The esquivarience of Mountweazel..

[fajrdrako]

I enjoyed reading "Not a Word" by Henry Alford this morning. Dictionaries are such fascinating things.

I noticed that my Chambers dates to 1993 and I started lusting after the newest edition.

Comments

[beatrixal.livejournal.com]

Long ago, at Bubonicon (early 80s), I chatted with Fred Saberhagen as he signed my copy of _The Ultimate Enemy_. I told him that I particularly liked "The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron." I asked how he came up with such a brilliant idea. Fred said he used to write science articles for Encyclopedia Britannica. He was supposed to invent a certain number of science articles as copyright traps. And, as long as he had to pay the tuition for two sons in the Univ. of New Mexico, he was going to keep putting out Berserker anthologies.

Synopsis, to my best recollection: It's about a damaged Berserker, who gets lifesaving information about a star system from an Encyclopedia Galactica article. It flies off to that star system to rebuild itself. The salesman from the encyclopedia company is put on trial for treason. He reveals that star system entry was a deliberate fake. It was written as a copyright trap to detect plagiarism. The Berserker would expend it's last energy getting there and discover there are no lifesaving resources.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Fascinating! Sounds like a good story idea, and good for Saberhagen. (I don't think I ever actually met him. Or if I did, I didn't know it.) But... I'm also perplexed by the idea of encyclopedias and dictionaries making things up, putting out disinformation. It seems contrary to their purpose.