Farewell, Mr. Courtney

In the Future, Everyone Will Need a Fully Functioning Brain

I'm sticking with mono!

Free Speech!

In the interest of promoting freedom of speech, here is a link to Cartoon Brew's commentary on the youtube "Officer Bubbles" videos. Apparently, this police officer does not realize that you can make fun of people in America Canada.

More at Boing Boing.

Zombies vs. Kids

I am confident that kids will be able to take care of themselves when the zombie apocalypse comes. See evidence below:

Hungary Does the Right Thing

Dear American Government,

This is how you handle a horrifying ecological catastrophe brought about by corporate negligence.

Sincerely,
A Citizen

Wo(o)T!

Working out my thoughts on the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series...I began reading these books nearly 20 years ago (!) and have had a love/hate relationship with them ever since. I liked the first book, The Eye of the World, when I read it, but I didn't think it lived up to some of the other doorstop high fantasy quest novels out there at the time, such as Tad Williams' The Dragonbone Chair and The Stone of Farewell (Williams hadn't yet published the third volume in his trilogy, To Green Angel Tower, which I ultimately found unsatisfying). The second and third books in The Wheel of Time were better, but by the fourth and fifth I found myself wishing for a Wheel of Time: Good Parts Version. I thought Lord of Chaos was a return to form, with more of the dark elements and the same feeling of importance and dread Jordan had brought to the first few volumes. Since then, though, I've had to live with scraps of brilliance.

Moments in the series are what keep me coming back for more. While Jordan had his weaknesses as a writer, he was also capable of developing characters readers care about or hate or fear, and of occasionally writing a very moving or funny or terrifying scene. The opening of the Wheel of Time series, "Dragonmount," a brilliantly bleak seven pages from The Eye of the World, is genuinely great.

Trolloc drawing by Daniel Landerman

I just finished Knife of Dreams and found it generally more satisfying than some of the other late entries in the series. Despite the 100+ page prologue and long sections about minor characters, it had some very creepy scenes, a lot of Mat and Perrin, and a wonderful unsettling coda.

I have high hopes for Brandon Sanderson's conclusion to the series. I want to see how this all ends, and I'm sticking with it until it does.

The always engaging
OF Blog of the Fallen on Robert Jordan and The Wheel of Time
For a smart fan's perspective on the enjoyment of reading fiction that is heavy on the worldbuilding, see
Pat's Fantasy Hotlist

Wheel of Time news sites and discussion boards:
The Thirteenth Depository

Dragonmount

Pages of Prophecy

A free Wheel of Time MUD:
The Wheel of Time MUD

A great piece in The Believer about Jordan and Sanderson: The End of the Story

Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World

I've seen this video of Arthur C. Clarke discussing today's technology yesterday on a few different sites recently, but will repost it here, primarily so I can also post a link to this song.




...and what the hell, while I'm at it, how about some of this: