rossitter

> Performant is not an adjective, it is a noun. "One who performs".

It has been used as a noun, but rarely. You are thinking of the -ant formation seen in informant: one who informs. But this is not the only -ant in English, and it is not the one used here.

That which is resistant, resists well; it offers a good amount of resistance. Those who are insistent, insist strongly; they make plenty of insistence. That which is compliant, complies fully; it is very much in compliance.

That which is performant, performs well; it offers (a) good performance.

As to what good performance is:

> Software can perform well at its job (not crash, get the correct answer) but may not perform efficiently (takes a long time, has unbounded resource use, uses a brute force pattern).

This is a reasonable objection—I agree with it, wanting speech to be plain—but here is something to oppose it: I suspect that just about everyone who clicked on this article, including the two of us, knew precisely what the author wanted the word to mean, even if they had an objection to that use of the word. Performant has sprung to life, and it describes an efficient performance.

As for what I think of the word: the English language is already rich with others which would do just as well, which is probably why this one seems so jargony. It is one of those technical words that sounds more like a social signal—"I know what I'm talking about"—than something precise: "This is what I'm talking about."

> thanks for all the down votes, guys

This may be why:

First you described a defect in the story. But you claim such defects have "always been a problem" in science fiction. So this story is unsatisfying to you in company with a slew of other works, many of which will have been award winners.

Then you speculated that this particular story might have won an award only because it was Chinese, as if the other finalists are likely to have been better. Yet you've made it clear that you wouldn't expect them to be. So your initial criticism, that the story falls short as so much of science fiction does, gives way to a criticism of this peculiar story--but you have only singled it out for being written by a Chinese author. So, it is ordinarily bad, yes; but it is particularly bad for being Chinese.

I do not think you meant it like that, but that is certainly how you wrote it.

As for the premise of this and similar stories: It is commonly held that technological advancement disproportionately benefits the ruling classes, while the workers are made to grind away as usual, life having been little altered. This line of thought may vary in intensity and nuance with place and regime. "Folding Beijing" and many stories like it draw up a simplified world--all fictive worlds are simplified--in which this tenet rings particularly true. Probably the author intends to play with a view on our world as it is, or that part of it which she is most concerned with. Certainly she wants to lay hold of a reader's emotion, to keep them reading (we do not all share your desires in speculative fiction): who does not care about what their own lot may become, or the lots of their neighbors? We may even feel this way when our lots are presented figuratively, as in a world that looks a little too close to our own for being so different--or a little too different for being so clearly our own. Many of us are weak for this sort of thing. But I think it's disingenuous to claim that such a story only does this. It may not serve the function you want it to; but then, if you're used to that in science fiction, you should be expecting it any time you see the label.

(If you want to know, I personally thought this one dull, but I feel that way about a lot of science fiction, too.)

Printed book sales have gone up in the U.S. over the past two years, though this was largely driven by 'adult coloring books' and (in 2015) Go Set a Watchman.[0]

In my experience, the Strand in New York[1] is every bit as crowded as it ever was. While some smaller stores have failed, others[2] remain hectic with popularity, and while I don't have their sales figures I do see plenty of people making trips to the counter. Friends in other cities in the U.S. have much the same thing to say about bookstores near them. That won't reach everyone, but it isn't only urban environments where print lives on.

I do wonder what all factors come into play here. Certainly there are many people who do not like to be roped into buying books from one retailer, or else converting them haphazardly using Calibre. More 'open' platforms, like the Kobo, are difficult to find in certain markets—and why search them out when EPUB prices might not beat prices at your local store (as at the Strand, if you're in New York)? Many e-books are still clumsily produced, thanks to some combination of a limiting markup language and corner cutting at publishers (poorly proofread OCR output, common in older materials, regardless of firm).

Then there are the sentimentalists. There's no reasoning with sentiment—and why would there be?

Then there is the ease of lending, exchanging, etc. You don't have to deal with pesky rights, and no need to convert anything. No need to give over your reading habits to someone else's server. It's your book.

I understand some of the skepticism myself. Most of us have lived through deprecation of file formats and obsolescence of software. I do have e-books tucked away in plain text now, but that's the only reason I feel they're less brittle than the books on my shelves.

[0] http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bo... [1] http://www.strandbooks.com/ [2] http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/

What evidence could there be, beyond a common assertion?

I have admired software, but art is not simply that which is admired. I have admired tools, and have been happy with them even while they sit beside me, unused.

I may write this comment without expecting it to be admired for its luster. I may write a lyric poem with quite different hopes. It is hard to say just what art is, but I imagine many would agree that writing may or may not be an artistic practice. The same goes for pencilwork; I could be tallying in a margin or sketching a scene. It all depends on how one goes about it, and what one makes—and to what purpose it is made.

As with art, almost all software is forgettable, most of it is a poor copy of something already done well long ago, and the best it can hope for in future is to take up a few minutes of an archivist's life. Still, it may have been worth making.