Lovecraft Unbound

Thanks to Ellen Datlow, this can be revealed.
Lovecraft Unbound edited by Ellen Datlow. To be released in October from M Press.

Table of Contents
Introduction by Ellen Datlow
"The Crevasse" by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud
"The Office of Doom" by Richard Bowes
"Sincerely, Petrified" by Anna Tambour
"The Din of Celestial Birds" by Brian Evenson
"The Tenderness of Jackals" by Amanda Downum
"Sight Unseen" by Joel Lane
"Cold Water Survival" by Holly Phillips
"Come Lurk with Me and Be My Love" by William Browning Spencer
"Houses Under the Sea" by Caitlín R. Kiernan
"Machines of Concrete Light and Dark" by Michael Cisco
"Leng" by Marc Laidlaw
"In the Black Mill" by Michael Chabon
"One Day, Soon" by Lavie Tidhar
"Commencement" by Joyce Carol Oates
"Vernon, Driving" by Simon Kurt Unsworth
"The Recruiter" by Michael Shea
"Marya Nox" by Gemma Files
"Mongoose" by Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear
"Catch Hell" by Laird Barron
"That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" by Nick Mamatas

Hear the joke about the Vatican and the Science Ethics Prize?

A Eureka needs to be born again

The very cool Eureka Prizes are Australia's "Oscars of Science". Presented by the Australian Museum, the Eurekas celebrate outstanding work in many fields.

The Eureka Prize for Ethics Research is sponsored by the Vatican Australian Catholic University.

"Because the world of higher education constitutes for the universal church 'a privileged field for her work of evangelization and her presence in the cultural sphere,' the university's health is a matter of great concern to every pope.

"Of primary concern to the Vatican in all its interventions and initiatives in the sphere of education is the preservation and fostering of an institution's specifically Catholic identity."
- Michael J. Miller, Catholic Universities and their Catholic Identity, 2005

(Archbishop Miller is Secretary to the Congregation on Catholic Education at the Vatican. You might enjoy some of his thoughts on the Internet Padre's "Catholic Sexual Ethics" page. In 2007 the Australian Catholic University awarded him their highest honour.)

With so many problems on so many fronts, and capabilities in life sciences never before achievable, the $10,000 Eureka Ethics Research Prize should be both controversial and exciting, something that also enhances Australia's image around the globe as much as our overabundance of brilliant (and sometimes very brave) scientists. One would think the Ethics Prize must be the hardest to decide, given the competition of ethical issues confronting scientists. The 2008 winner was a corker, avoiding the obvious problems and going for the underlying cause of our world financial crisis: The scourge of selflessness and asceticism amongst the wealthy.

The 2008 winner of the Ethics Prize is Garrett Cullity, a "Philosopher of Religion".
"Cullity has won the ACU Eureka Prize for Ethics for a book in which he argues that the altruistic model of restricting one's life to aid another is flawed and that it is not morally wrong to live a life of rich personal fulfillment."
- "Eureka Prize wins for the good life", CN Cath News

If the current sponsors of the prize continue, perhaps we can look forward to these issues as future winners:

• Hope vs. incarceration for perpetrators of extreme random violence
• Improving the Lancet's scientific awareness
• Publishing the miracle proofs from beatifications. Nature, the Lancet, or PLoS
• Does indulgence abuse have a reverse effect in purgatory-time reduction?

It takes some saviours
"Australia waged the world's most effective war on AIDS by ignoring the Catholic Church."
— David Marr, "Pell rides papal bandwagon of death", Sydney Morning Herald, April 11, 2009

"If the Pope is right about condoms' effectiveness, surgeons will have to abandon latex gloves to reduce the likelihood of transmitting bugs. If latex won't work on a lone phallus, what chance does it have against 10 digits with nails on the tips?"
— Peter Robinson, letter, Sydney Morning Herald, April 20, 2009

"Church's condom stand based on religion not science"
— Professor Andrew Gulich, HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Program, University of New South Wales, "First Word", Sydney Morning Herald, April 21, 2009

Australia's science fiction and fantasy community: Arise!
The Sydney Morning Herald community is doing its part, with its letters and stories. But the Holey See is taking up our turf, and we should claim it back. We're the fictionistas. We know the difference between science and fiction, reality and fantasy, and we play with it every day, stretching the boundaries of possibilities, but never breaking them (except for the sinful fun of it.) Many of us are scientists! And some of us wear rubber gloves, even the ones with only one finger.

If we can't help to save the Ethics Prize, we should sponsor a Rubber Glove for Ethics. If, however the Ethics Prize were to be reborn, the God industry should be excommunicated from any part of it, and the judges should include people such as Gulich, Robinson and Marr, a mixture of science professionals and people from the 'community' at large. Then this prize could mean something and not be such a joke.

One Eureka that's a joy foreveryone
The Science Photography Prize, sponsored by New Scientist. The winners and runners-up are always outstanding—beautiful, surprising and in the spirit of curiosity that is the basis of all science.
The Australian Museum runs a travelling exhibit, The Top 25 Science Snap-shots ('snap-shot' is a joke. These are masterpieces, many of which took considerable skill and time to set up.)
The 2008 winner is, literally, a Blast Wave, by Phred Petersen, RMIT University.

The relativity of hairiness

"A shade of dark moustache lent her puffy face a hint of impassioned mystery."

– Marcel Aymé, "Rue de l'Évangile", Across Paris: A collection of Stories, translated by Norman Denny, The Bodley Head, London, 1957. This story first appeared in Aymé's collection Derrière Chez Martin (Paris 1938).

A Magnificent Insignificant: Instead of roses, give a loupe

parts of a head of clover

The end of this quest

A great quest ends, not in "answers", but questions.

Ending this blog with a companionable greeting to all you questers everywhere – dirty with delving, riddled with confusion. Hearing, all of you, the resonance of bells that strike your minds. You know that the saying, "All good things come to an end" is as infinitely stupid as curiosity is, to a happy quester, infinite.

The greatest conservationists have no brains

They are simple, slow – and when times are bad, not even green.

These, just outside my door, were brown and hard as scabs, and as lively as students after all-nighters for most of the past 10 years of drought.

But after rain:

moss Triquetrella papillata with capsule

Bryophytes do not have roots, but are anchored by fine, hair-like rhizoids. Some species have a waxy covering and other adaptations that reduce water loss, but most do not, so that it might be expected that they cannot cope with desiccation for very long. Yet most have the remarkable ability to dry out almost to a crisp, then rehydrate with the first drop of rain and begin to photosynthesise almost immediately.
– David Meagher and Bruce Fuhrer, A field guide to the mosses & allied plants of southern Australia, Australian Biological Resources Study and The Field Naturalists Club of Victoria

Triquetrella papillata

A moss is a university, so much could we learn from it. Yet we treat mosses and their allies like codfish and the sea.

There is a lot of worry about how Sphagnum is being harvested for horticulture. I remember the time I opened a bale of Sphagnum and found a tiny, dead pitcher plant dried up with the moss. It broke my heart.
– Kay Klier, Biology Department, UNI, What is this controversy I hear about Sphagnum and peat bogs? The International Carnivorous Plant Society

(Another must-read from the Society: Are there any vegetarian carnivorous plants?)

Optical illusions, spiders and waspishness

This spider on a printed surface

is one of the wasp-preserved that I showed you here a few days ago.

I placed it on the grey cover of The Workers' Paradise, the recently published anthology I wrote about here.


More pictures, taken yesterday, of this food and others chosen by the same wasp. Although now some days old and treated by me, with shaky hand and a pair of tweezers, as roughly as a warfie's forklift to a crate of whisky, they still look remarkably fresh, yet something more . . .



These are only a few of the many tiny spiders pulled from the smashed chambers made by that mud dauber, but each and every spider has one thing in common. They are so beautifully backed (and in many cases, fronted) that carpets less gorgeous have been the cause of murders.

A wasp couldn't be low enough on the intelligence scale to be swayed by packaging?

Or could these spiders be nutritionally superior as well as visually stimulating? If so, the definition of waspish should be changed from the warped "easily annoyed or angered" that more accurately defines our species, which reacts to the presence of wasps with thoughts of kill.

The wasps that filled these chambers were not only industrious to a fault but surprisingly tolerant of this gawking watcher. I have put my face to their backsides while they work, and they don't even change their 'happy' as some wasp-watchers have called it, hmmm.

As for their taste, we can but aspire to such discernment.

But you might like an update on the little wasp grubs in the nest that was not destroyed. Here they are in a photo taken five minutes ago, not so little any more. Sorry about the blurring in the left-hand chamber. The babe is shifting its body as it eats.

Lookdown at the lookout

If you, like me till a relative moment ago, think cryptogam means a leg with a secret, see The Australian National Botanic Gardens' fascinating Other Cryptogams.

Slightly jargonish but informative nonetheless, is Lichen Biology, part of the University of Sydney's extensive "Fungal Biology".

But "Other?" you say. Never fear. As Other Cryptogams says, "...even experienced bryologists occasionally get confused."

Bryologists now!
If you're confused by that (and who isn't, except for some other -ologists) go get unconfused and potentially obnoxiously informed, by The Australian National Botanic Gardens'
Bryophytes: the world of hornworts, liverworts and mosses



A fantastic field guide
I highly recommend A Field Guide to the mosses and allied plants of southern Australia by David Meagher and Bruce Fuhrer, published by (and available from) the Australian Biological Resources Study and The Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. The pictures are just what this amateur needs, and the thrill of being able to stick little bits of "found this" paper in the book is something I don't have words for. Especially the 'rare' capsule, about which possibly more, later.

And finally, a confession
Though my knees are dirty from crawling, I confess to be horridly disappointed that I have not yet found (or recognised?) a hornwort.

Fresher than that from "the fresh food people"

"How immensely superior to our own pickling processes is that of the Wasp!" *

"certain of fresh meat until their banquet is finished" **

* & ** – J. H. Fabre, The Hunting Wasps, 1916

Mud wasp grubs (Family Vespidae) and smörgåsbord of spiders

"Apples on sale in supermarkets are up to 10 months old, an investigation by The Sun-Herald has revealed.

Woolworths, which advertises itself as "the fresh food people", was the worst culprit, with the oldest products on sale.

The Sun-Herald bought samples of Granny Smiths from Woolworths, Coles and the Norton Street Grocer in Bondi Junction after learning that, within the industry, some products are nicknamed "birthday apples" because they are up to a year old by the time they hit the shelves.

All the samples were Australian-grown.

The apples are kept in cold storage under controlled conditions from the time they are picked."

– "Our tests show supermarket apples are up to 10 months old", Sydney Morning Herald, January 20, 2008

A spider a day, and Mum's the word
This is another nest, unfortunately broken but also packed with a spider assortment including the gorgeous St Andrews Cross, various luscious green Crabs, what I think is a Lynx that was not fast enough; and the exotic banquet-size Camel Spider Leucauge dromedaria, not shown below but shining hugely green and striped black and silver-white in the undisturbed right-hand chamber above.

That brilliant blue bit of shell in the foreground is something else . . .

The cuckoo in paradise

18/3 NOTE: For those of you losing sleep over the scene of ruin, those grubs have been quartered in other accomodation, where they are waxing fat.

The sleep of bees

"Blue banded bees are not at all aggressive" says the Australian Native Bee Research Centre.

That is the first question asked about so many species. It's good to know the answer, but funny as too-tight shoes since our obnoxiousness to them is so often off the chart– especially when there's a camera involved.

No worries! The aggression is all mine


These are Common Blue-banded Bees or Blue Banded Bees (Amegilla cingulata) – males, settled for the night on a sorrel stem.

A number of bees, including the Green & Gold Bee, sleep in large groups of 8 or more. They also fight for their special resting spot with others in the group. These sleeping areas, usually only occupied by males, are simply a small branch or leaf to which the bees cling with their jaws.
– Simon Brown, Native Bees, Willoughby City Council Bushcare News

As I didn't know what they are nor what they were doing (if in doubt, the rules are: If it's people involved, it's a religious rite. If it's other species, it's s**) and as it was breezy, I not only took hold of their place of rest but twisted it around and over while I palpated the camera with my other hand.


Although I didn't ring their legs, notch their wings, glue radio transmitters to their backs (let alone have collecting glints in my eyes) one of the disturbed sleepers eventually fled, leaving the other to grip grimly, all alone. Here's a closeup of those jaws:


What is sleep to bees?

What role do eyelids play in sleep?

Do bees dream?

What does aggressive mean?

"Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds."

For more about these fascinating bees, including where those fortunate females sleep, see:
Blue-banded Bee by Warren and Gloria Sheather, Yallaroo Wildlife (A wonderful place!)
As they say, Unfortunately many gardeners have been conditioned to reach for poisons as soon as they see something with six legs and wings.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Gardening Australia Fact Sheet: Bees

To sleep, perchance to dream
beside you, brother, on this sorrel stem,
but no! Methinks to scream
but I can only Zzzzzzzz.
O! Wo- and men.