Murcushio

Murcushio

  • Commented on Strong and Stable!
    And this party gets to impose an unelected national leader without the endorsement of an election, unless you count a vote by its own members—at most 0.1% of the electorate. The winner of the current race will be the second...
  • Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
    At risk of a series-level spoiler, if it isn't glaringly obvious by now, CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is a metaphor for global anthropogenic climate change (global anthropogenic thaumaturgic change, maybe?) and everyone is having to reach accommodations in their own way....
  • Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
    Finally, on the other side of London, a respectable looking nanny arrives on the doorstep of Mr and Mrs Banks, just in time to take charge of their four children while the parents jet off to attend an international conference...
  • Commented on The Laundry Files: an updated chronology
    and Orbit's lawyers made me very carefully describe the female Home Secretary as clearly not being one of her non-fictional predecessors, not even a little bit. Charlie, if I'm not out of line here, and it's something you can talk...
  • Commented on Infomercial Interlude
    If you like the Laundry Files, you'll like Ben's PC Grant books. I assume you're American (he's a bestseller here in the UK!): My understanding as of a couple books ago is that the PC Grant books sell about the...
  • Commented on Happy Halloween!
    That's in the the US print version as well. There's a few other typos as well; "complementary" for "complimentary" in one place I remember. Mhari gets the name of Reagan National wrong, although that can be chalked up to an...
  • Commented on Happy Halloween!
    My understanding of the general etiquette around here (I usually only post in the book threads, which means once or twice a year) is that the book threads serve as discussion threads for said book. Am I in error here?...
  • Commented on Happy Halloween!
    (Spoilers Ahoy. So many spoilers, you guys.) I was deeply privileged to have received a signed copy of this when Charlie stopped by Bakka-Phoenix in Toronto; I drove up from the states for it. The Labyrinth Index (along with it's...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Delirium Brief
    (Similarly, the emergence of a world like our own where magic nevertheless exists also demands explanation: there is such an explanation for The Laundry Files—history is mutable and has, in fact, been tampered with extensively—but it's largely implied, although future...
  • Commented on Book launches for The Labyrinth Index
    I'll be in Toronto on Saturday, looking forward to getting both a shiny new Labyrinth Index and my well-worn edition of Wireless signed! I'll be coming up from the states, actually. Normally I would not want to fight with Toronto...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    So I think the whole thing hangs together fine if you look at it as "we can't magic the PM, or Cabinet", "Schiller can and has", "we've lost, bother, now what?" No amount of PR or political processes is going...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    But this was pretty well explained the first time we met Schiller. It's not that they felt they didn't need a plan against their own government, it's that they *couldn't* make that plan. Literally, anyone who tried would die. That's...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    CASE NIGHTMARE RED was seen as quite unlikely and so, while there were plans for dealing with it, there were no backup plans for how to react if the response was only partially successful and the usual cover-up techniques failed...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    "Quisling" is and has been for decades used as a generic synonym for traitor. If you call someone a Quisling, you don't mean that they're specifically a wannabe Norwegian fascist, you just mean they're a traitor....
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    Thinking about this a little more, the whole "enslavement geas" thing has a bit the flavor of a good thing gone wrong; that is, if you give someone a demon-haunted violin and they can open gates to terrifying hell-dimensions, you...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    OTOH, since I don't accept the Michael "Quisling" Armstrong's enslavement geases characterization Both of those things are true. The Laundry uses enslavement geases; indeed, this is the most crucial plot element of The Annihilation Score, because without her enslavement geas...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    I will be very interested in reading that, no matter how peripheral. I had figured the Mandate would want to stay in the EU because it would offer him all sorts of juicy opportunities to spread his power within it,...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    My current headcanon is that "Brexit" in the context of the Laundryverse is "the rest of the EU decided to kick out the nation-state that defected to the enemy in the middle of a war" and that the Brexit vote...
  • Commented on The Labyrinth Index: sneak preview!
    What seems obvious to me is that there are two "successful" end-games available to the leaders of the Laundry. The first is that the leaders of the Laundry bring humanity a God who will protect us from the oncoming horror...
  • Commented on SF For Nothing, Stories For Free
    One final bit of fan fiction: Honor Among Thieves. The finest piece of Weberian-inspired fanfiction is and always will be In Ovens Baked. I would like to second Worm, join with those who are scratching their heads over the Taylor...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    Well, at that rate I'm fairly certain that you've just said "The North American Great Lakes and Mississippi-Missouri river complex can't exist because Rocky Mountains" not once but twice. Both of those things are located well outside of the Rocky...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    The conceit behind Lord of the Rings is that it is the secret, lost history of our own world and actually takes place in the distant past of Earth. Therefore one would expect Middle-Earth's northern hemisphere, OUR northern hemisphere, to...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    Okay, because I am a huge fan of Tolkien lore, I have to get into this in a deeply nerdy way. You are correct that he didn't build a flawless world. However, the flaws you point out are either not...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    Charlie, a question if I may: how much of the NAC's government form was driven by meta-concerns? That is, it seems like you needed the same group of people to be overtly in charge, that is, wielding direct and powerful...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    As much as I loathe Trump, the electoral college worked exactly as it was supposed to work: it penalized the candidate who ignored multiple "unimportant" states, which is exactly what the Hillary campaign did. One, it did nothing of the...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    Tell that to the Irish in 1845-52. Or the Scots in 1715/45. Or anyone who was prosecuted under the Bloody Code (which makes present-day Iran look liberal and enlightened). This seems like a bit of a two-step, Charlie; Hugh Fisher...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    Also, your constitution sucks. (Supporting evidence, item number 1: President Trump was even possible. Supporting evidence number 2: the Civil War happened. Supporting evidence number 3: the Equal Rights Amendment never passed. I could go on ...) ... okay, there...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    I'd rather that the NAC not become a People's Republic of Tyranny. I would submit that they're already there and have been since their inception. The structure of the NAC is very autocratic and highly tyrannical; any specific Big Man...
  • Commented on Radio silence
    I'll be very interested to see the fallout from Armstrong and Nyarlathotep's coup d'etat. I suspect a surprisingly high proportion of the Laundry's personnel are going to be perfectly happy working for Team Elder Gods, and those that aren't... well,...
  • Commented on Character and Exposition are Plot: Why most pop critical terms aren't useful to writers
    had Conan settle down in Tolkien's Shire to protect the hobbits from the fallout from the Ring War, then he'd suddenly be this all-travelled, super-cosmopolitan, uber killing machine; an embarrassing Mary Sue I would submit that you'd probably need one...
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