chriswb71

Comment Threads

• FatBigot commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  One question I have is whether there was any influence from Tom Holt's "The Portable Door" (and it's successors) on the Laundry series? They both take "Magic exists" as a starting point and build a world from there. Tom Holt assumes that you'd have private companies doing the work, run very much in the same way as a firm of solicitors. This allows much fun to be had with inter-firm rivalry, clients, office politics, hierarchies and procedures. In contrast, our host assumes it would be run by the civil service, and we see how that works out. My view is...
• paws4thot commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  The Portable Door - Copyright date 2003 The Atrocity Archives - CD 2004 Since Charlie's blogged many times on the length of the publishing pipe from author typing "The End" to "books on shelves" I feel safe in saying that he'd finished writing TAA before anyone who didn't get a proof copy could have read TPD. TPD is more likely to have influenced Jasper Fforde's Dragonslayer trilogy....
• decicco.barry commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  "The only discussion system I can think of where threading worked was usenet, and then only because the threading was done by the client software: the likes of trn and then strn and slrn rocked at threading (and scoring, and magic killfiling). I have never met a GUI-based USENET newsreader, in contrast, that wasn't really shit at threading. Bah, humbug." Most discussion forum software didn't seem to come with kill files, which were obviously a much-needed thing even when the Internet had a hundredth as many people on as now....
• trey.palmer commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  Trying again because I think Charlie was kind of busy shortly after I posted it. Charlie, Where did you get the idea for the hands of glory? I know they're a myth (way to make house breaker's invisible) but how did you get the idea to make laser guns out of them? And use pigeons and monkeys for part sources?...
• jeff.rubinoff commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  Not only do I love the Laundry books, but when I read that you'd been influenced by early Len Deighton, I went and read all his never-actually-named-Harry-Palmer books, for which I am also eternally grateful....