John E

John E

  • Commented on Strong and Stable!
    Given that Abermule is one of the most well-known accidents on UK railways and steps were promptly taken to prevent a recurrence, I was quite shocked to read that the same thing nearly happened on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch...
  • Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
    Anvil had some fun with science-fictional monarchies. In "The Troublemaker" a planet's ruled by an absolute monarchy (with the King and the nobility being volunteers who serve for a fixed term). All the people have implants in their nervous system...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Dead Lies Dreaming
    I expect there's an island called Sodor in the Irish Sea, too, where they wall up misbehaving shoggoths in tunnels....
  • Commented on Central Banking on Mars!
    The Drawing Room Cabinet version is even prettier -- the sewing machine retracts vertically rather than flipping over....
  • Commented on Covid on Mars
    It's playing JavaScript tricks. If you've got JavaScript enabled and you click on an image, it displays it as an overlay on the same page with pageurl#imageid as the name. If you don't have it enabled, clicking the image takes...
  • Commented on The Laundry Files: an updated chronology
    But our T&T have an advantage other investigators don't have - a TARDIS, so they can go back in time to find out what really happened to the disappearing children. That sounds somewhat similar to the premise of Crime...
  • Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
    If you were unpleasantly inclined, a thin bit of wire stretched between two solid objects then add a stasis field would make the mythical cutting-heads-off-motorcycles a real thing. That would also come in very handy to protect low bridges from...
  • Commented on Trapped in the wrong trouser-leg of time
    That reminds me of Sir Arnold's diary in the Yes, Prime Minister novelisation: It is true, doubtless, that some Civil Servants are incompetent, but certainly not enough for a politician to notice. A better idea might be that Civil Servants...
  • Commented on "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" 2017 continued.
    In this timeline, I can see the proven and fast-to-build RBMK design looking awfully attractive......
  • Commented on Magic systems and my world building process
    A setting that's known for its multiple magic systems is Lawrence Watt-Evans' 'Ethshar' universe, which started off as an RPG setting. Some of the magical systems are very mechanistic, such as sorcery (constructing magical gadgets) or warlockry (psychokinetic manipulation of...
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