The Reading Room

Q: Meaning of "lit from behind through a cloud of metallic steam" and "strain a person’s sense ... "

8:35 AM

" a somewhat simian experience" - I assume that should be "similar"? — Rand al'Thor ♦ 12 secs ago

Typo of the month :-D

Eng Lit Learner

9:02 AM

They stopped on a rising note. Dexter was standing in the bathroom doorway, holding Billy by the hand, lit from behind through a cloud of metallic steam. ‘Some things, Morty,’ he said, ‘strain a person’s sense of humour.’ He swept through the room. The three of them sat foolishly, with fading sm...

Spagirl

9:13 AM

@Randal'Thor ooook

Bookworm

9:29 AM

Q: Options for when a text has not been translated into English

Several of Arturo Perez-Reverte's works have been translated into English, but in the case of "El Cid" (Sidi), no English version has been published to my knowledge. I fear my prospects are grim. Auto-translating an e-version would surely cheapen the experience. And I won't be learning Spanish an...

translation spanish-literature

3 hours later…

b_jonas

12:34 PM

@Librarian well I'm surprised.

Mithical

1:02 PM

Pleasantly, I hope?

5 hours later…

Bookworm

6:18 PM

Q: Have or were there any great works of fiction about flying machines before Jules Verne?

There are two stories by Jules Verne which I know about which captured Public imagination about Flying Machines in the 18th century. The first is the somewhat unknown 'A trip around the world in a Flying Machine' https://archive.org/details/triproundworldin00vern (Public Archive) and the more fam...

french-literature jules-verne

6:29 PM

@Bookworm Good comment, @bobble. I think this question is very rescuable, probably by making it ask what was the first work of fiction about flying machines.

There's even an argument to be made that it's on-topic already, since "were there any before Verne" is equivalent to "was Verne the first" which is a special case of "what was the first".

@Randal'Thor I'd still quibble with the use of "great" as a requirement and ask for a definition of "flying machine"

\o/ they edited!

Yay! Not surprising though, they're a "new user" only to Literature, got 10k on another SE site, so they should know how this stuff works.

6:51 PM

What are the requirements to be a "flying machine"? For example, do the wings made by Daedalus in Greek legend count? How about magic carpets? A mythological flying palace? (All examples pulled from Wikipedia's article on flying machines) — bobble 48 secs ago

That's why I put the "For the pedants" paragraph in this question :-)

2 hours later…

Q: Join me in Welcoming Valued Associates: #945 - Slate - and #948 - Vanny

8:38 PM

I’m excited to introduce you to the two newest members of the Community team. Slate and Vanny have joined us as Associate Community Managers. They are joining JNat and Catija on Community Ops and will report to me. Slate and Vanny will eventually oversee tickets that come through the contact us f...

discussion featured announcements community-managers

^ spot a familiar face in a new guise

^ spot a familiar face in a familiar guise

Mithical

^ spot a familiar guise in a new face

^ familiar a new spot in a face guise

Mithical

...spaghetti.

You need a password to access the spaghetti party.

8:46 PM

I don't think I want to know what the spaghetti party is.

I thought you of all people would pick up on that reference.

...I'm going to lose my mind. Again. For the third time. About this same sequence of posts. Seven years later.

9:00 PM

Can someone help with that flying machine question? They're adding... something... about how they define flying machines in the comments, but I don't understand, and anyways it would be best with specific descriptions in the Q itself.

Because I would love to get away with Daedalus as an answer but apparently he counts more as "mythology than fantasy" :)

9:15 PM

This isn't SFF where mythology is off-topic and fantasy is on-topic :-)

1 hour later…