Fictitious vol. 16: That sweet analog smell
Filmoscopes, paraphernalia, amber gathering as a sci-fi plot, longest word ever
Hello! And if this is your first time receiving this newsletter - welcome! You might want to check out the back catalog that’s growing every week. In this edition, I’ll be taking a trip down memory lane, sharing a short story I wrote (first one in years, so yay for me!), and peddling some language trivia.
Why format matters?
This short piece is inspired by Mark Dykeman’s recent essay, in which he reminisced about monochrome TV, and the emotions (which include envy) that the format brought with it. I grew up in the 90s and early 00s, right at the time when a lot of lo-fi technology coexisted with their digital counterparts. VHS was still huge, but DVD was about to kill it. Kiosks were filled with MC tapes, but the pirate stalls on the market already had everything on CD. The kids with the MiniDisc players would be cool one day and already envy the first classmate to get a Creative Zen MP3 player the next day.
Each piece of technology brought with it specific quirks that added an extra layer to the experience. You'd rewind audio tapes using a chewed-on pencil. You’d save the anti-shock function of your Discman for really dire conditions, because you knew it’d drain your battery. You'd use dubious methods for getting rid of scratches on your favorite CD that would always skip your favorite song.
But the memory that Mark’s essay sparked is older than that. The essay took me not to the halls of my school, where gadgets were the hottest topic, but to the warm, dim-lit living room of our old flat.
I was probably 7 or 8 years old at that time. The living room was where all the coolest things were kept. First, the turntable with LPs that had fairy tales and kids' stories recorded on them. There was a sizeable music collection there as well, but I wasn't that interested in music as a child. There was also the stamp album, with hundreds (if not thousands) of thematically arranged stamps - Soviet space satellites, Mongolian fauna, commercial fishing vessels, Impressionist paintings. I’d spend hours staring at them, and if I were presented with a stamp collection today, I could easily tell you, which of them were contained in that album. Among the cool things were also a box filled with Soviet-era enamel pins and several volumes of my favorite encyclopedia of that time, dedicated to the battles of World War II.
But there was something else, as exciting as the turntable or the stamps. It was the filmoscope. What looked like a miniature TV set was pure magic. You would turn it on, wait for the lamp to heat up, put in a film role, and have an illustrated kids' story displayed on the screen. You'd use the knob on the side to turn the film roll. Even though I had been exposed to a lot of colorful kids' books and cartoons by that time, the DEFI filmoscope was still something magical and exciting.
Do I remember any of the stories we had on film? Honestly, no. Unlike the stamps or the pins, they did not leave an imprint in my memory. But what I do remember very vividly is how the whole experience engaged my senses. You had to handle the film roll with care in order not to bend it (tactility). As the lamp was definitely not a champion of energy efficiency, after a few minutes of using the filmoscope, you would feel the warmth (thermoception). The lamp would also burn tiny particles of dust, so there was always a certain smell in the room (olfaction). It was these additional layers that made the experience magical, not the pretty basic stories that the films contained.
The stories themselves would not hold water as comics (here is an example you can view in your browser). They needed the format and all the associated senses to work. The question of the impact a format makes is quite an interesting one and I’d like to explore it more in the future. Back in college (during my unfinished attempt to get a Master’s degree), I remember reading MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Sign, Storage, Transmission) which might be a good first step for exploring the topic.
Reminiscing about filmoscopes, I actually found several exemplars on sale through a local classified ads page. There’s even one that’s the exact same model I had as a kid! I don’t really know if I need it, though. What would you do if you were me?
I wrote a sci-fi story set in Lithuania!
When I started Fictitious in May, I didn’t even think about using the platform to publish my fiction, but by this day I’ve already published 3 short stories. Unlike the previous two, Gathering amber was actually written this year (this month, actually). I’d love for more people to read, so if you know of an online space where speculative fiction fans congregate, let me know!
The language corner
Word of the week. Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon. The Wikipedia page for Longest word in English has some real gems, among them the complete formula for titin (the largest known protein) taking 189,819 letters. The Lopa…. word above was coined by Aristophanes in 391 BC. Transliterated from the Greek, it’s the longest word to ever appear in literature, according to the Guinness World Records.
The word itself describes a fictional dish. with at least 16 sweet and sour ingredients, including the following (as per the Wiki page):
Fish slices
Fish of the elasmobranchii subclass (a shark or ray)
Rotted dogfish or small shark's head
A generally sharp-tasting dish of several ingredients grated and pounded together
Silphion, possibly a kind of giant fennel, now believed extinct
A kind of crab, shrimp, or crayfish
Honey poured down
Wrasse (or thrush)
A kind of sea fish or blackbird as topping
Wood pigeon
Domestic pigeon
Rooster
The roasted head of dabchick
Hare, which could be a kind of bird or a kind of sea hare
New wine boiled down
Wing and/or fin
This only shows that Ancient Greek playwrights were as quirky as Terry Pratchett.
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So what counts as a word? Who gets to decide this?
WOW for that word! Until now I’d always considered the longest English word to be pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, but yours is MUCH better and knocks mine into a cocked hat!!!