.
The book is divided into: Introduction, and two main sections: The first section: dedicated to talk about his hometown, the city of Mecca, expressing his passion and longing for this holy spot.
The first section contains three chapters: the first chapter entitled Mecca: Place and Man.
The second chapter talks about the “raft ” and its upbringing, as he comes from a family practicing the profession of raft.
In the third chapter he talks about his birth and his upbringing in his beloved Mecca.
The second section of the book contained ten chapters, or rather, ten “stations, ” as he called them, meaning the ten countries in which he represented his country.
He talked about his experience at each station.
These countries are: Egypt, Lebanon, Nigeria, Japan, Sudan, America, Tunisia, Somalia, Indonesia and Oman.
He has spent almost half a century serving his country and representing it in these ten countries.
Starting in Egypt and ending in Oman.
In addition, he mentioned some memories, achievements, and what he presented again.
He finished his book with a brief ending.
One of his most notable achievements is encouraging Saudi women, starting with the virtuous woman, his wife, and others, to engage in diplomatic and charitable work in the service of their country.
His Excellency ’ s mediation and conciliation efforts were positively reflected in the Kingdom ’ s image and its international standing.
* * * *
The science of politics and international relations provides us with scientific and logical "entrances".
Each of these “analytical frameworks ” helps to analyze topics of a political nature logically, focusing on the most important elements of the subject, organizing its treatment, and identifying its important points and dimensions.
In this case, I have found nothing better than the framework of “the most important functions of the ambassador, or the diplomatic envoy, ” to evaluate or evaluate the practical process of Ambassador Abdullah Alam, which he summarized in this book.
The science of international relations, including the subjects of diplomacy, international law, and diplomatic law in particular, states that an ambassador, or a permanent diplomatic envoy of a country, performs, by law and custom, several functions for the benefit of its state, the most important of which are the following five functions:
Care for the care and protection of the citizens of his country, in the State to which he is sent.
Representing his country, officially, and expressing the will of his government, and its positions on bilateral issues, and issues of common interest.
Negotiate on behalf of his country, with officials of the government of the country accredited to him.
4. Writing reports and providing information on the conditions and conditions of the host country, of which the host country is interested to know.
Contribute to the formulation and implementation of the foreign policy of his country, especially towards the addressee State.
* * * *
These are the most important "functions" and tasks that must be performed by the permanent diplomatic representative of his country, with skill and wisdom, in order to achieve the objectives of his country and improve its relations with the receiving State.
From reading his book “My Reflections and the Harvest of Years ”, I believe that Ambassador Abdullah Alam has carried out these functions, and others, best evidence, of his continuation in the diplomatic service, and his inclusion in it, for half a century.
There is no doubt that the Saudi Foreign Ministry has decisive and fair measures to measure the performance of its diplomats.
I think my father has received the highest ratings.
I believe that the practical work of Ambassador Alam deserves excellent recognition for his great efforts to serve his country in the difficult diplomatic field.
This talk is relevant.

Title:

Content: 16 / 05 / 2023 - 18: 00
Why does the age of machine learning need the humanities?
We still need traditional human skills: we need to scrutinize assumptions and evaluate arguments; however, the challenges facing 21st century citizens are not always individual arguments that need individual assessment, but are overwhelmed with information such as the Hader Falls.
(Getty)
It is no longer easy to live our normal lives these days, as we are asked to be wary of digital robots and biased search engines, but the uncertainty associated with the new media can make us easy prey to old forms of political propaganda, and we have all seen how Donald Trump avoids criticism by adopting the same style of skepticism and uncertainty, claiming that most news sources are “fake ” and Google searches. A lizard against him.
If democracy ’ s success depends on well-informed citizens, democracy is in trouble.
This is a moment of crisis for many institutions, including higher education, especially in disciplines such as English, philosophy and history, which promise to prepare students to be citizens, but to prepare students for a world in which information is filtered by computers, we will need a stronger alliance between the humanities and mathematics. These are the ideas that shape our world, and the mathematical critique of cultural models.
We still need traditional human skills: we need to scrutinize assumptions and evaluate arguments; but the challenges facing 21st century citizens are not always individual arguments that need to be evaluated individually; rather, we are overwhelmed with information such as the Hader Falls, coming from data in our networks of friends, and in statistical models that predict our preferences.
Evaluating individual sources won ’ t help us know how biased that information is.
Now we need to think about samples and models, that is, we need to think about the mathematics behind the information.
We may have learned before that mathematics is defined as specialized scientific performance, but culture and politics in the 21st century are increasingly intertwined with automated forms of statistical inference called machine learning, and students who do not understand it will struggle to understand what happens to them in their living lives.
It is equally easy to misunderstand machine learning, as many popular books and articles on the subject encourage discussion about the dangers of algorithms, which are no longer the most appropriate topic for discussion in this age, where the algorithm is defined as a recipe, a series of steps to solve a problem: separate the fallout from the yardstick and screw it up.
Algorithm became a popular and influential term in the 20th century following the widespread idea that computers do not work unless instructed by humans.
Journalists use the word every time computers are used to do something, which may be technically correct, but the computerized innovations that have reshaped our daily lives in recent decades should not be understood as a mere mass of new algorithms, as we have moved to a system in which computers are inconspicuously controlled.
We no longer write directly the algorithms that govern computer decisions, but ask the computer itself to write its instructions by modeling the problems it is asked to solve.
Take the filtering of random (or insignificant or unwanted) emails, for example, which is a task whose terms cannot be defined precisely, because they reach us in different forms, and it is difficult to write a single algorithm to block them all, and the other solution, the most innovative, in dealing with them, is to collect a large amount of messages rejected by human readers, together with the messages. We then ask the computer to come up with the blocking instructions by observing and inferring the difference between the two groups.
A computer may list common words in spam (“free, ”“ offer, ” and “cialis ”), and then measure the relative probability of their presence in accepted and rejected messages.
This leads to a “statistical model ” of the concept of spam, which can be used to filter incoming messages.
Unlike the way an algorithm works, which will exclude any message that contains words such as “free ” and“ display ”, even if it is an important or ordinary message, the statistical model takes into account a number of different clues, indicators, and ambiguous clues to assess the likelihood of a message being considered “random. ”
This approach, known as machine learning, requires the computer to understand the ambiguous patterns contained in messages as a whole, rather than giving them explicit instructions directly, and the aforementioned patterns are problematic in part because the computer often learns from human behavior, which in turn does not follow strict mathematical rules. Mathematical understanding of the learning process.
When children try to learn, they tend to generalize based on specific examples such as considering a cat as a cat or animal, and this requires children to conclude based on the details available to them, because the animals are not always as colorful as a cat, and do not make sounds like it, and so on.
Perhaps we do not realize that learning requires inference, because forgetting details is part of the nature of humans, while computers do not suffer from the same state, where they reach the details easily and easily, so we must tell them frankly and clearly to work to limit the long list of emails (or animals) in a useful vague model.
The success of machine learning depends on the collection and accounting of data, and “learning ” in the words of statisticians is the next step.
Machine learning is increasingly shaping human culture: based on the voices we make, the TV series we watch, and what we write on Facebook, all become food for models of human behavior, which in turn shape what we see on the Internet.
Because this course can amplify existing biases, any critique of contemporary culture must include a critique of machine learning.
But to prepare students for this new world, we need to take action and offer them more than just a warning that algorithms are causing problems.
Generalizing a culture of uncertainty doesn ’ t necessarily help people understand the media, as we saw in the former president ’ s attacks on biased search engines and fake news.
Telling students that new technologies are designed to trick them into looking for quick fixes (Dana Boyd argued in an article that trying to teach people practices that allow them to access, critically evaluate, and understand the media is likely to backfire).
To be a healthy precaution, without descending into obsession and distrust, students need to understand both the limits of technology and its legitimate forms of application, and humanities researchers can contribute to both parts of this educational project, because we already know one of the central applications of machine learning: modeling ambiguous and implicit patterns in human behavior. Humanities.
The above claim may seem strange, as we have always believed that mathematics has no place in history and literature, but the researchers of the humanities have been more flexible than the stereotypical image of them suggests in their hatred of the natural sciences. In the 20th century it was not able to offer anything to culture.
We can ’ t, for example, write a simple algorithm to help us identify the literary genre, because literary genres lack a judicious, descriptive definition.
Humanities scholars have painstakingly come to humility in this particular field, with dozens of them spending their lives trying to define the genre of “science fiction, ” until critics finally admit that a genre means different things at different times.
Reluctantly, scientists have abandoned their search for a single feature that brings together species, embracing the idea that species carry a family resemblance, and their content changes from decade to decade.
Concepts of this kind may seem slippery and unscientific, as does machine learning, which we resorted to in the first place because we could not come up with a simple and comprehensive definition of random mail, relying on human knowledge embedded in their rejection of certain messages for a variety of reasons.
A model based on this type of evidence will never be stable.
It will have to be updated every few years, as old forms of fraud disappear and new ones emerge.
My point is that the warning against biased algorithms denies and repudiates the true limits of machine learning, which go beyond carrying an accidental bias.
Models formed from examples of human behavior are necessarily models of a specific cultural context.
Machine learning models cannot offer us objective, out-of-date models, because human culture is fickle.
This means that helping students understand the strengths and limitations of historical knowledge can be a way to help them understand the strengths and limitations of machine learning.
There is much in common between the vague and context-specific models produced by machine learning and the familial similarity that historians see in culture (for example, both models tend to be determined by many overlapping clues, rather than by one fundamental feature).
It is not surprising, then, that the field of cultural history benefits from machine learning.
Catherine Boddy ’ s A World of Fiction compares different models to illustrate how Australian and American writers diverged from the 19th-century British writing tradition, and Andrew Piper ’ s Catalogues uses these methods to elicit insights into the attraction of introverted heroines in literary works to windows.
Students generally don ’ t need to study the examples identified above, but each of them will need some hands-on experience on the statistical models that have become central to our modern culture.
The general student population does not need to understand that these models are constrained by the same contextual conditions that make historians and literary critics so cautious.
Technology leaders who argue that machine learning is more objective than other forms of knowledge cannot be trusted.
But we must be deeply suspicious of political leaders who use the theoretical complexity of the Internet to indicate that real knowledge is impossible, that everything is false, and that the only solution is to make decisions based on personal and individual biases, without taking into account the real evidence and the general perspective of any issue.
It is possible to form and build real knowledge by comparing different cultural contexts, and this method has been adopted by recent scholars for a long time.
We need the same comparative strategies to understand our lives as our knowledge of the present is increasingly filtered through statistical models that target specific target markets, and we need to recognize that the traditions of caution and relativism that historians use in their work are not alien to the new computer world.
Such bridges between the humanities and natural sciences will soon have value, and universities have not yet explained them to their students, but as usual try to accommodate technology-related cultural changes in pre-existing academic disciplines.
The discipline of “digital humanities ” often turns easily into an area of internal conflict between history and English departments, and is more associated with teachers than with students.
Students need to find an alliance between disciplines, without any of them losing their separate identity.
Students learn how to use machine learning from quantitative disciplines, such as information science or the new interdisciplinary data science.
They may turn to the humanities in order to apply new methods to cultural questions, or to think about the historical and social implications of these methods.
The new links between disciplines will not replace the traditional strengths of history, philosophy, art and literature, but we will see a significant shift if we see humanities and natural scientists working on a joint educational project.
Throughout the 20th century, these sections of the university assumed antagonism with each other.
Natural science teaches you how to clone a T. rex, as one of the satirical images put it.
And the humanities give you reasons not to.
These examples of antagonism are clever and funny stories, but we have to move beyond them.
The beast in our world is not a dinosaur that we can avoid creating, but a human history that is already disjointed, predatory, and difficult to predict, and we will need, to understand ourselves, both numbers and words.
Humanities researchers have a lot to contribute to this field, because we know the past of this beast, and we know its slippages, knowing the superiority of any other discipline.
We always cast constructive doubt on the numbers, and we can do more than that.
We can work hand in hand with natural science researchers to show students that statistical inference and historical interpretation are two parts that are allied and intertwined in order to understand life.

Title:

Content: Saturday 24 February 2024
Chairman of the Board of Directors and Editors
Abdurrahim Ali
Chairman of the Board of Directors and Editorial Board
Abdurrahim Ali
A culture
Isis Ashour Translator “Maybe Now ”: Writing is a talent before it is a hobby.. Translator“ Unknown Soldier ” is not highlighted and not appreciated enough by the public
Not many people know the difference between literary editing and translation.
Both are in the same project.
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In the third part of "Maybe Now" trilogy, American novelist Colin Hoover continues her story of a group of friends who are united by a love of music and playing.
But whenever a new person joins them, their relationships get complicated and they go from friendship to love, to betrayal.
So, they try to reach a new form of stability without enduring the bitterness of loss and the loss of friends?
The events of this social and romantic trilogy of young people, combining love, friendship and music, the third part of which was translated into Arabic by Isis Sherbini, begin with a young Sydney, 22 years old, who enjoys everything her peers wish for: an education in a prestigious college, a steady job, a wonderful lover, and a loyal friend.
Until she gets closer to her mysterious neighbor, Ridge, and his friends, a talented musician with a strange secret.
The final part "Maybe Now" sheds light on the relationship between Ridge and Sydney and their happy lives together, but the relationship of their friends Warren and Bridget cast a shadow over them, and Bridge does not give up his friendship with Maggie, especially during her health crisis.
To expose all established beliefs to the winds of reality.
Colin Hoover was born in December 1979, in Texas, United States.
It became a publishing phenomenon in the early 21st century, known for popular books that are usually characterized by romance and dramatic plot twists.
Hoover abandoned traditional marketing plans, and herself published many of her books, which caused quite a stir on social media, especially the popular video platform TikTok.
After that, she moved to publishing houses, and her work topped the bestseller lists and sold millions of copies.
As for the translator and literary editor Isis Ashour, she graduated in the Faculty of Al-Alsun Department of English at Ain Shams University in 2016.
She worked in legal and journalistic translation for several Egyptian and Arab institutions, and specialized in the field of editing in the publishing world, where she worked with Al-Arabi Publishing and Distribution from 2016 until August 2023 and edited more than 130 works, and her first translation was published in 2018 for the book “Against Elections: In Defense of Democracy ”.
She also worked as a freelance editor for Dar al-Karma, and published the translation of The Kromer Papers: Khedive Ismail, published by Al-Riwaq Publishing in August 2023, and the translation of Maybe Now.
Speaking to Al-Bawaba News, Isis pointed out that in our Arab world, so far there are not many who know the difference between literary editing and translation, although both fields are combined in the same project, which is the translated book, and although both can occur simultaneously and simultaneously with each other, the difference between them is significant.
She says: “Translation is the process of transferring text from the original language to the language into which it is translated, here the responsibility of the translator is to be accurate and honest in transferring the text without compromising the meaning of the original text, and he is responsible to the reader in maintaining the same style for the foreign writer to be able to identify him and not create a new style.
The editor is the “right arm ” of the translator, an eye that follows behind him what has actually been translated and investigates that the translation process has been done with the required accuracy, in addition to that it is the link between the translator and the reader. ”
She stressed that the literary editor is responsible for the fluidity of the text, reviewing the structures related to the wording and language after the translator, and is responsible for reviewing the translation with the original text if necessary, to ensure that the final text reaches the reader in the most appropriate way. "He is also the one who gives the green light to the publisher if the text is ready for printing and can be presented to the reader or not."
"It is very unfortunate that the literary editor is not sufficiently appreciated.
Perhaps this is what makes it so far a somewhat obscure profession, although I have pointed out the importance of his presence, as he is the one who guides the translator with the notes and instructions that must be followed in the translated text and assists and accompanies him during the process of producing the book.
He is with those who coordinate with all parties to bring the book to light; they are the translator, the proofreader, the coordinator, the publisher, the department manager, the cover designer. ”
She continued: "I wonder that even now he is not sufficiently appreciated despite all this, and even in general, if I mention to the public the profession of 'editor', they may confuse it with that of a newspaper editor, despite the great difference between the two professions.
She added: “In my opinion, after both experiences, the role of the translator is more difficult and more responsible, but it is appreciated and praised by the readers who come to light.
The editor, although his role is no less important, and it is impossible not to be present now with the translator, is not highlighted and is not sufficiently appreciated by the public.
He is the “unknown soldier ” in any translation project undertaken by the publishing house.
As a translator, Achour does not think that, in general, there is something that provokes her to translate more than others: all works of various kinds, literary and non-literary, deserve translation because each has its own favorite audience, “but on a personal level I prefer to translate works that are closest to my personal taste, between history, social literature and psychology. ”
As for the final part of Colin Hoover ’ s “Maybe Now ” trilogy, she describes it as“ a great experience with the Dar Al Riwaq team. ”
She noted in particular her admiration for the publisher ’ s choice of works in line with the requirements of the larger audience of readers, namely the young.
“The trilogy is very nice and age-appropriate, it asks a lot of questions about friendship, loyalty and love, and the part that I translated gives the idea of what are we supposed to do when love turns into friendship and vice versa, ” she says.
How do you live a healthy life with a close friend and a loved one at the same time without having to break up with one of them? ”
She pointed out that the translation market is witnessing a great boom in a way that does not negatively affect the Arab publishing market, “This is a very positive point, because translation is an outlet and a door to openness to the culture of the other and benefit from it, and a lot of effort and money was spent in previous times to translate various books in all sciences. ”
She pointed out that the boom in the translation market has opened the opportunity for many young people to work in the field of publishing, “there is a constant need for translators and language reviewers from publishing houses. ”
But when it comes to the publishing market, it ’ s different.
She said that it is unfortunate that publishing, in the end, is an industry like all industries, and suffers from the current economic crises, from high prices of paper, raw materials, staff wages and others; at a time when the Arab reader suffers from high prices of books as a result of all the above, he has to buy pirated copies paper or even pirated electronically without having to bear any costs.
She stressed: "Publishing is suffering a major crisis in reducing the gap between the huge production costs and providing the book to the reader at a price that bears its cost."
Although she is young, Isis says that she has rarely appreciated the amount of effort she makes to make sure that the book comes to light without catastrophic errors. "But if I try to mention the" nice "rather than funny situations, it is that I often get praise from readers for the way I narrate books at the book fair. When Matthew Perry died, I was very sad because I edited the Arabic translation of his memoirs. I have a relationship with him, so I received messages of sympathy from some of my readers friends, who I love to be with them always, I am a reader before I am a literary editor or a translator as well, and I like to discuss with them everything about the developments of publishing, understanding the future category of everything we seek to produce. ”
In the end, Isis Achour refuses that the experience she has gained from translation and editing is capable of making her a successful author.
I don ’ t see that I ’ ve been given this gift, writing is a gift before it ’ s a hobby, we don ’ t have to write just because it ’ s a hobby and because we want to see our names on the covers of books, it ’ s a pity that this phenomenon has recently spread so much.
Writing has its parents, and I think I ’ m destined to be a translator, so I ’ m just going to keep translating books. ”

This report examines the evolution of science fiction literature, exploring its early influences, contemporary developments, and the impact of underrepresented voices on the genre.

## Early Foundations and Influences

### The Pioneers: H.

Title:

Content: I'm sorry.
Mayassa Sultan Al Suwaidi
Reading books charges us with knowledge and drives us to think, we read over and over again, even without knowledge, in search of a mind more original than our own, and intellectuals know that culture is a matter of direction, to be an intellectual does not mean that you have read all the books, but to have the ability to find your way in a book you may not be supposed to read in full. Follow what we say and do.
Franz Kafka, the great dark writer, wrote in a letter to his friend Oscar Pollack (1904), “One should read only those books that preach and shame him; if the book we read does not wake us up with a bang on our skull, then why do we read the book?
Oh, my gosh.
We ’ d be happy even if we didn ’ t have books. ”
The true culture tends to absorb the whole and not just accumulate knowledge and detailed information, and we may be passionate about reading books but we may feel guilty for not being able to read everything we want, time and worries and distractions around us may take up most of our time, and I believe that reading in its traditional form, which is considered a kind of veneration is about to disappear, many have turned to electronic reading media that appeal to the youth more. The tendency to read abstracts that abbreviate books in a way that may compromise their quality sometimes.
Moreover, the very process of reading, even if we spend our whole lives in it, will remain open to an infinite horizon, given all the books we will be forever ignorant of.
Whenever I felt cold or distant from reading, I addressed one of the books that reviewed the importance and necessity of reading in order to sharpen my motivation, and return to drowning in the pages of books, and during my search I was intercepted by the provocative and unconventional title of a different book entitled “How to talk about a book you have not read? ”
By French writer Pierre Bayard, translated into Arabic by Ghassan Lotfi, and the title of the book itself is enough to raise more questions, so why should we talk about books we have not read?
What is the need for false pretenses to read?
But I immediately thought of many models that claim knowledge and deceive others and claim to read many books to add some kind of cultural dignity to their social image, while their reading may be limited to reading indexes and linking the contents to the general context of the subject.
Or maybe they just read limited abstracts or heard a casual discussion about a book and not being familiar with the book did not prevent them from sharing their ideas, for example a librarian who does not read the content of books in his library but is interested in indexes, titles and classifications that are just lists that have nothing to do with the content of the real book.
Discover the creative self
The author of the book Pierre Bayard, professor of literature at the University of Paris and psychoanalyst, and has many controversial books in which he embodies his unique vision of things, a man navigating in reading and literature and a writer at the same time, how to bother to write a book in which he advises not to overread, but he calls not to read originally, where the writer to abandon the idea of sanctifying books, and demolishes some beliefs related to talk about adventure It invites us not to feel guilty for not reading all the books in our libraries, and even more so it invites us to talk about those books that we have not read in the first place, regardless of any purpose or justification, because it believes that it is an excellent opportunity to discover the creative self within each of us.
He demands the liberation of the reader from the text of the writer and the removal of the weight of the words of others from his shoulders, because in short he is looking for that power to create the text of each reader to become a writer in turn, the goal is to free the possibilities in each individual knowing that few will become writers.
And to write after you are just a reader is liberation and an act that requires a lot of courage, while excessive reading may deprive you of the possibility of being an authentic writer, because when you read only without expressing your opinion, you remain a follower of the writer, and this reminds me of the style of writing practical research and academic writing where the strength of your research lies by quoting the above to be the master of the situation. After you and your name is repeated in the list of research and references, and then you are confused between quotation and self-quotation, which is the most important and strongest in the citation, to realize after a while that this position of authority is a major factor in our talk about books, and that the simplest quotation we quote from a book is often a way to prove our argument or invalidate the argument of others.
Community Library
In his call not to overread, the writer elaborates on the idea that there is no need at all to read the book in order to have an accurate idea of its content and be able to talk about it, and explains that there is no book isolated from other books, each book is an element of a group called the collective library, which must not necessarily be known to evaluate or estimate this element specifically, and we must go beyond the individuality of the book. When you review the collection of books that you have already read and discover that you have forgotten parts of them and this is normal, does this mean that you have read the book that you forgot to read a briefing?
In order to be able to talk about books we have not read shamelessly, we must free ourselves from that tyrannical image, the image of the whole culture which the family and the school institutions have imparted to us, and which throughout our lives we seek to identify with, in vain, the truth directed to others is less important than the truth of the ego, which is only reached by the liberation from the yoke of necessity that compels us to appear to people as a culture. That torments us deep down and prevents us from remaining who we really are, ” he asserts that reading is a rubber term with no clear, explicit meaning, and explains the difference between reading and not reading and not reading.
Coexistence with books
Reading means that you spend your time with the book from cover to cover, but not reading is to recognize the idea of   the writer without the need to read the book in full, and your reading is limited to enough extracts to be the general idea of   the subject of the book, or maybe depend on what you read for the same writer previously, while not reading is different from the two types of the previous to move away from interest in reading in general.
Pierre Bayard warns in his book from falling into the trap of drowning in the books of others, the writer is a simple man who exercises his authority in the flow of ideas and feelings, and may not be completely neutral, but writes because he wishes to express his opinion and idea even if he is not familiar with the whole subject he writes about, and is not better than the reader in any way, he only possessed the tools that made him able to write his vision and experience and science, Prisoners of the text and we have the decision to accept this flow of thought, analyze it, and perhaps reject it.
The writer aims to push the reader to live with books instead of reading them, and enjoy the literary text, any book related to the general context and the previously written books on the same subject, and the use of books, in the words of Umberto Eco, to live with a book, and means to take it as a companion to socialize and learn from it no more.
To live with the book also means not to let the book prevent you from disclosing what is inside you and expressing yourself and seeking inspiration within yourself, it is important to practice freedom of opinion and approach between books while lifting the prohibitions if any.
Betrayal of Memory
One of the fundamental questions in Pierre Bayard ’ s book is: Do books that have already been read and fallen out of our memory still count in the list of books read?
The act of reading whatever it is associated with the acquisition of knowledge, but forgetting is possible, and indeed certain, in spite of us.
Personally, more than once you found me browsing through a book and finding a comment on one of the footnotes of the book or notes in my handwriting that prove my passing one day, but I do not remember who wrote anything at all at that moment!
So we have to ask an important question, how is this forgotten book different from any other book that we haven ’ t read in the first place?
Is there a perfect way to read?
Many questions have been discussed by writers such as Harold Bloom ’ s How to Read and Why?, Alberto Manguel ’ s History of Reading, Reading Memory, Reading Diaries, Daniel Banack ’ s The Pleasure of Reading, Henry Miller ’ s Books in My Life, and many others, each with their own style, method, and reasons for reading.
Many of them have been advised to follow effective reading techniques such as taking notes and perhaps abstracts about books, in addition to the importance of writing your personal opinion, your impression of the writer and the subject, translation if any, in addition to sharing with other readers and those interested in learning more.
All of this leads us to the most important question: what is culture?
Does it resemble the stereotype imposed by family and school institutions, with which we always and in vain seek to identify ourselves?
The subject is thorny and large and this article may not be enough to talk about it, but it is necessary to work to desecrate books and evoke the real self in everything we read without the need to pretend or resemble the usual stereotype, and most importantly not to fabricate culture and remain who we really are and continue to stroll between books and pick the most beautiful fruits, and that reading for fun is the most important thing that books can give us Reading books that we haven ’ t read is the beginning of creative creativity.

G.

Wells and Early Science Fiction

The genre of science fiction was fundamentally shaped by early pioneers like H.

G.

Wells, whose works in the late 19th and early 20th centuries established many of the foundational elements that would define the genre.

Title:

Content: The Independent’s journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 longlist is here – and features five debut authors

Judges whittled down 175 submissions to these 16

Eva Waite-Taylor
Tuesday 08 March 2022 09:30

The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 longlist has just been announced – and surely there’s no better day to do it than on International Women’s Day, a day dedicated to celebrating and championing women in every aspect of society.

But, while publishing has become increasingly inclusive, there’s still a need for greater access to a range of voices. As such, the Women’s Prize for Fiction remains as important today as when it first came about.

Founded in 1996, the prize is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, showcasing the remarkable originality, accessibility and excellence of novels written by women from around the world.

As such, if you’re looking for some recommendations on what to read next, the longlist offers an exciting opportunity to discover a range of ambitious and outstanding literature.

The panel of five judges – Mary Ann Sieghart, Lorraine Candy, Dorothy Koomson, Anita Sethi and Pandora Sykes – had the near-impossible job of whittling a stellar line-up of 175 submissions down to a 16-strong list.

The final list for 2022 is a mixture of new and well-established writers, featuring five dazzling debuts, as well as five previously longlisted authors and one writer who has also been shortlisted before (Charlotte Mendelson). Indie publishers also reigned supreme, representing a quarter of the list.

Read more:

In honour of the inspiring range of literature, join us in celebrating, championing and supporting women writers from across the globe by adding these books to your “to-read” pile now. The shortlist will be announced on 27 April, and you’ll have to wait until 15 June for the winner.

‘The Bread the Devil Knead’ by Lisa Allen-Agostini, published by Myriad Editions

Set against a Trinidadian backdrop, Allen-Agostini’s debut novel has a blazing feminist message and tells the story of Alethea Lopez, an unforgettable woman nearing 40 who is at the start of a new journey freeing herself from a violent and abusive relationship. It touches on themes of gendered violence, racism and female liberation.

‘Salt Lick’ by Lulu Allison, published by Unbound Digital

Allison reimagines England in this dystopian novel. Rising sea levels, climate crisis and a global pandemic grip the reader. The book’s backdrop works to form the basis of what may become of our world. It touches on love and loss, as well as community spirit and resilience. When discussing the novel, judge Mary Ann Sieghart said it’s “an extraordinary, poetic, elegiac book”.

‘Careless’ by Kirsty Capes, published by Orion Fiction

Coming-of-age novel, Careless, is Capes’s debut and follows 15-year-old foster child, Bess, who learns that she is pregnant and has no one to tell. The book explores how the protagonist decides what she should do. Told with empathy and compassion, it’s equal parts heartbreaking and funny.

‘Remote Sympathy’ by Catherine Chidgey, published by Europa Editions

Set in Buchenwald concentration camp, Remote Sympathy is a bleak and harrowing WWII historical fiction novel. It follows three different characters, all of which are on different sides of German nazi atrocities. An SS officer, his wife and the incarcerated doctor she befriends while her husband is away. It’s been said that Chidgey doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable and barbaric truths.

‘The Paper Palace’ by Miranda Cowley Heller, published by Viking

Having been Reese Witherspoon’s book club pick for July 2021, if you’re looking for a summer read, this is it. It’s an evocative story that tells the tale of 50-year-old Elle who has a night of passion with her old flame Jonas while on a family summer getaway. Her husband and Jonas’s spouse are totally unaware. Touching on guilt and forgiveness, it’s undoubtedly a book you’ll gobble up.

‘Flamingo’ by Rachel Elliott, published by Tinder Press

Revolving around two families who are neighbours, Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline, and Eve and her son Daniel, Flamingo is about an unforgettable summer they spend together. But one day something happens that disrupts all this and secrets come to a head.

‘The Sentence’ by Louise Erdrich, published by Corsair

Poignant and witty, The Sentence is Edrich’s 23rd novel and combines contemporary events with a ghost story set in a Minneapolis bookshop. It’s a multifaceted novel that explores how history and heritage continue to shape modern-day.

'Build Your House Around My Body’ by Violet Kupersmith, published by Oneworld

Moving between forests, nightclubs and zoos, Build Your House Around My Body draws on Vietnamese folklore and history and is about two women who go missing two decades apart. The twists and turns in Kupersmith’s debut make it an unputdownable novel.

‘Sorrow and Bliss’ by Meg Mason, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss took the top spot in our guide to the best books of 2021 thanks to being an “exciting, funny, and thought-provoking novel”. It tells the story of 40-year-old Martha and her dysfunctional family, failed marriage and depression. While it “sounds like a truly awful misery read”, our writer noted that “it’s the funniest book of the year, with the most recognisable characters”.

‘The Exhibitionist’ by Charlotte Mendelson, published by Mantle

Touching on sacrifice, toxic family politics, queer desire, and personal freedom, Mendelson explores a heady mix of themes. The story is centred around the Hanrahan family, and in particular, the selfish father, Ray, as he prepares for his new exhibition. The book counts down to the event and chronicles how, slowly but surely, things start to unravel.

Judge, Anita Sathi, said it is a “fantastically gripping portrait of family dynamics, which manages to be both heart-breaking and humorous”.

‘The Book of Form and Emptiness’ by Ruth Ozeki, published by Canongate Books

This is “a deeply moving story of family, loss and love, and a provocative lesson in mindfulness and the art of mastering inner peace”, noted The Independent’s guide to five new books to read. It follows 13-year-old Benny Oh who starts hearing voices in his head after his father dies and explores how he learns to deal with it. Dorothy Koomson, one of the judges, said it’s “touching, humorous and beautiful in equal measure”.

‘This One Sky Day’ by Leone Ross, published by Faber & Faber

Ross conjures up a surreal and imaginative world “where butterflies are edible and each human is blessed with their own form of magic” noted our writer in their guide to the new books to read. It features a range of quirky characters and showcases a 24-hour period of true love and is said to be funny and insightful.

‘The Island of Missing Trees’ by Elif Shafak, published by Viking

Set in Cyrpus, The Island of Missing Trees is told from the perspective of a fig tree and follows the lives of two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, that meet in secret at a tavern. Exploring the legacy of secrecy on future generations, it was praised by Dorothy Koomson, one of the judges, for being a “hauntingly beautiful tale” that touches on “loss and identity, love and redemption”.

‘Great Circle’ by Maggie Shipstead, published by Transworld Publishers

Shipstead spent seven years writing her third novel, and it’s sure to be worth the wait. It offers a thrilling story of the life of a fearless female aviator who disappeared in 1950 while attempting a north-to-south circumnavigation of the earth, and an actor who portrays her on screen decades later. It’s a soaring novel that will undoubtedly grip you.

‘The Final Revival of Opal and Nev’ by Dawnie Walton, published by Quercus

Walton’s debut oral-historical book featured in Barack Obama’s 2021 reading list and follows a cult band in early Seventies New York. The author paints a portrait of the era that is rich in atmosphere and tells the story of Opal, a fiercely independent young woman, who is finding her niche in the creative scene and is asked to join a rock duo with Nev.

‘Creatures of Passage’ by Morowa Yejidé, published by Jacaranda Books

Set in Washington DC, Creatures of Passage explores a forgotten quadrant and the ghosts that haunt it. The novel follows grief-stricken Nephthys Kinwell and her 10-year-old nephew who are both learning to deal with the ghosts around them. It draws on love, loss and death.

This is a “really magical, unexpected plot. It was an addictive book to read and I kept wanting to go back and enter that world again and again”, praised one of the judges, Lorraine Candy.

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Title:

Content: Can technology help writers write?
• Bernd Debusman Jr.
• Reporter of Economic and Business Affairs
The famous American author Mark Twain was strongly frowned upon by those who thought it was possible for someone to learn how to write a novel.
One of his famous sayings on the subject is: “He who is not born with the queen of writing a novel will inevitably have a hard time trying to write a novel. ”
“If a person doesn ’ t have a clear idea of their story, that necessarily means that, in fact, they don ’ t have a story, ” he said.
British writer Stephen Fry has another way of framing the idea: Successful authors are those who know how difficult it is to write a book.
About 2.2 million books are published each year worldwide, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which monitors and counts books.
This figure includes both fictional novels and non-fictional works.
For most of these authors, the writing process has remained relatively unchanged since Twain was at the peak of his glory and giving in the late 19th century.
The process begins by outlining the plot and ideas, and then gradually decoding, developing and refining them over time.
But these days, the effectiveness of technology is growing in making the life of an author a little easier.
For Michael Green, an American statistician and data scientist turned novelist, the need to use technology to simplify the writing process and make it seamless came when he was in the middle of writing his first book.
After writing 500 pages of a complex story, he reached a point where he felt the process was becoming difficult to manage: “In the midst of editing, I reached a point where I started to feel like I had a lot of plots and characters. ”
“I had all these documents about the deeper aspects of the world I was working on creating.
I was worried about being able to track all the leads.
That ’ s the point where I turned again to my data science methodology to solve a complex, complex problem that has so many aspects and details. ”
The end result was that Green created Lynit, a digital platform that helps authors visualize, plan, and weave together the different elements, such as characters, plot aspects, themes, and major events, that make up the story.
The app is now in its experimental phase, and is being tested by a number of writers.
It is currently free, and enables users to draw and update complex digital templates or story maps.
Greene says many novelists start their work with more than just a general idea of a particular plot or character.
He says the process of adding Lynette to this initial idea is simple and easy.
“When a new idea shines in the mind of an author who wants to insert it into the story, he is able to insert it into a natural framework.
They are building a vision. ”
“They develop the story by adding one part after another, and as new ideas emerge, they make changes and adjustments, perhaps by creating new nodes (or interactions), or new relationships. ”
Technology is increasingly being harnessed once a writer has published his book to help authors connect with their readers.
This can be through the simple use of social media, as some writers welcome lengthy chats with their audience.
But there are other ways, where authors can turn to specialized companies such as Chicago-based Hiitide.
Its website and app allow writers to participate in live paid Q & A sessions with their readers.
Authors of self-help and self-development books can create and earn money through educational courses.
Ivan Shay, CEO of Hiitide, says the courses are “copies of writing workshops about a particular book. ”
“It helps you better understand the material and integrate its principles into everyday life. ”
As an example, he points to Ryan Holliday ’ s book The Obstacle is the Way: The Immortal Art of Turning Attempts into Triumphs, which draws its inspiration largely from Stoic Philosophy (an ancient Greek philosophical school that essentially holds that emotions are caused by errors in judging things and that a wise man does not suffer from such feelings).
“Users not only learn about Stoicism through the Hightide cycle, they can identify the virtues they want to embody and then follow them on a daily basis, ” Shay says.
“They can also participate in a Q & A seminar with author Ryan Holliday about his book. ”
Another tech company, California-based Crazy Maple Studios, says it ’ s helping authors revive their books.
Instead of giving readers just words in lines, its four apps, Chapters Scream, Spotlight and Kiss, add animations, music, sound effects and even games to digital books, enabling the reader to decide what the character does.
Joy Jia, the company ’ s founder and CEO, said: “The digital revolution and the emergence of digital readers (who rely on reading across digital devices) have brought about the first major transformation of the publishing industry. ”
Jia suggests that authors are more likely to employ technology as a result of the need to compete in a world where readers have many choices about how to spend their free time.
But experts still warn against over-reliance on technologies meant to help writers.
“Technology can be distracting, especially if you ’ re one step away from social media, or you ’ ve been trapped searching for a topic for too long, ” says Melissa Huffman, a trainer and ghost author.
“Five quick minutes you intended to take as a break can sometimes turn into hours of wasted writing time.
One of the tips I ’ m going to give on technology is to find work that fits your personality and writing styles, and then use it. ”
“But authors can sometimes fall into the trap of trying everything in the hope that they will find the magic tool, which can actually turn out to be another distraction. ”
But Michael Green believes that technology will take a more prominent place when it glitters the new generation of tech-oriented writers.
“What I ’ m seeing in Generation 21 and even younger writers is that they ’ re looking for technology to give them direction, they ’ re simply seeing it as a tool to learn and grow, rather than as work and extra effort, ” he says.

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

What time period produced science fiction works that included idealogies such as capitalism, and communism, and also threats of nuclear power, racism, pollution, and more?

Wells' novels, including "The Time Machine" (1895), "The War of the Worlds" (1898), and "The Invisible Man" (1897), introduced readers to concepts of time travel, alien invasion, and scientific

Title:

Content: The Joy and Worry of Chinese Translation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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Source: Guangming Daily
The modern Chinese understanding of the world began with translation. Liang Qichao once said: "Today's China wants to strengthen itself, the first policy, should be to translate books as the first thing."
"The reason why Chinese culture can always maintain youth, the panacea is translation." Ji Xianlin believes that the long river of Chinese culture, when there is water, there is less water, but it has never dried up, the reason is that there is new water injection.
The source of "new water" injection relies on translation, and the importance of translation cannot be overemphasized.
Nowadays, as an important part of the service industry, the high-quality development of the language service industry is playing a vital role in internal and external communication.
Among them, translation and publication of foreign languages have made great contributions to promoting China's academic development and cultural exchanges.
However, the quality of translation is not always high.
When reading some foreign translations, readers sometimes have this experience: every Chinese character in the book is known, but the strings of sentences are difficult to understand, and the difficult translation is difficult to understand.
The progress of computer technology, the expansion of Internet coverage and the rapid development of language services have completely changed the working environment of language production for translators, and machine translation has become an unavoidable existence for translators today.
Therefore, the discussion of translation and publishing needs more attention from a new perspective.
"New Water" Speaks: Translation and Publishing Industry Booms
Since the 1980s, China has published three sets of translations of classics of foreign literature: the People's Literature Publishing House, the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, and the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.
These Chinese translations of world classics have far-reaching influence, becoming the starting point for a generation to "look at the world".
"I grew up reading these books when I was young, so I got the idea of learning foreign languages and learning translation." Wang Yingchong, an associate professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, is now engaged in teaching and research on translation theory and practice, and refers to foreign translations she read as a child.
In the past decade, the domestic translation of foreign language works has flourished, which has been reflected in the "large volume and wide range" - the number of translations has soared, the types and fields are more extensive, and the number of translators is larger.
At the same time, translation efficiency and timeliness of publication have also been greatly improved, and it is particularly gratifying that some works with a narrow audience and a strong professional nature have also been translated into a large number of languages, which is of far-reaching significance for technology introduction, discipline construction and personnel training.
Among them, more publishing houses and book planning studios have begun to get involved in academic translation and publishing, and there has been a significant increase in classic works, cutting-edge works, and academic popularization works.
Li Xia, editor of the Commercial Press, said that this is closely related to the rapid development of Chinese scholarship and the increasing popularity of the international perspective. "Not only has the field of academic translation been expanded, but also the translation has become more specialized, and readers and publishers have increased their demand for translation quality."
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of the "Chinese Translation World Academic Books Series", and as a "key town of academic publishing", the Commercial Press is still updating and supplementing the series, and has published about 850 titles to date.
According to the State Press and Publication Administration, China now imports more than 10,000 titles of books every year, and the publication of translated books accounts for a considerable proportion of the total annual book publishing in China.
The translation of "Lin Zi" is big, and there are many Chinese translations of foreign classics on the market, but readers still need to work hard to find a high-quality translation.
The reason is that translation of foreign language works, on the one hand, has very high requirements for translators in both Chinese and foreign languages, and also needs to have a certain cultural accumulation and extensive knowledge reserve; on the other hand, it is time-consuming and laborious, and the translator's return and pay are often not proportional.
In the process of continuous efforts to "quality" and "quantity", the translation market still has insuperable diseases, which not only make readers unable to fully enjoy reading, but also cause certain obstacles to the high-quality development of the translation and publishing industry.
Whether it is academic research or industry practice, it is inescapable to discuss the factors affecting translation quality.
This is not only the premise of constructing translation theory, but also the action guide that all translators rely on to determine the direction of their efforts.
As an extremely important award in the industry, the fourth edition of the Lu Xun Literary Award for Literary Translation has not been filled with five places, and the fifth edition has been directly vacant, which has triggered the thinking of the translation community.
Scholar Li Jingduan immediately pointed out that it once again warned people that "we must explore the deep-seated factors that cause the 'vacancy', because it is not the translation award that is vacant, but the accountability for poor translation."
From Entrance to Entrance: Why a Good Translation Is Hard to Find
The translation industry has developed rapidly, but it is more market-oriented, and some academic works and some niche humanities works have not been introduced.
In the process of introducing works, publishers may have little long-term planning, often a "hammer of the East and a stick of the West", following the hot spots in the Western publishing industry.
Under the "baton" of the market, the balance of the selection of translation materials by the publishing house affects the quality.
There are more than 80 Chinese translations of The Little Prince published after 2000, which often makes ordinary readers wonder: Which translation is better? Li Bojie, a professor at the School of Foreign Languages of the University of International Economics and Trade, pointed out that "the translation of pure literature is lagging behind due to the problem of sales."
At the same time, the introduction of best-selling books, hot books are time-sensitive, such books are often closely related to social hot spots.
In the hot period of the introduction of domestic books, after translation, book editing and processing to the final printing, it is likely to miss the best period of book sales.
In a hurry to submit manuscripts, in a hurry to review, in a hurry to print and publish, less time to refine, polish, polish, improve, and so on, fell into a vicious circle.
"Low prices, under the pressure of time, you do not do, there will be others do." Some people in the industry said that in order to quickly occupy the market, some publishers prefer to reduce costs at a lower price, and some translators can quickly (not guarantee quality) complete the task.
All these have gradually formed the "inner volume" in the field of translation - the reverse elimination of bad money to expel good money.
Today, translators from universities, research institutes, publishing houses, translation companies, as well as freelance translators, are still a relatively discrete group overall, and it is difficult for “atomized individuals ” to form a solid relationship with the community.
"Because of the loose organization, translators rarely get the opportunity to learn collectively, and often repeat many problems that could have been avoided." At present, many publishers lack a professional community formed by translators and experts, and it is sometimes difficult for the demand side to effectively identify qualified and suitable translators, resulting in insufficient talent market matching.
In some countries, institutions such as translators' associations can restrain practitioners to a certain extent and form evaluation mechanisms.
"Translator resources are often in the hands of the editor, if the editor mobility is high, translator resources are easy to lose." Tujucano believes that the lack of a unified talent pool in the industry, resulting in "good books can not find translators, translators can not find good translation projects."
On the export side, the evaluation of translation quality is reflected in professional evaluation and public word of mouth.
At present, the evaluation of translation quality in the market mainly depends on the word of mouth of readers, which will cause the evaluation lag and the authenticity of the evaluation to a certain extent.
The mechanism of quality assurance of translation by publishing houses is different, which makes the translation level of published works vary greatly.
Jia Hanfei believes that the translation of scholars in colleges and universities can often guarantee a high standard, but the evaluation system of colleges and universities almost does not recognize the translation, coupled with the pressure of teaching, scientific research, administration and other work, so that teachers can not devote their energy to it.
What standards and measures should be used to measure translation results is another difficult question about norms and rules.
Yuan Nan, editor-in-chief of Translating Lin Publishing House, pointed out that "the problem of diversity of translation standards will make translators in trouble." Yan Fu has established "faith, da and ya" as the translation standard in the name of "the three difficulties of translation". It is sometimes difficult to harmonize standards within the translation community.
Therefore, sometimes even if the translator has enough attention, it may not be able to get the approval of all readers. "Yuan Nan said.
"The translator and the reader get along more like a process of grinding each other. The translator needs to grasp a degree in the long-term interaction with the reader, and this grasp is mobile," Tujucano believes.
"Messenger with a lamp": creating a good ecology for translation
In the view of experts, breaking the title to improve the quality of bottlenecks, economic support and evaluation assessment is an important grasp.
Zhang Chunyang, a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law, said that it is necessary to improve the treatment of translators to alleviate the "structural imbalance" in the translation talent market.
At present, the manuscript fee system of many publishing organizations has changed.
Some publishers use the version tax system, while others use the incentive system of bottom remuneration plus royalty, these changes are the reasons for the great improvement in the quality of translations in recent years.
"Translating foreign works is part of the service of foreign language people to society," said Jiang Li, vice president of the School of Foreign Languages at the University of International Economics and Trade.
"The international standard of academic evaluation mainly focuses on high-level papers and academic innovation, and universities pay far less attention to translation." In general, translation has not yet been classified as academic research.
Li Berger believes that "the current external understanding of translation, always feel that translation is very easy, lower than the 'grade' of research, so there is a lack of sufficient attention."
He said, “Today is the day of the Lord ’ s Resurrection; the day of the Lord ’ s Resurrection; the day of the Lord ’ s Resurrection; the day of the Lord ’ s Resurrection. ”
To cultivate the ability to translate is not only to cultivate, but also to create a good working environment.
According to different professional categories, it is necessary to evaluate the performance, contributions and capabilities of different categories of teachers in a targeted manner, and avoid "a ruler to the end".
Appropriately incorporating translation results into the teacher evaluation system, it has become another concern of academic circles for the high-quality translation of professional teachers.
In the face of the deep integration of language science and artificial intelligence, language technologies such as machine translation have gradually become an important force in the translation industry: HKUST Xunfei Translation Machine can translate more than 60 languages, Baidu Translation supports more than 200 languages … The rise of artificial intelligence translation has brought new challenges to traditional translation.
“Language is the carrier of thoughts and emotions, a translator has a soul, and a machine does not, ” Jiang said.“ For example, China often says ‘ realm ’, which is difficult for machines to understand, and translators will have different levels of understanding. ”
He said that the Chinese government has always attached great importance to its relations with China.
As for machine translation, Wang Yingchong believes that "to make good use of modern technology, we must not stand by ourselves and reject it, nor can we rely on it completely, and we have lost our basic skills and judgment."
Every cultural and technological revolution in history has been inseparable from the wave of translation. Translators are first learners, then communicators, and should be at the forefront of the field.
At the same time, it is necessary to keep in mind that translators should pay attention to their own upgrading and seek a balance between translation principles and market demand.
Xu Yuanchong regarded "happiness" as the highest level of translation, "better, better, less than the top, never stop" is his attitude.
It will take a long time for us to have more good translators like Xu Yuanchong.
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Title:

Content: My Drug Quest Life: There are no crutches, no spare wheelchairs in the Amazon rainforest – I can ’ t move without prosthetics
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
What we want you to know is
Cassandra Kuffer will take you everywhere with her stories of study, scientific research and family life, and let you feel her love for plants, her tenderness as a mother, her determination to overcome obstacles and her determination to pursue scientific research.
by Cassandra Leah Quave
Welcome to Amazon
Choosing a vocation is the most important thing in life, and choosing a vocation is luck.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1660
I sat on the rocking bench next to the trunk of the tree, waiting for the witch doctor.
In the middle of the day, I was shaded by this thick shrub, with shiny dark leaves and pointed, egg-sized bright red pods hanging from its branches.
I can't help but think of Christmas trees full of ornaments.
I admire Cecrepia, the umbrella tree of the nettle family, the leaves like open fingers of the palm, the crown spread out like a candlestick.
There was a fat brown figure hanging from one of the trees, moving very, very slowly, with long claws reaching out to the trunk little by little.
It's a sloth.
Three blue flashing butterflies skim across a nearby path, and their large metallic wings glow in the sun with each flapping of their wings. The insects are constantly buzzing, sometimes interspersing with the chorus of birds.
Every one of my senses is happy with the diversity of life, from the blue sky to the mud on the soles, life surrounds me.
The Amazon River Basin is the most biodiverse place on Earth.
There are more than 1,500 species of birds, nearly a thousand more than in Europe! More than 2,500 species of fish, more than 1,400 species of mammals, including sneaking jungle cats, jaguar and leopard cats, the grumpy capybara (the world's largest rodents), South American tapirs, various monkeys, and termites roaming the woodlands.
There are more than 1,500 species of amphibians here, so many species of insects that are difficult to estimate, and there are still many species in the forest that science cannot describe.
The doctor I met was Don Antonio.
He went to the palm hut deep in the botanical garden to get his things, and I sat on a bench waiting for him.
As I waited, I tried to knock the mud off my hiking boots, which we had just visited the jungle that morning. It couldn ’ t be knocked out, and the mud was still wet.
My backpack was next to me, worn out and packed with equipment and tools: photographic equipment, garden scissors, first aid kits, water bottles, iodine tablets, a Field Guide to the Families and Genera of Woody Plants of Northwest South America by Al Gentry, a notebook, a pen.
I arrived a week ago in this remote corner of Peru ’ s Amazon River basin.
I flew from Atlanta to Lima, then from Lima to Iquitos, and waited for a few days for the motorboat to take me upstream.
Iquitos is a remote town in the jungle, inaccessible by land, but the sixth largest city in Peru in terms of population.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when rubber was hot, it was once a rubber production center.
Today, the economy of Iquitos is dominated by the export of forest resources, including timber and fish, while attracting an endless stream of tourists to this gateway to the Peruvian Amazon.
The motorboat runs upstream along the Amazon River, then turns northwestward into the Napo River to reach the Adventure Lodge on the Sucusari River, close to the Ecuadorian border.
In June 1999, I was about to enter my senior year and just turned 21. This was my first trip to South America.
I have traveled with my family many times by car, and I also participated in the school ’ s European tour in high school.
Visiting such a pristine place by myself like this is a new experience for me.
As a research intern at the Adventure Lodge, I work in the ethnobotanical garden run by Antonio and his son Gilmer.
With Dr. Wilson ’ s introductory letter, along with the basic Spanish I learned in high school, and a little medical Spanish I learned while volunteering in the emergency room, I began to adapt to life in the research camp.
Antonio ’ s botanical garden grows only plants that can be used as traditional food, medicine, and tools.
In addition to tending the botanical garden, their father and son also guide the guests of the Adventure Hostel, taking them to the canopy walkway located deep in the forest near the botanical garden and research base.
Antonio walked slowly back, reaching out and grasping a pointed potion on the top of our heads.
At five feet six inches, Antonio is a few centimeters shorter than me, with dark eyes, charcoal black hair and broad shoulders.
His hands are full of calluses for taking care of plants, but his status is not as simple as that of a gardener.
He is also an Amazonian shaman who uses plants to treat patients in nearby villages.
The garden is just his normal job.
Antonio told me that the tree was called the achiote.
I seriously looked through the field guide to find it. The carmine tree is a redwood plant (Bi xaorellana) of the mahogany family.
We developed a tacit understanding: he would patiently explain the characteristics of the plant in a light tone, and when he encountered Spanish words I could not understand, he would say it again, so that I could find it later.
I was preoccupied, transcribing notes as quickly as I could, my frowning frown not knowing whether to express concentration or confusion.
He squeezed the pods in his hand along the seams of the pods, revealing the smooth red seeds, about the size of cranberries, and similar in color, but with a harder texture.
He crushed the seeds of the pod with his fingers and rubbed them into a paste.
I read with interest, and wrote this process in a notebook, next to the text is a fruit sketch.
Then he leaned closer to me and put the freshly prepared ointment on my lips and around my mouth.
When he did that, my brain was spinning.
Is this a balm for cold sores?
Or chapped lips or other problems?
Carefully, he picked up the bag he had just returned to the hut and took something out of it, so that it shone in the sunlight that was shining through the canopy of the tree.
It was a small mirror, and he held it up in front of me.
I saw red ointment on my mouth and on my teeth.
The expression on his face changed from a sly smile to a big smile, and he pointed his finger at me.
"You wipe your lipstick!" he laughed, almost to the point of rolling in the woodland.
I laughed too.
I look like a clown.
Plants have been a major source of medicine ever since humans left the African savannah on their legs.
In 1991, while hiking in the Alps, two people were lucky to find the 5,300-year-old remains of Ötzi, along with hunting tools, berries and poromycetes.
This porous birch fungus produces agaric acid, a powerful laxative that Oz may use to treat whips that scientists have found in his intestines.
The earliest written records of medicinal plants date back to ancient Egypt in 1550 BC.
There is a scroll measuring more than 65 feet in length, recording about 700 plant formulations and treatments for various ailments, including chronic wounds and skin diseases.
Another record related to ancient medicine comes from China, written in the year 2000 BC by Jomo, called the Shennong Herbal Sutra.
The book details 365 herbs, including the geographical location of each plant, the time of collection, the treatment characteristics, the method of preparation and the dosage.