Hey Neil,
Are you aware that there's a Japanese artist who has created a "love
couch", based on the principle of the theremin, that sounds a tone when
people sitting on it touch?
http://www.pingmag.jp/
rebecca
I'd read about the emotional tree over at http://www.fabulist.org/ but the rest of the inventions look rather wonderful too. I want the mercury fountain. No, honestly. I really, really want the mercury fountain.
Ummm...this isn't a Neil question at all, but since you've so nicely answered many
other questions relating to books and publishing, I thought you might help.
I'm living in Japan, and a friend of mine likes to use the books of a
certain bestselling American author (unfortunately, not you) to study
English. He reads them in Japanese, and then listens to the English
audiobooks. However, he has had a difficult time locating a few of
them, because the Japanese translation titles differ from the American
titles. Do you know of a way to find bibliographies with titles of both
translated editions and English editions? I Googled every which way I
could think of, but had no luck.
By the way, thanks for being a nice guy to your fans, and thanks for,
well, being yourself :)
And of course, thanks for the help!
Jess
You're welcome. I don't know of any bibliographies that will do it -- but the easiest thing is probably for your friend to go to Amazon.co.jp and look at the English language editions of the books listed there and see if he recognises the plots.
An Amazon.co.jp search gives this link for me only in Japanese, Which is a different set of results to what you'd get if you went to the Amazon.co.jp front page and typed "gaiman". You could work out what was what from covers and plot descriptions, even without the titles.
(And I just noticed what appears to be a Japanese edition of the BBCs Neverwhere coming out on DVD. How cool. I wonder if the BBC will send me a copy...?)
And finally, your cut out and keep New York Times guide to the many Beowulfs of the next 18 months.