Moe Lane's Blog, page 679
September 25, 2021
Book of the Week: Byzantium Express.
I’m very tired, so I’m just going to note that Alexander Rooksmore’s BYZANTIUM EXPRESS imagines a world where Byzantium never fell, and WWI has just begun. Alternate history purists — and some mere enthusiasts — will likely quibble at how little a difference the survival of the Byzantines made to history*, but the story is engrossing enough that I did not mind. I liked it quite a bit, really. It had the feel of realness to it.
*A world without Lepanto or the Siege of Vienna would be… significantly different from our own, surely.
It was a good event, despite the lack of zebras.
A beautiful day and everything went off without hitches, which is always nice. I wasn’t doing as much to help out as I usually try to, for various reasons, but I still managed to be useful, here and there. Oh, and I got a baronial award for service! That was very cool, and I like the enamelwork on the medallion.
But no zebras, except for the ones we brought with us. But that’s okay. They weren’t preregistered.
Moe Lane
Off to the event!
Amazing what eight hours sleep can do. Anyway: beautiful day, all the stuff I need to drop off is packed, and now I just gotta get gas and drive. Enjoy your Saturday.
September 24, 2021
Annnnnd early bed, for me.
Hopefully this isn’t the start of a cold. It’s not COVID, because if I caught something it was from my wife and she went and got a quick test. But if I wake tomorrow with ‘mere’ cold symptoms, I can’t go to the event anyway. Which will annoy me, because there’s a chance of ZEBRAS.
So here’s hoping.
It’s now officially a light content, zebra-heavy weekend posting schedule.
Got clearance to get on with things, so that’s what we’ll be doing now. Gotta run around, pick stuff up, get over to the site to help with setup, come back, find my garb for tomorrow, and get to bed earlier than is my usual wont. And after that… well, it’ll be a while before my SCA barony has another event, so I can relax.
Creature Seed: Speebras.
Speebras
Description: take a standard Grevy’s zebra, and make its stripes horizontal instead of vertical. Its legs and head are noticeably more muscular and bony than a regular zebra’s, too. Do not approach a speebra without protective gear.
Top speed: 95 mph burst, 40 mph cruising.
It is unclear why there is such a specific and sudden mutation among the wild Grevy’s zebra population. Possibly it’s because they’re endangered: evolution sometimes moves in mysterious ways. Mother Nature might have simply decided that more than doubling the speebra’s speed might help more of them survive to breed.
If that’s the (heavily anthropomorphized*) case, the results can best be described as a qualified success. Speebras can definitely outrun predators now, and even most powered off-road vehicles. They just haven’t figured out the best way to brake, yet. A speebra can take a remarkable bit of damage, at least from the front — and the species absolutely has to, because once one is up to speed it can’t always avoid immovable objects in time.
Speebras are also extremely ornery, with an aggression level that’s even higher than that of their unmutated cousins. They just don’t like humans, and have figured out that running into one results in a slightly bruised speebra — and a temporarily airborne person. The video footage of such encounters make for macabre, yet humorous, viewing… which might also be a survival trait, in this modern age. There’s already been at least one cable TV series.
*Evolution is in fact not supposed to work that way. But if the zoologists (not to mention, the increasingly more relevant cryptozoologists) are correct, nobody seems to have told evolution. There’s been a lot of weird critters out there lately, and they’re all speed-running the adaptation process…
September 23, 2021
‘Let Me Teach You How To Eat.’
The guy’s name led me astray.
Let Me Teach You How To Eat, Reverend Horton Heat
…And ain’t that a crying shame.
Ooooh New Tim Powers (STOLEN SKIES) coming out in January.
STOLEN SKIES is available for pre-order, but we all know that I’m just gonna buy the Baen EARC as soon as it’s available. Without shame, too. Giving writers money for an early look at their latest book is exactly what I want to use the Internet for, and I will be doing that until the day I die. And nobody can stop me, either.
Moe Lane
PS: I dunno, it’s about aliens or something. Tim Powers, remember?
ZEBRAS AT THE EVENT.
It could happen!
ZEBRA SIGHTING in Upper Marlboro, MD. Video from @wusa9 viewer Chris Horrell: pic.twitter.com/CI54iFpdNg
— Jeff Ackermann (@JeffAckermann) September 22, 2021
I am going to have to have some signs made up. Seriously, this is where we’re having the SCA event.
The Chock Full O’Footage DUNE international trailer.
…Well, the director’s read the book. I dunno if Villeneuve’s DUNE is gonna live up to Lynch’s, but he’s gonna give it a try.
Via Coming Soon.
