The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is a 2016 fantasy novella by American writer Kij Johnson, revisiting H. P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath from the viewpoint of a woman. It was first published in trade paperback and ebook format by Tor.com.

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe
Cover of first edition
AuthorKij Johnson
Cover artistVicto Ngai
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreFantasy
PublisherTor.com
Publication date
2016
Media typePaperback, ebook
Pages165 pages
ISBN978-0-7653-9141-4

Synopsis

When a student at Ulthar Women's College runs off with a man from the Waking World, professor Vellitt Boe — a retired adventurer — must track her down and convince her to return.

Reception

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe won the 2017 World Fantasy Award—Long Fiction,[1] and was nominated for the 2016 Nebula Award for Best Novella,[2] the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novella[3], and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Novella.[4]

Publishers Weekly called it "absorbing" and "utterly irresistible", lauding Johnson for "(s)uperb worldbuilding and gorgeous prose".[5]

At National Public Radio, Amal El-Mohtar noted that the story is "perfectly self-contained", and can be appreciated without any knowledge of the source material on which it is based.[6]

gollark: Denied.
gollark: ... no.
gollark: Thus bad.
gollark: It does NOT allow random access.
gollark: Hmm, so, designoidal idea:- files have the following metadata: filename, last modified time, maybe permissions (I may not actually need this), size, checksum, flags (in case I need this later; probably just compression format?)- each version of a file in an archive has this metadata in front of it- when all the files in some set of data are archived, a header gets written to the end with all the file metadata plus positions- when backup is rerun, the system™️ just checks the last modified time of everything and sees if its local copies are newer, and if so appends them to the end; when it is done a new header is added containing all the files- when a backup needs to be extracted, it just reads the end, finds the latest versions and decompresses stuff at the right offsetThere are some important considerations here: it should be able to deal with damaged/partial files, encryption would be nice to have (it would probably work to just run it through authenticated AES-whatever when writing), adding new files shouldn't require tons of seeking, and it might be necessary to store backups on FAT32 disks so maybe it needs to be able of using multiple files somehow.

References
  1. World Fantasy Convention 2017; at WorldFantasy.org; retrieved April 11, 2018
  2. “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe” at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved April 11, 2018
  3. 2017 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved April 11, 2018
  4. 2017 Locus Awards Finalists at Locus; published May 12, 2017; retrieved April11, 2018
  5. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, reviewed at Publishers Weekly; published July 18, 2016; retrieved April 11, 2018
  6. Everything Has Meaning In The Dream World Of 'Vellitt Boe', by Amal El-Mohtar, at National Public Radio; published August 27, 2016; retrieved April 11, 2018
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