As you may know, many of the characters in the novel Dual Memory are named after tulips because the novel was vaguely inspired by the tulip bubble in Holland in the 1630s.

In my novel, Miss Fanny Kemble is an artist driven out of a shared studio by a jealous rival.

The flower called Miss Fanny Kemble is a “broken” tulip from the early 1830s praised as the finest tulip ever produced in England. 

The tulip was named after a popular young actress, Fanny Kemble, born into a British theater family in 1809. She toured the United States in the 1830s performing Shakespeare and became so popular that other women copied her hairstyle.

In 1834, she married an American, then discovered that he was an heir to a plantation in Georgia. She was repelled by the slavery there, and the marriage didn’t last long, but she recorded the “simple horror” of what she saw and published a book, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. It helped cement European support for the Union in the Civil War.

Works about her include the biography Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars by Catherine Clinton, published by Oxford University Press. Photo from public domain.

I’ll be at Windycon, Chicagoland’s longest running science fiction convention this weekend, November 10 to 12. Usually about 1,000 members attend. This is an all-volunteer fan-run event, more intimate than mega-conventions, and everyone gets a chance to have fun and conversations with friends and special guests. You can join at the door. It will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Oakbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

This year’s theme: Adventure Is Out There. We’ll have an art show, charity drive, dealers room, gaming, amateur radio broadcast at W9W, workshops, cosplay, theater, music, concerts, panels, science presentations, snacks, beer, and parties. If you see me, say hi!

Here’s my schedule:

Writer’s Workshop, Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. A critique-session workshop, usually with doughnuts (thanks, Rich!), prior registration required.

SETI Protocols, Saturday, 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., York Room. What are the protocols for alien contact? A lot of people and organizations, such as NASA, have put serious thought into this. We’ll discuss their intractable questions and try to come up with reasonable answers. Sue Burke; J. Taylor, moderator.

The Many Types of Fantasy, Saturday, 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. Ogden Room. From high fantasy to low fantasy — and let’s not forget the popular epic fantasy. Who determines the meaning of these distinctions? Are they different? How many kinds of fantasy are there? Let us count the ways… Richard Chwedyk, R. Garfinkle, Z Jeffries, Angeli Primlani; Sue Burke, moderator.

The Obligatory Dr. Who Panel: Good-Bye Rubber Suits, Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Hunt Room. Has it lost its nostalgic charm since the special effects are better? P. Hahn, J. Skwarski; Sue Burke, moderator (but I have opinions!).

What if you could adopt rescue dragons the way you can adopt rescue dogs? Who would do the adopting? How? Where?

These questions led to my story “The Virgin Who Rescues Dragons” in NewMyths Anthologies Volume 4: The Cosmic Muse. It just came out, and you can buy it through this link:

https://books2read.com/b/br6Z67

I drew inspiration for my story from The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones. That book is a parody of tourist guidebooks, and it lists the common tropes of fantasy fiction. I studied up on Dragons, Virgins, Evil Mages, Boy Kings, Dark Lords, and Foreboding Castles, then added a few Compelling Motivations, Backstories, and Inner Conflicts — and soon, I had a fun tale to tell.

The Cosmic Muse will give you 40 stories and poems involving magic or expressing awe at the universe, with cover art by Fiona Meng, its third eye promising insight and inspiration. I’m excited to be included among so many impressive authors.

***

OTHER NEWS:

André Santana has been nominated for Best Science Fiction Audiobook Narration for Dual Memory by SOVAS, the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences. Congratulations André! The winner will be announced December 10.

Alex Kingsley has reviewed Dual Memory for Ancillary Review of Books, and I think they explain wonderfully the role of art and artists for both humans and AIs in the novel. Beautiful Things We Weren’t Supposed to Make: Review of Dual Memory by Sue Burke

This fall, Merriam-Webster.com updated its dictionary with 690 new words. One of those words is nyctinasty, a noun meaning “plant movement (such as the closing of a flower’s petals or the reorientation of a leaf’s position) that occurs in response to changes in light intensity (such as the onset of darkness) and that typically involves changes in cellular turgor: the nastic movement of the parts of some plants that occurs in the absence of a directional stimulus and that is associated with the plant’s circadian cycle.”

Basically, it means that the plant folds up parts, like leaves and flowers, at night. The plant snuggles up and goes to sleep. The prayer plant (Maranta leuconura) is one example. Other common nyctitropic plants are some species of Oxalis, also known as wood sorrel or false shamrocks. They’re often sold around St. Patrick’s Day in the United States.

St. Patrick’s Day sales are how I got the two plants shown in the pictures, Oxalis triangularis (the purple one), and Oxalis regnellii, also called Oxalis triangularis ssp. papilionacea (the green one). The difference is day and night: plants on the move.

The word has been around in botanical circles for a long time. Merriam-Webster decided that nyctinasty isn’t a niche word anymore. It’s now safe for non-scientists to use, so use it wisely and often.

My good friend, Cristina Jurado, has a new collection of short stories available, Alphaland and Other Tales. It includes a story I translated from Spanish into English, “Embracing the Movement.”

I met Cristina when I was living in Spain, and I’ve collaborated with her on a number of projects. She’s an award-winning author, enthusiastic editor, and cheerful promoter of speculative fiction. You can recognize her from across a room by her wide, warm smile.

This collection includes nine short stories, and the back cover describes them this way: “Otherness is the idea that permeates all these speculative stories, full of characters troubled by the misconstruction of their identities, and in permanent search for answers in the margins of reality.”

I translated “Abrazar el movimiento” (Embracing the Movement), an intense first-contact story whose beautiful images hide horror.

Every translation has delightful problems. Many words never have exact equivalents. In this case, the challenge started with the first sentence: No somos tan diferentes, forestera. “We are not so different…” and then there’s that word: forestera. It is used repeatedly throughout the story, and I had to get it right.

The Real Diccionario Española defines forastero/a as someone or something que es o viene de fuera del lugar: “that is or comes from another place,” a stranger, an outsider. But there’s more: forastero is male, forastera is female. In the context of the story, it matters that the person being addressed is identified as female. I needed to find a way to preserve that sense.

Thesauruses listed close-but-not-quite words like foreigner, nonnative, outlander, alien, nonresident, drifter, transient, wanderer … which led to nomad, rambler, roamer, rover, stroller, vagabond, wanderer, wayfarer … Wait. The word rover suggested something … the Mars rovers, Perseverance, Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity, and Sojourner. The Sojourner was named after Sojourner Truth. In 1797, she was born into slavery as Isabella Bomfree in New York State, and after she became free, she chose a new name because she felt called to travel and testify for the abolition of slavery and for the improvement of women’s rights.

“Sojourner” means someone who stays as a temporary resident, who comes from another place. The word in English has associations with space exploration, and it’s a name still being used for baby girls today.

I decided I’d found the word for forastera, although I needed to reinforce the female meaning in the first reference, and I realized that I could do so by introducing an important element from further within the story. Finally, I had the opening line in English:

“We are not so different, sister sojourner.”