emotional compromise & the novelist’s event horizon

I stayed up too late last night to watch Cory Booker smash that old racist bastard’s filibuster record into dust, and it was fully worth it. As soon as I woke up this morning, I picked up my phone to see how long he’d held the floor in the end, and the first thing I saw was “Pour one out for Madmartigan, lads.” So between Cory Booker, Val Kilmer, & a lack of sleep, I’m pretty emotionally compromised this morning (which, phrased like that, sounds like it’s much more scandalous than…

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It’s only forever…

…not long at all… I wouldn’t think that David Bowie’s death would hit me so hard. It’s just so damned unexpected. Elizabeth Bear said once that David Bowie would still be cool at the heat death of the universe. I think I vaguely expected him to still be *there*, at the heat death of the universe. I mean, I don’t know, right? The 80s. Jareth. Let’s Dance. Under Pressure. The truth is that my Bowie oeuvre is almost strictly 80s. I only heard his Christmas carol with Bing Crosby when…

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Small Gods

I was not a fan of Terry Pratchett. I read several of his very early Discworld books when I was still in high school, probably around 1988. The fact that I read *several* is more an indication of how much I read than how much I liked them, but I actually stopped reading them before I ran out of them to read, which *was* an indication of my dislike. It wasn’t Pratchett in particular; I eventually realised I didn’t care for most satire in prose form. In 1996 I was…

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