#David Drake

[thechanelmuse]

Alkaline-Glazed Jugs Made by Master Potter, David Drake

David was a chattel enslaved Black potter from Edgefield, South Carolina. He was owned as the property of Harvey Drake, a large pottery business owner who partnered with Abner Landrum, an editor of a local newspaper called The Edgefield Hive. (He would also be owned as the property of Lewis Miles and the Landrum family. Not simultaneously.)

David was forced to labor in Pottersville, one of the twelve pottery factories in Edgefield at that time. He’s recognized as the first enslaved potter to inscribe his work (with a couplet poem, the date, and his signature—Dave) during the time when literacy was forbidden for the enslaved with enacted laws and deadly consequences. 

Some of his inscriptions are practical instructions or reflections on love, spirituality, or afterlife; while others are commentaries on the institution of US chattel slavery. His earliest recorded work is a pot dated July 12, 1834. The poetry on this one reads: 

Put every bit all between 

Surely this jar will hold 14

One of Drake's better known pieces, a 19-inch greenware pot, is dated back to August 16, 1857. The inscription reads: 

I wonder where is all my relations

Friendship to all and every nation

David made more than 40,000 large stoneware jugs and jars between the 1820s and the 1870s. They were worth about 50 cents during his lifetime. You can only imagine how much they are worth today... There are pieces housed in museums from Greenville County Museum of Art to the Smithsonian.

Per the US census in 1870, it’s labeled that David couldn’t read or write. Ha.

So how was he able to read and write (in cursive) to the point of demonstrating such charming and emotive, couplet poetry? Wouldn’t they all like to know. 

[theseventhoffrostfall]

Most recent read for me was Starliner, by David Drake. It's slightly outside the wheelhouse of stuff I've read from him, in that while it's sci-fi and there's a war, it's not boots-on-the-ground gritty milsci action. It's more the story of a (very short, for spoiler reasons) interstellar war from the perspective of several interwoven character arcs of passengers and crew aboard a neutral, well, starliner.

It's solid and well-done stuff and delving too far into it very rapidly veers into spoiler territory, but two things kind of stick out to me:

1.) FTL-space and Hell are directly equated at several points, but this isn't because it's full of Big Nasties. Rather, being directly exposed to spaces and laws humans were not meant to experience (oh, yeah, advanced equipment tends to break down outside a ship's envelope, so keeping the engines running and maintained falls to manual work of the 'Cold Crew') seems to magnify man's inhumanity, coupled with the brutal working conditions. The Cold Crews are directly inspired by Age of Steam "Black Gangs"; they're bleak-eyed, nihilistic and violent men--at one point, a character cuts another's line and deliberately sends him sailing off into the 'blazing infinity' rather than a quicker kill because of the detached cruelty that the environment fosters. It's much more chilling and frankly much more interesting than getting Space Possessed.

2.) The obligate Libertarian Planet is a filthy, coarse shithole that barely functions, and that only by foreign exploitation, with its residents' "rugged individualism" mocked by every character not from there.

[terriwriting]

Author David Drake passed away December 10, 2023. Memories of Drake appeared to be universally positive, and he didn’t seem to have had enemies. This is not always the case with speculative fiction authors (an understatement), particularly ones whose careers were as long as Drake’s.

Science fiction being the immense field that it is, there are readers who have never tried a Drake story, whose first knowledge of David Drake was reading his obituary. Some of them may be considering reading Drake’s books. Drake was prolific so where to start?

Here are five suggestions, drawn from across the genres in which Drake worked.

[scifi4wifi]

Author David Drake Dead at 78

Popular and prolific speculative fiction author David Allen Drake passed away of natural causes in Silk Hope, North Carolina on December 10, 2023. He was 78. He had announced in 2021 that he was retiring from writing novels, due to health issues, including “unspecified cognitive health problems.” Drake was best known for his military science fiction, especially the Hammer’s Slammers series of…

[cinader]

Speaking with Greenville's Poet Laureate

Tony Robles interviews Greenville, SC #PoetLaureate, #GlenisRedmond, quotes from notable women. Martha's Kitchen Garden. #yeahthatgreenville #poetry #thelisteningskin #davethepotter #praisesongsfordavethepotter #jonathangreen

Listen & Be Heard Podcast, Episode 7 Tony Robles interviews Greenville, SC Poet Laureate, Glenis Redmond. Pilar Uribe gives us quotes from notable women of past and present. Martha Cinader hosts and shares excerpts from a journal about a journal made in China. Crystal Waters contributes another episode from Martha’s Kitchen Garden about snapping turtles, with James Cruell and Kirk. Text file of…

[lizabethstucker]

Baen Free Short Stories 2013

4 out of 5.

A selection of fifteen short stories published in 2013 by Baen Publishing, free at their website. A mixture of science fiction and fantasy with an occasional outlier.

The stories are, for the most part, interesting and enjoyable reads. While not every story appealed to me, and a few were extremely confusing, I don't regret giving them all a read. Some of my particular favorites include "Eleutherios", "Dog's Body" (I immediately downloaded the first Shifter book after finishing this story), and "Murder on the Hochflieger Ost". FYI, "Sweothi City" is military adventure, while "Murder on the Hochflieger Ost" is a pre-World War I spy mystery, neither science fiction nor fantasy.

Contents/Individual Ratings

"Eleutherios" by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. 4.5 "Seven Miles" by T. C. McCarthy. 3.5 "To Spec" by Charles E. Gannon. 4.5 "Skyspark" by Ryk E. Spoor. DNF (I just couldn't connect with this novella.) "The Krumhorn and the Misericorde" by Dave Freer. 3.5 "Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden" by Wen Spencer. 3.5 "Haunts of Guilty Minds" by John Lambshead. 4 "The Lamplighter Legacy" by Patrick O'Sullivan. 3.5 "Dog's Body" by Sarah A. Hoyt. 5 "The Sorcerer of Daigawa" by Jon F. Merz. 3 "Sweothi City" by Larry Correia. 4 "Out of True" by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. 3 "Mars Farts" by Ben Bova. 3.5 "The Virgin of Hertogenbosch" by David Drake. 3.5 "Murder on the Hochflieger Ost" by Frank Chadwick. 4.5

[book0ftheday]

Analog Magazine, July 1977. Cover art by Rick Sternbach, with additional art by George Schelling, Jack Gaughan, Vincent Di Fate and Mike Hinge.

[commodore-jeep-eep-blog]

Don't feel bad about holding back if you can't take it that far, even he couldn't finish one series because he knew where it ended up. Not sure I'm fully capable of writing a nonbittersweet ending.

Having ocs is funny, you love them and want only the best for them; while also making them witness horrors beyond their comprehension in the name of character development and backstory

The standard OC experience.

[theseventhoffrostfall]

The Forlorn Hope is pretty damn good so far. We have bizarre esoteric yet familiar military technology and tactics. We have mercenaries. We have obscure ethnic groups that hate each other. We got incompetence, corruption, vice, and brother you know we got gay subtext by the truckload. David Drake, RIP in peace, had a wheelhouse and by god was he good at it

[ditzybat]

i love the headcannon that both tim and cass look scarily alike, to the point they could be twins.

like they both share the same general lithe build, they’re the same short height, cass has a short bob while tim has his baby mullet, their training is similar due to their backgrounds with lady shiva and the loa, and (depending on your headcanon) both waisan- so i can definitely see instances where they’re confused for each other or where they mess with everyone around them.

cass on patrol in red robin gear so tim can go on a date with bernard:

random thugs seconds away from being one hit k.o’d: yo since when did red robin start melting into the shadows like an eldritch horror?

jason: hey tim -

cass: wrong.

jason: no, im pretty sure you’re tim, i gave you that scar right there in your neck

cass: nu-uh, this is from cain

jason:

cass:

jason: well this got awkward…

steph hugging tim from behind: hey babe

tim: wrong wayne

steph: ew, i should’ve known, your ass isnt nearly as —

tim walking away with his fingers in his ears: lalalalala im not listening to you

damian: i think you’re the only one in this family i respect

tim who has been silently hanging out with him for the past 3 hours: aw thanks damian, i’ve come to love you like a brother too

damian: drake? i thought you were cassandra, my apologies, i retract my previous statement

tim: don’t care, you love me, don’t try to deny it

lady shiva hugging both tim and cass: my beautiful twins, such well trained weapons, unfortunate that you both ended up with cain

bruce pulling his children back: tim isnt yours…

shiva: well that cant be right, he’s s the spitting image of my sister carolyn, and that birth was far too painful to only produce one small child

tim: woah full circle, my drag-sona is called caroline, maybe you are my mom, i wouldn’t put it past janet drake to adopt

bruce: tim no, you’re not even the same type of asian

cass: too late, we’re blood

shiva: see!

[threeravenspublishing]

What comes to mind when you think of Spring?

What comes to mind when you think of Spring?

My mind almost always goes to spring cleaning, time to plant and prep the garden, and the rebirth of the world for another season. And that’s exactly what’s going on around Raven Central. We’ve been opening the windows, sweeping out the old, and prepping the land for another year of planting and growth. Going along with that is a little bit of cleanup on the site. So if you happen to see a…

[hug-your-face]

Oh my god @thebusylilbee you found it!!

This is it! This is absolutely it! And it's even grimmer than I remember!

I googled the story and found that it appears in the anthology Bluebloods collected by David Drake which is definitely where I read it -- I used to own this book so that's where I came across it. (This book also features Drake's own creepy horror story The Red Leer, which I also highly recommend!)

@thebusylilbee thank you thank you thank you so much! How did you do it?? I tried every combination of keywords for googling and got buried under a pile of false positives. I am so impressed. You watered my crops and cleared my skin!

@staff it's interactions like this that are why I would SUBSCRIBE to this damn site. Take our money already!

(Side note this is what SUCKS abt short story anthos -- something sticks with you and decades later you have no clue how to find it)

I have one of those robot vacuums but there's a mirror in the house low enough to the ground that the lidar scanner can see a nonexistent room in the reflection so on the navigation map it's generated I have a room that doesn't exist that I have to forbid the vacuum from entering.