William T Goodall

Comment Threads

• Nestor commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  Just finished the Trader's war, somewhat bemused to find it ends in a cliffhanger. Was under the impression this kind of thing was an artifact of the previous artificial subdivision of books and not something that was going to happen in this re-edition. Not a biggie, I understand the next volume is due out soon, but a little surprising....
• Ian Bertram commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  I'm really glad you are taking this story line forward. I remember the way the ending in the previous version impacted on me and it isn't any better this time around. I really don't want things left there. Overall I did find the revised version flowed better. I couldn't see all of the changes but I sense you changed some of the storyline details - the way in which Reynolds was dealt with for example and the BushII/Cheney/Rumsfeld chain was much clearer. In a sense Miriam's world is of course a parallel world to our own. I don't know if...
• Charlie Stross commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  Middle volume of trilogy needs to end of a cliff-hanger. If you write one and it doesn't, you aren't doing it right. Look at The Lord of the Rings! (Also: the last two omnibuses -- which collect the last four slim novels of the original stories -- cover what was originally designed to be the second story arc in the series. Which I was intending to write as a single 900 page doorstep. As with all second books (or releases of a new piece of software), bloat happened, resulting in a 1370 page story in four volumes, which got refactored...
• Charlie Stross commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  I'm running with Miriam's world. Circa 2020, imagine how much more paranoid our War on Terror/Global Security State would be if the terrorists had nuked the White House and came from parallel time lines. For one thing, the entire territory of the USA could legitimately be considered to be a border, for Customs and Border Patrol purposes (look at those guys' powers -- they're scary) and DHS purposes. And then there's going to be the US government's institutional response when they discover the dome in the forest and realize PDQ that they're not the big swinging high-tech dick in this...
• Nestor commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  The bit about B-21s over Iraq after Saddam was deposed by an internal coup (And Paris Hilton's funeral!) clued me that it's just very close to our world but not quite us. I read the lord of the rings as a big ol' paperback so if there were any cliffhangers there I missed them. But I already got my sticky mitts on the revolution trade so any cliffhanger was more of a speedbump than an obstacle. Thanks be to e-books and instant satisfaction. (Speaking of which, your catalog is spotty in google play, I can't seem to find Glasshouse there,...