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Charlie Jane Anders Takes Writers With Drinks on the Road!

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Charlie Jane Anders Takes Writers With Drinks on the Road!

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Charlie Jane Anders Takes Writers With Drinks on the Road!

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Published on March 23, 2016

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While there are plenty of themed monthly reading series and open-mic nights, how many can you say combine stand-up comedy with erotica with rants with science fiction (and more)? Since 2001, io9 co-founder and author Charlie Jane Anders has been running the spoken-word variety show Writers With Drinks in San Francisco. This delightfully subversive monthly event brings together writers from all genres, from Jonathan Lethem to Mallory Ortberg. But San Francisco doesn’t get to have all the fun—Writers With Drinks is finally coming back to New York City!

In April and May, Anders will host Writers With Drinks events in NYC and Chicago. We’re especially excited about the NYC event, which will feature Uprooted author Naomi Novik, Annalee Newitz (whose novel Autonomous is forthcoming from Tor Books), and others including Anders herself. In her usual role as emcee, Anders has been praised for her “legendary introductions, which tend to veer into surrealistic whimsy” and which “travel as freely as a sci-fi novel, voyaging from Postmodernism to twerking to super-freak librarians to 18th century fashion history.” (Read more about WWD here and here.)

The cost of admission is on a sliding scale (“no-one turned away,” all events note), with the proceeds going to charities such as New York’s Housing Works and San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture. Here are the WWD lineups for the next two months:

Saturday, April 9
Adam Savage (Mythbusters), Isabel Yap (A Cup of Salt Tears), and Princess Kali (Enough to Make You Blush: Erotic Humiliation)
The Make Out Room @ 7:30 (doors at 6:30)
San Francisco, CA

Wednesday, April 13
Naomi Novik (Uprooted), Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad), Annalee Newitz (Autonomous), Aparna Nancherla (Late Night with Seth Meyers), Charlie Jane Anders (All the Birds in the Sky), and Jee Leong Koh (Steep Tea)
The Delancey @ 7
New York, NY
RSVP on Facebook!

Tuesday, May 3
Luis Alberto Urrea (Queen of AmericaInto the Beautiful North), Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife), Charlie Jane Anders (All the Birds in the Sky)
Martyrs’ @ 8
Chicago, IL

Saturday, May 21
Guy Gavriel Kay (Children of Earth and Sky), Yangsze Choo (The Ghost Bride), and David Lau (Virgil and the Mountain Cat)
The Make Out Room @ 7:30 (doors at 6:30)
San Francisco, CA

For more information, visit the Writers With Drinks website.

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oafgeek
4 years ago

Thanks so much for the review!! I know almost nothing about fabrials, it was very helpful. I’d never even thought about the fact that soulcasters would probably have had trapped spren; I I wonder if that’s the reason radiants and non-radiants experience soulcasting differently. Unless there’s some other hidden gem that hasn’t been hinted at, maybe a tiny perfect gem of some kind that a spren is trapped in, but since Shallan had both her soulcaster and Jasnah’s at different times she’d probably have noticed that. But when non-radiants use soulcasters (object), isn’t it true that they can mostly only do one or two things? And the soulcaster (person) becomes subject to the changes they enact on other things as well, which was very viscerally illustrated by a smoke-soulcaster in one of the interlude chapters. These people eventually get used up and die, turning into the thing they once made. Radiants don’t seem to experience that, or else Jasnah is hiding a lot of things.

And how DO they charge the gems? Most people charge their spheres by leaving them out somewhere secure, even the wealthy, so if there was some established method of transferring stormlight from sphere to sphere the banks would probably be doing that for them instead, with some reserve of large gems whose only purpose is as a stormlight reserve (like Lirin’s gem reserve which served as a light source). Correct me if I’m wrong but with one big exception I don’t think we’ve ever seen a radiant transfer stormlight into a gem either – and arguably even Dalinar didn’t do that, he charged them with the same mechanism that the Highstorm does. So they’d have to leave them out for the storm somehow, right?

As far as trapping spren, do you think there’s a connection to how the Listeners change form by letting spren into their gemhearts? (I am understanding that correctly right?) In fact Venli discovered Stormform after trapping an associated spren. It seemed like after her own transformation she was able to essentially mass-produce gems with trapped Storm spren, so it must not be terribly difficult to entice a spren into a gem, it may be that all you have to do is cut the right gem to the right shape and they’ll just hang out there full-time by their own choice. So maybe instead of a cage, it’s more like a birdhouse. You create the space and it’s just nice for the spren and it’s there by choice, you just have to expose the gem to the circumstances that would attract those spren so that one will notice it and take up residence. Then you’re able to use its presence to manipulate the surrounding material world.

OR it could somehow be connected to the interesting properties we’ve seen in spren, like how once you’ve measured it it will hold that metric (apparently indefinitely). Maybe you get some spren, label them somehow so you can track them, then once one is in the gem you choose you check the box that says “in the gem” and then the spren is like “yep that’s me I’m the one in the gem” and it just stays there because someone happened to make a note of that. Safe to say there’s a lot we still don’t know.

Avatar
4 years ago

If gemstones can capture powerful spen such as the unmade, what would happen if the Stormfather was captured? Would the highstorms ceace to exist? If that’s the case, that would certainly be a huge blow to the Knights Radiant, cutting off their supply of stormlight. Maybe we’ll see the fused attempt to accomplish this in some later book.

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Landis963
4 years ago

Re: Warning Fabrials, I think we’ve seen them in one other place: > In Secret History, the artifact that the IRE were using to detect Threnodian interlopers (conveniently missing our favorite Scadrian interloper) is described as a gemstone in a cage of wire.< Of course, the person looking at it didn’t know what they were seeing at the time.  

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4 years ago

Did we see Reversers in use in the same section as the de-humidifier attractors at the battle of Narak? WoR, chapter 82.

Or was that simple non-magical engineering?

I had assumed it was fabrials, but re-reading the passage just now I’m not as certain as I once was.

Avatar
4 years ago

Alice.  Well articulated summary.  I was surprised, however, that you did not discuss the apparent effects on those who consistently use Soulcasters.  As oafgeek @1 noted, “the soulcaster (person) becomes subject to the changes they enact on other things as well, which was very viscerally illustrated by a smoke-soulcaster in one of the interlude chapters. These people eventually get used up and die, turning into the thing they once made.”

While it is apparent that the Soulcaster’s phyiscal form gets used up and they die, does that have an effect on their soul?  Do they remain as a ghost or can they move on to the Spiritual Realm like others who die?  I also would like an explanation as to how using the Soulcaster constantly over time causes the user to be used up?  How does that work?  Would somebody who only uses a Soulcaster once have a tiny bit of them used up; but not enough to have any noticeable effect on his/her body?  Or does repeated use create some time of connection (in the same way that the Nahel bond creates a connection between KR and spren)?  Perhaps it is this connection, that only once it us open and active, begins the “draining process.”  I am guessing that most, if not all, my questions are RAFO.  Oh well.  Hopefully we will get answers to these questions in the next 2 books (rather than have to wait for books 6-10 or no answers at all).

Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren

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Nicola
4 years ago

For modern fabrials, I don’t think the fact that the gems are replaced means the spren aren’t in there – perhaps there’s a way to transfer the spren. Or you replace with a gem that already has a new spren of the same type trapped inside and, throw the old gem and spren away?

For ancient fabrials, I do think there are high spren inside, but I don’t think they are trapped. I think they agree to it. If you’ve read the unpublished Aether of Night, there is a type of high Aedin that bond and make a Copate. Essentially turn themselves into a lamppost or a taxi but become essentially immortal. Raeth muses about why someone might choose this kind of life. I think a trapped high spren would be kind of like that – although it seems from our tour of the cognitive realm that they can still interact with spren and other folks in the cognitive realm.

Also, any theories on how modern fabrials work has got to also explain why the users gradually turn into the things they soulcast! Is that specific to soulcasting and why??

Avatar
4 years ago

The transformation of the soulcaster ardent might be similar to the forms of the parsh. The soulcaster (person) bonds with the spren of the soulcaster (object) and transforms. The gems in the soulcaster are like an external version of the gemhearts that the native fauna seems to need to bond with spren. Fabrials are like artificial versions of native creatures that use gems to bond with spren and gain new abilities. If it is a symbiosis, what do the spren powering fabrials gain? With diminishers they might “eat” what they absorb, but the opposite should cost them energy.

A pain fabrial that can absorb and cause pain might work like a battery that stores pain and later releases it again.

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Hemiak
4 years ago

I too believe they used the reversers at Narak. They push the rocks into the chasm, the paired gems lift the canvas into the air. Seems pretty clear to me. They don’t mention setting up frames and pulleys at any time. Also, the big blue light that got lifted up to signal the start of the battle was probably a form of reverser as well. 

 

@1 Shallen pushed storm light into the oath gate gems right at the end of WoR. She says something about not really understanding what she was doing.

Also in Oathbrringer one of the ardents mentions infusing some of the devices but they still can’t figure out what the devices do. We don’t actually see it happen, but there’s obviously a way to do it not requiring a radiant. 

Avatar
4 years ago

@@@@@ 1 oafgeek

Correct me if I’m wrong but with one big exception I don’t think we’ve ever seen a radiant transfer stormlight into a gem either …

Actually, Shallan had to recharge the gemstones in the Narak Oathgate at the end of WoR. She was calling for everyone to give her whatever stormlight they had so she could power the platform.

EDIT: Thanks, @@@@@8! That’ll teach me to refresh before posting lol

oafgeek
4 years ago

Thanks for that! So radiants can do it, and presumably there’s also a fabrial that can do it. If you can infuse a gem with stormlight, and you can power a fabrial with that gem, and use that fabrial to transfer stormlight to or from other gems… how long until Navani invents a transistor circuit? Navani: “Look at this Dalinar, this device can calculate both addition and subtraction!” Dalinar: “So can Renarin.” Kaladin: “True but not Adolin. Zing!”

All I’m saying is that if Taravangian had really been that smart he would have designed a supercomputer instead of a house-of-cards world domination plot. You want humanity to survive? Give them tools, that’s what Taln was offering when he first came back from Damnation and as a herald I think he’s got a good bit of experience helping humanity survive. But nooo, gotta dominate the whole planet myself, that’s the only way the world really gets saved. Sure, sure, gotcha buddy. You’re not evil, you’re just looking out for humanity. Sure.