Moe Lane

I suspect that “A Year of Consequence” would indeed be a temptation, for some people. I mean, the odds are long against the person. But the dice probably aren’t actually stacked. A square fight even if it isn’t a fair fight, as Manly Wade Wellman might say*.

Moe Lane

*Just in case… what do you MEAN, the Silver John stories aren’t on Kindle?!? Here: they put them in to replace Kuttner’s work in that particular e-book.

…Everybody’s got a breaking point.

I believe that ‘Species Adaptation’ will turn out to be true. The Galactic community will take one look at out species, and immediately show us where they store all the really cool guns. I think that I’m all right with this scenario, too. I mean, maybe some of them shoot plasma slugs, or something. That’d be neat.

Ah, ‘Feud.’ You know: winners might write the history books, but losers do have their own ways of keeping score. And you may never know what side you were signed up for by your ancestors.

:cue evil laugh:

I have long felt that the smart thing to do with a geas like the one in “It Could Have Been You, Sure” was to ignore the blessed thing entirely. The stories are clear: the harder you try to thwart a death-geas, the more bloody-minded the universe gets in warping reality. Just don’t sweat it, man. Everybody’s gotta die of something, and you want the other person to be the overconfident one in a duel.

‘Pi to the Face’ is an amusing conceit, in my opinion. Also: fighting this guy is very embarrassing. Worth it if you had to skip breakfast, though.

Ah, “Root Access.” I imagine that being a civilized orcish mage could be a lot of fun. Especially if you use the entire orc thing to cheerfully yell at people who deserve it, to the secret glee of all your more circumspect colleagues. And faculty meetings would never go on and on.

You can’t really write a book around “Like Being Welcomed Home.” Where’s the conflict? Yes, you can inject conflict into it, but then you can do that any time. Who’s gonna want to read a book where the Good Guys get the Quest Object in a speed run because everybody gets out of their way?

Exactly.

I’d write more Civil War stuff like ‘Bring the Jubilee,’ except that it’s a field of overlapping rhetorical minefields. Although I don’t care about the opinions of the monomaniacal historical illiterates, mind you: I’ve been ignoring them for years. No, it’s the monomaniacal historical literates who would eat me alive. And I am not going to spend six months figuring out just what damned buttons George H Thomas or Nathan Bedford Forrest were wearing at the damned battle of Chickamauga. Life is just too damned short.

‘Around Here Somewhere’ is, yes, a little gruesome in its sheer matter-of-fact nature. I can only assume, though, that this is how THEY would do it. And then this is how THEY would forget how they did it.