The Big Idea: Lynne M. Thomas & Katy Rawdon
Mar. 19th, 2026 08:42 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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Like two peas in a time travel pod, archivist and author Katy Rawdon teamed up with Hugo-award winning editor Lynne M. Thomas to craft the perfect time travel narrative. Take a closer look at famous time travel stories from all across the globe in The Infinite Loop: Archives and Time Travel in the Popular Imagination, with a foreword from one such writer herself, Connie Willis.
KATY RAWDON (a.k.a. KATY JAMES):
Archives are made of time. Time is made of archives. Archives are where time gets mixed up, turned around, and pulled apart.
I have always been obsessed with time, frustrated with it, wanting to tear at it and see what’s behind and underneath it. No doubt that’s why I became an archivist some thirty years ago, so that I could look at the physical remnants of time and preserve them, see what’s missing, and organize and interpret time’s leftovers for people who, wisely, do not think about time all the… time.
When I was approached to submit an idea (a big idea!) for a book series jointly published by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) called Archival Futures – a series that tackles big ideas around the archival profession – there was only one possible topic for me to write about: time.
While the phrase “archives are like time travel” is thrown around a lot, I knew the relationship between historical records and time was far more complicated. Archives reinforce and challenge our very conceptions of time, of what has happened, of what will happen, of what is truth and what is unknowable. The evidence of archives can be used to demonstrate how the past is so much more faceted than the narrow stories of history we tend to tell ourselves and others. Archives can also be selectively wielded as propaganda, or erased to allow for falsehoods to sprout and flourish in the empty spaces. Time can be illustrated, illuminated, rendered invisible, or constructed in new ways using the material items created in the course of history.
Unfortunately, all of this turned out to be so complicated that the series’ word limit of 50,000 was never going to cover it, as I painfully discovered while writing the book proposal.
I am forever grateful that the inimitable Lynne M. Thomas stepped into my creative mess and provided direction: Why not analyze the depiction of both archives and time travel in popular narratives (books, television, movies, etc.) and see what we could unearth? As a romance author (Katy James) as well as an archivist (Katy Rawdon), I was more than happy to spend time in fictional worlds in order to better understand my non-fictional archivist profession.
It turns out that we unearthed a lot – about cultural views regarding time and time travel, the popular perception of archives and archivists, and the ways current archival theory and practice intersect (or don’t) with ideas about time and time travel.
How does time work? How is it understood by different people and cultures? How do archives help or hinder our understanding of the past (and future)? How can popular narratives about time travel and archives guide archivists to shift their methods to a more expansive, inclusive, transparent approach? How can archival workers apply current archival theory and practice to all of the above ideas to better serve their communities and increase the use of archives?
Researching this book and synthesizing all of the swirling concepts was a real mind-twister of an exercise, trying to write our expansive, big ideas while keeping it succinct and legible for archivists and general readers alike.
We hope we’ve succeeded.
LYNNE M. THOMAS:
Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, the right project turns up at exactly the right time. As a professional rare book librarian, twelve-time Hugo Award winning SFF editor and podcaster, and massive Doctor Who fan, I had a moment of “I was literally made for this” when Katy explained her concept for the book to me and asked me to join her. My initial contribution was more or less “but what if we add Doctor Who examples to make all this time stuff understandable,” and then … we got excited. Because when you have the chance to dive deep into a particular rabbit hole that looks perfect for you specifically, you lean hard into your personal weird.
Time travel stories often feature archives to prove the narrative truth of characters’ experiences. The main character goes into a locked room full of dusty boxes, and immediately finds the one piece of documentary evidence they need to solve their problem, or make sense of their experiences. And yet archivists—the people tasked with organizing and running archives—are almost always invisible or nonexistent in these very same narratives. When we do show up…well, it feels like writers haven’t talked to an archivist lately.
That…bothered us. It turns out, when you have professional archivists and librarians who are also active writers and editors in science fiction, we have thoughts and opinions about how archivists and librarians are portrayed (or not) in fiction and nonfiction. But we thought, maybe we’re seeing a pattern that doesn’t exist, it’s just that “red car syndrome” thing where experts pay more attention to the areas of their expertise in the narratives than non-experts do. So… we checked. We looked at dozens of time travel stories across novels, comics, television series, and films. We discuss Doctor Who, of course, but also Loki, Star Wars, works by Connie Willis (who wrote our foreword), Octavia Butler, Jodi Taylor, Rivers Solomon, Deborah Harkness, and H.G. Wells, among many, many more. We also looked at a whole lot of archival literature—how archivists and librarians talk about themselves, their professions, and their work to one another. And because we are both academic librarians, we laid out our findings in a peer-reviewed book.
What we learned is that there’s a massive divide between what pop culture thinks we do, and what we actually do, and the even greater divide between the level of resources pop culture thinks we have, and what we actually have…and we posit multiple ways to close those gaps.
The Infinite Loop is where archives and pop culture’s image of archives meet and have a long overdue chat. Our hope is that these conversations will lead to archivists being better able to explain what we do, and have that knowledge spread far and wide across popular culture. Ideally, with some time travel stories that feature archivists as main characters. It’s well past time.
The Infinite Loop: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s|Inkwood Books
Author socials: Katy’s Bluesky|Katy’s Instagram|Katy’s Website|Lynne’s Bluesky|Lynne’s Instagram|Lynne’s Website
Everything I love is on the table, everything I love is out to sea
Mar. 19th, 2026 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sovayBirdfeeding
Mar. 19th, 2026 11:44 amysabetwordsmithThe stump grinder guy has come and gone. He did an excellent job. The stump in front of the garden shed is gone and the hole mostly filled, though I'll add some top soil to smooth it out more. The east path is nearly smooth, might need a bit of raking. I'm particularly impressed that a ring of daffodils around the plump stump is still there! I had expected to lose those, so the precision is noteworthy. The parking lot is also nearly smooth. He got right up to the edge of the sidewalk and rock wall, although he advised there are some buried rocks and concrete that we didn't know about. I may need to rake some areas, and certainly need to see about removing the last stubs from the sidewalk to recreate that defensive zone. My partner Doug plans to drive over the parking lot to press it down some before ordering a load of fresh gravel to top it. Progress!
I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches. Cardinals are singing.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I put about half a bag of topsoil into the hole in front of the garden shed to smooth it out. That may need more later after it settles, but it'll do for now.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I filled a flat of 12 pots with potting soil and in each pot I planted 5 seeds of short landrace marigolds. These are similar to Shithouse Marigolds but shorter. If I can get them growing well, I can save money buying nursery marigolds. I covered them with a plastic tub to serve as a greenhouse. I still need to label them though.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I labeled the marigolds.
I checked the east path. It doesn't really need anything but grass seed. We'll need to buy a big bag of that. Recommended time for spring sowing is late March to mid-April.
I checked the parking lot. I picked up a few pieces of junk that were churned up, but it's also pretty good. I do need to work on clearing more of the sidewalk, but a lot of that will just be brushing dirt off it.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I started working on the sidewalk again. Much of what covers it is just loose dirt that needs to be scraped off. Some is still packed dirt and roots.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I watered the seeds under tubs.
It's 71°F now. Over the next few days, it's supposed to reach 80°F. 0_o
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I started the process of topping up troughs on the new picnic table. I want to finish those first six with the self-mulching potting soil.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 3/19/26 -- I finished topping up the troughs. I'll need to get more American Countryside potting mix. I like how it self-mulches. Soon I'll be planting peas in these. My plan this year, instead of putting the peas in their own container, is to space them out so they fertilize other plants. We'll see how that works.
While the deep freeze killed a fair amount of things, much has survived. Crocus have already put out new flowers. The bluebell leaves weren't as damaged as I expected. More squills are blooming.
It is 7:20 PM and not quite full dark. This was my first after-supper yardening session. :D
I am done for the night.
Anthropic Settlement Information, Not For Me
Mar. 19th, 2026 03:50 pmscalziwhatever_feed
The legal firm that is apparently handling at least some of the Anthropic Copyright Settlement case has started sending out notifications of some sort to presumably affected parties. Small problem: Some of these were sent not to the addresses of the presumably affected parties, but to mine.
I have not opened these notifications, as they are not addressed to me, so I don’t know what’s in them or what they say, and I will be henceforth disposing of these notifications unopened. However, if you are Jody Lynn Nye, Sarah Hoyt, Eric S. Brown, Christopher Smith, or the estate of Eric Flint, please be aware that JND Legal Administration is trying to inform you of something (probably that you have works that are eligible to be part of the class action suit).
I have contacted the firm in question and told them about these incorrect addresses and, for the avoidance of doubt, also informed them at no other affected author than me lives at my address. Hopefully that will take. That said, I would not be surprised if I get more notifications, not for me. What a wonderful age of information we live in.
— JS
Community Thursdays
Mar. 19th, 2026 12:13 amysabetwordsmith* Posted "Tutorials" on
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getting_started.* Posted "Gaming" on
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goddessfolk.* Posted "Birdfeeding" on
birdfeeding.
Benn Jordan plays the stock market [econ, tech, dataviz, music]
Mar. 19th, 2026 12:46 amsiderea(All about the sound, but visuals also nice.)
2026 Mar 18: Benn Jordan [BennJordan YT]: "I'm here to disrupt the finance synthesizer scene."
Here, Have a Nice Little Sunset
Mar. 19th, 2026 12:11 amscalziwhatever_feed
Spring will be here soon! I can tell by the sun!
(No, seriously, I can)
— JS
Science
Mar. 18th, 2026 04:12 pmysabetwordsmithA new study warns that if global warming surpasses 1.5°C, vast regions could lose critical crop diversity, heightening the risk to worldwide food security.
Researchers predict that about one-third of global food production may be in jeopardy due to higher temperatures, underscoring how climate change is expected to reshape agriculture, especially in vulnerable low-latitude countries.
You know what? I think they're barking up the wrong tree here. Humans have done FAR more damage to the foodstream than climate change has so far. I'm sure climate change will get around to that, but it's late to the party. Humans have already discarded many traditional crops because they don't lend themselves to commercial growing, drastically limiting the typical diet.
( Read more... )
Birdfeeding
Mar. 18th, 2026 01:39 pmysabetwordsmithI fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work outdoors.
The mower has been picked up for its spring tuneup.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I picked up more junk from the parking lot.
I've seen a lot more sparrows and house finches, plus a fox squirrel.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I started trying to unearth the edge of the sidewalk bordering the parking lot on the south side. It is exhausting, and must be done before the stump-grinder guy arrives early tomorrow. D:
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I hacked away at the east end of the sidewalk. There are still several feet of the middle buried.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I continued hacking at the sidewalk edge.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did more hacking at the sidewalk edge. I think it's about as good as I can get it. There's a big patch in the middle that I couldn't clear due to roots and brush, but at least the edge is more-or-less visible at both ends.
I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I am done for the night.
Cuddle Party
Mar. 18th, 2026 12:05 amysabetwordsmithWe have a cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!
home again
Mar. 17th, 2026 08:27 pmredbirdRysmiel gave me a back rub last night that did significant good for the tension in my neck and right shoulder. I currently have an unrelated shoulder pain, from spending too much time poking at my phone while spending several hours at the airport, but if I'm somewhat cautious now that I'm home, that should take care of itself in a day or three.
I am catching up on some of the PT exercises I didn't do while traveling because they require elastics, or the foam roller, or weights, but doing all of them tonight would be imprudent.
The Big Idea: J. M. Sidorova
Mar. 17th, 2026 07:20 pmscalziwhatever_feed
How is it that fairy tales persist? In the Big Idea for The Witch of Prague, author J.M. Sidorova suggests that it might be because they are malleable and can be made to fit more times and places than just their own. To what use has the author put them here? Read on.
J. M. SIDOROVA:
When I think about a Big Idea of a novel, what comes to my mind first is more of a premise, an inceptive sprout from which the novel had grown. In this regard, The Witch of Prague grew out of a common fairy-tale archetype: an old hag gives a magic gift/poison apple to a young girl; think Sleeping beauty, forests, and castles. Except in this case, the archetype was invoked by true stories my Mom had told me about her young adulthood.
Thus, forests became the Cold War era Eastern European bureaucracies, castles became government departments, and the relationship between the hag and the young girl became complicated, as I, in the act of reimagining the fairy tale, subverted the heck out of it.
That said, this novel took a long time to become what it is now; it evolved in fits and starts while a sizeable chunk of my life was going by and the world was changing, and as a result it became a repository of symbolic representations for the ideas that are not new but have been important for me to unpack and highlight.
There is the Hunt of a Unicorn that, historically, fronts a host of contradictory ideas about power asymmetries between women and men; and then there is a Stag Hunt, which, as an example of a game of trust (or, more broadly, public goods game theory, like it’s better known cousin, the prisoner’s dilemma), stands for a balance of trust/cooperation vs. predation/competition in a given society.
There is also the Orwellian idea that authoritarian regimes not just restrict speech and writing, but, far more insidiously, they warp the very meaning, usage, and purpose of words, of the language itself. My main character, Alica, who’s grown up with mild dyslexia, is primed against such shenanigans because she’s always thought words were treacherous and out to get her, and one of her ways of fighting back was to invent an imaginary friend, a live typewriter with spider legs and word-swatting pincers.
So many different symbols, in other words, that at some point even I, their compulsive collector, felt that it was too much. And my awesome editors, Rachel Sobel and Huw Evans of Homeward Books, were of the same opinion: wait, is the Stag the same as the Unicorn or not? Author, explain thyself! So I went on an editing rampage, and I think I fixed things, and now all symbols are there to serve the story.
But the big — or at any rate the permeating — idea that I would like to foreground since we are talking speculative fiction here, is what constitutes magic in this book. I think if one creates an alternative, fully magic-enabled reality for one’s tales, one can give a reader an escape, a full-on suspension of disbelief and all that, and that is fine. But if one instead injects bits of fantastical or magical into our viscerally recognizable reality, one gives a yearning, gives flickering moments of disassociation, of belief, “what if it were real?” It’s like magic comes to you, instead of you taking a vacation to go see magic.
And of course, so many works of speculative fiction do one approach or the other or anything in between. I personally, prefer the latter end of the spectrum over the former. So, what I was trying to do in The Witch of Prague was to have seemingly small, tenuous even amounts of magic within a historically accurate reality, and I was interested to work with this premise: what if magic was generated from scratch under certain unique constellations of circumstances and human lived experiences and emotional states, for instance, extreme trauma or enduring hope or devotion?
It wouldn’t be by anyone’s design, and it would be hard to predict what or who would become the magic’s “carrier” once it was produced. It would be a sort of undomesticated, involuntary magic for which no one really knows the rules or capabilities, though one could make assumptions or jump to conclusions according to one’s beliefs or character, in trying to harness it to one’s own benefit.
If we agree that as humanity, we have always been “producing” magic in our stories, histories, and self-narratives (“it was a miracle that I survived!”) as a matter of belief or metaphor, to help us parse reality or even just to communicate it — then my premise in this novel simply takes this fact and implements it. Literally and physically.
The Witch of Prague: Asterism|Homeward Books
Birdfeeding
Mar. 17th, 2026 02:51 pmysabetwordsmithI fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
Many of the plants that were sprouting have died from the hard freeze. :/ Some still look fine though. At least some of the sprouts in my jug and tub greenhouses have survived.
EDIT 3/17/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/17/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I've seen a large flock of sparrows and two male cardinals.
EDIT 3/17/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I am done for the night.