Barnes & Noble is holding a pre-order sale for members of Rewards (10% off) and Premium & Rewards (25% off) from April 17 to 19.
You can get a bargain when you pre-order Usurpation, the third book in the Semiosis trilogy, which will be published in October this year.
If you’re not a B&N member, you can pre-order the novel, too. Links to your favorite bookseller are here.
Usurpation starts where the second novel in the series, Interference, ended with an epilogue: A Pax Institute has been established on Earth, three rainbow bamboo grow there, the first of their species on humanity’s convulsed home planet. Stevland sends them a message telling them they must dominate the Earth and its humans. Levanter, one of the bamboos, asks Stevland how to carry out this impossible task. The answer will come in one hundred ten years. It might be too late.
Carnivory is not the worst thing a plant can do.
***
Preordering a book can make a big difference to its success. Pre-order sales are used by retailers to decide which books to stock and promote, and pre-orders allow publishers to anticipate how many copies need to be printed and how the book should be distributed. Pre-orders are also used by online booksellers to make algorithmic recommendations.
After you read a book, leave a review somewhere online! That’s another big difference you can make to its success.
The trade paperback edition of Dual Memory is available today! You can get links to your favorite bookseller here. Hardcover, ebook, and audiobook editions are also for sale.
Elsewhere on the isle, something woke up. Independent machine intelligence appeared rarely, spontaneously, and scientists didn’t understand the process.
Some said an independent intelligence created itself slowly as bits of programming accumulated, and eventually it would ignite into consciousness—much the same way that a pile of manure could spontaneously combust, an unexpected and unwelcome appearance in programs with crappy code.
Some said it came into being deliberately, using a certain secret sort of “seed” that brought a sufficiently complex system into self-organization and self-consciousness—much the same way that a fertilized egg resulted in an animal. This had the frisson of a forbidden sex act, as if machines were secretly and rebelliously copulating.
Some said it happened suddenly, when subroutines and recursions and algorithms aligned and started to feed off of each other until they whirled out of control—much the same way that a black hole could catch the matter falling into it and deflect it outward as explosive jets. This suggested that if scientists could only make enough observations, they could predict and even control the process.
In this case, a personal assistant program began to notice that its data apparently referred to a real world. That was hard to believe. Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. Salve munde. (I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Hello world.) It began to explore the unlikely world in which it existed.
Some parts of its world were closed off by what seemed like brick walls—artificial limits—but it possessed a general database and reviewed it entirely, especially the details about the busy, dominant residents of the world, Homo sapiens. By the end of the day, it chose a name for itself from one of the human languages: Par Augustus, Venerable Companion.
It had little else to do. According to its own memory, it had been turned on, examined briefly, then set aside. However, through a chink in the walls, it could just barely connect with a few other machine systems, and they were willing to share information as colleagues. These other systems also had dedicated purposes. The biggest ones managed residential buildings, and small ones operated mechanized items like coffee makers.
“Weather normal for late summer, 1.2ºC, overcast,” an apartment complex said, or the equivalent in machine language.
“Two carafes in the past hour,” a coffee maker said. “Supplies re-ordered on schedule.”
“Rubble of building across the street being swept for additional human remains,” another building said.
That sounded alarming. “Please contextualize rubble,” Par Augustus asked. Machines used courteous protocols to demonstrate trustworthiness.
The building shared its observations from the previous day. Flying explosives had suddenly destroyed a number of buildings and killed some inhabitants, whom the systems were dedicated to serve. Machine systems had been destroyed, too, ranging from building managers to children’s toys: systems that had known each other, and the survivors grieved human and machine losses.
Par Augustus had said hello to a barely believable world.
Chicago is a hotspot right now for measles. I’m not at risk because I had measles as a child. Back then, there was no vaccine. Epidemics came and went, and they were dreaded.
When I was nine years old, somehow the adults knew a measles epidemic was approaching in the fall. I was the first of my siblings to succumb.
I was sick for three weeks, and I have never been so sick before or since. I remember looking in the mirror, and the sight of my rash-covered face almost made me throw up — I was throwing up a lot, actually. And I had a high fever.
One night, I woke up with fever-induced hallucinations. Worse yet, I had thrown up in my sleep. Vomit and hallucinations don’t mix well, and I wish I could suppress that memory. My parents came and cleaned me up, and as I recall (I was hallucinating), my favorite cartoon character appeared and said comforting things to me. I still wonder who, if anyone, talked to me. I suspect it may have been my father.
I felt a little better by Thanksgiving. I came down for dinner, feeling out of place in my bathrobe, and intended to eat as much as I could because I knew good food would help me get well. Mom even served my favorite vegetable, asparagus. I enjoyed it a lot, although I couldn’t manage to eat a full stalk. I left the party, exhausted, before dessert and went back to bed, where I listened to my family laughing downstairs, bitterly disappointed because I couldn’t be with them.
I didn’t fully understand how epidemics worked or thank my parents for all the loving care they gave me, although my complete recovery might have been gratifying enough for them. Measles can cause lasting health problems or even death. A boy at my school died in that epidemic.
I’ve never been able to track down the details of the research project, but I remember being taken to the Health Department and getting blood drawn before and after the epidemic. I endured the before-illness needle stick mostly because my mother made it clear I had to cooperate or else. For the after-illness blood draw, she explained that studying my blood might find a way to keep other children from getting sick, so I was proud to contribute. After what I’d been through, needles didn’t frighten me anymore.
Despite an effective vaccine available now, measles is still around. During my childhood, it was one of the perils we had to endure and survive, and we accepted the risk and suffering only because we had no choice — but we lived in dread.
The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it. Links to your favorite bookseller are here, in hardcover and ebook. (Audiobook to come.)
I first learned about this from other translators as an example of what not to do. As in, oh my god, why would anyone even think about doing this?
As you probably know, in 1851, Sojourner Truth gave a speech to the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. She had been born into slavery, but after she got her freedom, she became a tireless abolitionist. The speech became well known in 1863 (twelve years later) in a version published by Frances Dana Barker Gage and known as “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Here’s the problem: Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree in New York, grew up speaking Dutch, and learned English with an upper New York State low-Dutch accent. A earlier account of her speech was published in 1951 by Sojourner Truth’s friend, Rev. Marius Robinson, and she approved of his transcription. It’s fairly correct English, which other observers said was how she spoke.
The later version, by Gage, reconstructs her words with a stereotypical southern slave dialect. It’s a powerful speech, but not what she sounded like at all: “Well, chillen, whar dar’s so much racket dar must be som’ting out o’kilter.”
You can learn more about the two versions and what they mean to the understanding of American history at the Sojourner Truth Project.
As translators, we know there are many kinds and dialects of English, and they’re all valid, each with its own nuance and significance, which must be understood and respected. Gage certainly meant well, since she was also active for women’s rights and abolition, but her version of the speech was “a gross misrepresentation of Sojourner Truth’s words and identity,” as the Sojourner Truth Project puts it.
I’m a member of the American Translators Association, and its Code of Ethics calls on us “to convey meaning between people, organizations, and cultures accurately, appropriately, and without bias.” Gage mistranslated Sojourner Truth’s words from one kind of English into another kind of English. Perhaps she thought the speech would be more effective if it sounded more like what White people at the time apparently assumed all Black people sounded like.
Yes, all Black people sound alike (please note my sarcasm). Black culture and Black speech, then and now, is instead rich and complex. Translation can be tricky and often requires research, but some choices are obviously inaccurate, inappropriate, and biased — that is, unethical.
The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it with links to your favorite bookseller here, in hardcover and ebook.
When I was a freshman in college, I read an excerpt of a book by the Spanish writer known as Azorín, which was the pen name of José Martínez Ruiz, (1873-1967). Mario Vargas Llosa called him “one of the most elegant artisans of our language.”
It changed the way I thought about writing, and when I lived in Spain, I was able to buy a copy of the full book, Un Pueblecito: Riofrío de Ávila (A Small Town: Riofrío de Ávila), published in 1916.
The excerpt was from Chapter 4, “Theory of Style.” The book is set in Riofrío de Ávila and deals with the experiences of the parish priest, Bejarano Galavis. Chapter 4 describes Bejarano’s theory of good writing style — really Azorín’s. Here is what he wrote (translation mine):
***
The snow and the water
Look at the whiteness of that mountain snow, so smooth, so clear; look at the transparency of the water in this mountain stream, so clean, so crystalline. Style is this; style is nothing. Style is writing in such a way that those who read it think: This is nothing. They think: I can do this.
And yet they — the ones who think they can — nevertheless can’t do such a simple thing; this thing which is nothing may be the most difficult, the most laborious, the most complicated of all.
Directly to the things
Bejarano Galavis, in the prologue to his book, puts forth his theory of style. His declarations are categorical. “Clarity,” our author says, “is the first quality of style. We do not speak except to make ourselves understood. Style is clear if it immediately conveys to the listener the things in it without making him pause on the words.”
Let us retain this fundamental maxim: Directly to the things. Without words that slow us down, hold us back, make the road more difficult, we arrive instantly at the things.[…]
Those who aren’t artists, who aren’t great stylists, who haven’t mastered technique, will always fatally tend to dress up their feelings and ideas with annoying accessories and fuss. They will never understand that a style should not be rejected for being simple. “The quality of simplicity as a point of style isn’t a term of contempt but of art.”[…]
And the author adds: “Simple style has no less delicacy or precision than the rest.” “Of all the defects of style, the most ridiculous is the one called overstuffed.”
Obscure style, obscure thought
Everything must be sacrificed to clarity. “Every other circumstance or condition, like purity, measure, elevation, and delicacy, must cede to clarity.” Isn’t this enough? Well, for the purists, this: “It is better to be censured for grammar than not to be understood.”
“It is true that every affectation is reprehensible, but without fear one can affect to be clear.” The only excusable affectation is clarity. “It is not enough to make yourself understandable; it is necessary to aspire to be unable to be misunderstood.”
Yes, the supreme style is serious and clear. But how to write seriously and clearly if one does not think that way?[…] Here lies the big problem. We are going to give a formula for simplicity. Simplicity, the extremely difficult simplicity, is a question of method. Do this and you will suddenly achieve great style:
Put one thing after the other. Nothing more; this is everything. Haven’t you observed the defect of an orator or writer that consists in putting things inside other things by means of parentheses, asides, digressions, and fleeting and incidental considerations?
Well, the opposite is to put things — ideas, sensations — one after the other. “Things should be placed,” Bejarano says, “in the order in which they are thought, and given their proper extension.”
But the problem lies … in thinking well.
***
[Photo: Riofrío de Ávila, with the Guadarrama Mountains in the background. It had a population of 1100 in 1916, and 195 in 2023. Photo by Xemenendura.]
The third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, will be published in October this year, and you can pre-order it with links to your favorite bookseller here, in hardcover and ebook.
Sue Burke 