more adventures with the OED

Dammit. "Idealist" is an anachronistic word for the period, and in its earliest usage, it referred to a specific philosophy. "Optimist" is also out-of-period. "Utopian" is not, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing as "idealist," and that's the word I really want.

The answer to this, of course, is to say "to hell with the OED" and use the word anyway. I doubt anyone not reading this journal would ever notice the word in the novel and think, that's anachronistic. But having established this principle in my prose, I'm remarkably unwilling to surrender it.

Maybe this will be the corollary to the use of "medieval" in Midnight Never Come. There just wasn't a word in use back then that efficiently conveyed the period I was trying to reference, so I finally gave up and used it.

Yes, I do obsess this much. But most of you are not surprised. Those who are, are probably new to this journal.

your morning Midnight round-up

The major purpose of this is to say that Orbit has announced the winners of the website competition. (If you are one, I think they've notified you by now, but everyone else may not have heard.) Thanks to everyone who participated, and I hope you had fun!

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Review time:

juushika was not a fan of the flashbacks, and found the characters a bit underdeveloped, but liked the book overall.

Two people in Italy also seem to be saying nice things about it, as near as I can tell from Babelfish and my own limited command of the Romance language family. (Hey, people in Italy -- keep talking about it! Then maybe I can make a translation sale there.)

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Brief quasi-interview piece on Sci Fi Wire, the Sci Fi Channel's news service. John Joseph Adams (better known to some of you as the slush reader for F&SF) interviewed me, then compiled my answers into something more like an article.

There should be a few more coming in the nearish future, too -- but I want to clear these tabs, so here's this stuff, and I'll post again when the other things happen.