NelC

NelC

  • Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
    Just to mention my nomination for Bob: Richard Ayoade (of The IT Crowd fame). I also fancy Gillian Anderson... ...sorry, I got distracted for a moment there...Gillian Anderson as Mo. She's noticeably older than Ayoade or anyone else of the...
  • Commented on Not dead but dreaming
    Oh, I think Scientology can do better than that. It passes #2 — LRon is the prophet with whom one cannot argue, and David Miscavige is his representative on Earth, with whom you can argue even less. Miscavige has caused...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    I learned a new word today; thanks for that! (Now, as to whether it will stick....) Thinking aloud, I can see I'm going to have complicate my "Dark Matter for Dummies" explanation. I'm thinking now that while bright matter has...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    My next problem with all of that is that if dark matter does not react at all with photons, neither absorb or emit... it should leave a shadow. No, because it doesn't interact with photons, like, at all, so no...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    Something that could cause a Kessler Cascade just by lighting off its main drive in orbit above the US - yikes! Why would it cause a cascade? The propellant bombs on an Orion are sub-kilotonne, if I recall correctly. You...
  • Commented on Silence is ending (soon)
    Huh, it was the last Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool from 1988, so not the same era as Bullitt at all....
  • Commented on Silence is ending (soon)
    I have my doubts that an RC car could get up to the speeds of whatever muscle-car Harry was driving (my brain is saying Mustang, but it may be mixing in some other movie from the era, probably Bullit). Come...
  • Commented on Book day!
    Persephone has also made a deal with entities unknown which gives her powers in return for a set limit to her life (or just a shortening, I forget), which presumably includes immunity to low-level critters like K-syndrome as part of...
  • Commented on Book day!
    What snark? Seems factually accurate to me....
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    By some synchronicity or other, I was looking up the yield to weight thing recently, and found that Teller once proposed a multiply-staged nuke à la Tsar Bomba, that would have had a yield of 10 gigatons. It would have...
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    The problem is that suspending the body in water — or oil or chlorofluorocarbon foam or whatever — doesn't do anything to support the internal organs, or reduce the effect of gravity on the blood. Water doesn't screen you from...
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    The simplest solution that I can think of is cradling/insulating the pod carrying the humans against this excessive G probably just by floating it in water Not going to work. That would just be an expensive and heavy g-seat,...
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    I boggle at the idea that someone able to afford a $500K honeymoon (because 2 people) wouldn't necessarily be in the 1%, considering that you need to be earning $500K annually to be in the 1%. Even if you're both...
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    That's $250K per person. So, the patient, the surgeon, an assistant and an anaesthesiologist puts you into seven figures, and that's without figuring in after-care specialists, or a full-sized surgical team....
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    A bomb factory in orbit is in everyone's backyard. Their frontyard, even, for everyone directly under the orbital path. A political problem isn't insignificant for being not-engineering. Political problems are hard: you don't go breaking treaties, especially weapons treaties, without...
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    I can't imagine how building an atomic weapons factory in orbit could possibly break any international treaties at all....
  • Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
    I could have sworn I saw somewhere on the interwebs some pictures of an executive jet fitted out for freefall sex a few years ago, but damned if I can find anything now. Bound to be cheaper than hiring a...
  • Commented on Empire Games
    The knots may not be necessarily related directly to the operation of world-walking; they could be an arbitrary code. The world-walker module may in fact be two modules: the engine that takes the world-walker to another universe including handling the...
  • Commented on FAQ: The Laundry Files--series timeline
    Don't be obnoxious, Greg. "Why do people like this?" is a polite question. "Why do people like this rubbish?" isn't....
  • Commented on Some notes on world building
    It seems to me that Star Trek had a few of both of those. There was the mining colony in the Horta episode, for example, and the recreational planets that appeared in TOS and TNG, though they were more like...
  • Commented on But it's not April 1st yet!
    Sorry, I was distracted; what was the link between Mossad and Microsoft, again?...
  • Commented on Defining space opera
    Speaking of Iain Banks, I just came across a note I made of something he said at a convention or literary festival a few years ago: "Space Opera isn't written in a vacuum!"...
  • Commented on Defining space opera
    To the extent that you may want to differentiate between them, planetary romance takes place on generally one planet, while space opera gads about all over the place. One may be a subset of the other though, or possibly they...
  • Commented on Defining space opera
    Colin Greenland's Plenty takes place in a Solar System where Venus is steamy, swampy jungles, and Mars is a dry but inhabitable desert world, in a book which seems otherwise to follow 1990s technological tropes, for the sake of cognitive...
  • Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
    Wow, the "rapture of the tides" was where I gave up on the Uplift books. Looks like I missed some trippy stuff....
  • Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
    I read Charlie for pleasure, and part of the reason I find his writing pleasurable is that he's put a lot of work into making himself understood. I tend not to read Hadil as I don't find their posts pleasurable...
  • Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
    Talking of comedic space opera (someone was, weren't they?) — How Much for Just the Planet? by John M Ford. A classic. Someone persuade his heirs to pull the stick out of their butts and re-release his books, please?...
  • Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
    As I recall, Jack didn't have any input on the Grendals until after the first book was published and he had an opportunity to teach the authors some basic biology....
  • Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
    Not to mention that the shade will have to be quite robust to stand up to any significant acceleration. And if the acceleration isn't significant the battle or war will be over by the time the stealth ship gets anywhere....
  • Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
    Thought so. The style is unique. I'm too lazy to go looking, but what brought on the change of identity?...
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