The Babbington Press

03/25/2025

From the Public Domain Review: “In the piece that follows, Eigil zu Tage-Ravn experiments with some digital-analog horizon-fusing, asking a GTP-3-driven AI system for help in the interpretation of a key scene in Moby-Dick (1851). Do androids dream of electric whales?”
— D. Graham Burnett, Series Editor

Eigil zu Tage-Ravn asks a GTP-3-driven AI system for help in the interpretation of a key scene in Moby-Dick (1851). Do androids dream of electric whales?

02/06/2025

Deception: Photographic Fakery and Credulousness

Mark Dorset: Deception: Photographic Fakery; Credulousness; and Performance

01/11/2025

Deception, Hoaxes
Credulity versus Skepticism

Mark Dorset: Deception, Hoaxes; Credulity versus Skepticism; and Imagination: As Refuge

08/30/2024

Science: Experimentation�In At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 3, Peter Leroy abandons the idea of a scientific experiment involving peas, but I happen to know that Kraft, in high school, conducted the experiment that Peter claims to have “concocted,” following instructions in an installment of C. L. Strong’s “The Amateur Scientist,” a regular feature in Scientific American magazine.

Mark Dorset: Science: Experimentation; Reality, Real and Fictional; Projects, Practical and Impractical

08/20/2024

I’ve begun serializing At Home with the Glynns on Substack. You‘ll find it here:

Covers and Copyright

07/15/2024

War, Folly
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 57:
“Actually,” she said, “c’est la guerre. There was, you remember, a war. Isn’t there always? Hasn’t there always been a war? If we’re not at war, then someone else is.”
Imperial War Museums, “Timeline Of 20th And 21st Century Wars”:
Conflict took place in every year of the 20th Century; the world was free from the violence caused by war for only very short periods of time. It has been estimated that 187 million people died as a result of war from 1900 to the present. The actual number is likely far higher.

Mark Dorset: War and Folly

05/31/2024

Allusion: Chekhov’s Pistol (or Gun)
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 46:
At last, like Chekhov’s pistol, the cigarette got its moment. She lit it, took a long drag.
Sorry, but I can’t resist this:

Mark Dorset: Allusion: Chekhov’s Pistol (or Gun)

05/25/2024

Personages, Fictional: Gregory Tschudin�Books, Real and Fictional: The Films of Gregory Tschudin
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 45:
FROM The Films of Gregory Tschudin, by Andrew Cargill:
“To Rarotonga,” meticulously restored as “Rarotonga,” has been included in the prestigious Hyperion Collection:
https://peterleroy.substack.com/p/topical-guide-736

05/21/2024

Travel: Ocean Voyage; and Plans and Schemes
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 42:
“SHE WAS FAILING,” said Ariane, “so the point of the deception changed. Now we wanted to get to Rarotonga before she died.”
On Saturday, May 18, 2024, I asked ChatGPT to show me a route from [a location on Long Island, New York where Babbington might be located] to Rarotonga by sailing ship.
Here is the response I received, lightly edited and re-formatted, by me:

Mark Dorset: Travel: Ocean Voyage; and Plans and Schemes

05/09/2024

Observation, Surveillance; and Dancing: Erotic
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 38:
[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters]

Mark Dorset: Observation, Surveillance; and Dancing: Erotic

05/07/2024

Books: Real�
Writers: Real
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 38:
At the library, she read all the works of Robert Dean Frisbie, a Clevelander who went to the South Seas as a young man around 1920. . . .

Mark Dorset: Books: Real; Writers: Real

05/06/2024

Personages: Fictional: The Gigantic Mortoni
What a Piece of Work I Am: Chapter 38:
“[…] generations of Babbingtonians were raised on the legend of the clamdigger who wandered all the way to the South Seas in search of the best clam beds. […] They called him the Gigantic Mortoni.”

Mark Dorset: Personages: Fictional: The Gigantic Mortoni

05/01/2024

Work: The Right Thing and the Time It Takes
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 36:
Grandfather . . . would scrape the loose paint and touch up the bare spots, painstakingly painting the half rounds that held the screens in place, slowly, so slowly, so that he wouldn’t get paint onto the screens themselves, teaching me—but only by the way, without a word—that some work not only takes time, but needs time, as if it were alive, and had its needs.

Mark Dorset: Work: The Right Thing and the Time It Takes

04/23/2024

Man’s Inhumanity to Man, Examples Thereof: Expulsion of the Acadians
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 34:
The Robertses were descended from displaced Acadians, as were several other families in Babbington, Grandmother’s among them, and like most of the displaced Acadians in Babbington they had abandoned their faith and their old-world allegiances long ago.

Mark Dorset: Man’s Inhumanity to Man, Examples Thereof: Expulsion of the Acadians; and World Views: Skepticism, Materialism

04/22/2024

Allusion�
Projects, Difficult
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 33:
It wasn’t an easy trip for Grandfather. Often, along the way, he had doubts about the wisdom of having set out at all. Sometimes he wished that he could just end it, put into any port along the way, and sometimes he wished that he could start again—better prepared this time, better equipped. […] At other times, the effort of keeping up the pretense seemed too difficult for him.

Mark Dorset: Allusion; and Projects, Difficult

04/19/2024

Imagination
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 32:

Mark Dorset: Imagination

04/13/2024

https://peterleroy.substack.com/publish/post/143517361

Mark Dorset: Places, Real and Fictional: Rarotonga; Reality: Making It Endurable; and Sailboats: Types: Yawl

04/11/2024

https://open.substack.com/pub/peterleroy/p/topical-guide-707

Mark Dorset: Drinks: Rum and Coke, Cuba Libre; Appropriation, Plagiarism; and Fact and Fiction