Andrew Moore's Blog, page 38

The Next Thing in Publishing

The page margins will be made up to look like it's a heads-up display, periscope, binoculars, or other immersive framing. For fantasy? Illegible marginalia.

The Real Danger of AI

We're going to send them to other solar systems and they'll have all the thrilling adventures. We have to remember to give ourselves a good time, too.

September Warning

There isn't much of it left, so finish up anything that's left. September swimming, September sweeping, September sedition, September sermonizing, September sorting of stamps and stickers, any of it. Except that middle one.

On Spaceship Construction

How many external windows do you think the typical spaceship would have? None, right? Zero? They are cool, but consider the advantages of an isolated atmosphere.

The Difference Between Fraternity and Sorority

"Soror" is a dumb word. I don't know what the Romans were thinking with that one. "Frater" is far cooler. You can't say "soror" without its sounding like part of an insult, as in, "my soror was all like sorororor and then I was all like, we're speaking Latin, we don't say 'all like.'"

Obligations of the Dead

There was a man who, as punishment for a crime irrelevant to this history, spent a term in the land of the dead. When the end of his sentence approached, he asked the king of that land about that which confused him most about the customs there.
"Why is it, great king, that this is far from a dismal land? The dead have such feasts and entertainments as are never possible elsewhere without months to separate them, but here there is never any rest among those said to be forever resting in the matter of revels."
The king tested him with these words. "Where did you hear that this kingdom was ever dismal?" The man responded with citations from several classics, whereupon the ruler of all subjects nodded, satisfied. "It is because today the dead are deluded and think their duties done, whereas wiser men in earlier ages, relieved at last of the obstacle of sleep, set themselves ceaselessly to laborious tasks that they might not be found unprepared when at last it comes."
The man spread the warning of the ultimate monarch among the living and trained his body relentlessly, interrupting his exercises only when he judged more exertion would be wasted and never for the purpose of pleasure. Accordingly he was remembered as the first of the sword prophets. Reverent gratitude became attached to his name after at last it came, by the prepared; the unready regretted their indolence.
Finis

Adaptation Corner

Q. What's the best way to adapt The Skylark of Space?
A. Pinball game.

The Best Materials

Forget dumb old blandamantium and get up to date with double bronze, double iron, and double steel. Owing to the square cubed law, double iron is eight times as good as regular iron. Since bronze is an alloy, it ends up being twenty-four times as good in double form.

Obsolete Ideas

We need to get away from this idea that dragons aren't pefectly willing to sell their eggs at market themselves to get that treasure hoard going. Their scales too. "Dragon scale armor is rare and valuable," nah, everybody's running around in that.

Addendum

They like chocolate, studies have shown.