Big Meow (Spoiler Thread)

[Lazy Leopard]

...and isn't WorldCon in Tokyo in 2007?

Seems to me there're quite a few People who could turn out to be... unwelcome... in this book, one way or another. I'm looking forward to the next installment.

[Peter Murray]

Yes, but I wasn't considering Los Angeles, this year's locale, to have firm foundations either. See, I was just reading this chapter of a book where a 4.3 earth tremor is shrugged off by the natives, but not the visitors, and ...

... oh, you've read it too? Ok.

Plus I looked up 2432022.873981; it's 1:58:52 21 July 1946, assuming that DST applied there and then. I suppose it makes sense, as cats are active at night.

[Selden]

I have to admit that I was a little surprised to learn that something from Outside was considered worse than the LP. And, of course, one is left wondering just *which* Outsider is suspected -- whether it'll be something already well known in the genre, something relatively obscure, or someThing entirely new.

Cthulhu fthaghn!

;-)

[Kathy Li]

Originally posted by Lazy Leopard:
...and isn't WorldCon in Tokyo in 2007?...

Yokohama. But yes, also earthquake country. You can tell when people tend to build with wood and low to the ground, vs. building high with bricks.

Originally posted by Peter Murray:
...I looked up 2432022.873981; it's 1:58:52 21 July 1946, assuming that DST applied there and then. I suppose it makes sense, as cats are active at night....

Thanks for doing that. I wouldn't have had a clue it was a 2am happening. I have a feeling everybody's going to get exhausted at some point in the story.

And I just realized. 1946. I wonder if DD chose that year specifically so she wouldn't have to deal with WWII specifics?

Originally posted by Selden:
...one is left wondering just *which* Outsider is suspected -- whether it'll be something already well known in the genre, something relatively obscure, or someThing entirely new. ... Cthulhu fthaghn!....

Please no, not the Elder Gods!!! Actually, I kind of like that idea.

[Lazy Leopard]

Originally posted by kli6:
Yokohama.

Oops! I obviously wasn't paying attention at Interaction!

But yes, also earthquake country. You can tell when people tend to build with wood and low to the ground, vs. building high with bricks.

Indeed. My grandmother's first fiance was killed in the 1923 Tokya-Yokohama earthquake.

[Space Cadet]

In late 2004 there was an earthquake in Niigata (a place in Japan) and for three months the only public transport from here to Osaka and Kyoto was by airplane. The train and bullet train lines were turned into twisted scrap metal. A bullet train de-railed. I remember the quake. I was at a work party. Everyone just said "Huh, an earthquake," and then continued eating. But then, I did too because I am from near Wellington in New Zealand, and we have a lot of quakes there too.

Does anyone else get a tired mind trying to hold onto the imagery of the main characters as cats? I mean, I always know I am reading about cats, but I am afraid that if I don't concentrate on the catness of the characters, they will become humans in my minds eye. Every now and then I get jolted by phrazes such as 'flirted her tail' and think "cat, cat, cat, remember the catness." Maybe I am just going mad.

[Peter Murray]

There's enough body language like "put her whiskers forward" and so on that I'm constantly reminded that they are cats.

I suppose you could always find photos of cats that look like them (start with DD's flickr?) and print them out, captioned Rhiow, Saash, Urruah and Arhu. Or whoever you'd want on such a list.

[Space Cadet]

That might be a good idea. I think my problem is that I have never owned a cat. My Dad is allergic to them, you see. Even though I no longer live at home, I can't get one now because I will have to go back to NZ in a little over a year.

[Peter Murray]

Belated nitpick from chapter one:

dear staid Urruah, had finally lost his temper two weeks ago and sat down and actually started washing his at Ffrihh during one of these perorations.

I just checked the current revised version and it still says Ffrihh. Shouldn't that be Jath? (I was thinking Ffrihh was one of the London team, but I just checked, and that's Fhrio.)

I like this by Aufwi (chapter 3 now):

he pulled the gate up from the branch and dove through it, taking it with him as he vanished.

This is a style thing, right? I mean, if it's dangerous to take a patent gate through a gate (Urruah's comment in WH), how much more dangerous is it to take a patent gate through itself?

[Space Cadet]

I was surprised at the gate thing too. I would have thought the end result would have been like when you pull a Cat's Cradle through the wrong way and get a big tangle that you then have trouble extracting your fingers from. But a hundred-million times worse, and using strings of powerful power rather than strings of, er, string.

[Buran]

What format is the date string in? At first I thought of the Unix secs format, but that begins counting from 01/01/70 (which is why OS X and other Unix related systems can sometimes screw up and think it's 1969), so it is not that. I'm curious.

The 'another day in paradise' quote I do know, however; it's from a Phil Collins song advocating more help for the homeless.

She calls out to the man on the street,
"Sir, can you help me? It's cold and I've nowhere to sleep;
There's somewhere you can tell me?"

...

Oh, think twice!
It's another day for you and me in Paradise ...

Great song, especially on Serious Hits Live!, and it's from the But Seriously album.

I always like seeing songs I know referenced in books.

[Peter Murray]

The dates in the YW books are almost all in the Julian date format. The date in chapter 2 seems to be the same format - at least, it works out to 1946, which the webpage says is the year the story is set in.

See this page for an explanation:

Julian dates (abbreviated JD) are simply a continuous count of days and fractions since noon Universal Time on January 1, 4713 BCE (on the Julian calendar). Almost 2.5 million days have transpired since this date. Julian dates are widely used as time variables within astronomical software. Typically, a 64-bit floating point (double precision) variable can represent an epoch expressed as a Julian date to about 1 millisecond precision. Note that the time scale that is the basis for Julian dates is Universal Time, and that 0h UT corresponds to a Julian date fraction of 0.5.

[Buran]

You came to the same conclusion a friend did when I posted the question on my Livejournal (I know lots of fellow geeks). Here is his response:

Julian Date 2432022.87398 (the converter I found online truncates at that point) is 21 July 1946, at approximately 8:58:32 Greenwich Time. It's a Sunday.

Julian Date is (or at least was) popular with astronomers as it avoided all the confusion of Gregorian and Julian calendars; having a straight serial number makes computing times of periodic or periodic-with-correction-term events easier. It's also probably the easiest way to convert from one calendar system to another (go through the Julian Date), and vastly simplifies figuring out how many days there are between two events. That it keeps the same number through a night's observations (if you're in Europe) was another bonus to the astronomers, who counted the day as starting at noon up till 1926.

He didn't have any other information about my question other than it was some sort of date reference that was supposed to track back to 1946.

I now know a few more factoids!

[nelka35]

I am afraid that if I don't concentrate on the catness of the characters, they will become humans in my minds eye. Every now and then I get jolted by phrazes such as 'flirted her tail' and think "cat, cat, cat, remember the catness." Maybe I am just going mad.

Nope, you just do not identify with the cat traits and cat personality enough, and therefore need to remind yourself. Well, it is a possible explanation...
For me it is not an issue - those lines ("flirted her tail") fit. I guess I see the cat personalities as both personalities and clearly cat; I think it depends on our personalities how we perceive that...

[nelka35]

I suppose you could always find photos of cats that look like them (start with DD's flickr?) and print them out, captioned Rhiow, Saash, Urruah and Arhu. Or whoever you'd want on such a list.

What is DD's Flickr id? How do I find it?