The Summer Solstice having passed, and the preternaturally eldritch scent of chthonic autumn already in the cerulean emyprean welkin do you feel better now? — Ed], the time is rapidly coming up to fast approaching when I shall have to put together the Autumn issue of Mallorn, the Journal of the Tolkien Society, which comes out every half a year.
What a refreshing change it makes from my day job, where I have nothing much to do except sit back in my beach hut office, feet up, deciding on the fate, tenure and livelihoods of scientists while quaffing nectar and ambrosia and being fed grapes by flying babies.
Everything else — all that tedious-but-necessary stuff — all the copy-editing, production, typesetting, sizing artwork, chasing authors, production, mailing issues to contributors … well, I have minions to do all that stuff.
With Mallorn, though, I have to do it all myself. What’s more, I have to do things that people at Nature, yea, even the minions, have long ceased having to bother with. For whereas most Tolkienistas are happy to send copy over the net, there remain a few for whom the most advanced means of production is a quill.
So now I have several typescripts before me which I’ll either have to copy-type, or persuade my scanner (or someone else’s) to perform something called Optical Character Recognition (OCR). I learn that even the assembled preternatural and eldtrichly chthonic might of Nature doesn’t run to OCR these days.
I’ve not had to cope with hand-written text (yet). At least that’s readable by human eye, in principle … the worst things to receive are diskettes of some innominate sort that might (_might_) be readable by the eldest of the five (5) functioning computers chez Gee. Neither have I been asked to assimilate wax cylinders, clay tablets or papyri.
If I do, none of this would be as much fun as the exotic manuscript I received at Nature many years ago, before electronic submission had been invented, when Nature really did routinely consider items sent in the mail. This example was a google goggle-eyed exegesis on the secondary sexual characteristics of Homo sapiens, which provided, as supporting evidence, a lavishly coloured special edition of what can only be described as a Men’s Magazine. And not just one copy — there were four, one each for as many as four referees. It made rather a large parcel to send back to the author, and the only time that I can remember in which Nature has disseminated pornography through the mail.
And no, I didn’t keep a copy for myself.
The only time you can remember? That implies that you have checked every piece of mail Nature has sent out.
Including the one that should have returned the 20 shilling notes to me. Someone kept a copy of that for themselves.
You mean you’ve never had a submission for Mallorn on a block of stone in a silvery script that can only be read by moonlight? You disappoint me.
the only time that I can remember
No, it means I have blotted out all the other occasions as being too horrific.
You mean you’ve never had a submission for Mallorn on a block of stone in a silvery script that can only be read by moonlight?
Don’t encourage them, Brian.
I recommend asking Charles Wenz for advice, Henry. I bet he’d get quite into Mallorn production!
I wouldn’t wish it on
an orca colleague.When I took on the job I was adamant that I’d only consider copy sent by email. The result was uproar in the streets of
Minas TirithBirmingham. I stood my ground. Then some of the more tech-friendly on the committee said that if I got hard copy, they’d volunteer to type it in for me. Which they are now doing, heh heh.On the whole, though, it’s a learning experience. I am learning about how to make PDFs; how many dpi’s there are in a furlong; the difference between CMYK and RGB; the fact that MS Word is a nice word processor but lousy DTP program, and other cool stuff.
Definitely Charles! Or, failing that, James McQuat. They are a great team (they have been doing John Maddox proud with a title he has edited since retirement).
Update: The next issue of Mallorn is taking shape. It’ll include (among many other delights) stories from Tanith Lee, Jeff Crook and John Gilbey; a commentary from Maggie Burns on Tolkien’s schoolboy poem The Battle of the Eastern Field, with the first full-length reprint of the poem for 30 years; a magisterial review of John Rateliff’s History of The Hobbit from the equally magisterial Charles Noad (who helped copy-edit and proofread The History of Middl-earth, and so knows more about the minutiae of Tolkieniana than perhaps any man alive); a simply pellucid piece on the influence of Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus on Lewis’ space fiction from Frank Wilson, Gentleman, Scholar and former Books Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer (Hat tip to Maxine), and a nice piece of Shakespearian cattiness from David Doughan to finish.
Too tempting to pass up…looks as if it’s time for me to finally join the Tolkien Society. I’ve no excuse not to, as there are rates/currency conversions for those of us stuck out here in Andustar.
You’d be very welcome, Kristi.
Joined! :-)
Look forward to reading Mallorn.
My quest for world domination continues, one sould at a time … mwah ha hah hah hah!