The Effluent Engine

[sanguinity]

23. N. K. Jemisin, "The Effluent Engine".

People have rec'ing this for a long time, but only yesterday morning did I sit down to read it. This is what I want from steampunk. Intrigue! Kick-ass engineers! Lesbians! Haitians and Louisiana Creoles sticking it to the slave-holding empires!

Also! (skip mild spoilers about the engineer character)

An engineer who is female! And who actually pings to me as an engineer! Also, who isn't all "engineering while female turns me into sexy sexy sex object central".

NB: I am not a chemical engineer. That scene with Eugenie first smelling the effluent may in fact be completely ridiculous to actual chemical engineers. Howfuckingever. This female engineer who knows nothing about chemical engineering aside from having shared office space with one once, is happy.

Oh, and I forgot to say when the post first went up: Jemisin posted this as part of the A Story for Haiti fundraiser. 'Tis definitely worth kicking in a little, if you've got a little to kick in.

Also, it's coming out in an anthology soon/now, is it not?

FAQ Update: Tagging

[sanguinity]

Because the tag project is dragging on (in the fantasy world in my head, we would have been done by now!), and because I can't tell how long it's ultimately going to take, I've updated the FAQ to reflect the current situation.

( Where are...? Who does...? How do I...? )

I do apologize for not having updated it earlier. If you catch something else that needs updating, let me know.

As far as where we are in the tag project...

• The bulk of the author tags have been moved. We haven't yet decided how to make sure that all new posts get indexed over there. One possibility we threw out was to ask for monthly volunteers: people willing to take all the new posts made in a month and add them to the delicious account. (Or we could do less than a month, if a month seems unreasonable or if we get a traffic surge like we did during RaceFail09. Basically, we do not wish to break our volunteers!) What do y'all think? Other suggestions?
  
  
• oyceter is doing behind-the-scenes work right now on Phase Two, where we take on the nationality, ethnicity, geography, and related tags. (Some of the previous discussions about that: here, here, and here. And yes, we've been plodding away at this for a long while now. Even with y'all pitching in and doing the bulk of the labor, we've been having trouble getting the planning and administrative side of it done.) I'll leave oyceter to explain more about that once she's a little farther along with it.

...and that's what I've got. If you've got suggestions for doing maintenance on Delicious (or want to volunteer for a month's shift!), or otherwise have comments, suggestions, corrections, or questions, let us know. :-)