a couple of answers.

What I assumed was a quick thinking-time housecleaning break yesterday turned into a full-scale cleaning assault.  Somewhere around the point where I decided it was a good idea to sweep behind the hot-water heater, I realized what was going on.  On some level, it is apparently very important to me to have a clean house when I turn thirty next week.  Less than a week away from my birthday, I feel really good about turning thirty.  I'm at a good place in my life--to be a little flip about it, I know a bunch of stuff, and I'm good at some things I want to be good at.  This is where things start to get interesting.  So it's not milestone-birthday anxiety, this need to set my house in order (both literally and metaphorically).  I think it's just about marking the occasion.

Greg gave me some questions to answer, and I guess I should get to that.

1. Are those ignorant of history really doomed to repeat it? Are we all doomed to repeat history whether we're ignorant or not?

I realize this is practically heresy, but I've never entirely understood what Santayana was getting at.  Not having ever seen the context for the quote, though, I'm going to choose to assume that he's talking about personal history, rather than history on the broader scale.  As far as personal histories go, I think we all know people who repeat their own mistakes over and over again, and yeah, in that case the only way to get out of the cycle is to really do a lot of thinking about your own past. 

2.  What has been the most unexpected good thing about editing for SH? What's been the most unexpected bad thing?

The most unexpected good thing has been the people I've met.  My involvement with Strange Horizons has brought me into this incredible community of people, and honestly, I'm not sure I would have found y'all otherwise.  For bad things... I feel like you're trying to get me in trouble here.  How about this: the concern that my involvement with science fiction (SH in particular, but publishing in general) is somehow going to hurt me in my academic job search.  (I like to think this is an unfounded fear, but it's impossible to say for sure.)

3. Pie or cake?

Pie.  (Which is not to say that I'm anti-cake, like Some People.)

4. Do East Coast people have tend to possess some quality you wish more West Coast people had? What about the reverse?

Of course it's dangerous to generalize, especially because my West Coast experience is so thoroughly Berkeley-centric, but if we can take all the standard disclaimers as read, then I'd say that East Coast people tend to have more of an ability to not take themselves so seriously.  There's a particular kind of self-deprecating humor that was absolutely standard among my friends back east, both in New Jersey and in Boston, and one of the weirdest adjustments for me when I moved to California was realizing that a lot of people I met here were just tone-deaf to that.  I might have thought it was a grad school thing, but my first year out here I was dating a computer programmer who was involved in a lot of dot-com stuff, and I saw a lot of the same trends.  Some days, I felt like I could guess whether a person was a California native or not by listening for the presence or absence of a self-mocking note when she talked about the importance of nondisclosure agreements for casual conversations.

5. Describe your dream home. You're not paying for it, so it can even have an observatory or roller coaster or whatever.

My needs are so prosaic!  My dream home has large bathtubs, room enough in the yard for both big shade trees and a thriving flower garden, and at least one room whose only purpose is to be a library.  (Really lovely built-in wooden shelving and cabinets wouldn't hurt.)  It has a big kitchen with plenty of counter space, and it gets good daytime light in all the important living spaces.  The house itself is large enough that you can't hear everything people are doing in other parts of the house, but not so big that you could get lost.  It's walking distance from some sort of interesting and active urban-like area (like Rockridge in Berkeley, or Davis Square in Somerville, or downtown Iowa City), it's located somewhere where Matt and I don't have to drive to work, and it's convenient for our friends to visit.

Oh, and it has at least one secret door and hidden passageway.

Anyone want some questions?

Comments

[Niall]

Hit me!

[Dan Percival]

May I play? I'm almost done writing up my WisCon notes, so I'm just about ready for a new assignment. Yes, I am slow.

[David Moles]

Me, too.

[Karen]

That's an interesting observation about the east/west coast thing. As generalizations go I think it's a fair one; those levels of earnestness (not quite the right word, but you know what I mean) get absorbed and adopted throughout groups of people who spend time together. It's all in the subtle twists of attitude. When I moved from east coast to west, I was struck by basically the same thing, although I thought about it in different terms.

[Heather Shaw]

Oh, I'd like some questions, please!

(And, not trying to suck up or anything, but I really enjoyed reading your answers to yours! May I clone your dream house? The only things I'd add are a swimming pool and a courtyard/ atrium.)

[Jed Hartman]

Fascinating east/west distinction. From my point of view -- as a west-coast native who spent years out east but was never really comfortable there -- it's almost the opposite: my experience of the east coast (aside from Swarthmore and my friends, so maybe I'm talking more about my stereotyped mental image than about actual experience) is of a certain grimness about life and intentional distancing of people from each other, while in California I feel like people are more laid back and relaxed, in general.

...But maybe that's a different axis from what you're talking about. I guess I do expect more Irony from eastcoasterners (which can take the form of self-deprecating humor, but can also serve the purpose of distancing), and more Earnestness from westcoasterners (which can take the form of an endearing passion about important things, but can also lead to taking self too seriously and to apparent naivete).

Then again, most of my time on both coasts has been spent with liberal intellectuals who take things seriously but also like to laugh, so I'm not sure that any of my generalizations are based in actual observation.

[Susan]

I promised myself that I'd get questions written for y'all before I left for the birthday celebrations, and I'm cutting it a little close, but here goes.

Questions for Niall:

1) (This one is a shameless copy of a question Greg asked me, but I'm really curious.) What has surprised you the most about working for Strange Horizons? (Positive or negative surprise, I'm not as picky as Greg was.)

2) What do you like best about your neighborhood?

3) Through some unspecified handwaving magical mechanism, you can have any three restaurants in the world relocated to be within walking distance of your house. Which three do you take, and why?

4) What's your favorite science-fictional invention?

5) What do you have as your computer desktop background?

Questions for Dan:

1) How did you and Nadya meet?

2) Do you ever wear nailpolish? If so, what's your favorite color nailpolish? If not, why not?

3) What three books do you think everyone you know really ought to read?

4) Why did you decide to be a vegetarian?

5) If you could change one thing about the city of Berkeley, what would it be?

Questions for David:

1) Robots or superheroes?

2) What did you like best about Oxford?

3) The Arbitrary Fortune Fairy gives you five thousand dollars, but you have to spend it all in the next 72 hours. What do you spend it on?

4) I'm not a fan of those "if you could live in any past time or place" questions, so I'm not going to ask that. But I am going to ask this: if you could bring the dominant clothing style from any past time or place back into fashion, what would it be?

5) Which author, living or dead, would you most like to be favorably compared to?

Questions for Heather:

1) What's your dream job?

2) All of your friends are going to be in town at the same time, and it's been decided that everyone's coming over to your house for a movie marathon. What movies do you show? (This does, of course, assume that you have a fabulous house large enough to seat everyone, with a comparably fabulous entertainment center.)

3) When you publish your first novel, what are some phrases you'd like to see show up in the blurbs?

4) I tend to assume that all children have some item that they really wish their parents would buy them, but the parents never come through. (For me, it was a Betty Crocker EZ-Bake Oven.) Did you have one? What was it?

5) What do you miss most about Indiana?

I think that's everyone. More comment on the East Coast / West Coast thing if I have time when I get back from dinner.

[Dan Percival]

Can it be that I'm the first of us to finish my interview? Astounding!

Answers.