The cruelty of English professors

They’re monsters, I tell you. They team up with publishers and become real horrors. My colleague here at UMM, Josh Johnson, has written a book I’ve been looking forward to for a while, The Forever Sea, and I get the alert this morning that it has been automatically downloaded into my Kindle app. Today! 19 January! The first day of spring semester classes! So now it’s going to be sitting there, taunting me, and I’m not going to be able to get to it for a while.

Did he do this intentionally, knowing what our academic calendar looks like? Does DAW books routinely torment their academic clients with this kind of scheduling? Temptation is unkind.

The first book in a new environmental epic fantasy series set in a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea.

Hah. The first book in a series. We’ll get even — he’s going to have to write more books while holding down a teaching load!

Since I haven’t read it yet, you’ll have to get by with the testimonials of those who have.

“I can rarely remember being this excited for a debut novel. This was everything I wanted it to be. Wind-swept prairie seas, pirates, magic, and found families.” —Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning author of the Lady Astronaut series

“Richly imagined and beautifully written, with a highly original and very creepy magic system—The Forever Sea is wonderful.” —R. F. Kuang, Astounding Award-winning author of The Poppy War

“Loved The Forever Sea. Loved it. Sheer joy.” —Joanne Harris, internationally bestselling author of Chocolat

“A beautifully imagined dive into the unknown.” —G.V. Anderson, World Fantasy Award winning author of “Das Steingeschöpf”

“Beautifully lyrical and imaginative, Johnson’s debut sings a twisting tale of adventure full of diverse characters and a lush world ripe to fall in love with. With a heart that will haunt you, this ecopunk story is unlike any you’ve seen before.” —Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister

“Lush descriptions of plant life abound… When combined with the exceptional protagonist and themes of embracing the unknown, [The Forever Sea] calls to mind Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series. With a good balance of grit and tenderness, this entertaining story makes a nice addition to the growing hopepunk subgenre.” —Publishers Weekly

“Hopepunk”? Is that a thing now?

It would warrant a larger lab and more money, after all

You may look on this cartoon as an example of a scientific catastrophe.

A real scientist, though, would know that this is a strong, positive outcome, one that was already enumerated in their grant proposal. No answer is a wrong answer! Every outcome is grist for the mill that is the scientific method!

I, for example, might have this as a potential, if unlikely, outcome of my lab work.

That result would be awesome.

A graveyard adventure

I’ve wanted to photograph this spectacular church and graveyard in Starbuck, MN (about 20 miles away from me) for a while, and this morning, on a whim, I decided to drive out early in the morning to explore it. The plan was to catch the sunrise light, maybe get some nice background, but no, the weather did not oblige. Instead, we got a pale gray sky that slowly brightened, uniform and uniformly uninteresting. I took a few shots anyway. Maybe I’ll try again on a different day.

This is the Indherred Lutheran Church, and the steeple declares that it was built in 1896. The graveyard is significantly older, though — I found tombstones from the 1860s, and other stones so eroded they were unreadable. Most of the names were German and Scandinavian, as you’d expect. It’s hard to imagine living in this remote part of the country 160 years ago, when there was probably nothing but a dirt road connecting your tiny community of farmers to markets and civilization; I think the railroads were mainly built in the 1880s and later.

There were some funky tombstones there that made me wonder about the story behind them, like this stone tree-trunk for Swerre Torenius A. Wollan. Yeah, that’s not a rope, it’s sculpted. It’s got spectacular lichen growing on it, too.

The other question in my mind was what language they were speaking. I know a little rusty German, and this ain’t it. Instead of “born” and “died”, we’ve got “fodt” and “dode”. Maybe someone will recognize it. Is this some archaic form of Danish? Some other Scandinavian language?

I couldn’t even guess what this inscription says. It’s tantalizingly germanic, but that’s as far as I can get. Also, lots of the stones had this hand symbology, like the handshake on this one.

I also sent one photo off to affinitysubmissions@gmail.com, we’ll have to see if it makes the cut. You know that as part of our fundraiser, we’re inviting everyone to send in photos with a Fall/Halloween theme, right? That means you, too. Maybe your work will end up in our art collection for everyone to see! We also welcome donations to our cause, if you don’t feel like taking pictures.