Other than that, omigod. Hahahaha. Two in the bush, indeed.
]]>I'd arrive to work a lot more relaxed. Fifteen years of fighting rush hour twice a day, five days a week, and boy-howdy am I ready to turn the keys over to a robot, NSA et al be damned. I'd welcome not being frustrated with my fellow drivers.
I think it would be a boon for pedestrian traffic as well. A few iterations of pattern analysis of a given area's day-to-day use would allow for spreading traffic patterns out over a wider area, decreasing congestion. It would also show you where you don't need streets at all, and that land could be re-purposed for public use, perhaps.
Oh! And when the City decides they're just going to suddenly do some road construction and not tell anyone about it in a way that makes useful sense, presumably the car's nav system will be updated with that information in real time. One hopes.
]]>I particularly enjoyed the nuanced professional frustration Bob relates in proclaiming how ol' Bat Wings doesn't exist, as if there's someone pestering him constantly about it. Will Santa Claus ever make an appearance in universe?
]]>What happens when the universe washes its hands? Or, to be more precise, discovers signals trying to pierce the intestinal wall in search or others? If it reacts like I have to this post, it decides it's time for a regimen of Albendazole.
It's silly of me to anthropomorphize the universe, of course, but I have a case of the Gibbering Fear now and need the small comforts available in such wrong- headedness...
]]>Sorry to gush. I've got hunting buddies who took a crack a while ago at producing their own ammo. They gave up at doing so after a short amount of time. It's a pain compared to the convenience of OTC shells.
Plus, it wasn't really full-fledged making. More just measuring out charges. No forging brass into cylinders, or jacketing lead with copper, or fiddling with primer chemistry. More of a 'some assembly required' approach.
]]>Plus, "Founding Fathers" is just so deliciously patriarchal...
]]>But really a character that comes to my mind immediately is Susan Richards, of the Fantastic Four after John Byrne took over. Just after the weird bit with Malice. She became a tough, clear-headed leader and somebody that was easy to root for, instead of a damsel-in-distress.
Now whether a comic book can slide under the SF&F umbrella as defined by this post, I'm not sure. I just remember grinning at Marvel finally letting Sue do something that was cool, of becoming more than what she was originally portrayed as, and she wasn't obnoxious while doing it.
]]>I suppose I relegate being "horrified" with events that are morally reprehensible to myself. Scare-tactics aren't really horror for me, suspense seems to linger on.
]]>If there is a dramatic shift to a darker tone, I think it might be in part due to the problems that currently face humanity are rather daunting. You can critical path out a moon landing, and you have the exciting 'achievement unlocked' at the end. It seems more difficult to do the same with staving off and reversing global environmental concerns, biological concerns. Those very large problems would probably require some very large novels. The alternative perhaps being skipping ahead a bit and dealing with the aftermath of catastrophe. Situations that are only dealt with rather than standing aside and letting science fix it. The 'fix' might yield other problems...
I have a friend who proclaims his favorite activity is to see how deep a hole he can dig himself because he loves the scramble back up out of the hole. He then goes on to say he'll know when he can relax because he won't be about to get out of the hole anymore. There's a dark sort of thrill for him. I find dark SF to be a bit safer, and the world doesn't look like such a grim place when I'm finished with the story, either, because I hold in my hands evidence of something larger than myself at work, and that with luck will go on working for someone else in time.
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