A little incident in folk grammar, funny to me at least. I wrote a sentence containing

. . . which led to reconstructing in my mind . . .

because

. . . which led to mentally reconstructing . . .

seemed wrong: everyone knows you don’t put an adverb between to and a verb form! (You’ll note that to reconstructing is not an infinitive, so the ‘rule’ does not apply.)

When I became consciously aware of that confused subconscious reasoning, I changed it to the latter.

I wonder how many now-standard grammatical features we owe to such extensions of misunderstanding.

Greg Egan complains about sloppy reviews of his latest novel:

About half the reviews of Incandescence made at least one of the following false assertions:

• The Splinter orbits a neutron star.
• Rakesh visits the Splinter.
• The relationship between the novel’s two threads is never revealed.
• The reader learns nothing about the Aloof.

The first two errors result from failing to notice that Egan violates a common pattern of First Contact stories: chapters alternate between two sets of characters who would conventionally meet in the end. Odd-numbered chapters of Incandescence are about Rakesh, a human who learns of evidence of DNA life in an unexpected place and follows the trail; even-numbered chapters are about the discovery of general relativity by the inhabitants of the Splinter, an artificial worldlet orbiting a black hole. Rakesh never finds the Splinter; he arrives at another artificial worldlet, with the same origin as the Splinter but orbiting a neutron star. So there is a clear link between the two threads, but it’s at the wrong end.

And unless I missed something the Aloof remain as mysterious as ever, though slightly less aloof than they seemed before.

Two stories in the same universe as Incandescence are online: Riding the Crocodile and Glory (pdf).

April 9 is CSS Naked Day, a concept amusing enough that I installed the WordPress plugin to comply with it. As I should have expected, it makes this blog rather less readable than it was before I converted from Blogger and learned enough CSS to make WordPress’s (then) default template less ugly. Back then, I used <h#> and <hr> tags for visual structure; whups, that’s all gone. Next time I fiddle with my Theme, I should give such things some attention. Meanwhile I’ll just turn off the Naked Day plugin.

In Renaissance (2006) there’s a Big Sinister Corporation whose advertising tagline is “Health, Beauty, Longevity.” Oo, scary! I don’t think we’re ever told what Avalon sells (vitamins? cosmetics? medical treatment?) but it doesn’t matter. The noirish visual style suffices to notify us that there are no white hats.

Some years back Avalon’s top scientist Jonas Muller, who had been studying progeria, dropped out to run a charity clinic. Now another promising scientist, Ilona Tasuiev, has vanished.

Eventually we learn that Muller dropped out because he found the secret of immortality; to let Avalon bring it to market would be a Really Bad Thing. Muller has kidnapped Tasuiev because she found the same secret and does not share his fear of it.

I kept expecting someone to reveal that the Muller Protocol involves sacrificing children, but no: immortality is bad because “without death, life has no meaning,” a truth which the writers hold to be self-evident. So in the end Karas, the detective assigned to find Tasuiev, shoots her in the back to save humanity’s soul; and tells her sister that she needed to disappear for her own safety, but don’t worry, she’ll be fine.

Oddly enough the movie does suggest a better reason to think immortality isn’t all good. Muller’s progeria subjects included his own brother, who apparently is now immortal but mentally damaged – though he doesn’t get enough attention to make this clear.

The movie is animated in (mostly) one-bit monochrome. This gimmick is occasionally used very well, as when Tasuiev finds herself in a surreal arboretum; but the show is long enough to use up its novelty. I found myself wondering whether the characters see their world as we do.

. . . In recent years I’ve read a fair amount of fiction (e.g. by Greg Egan) in which the abolition of senescence is treated as an unremarkable feature of the background. Is there anything like that in visual media?