Why This Is Hell

The RAA catalogue on their Anish Kapoor show makes a link between the uncanny and Edmund Burke, seeing the uncanny as the dark side of the sublime (linked to terror), but as far as I can tell Burke doesn't use the term "uncanny". Thus far google mainly finds the truism that Burke is uncanny about the French Revolution and Royle doesn't have Burke in his index. Ring any bells with anyone?

Is there any way to back up all entries with a given tag/keyword from Livejournal to Dreamwidth - say if I wanted to separate out all my film entries?

Obviously I could download all and then delete, or go to each entry and cut and paste, but that seems inelegant.

I wonder if the secret research centre - usually in a coastal village (or Collindale) - is a British sf thing? They're experimenting with time travel or teleportation in a private estate rather than a university lab or a military lab although big business is not necessarily excluded. Think "Piper at the Gates of Dawn", A Dream of Wessex, Chronicules, The Electric Crocodile, Charisma, bits of Jerry Cornelius. Various Doctor Who serials.It's not as ostentatious as the base in a hollowed out volcano. There must be US examples, but I'm blanking.


I sort of have an idea what it represents, but the coastal bit doesn't quite fit.

I'm trying to put together a list of sf writers active before 1950 - although I may push that back to 1945 or 1940 - and publishing sf in the 1970s. I've got:

1. Isaac Asimov
   
2. Alfred Bester
   
3. Leigh Brackett
   
4. Ray Bradbury
   
5. Arthur C. Clarke
   
6. Robert A. Heinlein
   
7. Andre Norton
   
8. Theodore Sturgeon
   
9. A.E. van Vogt
   
10. Jack Williamson
    

Naomi Mitchinson is a separate issue - she's not exactly first/agenda sf.

There's one Edmond Hamilton story, which I think I can skip over, Hubbard is busy, ah, I probably need to think about Jack Vance. I just wonder if I've missed the bleeding obvious.

I'm doing lectures tomorrow and next Monday on avoidable errors in essays and dissertations - formatting of titles, bibliographies, use of apostrophes and, above all, misused words.

You'll know the kind of thing - famous/infamous/notorious

"Robert de Niro famously played Travis Bickle."
"Robert de Niro infamously played Travis Bickle."
"Robert de Niro notoriously played Travis Bickle."

Defiantly for definitely:

"Robert de Niro is defiantly a good actor."

Bare/bear:

"The Americans have the right to bare arms."

"Paddington is bearly an illegal immigrant."

They're/their/there:

"Its' there birthday so their over they're"


If you have any gems and bugbears (bugbares?) to share I'd be grateful.

Okay, so it looks like the DVD player died, so it's time to upgrade with something that has a hard drive.

I'm thinking of the SONY RDRHXD890 (here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-RDR-HXD890-Freeview-160GB-Recorder/dp/B0018PRXWE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top and here: http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/Product_ID/4214), which likely needs a multiregion hack (although I think Superfi does this). It is upward of the £200 mark I was thinking of as a max.


Anyone got any experience in this (and a Macbook was meant to be my next big spend...)?

ETA: I just descendezed the étapes (or something) to hear DVD player making loud whirring noise. As best I can see, my copy of Diamonds Are Forever is in there. Thank god it wasn't anything really embarrassing. I guess I am going to take the player apart tomorrow, if I can find the baby cross headed screws. A trip to Wilkos, methinks.

Does anyone have easy access to any of the following (I have a list of quotations to track which I'll then offload onto you...)

Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows", perhaps The Willows: And Other
Queer Tales (1934) but any decent edition would do (a Penguin say) barring first edns

William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland (1908) or later edition with Ch. 18.

H.P. Lovecraft (1995) Miscellaneous Writings, ed. S.T. Joshi, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House.

H.P. Lovecraft (1999) The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, Penguin Classics (I have two of the three quotes pegged in this but can't locate third)

Thanks in advance...

And if anyone recognises Clute's phrase "Pre-Aftermath fiction" (I don't have his book on horror) let me know a source

Is there anywhere that Jeff Noon uses the phrase "science fiction ghetto," "sf ghetto" or "sci-fi ghetto"? I felt sure he has, possibly in my interview with him in Vector (but apparently not there). I need a sentence with him disparaging the genre as a ghetto and saying that he's not part of it.

There's a review of Falling Out of Cars which says it - "reflects his attempt to escape from what he views the SF ghetto." - but I want it in his words.

Does anyone have a year of birth for Alan Erasmus, who co-founded Factory Records etc?