BFS Awards

Yay! The British Fantasy Society Awards longlist is up - and lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

- Well, no. But lo, Mark Chadbourn and Juliet E McKenna and Stan Nicholls and, uh, some Chaz Brenchley guy are all on it! Mark's there twice! And lo, there was much rejoicing in TWF-land, because we like it when our work is noticed.

Also, of course, we like winning. Now would be a perfect time to follow that link above and vote for us, if you're a member of the BFS. If not, now would be a perfect time to join, so's you could then follow the link above and vote for us...

[Oddly, if you google 'British Fantasy Society' it wants to take you to the old website, which doesn't have the longlist or a voting form, so don't do that...]

[posted by some Chaz Brenchley guy, who feels obliged to declare an interest]

Mining tech

I know two separate and unrelated words for the material, the unwanted base rock from which you dig your ore or precious stone or whatever it is you're mining for; and one of them is matrix and the other is gangue, and the first is too formal or technical or some such and the second is too obscure. Sigh. You'd think it would be easy, wouldn't you...? A language famous for its range of synonyms, an obvious and long-established need for a simple commonplace word, and I got nuthin'...