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• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  From a quick read through the comments here, it does seem that smokers and ex-smokers are more supportive of banning smoking than non-smokers. Personally I feel that if I hadn't been able to easily buy tobacco at 16, and hadn't...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  How about structures designed to last for multiple millennia, like the 10,000 Year Clock? It's being built by the Long Now foundation (with Bezos's money), specifically to spark conversations about 'deep time'. (It's also part of the inspiration behind Neal...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Several people have wondered what ICE powered classic cars will run on in the future. An obvious answer would be ethanol. The UK has recently moved to a 10% blend of ethanol in it's 'petrol', and while it's not common,...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  For those that want to avoid Amazon, you can pick it up from the Kobo store. For some reason my mind has completely blanked on what happened to Rupert at the end of DLD, I guess I've have to re-read....
• Commented on PSA: Publishing supply chain shortages
  It was running out of shelf space that pushed me onto ebooks. That and not having to pack a separate bag of books when I go on holiday for more than a few days. Has anyone ever investigated the environmental...
• Commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  Maybe a reason the knotwork engrams can only encode a limited number of timelines was actually a feature? The Forerunners created the in-brain jaunting tech from their already existing tech. What if the version used by the Clan was a...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Labyrinth Index
  One other point about the F22, there's not many of them, and with their historically-low availability rates, it's not inconceivable that on a given day there wouldn't be any in a position to intercept the Black Concorde. Of course, the...
• Commented on Starship bloopers
  Troutwaxer @ 21: The difference between Starship Troopers as book and movie is that, if you're somewhere between 15 and 30 the book is likely to make you think, whereas the movie... isn't. I think I read the book not...
• Commented on So you say you want a revolution
  "Fisheries are a £400M industry in the UK at this point" Extra fun little wrinkle, most of that industry is based in Scotland, only about 30% is based in England....
• Commented on Upcoming Attractions!
  Euro people who want to buy the eBook version, but don't want to give money to Amazon, you can buy it on Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/dead-lies-dreaming (Hope it's ok to post this)...
• Commented on A serious question
  This has brought up a couple of thoughts: 1) Surely the Black Chamber would have been able to come up with some shielding for the CM to prevent Collins from transforming? (Presumably something that would be difficult to shrink to...
• Commented on Story time!
  Reminds me of China Miéville's rejected 'Iron Man' pitch, which you can read on his site. (He did end up doing some work for DC in the end, which was fine I guess, not a patch on the above story...
• Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
  You're all wrong. All we need to do is strip down the two new QEII class carriers. Strap the engines on the coastline somewhere (near Scarborough maybe?), and we take the entire country off on holiday. Why don't we go...
• Commented on Publishing: A Slice of Life
  The one explanation I've heard for the super pricey audiophile networking cables is that usually these things are installed as a whole package by a reseller. Some rich person decides they want a new stereo, the sales person upsells them...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Delirium Brief
  "I'd like to ask if anybody else shared my reaction to the idiocy of shutting down the old organisation while its replacement was only in the planning stage" Insofar as it seems like a utterly stupid and backwards thing for...
• Commented on Sitrep
  Magical Girl Obsidian Heartbleed reminds me a bit of The Wicked and the Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (et al.). Short version, every 90 yeas, twelve gods incarnate into the bodies of young people, they live for two...
• Commented on That sinking feeling
  "opening us wide open to narcotics [..] smuggling" Well there's our solution, we'll become a narco state! The UK already has a lot of experience in hydroponics, and we've always been good at smuggling. As for EU nationals fleeing the...
• Commented on Canned Monkeys Don't Ship Well, the Remix Version
  I suspect that commentators here arguing about generation ships would enjoy "Aurora" by Kim Stanley Robinson. He assumes that most of the above problems would be solved, and instead gives his protagonists new and exciting problems(!) to deal with. He...
• Commented on Dude, you broke the future!
  "what corporation wants its users/eyeballs/ad-targets to start inflicting acts of violence on other groups" Arms manufacturers, prison owners, spyware manufacturers, and that's just the obvious candidates who directly profit from violence. Once someone develops a perfect gaydar app (for example,...
• Commented on Dark State: how to get signed copies!
  New idea: Crowdsourcing to buy uppers for our gracious host (and possibly William Gibson as well) so they write better futures for us to inhabit....
• Commented on Character and Exposition are Plot: Why most pop critical terms aren't useful to writers
  You could argue that most of Neal Stephenson's work is just exposition and info dumps, but I (and presumably many others) love it. He does seem to do a good job of integrating (eg) a three page diversion on orbital...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
  I'm not sure if this is the/a default fit, but this page has a QRA Typhoon armed with "4xASRAAM, 4XAMRAAM and 2x1000 litre drop tank" I was surprised by Quarry house showing up. Back when I was the same age...
• Commented on Empire Games
  Being pedantic, GRRM did the Red Wedding in 2001 in "A Storm of Swords", not 2016....
• Commented on Empire Games sneak peek
  Oddly that cover reminds me of GTA, although when I check, none of the GTA games had an overhead view like that on the box (the cover of GTA2 is close though)....
• Commented on Wooden Train Parenting
  @4 Buying loud or obnoxious toys for your nieces and nephews is one of the privileges of being an aunt or uncle. You get to amuse the small person, whilst pissing off your sibling at the same time :) The...
• Commented on Facts of Life and Death
  To a large extent, brexit* was about immigration, the trouble is, there's no easy way to reduce the number of people who want to come to the UK. You only have to look at Calais to see that even with...
• Commented on Suspense is the key
  I believe it was Kieron Gillen who opened this can of worms the other day, which is interesting because although he doesn't open "The Wicked and the Divine" with a flash forward, he does set up the end of the...
• Commented on Reality is broken
  After falling down a wikihole, I have discovered that "G4S Gurkha Services" is a real thing. So, if not the army, perhaps "G4S Morningstar" is in Cassie's future?...
• Commented on Reality is broken
  "my UK editor doesn't believe UK peeps will know that, for example, CVS is the name of a high street pharmacy chain in the US" That's fair enough, I like to think I could have guessed it from the context,...
• Commented on Cytological Utopia and the rapture of the eukaryotes
  (Correction, according to this we probably have about the same number of bacteria as human cells. To within the nearest billion or so anyway)...