(This post was previously part of another one, severed for what now seems to me greater convenience.)

Charlie Stross‘s recent novel Iron Sunrise has a surprising number of minor errors. The distance between Moscow Prime and Old Newfie is stated as 1393 light-days, one parsec (1191 d·c, close enough), one light-year (365 d·c). Someone mentioned in conversation is “he” then “she” then “Otto”. A garment is white when bought and black when worn.

Iron Sunrise is a sequel to, but plotwise independent of, Singularity Sky. It’s generally more coherent and less whizbang.

I’ve spotted two personal references in the first half. An empress is named Ayse, presumably after Ayse Sercan who, like Charlie, is or was a regular in alt.peeves. One of the quotations from which another Edinburgh writer takes the title of his blog is, er, quoted.

The last book I finished was Charlie Stross’s The Family Trade. Spoilers: ( . . more . . )

A set comprises its members; a set consists of its members; a set is composed of its members — but a set is not comprised of anything.

“Thank you for observing all safety precautions.”

Argh! No traffic tickets for twenty years, and now two in 16 months – both from BART police. Two more months and I could have cleared both by the curious device of “traffic school”.

“Lady Liberty” says it well:

So rest peacefully in your assumption that none of the invasive new laws or procedures applies to you because you don’t have anything to hide. You’ll be just fine as long as the police never make a mistake. You won’t be a target of an investigation as long as you don’t want to do anything to generate suspicion, like drive, work, open a bank account, or rent an apartment. . . .

From the Boston Globe last week:

The top US military commander in the Middle East warned yesterday that troops are questioning whether the American public supports the Iraq war and implored political leaders to engage in a frank discussion about how to keep the country behind a mission that the armed forces believe is ”a war worth fighting.”

Does this strike anyone else as putting the cart before the horse?

Ah, phooey: I’ve carelessly deleted my preferred “theme”. May as well leave it for now while I go learn how to write one properly.

Some people amuse themselves at inventing languages and scripts; that sport’s most famous player was of course Tolkien. And some avidly study whatever notes Tolkien left concerning his Elvish language family.

Tolkien invented at least three scripts: Sarati, an alphasyllabary; cirth, a full alphabet; and tengwar, used both as an alphasyllabary (in the Ring Verse) and as a full alphabet (on the West Gate of Moria). But in human history such scripts have been invented less often than syllabaries, in which no two of the symbols for ti ta ki ka are similar. (The alphabets listed are more numerous, but most of them are descended from the same Semitic ancestor and most of the alphasyllabaries from Brahmî.) So I wonder whether the T-linguists would be offended if one were to design a syllabary for Elvish.
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