Kaylee: H-how did you... g-get on...? Early: Strains the mind a bit, don't it? You think you're all alone. Maybe I come down the chimney, Kaylee. Bring presents to the good girls and boys.

'Objects In Space'


Natter 67: Overriding Vetoes  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, nail polish, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


tommyrot - Nov 12, 2010 8:44:03 am PST #5168 of 30001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

So I finished the SciFi novel The Windup Girl the other day and it is amazing. OK, I don't read as much fiction as I used to, but I'd say it's the best novel I've read in a few years.

Starred Review. Noted short story writer Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories) proves equally adept at novel length in this grim but beautifully written tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation. Capt. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai of the Thai Environment Ministry fights desperately to protect his beloved nation from foreign influences. Factory manager Anderson Lake covertly searches for new and useful mutations for a hated Western agribusiness. Aging Chinese immigrant Tan Hock Seng lives by his wits while looking for one last score. Emiko, the titular despised but impossibly seductive product of Japanese genetic engineering, works in a brothel until she accidentally triggers a civil war. This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best, will garner Bacigalupi significant critical attention and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.

The world-building is amazing.

Anyone read other stuff by Bacigalupi? (Pump Six and Other Stories or Ship Breaker?)


lisah - Nov 12, 2010 8:49:50 am PST #5169 of 30001
Punishingly Intricate

Actually, that's Delaware.

What the what??? There was a tv show set in Delaware??


meara - Nov 12, 2010 8:50:07 am PST #5170 of 30001

Hah. My senior high school portrait shows bad hair (long, frizzy, out of control) and a horrible sweater, but...I think mostly still looks like me (it's the pink cheeks, and the dimples). I got a picture taken in college also, but it looks AWFUL--somehow the photographer got me where my one eye is MOSTLY closed, but the other isn't, and my smile is weird, and it looks like I had a STROKE while he was taking the picture! Needless to say, I did not purchase any of those.

My BROTHER's senior picture cracks me the hell up--he posed with the CONSTITUTION and an AMERICAN FLAG background. OMG.


megan walker - Nov 12, 2010 8:55:28 am PST #5171 of 30001
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist

What the what??? There was a tv show set in Delaware??

The only one apparently.


Tom Scola - Nov 12, 2010 8:58:07 am PST #5172 of 30001
Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

There was a tv show set in Delaware??

It's so much easier to run an Evil Conspiracy from Delaware thanks to the business-friendly corporation law.


§ ita § - Nov 12, 2010 8:58:08 am PST #5173 of 30001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

My UK high school never took class pics. My grade school class pics are deliberately awful (it was the one day I decided to wear my glasses, and I undid my plaits just before the sitting) for reasons I don't care to examine.


lisah - Nov 12, 2010 9:12:48 am PST #5174 of 30001
Punishingly Intricate

It's so much easier to run an Evil Conspiracy from Delaware thanks to the business-friendly corporation law.

That's why MY family moved there anyway.


Jesse - Nov 12, 2010 9:12:58 am PST #5175 of 30001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

Congrats, sj!!

My college pictures all looked like I was high (and I wasn't), so I didn't buy any.


Matt the Bruins fan - Nov 12, 2010 9:24:39 am PST #5176 of 30001
"I remember when they eventually introduced that drug kingpin who murdered people and smuggled drugs inside snakes and I was like 'Finally. A normal person.'” —RahvinDragand

I would think that Evening Shade would be a better choice for Arkansas' representative TV show than a reality program about the Duggars.


-t - Nov 12, 2010 9:35:29 am PST #5177 of 30001
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

What is Billy the Exterminator? I've never heard of that.