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Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares

It's about a year since Quantum of Nightmares was published, and the third New Management novel (Season of Skulls) is less than two months out. So this seems like a good time to resume my intermittent series of Crib Sheet blog entries about specific books.

Here's the Crib Sheet for Dead Lies Dreaming, the first book in the series.

As I mentioned in that earlier crib sheet, Dead Lies Dreaming embodied about half the ideas I'd originally developed for an earlier abortive novel project, Ghosts in the Dream House. Well, it ended inconclusively and obviously wanted to be more than just a standalone novel, and the question of where to go next was bouncing around my brain in September 2019 when I found myself in a bar at the world science fiction convention in Dublin, and a certain person who was one of my regular test readers asked me, "what if ..." and then an absolutely terrible, no-good, horrible suggestion that left me rubbing my hands in glee.

Once upon a time, when asked how she planned her books, Lois McMaster Bujold reputedly replied: "I work out what the worst thing I could possibly do to my protagonist is, then I do it to them." It was obvious from the start that book 2 would focus on Eve Starkey, the over-achieving personal assistant to Rupert de Montfort Bigge: and it was instantly obvious that the worst thing that could happen to her would be something to do with Rupert nefarious schemes. Rupert can best be described as "magical Ernst Stavro Blofeld", the sorcerous equivalent of the ultimate Bond villain: at least for the first two books. (Although there's more to him than mustache-twirling evil and terrorism, as we discover in Season of Skulls.) At the end of Dead Lies Dreaming Eve successfully backstabbed him (or rather, lured him into a trap of his own devising), and appeared to be safe from his abusive activities. The opening of Quantum of Nightmares hinges on Eve cracking his office safe and discovering that there's more to his schemes than she imagined.

As my test reader pointed out, Eve's personal nightmare scenario would obviously be to discover that he's not dead, she's still under his control, and furthermore that she may be much deeper under his control than she realized. Which was easily enough arranged. Rupert had bound Eve to obey him by means of a geas, a magical compulsion. Eve, being a fairly powerful sorcerer in her own right, was confident of her ability to break his geas at will—but never did so, because she had no immediate reason to signal her disloyalty. But Rupert, despite his self-presentation as a depraved asshole, was playing a deeper game than Eve realized. Proxy marriage isn't exactly a thing in most jurisdictions these days but it was certainly a thing under early mediaeval Norman law, and Rupert just happened to be the owner of a tiny lump of rock in the English Channel with its own judicial system. Under the archaic and obsolete-in-most-places legal doctrine of Coverture a wife's identity is subsumed under that of her husband—once married they are "of one flesh". A magical obedience spell would logically be significantly more powerful if the subject of the compulsion is to all intents and magical purposes a part of the spellcaster's body. So Eve discovers that Rupert has arranged to marry her by proxy in the jurisdiction of Skaro, rendering his geas over her well-nigh unbreakable if he's still around to activate it.

So I now had a well-developed protagonist who is stuck in a deadly trap and needed to find an escape path. (This is what we in the writing trade call "motivation".)

But in general a novel, especially a 120,000 word doorstep, requires at least two plot threads—ideally three.

I still had some material left over from Ghosts in the Dream House, notably a character or two. One of whom was a hapless middle manager toiling in the Human Resources department of a peculiarly ghastly British supermarket chain, firmly under the thumb of an utterly hateful upwardly-mobile corporate psychopath, and condemned to deal with the nefarious activities of the 3D Meat Printer repair guy behind the deli department doors.

It's a third of a century since I worked retail, but it's an experience that lingers like the world's worst hangover. And back then, we didn't have ubiquitous monitoring and wireless headsets telling us where to go and what to do (although there was definitely CCTV everywhere, even in the mid-80s). It didn't take much effort to extrapolate where the most inhumane and dehumanizing retail practices were heading and dial them up a little. The horrendous conditions of workfare employees are not that far removed from those inflicted on agricultural gang workers, with the threat of De-Emphasis (essentially a revival of mediaeval Outlawry by the modern state) as a Foucaultian discipline to keep the working poor in line. FlavrsMart's experiments with bunny suited workfare bodies wearing a shock belt, a gag, and the Company Face, merely satirize the existing practices of corporations that try to automate their employee's interactions with public, removing any element of individuality.

GitDH was originally going to be near-future SF, set circa 2040. Right now supermarkets don't have vat-grown tissue cultures for manufacturing synthetic steaks and chicken nuggets. The technology kind of exists in over-hyped prototype form, and is clearly going to be a thing sooner or later, but it's not front-and-center right now. But we do have 3D printers, we have Pink Slime, and it seems reasonable that if you have enough variant meat by-products you could print bespoke processed meats. Imagine a birthday meat loaf with the name of the birthday person printed through it? Or a custom turducken printed from left-overs. Texture and "mouth feel" is an important aspect of meat substitutes and 3D printing offers scope for fine-tuning the produce.

I decided that if a supermarket was going to experiment with bespoke meat printers, they probably wouldn't hook it up to tissue culture vats immediately as the technology isn't as as well-developed as 3D printing. But robot de-boning machines were totally a thing even a decade ago (hint: play that video!), and it's not a huge stretch to imagine an automated butcher operation behind the scenes of a supermarket, taking in slaughtered and cleaned carcases off the loading dock and emitting tasty, tasty meat pies. (Obviously overseen by a repairman called Ade—or rather, Sweeny Todd.)

Which brings me to the B-plot, involving the take-over of the FlavrsMart supermarket chain with the experimental deli counter by the Bigge Corporation, Eve's misgivings about it (why was Rupert so dead-set on owning a supermarket?), and the subsequent horrors that our private eye, Wendy Deere, uncovers when Eve hires her as part of the due dilligence process leading up to the take-over.

This is a fat book, so there's scope for a C-plot. And as Dead Lies Dreaming riffed off Peter Pan (the original grimdark Pan based on the play and books by J. M. Barrie, not the Bowdlerized Disney version), I decided to riff off another misunderstood childhood classic, P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins. Who is nothing like the ghastly saccharine Disney musical version if you go back to the source material (as indeed Alan Moore did before me, although I only found out afterwards). The original Mary Poppins is a feral, narcissistic demiurge,blown into the Banks family's life by a storm, and she up-ends everything around her for her own convenience. In the case of Quantum of Nightmares Mary (Mary MacCandless, aka Mary Drop, daughter of the senile mad scientist Doctor Skullface, who briefly appeared in Dead Lies Dreaming) is definitely a rogue and a bad 'un, but she has a credible motivation for her crimes, namely to pay for her father's specialised old age home care, which is as horrifically expensive and inhumanely rationed as anything else in New Management Britain. She can rationalize almost anything if it's to keep her only living relative from joining the ranks of the De-Emphasized (although she reaches her breaking point when she realizes she's been lied to about her employer's objectives in having her abscond with the Banks children).

I note that the cover copy for Season of Skulls pitches it as the third and final book of the New Management trilogy. Well, it's a trilogy for now, and SoS wraps up the Eve/Rupert story, but the New Management is an ongoing series setting, and Mary may show up again in a future New Management story. (Certainly after the ending of Season of Skulls Eve is going to be looking to hire a governess, and Mary is going to be desperate for escape from the existential horror of nannying Robert, Lyssa, Emily, and Ethan Banks—a foursome who would definitely qualify as a high-level supervillain team if they were over the age of criminal responsibility.)

Finally, whence the title?

Confession time: Quantum of Nightmares is not my preferred title. Most of my novels start with the title, but this one was very much a head-scratcher. It started out as In His House (shot down by editorial fiat), then got turned into Meat Lies Bleeding, which was also shot down. (I was warned that if the Marketing folks at my publishers didn't like the book it would inevitably be nicknamed Dead Meat, which is what my career would be shortly thereafter). Quantum of Nightmares was at least anodyne, vaguely thriller-ish, and hinted very indirectly at some of what's going on in the book (Eve's worst nightmare).

Any questions? Have at it in the comments!

270 Comments

1:

Why did events in the in-book D&D campaign mirror another thread of the story?

2:

The email I got from Tor.com (March 4/23) about upcoming books mentioned 'Season of Skulls' as the 13th book of the Laundryverse.

https://publishing.tor.com/seasonofskulls-charlesstross/9781250839404/

Whatever the title, I'm looking forward to reading it!

3:

The meat-printing plot thread reminds me of the excellent short story "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, available for free here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prasad_01_17/ .

5:

The New Management books are in the same universe as the Laundry files, but are set after the (planned) end of the (unfinished) earlier series and feature mostly-new characters. Unfortunately Marketing at my publishers went with the easier sell, which was "more of what sells" rather than the higher risk/higher payoff of framing it as a new series.

Interestingly Orbit (in the UK) are now branding them as New Management, not Laundry.

6:

Whilst I can think of a few reasons why His Awful Majesty hasn't dealt with Rupert personally, or via his own minions, I do hope you'll put a throw in remark or two to explain this oversight to those of us paying attention.

Ta.

PS If you want another "odd" English Children's book as source setting, there's that odd bit in Wind in the Willows.

7:

My complaint about Stross is nearly identical about my feelings about Bujold, Scalzi, Cixin, Modesitt, Stirling, Birmingham, et al.

Too few. Too slow. Too good.

Not enough books produced, none produced fast enough, and impossible to slow-read. Rarely have I been able to ration out any of their books across more than two nights of reading. Oh sure, I could re-read (and I do) such as with Scalzi's "Kaiju Preservation Society". And when it is not a standalone, an excuse to justify re-reading prior volumes in a series. But still, I complain, "Too few".

Difference with Stross is he keeps tipping over the board and making the re-write of reality's rules plausible. Such how the Laundryverse explains various things about 'history things' in ways that make me itch. And it is tough not writing fan-fic. Luckily, there's the delightfully sprawling mess that is the 1632verse where just about anything goes, short of alien invasion. (If ever I finish my novel; 1400 pages in search of an ending.)

And now I gotta wait a zillion pico-seconds for "Season of Skulls".

Q: any chance you'll allow yourself to be brain scanned and incorporated into strossGPT...?

8:

Having read Lena, (see also), I'm going to guess that the answer is no.

9:

"Skaro" - a casual re-arrangement of the hold-out of the notorious fascist ( or maybe not? ) the Barclays? Nor any references to original Daleks, either?

10:

This is covered exhaustively in Season of Skulls.

11:

Yes to both! (Rupert is a very British Bond villain-type oligarch, with an island kingdom modelled loosely on Sark. And yes to the Planet of the Daleks, too.)

13:

Re 1632 - um, sorry, you're going to have to pitch that to Eric's widow, Lucille, as well as Baen.

And it is most certainly NOT everything goes - it's got to be within reason for the time and place.

14:

Off topic.

Please drop this until comment 300 or later.

This thread is for Q&A about Quantum of Nightmares.

15:

OK, the title "Quantum of Nightmares" makes me think of a cross between a Daniel Craig era Bond and a Laundry title. Was this deliberate on your part or simply twisted on mine?

16:

Apolgies. I didn't think - I could have emailed him privately.

17:

Re this old comment on a review of somebody else's book: did any edits result?

18:

Nitpicking QoM would include an obsessive desire to dig deeper into implications of the 3DMP (3D Meat Printer) and just how utterly depraved the food-industrial complex has gotten in certain countries... my ignorance of how abusive UK megacorps are in deliberately mishandling foodstuffs...

perhaps a brief bit of fan-fic composed of an article by an investigative journalist finding out that Soylent Blue(tm) isn't people... it's everything other than people... rats, mice, feral cats, stray dogs, the occasional misplaced exotic pet lizard... would the New Management tolerate such turning over of rocks? or stomp on the journalist when he finds out why pet shelters are suspiciously empty...?

19:

Entirely happenstance. (I was desperate for a name. Usually with my books the name comes first, but not so much with this one -- and with Season of Skulls, for that matter.)

20:

Apropos nothing, here's an article in The Guardian today about 3D food printers.

Meat printing is a bit more problematic than cake (infection control issues are more acute) but not obviously difficult from a technical perspective.

I can say that the New Management's policy on humanity is that, to His Nibs, we're bees and he's the beekeeper: he'll look after us and try to keep us healthy as long as we produce the honey and only occasionally gas a few of us, but ... keep producing the honey. So food standards won't be significantly lower under the NM than under any other government (and higher than in the USA). Which is positively utopian compared to present-day brexitland!

21:

old age home care, which is as horrifically expensive and inhumanely rationed as anything else in New Management Britain

Or modern Tory Britain...

22:

Charlie Stross 19:

so... it's okay to do a play off of "Silence Of The Lambs"... "Silence Of The Kennels" wherein hot dogs are indeed canine-based? Ratatouille is rodent-based? and it is a slow creepy realization there's ever fewer pigeons shitbombing their cars?

whilst at the same there's new offerings of cheaper processed foodstuffs rich in animal proteins which aids in energizing workers to their best in completing New Management vision of a 'New Britain' ... what's really the long term goal of a sleeping god and his minions... conquering the world seems so ordinary... QoM gives few hints as to what those alien entities intend to do... whereas Bob Howard in prior adventures does provide some toss offs but at the time, AIUI, apparently it was about finding human bodies to invade... what do they do after settling in their new mobile flesh homes?

23:

Hmm, future book with Marry Drop forced to dealing with the superpowered children, you could play with the plot of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (it being a Ian Flemming novel fits with your other nods to his work.) You already have a mad scientist inventor Skullface to stand in for Cractacus Pott.

24:

Greg Tingey @ 9:

"Skaro" - a casual re-arrangement of the hold-out of the notorious fascist ( or maybe not? ) the Barclays? Nor any references to original Daleks, either?

Well if Rupert were to end up in some kind of electric mobility frame? He'd have to change his name of course.

25:

Or modern Tory Britain...

I assumed the New Management was a metaphor for the right-most kind of Tories.

Was I wrong?

26:

I assumed the New Management was a metaphor for the right-most kind of Tories.

Well, to me it seems the New Management is much more capable of getting things done and food (if 3d printed meats) on the grocery store shelves... They might not even done a Brexit.

So I'd say the right-most kind of Tories are worse. Obviously I'm not British so my view is pretty distorted anyway.

27:

Surely in the computational horror of the Laundryverse it would be

The Silence of the Lambdas

28:

I assumed the New Management was a metaphor for the right-most kind of Tories.

It was ... but I wrote "The Delirium Brief" in 2016 and "The Labyrinth Index" in 2018.

In 2019 there was an election and the formerly right-most Tories came the centre-left of the Tory party and the post-election right wing outed themselves goose-stepping swivel-eyed neo-nazis.

Consequently it has become very hard to satirize them adequately!

29:

They might not even done a Brexit.

No, they're totally doing a Brexit. It's in the footnotes early in The Labyrinth Index.

But they're doing it for a good reason.

(To stop the sacrifices from escaping.)

30:

... in our timeline I don't think you're that far from the truth ... certainly the end product ... :/

31:

Ok, cheers. I did say up front it could be "just me".

32:

icehawk 27:

{ tip of hat }

I refuse to go off on a tangent

though I do acknowledge the utter horrors implicit in being trapped in a infinite loop of malformed code... as well as the terror of experiencing a divide-by-zero from the inside... one of many mathematical singularities which also wreck software...

huh... we could assemble fan-fic wherein each scene/story is a mathematical anomaly or a chunk of malformed code triggering a nasty tweak upon our shared reality...

33:

Charlie @ 28
I've got parliamentlive.tv on, with popcorn ....
I won't be able to see the end, but it's "amusing" for certain values of ....
And it recurses straight back to your comment about the current batch of tories.
Nonetheless, I'm vert afraid the lying slim-bag will get away with it, again.

34:

As I remarked on Mastodon this morning, you need shed no tears for Clownshoes Churchill: he already has a job offer on the table -- OpenAI want to hire him to be ChatGPT 5.

35:

Not just you. I haven't seen the movie, but I did briefly think of it when I first read the title of OGH's novel.

Very briefly. ;)

36:

It is sobering to realize that we are likely surrounded by millions of people who would gladly sacrifice their neighbors or co-workers to elder abominations and think little of it. I don't doubt that's true.

Yet there would also be a sizable movement attempting to resist, how successfully depending. Even some of the wealthy and well-connected. There must be somebody out there trying to play "divide and conquer" on these guys. It might be interesting to read a story from their point of view.

Will be buying QofN soon.

37:

You think he's that good at bs'ing?

38:

Speaking of, and somewhat ironically, I do believe that Rishi Sunak has just used Clownshoes Churchill as a dead cat, by publishing Sunak's tax affairs shortly after Clownshoes' testimony to the "Partygate" inquiry.

39:

Ratatouille is rodent-based?

uh? ratatouille is a vegetarian (side)dish. No rodent involved except in the Disneyverse.

40:

It's a feeble pun - RATatouille - also used in the title of a 2007 film.

A similar one was made by friend of mine referring to cafeteria goulash - made from real ghoul.

41:

Going back to the original topic (more or less): Are we going to get a glimpse of what is happening in the world outside of US/UK? Bob used to have interactions with the Dutch/German equivalents of the Laundry, but in recent books non-Anglo organisations seemed to have vanished.
Have other countries got their own New Management, and if that's not the case how come they tolerate such an infestation?

42:

I have no plans currently to write outside the UK. It may happen at some future point. (It definitely needs to be addressed in the background of the final Laundry Files main sequence novel. And, yes: the elder gods are taking over everywhere. Be glad you're not Russian, with Chernobog moving in ...)

43:

Do you know where the rest of the Lovecraftian gods ended up? You put Nyarlahotep in the U.K. and Cthulhu in the U.S, but where are Dagon, Hastur, Yog Sothoth, Ithaqua, etc? Also, is Cthulhu explicitly "The Sleeper in the Pyramid" or is that someone else, and if so, who?

44:

Topic-adjacent, just sharing...

I know The New Management is viewed by its human symbionts as having a relationship with humans analogous to the ones humans have with honeybees.

At this point, I should note that honeybees have been moved all over the world by humans and are one of our favorite domesticated insects. So this is not at all a bad thing for bees or humans, although it's an extinction-level crisis for other pollinators when humans move honeybees in (do I detect an analogy for future nefarious plotting a la A Colder War? Oh myyy).

Anyway, if you want to make your standard audience (e.g. us WEIRDos) a bit more creeped out and for Laundryverse lulz, it might be worth contemplating another set of human-insect symbioses, starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termitomyces . There's actually a whole set of intricate termite-human relationships in West Africa that are little-known and little-studied in the paler parts of the world, in part because social anthropologists didn't get into anthropology to study the benefits of termites. For the most part.*

I'll just leave it here, as I have no intention of derailing this thread further. At least until I can figure out what the quantum excitation state of nightmares would be like. Is superposition possible?

*Africans used termites to drive the French military out of one district in Africa. Harder to do that with honeybees. Termite priests (human ones) may well have been involved.

45:

Dagon is surely sitting on a throne in the Marianas Trench, peevishly picking fibre-optic cables out of Its scales and reviewing defence plans against the sudden infestation of New Managers in the near-vacuum above.

Hastur, canonically, Shall Not Be Mentioned.

It's also possible that once the Stars Are Right some well-known entities can choose - finally, after aeons of being stuck in this benighted backwater - to travel elsewhere. They may need substantial expenditure of power to do it, of course - even tourist class is pricey these days.

46:

As noted in Equoid, Lovecraft is a very inaccurate guide to both cosmology and theology. In the Laundryverse there are plenty of Lovecraftian-adjacent but non-Lovecraftian gods. You'll get to meet a new one in A Conventional Boy, and Season of Skulls turns out to be about a conflict between the New Management's leader and a would-be rival ...

47:

With four children capable of going toe-to-toe with adults, I'd be wondering about adding Timmy the dog. I've a feeling OGH's sense of humour might turn Timmy into an erotic furry cosplayer, but Enid Blyton fans should be able deal with it.

48:

I've never read Enid Blyton, and this is not a deficiency I feel any urge to fix. (Her books weren't welcome in my parents' household while growing up due to anti-semitism: same with Roald Dahl.)

49:

Not familiar with the author, but I looked her up.

Reminds me of finding a 1930's or so Bobbsey Twins, and starting to read it to my Eldest, who was seven or so at the time. Barely got through the first chapter,and then discussed with her why I hated it.

Too bad you're not familiar with the Bobbsey Twins, Charlie. I could easily see them being, ahh, modified in the US under its New Management.

50:

Are you sure? That's not an accusation I have seen (I mean Enid Blyton being antisemitic). She and her books were assuredly racist.

51:

https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-efficiency.html

be really fun if there's an effort by New Management were to seek out objective measurements of effectiveness of competing algorithms (cost of spells crafted and minimized unwanted side effects of spells cast) and then someone prepares a tedious non-PowerPoint presentation (4H w/o toilet pause) summarizing the benefits of migrating from lizard skins to pigeon feathers as raw material... big plus lots 'n lots of locally grown pigeons

oh heck after we've endured supply chain horrid moments due to our timeline's covid there'd be an understanding of the need to ensure a stable enough supply chain

52:

That's absurd. I mean, are you under the delusion that PowerPoint was not created under the directions of the New Management, as part of their Plan to take over?

53:

The New Management is specifically (a) British, and (b) came to power in 2014. Whereas Powerpoint dates to the 1980s and is very American ...

(Anyway, it shows up in the Laundry in The Jennifer Morgue, book 2.)

54:

thing about PowerPoint is its ability to incorporate animation and various colors... it makes for 'fun' [1] slide decks and thus less tedious presentations... without some variance the resulting experience becomes a brain rotting experience leading to slipping rum into coffee during office hours in a 1:15 ratio

[1] 'fun' as defined by people who enjoy tariff calculations to assess upon imports/exports based upon laborious inspection with reference to regulatory handbooks totaling 31,076 pages (in total weighing 73 kilograms)... which is say none

55:

I understand that, but I was using "New Management" to include the new ownership of the US as well - excuse me if that was inappropriate, I'd rather not have my head on a post - and that it was part of their long-term plan leading to the takeover.

56:

"the resulting experience becomes a brain rotting experience leading to slipping rum into coffee during office hours in a 1:15 ratio"
I think you've got that backwards because as typed the resultant beverage contains more coffee than rum.

57:

In what publication did Alan Moore revert to the original Mary Poppins? I haven't heard of that one, and I'm curious.

58:

Powerpoint?

I'm thinking of cheap and crappy knockoffs of ChatGPT trained old grimoires. If magic is just applied mathematics, some freedom fighters may train (or be tricked into training) an AI to rapidly and iteratively make up and cast a god-killing spell.

Not that I'd suggest this for a Laundryverse Story, because some things are just too horrible to contemplate. Especially considering the level of BS a properly chained ChatGPT puts out.

...

Semi-serious question: if superhero-dom is some sort of self-induced infection from outside, how do people who have Superhero-itis pass the condition onto their children? Are they contagious in some way? Are there superhero genes?

59:

The most creative use of PowerPoint I've encountered is as the overall AV control for funerals. For background music, you set each audio track to start when a particular slide is opened, then set a timer to move to the next slide when each song has finished, all over duplicates of the same slide. For the slide show of photos, you do the opposite, timing the photos to start and finish with the song. If it's set up right, you can leave an elderly deacon or the funeral director's young assistant in charge of the laptop, everything can be controlled with just the left and right arrow keys. The pastor who handled my grandfather's funeral, an unlikely PowerPoint guru, taught me these tricks, his stock in trade. I've since used them with various other funerals that ended up my responsibility to co-ordinate.

Actual animation PowerPoint is horrible. I have a co-worker who insists on using it and frankly it just makes it showier while deemphasising information content.

60:

It's in one of the later League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books. (IIRC the one in which he does a from-the-shoulder depiction of James Bond, per Ian Fleming that effectively got it banned from UK publication due to the risk of legal action.)

61:

paws4thot 56:

I was once chained by a contract (by way of awesomely horrid penalties) to a project where we all knew failure was not an option but inevitable...

senior management having gotten into a turf war amongst themselves and hamstrung us... sort of thing that led into contributing towards Germany's defeat in 1945...

some of us started drinking at lunch... others arrived in the morning already comfortably numb... turned out one project leader kept a bottle rum in her desk and a measuring cup to achieve that 1:15 ratio... there'd be some days two coffees were not enough and by 6:00PM -- we had to arrive by 8 and always required to stay till 6 -- she'd just about have to be poured into a cab...

after it all crashed we were threatened with lawsuits and blacklisting ("you'll never code in this town again") as a matter of form but all we needed to do was assemble our e-mail traffic and circle those item from MS Project flagged "pending -- 30 days overdue"... tasks-decisions-queries assigned to senior management that had been ignored... an utterly predictable outcome costing UNNAMED megacorp about USD$9M and 18 months... had to be re-started from zero

which reminds me to inquire about the penalties for failure under New Management...?

62:

Actual animation PowerPoint is horrible. I have a co-worker who insists on using it and frankly it just makes it showier while deemphasising information content.

Isn't that last bit the way most any PPT presentation works?

63:

thing about PowerPoint is its ability to incorporate animation and various colors...

When I started as an engineer (1985), we used a similar program to make B&W slides that were printed on overhead transparencies for weekly presentations. My young self took it as normal, but in hindsight it was stunningly wasteful and pointless. Corporate used the same program for their presentations, but they could use colour because they had them made into 35mm slides to be used in a projector.

Interestingly, Powerpoint was released three years before the first computer projector (integrated LCD/projector that connected directly to a computer). My memory is that the early powerpoint just did slides and didn't have animations, but that could be wrong.

64:

Not specifically related to Quantum of Nightmares, but to the Laundryverse in general:

I, for one, would really like for DEEP SEVEN to get involved in the affairs on the surface of the planet at some point. I'm waiting for it since The Jennifer Morgue. May I still hope?

65:

What really protects the Banks children from the consequences of their crimes? Is it the current age of criminal responsibility of 10 years, I think under the Bloody code children could be held responsible at younger ages than that? Is the status of their parents as state superhero’s enough to give them permanent protection?

66:

Actual animation PowerPoint is horrible. I have a co-worker who insists on using it and frankly it just makes it showier while deemphasising information content.

I haven't actually used Powerpoint in a long time. I did use Keynote (Apple's presentation software) for all my lessons.

I found the animation very useful. I could have diagrams where the parts actually moved, for example a graph of gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy that varied as the object was tossed into the air, then fell. Took a bit of work to construct, but some students were able to grasp the concepts faster.

I also use builds and transitions as visual cues, which is useful to some of my students who benefit from structure (at least their special ed teacher told me they appreciated it).

The key is moderation and consistency. I use two types of transition: one for new topic and one for continuation of previous topic (which is a slide up, mimicking rolling up the blackboard to write more underneath).

It's like selecting the right typeface and employing white space when laying out a book. Well done, it's unnoticeable but still enhances readability. Poorly done, it gets in the way.

67:

OK; as you may have gathered I saw the quoted ratio and thought it seemed backwards.

As for New Management penalties for failure, you may recall mentions of "piles of skulls" on the last entry...

68:

I, for one, would really like for DEEP SEVEN to get involved in the affairs on the surface of the planet at some point. I'm waiting for it since The Jennifer Morgue. May I still hope?

I'm probably not going to go there.

DEEP SEVEN involvement would be a serious escalation in the threat level the Laundry series arc covers -- they're an existential threat to all life forms in the biosphere that we interact with, far more so than most of the Elder Gods.

I'm trying to reduce the threat level to a more human scale in the New Management stories, because permanent ongoing escalation rapidly becomes extremely boring to read.

(If you want big threats, I'm working on a space opera. Or there's the denouement of the Empire Games trilogy, which goes the distance.)

69:

The Banks children are the offspring of a pair of fairly senior government truncheon-carriers.

The aforementioned government may have hopes of employing them at some future point.

In any case, even under the original bloody code the age of criminal responsibility was no lower than 8; and few really serious crimes are committed by 8-10 year olds in the UK -- there's an acute shortage of handgun-wielding toddlers here -- so changing it seems like a low priority for the New Management.

70:

As for New Management penalties for failure, you may recall mentions of "piles of skulls" on the last entry...

Correct. But bear in mind that His Nibs considers managers whose subordinates fail to be responsible for those failures, and has sorcerous minions who can compel even the likes of Boris Johnson to tell the truth -- if your director sets you a stupid or unachievable goal then most likely they're the one who's going to get to see the top of a Tzompantli up close.

71:

I think that's the contradiction which makes the New Management series less interesting to me; Nyarlahotep is so frickin' smart he shouldn't need to be horrible. I'd expect him to be more like Hank Scorpio in the Simpsons episode "You Only Move Twice," which tells the story of how Homer gets a new boss who really wants to build a nuclear raygun and rule the world. But Hank is the most amazing, coolest boss imaginable, friendly and approachable, not a micromanager or or control freak, rewards good employees, doesn't raise his voice - everything you'd want in a boss.

And like Hank Scorpio, the end result of the New Management should be horrible, but dealing with him you'd never imagine that he's going to end up as world dictator. "We don't know what happened to all those missing children, but the New Prime Minister... he's so nice!"

72:

That's missing an important consideration: does he want to be nice?

73:

Re: '... how do people who have Superhero-itis pass the condition onto their children?'

How about 'spiritual' epigenetics? Some epigenetic traits can affect future generations. There are probably a whole bunch of real-in-this-universe bio/chem/physics tricks that could be adapted to 'explain' the Laundryverse.

'Evolutionary consequences of epigenetic inheritance'

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0113-y

If an epigenetic cause-effect can be established then some anti-Management group could hypothetically establish an underground lab of scientists/researchers to identify and come up with cures, vaccines, or some other counteragents. I suspect that as is true for typical research, funding would be an issue. Cue PowerPoint presentation - this could be hilarious.

74:

paws4thot 67:

There's a reason for why there's so many bars-taverns-liquor stores in New York's financial center as well close to office buildings housing companies providing support services. Institutionalized sadism and casual cruelty and human sacrifice are not limited to zealot religious cults worshiping elder gods. It is not lust for power-money-notoriety which leads to such thing but the personalities of those achieving leadership (almost) all of whom are towards the bad end of somewhere on the spectrum of sociopathic amorality.

Everywhere I've worked, there was varying degrees of what could only be categorized as "human sacrifice", if you do not limit it to outright bleeding of victims into blood gutters chiseled into the office furniture. (Now there's a visual for incorporating into any Netflix production of a Landryverse mini-series.) Heck there's terminology in Korean-Japanese-etc for death-by-over-work amongst white collar employees. Always made me wonder the reasons for such abuse, then I read the Landryverse books and had that itchy unease maybe it had an inadvertent element of truth (Shakespearean obsessed monkeys, etc).

So now I reflect upon the wacky-crazy-scary I've seen and wonder...

If only there's a better feedback loop for convincing managers (and executives and bureaucrats) in our timeline towards better modes of managing... something less extreme than entry 70's ==> "if your director sets you a stupid or unachievable goal then most likely they're the one who's going to get to see the top of a Tzompantli up close"

Such as the smackdown offered by Hindenburg[1] upon Nikola, Adani, etc. Oh, how very necessary this is given toxic infections from eyedrops[2], train wrecks[too many to footnote], not-a-bailout of banks experiencing epic fails, etc.

I really would like Charlie Stross to mashup the CS/SVB/etc banking crisis with one or more Tzompantli built in City of London (and NYC's Wall Street and Japan's fin-disc). Written as though a Harvard Business School case study on improved management best practices due to punishment for worst practices published in the Landryverse timeline's Harvard Business Review. Please (please, please!) call it "Worst Practices: Immediate Feedback Loop".

[1] https://lite.cnn.com/2023/03/23/investing/jack-dorsey-block-hindenburg

[2] https://lite.cnn.com/2023/03/24/health/eye-infection-patients

75:

I wish you hadn't brought up the chatbots. Charlie, please, don't have some idiot use a chatbot to deliberately create a spell. Given the false references in papers to non-existant books, etc, I can see that going so very wrong.

76:

Shortage of handgun-wielding children... you mean, as opposed to the kids who found weapons and ammo the other day, and reported it to the bobbies?

On the other hand, a precocious 7 or 8 yr old, who gets hold of that popularized, pre-New Management text that their parents left laying around....

77:

Y'know, there's a problem with that: what happens when you use a spell to force someone to tell the truth... and they're so into their own head whatever they said last is what they think the truth is?

78:

Nyarlahotep is so frickin' smart he shouldn't need to be horrible.

You missed the implications of Jennifer's lecture to the board of directors of FlavrsMart in Quantum of Nightmares, I take it?

There are multiple ways to extract mana in the Laundryverse. Human sacrifice works (see The Atrocity Archive; see also Rupert's cult). But so does misery, torment, and despair. (Sex is also a decent source, but is much harder to control as to make it work requires willing participants. Ahem: one sub-plot of Season of Skulls hinges on this.)

The PM is, in a very real way, in the business of farming misery.

79:

I suspect he's like everyone else; he tries to plot a minimum-stress, lowest-energy, possibly lowest-time path to creating the exact situation which suits him.

80:

On chatbots: in Dead Lies Dreaming it is explicitly stated that an attempt to train a neural network to produce a concordance of the one true manuscript of the Necronomicon ended in tears before bedtime.

So you're safe.

81:

Right. That makes sense.

82:

Then they incriminate themselves and die.

(This is not a problem for the New Management. It's a problem for narcissists, conspiracy theorists, authoritarian followers, and maybe paranoid schizophrenics. But the latter should be reasonably safe from the Inquisition simply by virtue of being too obviously off their meds.)

83:

It's the "flavor" of energy he most enjoys. Interesting to see what the gods who like other "flavors" of energy produce!

84:

And mad people make others miserable, particularly families, not to mention being pretty miserable themselves, so leaving them alone is a big plus!

85:

I can see it happening when they resistance creates a PPT that produces the opposite effect that Alex & co did in the Nightmare Stacks.

86:

Earlier today I opened "Atrocity Archives" and had a serious case of deja vu.

Remember, OGH published it in 2004:

They're looking for a breakthrough. Knowing how to deconstruct any opponent's ideological infrastructure and derive self-propagating conceptual viruses based on its blind spots, for example. That sort of thing would give them a real strategic edge: their psych-ops people would be able to make enemies surrender without firing a shot, and do so reliably.

Did Putin happen to read "Atrocity Archives"?

87:

Remember, OGH published it in 2004:

Actually, I wrote it 1999-2000, and it was originally serialized in "Spectrum SF" magazine in 2002. Unless you meant "The Concrete Jungle", which was written in 2002/03.

This stuff was obvious even in the 90s.

88:

No, that was a quote from "Atrocity Archives". I forgot you had it serialized first.

89:

Weird thought: I'm now wondering if the Laundryverse is a spawning ground for Lovecraftian gods.

Originally, I wasn't thinking of a "biological" spawning ground, meaning a prey-rich place where the Eldritch came to do their version of the wild thing.

Instead, I was thinking of great horrors continuing an age-old cycle of abuse. This is akin to how abused children sometimes grow up to become abusers themselves. In the Laundryverse setting, a universe where magic now runs on pain and misery through the medium of applied mathematics, those who want to survive the great monsters have to become great monsters themselves, thereby perpetuating the, erm, species.

Thing is, I recently reread Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society. Without spoiling details, his kaiju are ecosystems that only grow beyond T. Rex size if they are colonized by the right "parasites" (read symbionts), who then take on essential roles in the physiology of their giant hosts.

Looking at Bob Howard, I wonder if he's that sort of kaiju. Almost certainly not, of course.

However, I'd uselessly speculate that new gods rise in opposition to old gods as a result of the toxic, abusive conditions the Great Old Ones produce, and that perhaps the new gods emerge as ecosystems, not unitary entities.

Just another harebrained idea.

90:

Heteromeles 89:

Exactly where things get fitted into an ecology based upon magic (rather than sugars and proteins and DNA/RNA) looks like the sort of arguments notorious amongst fans of Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel Comics, et al.

Here's my contribution to nerd fest: clowns. Not just the usual evil clowns gnawing on children's bones but also trapped souls enduring a decade of misery as they await their turn before the Pearly Gates for judgement. Who try to earn brownie points hunting down those evil clowns.

So maybe after "Season of Skulls" there ought be a volume titled "Chaos, Cotton Candy 'n Conflict at Circus of the Absurd"

91:

Scalzi's symbionts/parasites were (visibly) macrobiota physically colocated with the kaiju mountains, but the things we see in Charlie's multiverse are microscopic and only partially present in their host's universe. Leto II had a largely mental ecology, plus of course his symbiotic exoskeleton that eventually turned him... into a kaiju-hulud.

Speaking of ecosystems, there are now two+ Strossian multiverses: the Laundry-adjacent dimensions and the Family-accessible alternates. For economy they should really be a single multiverse, and that means that the trunk novel for Charlie's 70th birthday should be inspired by late Heinlein/Asimov/Niven. Tie them all together with the Freya-verse and the Palimpsest and the now-in-process space opera and make a really big boom.

92:

Tie them all together with the Freya-verse and the Palimpsest and the now-in-process space opera and make a really big boom.

Sadly, a little bit ago, I suggested that the singularity from the end of The Rhesus Chart was the singularity that powered Palimpsest, the evidence being that all the Laundry books had document-related names, and a palimpsest is a type of document. It was sad because I rather annoyed Our Gracious Host, and his Word of God is that these stories are not related.

My apologies. I otherwise agree with you that it would be nice if he pulled a Stephen King, multiversed his oeuvre (Angleton begat Singularity begat Palimpsest begat multiverse begat Merchant Princes, Freyaverse, Accelerando and Singularity Sky), and used that to make a comfortable retirement for himself out of the crossovers and licensing.

But that is not The Way.

93:

Tie them all together with the Freya-verse and the Palimpsest and the now-in-process space opera and make a really big boom.

Another thought: it being March 25th as I write this, it is not inconceivable that Charlie will make a major announcement in seven days or so.

94:

To paraphrase the old adage about big fleas and little fleas, I see symbiogenesis in in the Laundryverse thusly:

Humans have Hungry Ghosts

Inside their souls to ride them.

Hungry Ghosts host Great Old Ones

And so ad infinitum.

95:

Heteromeles 94:

Heh. Yeah, Heinlein did much the same, inverted, in "Job: A Comedy of Justice" (1984), in the very last chapter.

Every known (and theoretical) ecology has drivers/motivators: sex, sustenance, safety ("3S").

Reproduction & rearing of the next generation. Food, water, various nutrients. Avoiding (and preventing) other organisms seeking to make them into lunch via speed of escape, camouflage, spikey bits, herd movements, etc; allocating internal resources to an immune system focused upon defenses against enemies including infection and parasites.

So if we conjure of an ecology based upon magic, then the "sustenance" requirements are a lengthened listing and then there's the impact upon "safety". Body armor which is kept in a pocket dimension so a critter can move easier but snaps into place upon overt threat.

It is hardly necessary to detail all the ways species do wacky things to attract mates. But whenever I need a good laugh I've flipped through magazines those so-called "lad rags" and "women's fashion". OMG. There's been some really destructive things men and women do to themselves -- not simply mildly wacky -- in their efforts to be deemed desirable.

Now factor in magic. Not just concealment via 'glamours', but active measures such as draining youth from others for a man to look better, more vital. Literally, drawing off another's life force to become more vital. Tom Cruise, being in world wide headlines lately, prime suspect of being a bloodless vampire. He's about a year younger than myself but looks (and moves and attracts eyes) like someone thirty years younger. Imagine for a moment that there indeed was some mode of magic that (quietly) drains youth from others. On our timeline magic is hit-or-miss so there's not a large number of such mages nor can they do much more than steal/transfer a few extra decades to their clients. But what if there's another timeline where the magic is more active? Elfhome Saga (Wen Spencer). The destroyed home timeline of the Host of Air and Darkness in Delirium Brief (Charles Stross). There's others. But what has not been brought to the forefront is humans (or human-like) would have the urge towards seeking not just marriage and offspring but to feed their craving for being desired and the center of attention. Heh.

So forget lipstick and liposuction and running laps, there'd be entire magickally infused products and services focused upon making their customers irresistible.

Or maybe there'd be lipstick with varying amounts of 'stuff' mixed into 'em as enhancement?

enchantment...?

96:

I otherwise agree with you that it would be nice if he pulled a Stephen King, multiversed his oeuvre

I dislike retconned multiverse fic, whereby an author stitches utterly disparate milieux together -- for example Asimov's late attempt to bolt his Foundation stories on top of his Robot universe. (Heinlein at least seems to have had some idea about his "future history" project from the 1930s onwards, and allowed peripheral works to stay out -- at least, I don't recall him ever trying to superglue Glory Road onto Star Beast even though the premise of Glory Road was inherently less multiverse-hostile than much of his other work.)

Anyway, I've got a multiverse setting. And if I ever need to write more multiverse fic I'll just pick a new corner of the Merchant Princes universe to play in. (Spoiler: there will be more mushroom clouds. In that setting there are always mushroom clouds.)

97:

Another thought: it being March 25th as I write this, it is not inconceivable that Charlie will make a major announcement in seven days or so.

Not this year; seriously, I can't come up with an April Fool joke that can hold up a candle to the impending publication of Season of Skulls, the headfuckery of which will be very plain to see in the one-star and two-star reader reviews I'm stockpiling popcorn in anticipation of on Amazon.

98:

So forget lipstick and liposuction and running laps, there'd be entire magickally infused products and services focused upon making their customers irresistible.

Go back to The Jennifer Morgue and pay special attention to the Bathory™ Pale Grace™ cosmetics line sold by Eileen Billington. It's been in the Laundry Files since, oh, 2006 ...?

99:

You have at least one reader who agrees about stitched-up multiverses.

I find your remarks about Season of Skulls interesting - it sounds as if you have trodden on the corns of some people who probably richly deserve it ....

The blurb implies that is the conclusion of a trilogy; I hope so. One of my lesser reactions to Quantum of Nightmares was that its conclusion wasn't conclusive (if you know what I mean). More so than for Dead Lies Dreaming.

100:

it sounds as if you have trodden on the corns of some people who probably richly deserve it ....

Most of the commenters on this blog, I hope!

It's the conclusion of a three-book story arc. But the New Management was always intended to be the successor series to the Laundry Files, and as such, is open-ended. I'm already racking up plot points for book 4. However, book 4 of the NM won't be written or sold until after book 11 of the LF (the last one -- counting "A Conventional Boy" as book 10 even though it's not really part of the sequence and is half the length of a regular LF novel).

101:

Charlie Stross 98:

Now that you mention it, I recall that now.

What I laying out is some of those novel/saga concepts I've been gnawing upon for a decade, "bloodless vampire" as well as "deathless movie star". (Which has been done in StarGate and various forgettable movies and leaden books. Twilight Zone episodes, well of course.)

Oh sure, others have done those in some form, but there's still untapped variants. So now I'm wondering how to blend together something wacky enough to fun and ruthless enough to be scary. Something more twisted such as a business venture routinely facilitating the 1% elite who are seeking longer lives and better looks, brokering with a "bloodless vampire" to transfer over a chunk of life force. Maybe going completely legit, openly buying five years of life off the those bottom-most tier of the poorest of poor. Then at steep markup, selling those chunks to the 1%. Like how kidneys are overtly bought 'n sold in India to Americans looking to get a transplant to save themselves. Or plasma harvesting in impoverished Southern states in the US.

Both which are foreseeable as coming soon to an NHS facility in each of the fifty poorest urban neighborhoods across the UK. Putting them slackers to work, eh? Likely making it a requirement to get dole money, donating plasma once a week. After all, we've been milking cows for centuries, why not domesticate humans?

Getting people off the waiting lists for kidneys and no longer wasting resources on 'em for dialysis -- massive savings which would be happiness for amoral conservatives -- by offering prisoners a reduction in sentencing for a lung (20Y) or a kidney (just 5Y since its less crippling).

Which oddly, coincides with an abrupt uptick in arrests of healthy thugs for minor non-violet crimes, each of whom get sentences measured in multiples of decades.

(And other such novel ideas for dometicated human harvests woud soon after adopted by Greece, Turkey, Hungary, etc.)

=+=+=+=

Your thoughts, oh grand 'n grand wizard... hmmm... weather as a weapon? or source of fun?

I got this image of two gods getting a bit bored and deciding to play a game of 'human bowling pins' with twisters... winner decided upon most clever twisted outcome of a 'manufactured housing' (what used to be called mobile homes) having a mid-air sexual tryst with a F150 megatruck.

excerpt ==> "Preliminary estimates from storm reports and radar data indicate the tornado was on the ground for more than an hour and traversed at least 170 miles, said Lance Perrilloux, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Jackson office. “That’s rare – very, very rare,” he said, attributing the long path to widespread atmospheric instability."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/26/mississippi-tornado-biden-declares-emergency-after-deadly-storm

102:

I dislike retconned multiverse fic, whereby an author stitches utterly disparate milieux

There's another way to read it: I otherwise agree with you that it would be nice if he pulled a Stephen King, blah blah blah, and used that to make a comfortable retirement for himself out of the crossovers and licensing. To me, the bookends are more important than the blah blah blah.

Otherwise, I'd gently point out that both your extended series are multiversal. And there's some amusement to be had from the notion of the New Management and the Stasis from Palimpsest discovering each other and struggling to master each other's magitech first. It would put Lovecraft's Great Race to shame.

103:

As it happens...
Of course, this was by not doing Liz Cavanaugh III, and I agree your reasons for not doing it (yet) much as I would like it to be a thing.

104:

by offering prisoners a reduction in sentencing for a lung (20Y) or a kidney (just 5Y since its less crippling)

You are both behind the times and overly generous in your sentence reductions.

"Recently, two Massachusetts lawmakers proposed a bill that would allow eligible prisoners the option of reducing their sentence by “donating” organs or tissues, usually a kidney, or bone marrow. Prison sentences would be reduced by at least 60 days, but no more than 365 days. The proposed law would introduce a prison-specific incentive structure for organ “donation”. "

https://impactethics.ca/2023/02/24/a-real-prisoners-dilemma-organ-donation-for-reduced-sentences/

105:

“That’s rare – very, very rare,” he said, attributing the long path to widespread atmospheric instability."

Not saying they are wrong but I'd want to read the TL;DR version. Says he who grew up hiding from Tornadoes occasionally in the 60s. and being sort of in the middle of the massive April 1975 outbreak.

106:

Howard NYC @ 101:

What I laying out is some of those novel/saga concepts I've been gnawing upon for a decade, "bloodless vampire" as well as "deathless movie star". (Which has been done in StarGate and various forgettable movies and leaden books. Twilight Zone episodes, well of course.)

I wonder if it would be possible to do "The Film of Dorian Gray", where instead of a portrait stored in the attic, a print of the actor's first film is stored in some dusty archive and progresses from a light-hearted Cary Grant style romantic comedy to becoming a creepy silent horror film à la Nosferatu?

The actor gets his final comeuppance when he sets fire to the film vault to destroy the film before it can be shown for a career retrospective film festival.

107:

I wonder if it would be possible to do "The Film of Dorian Gray", where instead of a portrait stored in the attic, a print of the actor's first film is stored in some dusty archive and progresses from a light-hearted Cary Grant style romantic comedy to becoming a creepy silent horror film à la Nosferatu?

Love it! A related idea, working title: Does His Own Stunts. Dorian Gray's first film is a generic swashbuckler wherein someone steals his girl and he goes through adventures to get her back. The master of that first film is the one that takes all the damage while he becomes this great action hero like Harrison Ford cubed, known for doing his own stunts and being a daredevil off the screen too.

The film morphs from a swashbuckler ultimately to a horror film, where this unkillable monster pursues the ingenue he's obsessed with, while the original villain does a heel-face turn and becomes the reluctant hero who risks his life to protect her.

The downer ending is how many other master prints go up in flames when Dorian Gray torches the master of his first movie to keep it from being seen again and seals his own doom.

Anyone who wants to play with this, go right ahead. I'm just throwing it out there.

108:

Blake's 7 4.1 "Rescue") Link busted by MarkDown deleting ")" characters when 2 occur together.

109:

Heteromeles @ 107:

I wonder if it would be possible to do "The Film of Dorian Gray", where instead of a portrait stored in the attic, a print of the actor's first film is stored in some dusty archive and progresses from a light-hearted Cary Grant style romantic comedy to becoming a creepy silent horror film à la Nosferatu?

The film morphs from a swashbuckler ultimately to a horror film, where this unkillable monster pursues the ingenue he's obsessed with, while the original villain does a heel-face turn and becomes the reluctant hero who risks his life to protect her.

The downer ending is how many other master prints go up in flames when Dorian Gray torches the master of his first movie to keep it from being seen again and seals his own doom.

The other implication to the archive of film masters going up in flames is how many of the rest of our current crop of Hollywood greats would suddenly age to dust along with our hero? 🙃

So "sequels" & "prequels"?

110:

So "sequels" & "prequels"?

Speaking of sequels and prequels, I keep having bad thoughts about a Palimpsest/Laundryverse crossover.

Just a sample: a PHANG bites someone. We know that the victim will be dead in a few days due to the PHANG parasite feeding on their soul. But the victim is a Stasis agent who jumps 200,000,000 years into the future for medical care.

What happens to the PHANG?

111:

You have to use %29 for any ) characters that are part of the URL.

Like this

[Like this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blake's_7_episodes#Series_4_(1981%29)

112:

Cheers; It would be nice if it were better documented though!

113:

There is a song on an unreleased mountain goats album which I did not know was actually "You're So Vain" because he leaves out the chorus.

Similarly until I saw it pointed out elsewhere I had NO IDEA this one was a Mary Poppins reference, and just took in stride the idea of the nanny with a nannybag of impossible goodies.

114:

Do you know where the rest of the Lovecraftian gods ended up? You put Nyarlahotep in the U.K. and Cthulhu in the U.S, but where are Dagon, Hastur, Yog Sothoth, Ithaqua, etc? Also, is Cthulhu explicitly "The Sleeper in the Pyramid" or is that someone else, and if so, who?

I second these questions, particularly about the Sleeper. Is there any canonical "word of god" as to who he is? If I remember correctly, Iris and her cult erroneously assumed him to be the Black Pharao. Rev. Schiller (who—being American—was under the thrall of Cthulhu, I assume) was probably making a connection between the Sleeper and Cthulhu. But which connection? Did he believe that the Sleeper was Cthulhu? Or a lesser god that needed to be awakened first, before Cthulhu proper could be summoned?

The pyramid suggests a connection to the Black Pharao, however. And it may be why Iris got it wrong. Or is Fabian Everyman not 'really' the Black Pharao, but only an avatar of its sleeping (and thereby incomplete) form? But if so, shouldn't the full awakening of his true form be his first priority? And we don't see anything about that.

Also, ever since we got a description of the pyramid and the temple on its top, I've been intrigued by the fact that the seats around the sarcophagus are not made for human anatomy. This begs the question: for whose anatomy (and therefore: by whom) were they (and the whole pyramid) made? My pet theory (from some hints scattered throughout the books) is that the Chthonians built it. Which is also one of the reasons I was hoping to learn more about them one day.

115:

The pyramid suggests a connection to the Black Pharao, however. And it may be why Iris got it wrong.

There is no canonical Word of God on who the Sleeper is ... but more than one culture built pyramids, and pyramids with temples on top are canonically not Egyptian, and if you've been reading the New Management books you will have gotten hints that some things vaguely reminiscent of MesoAmerican deities are leaking through (and an even bigger hint in A Conventional Boy although that's probably not coming out before this time in 2024).

NB: they're not actual Aztec deities, that's just what the Conquistadores (and, to be fair, the Aztec priesthood) mistook them for. "Deity summoned by ritual in holy book may not be as depicted on front cover."

116:

pyramids with temples on top are canonically not Egyptian

You're right, that should have been obvious. I blame the word 'pyramid' for my conceptual blindness. The meso-american buildings are strictly speaking not pyramids, precisely because they have a flat top with a temple on it (and also because they don't necessarily have a square base).

117:

oh, good... old fashion religious ceremonies... a restoration of basic (Meso)American traditions with additions of Christian variants including such warming notions as "blood of Christ, flesh of Christ"

not long now until there's a weekly church sponsored barbeque every week... for those mistaking the sweetish aroma rising up as slow roasted pork loins... guess again

the worst aspect of the Laundryverse is that all too plausible go-along-to-get-along by politicians readily complying with 'stuff' to avoid losing their positions (and heads)

118:

You're right, that should have been obvious. I blame the word 'pyramid' for my conceptual blindness. The meso-american buildings are strictly speaking not pyramids, precisely because they have a flat top with a temple on it (and also because they don't necessarily have a square base).

Nope, pyramids were built in pre-colonial times on every settled continent except Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid

It's worth going through this rather eye-opening list if you're not familiar with all of them.

To Charlie: excellent bit of misdirection with the Sleeper in the Pyramid!

119:

It's worth going through this rather eye-opening list if you're not familiar with all of them.

And with LIDAR they are finding more and more in South America. Mostly surrounded by cities all overgrown by the jungle.

I wonder if someone is conducting similar surveys in Africa.

120:

I wonder if someone is conducting similar surveys in Africa.

Googling "Africa Lidar Archeology," yes, they found a city under a forest in South Africa. I'd like to see where all those pot sherds in the Congo came from, myself, but I suppose that isn't a safe-enough airspace yet. That, and given political conditions, if you announce a lost city in the Congo found by lidar, I suspect someone would loot it before it could be studied. Similar things have happened in Iraq and Central America.

121:

the worst aspect of the Laundryverse is that all too plausible go-along-to-get-along by politicians readily complying with 'stuff' to avoid losing their positions (and heads)

Or, in this particular case, hearts

122:

ilya187 121:

this is me venting my spleen because you saw that joke before I did

123:

Dorian Gray showed up again in some newspapers (link to sales page): https://store.harrybliss.com/product/the-picture-of-dorian/

124:

I think when QoN was listed for pre-order, I re-read DLD at that time, thinking I was busy enough with other things that I'd finish it just in time. However it turned out that being busy really meant was I lacked adequate procrastinations, and re-reading DLD immediately became the top-level one of those, so I finished it in a few days. When QoN when it came out I read it, but realised I'd left too much time in between, I didn't remember enough of the detail of the various threads of plot arc, so almost immediately re-read both again in order. Anyhow I've started into DLD again now...

I've what's probably a slightly odd hypothetical kite to fly (and maybe not entirely hypothetical). Would the New Management series stand on its own feet as a film/TV adaptation without the rest of the Laundryverse behind it. That is, I can imagine a Netflix series of DLD where the action is pretty much exactly as presented... Imp's force of will, DD's negativity, GB's speed: they are all things that have well-trodden conventions to be expressed visually, and the explanation about how there's a UK with emerging transhumans, elvish death squads and an ancient horror as PM... I'm undecided whether it works to leave it all unexplained, or whether you need to cast Stephen Fry or Bill Nighy as the voice of the narrator.

But that is with knowing the entire Laundry series as background. I can try to imagine whether it will make sense or flow without the background knowledge, and when I do I think it does stand on its own feet and is probably more appealing to a wider range of audiences than the Laundry stuff would have been... but that might just be me. It's also a very dark world, and that might not be so appealing these days for reasons.

125:

I do I think it does stand on its own feet and is probably more appealing to a wider range of audiences than the Laundry stuff would have been...

I began writing the New Management in 2019, during a fairly dark time (my mother was dying by inches in a nursing facility) so it's no surprise the tone is dark: it was meant to be a reflection of the times (in the UK).

It was also ...

I once read an interview with David Bowie in which he talked about the necessity of reinventing himself every decade to stay relevant. I realized in 2019 that I'd been writing the Laundry Files for 20 years, and while it had a following it was very much aimed at trailing-edge Boomers and Gen-X readers. Who were ageing, and if you base your career on an ageing audience then by and by your audience will shrink.

So I deliberately set out to pitch for a younger generational audience with the New Management books, just as I did (to a lesser extent) with the Empire Games trilogy. Only the marketing message got steamrollered flat and didn't make it through the publishing pipeline, because milking an existing audience is less risky. Upshot: they continue to sell to Laundry fans but aren't broadening the base as they were intended to.

(I've no idea how it would play on TV because I don't watch TV drama or movies. Or rather, my viewing is approximately equivalent to the average American's book consumption, i.e. the equivalent of 2 books/year rather than the 50-100 that I think is probably more normal in these parts.)

126:

an interview with David Bowie in which he talked about the necessity of reinventing himself every decade to stay relevant.

Well he certainly did that with his last album, just before he died. It was a pretty effective way to secure his legacy I guess.

127:

while it had a following it was very much aimed at trailing-edge Boomers and Gen-X readers. Who were ageing, and if you base your career on an ageing audience then by and by your audience will shrink.

The same problem a lot of "hip in the 70s/80s" mall clothing retailers in the US have been dealing with for decades. They wanted to appeal to the 15 to 35 (at most) year olds. But what kept happening is their appeal aged with their current customers and the newer folks didn't want to shop where those "old" folks shopped. Eventually the store brands gave up and started forming new brands/stores every 10 years or so so the new crop of young'ns would have a place to shop that was full of their parents.

So is there another Charlie Stross out there under a different name that is never talked about here?

The "Gap" and "Limited" still exist in the us but most of their customers seem to be over 50.

128:

that was full of their parents.

that was NOT full of their parents.

129:

Since OGH has both Mary the nanny and Skaro, I'm reminded of the time a friend of mine saw Mary Poppins (the Disney version) for the first time since childhood:

"I'd forgotten that her bag was made in Gallifrey."

130:

Damian 124:

Any attempt to produce visual content based upon a richly detailed world runs into the problem of context. Not everyone has the patience to read of Middle Earth's conflicts; that mostly everyone on this blog recognizes the reference to "Lord of the Rings" proves my point. Whenever there's a new Star Trek movie, mostly everyone knows the major characters and those that don't, will ask a friend for a three minute briefing whilst on line to buy tickets.

For Laundryverse there's have to be info-dumping. Lots 'n lots. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was structured within a format that made such lengthy dumps very much a joy and for many folk, a reason to re-roll segments (radio and teevee and movie).

There's the trope in teevee of a rookie-newbie-girlfriend who has to quickly introduced to a secret realm or a covert battle or a long running quest, thus serving the role of on-screen target of those info-dumping. (Classic instance: Will Smith's character in MIB movies.) Which if well written, properly enacted, could be done in an enjoyable manner (see: MIB). Problem being it takes time and executive producers are in a mode of frenzy, seeking to get as many booms on the screen as quickly as possible. So too, as much skin and sweating and bosoms heaving. Swords. Starships. Dragons. Bosoms. Booms. Whatever the targeted audience deems of interest to compel their attention to that sufficiency to ensure high ratings. Though there's a decided shifting of priorities and pressures and prose thanks to cable teevee having commercial free programming -- pushed to extremes by recent streaming services -- still there's a dire need for ratings. Good thing about streaming is it is on-demand-at-whim-whomever-whatever-whenever-wherever (ODAWWWW) [1]. So people watch what their whim wishes to be fed: swords, starships, dragons, bosoms, booms. But audiences are fickle and easily distracted by some other megacorp's "shiny bits" most recently arrived on the screen. Star Trek did well with Patrick Stewart's return but it is a literal end to that chunk of that IP, the actors are all too grey to be plausible as heroes. (Unless there's some really deep fakes done with really advance AIs to rollback the decades. And will megacorps be long term greedy in paying enough to buy the 'forever young' version of various actors?)

Which now means Netflix and Amazon Prime are also struggling to keep up since they lack those most sought after chunks of intellectual property (IP) such as Marvel-StarWars-StarTrek-etc. With Disney and CBS and others who have such IP, worried about ageing and fading and diffusion of the characters. (You can only watch a re-booted Spiderman a few times before it gets trite. Five? Three? Ten?)

Which is why there's a dire need for new content, but not just 'fresh fruit newly ripened on the vine' but other IP with its own established fan base. Game of Thrones did well, but for the most part it was composed of already known memes and tropes and cliches which the audience had long since accepted. So too, DiscWorld books.

Not all IP has that ease-of-acceptance.

Yes, I do love Laundryverse but I doubt it has enough fans to simply leap off the page to the screen the same way the DiscWorld books did. Moreover, not all of those books were made into visual content. And as far I know none were made into ten episode mini-series. Info-dumping would have to be done in a manner to draw in the audience. Such as creeping horror of ever worsening evil actions, slowly peeling back 'recent events' and the awful truth behind strange headlines.

So long as there's a dire need for new content, there is possibility of a Laundryverse mini-series. But better yet for a megacorp if it was to be 'total package' as per the Transformers IP (and StarWars and StarTrek) which has games-comics-cereals-bedsheets-etc. If there was to be a pitch made for an eldritch horror MMORG based upon Laundryverse to be developed prior to a streaming mini-series with a modest USD$5/month subscription, it would become a form of self-funding advertising. Whether or not a Laundryverse MMORG would have the 'legs' to hold onto a million subscribers for years 'n years is open to debate over beer-n-pizza. Possible. Across a billion or so English-speaking-reading people in US-EU-UK-CAN, would there be 1 in 1000 interested in weekly sessions of eldritch monster hunting within buddy groups?

Because if there was a million subscribers to a Laundryverse MMORG then there's possibility of it taking on a life all its own.

=+=+=+=

[1] based upon other locales where I've been posting, I accidentally-on-purpose coined ODAWWWW (on-demand-at-whim-whomever-whatever-whenever-wherever) since the originating notion of 'on demand' has been evolving ever further towards a mode of 'whim' which clearly angers the Powers That Be in mass media since they cannot keep up and find themselves always two years behind their competitors;

131:

I've what's probably a slightly odd hypothetical kite to fly (and maybe not entirely hypothetical). Would the New Management series stand on its own feet as a film/TV adaptation without the rest of the Laundryverse behind it.

Lockwood & Co. (Netflix) does something similar. Basically, parallel timeline where "ghosts" are real, deadly if they touch you, and can only be seen by "gifted" pre-adults (under 21 or so). Most of the back story is presented in the intro graphics. Fun side effect: Tech is stuck at late 1970s.

132:

I once read an interview with David Bowie in which he talked about the necessity of reinventing himself every decade to stay relevant. I realized in 2019 that I'd been writing the Laundry Files for 20 years, and while it had a following it was very much aimed at trailing-edge Boomers and Gen-X readers. Who were ageing, and if you base your career on an ageing audience then by and by your audience will shrink.

Did Mr. Bowie leave behind any notes on how he went about reinventing himself? That seems to be the hard part.

It seems that John Scalzi might be lucky to have his daughter Athena still around and working with him...

133:

Speaking of reinvention:

A is for Azathoth, I is for Ia: The Curious Child's First Book of AI Games by award-winning author Charles Stross. The first book in the New Audience series.

134:

New Management might succeed in a transition to screen. I'm fairly sure that the first couple of Laundry books would make an excellent miniseries - particularly the novellas in the Atrocity Archives, largely because they do a nice job of linking the creeping horrors from beyond the world (which none of us have experienced) with the creeping horror of office work (which most of us have experienced).

135:

A is for Azathoth, Who listens to flutes

B is for Blighted, Gardner’s farm, leaf to root

C’s for Cthulhu, Mile-high and squishy

D is for Deep Ones, Who smell mildly fishy...

https://paizo.com/products/btpy93ju?The-Lovecraftian-ABCs

136:

Well yes, but I wasn't proposing an ABC book. Just one for the curious type of child, or those who grew out of this morph.

137:

for sure the visuals from the Nazi-destroyed timeline of "Atrocity Archives" would be terrifyingly effective, what with an otherwise ordinary Earth knee deep in liquefied oxygen

but the background of how it came about, the sequence of evil acts and boneheaded errors and math-as-magick, that's all a challenge in written form but just a bit too much to imagine explaining as a fast-enough-paced visual

138:

It's been quite a few years since I read it, but as I recall there was a lot of world-explaining done by Bob. A fair amount of it could be done by showing rather than telling as well.

No need to explain the math of what happened to the guy from accounting that Bob had to brain with a fire extinguisher, just show him touch the circle and then the snakes in his eyes. In the context of a bland office training demonstration that would be an excellent scene. Ditto the armory and other key elements of the story.

139:

, with the threat of De-Emphasis (essentially a revival of mediaeval Outlawry by the modern state) as a Foucaultian discipline to keep the working poor in line.

Oh, I always thought that was a reference to the practice by the Los Angeles PD to write "N" or "S" on reports in pencil if the victim was homeless (N for non-housed) or a sex worker (S) and then them refusing to investigate.

Allegedly that practice was stopped by ~2005 as part of the Rampart Scandal cleanup but cops are cops and curiously they don't show much interest in investigating crimes against the homeless or sex workers

140:

Howard NYC @ 130:

I thought the tech people working on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 did a good job de-aging Kurt Russell for his scenes as the "young" Ego.

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Vol. 2 - Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)

And apparently ABBA are back with a new album and a CGI "stage show" (although I may be behind times with that).

ABBA - I Still Have Faith In You

141:

Rocketpjs @ 138:

It's been quite a few years since I read it, but as I recall there was a lot of world-explaining done by Bob. A fair amount of it could be done by showing rather than telling as well.

No need to explain the math of what happened to the guy from accounting that Bob had to brain with a fire extinguisher, just show him touch the circle and then the snakes in his eyes. In the context of a bland office training demonstration that would be an excellent scene. Ditto the armory and other key elements of the story.

Possibly a bit of flashback from the auditors interrogation of Bob POST-incident with a bit of voice over to bridge certain parts - like how Bob ended up in the elementary class on summoning grids fading into "Fred from accounting" bragging to Bob about how he got into the class & setting up just how "Fred from accounting's" utter cluelessness was responsible for his own "promotion" to Residual Human Assets ...

142:

but the background of how it came about, the sequence of evil acts and boneheaded errors and math-as-magick, that's all a challenge in written form but just a bit too much to imagine explaining as a fast-enough-paced visual

You have seen Doctor Strange? The visuals wouldn't be hard. Making them not trite or derivative on a budget would be trickier.

143:

Re: 'Yes, I do love Laundryverse but I doubt it has enough fans to simply leap off the page to the screen the same way the DiscWorld books did. ... Info-dumping would have to be done in a manner to draw in the audience. ... creeping horror of ever worsening evil actions, slowly peeling back 'recent events' and the awful truth behind strange headlines.'

A newsreel montage format could do that in 5 minutes: 1-minute arcs per theme or characters likely to be relevant before the actual main story start.

Better yet use the James Bond formula: the movie starts with some sort of high energy stunt wrap-up of an unidentified case, the hero escapes/survives and only then does the official intro theme music kick in. I think it's usually only about 10 minutes into the film that we see Bond amble in for his next case's briefing - and the ambling in sequence itself helps introduce the viewer to the other [official] facet of his job.

Heteromeles:

Your area ... There's an open access book on sustainable development goals that I just heard about and thought it might interest you. I've only just downloaded it today but hopefully it will provide solid data re: UN policy and various countries' responses to-date now that they've come up with metrics on how to measure such goals.

'Governing the Sustainable Development Goals Quantification in Global Public Policy'

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-03938-6

144:

Cthonians would not sit in anything remotely resembling a "seat." I was thinking maybe Deep Ones or some kind of reptilian creature.

145:

*'Governing the Sustainable Development Goals Quantification in Global Public Policy' https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-03938-6*

Thanks! I'll check it out.

146:

Genuine question: which part of the Laundry series is it that you feel aims it at the boomers. I sort of assumed it would appeal to any slightly nerdy early 30s - whoever they were - as they had the same problems as Bob, still in the spouse finding market, no kids (but parents nagging), badly paid jobs, butting heads with arseholes in management. Theres always a generation doing that, only the mobile hardware and software tools change - the Civil Service doesn't. To make it more contemporary they could make Brains and Pinky lesbian/trans.

Presumably, your forthcoming(?) space opera will have a wider appeal.

Personally, the three books highest on my list of "It would be great to see these on TV" would be The Atrocity Archive (3 progs per book?), The Rivers of London and, impossibly, Whipping Star by Frank Herbert - but thats never going to happen.

147:

I'm not a boomer, but solidly Gen X, by age. I'm not a native English speaker, and Finland has a bit different demographics than both the UK and the US, so I don't belong exactly to the demographic Charlie is talking about here.

However, to my understanding I'm quite close to Bob in age, and I've worked in IT security related things for the last couple of decades. I've not worked directly in governmental organizations, but very close, and I can very well see the paperclip audit joke's origins.

Now, I'm quite solidly employed and kind of grew along with Bob (until the book series diverged too much). I'm also in Finland, with its own job market. However, reading the internets and speaking to younger people, I think the big picture in IT jobs in the English-speaking Western world seems to have changed. The problems might not be even finding a spouse but a place to live of your own.

I think I'd write modern Bob living in a commune or in their parent's home, or maybe even some dorm-type thing if in the SF bay area. Also not sure about the government jobs, but it seems to me that job security in IT businesses is not very good in many places.

Then there's the real existential crisis(es) which might be more relevant to younger people. Of course Bob's and Mo's decision not to have kids might resonate well with this.

Especially the earlier books in the series feel kind of... quaint nowadays. Not bad, but they are almost twenty years old. I think it's the same as reading for example 'Dune' in the Eighties, like I did - fine, but still in the two decades things have changed.

This is just my feeling, I'm not two decades younger than I am so it's hard to speak for the young people and what they want to read. (I think the youngest sf authors I've recently read are born in mid-Eighties, and that might be kind of the age when you can write and publish an sf novel, thirtyish?)

148:

Genuine question: which part of the Laundry series is it that you feel aims it at the boomers. I sort of assumed it would appeal to any slightly nerdy early 30s - whoever they were

Not so much boomers, but older readers do read a lot of SF, and I began publishing LF material around 2002. My elder siblings are clearly trailing-edge boomers while culturally I'm leading-edge Gen-X, but Gen-X is now 40-60-ish which is what we might think of as boomer-adjacent.

In the Last Laundry Novel (not yet written) Bob and Mo are in their late 30s/reaching 40: that's sub-optimal when writing for Millennials/Gen-Z. (Remember, Millennials are now in their thirties.)

If you look at Dead Lies Dreaming you'll note the protags range in age between Eve (24/25-ish), Imp (22), and then down to Game Boy (who is IIRC 16, hence the parental issues). Rupert is of course not so young (40s, I think?). But this ensemble cast is overall drawn from a younger generation than the Laundry cast. (Again, the Senior Auditor is fairly clearly a generation older than Bob.)

Of course, we don't talk about His Dread Majesty's age -- not if we know what's good for us.

149:

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE

Sorry about the couple of hours of downtime this morning -- I hadn't noticed the root filesystem on this server filling up over the years! MySQL is Unhappy about writing to a database when the drive is full ...

190Gb of logfiles going back to 2010 now being squished/archived/reviewed/deleted. Groan.

150:

Charlie Stross 149:

Oh. Good news. Compared to my concern, good. There'd been a momentary concern you'd had a 'knock on the door' at 3AM (GMT) along with a zillion other undesirables had been scooped up and were now on your way to some remote, lawless chunk of UK territory (Shetlands? is there anything more northern controlled by London) for admonishment-reeducation-turning-big-rocks-into-little-rocks.

Here's a question.

Those logs, did they contain anything "interesting" or just a near-infinite number of zero value 'here I am' status alerts with millisecond timestamps?

151:

147 - Mikko, I may have said this before, but beyond your obviously Finnish name and the "not a native English speaker" statement I wouldn't know that you're not.

149 - Not even noticed. The server was up ~5AM IIRC, and then I was at dialysis so AFK from 6AM until just before this timestamp.

152:

It's the web server logs. Potentially interesting for bulk traffic analysis of trends over the past 13 years. One line per http request served, which doesn't sound like much until you realize there was a period of years during which the blog got hit by one of BoingBoing/Slashdot/Hacker News at least once a week, and typically fielded 300,000 unique visits (pages served plus extra kipple, eg. CSS, images) per month. Which would be at the low end ... for a newspaper. (I think it's a lot less these days, but still.)

153:

I have always had a soft spot for the Senior Auditor - but mainly because of our taste in tea! Of course, I am also the same age, but I 'relate' more to Bob.

I have always been a little bit doubtful about the marketing belief that authors need to write about a particular age group (especially teenagers / young adults) to attract that age group, because I have always been put off by that (even as a teenager!) And I never could stand books that wallowed in teenager / young adult angst. While I am probably unrepresentative, it also isn't impossible that the marketing belief is wrong.

However, I sympathise with your attempts to enlarge your audience being sabotaged by marketing. That's horribly common in many contexts.

154:

No, but the UK has plenty of such places. South Georgia, for example.

155:

For added fun: yesterday Apple dropped macOS 13.3.

The upgrade went off without a hitch on my Macbook Pro, but the iMac -- my main work machine -- hung for five hours before I hit the power button.

It turns out that during an upgrade macOS insists on checking all the filesystems plugged into a Mac for consistency. Which is good, and what you'd expect. What's less good is that this includes external drives, and my Mac has a USB-C hub with a 5Tb LaCie spinning disk and a 4Tb Sandisk SSD plugged into it for Time Machine backups, which are basically link farms pointing to some millions of files. Never mind the extra 4Tb SSD I use for manual file-pile purposes (never trust a backup solution if you don't have an alternate!). So, it was grinding on 13Tb of drives before it got to the 2Tb internal SSD.

Unplugging the hub allowed the upgrade to proceed, but now I'm manually running Disk Utility on those external drives, and as they're APFS drives each of them has 60-120 versioning snapshots (of those million-plus files) that need checking for consistency, which is slow ...

156:

Charlie Stross 152:

SUGGEST: place a recurring reminder onto your phone so every six months you re-run this particular bit of tedious housekeeping

as regards OS updates, it seems to be part of a general pattern, vendors say one thing (promises of forever love 'n respect) but do something else (indifference 'n casual cruelties)

my laptop is an out-of-warranty WIN7 -- good enough for posting to blogs, news surfing, lite gaming -- which still gets forcibly updated despite supposedly not being supported

157:

RE: '... doubtful about the marketing belief that authors need to write about a particular age group (especially teenagers / young adults) to attract that age group, ...'

Marketing to demographic segments - old vs. new:

Demos - provided they're steady, i.e., keep the same overall Bell shape, have been a good quick way of checking whether as a marketer you're reaching/covering your target market. Age was the quickest and steadiest demo item for a long time until about the '90s mostly because (at least in NAm) the large majority of people within the established age subgroups were still doing important things/transitions: education, job, car, marriage, kids, house, etc.

Around the late '90s some demo orgs tried to segment the-then current NAm market into better (more cohesive) segments. They ended up with over 100 distinct segments. Way too much for your typical marketer/adman/retailer to keep track of and design strategies for! My impression is that what's happened since is that marketers have merely moved the age up for each segment, i.e., instead of 18 equals autonomous adulthood (finished school, has a full-time job, moved out of parents' home) - it's now about 23-24 years of age. However - despite increased life expectancy* - the last traditional age group segment has not budged: it's still 65 & older. And this last age group was and still is a write-off for most marketers.

The smarter marketers also check published census data. The census takes place every 10 years in the US, every 5 years in Canada. Not sure how often census data are collected elsewhere. BTW - census coverage and questions/answer boxes vary across countries which makes it challenging - a total PITA - to do cross-country comparisons which is motivation enough to check whether the UN or one of its agencies has done a usable analysis.

Hey! I see that the latest World Happiness Report is now available (open-access). They've got some stuff on social media & COVID, and the biological basis of happiness. My science fact reading list is growing faster than my science fiction list. Oh well, I'm sure this will enrich my enjoyment of the SF/F I do manage to read.

https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/

*The US is the only major country whose life expectancy continues to drop. FYI - this was already documented pre-COVID, COVID just made the drop steeper. Clearly an indicator that there's something seriously screwed up going on especially considering that one of the largest increases in deaths has been among children.

https://ourworldindata.org/us-life-expectancy-low

Hey Charlie -

I know you're still busy but your Mastadon site doesn't mention that your blog is up again.

158:

... And I'm using a Windoze 7 minitower with an outstanding Java "update" from ~2000CE that will break its internet connectivity if applied. Similarly, it also "updates" about once a month...

159:

as regards OS updates, it seems to be part of a general pattern, vendors say one thing (promises of forever love 'n respect) but do something else (indifference 'n casual cruelties)

I'm a bit lost with this statement. Can you expand your meaning a bit? You can defer automatic updates on macOS if you want. At times you have to kick it to stop all of them but it can be done.

my laptop is an out-of-warranty WIN7 -- good enough for posting to blogs, news surfing, lite gaming -- which still gets forcibly updated despite supposedly not being supported

Windows has multiple Registry settings to stop update checking. You could look for them in this vast repository and see which might apply to your setup. The primary purpose is to help those building AD or GP settings but you can enter them manually if you want.

https://admx.help/

160:

If anyone is running Windows 7, currently unsupported, your laptop is a very good candidate for Xubuntu, which will give you a very Windows-like desktop if you're willing to spend 15-minutes playing with the desktop setting - and the OS will be up to date and fully supported for at least four years if you use the long-term-support option.

161:

Mikko, I may have said this before, but beyond your obviously Finnish name and the "not a native English speaker" statement I wouldn't know that you're not.

Yeah, though it's easier to write than to speak - I speak more haltingly and forget words, and the one mistake I make is mixing up 'he' and 'she' (I tend to use 'they' more and more nowadays) because Finnish doesn't have that distinction.

However, my understanding of the different cultures is not solid. I'd be very clearly a foreigner when living abroad, even in places where I know the language. Most of the context would be missing from me, starting from what people watched as children (of course this is different in different times and places).

Also, I have only worked in Finland and I am quite sheltered in many ways, so I have little idea of millennials or younger people in different industries and their culture. I try to pick up what I can, but I'm still very biased.

Just that even though I like OGH's books I really have no idea what other people do like, and I'm very unqualified to figure that out. :)

162:

Yeah, though it's easier to write than to speak - I speak more haltingly and forget words, and the one mistake I make is mixing up ...

My daughter knows German. Likely as good or better than 99% of the people who grew up in the US not speaking it until a class in her early teens. She later spend a year in Germany while still in school. She says she tends to not speak much except with close friends as it takes her too long to mentally form the sentences. Especially the grammar. Which in most of Germany is a very big deal.

Just that even though I like OGH's books I really have no idea what other people do like, and I'm very unqualified to figure that out.

This blog is full of CS fans. And there are many who would like his works around the US. But there is also a non trivial sized group who likely think his works are the spawn of Satan. But there's nothing new about that in the US. Well except in the last year or so things have moved from uneasy truce to combative.

Up thread or in a previous post someone said they started reading a Bobbsey Twins book from the 1930s to their child and had to stop and explain why. That sent me down a rabbit hole. Apparently the owner of the copyrights had them re-written in the 60s to remove the racist and other nonsense. Then re-released them.

163:

Around the late '90s some demo orgs tried to segment the-then current NAm market into better (more cohesive) segments. They ended up with over 100 distinct segments. Way too much for your typical marketer/adman/retailer to keep track of and design strategies for! My impression is that what's happened since is that marketers have merely moved the age up for each segment, i.e., instead of 18 equals autonomous adulthood (finished school, has a full-time job, moved out of parents' home) - it's now about 23-24 years of age. However - despite increased life expectancy - the last traditional age group segment has not budged: it's still 65 & older. And this last age group was and still is a write-off for most marketers.*

Hunh? I think we're living in the marketers' dream/nightmare right now.

Social media allows them to target us very precisely, and Google, Meta, and formerly Twitter made most of their money from ads. Interests and platform use allow them to target ads where they want them.

As for the olds, if you watch the evening news, Jeopardy, or Wheel of Fortune, you'll see wall-to-wall ads for diseases of aging, cancer meds, senior living, even cremation and "are you going to heaven?" The proliferation of media has made it easy for marketers to target everyone, and antisocial media now targets the olds, at least here.

164:

On the general topic thread. I'd like to say that I really enjoyed QoN, more even than DLD, though I suspect my readthrough of DLD was affected by my ongoing 'want to know what happens' with the Laundry stories. I thought Mary in particular was an excellent character and I'm looking forward to the next book.

Subthread: I briefly and foolishly was involved in forming a marketing company focused on social media. My main takeaway was that the current state of play is that you can drill down as far as you like. Want to target women between 35-40 with college degrees, 2 kids, an interest in art and a regular yoga practice who live in a particular town or even neighbourhood and enjoy fried rice?

With enough markers and filters it is likely possible to market to a single person. In fact, that is what all those goog/meta/bing algorithms are built to do - parse out your specific interests and show you things that you will then buy. Obviously the cost/benefit of such hypertargeted marketing is low, which means it can't be done profitably without automation.

My other takeaways were, in order: Don't go into business with friends, avoid marketing in all its forms like the plague, and don't go on Facebook.

No idea if OGH has an interest in writing YA fiction, but the New Management books are approaching YA, and there is an appreciation in YA for speculative fiction and dark themes.

165:

No idea if OGH has an interest in writing YA fiction, but the New Management books are approaching YA, and there is an appreciation in YA for speculative fiction and dark themes.

YA isn't my thing, unfortunately.

To do YA convincingly you not only need younger protagonists, you need a simple world -- adversaries that are personal, individualized, and possible to defeat by Punching Evil™. Institutions and organizations and committees are big and impersonal and hard for younger readers to relate to.

They're used to school administrations, but only from the outside -- confronting teachers and maybe the odd administrator, not dealing with them as a bureaucracy. And unless they're unlucky they probably have limited or no experience of other institutions: hospitals, police, universities, prisons, corporations.

You can do a YA plot with an Evil Politician™ as the adversary, or a Darth Vader/Emperor Palpatine duo. But you can't get away with an Evil Administration or "how do we draft a good policy and send it up the chain without it getting watered down?" in YA because it just doesn't relate to the readers' life experience so far.

And the New Management is variations on the theme of "how do we survive under conditions of ubiquitous systemic evil".

166:

"The first book in the New Audience series."

A series of stories set in the entertainment industry? I'm there!

"This week on "Outlaw": Our fearless hero once again tracks down the elven assassin who killed his family, while avoiding relentless otherworld agents of the debt court."

It focuses on the travails of a junior member of the production team of a popular streaming show directed at millennials (so some author self-insert here). The target audience are young upper middle income people who are fascinated by the seamier side of their new society but don't quite take it entirely seriously enough.

Gotta produce that honey, and how better than through the entertainment industry? But it's still on demand, you have to make people like feeling miserable. So a lot of the content is borrowed from places like Q-Anon. Meanwhile the truth is even worse. (The director has been removed from the set. Why? How do you avoid the same fate? Not clear. Subliminals are being inserted into the programming. What do they do? Do they affect the staff during filming? Not clear.).

This has legs!

167:

To do YA convincingly you not only need younger protagonists, you need a simple world -- adversaries that are personal, individualized, and possible to defeat by Punching Evil™. Institutions and organizations and committees are big and impersonal and hard for younger readers to relate to.

Now you have me wondering how Greta Thunberg would defeat The New Management. Ahem.

The point is that a fair number of kids these days probably think your heebie jeebies about nuclear war are simplistic and quaint compared with the existential crises that greedy boomers are forcing on them. Given the huge rates of depression and anxiety out there among the millennials and other, you may have an untapped audience if you can find a shared language and a way to get to them. Frame policies as the equivalent of bureaucratic geas crafting, for instance.

168:

Howard NYC @ 156:

Charlie Stross 152:

SUGGEST: place a recurring reminder onto your phone so every six months you re-run this particular bit of tedious housekeeping

as regards OS updates, it seems to be part of a general pattern, vendors say one thing (promises of forever love 'n respect) but do something else (indifference 'n casual cruelties)

my laptop is an out-of-warranty WIN7 -- good enough for posting to blogs, news surfing, lite gaming -- which still gets forcibly updated despite supposedly not being supported

IOS on my phone is finally "up to date" & has quit nagging me. I had to replace an Apple USB to Ethernet adapter so I could plug it in. Cell coverage here at my desk is inadequate for something like a software update, so I have to have the physical connection.

Now if I could just get rid of the "two factor Authentication" nag.

169:

Troutwaxer @ 160:

If anyone is running Windows 7, currently unsupported, your laptop is a very good candidate for Xubuntu, which will give you a very Windows-like desktop if you're willing to spend 15-minutes playing with the desktop setting - and the OS will be up to date and fully supported for at least four years if you use the long-term-support option.

Will it run 64 bit Photoshop CS6 Extended Edition (the last perpetual license version) SEAMLESSLY - no fuss, no muss, no problems, no work-arounds? All features functional?

AND, no support required from Adobe?

170:

To do YA convincingly you not only need younger protagonists, you need a simple world -- adversaries that are personal, individualized, and possible to defeat by Punching Evil™. Institutions and organizations and committees are big and impersonal and hard for younger readers to relate to.

You've just described the bulk of fiction as measured by sales, I think. Romances, westerns, adventure stories, detective novels… hell, most SF and fantasy — all are mostly like that, save maybe that they don't have younger protagonists.

Alistair MacLean, Dick Francis, Mary Stewart, Randall Garrett… They all wrote a lot of adult stories with relatively simple plots and personalized and individualized adversaries, best defeated by punching hard (or equivalent).

Stories like that are easy to read — good practice for new readers. Having protagonists they can identify with helps a lot there. Some never move beyond that level, just demanding older protagonists as they themselves age, others grow into the multilayered novels you seem to prefer writing.

171:

I'm not even trying to do y/a - I'm writing fiction for adults. I don't try to aim at a specific market age... because I'm going back to the old, old idea of the younger folks can make themselves useful, but they're following the lead of the older, more experienced, and they want to be more like them.

And they're dealing with what the world throws at them. This means I'm aiming at a general audience, not a specific. And... well, I think I'm partly doing what I see OGH doing - I have issues with "character-driven" stories, because I'm starting to see them as "this is what happens in someone's head"... and they make no effort to change the world around them for the better. I want them doing something. They can screw up, or get into more and more trouble (like a nanny dealing with superpowered kids), but the find a way to handle it.

172:

Mikko Parviainen (he/him) @ 161:

Mikko, I may have said this before, but beyond your obviously Finnish name and the "not a native English speaker" statement I wouldn't know that you're not.

Yeah, though it's easier to write than to speak - I speak more haltingly and forget words, ...

Well, hell, I do THAT and I am a "native English speaker" ... well, 'murican English anyway. 😏

Also, I have only worked in Finland and I am quite sheltered in many ways, so I have little idea of millennials or younger people in different industries and their culture. I try to pick up what I can, but I'm still very biased.

Nobody really understands young people, including young people themselves ... and I write that having once been young myself.

Just that even though I like OGH's books I really have no idea what other people do like, and I'm very unqualified to figure that out. :)

And I think that makes you just like everyone else. Outside of the cultures we grew up in, we're all more or less unqualified to figure things out. Some people don't even try.

173:

The Bobbsy Twins was me. In the first chapter of the old copy I'd found, literally, the cook was an Aunt Jemima (not the real person, but the bigoted version), and the girl had been told not to try to jump rope 100 times, but she did it anyway and collapse... No, I wish I was making this up.

174:

As for the olds, if you watch the evening news, Jeopardy, or Wheel of Fortune, you'll see wall-to-wall ads for diseases of aging, cancer meds, senior living, even cremation and "are you going to heaven?"

Cruises, Viagra and all the generics and alternatives, hair thickeners for men AND women, Buicks, wrinkle creams, and on and on and on ... Makes me feel young that I don't need or want 99% of these things.

175:

FB - unfortunately, you need some social media for marketing. Advertising on FB sold some copies of my novel. Putting an ad in Locus did not seem to. That's why OGH is on social media, and as he's noted before, he set up this blog for marketing (at least partly).

I'm here because i like his writing, I mostly like the regular posters (ok, now for the truth: I really miss usenet....)

176:

Charlie Stross @ 165:

No idea if OGH has an interest in writing YA fiction, but the New Management books are approaching YA, and there is an appreciation in YA for speculative fiction and dark themes.

YA isn't my thing, unfortunately.

To do YA convincingly you not only need younger protagonists, you need a simple world -- adversaries that are personal, individualized, and possible to defeat by Punching Evil™. Institutions and organizations and committees are big and impersonal and hard for younger readers to relate to.

They're used to school administrations, but only from the outside -- confronting teachers and maybe the odd administrator, not dealing with them as a bureaucracy. And unless they're unlucky they probably have limited or no experience of other institutions: hospitals, police, universities, prisons, corporations.

You can do a YA plot with an Evil Politician™ as the adversary, or a Darth Vader/Emperor Palpatine duo. But you can't get away with an Evil Administration or "how do we draft a good policy and send it up the chain without it getting watered down?" in YA because it just doesn't relate to the readers' life experience so far.

And the New Management is variations on the theme of "how do we survive under conditions of ubiquitous systemic evil".

Plus, I don't know, but wouldn't you also need test readers and I think in today's political climate (at least here in the U.S.) that might be a problem?

177:

It would depend on the memory you have available, but if you want to emulate Windows well-enough to run Adobe you'd probably need a minimum of 16 gigs of memory, so probably not. This is something you'd have to dig deeper to learn about. It might ultimately be cheaper in the time vs. money sense to upgrade.

The good news - such as it is - is that your Windows 7 machine is good as long as you don't take it online. (Windows 7 is a good, solid OS, except for the current lack of support.)

178:

I'd say Cory Doctorow did alright with his Little Brother series as far as young people facing up against large institutional systems. He did throw in a couple of very punchable villains to be sure. And it really is right on top of some of his hobby horses.

I'd also say that most people discover existential horror (the experience) around about 14-15 years old. Nukes, climate change, office cubicle mazes.

179:

I've got to say that aiming at a YA audience might be a good idea, particularly as it can also follow your political preferences.

180:

RE: 'Social media allows them to target us very precisely, and Google, Meta, and formerly Twitter made most of their money from ads. Interests and platform use allow them to target ads where they want them.'

Okay - but that still requires marketers to develop an appropriate segment strategy for every single segment they identify and want to target. Some products/services are easily slotted into age segment pigeonholes, others (e.g., fast food restaurants, cars, small home appliances) aren't.

I've no idea how Goog, Met, or Twt do their ad placements or figure out their ad success rates. Yeah, sales bumps in online purchases would be easily identified and traced to a specific combo of ad exposure-purchaser but corresponding offline purchases - not so sure. Depending on the product/service category, this online vs. offline purchasing stat could be pretty relevant.

Charlie:

Do you get sales data showing purchases by market segment, in how much detail? If yes - how do they come up with that data? [I recall you mentioning an on-going shift to ebooks but don't recall whether this was across market segments or what.]

181:

Do you get sales data showing purchases by market segment, in how much detail?

Ha ha nope!

I'm pretty sure my publishers don't get that data either. They might be able to break it down between different editions in various bookstores in different parts of the country (for any given country's publishers) but that's about it.

182:

if an e-book retailer -- Amazon might be the biggest but not the only -- carefully accumulated snippets and clues and background of its customers there'd be a detailed profile... gender, age, sexual orientation, income, children count, et al... but given how useful such intel is for them (decidedly a competitive advantage) not likely they'd share it... and then there's the risk of customers filing lawsuits about reprieved and/or actual violations of privacy... so they likely have those profiles but are keeping 'em in a windowless room with thick concrete walls on air-gapped data servers

183:

"Would the New Management series stand on its own feet as a film/TV adaptation without the rest of the Laundryverse behind it."

My gut feeling is that it probably would. Two examples that spring to mind are Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who; in both cases the very nature of the premise makes it unquestionably obvious that there must exist an immense but unrevealed background story, and the main narrative occasionally throws up unexplained references to, or hints at, odd spots of it, but we never get more than a vague feeling of what it must be all about. This didn't prevent either of them achieving a high degree of popularity, but it did mean that it was possible for someone else to come along some decades later and have "revealing background story material" as a ready-made opportunity for publishing more stuff.

Yes, one was books and then more books, while the other was a TV series and then books/audio plays/movie/cartoons/etc/another TV series, but I think that strengthens the point rather than detracts from it.

The important thing seems to be whether or not the first bit to be published gets people interested or not, which in turn seems to be a matter mostly of luck. (Which includes programme planners not being stupid enough to schedule the first broadcast at the same time as Coronation Street or a football match.) In past times this was not so decisive a factor, and many shows which did badly at first but didn't immediately decide to give up became extremely popular once people had got the bug, but these days it seems much harder for a potentially promising concept to make it past the obstacle of the mistimed football match, or indeed to even get as far as trying to in the first place without something silly falling apart behind the scenes and terminating the whole effort.

184:

but these days it seems much harder for a potentially promising concept to make it past the obstacle of the mistimed football match, or indeed to even get as far as trying to in the first place without something silly falling apart behind the scenes and terminating the whole effort.

In the US shows pop up on cable or the big networks then those episodes go to streaming day or week later. The attempt is to get them discussed at the water cooler by someone and then the others can use the streaming service to catch up.

185:

Or a presidential assassination.

186:

Re: '... risk of customers filing lawsuits about reprieved and/or actual violations of privacy...'

Yes in the EU (all EU members*) and maybe Canada (national law) - not so in the US where data protection laws vary by State. No idea how data protection laws work in Australia or New Zealand.

  • The UK's 2018 Data Protection Act has similar coverage to that of the EU but not sure it's ever been tested in court, i.e., stiff fines that actually financially hurt the multi-billion $$$ corp likely to benefit from breaking such laws.

If you're interested:

https://iclg.com/practice-areas/data-protection-laws-and-regulations/usa#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20single%20principal,Code%20%C2%A7%2041%20et%20seq.)

https://www.dataguidance.com/notes/canada-data-protection-overview#:~:text=Under%20Canadian%20data%20protection%20laws,applicable%20statute%2C%20within%20prescribed%20timeframes.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/data-protection/data-protection-regulation/#:~:text=data%20protection%20rules-,What%20is%20the%20GDPR%3F,application%20on%2025%20May%202018.

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection#:~:text=The%20Data%20Protection%20Act%202018%20is%20the%20UK's%20implementation%20of,used%20fairly%2C%20lawfully%20and%20transparently

Pigeon @ 183:

Re: '... these days it seems much harder for a potentially promising concept to make it past the obstacle of the mistimed football match'

Netflix changed all that as seen by the huge viewership numbers for 'Squid Game'. Not sure what Netflix's household/market penetration is but I'm guessing it's pretty high especially among younger audiences who seem to prefer binge-watching rather than wait a week for the next installment.

188:

Oh, Amazon for sure has tons of data on their customers, down to how long they spend on each page, what bits of text they highlight, and so on.

But they don't share it with publishers.

189:

Ben has two big advantages over me in that (a) he likes TV and (b) he has a pre-novelist history as a Doctor Who scriptwriter.

Me, I'm not really a TV/movie person. If I was, I'd be writing screenplays, not novels.

190:

Sigh. "Ideological infrastructure". "Self-propagating conceptual viruses". Such a typical nerdy CS ideas. Let's pretend everything is a program, and cool hackers can totally hack it, if they are cool enough. Cheat codes for human civilization! Fnord!

192:

Problem for Ben A. there ... now the Casey Report is out & after the Couzens + other rape cases involving Plod ...
Poor old PC Grant is in trouble & of course with the tories dumping even more shit in the rivers ...

193:

Charlie Stross 188:

Heh. I'd forgotten where I was headed with my snark.

Punchline about that massive array of air-gapped servers filled with 21st century version of 'buried treasure' -- better than gold 'n silver -- leading to a covert team doing a Mission Impossible styled sneak 'n creep to gain access to that intel. Funded not by CIA-MI6-Mossad but rather desperate book publishers in London and New York, seeking their Next Big Thing... another Harry Potter-sized mega-sized (mega-profit) multi-media chunk of IP on the scale of a gigabuck but without the need for JK Rowling (or other feet-of-clay mortals).

Sort of the way StarTrek & StarWars has attempted to turn authors into literary sharecroppers paid a minimized wage rather than an appropriate percentage of gross profits. And those MMOGs which are built by teams of hundreds of talents folk but any single one of whom could be replaced in two business days. Call of Duty by way of Lord of the Rings, with toys as per Transformers. As much multimedia as there is money in the pockets of a particularly ripened demographic cluster. Yummy.

Yummy. Yummy. Yummy. <== sarcasm

A lesson not overlooked was what Disney learned from having (initially) lost control of Pixar. There was a profoundly awful day in late 90s when the executives of Disney walking around Disneyworld realized how much of the swag sold and costumed players were based upon 'foreign' IP. Which soon led to investigating and(eventually) Pixar and Marvel and Lucasfilm acquisitions.

But why wait for random creativity to generate valuable IP from uncooperative chaos? It is after all a ○process taking years (decades!) to reach full valuation. With the right intel it ought be feasible for publishers to structure that next chunk of IP as their Next Big Thing by way of pattern matching to various demographic clusters. Intel only to be found inside Amazon (or TikTok or Apple or Facebook).

So. Working title of "Dire Quest For Virtual Treasure" is clumsy. Maybe "NerdRaid on MegaCorp MetaData"...?

194:

"Sort of the way StarTrek & StarWars has attempted to turn authors into literary sharecroppers..."

I'd heard reliable information about this regarding Star Wars, but not Star Trek. Do you have a link, by chance?

195:

Troutwaxer 194:

Sorry, nothing I can share. There's dozens of authors who've taken on gigs writing "in-universe content" who were once prone to venting online but soon either were fired or stopped posting. Since then they've been self-censoring since the gigs are a source of money, never mind the low pay and deliberate dead-ended.

196:

I'd heard reliable information about this regarding Star Wars, but not Star Trek.

I casually follow David Gerrold over on Facepalm but he's spoiling his grandkids more than he's worrying over the working conditions in the Trek mines. And good for him; the former is a lot more fun.

197:

Has Gerrold said anything about finishing the Chtorr books?

198:

A measly 190Gb of logfiles going back to 2010? Luxury! At my last job we had to process 100GB of logs every day.

199:

Given that this thread is based on computing as applied to Magick, or vice versa as the case may be ....

Does anyone have opinions on the use or not of the MS ( & others ) service "Dropbox" as a method of backing everything up?

200:

Tomorrow's the beginning of the month. I'll run a backup of /home and /etc, then back that up onto an external 4TB drive that I'll put in an eSATA drive bay I have. Then, when done, I'll take it out. No cloud, and I have everything. I have friends who use Synology, or other external drives for backups.

201:

SUGGEST: prior to uploading to a cloud backup site, consider a combo of encryption and compression; PKZIP, WINZIP, et al; better yet an additional layering of encryption utilizing a distinct algorithm; you can 'roll your own' relying upon "one time pad" algorithms plus a brutally long password (random 36 letters)

consider as well what happens when a corporation goes out business or gets hacked or is bought out or trashes old equipment or is discovered to be the secret property of a sovereign wealth fund (Norway, Saudi Arabia, etc)... in all these cases someone else gains access

202:

Most likely such an entity would use a certified computer recycler and the contract would include the destruction of hard drives.

203:

Does anyone have opinions on the use or not of the MS ( & others ) service "Dropbox" as a method of backing everything up?

I just got a message from Dropbox that my computer will not be supported as of April 1. So lots of notice there.

I used to love Dropbox. Then they cut the number of devices you could have linked to a free account way down. And then started dropping support for my devices.

Someone here recommends Backblaze. Haven't used it myself but I'm seriously considering it.

https://www.backblaze.com

204:

Has Gerrold said anything about finishing the Chtorr books?

As of worldcon in 2019, he'd completed a first draft of the next book -- it still needed a load of polishing work, he said.

Dunno what he's doing now: he looked healthy as of September last year in Chicago.

205:

Greg: Dropbox is NOT a backup system!

Dropbox is a cross-device file synchronisation tool. Stash a file in your Dropbox and it will be copied seamlessly to your other Dropbox-linked devices. Overwrite it with a more recent file of the same name ... and the updates will be replicated, even if they truncate a novel down to a single chapter.

In other words, it's a chainsaw. And you can chop your own foot off with it if you try and use it as a shoe-horn.

I use Dropbox to synchronize a tree of folders between my various machines.

As I'm mostly a Mac guy, I then use Time Machine, Apple's backup tool, to back up the folder tree (and a bunch of other stuff).

Each of my Macs has one or more external drives with Time Machine archives on them. I also have a pair of NAS boxes for network backup and archiving. (Two of 'em because of of them appeared to die a couple of years ago ... and I'd bought a new one before I figured out how to resurrect the old one. And now I run both of them in parallel, because you can never have too many backup servers.)

206:

Charlie @ 205
I now have a (Small, cheap - laptop ) I was specifically thinking of using Dropbox to copy/retain files between the two, as mutual backup.
I can back-up "normal" files on my separate several-TByte drive, but emails { On Thunderbird } are much more of a pain, so Dropbox might get round that problem.
The whole point is that it is extremely unlikely that both will go down simultaneously?

207:

I use backblaze as a secondary (like Charlie I mostly run Macs so TimeMachine is the primary) and so far it is good. For C$70 or so per year it’s an excellent idea. It certainly helps that I have1.3Gb fibre to my server room, even here in the rainforest on a pacific island.

The multitude of Raspberry Pi’s all backup to the Big Mac and then that gets included in the system. I use duplicity on the Pi’s. There are no Microsoft things in the house.

For sync and sharing I can use my private domain or Mega.nz - Dropbox has been on my shitlist since they started paying condoleeza rice.

208:

Synchronisation tools make very poor backup tools, because (despite their claimed and, indeed, original purpose), the principal use of backups is to recover from damage caused by the idiot of the keyboard. The point is that modern disks are reliable enough that disk failure is no longer the main cause of data loss. I speak as a once administrator of supercomputers here :-)

209:

I wrote up some posts/articles on linkedin about backups (my company had an announcement, and wanted us all to be "more visible"). I just consolidated them into my DW at http://kithrup.dreamwidth.org/2023/03/21/

Interestingly, I hadn't even thought about going into the alternatives to backups, and their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps I should do so.

210:

Has Gerrold said anything about finishing the Chtorr books?

What Charlie said. A novel draft exists, but I haven't heard anything about a release date lately. He has occasionally mentioned tending to work on projects he's not at liberty to discuss yet, so something is coming.

211:

BTW, Season of Skulls just showed up on James Nicoll's Books Received list.

212:

Can you clarify just what powers the kids have? I kept losing track.

213:

REMINDER:

on-site backups protect against loss of files due to server failure and/or human stupidity and/or co-worker sabotage

off-site backups protect against loss of servers due to building failure and/or human stupidity and/or terrorism involving fire-explosives-EMP

please calculate the likelihood of your building (office, home, school, hospital, etc) being attacked deliberately or accidentally damaged as result of fire-flood-tornado-train-derailment...

then make appropriate plans for the worst case scenario

214:

Charlie, you made a side comment about Eve needing a governess at the end of Season of Skulls. If we assume Eve will not have any kids because of the family curse, what happens here? Does Eve free a whole bunch of kids imprisoned in an orphanage, either in the 19th or the 21st century?

215:

To answer that question would be a spoiler for SoS. And I'm not doing spoilers 6 weeks before publication date!

216:

accidentally damaged as result of fire-flood-tornado-train-derailment...

And a big (or even not so big) electrical power event. And that surge strip people bought bought for $£10-40 is not made of magic beans.

217:

The point is that modern disks are reliable enough that disk failure is no longer the main cause of data loss.

Agreed. But when they go, 10TB is a big chunk of stuff. Had a few 4-8TB go bad over the last 5+ years. Out of 30-50 drives. All were in a RAID 5 or 6 so data wasn't lost.

And I have this cheap consumer SSD that's around 15 years old that's still going strong. I keep meaning to pull the data off it but round 2 its and all that.

218:

The whole point is that it is extremely unlikely that both will go down simultaneously?

Agreed. But think of power issues or fire/flood that would take out both.

These syncing tools are great. I use them for myself and clients all the time. But you need to realize they will rapidly sync junk as much as good data. So if you fubar something on one computer the fubar will quickly be replicated on the other computer.

I'm a fan of Backblaze. Pricing is very reasonable and for consumers (in the US at least) you can pay extra to keep deleted files longer. I think 1 month is the basic. Forever is a choice.

Check this out.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/ars-archivum-top-cloud-backup-services-worth-your-money/4/

They say Backblaze isn't bad but is no longer the best. Read it closely.

I'd also check out wirecutter reviews but people outside the us might have issues accessing it. They are a part of the NYTimes. But just toss the word wirecutter at the end of your search and you can likely get to a review.

I don't pay attention to consumer oriented sites like Consumer Reports in the US. They just don't do tech very well. (There is one or more in the UK also that came up here a while back. Ditto.)

As to trusting the cloud or not. To each their own. If you don't want to use a cloud service then don't. I'll not fight you on it.

219:

Back to the original topic of this post: Is there a reason Mary cannot use her magic bag to find a way to finance her dad's care home expenses?

She is happy to use the fake cash it generates, and it can produce large (elephant gun) and cryptographically signed (car key fob) items, so a winning lottery scratch card, iPhone or plain gold bullion would seem to be possible. Whichever she chose it would be a lot less risky than taking on the job of kidnapping the children.

220:

Care home bills in the UK are on the order of £70-100,000 a year (real world, circa 2017-2019 -- this novel is set in a variant 2017).

Try and launder £100K in fake £20 notes and you will get caught fairly fast unless they are very good forgeries, and the New Management approach to crime and punishment is unforgiving.

The bag is much better at coughing up physical items (guns, car keys) and even so tends to go off plot rather rapidly, by providing what a dementia-afflicted mad scientist thinks his daughter needs rather than what she's asking for. Winning lottery scratch cards: not so likely. Gold bullion ... where does it come from? (It's possible the gun came from an arms locker somewhere, rather than being made ab initio.)

221:

Gold bullion...where does it come from? (It's possible the gun came from an arms locker somewhere, rather than being made ab initio.)

There's lots of lost gold out there: Confederates, Nazis, unopened tombs. The problems start when a Nazi-tagged (for instance) bullion bar pops into the bag. For one thing, bullion is heavy, and having it materialize inside a bag might shred the bag. For another, everyone's going to be interested in where the bar came from, which makes it interestingly dangerous.

I'd suggest that uncut diamonds might be safer???

222:

That would have been a fun way to be mean to the character: The mutant children are rampaging, the super-heroes are after me, I've committed a dozen crimes, here come the cops, and oh shit, my bag just started firing out gold coins stamped with Hitler's face like it was a Vegas slot machine!

223:

So the gun may have had a serial number? (Sorry, not got round to reading it yet.)

224:

I'm assuming places like Fort Knox are mystically guarded out the wazoo....

225:

I mean, we know, for example, that someone who can walk worlds can walk off with a suitcase nuke....

226:

I refuse to do crossover-fic between my universes, but ...

The theft of backpack nukes in the Merchant Princes exploited a security loophole that only existed as a result of the threat being unrecognized, much as the 9/11 hijackers exploited the general assumption that hijackers want to negotiate so you let them get to the flight deck because that way fewer people get hurt.

You can fix the hole the Clan exploited by simply storing fissile pits inside something too heavy to lift. A missile warhead such as the W76 carried by Trident D5 missiles weighs 95kg: simply bolt them to a heavy steel plate while they're in storage so that they're too heavy for a world walker to lift. (For "naked" pits, lock them in a lead-lined safe.)

227:

To close the loophole properly, you would have to secure all such devices, including in some pretty disorganised countries.

Without that, it doesn't fix the problem of someone smuggling a backpack nuke INTO Fort Knox - that would cause as much economic disruption to the USA as a fair amount of slaughter, with less 'justification' for genocidal retaliation.

But, as you say, that is all in the wrong universe.

In the right universe, I would be surprised if there weren't quite a few Krugerrands and similar in relatively insecure locations at any one time. Bullion does not just come in bars.

228:

"I refuse to do crossover-fic between my universes, but ..."

Oh sweet dear Goddess thank you!

229:

Backpack nukes are borderline-possible at all, and highly specialized pieces of kit: if you look for info on the MADM and SADM devices fielded by the USA, as well as the Davey Crockett nuclear-tipped battlefield rocket, it rapidly becomes apparent that even the smallest feasible package weighs about 30kg (and is generally a low yield device with horrible inefficiencies that sprays fallout like crazy).

Most actual weapons -- and I have no reason to think NK are any different -- are designed to be delivered by bomb or medium-to-long range rocket so can weigh in the 100-1000kg range. (And megaton range H-bombs are frequently multi-ton devices.) The Trident warhead I referenced is unusually lightweight, as the missile bus is designed to carry up to eight of the things and needs to be compact enough to store aboard a submarine.

Basically nuclear weapons a world walker (as described in the Merchant Princes novels) could carry are very rare/scarce beasts.

As for smuggling a bomb into Fort Knox ... that was the plot of Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger", back in the early 1960s. But the USA left the gold standard in the early 1970s, as did everybody else. Gold is a strategic metal, but no longer a currency counter -- the economy wouldn't collapse but some types of electronic device might see a transient price spike.

230:

Yes, but .... Carrying 100 Kg for long enough to world walk is not a problem for most healthy, fit men, and a fair number of people could carry 200 Kg. I once carried 70 Kg from Salisbury to Cambridge by train, including climbing station bridges and the underground, and I am very far from being a a weightlifter! Some of the British forces that yomped across the Falklands were carrying 100 Kg. Also, didn't I read here that the USSR had developed a backpack nuke (though there was some doubt over how well it worked)?

It wasn't destroying the currency I was thinking of, but destroying confidence in the USA - the Truss affair should have reminded us of just how brittle the finance system is. Even a half-baked nuke in Fort Knox would almost certainly trigger a run on the dollar, with all the chaos that implies. Actually, so might a chemical or biological attack inside that, but it's more likely that the USA could suppress the news from breaking.

231:

Charlie Stross @ 229:

Backpack nukes are borderline-possible at all, and highly specialized pieces of kit: if you look for info on the MADM and SADM devices fielded by the USA, as well as the Davey Crockett nuclear-tipped battlefield rocket, it rapidly becomes apparent that even the smallest feasible package weighs about 30kg (and is generally a low yield device with horrible inefficiencies that sprays fallout like crazy).

Most actual weapons -- and I have no reason to think NK are any different -- are designed to be delivered by bomb or medium-to-long range rocket so can weigh in the 100-1000kg range. (And megaton range H-bombs are frequently multi-ton devices.) The Trident warhead I referenced is unusually lightweight, as the missile bus is designed to carry up to eight of the things and needs to be compact enough to store aboard a submarine.

Basically nuclear weapons a world walker (as described in the Merchant Princes novels) could carry are very rare/scarce beasts.

As for smuggling a bomb into Fort Knox ... that was the plot of Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger", back in the early 1960s. But the USA left the gold standard in the early 1970s, as did everybody else. Gold is a strategic metal, but no longer a currency counter -- the economy wouldn't collapse but some types of electronic device might see a transient price spike.

Declassified U.S. Nuclear Test Film #31

0800031 - SADM Delivery by Parachutist/Swimmer (Special Atomic Demolition Munition) - No Date Given - 9:45 - Black&White (No explosions) - The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) was a Navy and Marines project that was demonstrated as feasible in the mid-to-late 1960s, but was never used.

Special Atomic Demolition Munition

232:

There was also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)

But there were a lot of tactical nuclear warheads in the 100-200 Kg range in use up to the 1990s, and still may be, for all I know. See links from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery

233:

That was basically the same works in a different box. I get the feeling those things were done as much to show they could do it as with any serious anticipation of real military use.

234:

Yes, but it was the 100-200 Kg ones I was really thinking of, which are world-walkable, even if not practically backpackable.

235:

Apropos of nothing, Quanta Magazine published an article about "Alien calculus", perturbation theory, and quantum physics. ( https://www.quantamagazine.org/alien-calculus-could-save-particle-physics-from-infinities-20230406/ ).

It occurred to me that the output of a mechanical learning AI trained on this math, or worse, one of those programs that helps mathematicians create new proofs, might live up to the title "Quantum of Nightmares." EC might disagree?

236:

It's too long since I did that sort of thing, and I never was much of a quantum mechanic, but I doubt it. Even if such techniques work, and it is only sometimes that they do without out-of-the-box thinking, there is no guarantee they are useful - you know that there is a series that gives an exact solution to the three-body problem, don't you? :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem#General_solution

It certainly sounds very interesting, and might well advance first principles simulation to a considerable degree. You would have to find someone who knows more to comment on that.

237:

Even if such techniques work, and it is only sometimes that they do without out-of-the-box thinking, there is no guarantee they are useful

This is what I was thinking of as a "quantum of nightmares." The math is esoteric and incompletely developed. The output you'd get by training an AI on it and turning it loose on some string theory problem (to pick one non-randomly) would be a nightmare to interpret. Never mind "is it right," because how would one tell beyond confirmation bias? "Does this AI output contain anything useful?" would probably be a nightmare in itself to answer.

238:

So no change then! That is EXACTLY how most modern AI's work when 'solving problems', and why many people object to them. This mathematical technique is just another one of many, as far as those aspects go.

239:

Pigeon @ 233:

That was basically the same works in a different box. I get the feeling those things were done as much to show they could do it as with any serious anticipation of real military use.

The impetus behind Davy Crockett & the SADM was inter-service rivalry.

With the advent of "atomic" weapons the brand new U.S. Air Force1 was sucking up a disproportionately larger share of the Defense Budget to the point where some Air Force Generals were advocating for abolishing the U.S. Army entirely.

This, of course, did not go over that well with the Army Generals, who decided the answer was for the Army to have their own "atomic" weapons ... maybe an "atomic" hand grenade ... a ridiculous idea, but none-the-less, a REAL proposal.

The Davy Crockett (and the W54 device for the SADM that came later) is the result of the quest to develop an "atomic" hand grenade.

1 Traditionally the U.S. Navy was the 800-pound gorilla of defense spending.

Up until WW2, the Army played second fiddle to the Navy because the Navy controlled the seas & the U.S.'s primary defense was the span of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Even as late as the 1930s the Army was primarily structured to defend the U.S. from invasion via Canada or (more likely) Mexico. Even with the requirement to garrison the Philippines after the Spanish/American War (and the Panama Canal Zone), the Army was still structured as a mainly defensive, reactive force here in CONUS.

Almost all of the "interventions" in South & Central America from the 19th & early 20th centuries were carried out using the USMC.

When the Air Force became a separate service they were not (yet) strong enough to take on the Navy in the budget battles, but they could do it to the Army.

240:

Thanks, very much. Fascinating.

One simple question, he says, opening the door for a fast getaway. What's the difference between a universal quantum field... and the ether?

241:

One simple question, he says, opening the door for a fast getaway. What's the difference between a universal quantum field... and the ether?

One's used for knocking people out and the other is also a solvent.

242:

I don't know if this was ever brought up, either in this thread or in the initial Quantum of Nightmares spoiler thread, but am I correct in surmising that by the laws of Skaro anything that Eve owns is also by proxy owned by Rupert? This means that Rupert owns the Necronomicon at the end of Dead Lies Dreaming and it wouldn't have killed him. What has he been doing all this time? Wandering the dream roads and plotting his escape and revenge, using the power of the Necronomicon?

243:

Foreign law does not hold in England, unless specifically enabled by an Act of Parliament. Exactly which jurisdictions apply here is clearly a question for the Laundry legal services department!

244:

It would be more correct to think that by the process of proxy marriage, everything that Eve owned becomes Rupert's. (Even as late as the 1730s, women could not own property in England. Hence leasehold property, and women buying South Sea stock.)

On looking up proxy marriage, it appears that this still happens in the UK, amongst some of our minorities. I'd have thought the ECHR (European Human Rights Court) would have something to say about this. Though note that they didn't get involved in an appeal by the Sark Islanders to improve their democratic representation.

A Proxy Marriage was a way for medieval children to be used as diplomatic counters prior to the age where they can actually be married.

I think Eve's best hope is to have the marriage annulled on grounds of non-consummation.

245:

Exactly which jurisdictions apply here is clearly a question for the Laundry legal services department!

Except that by Dead Lies Dreaming the Laundry doesn't exist anymore. So it's probably up to His Dread Majesty.

But anyway, the question of jurisdiction is what still bugs me about Eve's marriage to Rupert in the first place. Because Rupert marrying her without her consent (and knowledge!) is only possible because her brother Imp made Rupert her legal guardian by foolishly signing a document. Except that at that time Imp wasn't her legal guardian in England and therefore he couldn't pass her guardianship to someone else under English law.

He could under Skaro's (Skaroan? Skaran?) law, but neither him nor Rupert nor Eve were on Skaro at the time, and we're not told that Rupert's house was exterritorial. Furthermore neither Eve nor Imp had ever been on Skaro previously. So why would Skaran law apply to their relationship as English siblings within the jurisdiction of England?

Thus I could only see any legalities pertaining to Skaran law coming into effect the moment that both Eve and Imp set their foot on Skaro, not before.

246:

If I recall correctly, this was explained a few posts back. No, Skaro law does not apply while she is in England. But the instant she steps foot on Skaro ....

247:

It's not uncommon for someone to sign a contract which is governed under the law of another region or country. In fact, this is absolutely necessary when dealing with any kind of international or interstate (inter-regional) contract.

The problem here is that Imp is only Eve's guardian under Skaronese law - she does not require a guardian under British law - but unless Eve herself agreed at some time that all her affairs, not just those dealing with employment will be governed under Skaronese law Imp can't sign anything on her behalf. So the problem is that Imp is not, in fact, Eve's guardian under any system of law, unless Imp has power of attorney over her under British law, which is something Eve has never agreed to, and probably never will. (Even so, a British court would probably find that Imp's power did not extend to forcing her to marry someone.) The only time this wouldn't be the case would be if Eve and Imp were both on Skaro when the paperwork was signed, (because law is also geography-based,) something which was not impossible for Rupert to have arranged, though it isn't stated in the book.

248:

So essentially, Rupert's spell has an invalid variable or buffer overflow, or whatever programming error corresponds to "Imp not eligible to sign for Eve."

249:

Sark isn't in the EU. It's also necessary to beware that the word "democracy" in that context may be only the code word used by the Barclay brothers to mean they think it should be them who's the boss.

250:

I don't know in what USA state that might apply, but it is completely wrong in both English law and the postulated Skaro law. There is precedent for all of this, to do with Saudi Arabia and similar countries and child marriage.

Imp is automatically Eve's guardian under Skaro law, and can sign on her behalf, for anything allowed under Skaro law, marriage, employment or property. The fact that he isn't under English law is irrelevant.

That would be thrown out by English courts for almost anything with local jurisdiction, as would be any assertion of Imp's guardianship. It is irrelevant under both laws whether all parties were on Skaro or in England at the time of signing anything.

Foreign marriage is complicated in English law; some are recognised, some are deemed void,and some are recognised but can be annulled on request. I don't know which this would be, but one of the latter two.

As the usual off-shoring involves property in England being owned by a Skaro company, the ownership in Skaro would transfer automatically. However, there are a zillion English laws about such things, intended to counter tax-evasion, so this is complicated for different reasons.

251:
Sark isn't in the EU.

Correct.

But this doesn't mean that it's citizens cannot access the European Court of Human Rights. Just like the UK at the moment.

252:

As OGH sets it up in the book, it's a fun problem to throw at a character and I enjoyed the way he set it up. However, it's one of those things that can only work in fiction.

The problem in the real world is that you can't actually pull your favored legal system out of a hat and apply it, particularly without the consent of the people affected. Legal systems have geographic jurisdiction, which is to say a particular set of laws has power in a particular area. (If you don't believe this, try implementing Iranian law about homosexuals in the U.K. You'll probably find yourself in prison!) Imp can sign anything he wants, but Skaronese law only has power on Skaro. Imp's rights under Skaronese law literally have no effect if Imp/Eve is in the U.K. Like everyone else in the U.K., Imp's actions can only be judged under U.K. law, unless Imp is party to an international or inter-regional contract, in which case the contract is written under a particular country's/region's laws as agreed to by both parties.

In the U.K. Imp can't sign for Eve without either her consent or a properly granted power of attorney (if she's incompetent.) Under the circumstances in the book, if Eve is foolish enough to be on Skaro while Rupert wants something, maybe she's screwed, but particular sets of laws are in force in particular geographic regions, and Imp's contract with Rupert is probably in violation of multiple British laws.

In the real world, Eve's problem only exists if she's on Skaro. And even on Skaro a fair judge (fat chance with Rupert around) might concede that Imp signed the contract while outside of Skaro's jurisdiction, according to laws that did not govern either him or Eve at the time, that the contract was illegal in the place where it was signed, that Imp did so while not competent to sign a contract, that the contract had been written with malicious intent, and that the marriage had not been consummated. The Skaronese judge might rule this way with the specific understanding that a British judge might grant Skaro the same courtesies were the positions reversed.

Also, once again, outside Skaro Eve would have to specifically agree to be governed by Skaronese law.

253:

The way to reconcile the real world with the book is by assuming that Eve got very poor advice from her divorce attorney.

255:

Folks... I want to thank you for this discussion of international and interterritorial law.

Given that, unlike the contract I sighned that got my first novel published, which was barely two pages long, I'm looking at a contract to republish it, and to publish my next novel... and it's TWELVE pages long, involves rights for translation, audio, everywhere.... (Yes, I have a friend who has worked as an agent looking at it).

Charlie, sorry if this is pre-300 and out of line, but sort of going nuts over this, though....

256:

it's TWELVE pages long

I'd say that at this point, you need an actual agent officially representing you.

257:

What has he been doing all this time? Wandering the dream roads and plotting his escape and revenge, using the power of the Necronomicon?

Your question is answered in Season of Skulls!

258:

NEWS FLASH: and a crate of (British) author copies of SEASON OF SKULLS just arrived on my doormat ten minutes ago!

259:

My old friend, Darrell, who worked with George Scithers as both editor and agent, went through it, and I was not freaking out unwarrantedly. He says it's got a lot of legal gobbledegook, and appears to be a contract from something else (there are secrecy clauses) adapted by lawyers, not IP lawyers.

I'll request a few minor changes, and expect to sign when the person I need to talk to gets back from vacation Monday (what a pleasure, people who COMMUNICATE...)

260:

Awesome! Have we seen the art for that book? (If not, can you send us a copy of the cover?)

262:

One's used for knocking people out and the other is also a solvent.

When you see two intent gentlemen who are obviously together in a crowd of young women, you ask yourself "which one is holding the chloroform", or perhaps in this case ether, or perhaps quantum flux or {God knows}.

263:

Far out! Looking forward to reading it.

Business question- given how many cons you go to, how many copies of a new book do you get/buy, to display/sell at cons?

264:

Charlie is a writer, not a bookseller. I'm pretty sure you'll never find him camped out in the dealers' room - it's too far from the bar

265:

Not familiar with cons? Or are cons where you are different? 1) I'm a new author, not a big-name established one. 2) dealers' room? Ah, no, I've sold copies at readings, and one con I attend has a mass signing, and I've sold there, along with talking to someone (friends, a nurse at the medical facility I go to....)

266:

Not familiar with cons?

As Bellinghwoman's name appears in https://glasgow2024.org/about/committee-and-staff/ I suspect a bit of familiarity has transferred Alan's way...

267:

That's fine - and I don't have all committees in mind at all times - but writers I know all need to have some copies for selling at signings, etc.

268:

Oh, btw - not trying to be rude, still moving into being a published writer, and trying to figure out all the moving pieces....

269:

GO OUT & BUY a copy of today's FT, for it's SUPPLEMENT.
They have a mjor atricle, warning of the apparent dangers of "AI"
Link here ... but it's paywalled
For such a heavyweight, serious newspaper to publish this is certainly worthy of notice.
- especially since, on R4 this morning, there was a warning (?) about a new artificial "mimic-your-voice" programme/system, that will, with a probabliity of one, be used for scamming politics, everywhere ...

{ Yes, I'm repeating this message across all three threads. It's impportant, as regards public debate, OK? }

270:

I'd say that Naomi Novik has done a bang up job drip feeding her YA readership the existential horror of the adult world in the Scholomance trilogy. It looks like a magic high school series. Ok, it's set in a magic high school, and there is plenty of monster punching, but it's really about inescapable multi generational consequences.

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on March 21, 2023 2:55 PM.

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