Caitlín R. Kiernan

So...yeah, the BBC2 interview for The Culture Show went well, I think. We did it this afternoon (for me, at least it was afternoon), in the Abney Park laboratory. The episode will air next Saturday, if you happen to get Scottish television and would like to know what a NeoVictorian Nebari/Gallifreyan time-traveler has to say about the relevance of Beowulf to the modern world. I have no idea how it's going to come across on the screen, but, if it works out, maybe I have a new medium for doing live interviews.

I have a long entry I want and need to make, but right now I'm just too fried. I'll save it for tomorrow morning.

Oh, but I will note that someone at Locus is very fond of "The Ape's Wife", and my thanks to Sonya Taaffe and Sean Wallace for alerting me to the review, which reads:

"'The Ape's Wife' by Caitlín R. Kiernan (September) is a majestic novelette imagining varying scenarios for the climax of King Kong: does Ann Darrow, the beauty played by Fay Wray, truly return to New York, or does she stay on Skull Island? Is she marooned, a high priestess, or (back in America) an embittered, aging alcoholic, otherwise an older woman pondering Kong's skeleton, now a neglected museum exhibit? Is Kong god to a destroyed Manhattan? These possibilities progress through Ann's dreaming mind powerfully and very memorably."

Oh, and speaking of Beowulf, how about a letter from a reader, just to round it all out? Jason Schmus writes:

I recently picked up your novelization of the Beowulf script, and am enjoying it so far, but that little dedication at the beginning is driving me nuts. My high school Latin is twenty plus years behind me, and the little that remains serves me only to fill in crossword puzzles, translate the odd motto, or to work out unfamiliar word derivations. I just don't remember enough to puzzle it out. Something something defend us from the wolves?

The Latin phrase in question is Talibus laboribus lupos defendimus, which translates as "By such labours do we ward off the wolves."