Contributor Profile: Clara Cohen

Today we are welcoming another new contributor to the flock: Clara Cohen Clara lives in
Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still
lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by
profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation.
You can see her right hand on Season 8, episode 3, of Outlander ,
because they needed someone who could cut and wield a quill pen. During
figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. NAME : Clara Cohen SECRET UNDISCLOSED LOCATION : Home. Always home. Never was a homebody more bodiful at home. NERD SPECIALIZATION(S) : Star Trek, linguistics, massive doorstop fantasy, scifi can play too MY PET PEEVES IN NERD-DOM ARE :  a. The belief in strict genre boundaries between fantasy and scifi b. The belief that romance is less rigorous or more trashy than other genres c. 'Historical accuracy!' Pal, you've got DRAGONS. d. The etymological fallacy: 'if only we could discover the true meaning of <word>' Pal, the true meaning is how people use it now. e.
'What it means to be human', oh, god, please no, stopit. It's a cliched
piece of portentous-sounding zoom-out language that has been overused
and lost all meaning. VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, ZOMBIES, ALIENS OR ROBOTS : Aliens RIGHT NOW I'M READING : Battlestar Suburbia , by Chris McCrudden ...AND A COUPLE BOOKS I RECENTLY FINISHED ARE :  The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches , by Sangu Mandanna Children of Ruin , by Adrian Tchaikovsky Infernal Devices , by Philip Reeve The Hidden Palace , by Helene Wecker NEXT TWO ON QUEUE ARE : The Half-Life of Valery K , by Natasha Pulley The Hands of The Emperor by Victoria Goddard WHEN THE WEATHER SUCKS OUTSIDE I'M MOST LIKELY TO BE... In
my favourite armchair with a cup of tea, reading, or else at my desk
doing Islamic Geometric Art and listening to an audio book MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO AND SUPER-VILLAIN ARE :  The Accountant (aka Anna Tromedlov), from Hench  by Natalie Zina Walschotts (both for the price of one!) IF I WERE A SUPERHERO/VILLAIN, MY POWER WOULD BE : Able to speak all/any language, including programming languages THE BEST COMIC FILM OF THE PAST 5 YEARS IS : Black Panther (or do you mean funny movie? If funny movie, then Knives Out (the first one; second was good too, but the first was surprising.) THE WORST COMIC FILM OF THE PAST 5 YEARS IS : Oh, I think you do mean like marvel/dc. Unfortunately, I've really fallen off that bandwagon. I couldn't begin to tell you. I JUST WATCHED   XXXX   AND IT WAS AWESOME : Knives Out: Glass Onion  was great! I mean, I expected it to be, but it did live up to my expectations. I JUST WATCHED   XXXX   AND IT WAS TERRIBLE . The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window  (gave up after episode 2) EVERYONE SHOULD SEE   XXXX   BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE , Black Sails! (Don't know why it would be too late, but everyone should watch it. Great show.) BEST SCIENCE/SPECULATIVE FICTION SHOW OF THE PAST 10 YEARS: The Expanse . (But can I put in another plug for the SF-adjacent show Black Sails . Pirates! It's genius.) NAME A BOOK  YOU *NEED* A MOVIE OF (OR VICE VERSA): Ooh, hmm. Saint Death's Daughter , by C. S. E. Cooney. Great visuals in that one. Or Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet .
The role of co-speech gestures in that one, along with the passage of
time and the characterization of the andat, would make for some very interesting filmmaker interpretive choices. Welcome, Clara!