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The shamans of Tibet.
Continuing on from yesterday:
At the birth of the shaman already 'the evil spirits multiply.' If he really becomes a shaman, that will cost the life of several members of the tribe, not infrequently his relations, for 'elected shamans must have water from the river of death.' At his vocation, the shaman in fact concludes a pact with the devil, in ( Read more... ) -
The old Tibetan New Year.
"When the New Year was celebrated in Lhasa, the capital of the 'Land of the Snows,' the Tibetans turned life upside down. In former times this was even done so drastically, that most laymen went out of town for fear of the innumerable begging monks, whom they could not refuse generous alms upon this festival, and whom they also had to receive as ( Read more... ) -
excerpts from Fantastic Victoriana
I assume that some/most of you are familiar with the blog Beyond Victoriana, which I think is doing some quite valuable work in broadening the parameters of steampunk, making it multi-cultural and injecting non-Western cultures and perspectives into it.
Beyond Victoriana will be running weekly excerpts from my Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana ( Read more... ) -
Some of what I'm looking forward to in 2011.
- January: Matt Fraction's Casanova, vol 1: Luxuria.
- February: Neal Asher's The Technician.
- March: Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear; Daniel Fox's Hidden Cities; Jason Aaron's Scalped vol 7.
- April: Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Scarab Path.
- May: Iain Banks' Surface Detail; Jeff Vandermeer's Steampunk Bible. China Mieville's Embassytown.
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Andrew Coe's Chop Suey.
Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is informative and entertaining. Coe's a professional food critic and knows his subject, and he spends a decent amount of time on the history of Chinese and American interaction, the evolution of Chinese cuisine, how Chinese writers have viewed Chinese food, and so on.
( Read more... ) -
Pulp Market Share, 1930.
Title data: 187 total pulps.- Adventure: 14 titles, 7.5%.
- Aviation: 20 titles, 10.7%.
- Boxing: 1 title, 0.5%.
- Detective: 21 titles, 11.2%.
- Fantastica: 2 titles, 1.1%.
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Pulp Market Share, 1929.
Title data: 166 total pulps published.
- Adventure: 19 titles, 11.45%.
- Aviation: 19 titles, 11.45%.
- Boxing: 1 title, 0.6%.
- Detective: 15 titles, 9%.
- Fantastica: 2 titles, 1.2%.
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Pulp Market Share, 1928.
Title data: 119 total pulps.
- Adventure: 11 titles, 9.2%.
- Aviation: 9 titles, 7.6%.
- Boxing: 1 title, 0.8%.
- Detective: 8 titles, 6.7%.
- Fantastica: 3 titles, 2.5%.
