(b)logophile » tragic http://www.logophile.org/blog blog of a logophile (not "logos", but "λόγος") Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 Polyphony fading out http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/03/18/polyphony-fading-out/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/03/18/polyphony-fading-out/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:58:54 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=860 Polyphony is a short story anthology series, in the direction of “interstitial” or “slipstream” writing (“literary with a genre sensibility” being the “least elegant but most descriptive” phrase according to the introduction to volume 4). I own two volumes (3 and 4) and they have good stuff by good people inside.

It turns out that Wheatland Press are struggling, and I mean really struggling. To the tune of setting a three-month deadline to get 225 preorders on the next Polyphony (volume 7), and getting just over half that.

There’s a heartbreaking LJ post about the numbers: four times as many submissions as preorders. That’s quite a gap.

Given the publicity this last gasp is getting (I found out via tor.com), I’m hoping they may still fill the quota before Deborah Layne gives up in total disgust. I’ve ordered one Polyphony 7; maybe you feel moved to do the same.

]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/03/18/polyphony-fading-out/feed/ 0 Scott and scurvy http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/03/12/scott-and-scurvy/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/03/12/scott-and-scurvy/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:36:59 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=847 Idlewords has a fascinating essay on the history of scurvy: Scott’s Antarctic expedition in 1911 was plagued by the disease, despite its having been “conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease.” How it all went wrong would make a lovely case study for a philosophy of science class.

(I can’t help summarising the juiciest morsel: the British Admiralty switched their scurvy cure from lemon juice to lime juice in 1860. The new cure was much less effective, but by that time advances in technology meant that most sea voyages were so short that there was little or no danger of scurvy anyway. So poor Scott’s expedition, as well as applying “state-of-the-art” (i.e. wrong) cures, were falling back on a “tried-and-true” remedy that in fact had been largely ineffective already for 50 years… without anyone noticing.)

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