Input Junkie

Notes from the Best SF Books of 2025 panel at Philcon.

A Tangle of Time (sequel to the Hexologists)

Wearing the Lion (Wiswell, story about Hercules)

Aftertaste (LaVelle) ghosts and cooking

The Splinter Effect (I think it's the one where time travel makes it possible to go into the past, but not carry things forward-- if you want to protect an artifact, you have to hide it somewhere in its time and find it again in your time)

The Will of the Many (elite academy gets a student who won't get sucked into the hierarchy)

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association-- complications when a werewolf daughter goes to a dangerous magic school

The Stardust Grail (finding a major alien artifact)

Inventing the Renaissance (non-fiction by Ada Palmer-- the premise is that the Renaissance wasn't really a thing. From things she said, the glorious eras when the rich commission wonderful things aren't great times to live-- if the rich are competing that hard, power is shaky and the fighting affects the non-rich)

What We Can Know (tracking down a poem after worldwide catastrophe)

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil (woman with limited life gets into magic)

The Mars House (people on Mars are dealing with hazardously strong people from earth, how can they live together? I'll note that I could write the premise of this from memory, unlike many of the others where I used amazon)

Those Beyond the Walls (dystopia, murder mystery)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNOu6tfmOOA&ab_channel=ESOTERICA

In Charles Williams' _Descent into Hell_ (1937), a professor creates a succubus. No overt magical methods, just obsession about a young woman who isn't interested in him. He doesn't like that she's not interested. As I recall, once this is clear to him, he avoids her, and invents a false version with her distaste for him edited out.

He spends more and more time with the false Amelia until she can even be seen by someone else. His lack of interest in truth leads to his mind disintegrating.

I was surprised to find in this discussion of Paracelsus, a major Renaissance writer about magic who put much emphasis on the power of imagination (at about 25:00), a description of making a succubus by imagination, and I'm willing to bet that Williams, who had a considerable interest in magic, had picked the idea up from there.

I thought I had just found a really cool reference, but this does rather look like concerns about AI companions.

I recommend _Saint Death's Daughter_ by C. S. E. Clooney. It's an invented world fantasy with the emotions turned up to 12. The prose is giddy and enthusiastic, but there's logical structure underneath.

The plot is very surprising-- a lot of expectations are subverted in reasonable ways.

It won the World Fantasy Award. The majority at the local book club liked it. There's a reasonable chance you'll like it.

It's the first of (if I can trust Reddit) a trilogy. The sequel is almost out.

There's Lanie, a young woman who's born into a family of assassins. She's literally allergic to violence. (She started in a NanoWriMo project to write a fantasy character who can't be violent.) The situation is sad, but there's also a Charles Adams vibe.

She's kept isolated to keep her alive. Her older sister is a sociopath. The only source of kindness is a revenant servant who almost never speaks, but whose silences are very communicative. Lanie is a necromancer. She will be able to communicate with the dead if she survives.

There are twelve gods, and different religions. There's a meditation system. There's a puppy, but less about the puppy than I expected. There's a very challenging six year old. This sounds too cute, but it isn't.

There are politics, mostly between two nations. Magic is politically important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXDCQjeM8Hk&ab_channel=ColorNerd

The color wheel misses a good bit of the point about colors because some hues seem a lot brighter than others.

The video points out that a lot of the effect of color is related to apparent lightness/darkness and intensity of hue rather than anything like spacing around an evenly divided wheel.

Some of the work on real perception of colors goes back to the 80s. I've seen those asymmetric three dimensional charts, but not thought about them. What were you taught about color? When?

Is there color theory which starts with what people like (either over the lang haul or popular at a time) rather than with a theory about colors?

I really appreciate it when a new and strongly plausible theory comes along.

It's possible to learn to move more easily and competently, and I've been exploring some of the possibilities for over 40 years.

I'll just be describing systems I've spent some time on. When I say incomplete, I'm not kidding. This isn't everything I've tried, and everything I've tried is very little compared to everything there is.

This is a *lot*. If you're interested, choose something that looks promising and try it out. This can only be learned by doing it, not by only reading or thinking about it.

I started with Rubenfeld Synergy, later called Gestalt Synergy. It's a combination of Gestalt psychology, Alexander Technique, and Feldenkrais method.

I didn't have anyone local for the whole system, so I got into Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method.

One way of looking at Alexander Technique is that it's a way of noticing the moment of preparing to move, and not doing anything extra at that moment. It also involves releasing neck tension and propagating the release through your body. It takes giving up the desire to be "correct', which is rather a subtle matter. In general, moving better involves dropping parasitic habits.

There's also not "end gaining". End gaining is focusing on a goal while ignoring what you're doing to achieve the goal. For example, sometimes when people reach for something distant, they put their head backwards even though that limits their reach. I'm playing with that now, and I think the underlying premise is a habit of moving my chest closer to what I'm trying to reach, when I actually have more range if I let my whole torso tilt forward as an integrated unit when I'm reaching.

This is probably best learned from a teacher, though Alexander did invent it himself by observing himself in a triple mirror (this was around 1900) to find out why he was having difficulty with public speaking. The difficulty turned out to be a combination of bad advice to grasp the floor with his feet and existing bad breathing habits which caused him to interpret the advice in a way that tightened his throat. Once he found out what he was doing, he went on to learn how to change deeply ingrained habits.

Bill and Barbara Conable added "mapping" to Alexander Technique. They found that some intractable movement problems were caused by inaccurate mental beliefs about the body. For example, some people never incorporate how much they've grown, and don't really allow for how long their arms and legs are.

Feldenkrais method involves gentle repeated movements which remind you of parts of your movement repertoire you've forgotten or which you never learned. It has two versions, Awareness Through Movement (do movements on your own, or mostly so) and Functional Integration (movements guided by a teacher). My exposure has been almost entirely Awareness through Movement.

There are books and videos of Awareness Through Movement sets. As far as I can tell, sets by Feldenkrais typically take about 40 minutes, and end with a surprise improvement in parts of your body that you didn't think you were doing anything with. Sets by more recent teachers are more typically about 20 minutes and not surprising.

I can recommend Somatics by Thomas Hanna. Good, simple explanations and a nice daily warmup set. Awareness Heals by Stephen Shafarman-- good exercises and also the story of how Feldenkrais taught Ben Gurion how to do a headstand. Running with the Whole Body by Jack Heggie. I never worked through the whole set (and the first one might be too difficult), but I learned about the relationship between my feet and my hips and had higher arches for a while.

Mindful Spontaneity by Ruthy Alon-- very good for releasing your back, with some excellent exercises on a roller or folded blanket.

Lam Kam Chuen's The Way of Energy is an introduction to standing meditation and includes an Eight Brocades qi gong set. I used it to clear up a case of repetitive strain. That took some months of 20 minutes each per day of standing meditation and "holding a tree" (arms make a circle in front). I suddenly realized I didn't need my level of tension, let it go, and my elbow didn't hurt again.

Scott Sonnon worked up a system that's both athletically ambitious and careful about not injuring joints or connective tissue.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBCF16AA17907B625 is a seated version of his Ageless Mobility set. The channel, flowacademycst, also has his Intuflow (beginner and intermediate), which I recommend.

Eric Franklin's Franklin Method involves sophisticated use of imagery to improve kinesthesia. There's quite a bit in books and online. His Dynamic Alignment through Imagery includes both getting in touch with your body through imagery and theory about different sorts of imagery-- literal anatomy, visual metaphors for anatomy, and more comprehensive images.

Martin Mellish's A Tai Chi Imagery Workbook: Spirit, Intent, and Motion is in Franklin's style, but there's little overlap, and it's specifically about Tai Chi.

Peter Ralston (chenghsin.com) has done long study of how mind and body interact, driven by the question of what does consciousness have to do with fighting. One of his subjects is cultivating such a clear and accurate sense of touch that it's easy to tell how an opponent will move. There's the importance of seeing what's actually there, so that if a punch is coming at you, you aren't distracted by thinking about what might happen. Just seeing the punch makes it easier to dodge.

Kathleen Porter (kathleenporter.com) has researched how people from low tech societies move, and how their backs are in better shape. I was especially impressed with her advice to swing your pelvis back and forth like a bell until you find where your breathing is easiest. This is not posture based on an idea of how people should should look, it's functional!

She also thinks that Americans lost track of how to stand around the 1920s, and we're fallen into a combination of collapsing and over-correction.


Bruce Frantzis' qi gong school at energyarts.com has been very valuable to me, both in specific qi gong sets and the 70% rule-- only put out 70% effort when you're learning. This permits progress while protecting against injury.

Back in the 60s, he was studying qi gong in China, and had come to the conclusion that the medical system wasn't going to be able to do a lot of care for aging people. He asked his teachers what would be the best method for health for average people who don't want to learn 100-move sets, and they concluded that Dragon and Tiger Medical Qi Gong, a 7-move set would give about 80% of the benefit. No guarantees, but I'm 71 and not in chronic pain. It isn't a substitute for conventional medicine, but it's a valuable supplement.

I haven't studied the whole system, but it includes martial arts and meditation as well as healing. There's a school in Colorado and online classes for sale, and there are also books.

Chris Cinnamon teaches sensible, simple methods for avoiding falls and preventing knee pain, based on Frantzis' system, and also simplified Tai Chi (circling hands, which teaches the movement qualities but isn't a martial art).

A Sufi postural reset-- it leaves me feeling like a primate ready for action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNUuztKc2mM

Walking Well by Bruce Fertman is a wide exploration of walking more easily and effectively, and includes philosophy and practical metaphysics, not to mention animal imagery and famous creative people who found walking to be extremely valuable. I've barely begun to explore the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5v61YtDYo4&t=312&ab_channel=SabineHossenfelder

Sabine describes finding out that she reacts badly to sugar alcohols, a common additive to foods and medicines.

She was getting digestive problems after about half her meals, and couldn't figure out what the problem was in spite of listing every ingredient. The mystery was solved when some cookies that weren't a problem became a problem, and she could see what the manufacturer had changed.

The challenge is that there are at least a dozen sugar alcohols in common use, and also compounds derived from sugar alcohols. *Almost* all of the names end with "ol". In English. In German, the "ol" is left off the name.

The vast majority of people can handle sugar alcohols, but sometimes aging means they make people miserable. Just to sweeten the situation (so to speak), some medications for digestive problems (like Gas-X) have sugar alcohols.

Need I mention that she got half a dozen wrong diagnoses from doctors before she found out what the problem was?

I'd noticed that at least some sugar alcohols would make my stomach give a little clench, so I've been avoiding them, but obviously not everyone gets an early warning signal.

Please pass the word if you or someone you know has mysterious digestive problems.

I cut up fresh tuna-- any fish would do. I covered it with lemon juice. Lime would also be good. This was bottled lemon juice, fresh lemon juice isn't essential.

I put it into the refrigerator for over an hour. That's it.

This isn't an inferior ceviche, though if you want to suggest more ingredients, that's fine. This is a ceviche for when you want something tasty and don't want to work on it.

Footnote: Acid from the lemon juice substitutes for cooking. For some reason, this doesn't work for chicken.

No, I haven't tried making chicken ceviche because there were a great many people saying "No! Don't do it!". There are "chicken ceviche" recipes, but they involve marinating the chicken in citrus juice and then cooking it.

Discussion: https://www.facebook.com/nancy.lebovitz/posts/pfbid02ZR8YZj5AysuLzNy4GqKvbpD8uV4CbWwvCNzFEEtFvkAxBJmgLDiwon3XS95xzduJl

My ceviche has done some good-- one person who can't do alliums (onion, garlic) can eat it, and one who isn't good at cooking thinks it looks feasible.

Discussion of dishes with less than five ingredients (salt, pepper, fat, and the usual refrigerator condiments don't count against the five):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/recfoodcooking/posts/10160076890443640/?comment_id=10160085805883640

A dive into Tolkien and maps. In particular, that Tolkien said in a letter to Naomi Mitchison, that "I wisely started with a map". What could he have meant?

We find out that Tolkien certainly didn't start with a map. As we all know, Tolkien started with the languages. Or with an inspiration for the first line of The Hobbit. Or with having a substantial education in old literature and languages. The maps came later, and started with maps of localities where movement needed to be clear, rather than a map of middle earth.

However, apparently some creators take the quote about starting with a map very seriously, and they shouldn't. The video ends with a rant about not letting world-building distract you from writing, though world-building can be a great hobby in itself. There's a lot about the excuses people make to avoid writing, and I don't know how sound it all is.

There is scholarship about Tolkien and maps. Of course there is. I hadn't realized how vague the maps and geography in The Hobbit are compared to LOTR, and how much doesn't match up. I now imagine the Necromancer from The Hobbit waking up in The Lord of the Rings and saying, "Huh? What?".

Anyway, "the Fiery Mountain [from The Hobbit], whose actual placing seems to be entirely vague", from Christopher Tolkien, who made the finished map for LOTR.

The brings back a bit of my headcanon for the Silmarillion. There's mention of a wingless dragon; A wingless dragon seemed a bit odd to me, but alright, it's a wingless dragon. Later in the story, Morgoth(?) has a battle where a dragon would be helpful, but the dragon can't get there in time. And I had a vision of Tolkien with a map and miniatures (I don't think he actually used miniatures, and I don't know whether a literal map was involved) considering how the dragon could be kept out of the fight. I don't know at what point of writing the story Tolkien came up with the dragon.

The video guy is from a game called Monstrous. I needed to sort out that this isn't related to the graphic novel Monstress, which has fabulously beautiful art though I wasn't that interested in the story.

I've seen a meme about how half of people see unsolicited advice as criticism, and I'm going to give some unsolicited advice on the subject.

I've felt the drive to give unsolicited advice, and I've been irritated by unsolicited advice.
I may have seen unsolicited advice as annoying, but more like redundant or wrong more than as criticism.

I suspect that a lot of people who see unsolicited advice as criticism have spent time in an environment where it actually was criticism. It may well be a mild sort of dominance behavior.

But, if you have a drive to give unsolicited advice, here's some advice on how to mostly not be a plague with in it.

Check to see whether the advice you want to give has already been given. Reading the comments to see whether you're being redundant is a matter of courtesy.

Admit you're playing out your own compulsion. Not just "I felt I had to say", but "I'm being compulsive here".

Admit that you don't know all the facts about the situation. This is true, and you might even come to believe it.

Say "For future reference" to make sure you don't sound like you expect people to hop in a time machine and prevent their current situation from having happened.

This is from a facebook post.

https://www.facebook.com/nancy.lebovitz/posts/pfbid031D2jsPP4CsqH9oC9ez2pcqH8xvmpLmxPCkhe2ovfJXu5p6bbpbdTSZCcTcFk7jnfl

Is there a technical term for needing to go down stairs one step at a time-- one knee doesn't like lowering one's weight going down a step, so it's step and then feet together instead of alternating legs going down?

Please, no comfort emojis, my knees are improving.