Andrew Moore's Blog, page 99

The Hottest Word of the Month or So

Be sure to use "lambent" in your story so we know you're cool. It's a given that you are, but sometimes we like to be able to appreciate it.

Increasing Sales Through Titles

Bad: Malazan
Better: Bonazan
Best: Bonerzan

Who wants to read mal books? Give me the bon books!

Turn Everything on Its Head

Instead of having a future man with a robot butler, why not have a future robot with a human butler? What do you mean, that doesn't sound like an improvement? Write the rest of the story? No way. That's your job.

Miltary Rank Q&A

Q. What about the lower ranks?
A. Oh no! I forgot!

A Fictional Rank Structure

Sometimes our ranks of today sound too Earth-centric and too, quite frankly, French. Try this arrangement instead.

Major
More Major
Big Major
Bigger Major
Biggest Major
Major Mostest

2023's Biggest Subgenres

Soporific Fantasy and Soporific Science Fiction. People already use audiobooks and tedious regular books to fall asleep, so let's optimize the process. It isn't as easy as it seems. If your book is too consciously boring, that in itself becomes interesting. Plus, people will put it down instead of struggling to read it, their eyelids closing involuntarily, the same sentence read five times in a row.

Those Who Forget

"Gentlemen! Between Mackenzie Extraplanetary Engineering's Love Cannon and Ad Astra Design's Friendship Accelerator, we're falling behind in a race we didn't know was being run. Good, clean business, the kind that made our Pan-Oort Services Consolidated what it is today, is no longer enough. Innovation is what we require, not just to stay even, but to stay ahead. Imitation won't do us any good, since all of us worked so hard to build this company that we lost our wives and friends."
The men around the table nodded and shed a few tears.
"There is, as you know, a power stronger than love. History. Just as we look through our old earnings reports when there's a dip today, all mankind finds strength in its past. That's why our engineers have developed the History Driver."
The men around the table applauded as the viewscreens showed the History Driver along with the crews working it, the sprawling exoplanet docks where several competitors repaired their cargo freighters, and the closest office of the excise people. The Driver began to fire projectiles across hundreds of millions of miles of space which tore through the hostile facilities at a constant rate as the crews loaded shell after shell.
"What are we using as ammunition?"
"Futurists frozen in the hope their brains would be thawed out, time capsules filled by bored students, books expounding grand theories based on little or no evidence that tell us more about their own era than the ones they hope to explain, transcripts of court cases that give insight into the laws and economic realities of past generations, paintings by the ancient masters, pottery made with techniques no longer understood, and that kind of thing."
"It sounds like people might want keep some of those things around."
"Yes. More than our own products. That's why we have to get rid of them."
The men around the table applauded again.
Finis

Star Ocean: The Divine Force

More like Translation: Is Bad, am I right here fellas? Mayhap inserting a couple old-timey words and phrases here and there doth ill serve us all, expecially when it's somebody like Theo who speaks with disarming casualness. You know, Japan does have a past. People there can talk like samurai or Heian court officials if they want. So if they don't, take that as a hint.

Addendum

More likely, the murderer planted the 3 to discredit the victim's ability to come up with good numerals.

The Problem with 2023

3 is the worst numeral. So unsightly. It's like the guy making it stopped halfway through. Maybe he was murdered. What a mystery!