essay

The best SF I’ve seen this year—and admittedly it’s January 9, so there’s some time left in 2012 to go—has to be the opening credits of the 2011 David Fincher film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The imagery is drawn from the three books in the Millennium series. But it’s an incredible articulation of the melding of body and machine; in it, the heroine is seen not to be born, but rather forged:... read more »

A bunch of my academically employed Facebook/Twitter/social media du jour friends posted a link to an interesting article over at the Chronicle: Shame in Academic Writing. It’s all about how academics secretly think that their writing is terrible, and it makes them sad. This quote from a poor advisee sums it up:

“Is it normal,” he asked in a small voice, “to feel stupid after getting an edited manuscript back?”

Answer: Yes. Why, yes.... read more »

I recently received an e-mail from the DOI folks announcing that the styling doi:10.3983/twc.2011.0271 (with the doi: prefix run into the DOI number) may be replaced with the actual URL that the DOI links to—in this case, http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0271. This is big news indeed! But it is news that is unlikely to result in immediate action on anybody’s part.... read more »

A recent spate of research, which has included some data input into Zotero, has only reaffirmed my belief that the sciences can teach the humanities much. I’m not just talking about quick peer review turnaround times and wait times to publication that don’t stretch into years. I’m talking about something simple, something basic: abstracts and titles.... read more »

Yes, it’s happening again: I am engaging in endless research that in no way is time effective. I suppose I’m not the only one who would rather spend time than money. Last time I angsted this hard, I was attempting to optimize my Palm Tungsten E. I blogged about that experience, but months later, the Palm died utterly and I was forced to buy an iPod touch. Only recently, now that the new OS supports a foldy full-size Bluetooth keyboard without jailbreaking, have I become reconciled to the touch.... read more »

Over at SFRA.org, I have posted my “Fan Studies 101,” which originally appeared as Karen Hellekson, “Fan Studies 101,” SFRA Review 287 (Winter 2009): 5–7. A PDF of the entire issue is available from the main SFRAR download page here. This document is an overview meant for newbies to the field of fan studies.... read more »

I was so excited to get my copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, that I almost documented the entire reverent unboxing process by snapping pix—or maybe shooting a short camera video. I decided against it because a photographer wasn’t handy, and because it’s not an electronic device that I’ll need to send back with proof of damage during shipping!... read more »

Over at SFRA.org, I have reposted my “Scholarly Research and Writing 101,” which originally appeared as Karen Hellekson, “Scholarly Research and Writing 101,” SFRA Review 292 (Spring 2010): 4–8. A PDF of the entire issue is available from the main SFRAR download page here. This document is an overview and assessment of freeware tools used by researchers in the humanities.... read more »

Fan vids get all the critical love these days, but I’ve been an on-again–off-again fan of live-action fan vids since my days of IRL Doctor Who fandom. A few live-action fan projects look really interesting.... read more »