Once Upon a Time...

from Lapham's Quarterly
 

Diabo na Cruz - Terra Ardida

TERRA ARDIDA
Terra ardida
Dizimada terra prenha
Orla da formosa insanidade
Onde a serra fora a única fronteira
E meu pai o que sabia
Sem saber mo ensinou
Hora do cerco
Corda de povos a saque
Horror de aldeia em aldeia
 Lebre no monte
A mirar do penedo
Por onde segue a alcateia
 Golpe ao anoitecer
Salve-se quem puder
Bem confiada lisura
 Não te hão-de proteger
Os dotes da minha mulher
Quando ficares sem a tua
Terra ardida
Dizimada terra prenha
Orla da formosa insanidade
Onde a serra fora a única fronteira
E meu pai o que sabia
Sem saber mo ensinou
 Hora do cerco
Corda de povos a saque
Quadrilha de bandoleiros
Desce no monte
Pelos mesmos atalhos
De antepassados guerreiros
Veados a deambular
Cinzas caem do ar
Espalham-se em campos de flores
Uns vêm ajudar
Outros dar que falar
Pôr fama de benfeitores
Terra ardida
Dizimada terra prenha
Orla da formosa insanidade
Onde a serra fora a única fronteira
E meu pai o que sabia
Sem saber mo ensinou

Botanical Tapestry, by our very own Vanessa Barragão

HER website

The Aeronauts

Plato's Allegory of the Cave, voiced by none other than Orson Welles (1973)

BOOK

Africa

The Dark Side of the Moon :)

Wish You Were Here

Hallowe'en for pretentious children, or the Art of Tom Gauld

Happy Hallowe'en

On Translation

His Dark Materials - full trailer

Dia Internacional dos Tradutores 2019

"Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best."

I'm a translator :)

On the fifth day - Jane Hirshfield

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.

In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

Fictional Drugs and Substances - ooooh

Writers Emergency Supplies, or the Art of Tom Gauld

A Literary Guide to Whiskey

Find it much bigger at Electric Lit [hic]

80's & 90's albums - the ultimate editions, or the art of Wrong Hands

John Atkinson, the genius behind Wrong Hands

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

Safira Padparadscha do Malawi

Portugal Gemas

Esta é uma variedade muito especial e valorizada de safira que foi primeiramente descrita no Sri Lanka e que junta na sua cor uma proporção muito particular de vermelho e amarelo. Segundo Richard Hughes (um dos maiores especialistas em safiras no Mundo), o nome deriva de uma corruptela de o sansrito/cingalês “padmaraga” (padma = lotus; raga = color), em alusão à cor da flor de lotus. Saber que tonalidade se pode enquadrar na designação padparadscha gera, por vezes, controvérsia, até porque não existe grande consenso na definição desta variedade. Os laboratórios gemológicos mais importantes definem-na como de cor pastel entre o rosa e o laranja.

Hoje em dia, as safiras padparadscha ocorrem não só no Sri Lanka, mas também no Vietname, Tanzânia, Malawi e Madagáscar, sendo ocasionalmente aquecidas a baixas temperaturas para melhoramento da cor. Os seus valores de mercado, que variam com a qualidade da cor e com a dimensão, são elevados, podendo atingir as várias dezenas de milhar de euros por quilate.

Na imagem, magnífica safira padparadscha com 5,65 quilates (12,08 x 9,80 x 6,34 mm) de Chimwadzulu Hill no Malawi. Foto Mia Dixon © Pala International

Science Fiction terms and their origins

From i09

Science Fiction: The origin of the actual term "science fiction" is a bit mysterious. The first use cited by the OED is in William Wilson's 1851 A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject. In it, Wilson looks at how a single object might be perceived through the eyes of six different animals: a bee, an ant, a spider, a perch, a robin, and a cat. Wilson terms this work "Science-Fiction":

We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as we believe such books likely to fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail. [Thomas] Campbell says that "Fiction in Poetry is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanting resemblance". Now this applies especially to Science-Fiction, in which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true – thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science, clothed in a garb of the Poetry of Life.

The term "scientific romance," which described early works in the genre, may have had a slightly earlier debut. It shows up in an 1845 North American Review article about Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a popular, anonymously published work of speculative natural history (which some suspected Charles Darwin authored but was actually the work of a different evolutionary thinker, geologist Robert Chambers). Other terms competed for the genre descriptor, including "scientific fiction."

The reason we call the genre "science fiction" today is thanks to pioneering scifi publisher Hugo Gernsback, for whom the Hugo Awards are named. Life Magazine actually credited Gernsback with coining the term and according to some sources, he hoped to trademark it. It wasn't Gernsback's first choice for the genre name, however; that would be "scientifiction."

Alien: Alien is a word that has long been used to refer to something foreign, but when did it become the go-to term for a being from another planet? The first person to use alien this way was probably Victorian historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle, who at one point during his life, left behind his literati lifestyle to serve as a tutor to a farmer's son in Yorkshire. In a letter to a friend, Carlyle is deliberately (and amusingly) melodramatic about life in York and his inability to fit in amongst his new neighbors, "I am like a being thrown from another planet on this dark terrestrial ball," he wrote, "an alien, a pilgrim among its possessors." In science fiction, "alien" isn't used as a catch-all term for extraterrestrial beings until 1929, when Science Wonder Stories published Jack Williamson's story The Alien Intelligence. It didn't necessarily catch on right away; many sources cite the first use of "alien" for extraterrestrial beings in science fiction as Philip Barshofsky's 1934 story One Prehistoric Night, which refers to Martians as aliens. It would certainly be an auspicious introduction for the word; the story involves Martians traveling to prehistoric Earth to battle dinosaurs.

Android: Long before the invention of the word "robot," humans dreamed of mechanical beings. Clockwork artisans would construct all manner of automata—birds that flap their wings, monks that shuffle in silent prayer, dolls that pretend to serve tea or play the dulcimer. Naturally, legends popped up about automata that could do incredible—for the time and technology available, impossible—things. One of those legends surrounded the 13th-century Catholic saint Albertus Magnus, who was supposed to have built a mechanical head that could answer the questions posed to it. When Ephraim Chambers wrote his 1728 Cyclopædia, he paired the Greek prefix for "man" ("andr-") with the suffix for "having the form or likeness of" ("-oid") when describing Albertus Magnus' mythical construct, dubbing it an "androides." By the 19th century, the word was well in vogue, used in patent applications for human-shaped automata. Lucasfilm holds the trademark on the shortened form of the word "droid"; the first instance of that form of the word may be in Mari Wolf's 1952 story Robots of the World! Arise!—but it never got a toy line.

Ansible: Ursula K. Le Guin coined this word for a device for instantaneous communication across the vast distances of space in her 1966 novel Rocannon's World. She used it in her later works and soon it spread across the works of other science fiction authors as well. But where does the word come from? A 2001 Usenet post by Dave Goldman claims that Le Guin told him "ansible" comes from the word "answerable" and that she was amused to learn that word is also an anagram for "lesbian."

Beam: While the word "beam" evokes visions of Captain Kirk saying, "Beam me up, Scotty," beam already refers to the transport of matter in the "Matter Transmitter" entry in the 1951 Dictionary of Science Fiction. "Beamed" is used as a verb to describe how matter transmitters work in stories like A. E. van Vogt's The Story of Null-A and The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster (a story filled with fighting-beam, pain-beams, and all other manner of beams), but neither of those stories themselves use "beam" as a verb. It's an example of a term coming about not from science fiction itself, but from descriptions of science fiction.

Blaster: Who shot a blaster first? The (rather mysterious) writer Nictzin Dyalhis is believed to have first referred to a scifi gun as a "blastor" (with an "o") in When the Green Star Waned, an early entry into the space opera genre, published in Weird Tales in 1925:

Well it was for me that, in obedience to Hul Jok's imperative command, I was holding my Blastor pointing ahead of me; for as I blundered full upon the monstrosity it upheaved its ugly bulk—how I do not know, for I saw no legs nor did it have wings—to one edge and would have flopped down upon me, but instinctively I slid forward the catch on the tiny Blastor, and the foul thing vanished—save for a few fragments of its edges—smitten into nothingness by the vibration hurled forth from that powerful little disintegrator.

This may also be the first use of the word "disintegrator" to refer to a weapon in science fiction.

6. Credit: The universe's most generic form of currency first shows up John W. Campbell's The Mightiest Machine, which was serialized in Astounding starting in December 1934 and stars Campbell's recurring character Aarn Munro, when one character complains about having to build "a five-million-credit flying laboratory." Later, the same character proposes naming a rocketship "Little credit-eater" after the hull alone costs him a jaw-dropping two and a half million credits.

Cryostasis: The word "cryogenics," the study of materials at low temperature, comes from "cryogen," a word coined in 1875 to describe substances used to obtain low temperatures, refrigerants. Robert Ettinger, who would come to be known as the "father" of modern cryonics, would seize on the idea of freezing one's body for future revival after reading Neil R. Jones' 1931 story The Jameson Satellite when he was just 12 years old. In the story, a professor wants to see his corpse preserved forever and so has it sent into the cold of space upon his death, only to later be revived by members of an advanced alien species. After learning of the cryogenics research of Jean Rostand, an adult Ettinger would write his own science fiction story, The Penultimate Trump, which was published in Startling Stories in 1948. But it wasn't until 1965 that Karl Werner, then an industrial design student at the Pratt Institute, came up with the term "cryonics" to describe the preservation of bodies through freezing. And Alice Bradley Sheldon, writing as James Tiptree, Jr., would use the "cryo-" prefix for "cryostasis," placing human bodies in suspended animation for long journeys through space in her 1975 story A Momentary Taste of Being.

Cyberspace: "Cyberspace" is one of those words that has quickly traveled from science fiction into the mainstream vernacular. The word comes, not surprisingly, from that cyberpunk master William Gibson, appearing first in his 1982 short story Burning Chrome. (Gibson actually first read the story aloud in 1981, but it wasn't published in Omni until the following year.) Here, "Cyberspace Seven" is the name applied to a computer, but the concept of cyberspace gets a more complete definition in Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer:

Cyberspace. A con sensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding....

Death Ray: Here's a rare phrase whose first appearance is believed to come not from literature, but from film. In 1914, Whartons Studios and the Pathé Exchange released The Exploits of Elaine, a 14-part film serial in the style of The Perils of Pauline. Chapter Nine of Exploits is titled "The Death Ray" and involves a scientist named LeCroix who develops an instrument that concentrates infrared rays into a deadly beam that could kill a person if aimed at their brain, one that could only be deflected by a platinum shield backed with asbestos. While it's likely the source of the term "death ray," it's hardly the first story to feature one. George Griffith's 1903 story The World Masters features a terrifying ray weapons; it's just not explicitly called a "death ray."

Dystopia: The word "utopia" was famously coined by Thomas More for his 1516 work of political philosophy, using the Greek words for "good" (ευ), "not" (οὐ), and "place" (τόπος) so that utopia at once means "good place" and "not place." Dystopia also first shows up in a work of political philosophy, in a 1868 speech by John Stuart Mill before the British House of Commons. We could have ended up with a different word to describe our anti-utopias, however; in 1818, Jeremy Bentham (the same man whose skeleton and head sit preserved in University College London) coined the term cacotopia (from the Greek κακόs, meaning "bad"), a word that Mill also uses in his speech to the House of Commons.

First Contact: Murray Leinster didn't just coin the phrase with the title of his 1945 novella First Contact; he was also may have introduced the concept of the universal translator. First Contact finds two technologically advanced meeting in deep space and figuring out a way to trade technology while dealing with their mistrust. After Star Trek: First Contact came out, Leinster's heirs sued Paramount Pictures for trademark violation. A judge ruled, however, that Leinster didn't own the term because he had allowed it to proliferate throughout other writers' fiction.

Force Field: The phrase "force field" first appears in a 1920 report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: "Each atom must form the centre of an electromagnetic field of force. These force fields were first dealt with by Humphreys." In science fiction, it shows up starting in 1931. John W. Campbell's 1931 novel Islands of Space mentions a force field surrounding an alien city. That same year, E.E. "Doc" Smith published his serialized Spacehounds of IPC, which contains a few references to "force-field" theory and generators.

Hive Mind: James H. Schmitz was the first person to dub a collective alien intelligence a "hive mind" in his 1950 story Second Night of Summer, in which humans on another planet are attacked by the Halpa, aliens who are believed to have "the hive-mind class of intelligence." The humans are saved, unusually, by an elderly woman, Granny Wannattel. In 1973, it would meander outside of science fiction to describe bureaucracy in a March 1973 edition of the Daily Telegraph, "The social and aesthetic attitudes have been passed through the homogeniser of the bureaucratic hive-mind." Now we use it to describe all sorts of social groups that seem to think and act with a single mind.

Mad Scientist: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was 90 years old (and HG Wells' The Island of 

Doctor Moreau was 12) when Raymond McDonald apparently coined the term "mad scientist" in his 1908 episodic novel The Mad Scientist: A Tale of the Future. The book involves a so-called mad scientist with socialist leanings who uses his brilliant inventions against US business and the US government. For readers at the time, the book was probably less exciting for its use of the term "mad scientist" than for the cipher contained within its pages. The publishers offered a generous cash reward for the reader who sent in the best analysis of the cipher.

Moon Base: Another phrase that seems obvious now but turns up later in science fiction than we might expect is "moon base," likely a reflection of our changing sense of what lunar colonization would really look like. In Bryce Walton's 1947 story Assignment in the Dawn, Martians have set up moon bases, and the following year saw moon bases in Robert Heinlein's novel Space Cadet (high-ranking officers from a multinational military tried to take over the world from humanity's "Moon Base") and in L. Ron Hubbard's 240,000 Miles Straight Up (in which the "Moonbase" is a Russian outpost).

Multiverse: The term "multiverse" wasn't coined in science or science fiction; it actually comes originally from American philosopher William James' 1895 address to the Young Men's Christian Association of Harvard University, titled Is Life Worth Living? His meaning for multiverse is rather different from the modern one, however:

But those times are past; and we of the nineteenth century, with our evolutionary theories and our mechanical philosophies, already know nature too impartially and too well to worship unreservedly any god of whose character she can be an adequate expression. Truly all we know of good and beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less so all we know of evil. Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference, a moral multiverse, as one might call it, and not a moral universe.

The Oxford English Dictionary credits Michael Moorcock—that writer behind the capital-m Multiverse—with the first use of the word multiverse in the now-common sense of the word, referring to a realm consisting of multiple parallel universes. In 1963, in the pages of Science Fiction Adventures, Moorcock introduced us to the modern multiverse:

Yet within it there were many things, many intelligences who did not realise they dwelt in a multiverse since, within itself, it was comprised of many universes, each one separated from the other by dimensions, like leaves between the layers.

Parallel Universe: While "multiverse" may be a relatively modern term, "parallel universe" goes back to one of the authors who helped shape science fiction, H.G. Wells. In Wells' 1923 novel Men Like Gods, a man is transported to Utopia, which exists in a parallel dimension:

We accept your main proposition unreservedly; namely, that we conceive ourselves to be living in a parallel universe to yours, on a planet the very brother of your own, indeed quite amazingly like yours, having regard to all the possible contrasts we might have found here.

Posthuman: The term "post-human" pops up first in the works of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, who uses the phrase in the 1936 novel The Shadow Out of Time in a way that will look familiar to modern readers (although as commenter bob_d notes, he's referring not to the transformation of humans, but the species who come after):

I shivered at the mysteries the past may conceal, and trembled at the menaces the future may bring forth. What was hinted in the speech of post-human entities of the fate of mankind produced such an effect on me that I will not set it down here.

After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Later, as the earth's span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space—to another stopping-place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end.

Ray Gun: Before the pulp-era ray gun came the X-ray gun, ina 1916 motion picture titled The Intrigue. The film was about a young American inventor who perfects an X-ray gun that revolutionizes modern warfare. But the ray gun we imagine in our retro pulps starts with John W. Campbell's 1930 story The Black Star passes. But people had been killing each other with rays for ages in science fiction at this point. There's a heat ray in H.G. Wells' 1897 War of the Worlds, the aforementioned death ray in The Exploits of Elaine, even an ammunition-destroying ray imagined in George Bernard Shaw's 1919 play Heartbreak House. A ray gun was a logical imaginary weapon.

Robot: "Robot" has one of the most famous origin stories . Karel Čapek used a Czech word for forced feudal labor, robota, for the title of his 1921 play Rosumovi Univerzální oboti (Rossum's Universal Robots). The robots in R.U.R. weren't the mechanical robots we think of today, but rather artificial humans. Once the play was translated into English in 1923, English-speaking writers picked up the word to describe their own constructs made in humanity's mental or physical image. But it wasn't until 1940 that Isaac Asimov first named a discipline of study "robotics" when he referred to a character as a "Roboticist." The shortened form "bot" first shows up even later, in Richard C. Meredith's 1969 novel We All Died at Breakaway Station.

Telepathy: "Telepathy" is a word that came about just as science fiction was emerging as a literary genre, but it's from science fiction itself. Poet and classicist Frederic W.H. Myers coined the terms "telesthesia" and "telepathy" in an 1882 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research to describe what had previously been referred to as "thought transference." Myers was himself a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research, an organization that promoted research into "allegedly paranormal phenomena." Myers also likely coined the word "telekinesis," which turns up in the society's 1890 proceedings. The less common word "telempathy" was invented specifically for science fiction, with the 1963 Vance Simonds story Telempathy.

Teleportation: While "telepathy" and "telekinesis" entered the lexicon in the late 19th century, "teleportation" doesn't appear on the scene until well into the 20th century. The word seems to have been coined by Charles Fort in Lo!, the second of his books documenting "anomalous phenomena." (The word "Fortean," used to describe paranormal phenomena, comes from his name.) Early in Lo!, Fort writes, "Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation." Fort believed that teleportation could explain a number of unexplained events—although there was still the matter of explaining teleportation itself.

Terraforming: Jack Williamson invented numerous science fiction terms, and many of them (like ion drive and genetic engineering) turn up in science as well. Add terraforming to that list; Williamson first uses the term in his 1942 story Collision Orbit:

He had been the original claimant of Obania, forty years ago; and Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock, only two kilometers through—by sinking a shaft to its heart for the paragravity installation, generating oxygen and water from mineral oxides, releasing absorptive gases to trap the feeble heat of the far-off Sun.

Time Travel:H.G. Wells' seminal 1894 novel The Time Machine is the origin of the term "time machine," which we use to describe everything from our TARDISes to our WABACs. It also introducers the term "Time Traveller," which became another staple of the genre. Oddly, the term "time travel" doesn't turn up by itself until two decades later, in an article considering a journey through time in a 1914 issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods. There are earlier time travelers in fiction—even Ebenezer Scrooge gets up to plenty of time traveling in A Christmas Carol. But Wells gave us the simple language to describe it: a time traveller and his time machine.

RIP, Rutger Hauer (1944-2019)

The Novel So Nice They Named It Twice

From LitHub:

First, there’s the obvious: the incantatory effect of the repetition, the rush of sibilance, the plain punch of those four syllables. It just sounds good, and any great title should sound good. It is alluring, an obvious spell (ah, the famous “buy this book” spell), or perhaps simply a swoon. It is also a mystery—why the double? Why not simply The Sea if that’s what it’s about? “The anaphora,” writes Rebecca Hazelton, “demands more, more, more, and is a never-ending question for [us] to answer.” The spell worked on me the first time I saw the spine in a store; I bought it. It may still be my favorite title of any novel, on pure feeling.

Next, the provenance. According to Peter J. Conradi in his biography of Murdoch, the title of her Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea (1978) comes from “the Greeks’ cry during the Persian wars when they finally sight salt-water” (i.e. the Black Sea) as reported in Xenophon’s Anabasis. In the original Greek, it is Θάλαττα! θάλαττα! or Thálatta! thálatta!

The moment is also referenced in Jules Verne’s The Journey to the Center of the Earth:

A vast sheet of water, the commencement of a lake or an ocean, spread far away beyond the range of the eye, reminding me forcibly of that open sea which drew from Xenophon’s ten thousand Greeks, after their long retreat, the simultaneous cry, “Thalatta! thalatta!” the sea! the sea!

Even without this classical association (which I, no scholar of ancient Greek, alas, would not have made on my own; reader, I Googled it) it’s a clear yawp, a cry plainly articulated without punctuation of any kind; it can be read as sorrowful or exultant, depending on the mood of the reader. This being another fine quality for a title: functionality as mirror.

Speaking of punctuation, Murdoch, given her source, might well have retained the exclamation point, but she did not, which I consider to be an example of legendary restraint. It would have been clever, to have that exclamation; it would have been impish, even funny, and this is, to no little degree, an impish and funny book.

But the title is better exclamation-less, better for Murdoch’s restraint. I’d even say the exclamation is half-implied, whether you know the word thalatta or nay, but only half: in fact, its absence creates room for some wistfulness, a little bit of danger—who knows what the sea, the sea is doing at any given moment, say this very one; it might be calm and languorous or raging and rough.

Most importantly, the title is suited to the novel in question. The Sea, The Sea is presented as the personal diary of Charles Arrowby, a man who has lived “a life of egoism” in the world of the theatre, but has recently retired to a large house in a small town by the sea—the “blessed northern sea, a real sea with clean merciful tides, not like the stinking soupy Mediterranean!” The sea will quickly become a symbol—unbeknownst to our narrator—of many things, including Arrowby’s own self-delusion (he is “a skillful fearless swimmer,” he tells us, and has “sported like a dolphin” in “antipodean oceans,” but also cannot climb back up on the slippery rocks after he goes for a naked dip, and nearly drowns himself.) Murdoch lets herself go with the pomposity, in keeping with her character, but you can feel her delight.

Arrowby is, you might say, dramatic. The sort of man who, even in retirement, might fling open the shutters and declaim the novel’s title to the sky. The novel, being his diary, is dramatic too, and you can feel him (and Murdoch) ginning up twists and turns for the audience. The sea is a mirror for his anxieties, perhaps for his soul. It functions sometimes too symbolically, if I’m honest, but it also pulls the fine trick of becoming the only character that might rival Arrowby for the central role. Perhaps with the title, Murdoch is telling us as much. Who is our hero? The sea, the sea! Arrowby would surely weep.

The whole novel is outsize, an exaggeration. It is also a novel about obsession, which alone justifies the doubling. In a coincidence worthy of only the campiest theater, the aging Arrowby finds his long-lost love, the only girl whom he ever wanted to marry (“but,” he tells us, “she fled”—beep beep beep), living in the small town he has chosen. He proceeds to try to “rescue” her, despite the fact that she has no interest in being rescued. He more or less stalks her, to the point of disaster. Hers, obviously.

There is also a third “the sea” implied in the title: the one that begins the novel, our door into Arrowby’s mind. “The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine.” I’ll go on, just for your pleasure and mine:

With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam. Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green. At the horizon it is indigo. Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent. We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of color. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold.

Not for nothing, but: the audacity of starting a 500+ page novel with a paragraph describing, in detail, the varied colors of the sea. I find this paragraph thrilling enough, honestly, but I think I may be in the minority, but as if to cover her bases, this is what we get next:

I had written the above, destined to be the opening paragraph of my memoirs, when something happened which was so extraordinary and so horrible that I cannot bring myself to describe it even now after an interval of time and although a possible, though not totally reassuring, explanation has occurred to me. Perhaps I shall feel calmer and more clear-headed after yet another interval.

Consider the spell in question cast. More, more.

The view from Highway 1

Photo by my dear friend, Joanicas :)

Space jammin', or the art of Wrong Hands

Ahhh, Voltaire :)

Dia da Espiga

His Dark Materials - the series :)

Dafne Keen takes on the lead role of Lyra, the young protagonist of the story who lives in Jordan College, Oxford. Placed there at the request of her Uncle, Lord Asriel (James McAvoy), she lives a sheltered life amongst the scholars and college staff while under the watchful protection of The Master (Clarke Peters) and Librarian Scholar Charles (Ian Gelder).

When the glamorous and mesmeric Mrs Coulter (Ruth Wilson) enters Lyra’s life she embarks upon a dangerous journey of discovery from Oxford to London. Here she meets Father MacPhail (Will Keen), Lord Boreal (Ariyon Bakare) and journalist Adele Starminster (Georgina Campbell) at a glittering society party where she first hears about the sinister General Oblation Board.

Lyra is subsequently thrown into the nomadic world of the boat dwelling Gyptians—Ma Costa (Anne-Marie Duff), Farder Coram (James Cosmo), John Faa (Lucian Msamati), Raymond Van Geritt (Mat Fraser), Jack Verhoeven (Geoff Bell) and Benjamin de Ruyter (Simon Manyonda)—who take her North in her quest.

Once in the North she meets charismatic aeronaut and adventurer Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda), who joins them on their epic journey and who becomes one of Lyra’s closest allies.

A Ilusão de Merit - Colleen Hoover

O melhor livro para jovens adultas que traduzi este ano para a TopSeller.

Merit Voss tem uma vida pouco normal. Vive numa igreja reconvertida com uma família disfuncional e pouco ortodoxa: a mãe, sobrevivente de cancro, ocupa um quarto na cave, o pai é agora casado com a antiga enfermeira da mãe, o meio-irmão mais novo não pode comer nem fazer nada que seja divertido e tanto o irmão mais velho como a sua irmã gémea, Honor, são a imagem absurda da perfeição. E Merit sente que nunca será assim.

Merit coleciona troféus que não ganhou e segredos de família que é obrigada a guardar. Numa visita a um antiquário em busca do próximo troféu, Merit conhece Sagan, que logo a deixa completamente desarmada e com um novo brilho nos olhos ? até ela perceber que ele é inalcançável.

Cansada de se sentir invisível, e cada vez mais mergulhada no abismo, Merit decide acabar com a ilusão da família perfeita e revelar a verdade há tanto tempo escondida. Mas não estará Merit também a esconder a verdade sobre si mesma?

A magia gótica de Sandra Byrd - dois romances traduzidos por mim para a TopSeller

Da Inglaterra vitoriana à ilha de Malta, uma heroína à frente do seu tempo.

(Novamente) da Inglaterra vitoriana à Índia, outra heroína que tem de provar quem é para não depender de homem algum.

O Segredo das Safiras - tradução minha para a TopSeller

Ceilão, 1935. Louisa Reeve, a filha de um negociante de safiras britânico, e Elliot, o seu marido e empresário charmoso, parecem ser o casal perfeito. Mas a verdade é que lhes falta algo: um filho.

Um homem com segredos, a mulher que o amou e a traição que a arruinou.

Com as gravidezes falhadas de Louisa e as ausências frequentes de Elliot, que passa grande parte do seu tempo numa plantação de canela, o casamento deles está em risco. Louisa acredita que consegue salvá-lo, investindo nos negócios do marido. O plano, no entanto, é interrompido pela notícia da morte súbita de Elliot.

De repente, Louisa vê-se sozinha e com várias dívidas que Elliot lhe ocultou durante anos. Tentando perceber a razão da sua morte, Louisa regressa à fazenda de canela, mas dá por si inesperadamente atraída por Leo, o misterioso capataz da propriedade. Rodeada pelos aromas exóticos e a paisagem de sonho, Louisa sente o feitiço da plantação desta especiaria; contudo, nem tudo é o que parece. E quando a chocante traição de Elliot é revelada, o seu mundo desmorona-se.

Conseguirá ela ganhar coragem para procurar a verdade e aprender a viver de novo?

Na Praia dos Corações Desencontrados - tradução minha para a TopSeller

O amor está no ar na pequena cidade costeira de St. Carys, na Cornualha. Mas ninguém o diria...

Clemency não está à procura de romance quando conhece Sam durante um voo de regresso a casa. Mas a química entre os dois é palpável. Quando aterram, Sam revela-lhe que é impossível ficarem juntos. Clemency fica magoada e nunca mais esquece aquele encontro mágico. Até que, três anos depois, Sam volta a entrar na sua vida como namorado de outra pessoa. Ronan é um homem sedutor capaz de encantar qualquer mulher. Mas, no que toca a conquistar a mulher de quem gosta, o seu charme é inútil.

Pela primeira vez, Ronan terá de se esforçar para conseguir o que deseja. Belle sempre quis uma vida perfeita. Namorados endinheirados, luxo e roupa dispendiosa foram sempre os seus objetivos. Mas agora que tem tudo na mão, há um segredo que esconde dos outros e até de si própria. Terá ela coragem para admiti-lo, destruindo a vida que idealizou?

Num puzzle de personagens únicas e cenários idílicos, esta é uma história sobre as vontades do coração, que, através de encontros e desencontros, descobre sempre o seu caminho.

Abril!

Dia Internacional do Livro Infantil 2019

Dia Mundial da Poesia / World Poetry Day + e da Árvore + Tree day