The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers (1983)

As I've mentioned here before, most of my reading is non-fiction. When I do read fiction, it's usually only to reread from a small collection of favorites I've been rereading for 20 years. About half that collection is historical fiction (just two authors, really: Graves and Vidal), and the other half is science-fiction.

If I'm a sci-fi fan — and I don't think I really am — it's more by accident than by nature. In both the past and present I've had a lot of friends who are sci-fi fans, so science fiction is more present in my awareness than mystery, Western or romance. Come to think of it, every science-fiction book on my perennial-reread list came to me from just one person.

Doug was one of my two best friends in high school. He had an unusual combination of qualities, whereby he defied categorization by Breakfast Club high school stereotypes. He was simultaneously a smart kid, a dropout, a jock, a nerd, a druggie, and invisible. Among his nerdly qualities, Doug was a voracious reader of science fiction. He was always talking about whatever book he happened to be reading. Some small subset of them — selected because something about a particular book sounded appealing to me, or sometimes just by chance — I decided to read. About half of those stayed interesting long enough for me to finish, and then some subsubset of the ones I finished became my current collection of books to reread.

All but one in the collection is either from a favorite series (eg, Dune) or by a favorite author (eg, Niven). The lone exception is Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates. Many years ago I tried reading another book by Powers but it didn't stick. Maybe I'll try again some time.

I don't intend to really review this book. In short, a frumpy second-rate academic specializing in British romantic poets is offered an opportunity to go back in time and see Coleridge. Things go wrong on the trip, and our anti-hero finds himself caught up in an elaborate web of time-traveling intrigue and adventure. I suppose I like the tie-in to the actual historic poets. Even more, I especially like how Powers treats the time-travel problem, which I find so unsatisfying in most other science fiction. (The only other time travel stor I can think of that makes sense to me is in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.) I suppose those are the things Doug would have mentioned to me. He wouldn't have known anything about the poets, but he would have known to ask me about them.

Among the interesting words I took note of, lovecraftian means more to me now than it did when I read the book. I've never read any H.P. Lovecraft, but several of my current crop of friends know his work well and they have enlightened me somewhat (or should I say endarkened?).

I already knew the etymology of foible. It is the weak part of a sword (from the French word, cognate with our feeble). Still it was fun to see the word used in the original meaning, when a character grabs that part of a sword.

When a certain character takes a swim in the Thames, we read that he "trod water for a few moments". I guess that makes sense, for surely you wouldn't say that he treaded water. Still, it was curious to see.

Yaw and luff are sailing terms. My dictionary tells me that to luff is to steer into the wind. The line in the book seems related, but the usage doesn't quite match: "The man at the tiller had cut too close into the wind, and the sail luffed and fluttered empty." To yaw is to sway back and forth, as a ship is wont to do when the sea is rough, but Powers uses it to describe a certain sorcerer whose physical disability makes him do that when he walks. (Too much magic causes one to lose touch with the earth's gravity; thus the most experienced sorcerers are physically unstable.)

I knew cantrips from the card game Magic the Gathering, in which the word was commandeered to describe a certain sort of spell (one that allows you to draw a card after casting it). The word is of Scottish origin. In the book, it is a gypsy character who is "fearfully muttering protective cantrips". Go figure.

Most promising for embellishing one's vocabulary is the perfectly usable circumbendibus, a ten-dollar word meaning a long and roundabout trip. It's not in my Merriam-Webster Collegate, but the Third New International has it. No date is listed, but the abbreviated etymology says that the "bend" part really does come from the English word, suggesting that it's some anglophone's piece of Latin macaroni for "going around the bend".

The word that most caught my fancy was fetor. I can't recall ever seeing the word before, not even in Scrabble or Boggle, but I know what fetid means, so by thinking of pairs like splendid splendor or squalid squalor I could figure out fetor

Naturally, this makes me want to think up more such pairs ... fervid fervor, pallid pallor, torpid torpor. (I don't think torpor is a very common word, but it's been a familiar one to me ever since an eccentric high school English teacher wrote on one of my papers, "The slow drift into mental torpor requires no guide.")

What interests me even more is all the words that don't pair up by this pattern. That which is solid does not exhibit solor, and that which is arid does not exhibit aror. On the other side, something that has an odor or is in error is neither odid nor errid.

Some pairs are obviously connected, but the primary connotations don't quite match. Is liquor liquid? Well, yes, I suppose it is. Some of these give interesting insight into how the meanings of the words evolved. You can see how someone in a drunken stupor might be said to be drunken stupid, and although one cannot smell or taste rancor, if one could it seems right that it would taste rancid.

When a pair drifts too far apart, the noun requires a new adjective and the adjective requires a new noun. Earlier in their etymological lives, humor and humid were a wedded pair. (If you're familiar with the Greco-Roman concept of body fluids and temperament you can see the connection. Otherwise, probably not.) After their divorce, each took on a new spouse: humor is now humorous and humid has humidity. This pattern occurs quite often. You see the same thing with valorous validity, rigorous rigidity, and vaporous vapidity.

Some pairs don't wait for the divorce to take on a new partner. Languor is still the quality of being languid. But it's also the quality of being languorous. This ought to be an opportunity for the two adjectives to have subtly different connotations, but if there's any significant difference between languid and languorous, I have yet to learn it. For that matter, though I use both words I'm not sure I could pinpoint the difference between horrible and horrid. (And why is there no terrid?)

In an episode where our anti-hero finds himself in 17th century London, a certain street is specifically referred to as "Jeter Lane". This felt odd to me, since other streets aren't cited by name. Am I supposed to be familiar with Jeter Lane? The name makes me think of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, or perhaps the French word meaning "to jump", and it doesn't sound like a name I'd expect to see in old London.

Googling turns up no Jeter Lane in London in any era, but it does lead me to one K.W. Jeter, whom Wikipedia says authored "what was likely the first true Cyberpunk novel". Wikipedia also mentions that Jeter attended Cal State Fullerton where he became friends with fellow student-authors James P Blaylock and Tim Powers. I'm guessing that "Jeter Lane" must have been Powers' friendly acknowledgment to his friend.

The three aspiring writers at Fullerton were mentored by the better-known Philip K Dick. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the novel on which the movie Blade Runner was based, was dedicated to Tim Powers.

6:01:08 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

One of my favorite hobbies is contemplating word shapes. (It's good to have a hobby that can be practiced while stuck in traffic, waiting in line at the grocery store, soaking in the bathtub, or while lying in bed waiting for sleep.) The tyranny of alphabetical order predisposes us to think of patterns at the beginnings of words, but generally I'm more interested in patterns at the ends.

An error in Orcinus's latest post started me thinking about words ending in -faction. It's a long post, and I see he's actually quoting himself from an earlier post, but somewhere down there he says that Nazis "retained the ancient Catholic hatred of female putrefication". I honestly have no idea what he means by that, but I do know there is no such thing as "putrefication". When a body putrefies, the proper word for the process is putrefaction.

The error is certainly understandable. When something is modified, it is a modification; when one is notified, it is notification -- and so on for amplify, verify, purify, fortify, ratify and so forth. (Yes, Brux, I know what you're thinking. Go ahead and say it in the comments.) So when something putrefies, why shouldn't it be putrefication?

So I ask myself: What other -faction words are there? Most obviously, there is satisfaction. A bit of contemplation reveals liquefaction and stupefaction. Already, a pattern is emerging. Like putrefy, both liquefy and stupefy are spelled with -efy, instead of the usual -ify. I don't recall ever seeing a noun to go with rarefy, but when I look it up I find that it is indeed rarefaction and not rarefication as I might have guessed. So my tentative rule is that verbs ending in -ify form -ification, but verbs that end in -fy without a preceding i form -faction.

It turns out that, though not without exceptions, the rule holds up pretty well. Venturing beyond the basic dictionary I find several more obscure -efy words (tumefy, calefy, labefy, madefy ... get a fat dictionary if you want to look 'em up). Sure enough they all form -efaction and none form -efication. On the other side, of the dozens of -ify verbs, I find only two that break the rule. In both cases, both forms are allowed. For petrify, petrifaction is preferred to the alternative petrification; for vitrify, vitrifaction is the alternative to the preferred vitrification.

The word that clinches it for me is liquefy/liquify, which allows for alternate spellings in the verb form. The two spellings have the same meaning, but there are usage conventions. When industry converts coal to liquid for easier transport, it is liquified and the process is always called liquification. When ground becomes like liquid as the result of pressure or seismic activity, the soil is liquefied, and the process is always called liquefaction.

This reminds me of a favorite scrap of 17th century verse. The poet is Robert Herrick, best known for advising virgins to gather rosebuds while they may:

The third line makes me wonder if Americans whose dialect pronounces clothes like "close" have -- like those who "mispronounce" ask as "ax" -- centuries of precedent on their side.

1:45:58 AM  [permalink]  comment []