rhialto

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• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Compare also Simulacron-3 to the Tunnel Under The World, which is sometimes mentioned as the inspiration for The Matrix....
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  So what if the queen suddenly decided to throw the book at the brexiteers and their frauds (and then reverting it)... or some other wildly popular thing amongst people who are not so much friends of the monarchy. I wonder...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares: spoiler time!
  that the expiry date is dependent on the author's date of death, so in a perverted sort of way, copyright law encourages the killing of authors?...
• Commented on Brief commercial interlude
  You're probably off-by-one with those versions, since I don't see a Calibre version 6 yet at http://download.calibre-ebook.com/ ....
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  If a deadly strain gets a name, it should obviously be The Andromeda Strain....
• Commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  Since I'm living in the administrative district of Pankow, I've been looking at places where three streets are intersecting. That's a fairly rare thing, and the only one I can think of is the intersection of Schönhauser Allee, Eberswalder/Danziger Straße,...
• Commented on Invisible Sun: Themes and Nightmares
  (Ask yourself how many SF novels you read where the PoV character isn't human?) Recently: Murderbot....
• Commented on Dead Lies Dreaming: Spoilers
  I was wondering about the seller of the book. It wasn't somebody who was conspiring with any of the main characters, right? (oh, and the openid login seems to be broken; it didn't work for me: complained about not being...
• Commented on Normal service will be resumed eventually
  My deepest condolences too. I know a bit of what you're going through (my girlfriend died nearly 10 years ago) and I wouldn't wish any kind of loss like that on anybody....
• Commented on New Book Week!
  Apropos Schloss Britz: I was there last summer, for an exposition of paintings by Hundertwasser (I think). I had the impression that the visitor toilets were in the former servants' area. Unfortunately I didn't go up to the next floor,...
• Commented on Facts of Life and Death
  Personally I’d guess that the Dutch really, really had it hard during WW2 just based on how much taller the 3rd and 4th generations grew … plus their expanded waist sizes even though their diets and lifestyles aren’t anywhere near...
• Commented on Writer, Interrupted
  On twitter I am RhialtoTheM. You don't need to listen to me, as I said, but being unable to follow you makes me miss out on sometimes interesting stuff, which is a pity....
• Commented on Writer, Interrupted
  Congratulations! I didn't see it on twitter though since I seem to be blocked from following you. I don't mind being unable to talk to you, but a block on following seems somewhat counterproductive. And useless in general, since it...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Annihilation Score
  Well, at least one advantage of the falling pound: OGH's books will be cheaper for us abroad. Until Scotland re-joins the EU, of course....
• Commented on How I learned to stop worrying and love the concept of punitive slating....
  So, the strategy to annoy you next year, will be that there will be a "No Award" slate. Then you will have to modify your rules to ignore that....
• Commented on An exercise in futility
  You don't need a special reader for that. Just one that does OpenType fonts properly. Someone clever has leveraged the syngergy of ligatures to block bullshit: see http://www.sansbullshitsans.com/ for an example. You can download that font as well, or make...
• Commented on Some thoughts on turning 50
  "half the people are below average" is certainly not generally true! Only with some distributions. It is certainly possible that everybody is below average except me. Or that everybody is above average except me. Perhaps you meant "half the people...
• Commented on Not a Manifesto
  Usually my way to distinguish between Fantasy and Science Fiction was the development of technology. If it had been in decline during the story or before, it is Fantasy. If it is still developing, going "up", it's SF. I'll have...
• Commented on Apology
  (Administrative note: logging in with Livejournal via Typepad does not work. I get an error message "An error occurred / This weblog requires commenters to pass an email address. If you would like to do so you may log in...
• Commented on Apology
  My thought was "The Space Merchants", given that you already used "The Merchants' War" :-) Any similarity with titles of books by Frederik Pohl is of course completely coincidental....