General Update

Well, life is busy at the moment, what with the rewrites on the novella, the early weeks of term happening, occasional exploding baths and the like.

I'm not getting a lot of time to read non-research stuff at present, but The Separation and Natural History continue to be good. On the research front I've also been reading a pre-proof copy of the novella which comes before Peculiar Lives in its series, which continues a notable trend in this particular series of being rather excellent. (Soon, I hope, I'll be able to mention explicitly which series this is.)

I've also heard from the representative of the estate of one of the S.F. authors I've been hoping to quote, granting me permission to use some specific excerpts. This is a relief, as the quotes in question are crucial context-setting stuff, and help to establish from the beginning that the (rather unappealing) opinions of my narrator are not necessarily my own. I've not yet had written confirmation of the permission, but there's every reason to suppose it's in the bag.

In other news, the students have been running amok at the Library -- talking in the quiet areas, putting books back in the wrong places, making "beep-beep-beep" noises when they walk through the security barrier, and similar horrors. All of this is perfectly normal, of course, and makes me long for the days when librarians were constitutionally empowered to impose custodial setences (or did I make that up?).

I think that many of our students have grown up without direct experience of libraries, and therefore have little conception of the behaviour that's expected of them within one. (The teachers, on the other hand, are often still of the generation which saw librarians as terrifying authority figures, which can be quite fun.)

Oh, and my scooter blew over in the violent winds the other day, smashing its left-side mirror. Fortunately I wasn't straddling it at the time.