Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Peter D. Tillman
Michael Dirda has this to say:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28395-2003Sep4?language=printer
'Good Omens opens in Paradise, on a nice day, but with thunderstorms
threatening. "I think it was a bit of an overreaction, to be honest,"
says the serpent to the angel Aziraphale. "I mean, first offense and
everything. I can't see what's so bad about knowing the difference
between good and evil, anyway." Crawly is the serpent's name, but he has
decided that it's just not him, and he's planning to change it. "You've
got to admit it's a bit of a pantomime, though," he adds. "I mean,
pointing out the Tree and saying 'Don't Touch' in big letters. Not very
subtle, is it? I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or a
long way off? Makes you wonder what He's really planning."
"Best not to speculate, really," answers Aziraphale. "You can't
second-guess ineffability." '
Gaiman & Pratchett dedicate this book to G.K. Chesterton, and you can
see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Book Reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
Dr. Fidelius
>see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
>the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
>of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
I found it to be an absolute delight of a book, and my ten-year-old daughter
agreed when she read it over this summer. She used it as her "Favourite Book I
Read This Summer" for her classroom's poster board. She had the only poster
which mentioned the Antichrist.
The Wife is slowly becoming accustomed to concerned calls from school
officials...
---
Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Curator of Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
You cannot reason a man out of a position he did not reach through reason.
...free the Murray Hill 7...
Gage Kurricke
>
>Gaiman & Pratchett dedicate this book to G.K. Chesterton, and you can
>see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
>the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
>of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
>
>
>
I couldn't stand it. To me, there's a huge difference between silly and
funny. Good Omens was way too far on the silly side for my tastes. To
each their own.
Gage
Chad Irby
drfid...@aol.commoriom (Dr. Fidelius) wrote:
> I found it to be an absolute delight of a book, and my ten-year-old daughter
> agreed when she read it over this summer. She used it as her "Favourite Book
> I
> Read This Summer" for her classroom's poster board. She had the only poster
> which mentioned the Antichrist.
>
> The Wife is slowly becoming accustomed to concerned calls from school
> officials...
Why? Did the girl misspell "Beelzebub" in her notes?
Or was the pentagram incomplete? That can cause all *sorts* of problems
in the classroom.
Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.
Elisabeth Riba
> "Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message news:<tillman-69CF72...@news.fu-berlin.de>...
> > Michael Dirda has this to say:
> So *he's* got the rare edition that substitutes "Anastasia Nutter" for
> "Anathema Device"...Aziraphale will be so jealous!
I recently read _In the Beginning_, a nonfiction book about the history
behind the King James translation of the Bible.
I was deeply disturbed to discover that most of the misprinted Bibles
described in Aziraphale's collection were *genuine*. [Including the
"Wicked Bible" which commanded "Thou shalt commit adultery"] I'm still
pretty sure that the "Bugger Alle Thys" Bible is a creation of Messrs.
Gaiman and Pratchett, but after reading about many of the other
misprinted versions, I'm sorely tempted to email them and make sure.
--
------> Elisabeth Riba * http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/ <------
"[She] is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
They control information. Don't ever piss one off."
- Spider Robinson, "Callahan Touch"
Terry Pratchett
<l...@osmond-riba.org> writes
>I
>I'm still
>pretty sure that the "Bugger Alle Thys" Bible is a creation of Messrs.
>Gaiman and Pratchett, but after reading about many of the other
>misprinted versions, I'm sorely tempted to email them and make sure.
>
to me three time asking about it, however.
Oh, and we made up one of the others, too.
--
Terry Pratchett
David J. Loftus
> Gaiman & Pratchett dedicate this book to G.K. Chesterton, and you can
> see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
> the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
> of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
I've heard extremely mixed responses to the book, and I find it difficult
to imagine it could be anywhere in a league with Gaiman's _Neverwhere_
or _American Gods_ . . . and I enjoy reading Pratchett on a regular
basis, too.
But maybe I'll give it a try.
David Loftus
Htn963
That's what I figured so I'll pass. Pratchett's brand of humor is rarely
laugh-out-loud funny in any case, and the thought of Gothboy Gaiman trying to
be funny is scary.
--
Ht
|Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
--John Donne, "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"|
John Johnson
"David J. Loftus" <dlo...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:62894d4c.03091...@posting.google.com...
I think _Good Omens_ is an interesting book in that those who generally
don't care for Terry Pratchet (like myself) consder it among the best that
he's written, and those who don't generally care for Gaiman likewise
consider it some of the best that he's written. Either way I'd love to see
another collaboration between the two.
> But maybe I'll give it a try.
You definitely ought to do that.
--
John Johnson
Tony Hursh
> I think _Good Omens_ is an interesting book in that those who generally
> don't care for Terry Pratchet (like myself) consder it among the best that
> he's written, and those who don't generally care for Gaiman likewise
> consider it some of the best that he's written. Either way I'd love to see
> another collaboration between the two.
>
I like them both, personally, but yes, another collaboration would be very
welcome.
"Two great tastes that taste great together". Oh, wait, that's Reese's
Peanut Butter Cups.
Bruce McGuffin
> If there's anyone here who hasn't yet read this small comic masterpiece,
> Michael Dirda has this to say:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28395-2003Sep4?language=printer
>
> 'Good Omens opens in Paradise, on a nice day, but with thunderstorms
> threatening. "I think it was a bit of an overreaction, to be honest,"
> says the serpent to the angel Aziraphale. "I mean, first offense and
> everything. I can't see what's so bad about knowing the difference
> between good and evil, anyway." Crawly is the serpent's name, but he has
> decided that it's just not him, and he's planning to change it. "You've
> got to admit it's a bit of a pantomime, though," he adds. "I mean,
> pointing out the Tree and saying 'Don't Touch' in big letters. Not very
> subtle, is it? I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or a
> long way off? Makes you wonder what He's really planning."
>
> "Best not to speculate, really," answers Aziraphale. "You can't
> second-guess ineffability." '
>
> Gaiman & Pratchett dedicate this book to G.K. Chesterton, and you can
> see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
> the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
> of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
On the whole I enjoyed Good Omens. Like Pratchett's other work it's a
bit spotty. Mostly funny, though in places the jokes come a little
too far apart. Anyway, at the time I'd never read any Chesterton. Now
that I've gotten through half a volume of his short stories (The
Wisdom of Father Brown -- I'd 'of flung it accross the room if it
wasn't a library book), I have to ask: why would a couple of
presumably funny and intelligent guys like Gaiman and Pratchett
dedicate something to Chesterton? He's dull, often predictable, and
tediously moralistic. He works so hard to get in his digs at those
secular humanists [1] that it detracts from the story. Was the
dedication supposed to be a joke? Are Pratchett and Gaiman
crypto-authoritarian-Catholics who mourn the passing of a more
spiritual age? Or did I get a bad batch of Chesterton?
Bruce
[1] Not to mention Jews, Masons, liberals, socialists, or anyone
else who doesn't think the middle ages was the high point of western
civilization.
Luna
I liked it much better than American Gods and somewhat better than
Neverwhere. Anyone else feel like the movie Dogma ripped off Good Omens in
some respects?
--
-Michelle Levin (Luna)
http://www.mindspring.com/~lunachick
http://www.mindspring.com/~designbyluna
Luna
htn...@cs.com (Htn963) wrote:
Wow, people can be so different. I DO find Pratchett laugh-out-loud funny,
and Gaiman is pretty funny too. Some of the Sandman stories are hilarious,
and Neverwhere definitely had its comic moments.
David Silberstein
Luna <luna...@NOSPAMmindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <62894d4c.03091...@posting.google.com>,
> dlo...@earthlink.net (David J. Loftus) wrote:
>
>> "Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message
>> news:<tillman-69CF72...@news.fu-berlin.de>...
>> > Gaiman & Pratchett dedicate this book to G.K. Chesterton, and you can
>> > see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
>> > the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
>> > of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
>
>I liked it much better than American Gods and somewhat better than
>Neverwhere. Anyone else feel like the movie Dogma ripped off
>Good Omens in some respects?
>
There was definitely a GoodOmenesque feel to it, yes. Kevin Smith
thanks Neil Gaiman in the credits, so I suspect that any similarity
was quite intentional.
Chad Irby
Luna <luna...@NOSPAMmindspring.com> wrote:
> Wow, people can be so different. I DO find Pratchett laugh-out-loud funny,
> and Gaiman is pretty funny too.
I was rereading "The Last Continent" last night, and the bit with the
parakeets and the drop bears had me giggling. Again.
Damien Sullivan
>I recently read _In the Beginning_, a nonfiction book about the history
>behind the King James translation of the Bible.
>I was deeply disturbed to discover that most of the misprinted Bibles
>described in Aziraphale's collection were *genuine*. [Including the
>"Wicked Bible" which commanded "Thou shalt commit adultery"] I'm still
I think when Gaiman includes weird facts in his fiction that they're generally
true. Not always, especially if something looks modified directly for his
story (like Augustus's "the seven who are not gods"), but often.
-xx- Damien X-)
Mark Atwood
> Michael Dirda has this to say:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28395-2003Sep4?language=printer
>
> 'Good Omens opens in Paradise, on a nice day, but with thunderstorms
> threatening. "I think it was a bit of an overreaction, to be honest,"
> says the serpent to the angel Aziraphale.
Here is the prologue, as interpreted and drawn by Phil Foglio:
http://www.studiofoglio.com/fun/fun4goodomens1.html
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right,
m...@pobox.com | people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
nyra
The german translation suggests that one of them was the "eye for an
eye, ear for an ear" bible, which, a cursory web search says, isn't
notorious.
An "ears to ear" bible ("Who hath ears to ear, let him hear"),
however, does exist.
BTW, the 5th Sura of the Qu'ran gives the full list: eye for an eye,
nose for a nose, ear for an ear, tooth for a tooth, wound for a wound.
--
Das Mittel dieser Schrift / Macht, dass dich kein' Kugel trifft.
Asa vitom rahoremarhi ahe menalem renah oremi nasiore ene nahores ore
eldit ita ardes inabe ine nie nei alomade sas ani ita ahe elime arnam
asa locre rahel nei vivet aroseli ditan Veloselas Herodan ebi menises
asa elitira eve harsari erida sacer elachimai nei elerisa.
- H.J.C.v.Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus Teutsch
Craig Richardson
How's this for a hypothesis: Your expectations of <Good Omens> are
wrong. It will exceed (pessimistically) low expectations but not meet
(overly) high expectations. Up to two standard deviations or so -
there'll always be outliers.
--Craig
--
I start to wish Bob Melvin would walk out to the mound, ask Freddy if he
was injured, and then kick him in the balls so he can call in an
emergency replacement from the bullpen --Derek Zumsteg in BP, 5/13/2003
Ian Montgomerie
> Gage Kurricke wrote:
> >I couldn't stand it. To me, there's a huge difference between silly and
> >funny. Good Omens was way too far on the silly side for my tastes. To
> >each their own.
>
> That's what I figured so I'll pass. Pratchett's brand of humor is rarely
> laugh-out-loud funny in any case, and the thought of Gothboy Gaiman trying to
> be funny is scary.
Basically, it read to me as if Gaiman designed the basic plot and
setting and Pratchett strung together the sentences. I don't find
Pratchett laugh-out-loud funny either - but I appreciate the satire
and the sheer creativity of Discworld's version of various things.
Good Omens, however, is limited to the real world plus a fairly
pedestrian riff on standard western/Christian mythology. Didn't
impress me nearly as much.
Terry Pratchett
<mcgu...@edinburgh.ll.mit.edu> writes
>
>, I have to ask: why would a couple of
>presumably funny and intelligent guys like Gaiman and Pratchett
>dedicate something to Chesterton?
Because we wanted to, which was quite a good reason. And probably
because we both had in mind his book The Man Who Was Thursday. There's a
faint echo of that book in GO.
>He's dull, often predictable, and
>tediously moralistic.
Sez you. But I have to admit that I find the Father Brown stories
unreadable. Amazingly, those are the titles that seem to have stayed in
print.
He had a huge output, of essays as well as novels A lot of it is pretty
average , some of it sparkles. At his best, he could get across in one
line a point or argument that would take someone else 500 words. But he
was of his time, both in outlook and style; you can either get through
that, or not.
> Was the
>dedication supposed to be a joke? Are Pratchett and Gaiman
>crypto-authoritarian-Catholics who mourn the passing of a more
>spiritual age?
Curses, Fr. Gaiman, he has seen through our disguise...
--
Terry Pratchett
Eric Walker
[...]
>I think _Good Omens_ is an interesting book in that those who
>generally don't care for Terry Pratchet (like myself) consder
>it among the best that he's written, and those who don't
>generally care for Gaiman likewise consider it some of the
>best that he's written. . . .
Curious. I like both authors quite a lot, and granted it's
been a good while since I last read _Good Omens_, but had it
appeared solely under Pratchett's name I'd never have thought
twice about there being any material difference between it and
his other work in style and form, whereas had it appeared
solely under Gaiman's name--well, what with YOU KNOW WHO and
suchlike in it, it scarcely could, could it?--but that aside,
I'd have thought it uncharacteristic of past work.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://greatsfandf.com
Eric Walker
[...]
>Anyway, at the time I'd never read any Chesterton. Now
>that I've gotten through half a volume of his short stories
>(The Wisdom of Father Brown -- I'd 'of flung it accross the
>room if it wasn't a library book), I have to ask: why would a
>couple of presumably funny and intelligent guys like Gaiman
>and Pratchett dedicate something to Chesterton? He's dull,
>often predictable, and tediously moralistic. He works so hard
>to get in his digs at those secular humanists [1] that it
>detracts from the story. Was the dedication supposed to be a
>joke? Are Pratchett and Gaiman crypto-authoritarian-Catholics
>who mourn the passing of a more spiritual age? Or did I get a
>bad batch of Chesterton?
Short answer: Yes.
The Father Brown stories are mainly tendentious, though many of
them still have enough mooreffoc[1] value to be interesting.
The best of Chesterton is probably in _The Club of Queer
Trades_, _Manalive_, and _The Man Who Was Thursday_, though
some of his somewhat-less-known characters--Gabriel Gale (_The
Poet and the Lunatics_), Mr. Pond (_The Paradoxes of Mr.
Pond_), the assorted quartet who tell their tales in _Four
Faultless Felons_--are often delightful, being notably less
didactic than the good Father.
[1] Chesterton's specialty was showing a thoroughly bizarre
seeming that, when one at last adjusts one's perspective, is
seen to be everyday reality perceived from an angle. Doing
that sort of thing is, arguably, the very purpose of fiction,
and of speculative fiction especially. The term "mooreffoc",
which Chesterton fancied for that effect, was derived--if
memory serves--from Charles Dickens, who as a child, saw it as
a sign and puzzled much over it till he realized that he was
looking in a mirror at the ordinary cafe sign "coffeeroom".
Chesterton sought to show the wonders inherent in "ordinary"
reality through various mooreffoc means. Chesterton had an
enormous, ebullient, and wonderful sense of humor that does not
much show in the Father Brown stories.
how...@brazee.net
On 15-Sep-2003, htn...@cs.com (Htn963) wrote:
> That's what I figured so I'll pass. Pratchett's brand of humor is
> rarely
> laugh-out-loud funny in any case, and the thought of Gothboy Gaiman trying
> to
> be funny is scary.
I keep putting this off. But I read Gaiman and Gene Wolfe's attempt to be
funny together, and enjoyed it - for what it was.
Andrew Plotkin
You are, I assume, referring to _A Walking Tour of the Shambles_ --
which was wonderful.
At World Fantasy last year, I heard Gaiman read two pieces: "The
Emerald Letter", and a bit for the upcoming _Thackery T. Lambshead
Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases_.
Both were funny. The former was a Holmes/dark fantasy pastiche, so it
was funny in a ewwww-creepy way, but we laughed.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
John Johnson
ra...@owlcroft.com says...
> On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 10:44:25 -0600, John Johnson wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >I think _Good Omens_ is an interesting book in that those who
> >generally don't care for Terry Pratchet (like myself) consder
> >it among the best that he's written, and those who don't
> >generally care for Gaiman likewise consider it some of the
> >best that he's written. . . .
>
> Curious. I like both authors quite a lot, and granted it's
> been a good while since I last read _Good Omens_, but had it
> appeared solely under Pratchett's name I'd never have thought
> twice about there being any material difference between it and
> his other work in style and form, whereas had it appeared
> solely under Gaiman's name--well, what with YOU KNOW WHO and
> suchlike in it, it scarcely could, could it?--but that aside,
> I'd have thought it uncharacteristic of past work.
considerably in _Good Omens_. For some that would be a negative, for me
it's definitely a positive. I think that Gaiman has a touch of irony
and subtle humor, which I really appreciate, and I found quite a bit of
that in _Good Omens_ (though some of the more overt stuff was there
too).
--
John Johnson
Robert Carnegie
>, Ian Montgomerie <i...@ianmontgomerie.com> writes
>htn...@cs.com (Htn963) wrote in message news:<20030915124350.0
>3304.0...@mb-m11.news.cs.com>...
There was an informed discussion, which you might like to look
up via <http://groups.google.com/>, about who did do what in this
book in newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett recently, the "informed" part
coming mostly from Mr. Pratchett himself ;-) IIRC, at the chapter
level or below, they took it in turns to write bits and then edit the
other chap's bits. And I've read an interview with Gaiman, years
ago, where he half-seriously asserted that witnessing Pratchett's
skilled craftsman approach to pushing out the pages (as
opposed, probably, to the artist squirming in agonies of literary
creation) was intimidatingly impressive.
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
--
Surely no-one has read down to here. (from author Warren Ellis)
Elisabeth Riba
> Curious. I like both authors quite a lot, and granted it's
> been a good while since I last read _Good Omens_, but had it
> appeared solely under Pratchett's name I'd never have thought
> twice about there being any material difference between it and
> his other work in style and form, whereas had it appeared
> solely under Gaiman's name--well, what with YOU KNOW WHO and
> suchlike in it, it scarcely could, could it?--but that aside,
> I'd have thought it uncharacteristic of past work.
I disagree, but at the time I discovered _Good Omens_, the primary past
work of Gaiman's which I had read was _Don't Panic_, and I found that the
two were very stylistically similar.
> --
> Cordially,
> Eric Walker, webmaster
> Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
> http://greatsfandf.com
--
Elisabeth Riba
> I liked it much better than American Gods and somewhat better than
> Neverwhere. Anyone else feel like the movie Dogma ripped off Good Omens in
> some respects?
Well, the closing credits of _Dogma_ do give special thanks to Gaiman &
Pratchett, which I suppose makes it tribute rather than rip-off...
Leo Breebaart
> Terry Pratchett schrieb:
> >
> > >I'm still pretty sure that the "Bugger Alle Thys" Bible is a
> > >creation of Messrs. Gaiman and Pratchett, but after reading about
> > >many of the other misprinted versions, I'm sorely tempted to email
> > >them and make sure.
> >
> > We made it up. Various large and prestigious US libraries have
> > written to me three time asking about it, however.
> >
> > Oh, and we made up one of the others, too.
>
> The german translation suggests that one of them was the "eye for an
> eye, ear for an ear" bible, which, a cursory web search says, isn't
> notorious.
>
> An "ears to ear" bible ("Who hath ears to ear, let him hear"),
> however, does exist.
This is what the Annotated Pratchett File at
<http://www.lspace.org/books/> has to say about it:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOOD OMENS
- [p. 50/26] "And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles,
individually named from errors in typesetting."
There have been many Infamous Bibles, and all of the ones mentioned in
this paragraph, except for the _Charing Cross Bible_ and the _Buggre Alle
This Bible_, actually did exist.
As usual, it is Brewer who has all the relevant information. The
_Unrighteous Bible_ and the _Wicked Bible_ are as Terry and Neil describe
them. In addition, there is:
_Discharge Bible_: An edition printed in 1806 containing "discharge" for
"charge" in 1 Timothy 5:21: "I discharge thee before God [...] that thou
observe these things [...]".
_Treacle Bible_: A popular name for the Bishops' Bible, 1568 because in
it, Jeremiah 8:22 reads "Is there no treacle in Gilead" instead of "Is
there no balm in Gilead".
_Standing Fishes Bible_: An edition of 1806 in which Ezekiel 47:10 reads:
"And it shall come to pass that the fishes [instead of: fishers] shall
stand upon it."
Also mentioned by Brewer are the _Ears To Ear Bible_, the _Rosin Bible_
and the _Rebecca's Camels Bible_.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
('Brewer' in the above refers to _The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_, by
Ebenezer Cobham Brewer)
--
Leo Breebaart <l...@lspace.org>
francis muir
<l...@lspace.org> wrote:
Brewer is a great read but as the title says "...Fable".
Bruce McGuffin
Bruce McGuffin wrote:
> > Was the
> >dedication supposed to be a joke? Are Pratchett and Gaiman
> >crypto-authoritarian-Catholics who mourn the passing of a more
> >spiritual age?
>
> Curses, Fr. Gaiman, he has seen through our disguise...
I was going to ask if you're really Terry Pratchett, but I can't
think of a likely case that would have you reply "no".
Bruce
Luna
Elisabeth Riba <l...@osmond-riba.org> wrote:
> In rec.arts.sf.written Luna <luna...@nospammindspring.com> wrote:
> > I liked it much better than American Gods and somewhat better than
> > Neverwhere. Anyone else feel like the movie Dogma ripped off Good Omens in
> > some respects?
>
> Well, the closing credits of _Dogma_ do give special thanks to Gaiman &
> Pratchett, which I suppose makes it tribute rather than rip-off...
I did not know that, thanks for that bit of info. That's cool.
Helgi Briem
<mcgu...@edinburgh.ll.mit.edu> wrote:
>Terry Pratchett <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> writes:
>> Curses, Fr. Gaiman, he has seen through our disguise...
>
>I was going to ask if you're really Terry Pratchett, but I can't
>think of a likely case that would have you reply "no".
It almost certainly is. Mr. Pratchett posts regularly here
and on alt.books.pratchett.
--
Helgi Briem hbriem AT simnet DOT is
Excuses the munged address. My last
e-mail address was killed by spammers.
Louann Miller
<l...@lspace.org> wrote:
>nyra <ny...@gmx.net> writes:
>> An "ears to ear" bible ("Who hath ears to ear, let him hear"),
>> however, does exist.
>
>This is what the Annotated Pratchett File at
><http://www.lspace.org/books/> has to say about it:
Speaking of which, is "four books behind" a necessary condition of the
annotations file? I thought they'd finally gotten caught up, at least
for a while.
Leo Breebaart
> >This is what the Annotated Pratchett File at
> ><http://www.lspace.org/books/> has to say about it:
>
> Speaking of which, is "four books behind" a necessary condition of the
> annotations file? I thought they'd finally gotten caught up, at least
> for a while.
The problem with annotating the works of Terry Pratchett is that the
moment you stop working on the damn thing for a few months (or, okay, a
few years -- there's also this thing called Real Life which occasionally
interferes), he'll have gone and written about a dozen or so more books
by the time you get back to it, so it tends to get out of date much,
much faster than, say, the Annotated Douglas Adams File would.
The good news, however, is that as of this month I've started working on
another big round of updates, and I hope to release an actual,
up-to-date version 9.0 of the Annotated Pratchett File before the end of
the year, with incremental book-by-book updates appearing on the website
as soon as they're done.
--
Leo Breebaart <l...@lspace.org>
Mark Blunden
I've been trying to find 'The Man Who Was Thrusday' locally on-and-off for
awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which made effective use of passages
from the book to punctuate the game's story. I must get round to tracking it
down sometime.
> [1] Chesterton's specialty was showing a thoroughly bizarre
> seeming that, when one at last adjusts one's perspective, is
> seen to be everyday reality perceived from an angle. Doing
> that sort of thing is, arguably, the very purpose of fiction,
> and of speculative fiction especially. The term "mooreffoc",
> which Chesterton fancied for that effect, was derived--if
> memory serves--from Charles Dickens, who as a child, saw it as
> a sign and puzzled much over it till he realized that he was
Isn't it missing an 'e' in that case?
--
Mark.
* Pride, humility... oh, and there's the mind-numbing fear
David Silberstein
Mark Blunden <m.blunde...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
[G. K. Chesterton]
>
>I've been trying to find 'The Man Who Was Thrusday' locally on-and-off
>for awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which made effective use
>of passages from the book to punctuate the game's story.
>I must get round to tracking it down sometime.
Perhaps if you were to spell that last word as "Thursday"
your searches would have greater success?
http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/
>> [1] Chesterton's specialty was showing a thoroughly bizarre
>> seeming that, when one at last adjusts one's perspective, is
>> seen to be everyday reality perceived from an angle. Doing
>> that sort of thing is, arguably, the very purpose of fiction,
>> and of speculative fiction especially. The term "mooreffoc",
>> which Chesterton fancied for that effect, was derived--if
>> memory serves--from Charles Dickens, who as a child, saw it as
>> a sign and puzzled much over it till he realized that he was
>
>Isn't it missing an 'e' in that case?
>
Google has 40 hits on the word with one 'e', 274 with two 'e's.
Shrug.
Mark Blunden
> In article <bk7qsh$q90rk$1...@ID-36588.news.uni-berlin.de>,
> Mark Blunden <m.blunde...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> [G. K. Chesterton]
>
>>
>> I've been trying to find 'The Man Who Was Thrusday' locally
>> on-and-off for awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which made
>> effective use of passages from the book to punctuate the game's
>> story.
>> I must get round to tracking it down sometime.
>
> Perhaps if you were to spell that last word as "Thursday"
> your searches would have greater success?
>
> http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/
Good point. :)
Thanks for the link - now to find time to read it.
>>> [1] Chesterton's specialty was showing a thoroughly bizarre
>>> seeming that, when one at last adjusts one's perspective, is
>>> seen to be everyday reality perceived from an angle. Doing
>>> that sort of thing is, arguably, the very purpose of fiction,
>>> and of speculative fiction especially. The term "mooreffoc",
>>> which Chesterton fancied for that effect, was derived--if
>>> memory serves--from Charles Dickens, who as a child, saw it as
>>> a sign and puzzled much over it till he realized that he was
>>
>> Isn't it missing an 'e' in that case?
>>
>
> Google has 40 hits on the word with one 'e', 274 with two 'e's.
> Shrug.
The first thing I thought when I read the word was "does it spell something
backwards?...oh, not quite." Then I read the footnote.
--
Mark.
* There's no time like the present, and no present like time
Eric Walker
[...]
>I've been trying to find 'The Man Who Was Thrusday' locally
>on-and-off for awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which
>made effective use of passages from the book to punctuate the
>game's story. I must get round to tracking it down sometime.
As I just said elsewhere, self-serving, but:
http://greatsfandf.com/BOOKS/ManWhoWasThursday.html
>> [1] Chesterton's specialty was showing a thoroughly bizarre
>> seeming that, when one at last adjusts one's perspective, is
>> seen to be everyday reality perceived from an angle. Doing
>> that sort of thing is, arguably, the very purpose of
>> fiction, and of speculative fiction especially. The term
>> "mooreffoc", which Chesterton fancied for that effect, was
>> derived--if memory serves--from Charles Dickens, who as a
>> child, saw it as a sign and puzzled much over it till he
>> realized that he was
>
>Isn't it missing an 'e' in that case?
Only on Thrusdays.
Richard Horton
>I've been trying to find 'The Man Who Was Thrusday' locally on-and-off for
>awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which made effective use of passages
>from the book to punctuate the game's story. I must get round to tracking it
>down sometime.
My copy is a very inexpensive Wordsworth Classics edition (or
something similar) which I found in one of those Discount Mall
"Publisher's Clearinghouse" type bookstores.
It's a great book, spooky and original and extremely strange.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> It almost certainly is. Mr. Pratchett posts regularly here
> and on alt.books.pratchett.
Does Lawrence Pratchett post there, too?
Terry Pratchett
Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> writes
>
>It's a great book, spooky and original and extremely strange.
Try to get hold of The Napoleon of Notting Hill. It's at least as good.
But I suspect that the first Chesterton I read, which was The Flying
Inn, is less readily available. It concerns a couple of men (and a dog)
who go on the run with a barrel of beer and an inn sign in an England
that's coming under a weird Anglo-Muslim rule, and where alcohol has
been banned...
--
Terry Pratchett
francis muir
Pratchett" <tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Maybe the time has come to present a Chesterton mystery genre bibliography:
http://hem.passagen.se/orange/chester.htm
There are several series that are not Brown
that may appeal to those not crypto-Papists
who find the Good Father a bit hard to take.
Many think his wireless stuff for the Beeb
was ne plus ultra but that, children, was
when the choice was between Medium Wave and
Long Wave, which waves were ruled by Reith.
Chuk Goodin
Mark Blunden <m.blunde...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which made effective use of passages
>from the book to punctuate the game's story. I must get round to tracking it
>down sometime.
I'd been debating whether to get Deus Ex, but if it has passages from
"Thursday", I'll probably pick it up.
--
chuk
Chuk Goodin
The edition I read The Man Who Was Thursday in was an omnibus that
included the Flying Inn (I liked Thursday a little better -- I've actually
got about six or seven pages left in the Flying Inn and just haven't
gotten round to finishing it yet...)
It's also got the Napoleon of Notting Hill. Unfortunately, it came out
about sixty years ago, so it may be difficult to find a copy...
Never read any of the Brown books -- are they good?
--
chuk
francis muir
<cgo...@sfu.ca> wrote:
The Obligatory Books of Father Brown
I'd begin with *The Annotated Innocense of Father Brown*,
with Martin Gardner doing the annotating honours. Amazon
has this for $10+ new. This is aprticularly useful to
persons unfamiliar with the Edwardian scene in England.
David Tate
> On 15 Sep 2003 14:19:14 -0400, Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >Anyway, at the time I'd never read any Chesterton. Now
> >that I've gotten through half a volume of his short stories
> >(The Wisdom of Father Brown -- I'd 'of flung it accross the
> >room if it wasn't a library book), I have to ask: why would a
> >couple of presumably funny and intelligent guys like Gaiman
> >and Pratchett dedicate something to Chesterton? He's dull,
> >often predictable, and tediously moralistic.
You're clearly reading the wrong Chesterton, then. I find him to be
one of the wittiest writers in history, and often astonishingly
original.
> >He works so hard
> >to get in his digs at those secular humanists that it
> >detracts from the story.
One thing it's important to remember, when reading Chesterton, is that
the "secular humanists" of his day weren't anything like ours. You
really have to be familiar with the incredible bilge that was being
spouted in the name of 'science' and 'progress' in his day to believe
it. Without taking the side of religion (much less Catholicism), one
can side with Chesterton in many of his debates. I don't agree with
all of his positions, by any means, but I love the way he expresses
himself in propounding them, and I really loathe a lot of what he was
reacting against.
> > Was the dedication supposed to be a
> >joke? Are Pratchett and Gaiman crypto-authoritarian-Catholics
> >who mourn the passing of a more spiritual age? Or did I get a
> >bad batch of Chesterton?
>
> Short answer: Yes.
Agreed.
> The Father Brown stories are mainly tendentious, though many of
> them still have enough mooreffoc[1] value to be interesting.
What's more, they go downhill very quickly. The Father Brown stories
that established their reputation were all from the first collection,
_The Innocence of Father Brown_. These, and in particular the best of
these[*], stand far above the rest in quality. By the time you get
into the later collections, even readers who are fond of the little
padre are mostly hanging on through nostalgia.
> The best of Chesterton is probably in _The Club of Queer
> Trades_, _Manalive_, and _The Man Who Was Thursday_, though
> some of his somewhat-less-known characters--Gabriel Gale (_The
> Poet and the Lunatics_), Mr. Pond (_The Paradoxes of Mr.
> Pond_), the assorted quartet who tell their tales in _Four
> Faultless Felons_--are often delightful, being notably less
> didactic than the good Father.
Again, agreed.
Many of these works are in the public domain, and are available online
at http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/#FICTION
> [1] Chesterton's specialty was showing a thoroughly bizarre
> seeming that, when one at last adjusts one's perspective, is
> seen to be everyday reality perceived from an angle.
Exactly. I think of him as the foremost master of paradox (in the
rhetorical sense) that English has ever seen. His writings are full
of instances where he claims that black is white, and then proceeds to
show you that, in an important way, it is.
Here's a quick example:
"No traditions in this world are so ancient as the traditions that
lead to modern upheaval and innovation. Nothing nowadays is so
conservative as a revolution." -- from the essay "What is Right With
the World"
Or this one:
"As I feel it, the Cubists are not Cubist enough," replied the
stranger.
"I mean they're not thick enough. By making things mathematical they
make them thin. Take the living lines out of that landscape, simplify
it
to a right angle, and you flatten it out to a mere diagram on paper.
Diagrams have their own beauty; but it is of just the other sort,
They stand for the unalterable things; the calm, eternal, mathematical
sort of truths[...] -- from _The Man Who Knew Too Much_
Or this one, from _Manalive_:
===
[...]And she almost beamed as the stranger, with yet wider and almost
whirling gestures of explanation with his huge hat and bag, apologized
for having entered by the wall instead of the front door. He was
understood to put it down to an unfortunate family tradition of
neatness and care of his clothes.
"My mother was rather strict about it, to tell the truth," he said,
lowering his voice, to Mrs. Duke. "She never liked me to lose my cap
at school. And when a man's been taught to be tidy and neat it sticks
to him."
Mrs. Duke weakly gasped that she was sure he must have had a good
mother; but her niece seemed inclined to probe the matter further.
"You've got a funny idea of neatness," she said, "if it's jumping
garden walls and clambering up garden trees. A man can't very well
climb a tree tidily."
"He can clear a wall neatly," said Michael Moon; "I saw him do it."
Smith seemed to be regarding the girl with genuine astonishment. "My
dear young lady," he said, "I was tidying the tree. You don't want
last year's hats there, do you, any more than last year's leaves? The
wind takes off the leaves, but it couldn't manage the hat; that wind,
I suppose, has tidied whole forests to-day. Rum idea this is, that
tidiness is a timid, quiet sort of thing; why, tidiness is a toil for
giants. You can't tidy anything without untidying yourself; just look
at my trousers. Don't you know that? Haven't you ever had a spring
cleaning?"
===
So I agree with Eric, that
> Chesterton had an
> enormous, ebullient, and wonderful sense of humor that does not
> much show in the Father Brown stories.
...though I would amend that to "all but the earliest Father Brown
stories".
David Tate
[*] The three best Father Brown stories, IMHO, are
"The Blue Cross"
"The Queer Feet"
"The Invisible Man"
Those are #1, #3, and #5 respectively, and should be read in that
order. If you still don't think there's anything in Father Brown at
that point, you can probably safely skip the rest of them.
qazzi
cover. It was ugly. <shrug> Got into a conversation with somebody at a
convention who told me that I *had* to read it and so I picked it up.
What a terrific read.
For me, Good Omens became a "keeper" (and not the B5 kind either) in Chapter
Wednesday, when the Hound from Hell first meets its master. The transformation
from slavering menace to... well, I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't read the
book yet, but suffice to say it's a total hoot.
As for it being too "silly", what the hey, I'll take it over some of that "serious"
writing out there.
moi
Htn963 wrote:
> Gage Kurricke wrote:
> >>
> >>Gaiman & Pratchett dedicate this book to G.K. Chesterton, and you can
> >>see much of the spirit of The Man Who Was Thursday in its pages. Up with
> >>the best of Pratchett, and (to my eye) a far, far better book than any
> >>of Gaiman's solo efforts. Don't miss.
> >>
> >
> >I couldn't stand it. To me, there's a huge difference between silly and
> >funny. Good Omens was way too far on the silly side for my tastes. To
> >each their own.
>
> That's what I figured so I'll pass. Pratchett's brand of humor is rarely
> laugh-out-loud funny in any case, and the thought of Gothboy Gaiman trying to
> be funny is scary.
> --
> Ht
Eric Walker
[...]
>But I suspect that the first Chesterton I read, which was The
>Flying Inn, is less readily available. . . .
It's still in print; there is a Dover edition available at a
reasonable price.
The Ignatius Press printed a "Collected Works" edition with the
equivalent of several books per series volume. I know that
Volume VI, a 3-book omnibus volume containing _The Man Who Was
Thursday_, _The Club of Queer Trades_, and _The Ball and the
Cross_, is still in print, and the volume with _The Flying Inn_
might yet be (Amazon searches are terrible at finding omnibus
volumes by work-contained titles).
Simon Slavin
dlo...@earthlink.net (David J. Loftus) wrote:
>I've heard extremely mixed responses to the book, and I find it difficult
>to imagine it could be anywhere in a league with Gaiman's _Neverwhere_
>or _American Gods_ . . . and I enjoy reading Pratchett on a regular
>basis, too.
It requires a certain type of enjoyment. If you liked Adams'
Dirk Gently books then you'll like _Good Omens_. It has the
same slow scene-setting feel to it until you suddently find
that you're already in the action sequence, recognising that
they're completely necessary at this point of the book, but
having missed the precise point at which things got desparate.
But along the way there is lots of lyrical description of at
least three different places and ways of living. I especially
liked the ideas about how the Four Horsemen would be spending
their time until it was time for them to ride together.
This may be because I had a schoolteacher who could easily have
played the part of 'Red': 5'10", red hair, red lips, creamy
skin, kinda skinny, wore lots of satin, and for the five years
she was at our school she got either divorced or married to one
of the other teachers each year. Divorces were accompanied by
the man turning up with a face wounded by sharp fingernails or
getting his car repainted and dented (i.e. a few house paint
tins thrown on top of it). Believe it or not, before her first
marriage her name was 'Miss Savage'.
The other guy I know was 'Whitey'. Except that mine was fat,
and he was a navvy, running road drills or digging machinery.
He was the one who dug through the gas mains, tore up the
electrical wiring or put leaks in the water pipes, once two
out of three in the same day, somehow without every killing
himself in the process. Used to eat greasy burgers at lunch
and we'd often notice the wrappers in the road a few days
later.
Mark Blunden
That and 'Jacob's Shadow'.
It's a good game - unusually for its type, it's actually possible to
complete almost all of the game without killing anybody, and its plot and
characters are sufficiently compelling that, having found I could do so, I
was actually reluctant to do otherwise on subsequent replays (though it's
certainly possible to take a more 'shoot-em-up' approach - one of the game's
strengths is its flexibility).
--
Mark.
* Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a
feather and using a chicken.
Mark Blunden
> Chuk Goodin wrote:
>> In article <bk7qsh$q90rk$1...@ID-36588.news.uni-berlin.de>,
>> Mark Blunden <m.blunde...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>> I've been trying to find 'The Man Who Was Thrusday' locally
>>> on-and-off for awhile now, ever since playing Deus Ex, which made
>>> effective use of passages from the book to punctuate the game's
>>> story. I must get round to tracking it down sometime.
>>
>> I'd been debating whether to get Deus Ex, but if it has passages from
>> "Thursday", I'll probably pick it up.
>
> That and 'Jacob's Shadow'.
Which, I've just read, isn't a real book at all, but was invented purely as
background colour for the game. Pity - the 'excerpts' in the game made it
sound quite readable.
--
Mark.
* That power would set me up above the gods!
francis muir
fsnaqsbjypebsgpb...@news.individual.net, "Eric Walker"
<sfa...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:30:09 +0100, Terry Pratchett wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> But I suspect that the first Chesterton I read, which was The
>> Flying Inn, is less readily available. . . .
>
> It's still in print; there is a Dover edition available at a
> reasonable price.
>
> The Ignatius Press printed a "Collected Works" edition with the
> equivalent of several books per series volume. I know that
> Volume VI, a 3-book omnibus volume containing _The Man Who Was
> Thursday_, _The Club of Queer Trades_, and _The Ball and the
> Cross_, is still in print, and the volume with _The Flying Inn_
> might yet be (Amazon searches are terrible at finding omnibus
> volumes by work-contained titles).
The Collected Works seems to be a library edition. As I recall it also
annotates anything that flies.
Eric Walker
The editions are trade paperback, and most are available
through Amazon at reasonable prices for their size (c. $15 to
$30 US). See--
http://owlcroft.com/PHP/search.php?myid=sfandf07-20
&firstrun=Yes&blocks=1&block=1&pages=1
&authorname=g.+k.+chesterton&authortype=author-like
&sort=%252Bpricerank&bookname=works&booktype=title
&publisher=ignatius&booksonly=on&subjectname=
&subjecttype=subject&ppb=10&keys=&keytype=keywords&isbn=
[URL, naturally, to be all on one line]
They each have an introduction that--from the few samples I've
seen--add useful information and insight to the works.
Gage Kurricke
>
>As for it being too "silly", what the hey, I'll take it over some of that "serious"
>writing out there.
>
>
>
I'm learning to appreciate the many different kinds of writing styles.
I used to be really harsh on books that didn't fit my specific tastes.
If everyone read only what I liked, we'd all be forever depressed.
Gage
Htn963
>I passed on Good Omens for a long time because I didn't like the looks of the
>cover. It was ugly. <shrug>
I'll bet you've never read any books published by BAEN.
>Got into a conversation with somebody at a
>convention who told me that I *had* to read it and so I picked it up.
I hope she/he also gave you her/his phone number.
>What a terrific read.
>For me, Good Omens became a "keeper" (and not the B5 kind either)
Oh, ho! I've only begun reading Babylon 5 fiction but I take it this is a
reference to Mollari, yes?
> in Chapter
>Wednesday, when the Hound from Hell first meets its master. The
>transformation
>from slavering menace to... well, I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't
>read the
>book yet, but suffice to say it's a total hoot.
>As for it being too "silly", what the hey, I'll take it over some of that
>"serious" writing out there. moi
For me a bad or even just mediocre funny book is a much dire experience
than a bad serious book, so I'm more picky. At least with the latter, I can
actually laugh at it...with the former, I don't know what the hell I can do
with it.
And I should note that I don't read Pratchett for the humor, but the
satire. The two sometimes overlap but shouldn't be confused with each other.
--
Ht
|Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
--John Donne, "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"|
Mike Gallagher
I saw it in Borders this week, beside The Napoleon of Notting Hill and a
book of essays. I didn't recognise the publisher.
--
to reply, replace | 'It is better to light a flamethrower
'spamtrap' with | than to curse the darkness.'
'mikegallagher' | - Terry Pratchett
Justin Bacon
>I think the pastiche/parody inherent in Pratchett's work is toned down
>considerably in _Good Omens_.
Gaiman seems to give the work a very different foundation in some places, and I
can definitely sense his touch in many of the characters. GOOD OMENS reminds me
of Pratchett's SMALL GODS and Gaiman's "Murder Mystery" (for different
reasons).
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Ewa Pawelec
> presumably funny and intelligent guys like Gaiman and Pratchett
> dedicate something to Chesterton?
You aren't reading the right Chesterton's book.
EWaP HF FH
--
Ewa Pawelec, Zakład Fizyki Plazmy UO
Power corrupts, but we all need electricity
Linux user #165317
Justin Bacon
> And I should note that I don't read Pratchett for the humor, but the
>satire. The two sometimes overlap but shouldn't be confused with each other.
I think you'd enjoy GOOD OMENS, then. It's probably more of a satire than
anything else I've read by Pratchett.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Will Linden
>What's more, they go downhill very quickly. The Father Brown stories
>that established their reputation were all from the first collection,
>_The Innocence of Father Brown_. These, and in particular the best of
>these[*], stand far above the rest in quality. By the time you get
>into the later collections, even readers who are fond of the little
>padre are mostly hanging on through nostalgia.
"
???? I found the last "uncollected" story, "The Vampire of the Village",
uproarious, with its English Village with all the obligatory appurtenances
(including, of course, a retired Admiral, without which no English village
is complete). That is the one where Brown shows that the English know
nothing about the Church of England. And the ending has to be classic...
"And now admit I have kept my promise to show you something in your own
village more creepy than a corpse stuffed with poison... the coat of alive
parson stuffed with a blackmailer."
"Yes", said the doctor, "if it came to company on a long railway journey
I should prefer the corpse."
I also love "The Flying Fish", where the "sceptic" says something "could
be explained by telepathy", and the "mystic" retorts that "If a medieval
witch appeared and turned me into a baboon, you would say it was only
atavism.". Perhaps it is different where you come from, but I frequently
encounter "debunkers" like that... "There are no such things as miracles,
they are only extraphysical phenomena."
Oh, and R.A. Wilson stole the plot of "The Blast of the Book" for MASKS
OF THE ILLUMINATI, thereby giving it away to anyone who had read Father
Brown.
--
Will Linden wli...@panix.com
http://www.ecben.net/
Magic Code: MAS/GD S++ W++ N+ PWM++ Ds/r+ A-> a++ C+ G- QO++ 666 Y
Will Linden
>On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:30:09 +0100, Terry Pratchett wrote:
>The Ignatius Press printed a "Collected Works" edition with the
>equivalent of several books per series volume. I know that
>Volume VI, a 3-book omnibus volume containing _The Man Who Was
I was a subscriber to the Collected Works, and publication simply stopped
without explanation about a third of the way through. Long before they got
to "The Return of Don Quixote". Or the second volume of "Collected
Poems"... the first volume had quite a few which were not in the previous
"Collected Poems".
Will Linden
>The Collected Works seems to be a library edition. As I recall it also
>annotates anything that flies.
However, there are no footnotes on any references that actually NEED
explaining.
David Silberstein
>>I think the pastiche/parody inherent in Pratchett's work is
>>toned down considerably in _Good Omens_.
>
>GOOD OMENS reminds me of Pratchett's SMALL GODS and Gaiman's
> "Murder Mystery"
Ahem, correction: "Murder Mysteries".
^^^
I understand that the author has said that the title is a
Clue.
John Johnson
"Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030920144659...@mb-m15.aol.com...
Neither one of which I've read, so I can't really comment. Is Muder
Mysteries a short story or a full length novel? If the former, which
collection is it published in?
--
John Johnson
(To reply send email to smiley...@hotmail.com)
David T. Bilek
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I've always assumed I'm missing something. Is there more to the story
than the fact that the narrator is a murderer? I thought that bit was
so completely obvious that the idea that Gaiman considers that it
needed "clues" makes me wonder if there was a deeper mystery I missed.
-David
David Silberstein
John Johnson <smileyman20...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>"Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20030920144659...@mb-m15.aol.com...
>> Gaiman's "Murder Mystery" (for different reasons).
>
>Neither one of which I've read, so I can't really comment. Is Muder
>Mysteries a short story or a full length novel? If the former, which
>collection is it published in?
>
"Murder Mysteries" is a short story, and was collected in
/Angels and Visitations/ (which you problably won't be able to find),
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0963094424/
and also /Smoke & Mirrors/ (which you can find very easily),
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060934700/
and was also published in a standalone graphic format
(OK, a hardcover comic book) with art by P. Craig Russell.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/156971634X/
It was also turned into an audio play for the Seeing Ear theater,
and can still be heard here if you happen to the Realaudio player:
http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/
Christopher Adams
> Chuk Goodin wrote:
>> "Thursday", I'll probably pick it up.
>
> That and 'Jacob's Shadow'.
>
> It's a good game - unusually for its type, it's actually possible to
> complete almost all of the game without killing anybody, and its plot and
> characters are sufficiently compelling that, having found I could do so,
> I was actually reluctant to do otherwise on subsequent replays (though
> it's certainly possible to take a more 'shoot-em-up' approach - one of
> the game's strengths is its flexibility).
Have you ever played either of the "Hitman" games? In many cases, despite the
name, it's possible to complete most missions without killing anyone other than
the target.
--
Christopher Adams - SUTEKH Functions Officer 2003
Factual Errors: Punching a shark in the nose as it's coming to attack you will
result in you being eaten, not in the shark trying to surface.
Andrew Plotkin
It's a short story. It's in _Smoke and Mirrors_.
Gaiman's also done a comic-book adaptation and an audio-play
adaptation, both quite good. I'd say the original prose version is
best, however. The audio format can't convey the ineffable atmosphere
clearly enough, and the comic book's imagery is too concrete to convey
it right.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
David Tate
> In <9d67e55e.03091...@posting.google.com> dt...@ida.org (David Tate) writes:
>
> >What's more, they go downhill very quickly. The Father Brown stories
> >that established their reputation were all from the first collection,
> >_The Innocence of Father Brown_. These, and in particular the best of
> >these[*], stand far above the rest in quality. By the time you get
> >into the later collections, even readers who are fond of the little
> >padre are mostly hanging on through nostalgia.
> "
> ???? I found the last "uncollected" story, "The Vampire of the Village",
> uproarious, with its English Village with all the obligatory appurtenances
> (including, of course, a retired Admiral, without which no English village
> is complete). That is the one where Brown shows that the English know
> nothing about the Church of England. And the ending has to be classic...
> "And now admit I have kept my promise to show you something in your own
> village more creepy than a corpse stuffed with poison... the coat of alive
> parson stuffed with a blackmailer."
> "Yes", said the doctor, "if it came to company on a long railway journey
> I should prefer the corpse."
It's a fair cop. I stand corrected -- there are, in fact, many good
moments even in the later stories. Even, as you note, some good
entire stories.
However, I do maintain that the average quality of the stories in the
later collections never matched _The Innocence of Father Brown_, and
the tendency toward peevish preaching increased. (Of course, even bad
Chesterton is frequently very entertaining, even while being
annoying.)
David Tate
Robert Carnegie
<erky...@eblong.com> writes
>Here, John Johnson <smileyman20...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:20030920144659...@mb-m15.aol.com...
>> > of Pratchett's SMALL GODS and Gaiman's "Murder Mystery"
>> > (for different reasons).
>>
>> Neither one of which I've read, so I can't really comment. Is
>> former, which collection is it published in?
>
>It's a short story. It's in _Smoke and Mirrors_.
Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
* Stephen Donaldson's "Daugher of Regals", for instance, is pretty
much a novella in the volume _Daughter of Regals_. But I'm not
sure what you do with Ace Doubles ;-) (They're a nuisance to
orderly shelving, too.)
Robert Carnegie at home, rja.ca...@excite.com at large
--
Surely no-one has read down to here. (from author Warren Ellis)
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <bkj0vp$hu5$1...@reader2.panix.com>, Andrew Plotkin
> <erky...@eblong.com> writes
> >Here, John Johnson <smileyman20...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> "Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >> news:20030920144659...@mb-m15.aol.com...
> >> > GOOD OMENS reminds me
> >> > of Pratchett's SMALL GODS and Gaiman's "Murder Mystery"
> >> > (for different reasons).
> >>
> >> Neither one of which I've read, so I can't really comment. Is
> >> Murder Mysteries a short story or a full length novel? If the
> >> former, which collection is it published in?
> >
> >It's a short story. It's in _Smoke and Mirrors_.
>
> Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
> book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
>
> * Stephen Donaldson's "Daugher of Regals", for instance, is pretty
> much a novella in the volume _Daughter of Regals_.
That's the ASCII rendering scheme I use. Some people, as exemplified
above, write book titles LIKE THIS.
My vague understanding is that it's not exactly a short-long
distinction. Italics (or _underscore_ text in unformatted text) are
used for a work which is found (or searched for) as a unit. Quote
marks are used for parts of a unitary work.
(For a while I was referring to short text adventures in quotes and
long ones with underscores, but I eventually decided that was a false
analogy, because they're all released individually. And sometimes
collected in various ways, both long and short ones.)
So my chapbook of Hodgell's _Child of Darkness_ is properly referred
to that way, even though it's a short story (and is also collected in
the recent anthology _Blood and Ivory_.)
Yes, the scheme is really not consistent in the face of chapbooks. Web
sites with on-line text, well, the whole idea starts to go floop.
(There's an underlying assumption that you are always really referring
to a physical realization of a text, never to the text itself.)
If you're still reading this, you should consider a career as a
semiotician.
John Schilling
> Chuk Goodin wrote:
>> "Thursday", I'll probably pick it up.
>
> That and 'Jacob's Shadow'.
>
> It's a good game - unusually for its type, it's actually possible to
> complete almost all of the game without killing anybody, and its plot and
> characters are sufficiently compelling that, having found I could do so,
> I was actually reluctant to do otherwise on subsequent replays (though
> it's certainly possible to take a more 'shoot-em-up' approach - one of
> the game's strengths is its flexibility).
If you've found a way to get past Walter Simmons (sp?, the nano-augmented
FEMA chief) without killing him, I'm impressed.
As for me, I went through the first few missions my first time out without
killing anyone (and without using the reset button). And I like the fact
that it costs to do so - tranquilizer darts are *not* instantaneous, and it
takes some cleverness to work around that limitation.
But once I ran into the terrorists holding hostages in the subway and
rigging the place with explosives, I figured killing them all as quickly
and efficiently as possible was a more ethical and satisfying plan. Still
kept to a non-lethal policy w/re civilians, local cops, and UNATCO foot
soldiers, though, and still favored stealth over firepower.
And I highly recommend the game to anyone who is at all interested in that
sort of thing. It does have some grating problems coming from its heritage
as a first-person shooter; ammunition and even flashlight batteries being
things you cannot buy in stores or have issued by the quartermaster but
must find scattered implausibly about the landscape, and said flashlight
batteries lasting maybe two minutes even when used in something as undemanding
as a flashlight. The tactical flexibility collides annoyingly with a very
rigid strategic game plan.
But, in addition to being a good game as such, it's a fine SF novel presented
in an immersive and someone interactive format. Vaguely cyberpunk, but that
subgenre benefits particularly from the immersive storytelling, and doesn't
seem as dated as printed-text cyberpunk now does.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Nancy Lebovitz
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
>book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
>
I'm thinking about using colons (:A Song of Ice and Fire:) and seeing
if I can influence general practice.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Mike Schilling
"Nancy Lebovitz" <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:y9vbb.2251$qJ6.1...@monger.newsread.com...
> In article <LMm5v2AijXb$Ew...@redjac.demon.co.uk>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >
> >Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
> >book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
> >
> Do you have a recommendation for series titles?
>
> I'm thinking about using colons (:A Song of Ice and Fire:) and seeing
> if I can influence general practice.
For many series (not aSoIaF) the colon would be anatomically correct.
Mark Atwood
>
> It was also turned into an audio play for the Seeing Ear theater,
> and can still be heard here if you happen to the Realaudio player:
>
> http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/
IMO, this is the best version.
It's a story that requires that slow pace, and that voice...
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right,
m...@pobox.com | people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Robert Carnegie
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> writes
>In article <LMm5v2AijXb$Ew...@redjac.demon.co.uk>,
>Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>
>>Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
>>book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
>>
>Do you have a recommendation for series titles?
>
>I'm thinking about using colons (:A Song of Ice and Fire:) and seeing
>if I can influence general practice.
I've just been using quote marks. For one thing, series titles
aren't always official, but colloquial.
Another start-and-end delimiter might be called for. I'm not sure if
< > and [ ] should be considered available. If you use / /
emphatically enough, it might go.
This can't be the first time this issue has been considered, can it?
Has someone previously come to a conclusion about good
practice? It doesn't seem they've managed to spread it, though.
Feel free to try your influence on me ;-)
John McCarthy
works are to be found at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. Links
to about 20,000 other books are there. The html edition of
...Thursday at Bartleby.com is eminently readable on line. So far I
like the book quite well.
2. I much admire the optimistic moral aspect of _Good Omens_ and also
of Terry Pratchett's _The Last Hero_. I particularly like the last
bit of giving Prometheus a sword to deal with the eagle who has been
eating his liver.
3. Chesterton could be a ferocious propagandist when the occasion
arose. I have often wished for the occasion and the talent to imitate
the following.
ANTICHRIST, OR THE REUNION OF CHRISTENDOM: AN ODE
"A BILL WHICH HAS SHOCKED THE CONSCIENCE OF EVERY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
IN EUROPE." -- Mr. F. E. Smith, ON THE WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT BILL.
Are they clinging to their crosses,
F. E. Smith,
Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses,
Are they, Smith?
Do they, fasting, tramping, bleeding,
Wait the news from this our city?
Groaning "That's the Second Reading!"
Hissing "There is still Committee!"
If the voice of Cecil falters,
If McKenna's point has pith,
Do they tremble for their altars?
Do they, Smith?
Russian peasants round their pope
Huddled Smith,
Hear about it all, I hope,
Don't they, Smith?
In the mountain hamlets clothing
Peaks beyond Caucasian pales,
Where Establishment means nothing
And they never heard of Wales,
Do they read it all in Hansard
With a crib to read it with --
"Welsh tithes: Dr. Clifford Answered."
Really, Smith?
In the lands where Christians were,
F. E. Smith,
In the little lands laid bare,
Smith, O Smith!
And the Tory name is blessed,
Since they hailed the Cross of Dizzy
On the banners from the West!
Men don't think it half so hard if
Islam burns their kin and kith,
Since a curate lives in Cardiff
Saved by Smith.
It would greatly, I must own,
Soothe me, Smith,
If you left this theme alone,
Holy Smith!
For your legal cause or civil
You fight well and get your fee;
For your God or dream or devil
You will answer not to me.
Talk about the pews and steeples
And the Cash that goes therewith!
But the souls of Christian people . . .
-- Chuck it, Smith!
G. K. Chesterton
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
francis muir
McCarthy" <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
It was what Chesterton took for Birkenhead's dishonesty that occasioned this
satirical rebuke. For another glimpse at FE (aka Lord Birkenhead) and his
brand of Xtianity take a look at the film *Chariots of Fire*, the part where
Liddell (good morning, Iain) is being quizzed by FE and others on the
Olympic Committee for his refusal to run on Sunday. Chesterton never
satirized persons like Shaw with whom he violently disagreed on almost
everything and was always prepared to do so in their debates up and down the
country. In some respects and in particular in their shared Catholicism
Chesterton reminds me of Pope and this poem you have quoted draws something
from the *Dunciad*.
J. Del Col
> 1. Links to_The Man Who was Thursday_ and about 20 other Chesterton
> works are to be found at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. Links
> to about 20,000 other books are there. The html edition of
> ...Thursday at Bartleby.com is eminently readable on line. So far I
> like the book quite well.
>
> 2. I much admire the optimistic moral aspect of _Good Omens_ and also
> of Terry Pratchett's _The Last Hero_. I particularly like the last
> bit of giving Prometheus a sword to deal with the eagle who has been
> eating his liver.
>
> 3. Chesterton could be a ferocious propagandist when the occasion
> arose. I have often wished for the occasion and the talent to imitate
> the following.
> > Russian peasants round their pope.....
>
This would have been a great surprise to the Russian peasants.
Ob book: Dostoevsky --A Writer's Diary-- Dosty's anti-papist paranoia at its
zenith.
J. Del Col
francis muir
c0577cc.03092...@posting.google.com, "J. Del Col"
<delc...@mail.ab.edu> wrote:
You have your popes confused. When Chesterton says:
"Russian peasants round their pope" he is not refering
to the Pope of Rome. He understood that there were
several hierarchies in the old Xtian churches.
Will Linden
>It was what Chesterton took for Birkenhead's dishonesty that occasioned this
>satirical rebuke. For another glimpse at FE (aka Lord Birkenhead) and his
>brand of Xtianity take a look at the film *Chariots of Fire*, the part where
Or the LETTERS of C.S. Lewis, where he describes how Birkenhead was
mercilessly guyed by the Oxford Union. "It is hard to account for his
behavior unless we accept the explanation that he was drunk at the time,
or the subtler explanation that he was NOT."
Will Linden
>> > Russian peasants round their pope.....
>>
>This would have been a great surprise to the Russian peasants.
POP is simply the Slavic word for "priest"... and leads to formations
like "protopope", "archpope" and even "archprotopope".
francis muir
<wli...@panix.com> wrote:
> In <BB943905.1318E%francis....@balliol.org> francis muir
> <francis....@balliol.org> writes:
>
>
>> It was what Chesterton took for Birkenhead's dishonesty that occasioned this
>> satirical rebuke. For another glimpse at FE (aka Lord Birkenhead) and his
>> brand of Xtianity take a look at the film *Chariots of Fire*, the part where
>
>
> Or the LETTERS of C.S. Lewis, where he describes how Birkenhead was
> mercilessly guyed by the Oxford Union. "It is hard to account for his
> behavior unless we accept the explanation that he was drunk at the time,
> or the subtler explanation that he was NOT."
Walter Elliot has this exchange with his daughter Anne over another Smith:
Mrs Smith.
A widow Mrs Smith lodging in Westgate Buildings!
A poor widow barely able to live, between thirty and forty; a mere Mrs
Smith, an every-day Mrs Smith, of all people and all names in the world, to
be the chosen friend of Miss Anne Elliot, and to be preferred by her to her
own family connections among the nobility of England and Ireland!
J. Del Col
> In <c0577cc.03092...@posting.google.com> delc...@mail.ab.edu (J. Del Col) writes:
>
>
>
> >> > Russian peasants round their pope.....
> >>
>
> >This would have been a great surprise to the Russian peasants.
>
>
> POP is simply the Slavic word for "priest"... and leads to formations
> like "protopope", "archpope" and even "archprotopope".
I stand corrected.
J. Del Col
Konrad Gaertner
>
> In article <y9vbb.2251$qJ6.1...@monger.newsread.com>,
> Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> writes
> >In article <LMm5v2AijXb$Ew...@redjac.demon.co.uk>,
> >Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
> >>book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
> >>
> >Do you have a recommendation for series titles?
> >
> >I'm thinking about using colons (:A Song of Ice and Fire:) and seeing
> >if I can influence general practice.
>
> I've just been using quote marks. For one thing, series titles
> aren't always official, but colloquial.
>
> Another start-and-end delimiter might be called for. I'm not sure if
> < > and [ ] should be considered available. If you use / /
> emphatically enough, it might go.
>
> This can't be the first time this issue has been considered, can it?
> Has someone previously come to a conclusion about good
> practice? It doesn't seem they've managed to spread it, though.
>
> Feel free to try your influence on me ;-)
Lately, I've been using nothing. I've seen < > and * * used, and
I don't see any problem with the latter (the former should be
reserved for [fake] HTML tags).
--KG
Sebastian Bleasdale
>As for me, I went through the first few missions my first time out without
>killing anyone (and without using the reset button). And I like the fact
>that it costs to do so - tranquilizer darts are *not* instantaneous, and it
>takes some cleverness to work around that limitation.
The best way that I found was to get souped up speed and hand to hand combat
ability, and to run around knocking people out with a police batton, or
ideally just run past them before they can react.
--
Sebastian You are a piece of grit and
the world is your oyster
John Schilling
>John Schilling wrote:
>>As for me, I went through the first few missions my first time out without
>>killing anyone (and without using the reset button). And I like the fact
>>that it costs to do so - tranquilizer darts are *not* instantaneous, and it
>>takes some cleverness to work around that limitation.
>The best way that I found was to get souped up speed and hand to hand combat
>ability, and to run around knocking people out with a police batton, or
>ideally just run past them before they can react.
The riot baton never worked for me, not sure why. The cattle prod or
whatever it was officially called was of course perfect for sneak
attacks. But the winning combination was tranquilizer darts plus
tear gas, the latter disorienting them long enough for the former
to take effect. Gas first, then tranquilize, or set a proximity
fused tear gas grenade in an appropriate chokepoint and let them
rush into the trap as they try to rush the SOB who just shot them
with a tranq dart.
John McCarthy
gimmick.
2. It reminded me of Conrad's _The Secret Agent_, which was published
two years earlier in magazine form. Do any of you literati know
whether an influence has been argued?
John McCarthy <j...@Steam.Stanford.EDU> writes:
> 1. Links to_The Man Who was Thursday_ and about 20 other Chesterton
> works are to be found at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. Links
> to about 20,000 other books are there. The html edition of
> ...Thursday at Bartleby.com is eminently readable on line. So far I
> like the book quite well.
[and indeed finished it]
Eric Walker
[...]
These things are in the realm of what is technically known as
"style". There are no set rules of style as there are with,
say, grammar: style rules vary from publication institution to
publication institution, and even more from person to person
when not writing for formal publication. All that said, there
are a few institutional style manuals that have achieved
eminence, and are cited as "the rules" by many places other
than the ones that created them (and most of the eminent ones
agree on most things).
In the U.S., one commonly cited manual is the University of
Chicago Press's _Chicago Manual of Style_. I believe that the
latest edition (which matters with these thingies) is the 15th,
but all I have is the 14th.
Skimming a bit, I find:
"Titles and subtitles of published books, pamphlets,
proceedings and collections, periodicals, and newspapers and
sections of newspapers published separately . . . are set in
italics . . .
--which would be _italics_ to us. Then there is:
Titles of articles and features in periodicals and
newspapers, chapter titles and part titles, titles of short
stories, essays, and individual selections in books are set
in roman [sic] type and enclosed in quotation marks.
And--drum roll, please, Anton--
Titles of book series and editions are capitalized and set in
roman type without quotation marks. The words _series_ and
_edition_ are lowercased when they are not part of the title.
Chicago History of American Civilization series
So we are, if we follow that, to write (or type) things like--
Tubb's Dumarest series
or
the Radix Tetrad by Attanasio
I'm not a big fan of the _Chicago_ in any event, and my own
preference is to enclose such terms in quotation marks.
More problematic, for me anyway, is how to designate sets of
related books. It is emphatically *not* true that every
collection of books with some connecting thread is either an
Xology or a series.
There are two issues: 1) what sort of animal is the thing; and
2) how do we intelligently designate it?
Taking the Humpty-Dumpty prerogative, my own answers--though
still not settled--have been these.
. A "series" is a collection of books whose relation is
that they present the same characters or are placed in
the same setting, but whose member books are largely or
wholly independent of one another (and usually have either
minor or quite slow evolution of character or setting).
. An "Xology" is a set of books that can stand each on its
own but which, when considered _ensemble_, act
synergistically to convey some idea or ideas larger than
any one alone carries; Xologies have a set number of
member books and cannot (artistically) be expanded once
complete. The traditional number is 3, for plausible
artistic reasons.
. A "set" (that is a tentative term so far) is a collection
of books that are, for all practical purposes, one very
large book split into separate volumes for mechanical (and
financial) publishing purposes--_The Lord of the Rings_ is
more or less the archetype, but the form is common today.
. And one for which I don't even have a tentative name, but
which is common: books that have some _development_ from
one to the next (and so are not simply a "series"), but
which are _fairly_ independent and able to stand alone (and
so are not a "set"), and which are open-ended--more can be
added at any time without upsetting some balance achieved--
and thus not an Xology. (An example at random: James
Blaylock's "Escargot" tales.)
That's not some strict set of categorization rules, and if any
perceive a whole other category, please, describe it.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://greatsfandf.com
Zspider
> I've heard extremely mixed responses to the book, and I find it difficult
> to imagine it could be anywhere in a league with Gaiman's _Neverwhere_
> or _American Gods_ . . . and I enjoy reading Pratchett on a regular
> basis, too.
***********
It's been quite a while but I recall enjoying NEVERWHERE too. At
the time I picked it up my reading was still restricted to what I
could find in the little B. Dalton bookstore at the mall. It was
decidedly different. The girl vampires were an interesting varia-
tion on the status quo, and the netherworld that existed inside
the normal one was well done.
I've got AMERICAN GODS, but for a couple years now I've been
reading authors new to me.
Michael Robison
David J. Loftus
I thought either book would make an awesome movie, for folks who want
to use CGI to bring something truly imaginative to the screen.
David Loftus
Justin Bacon
>David Silberstein <davids_aat_k...@foilspam.invalid> writes:
>>
>> It was also turned into an audio play for the Seeing Ear theater,
>> and can still be heard here if you happen to the Realaudio player:
>>
>> http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/
>
>IMO, this is the best version.
>
>It's a story that requires that slow pace, and that voice...
The first time I experienced the story was when Neil Gaiman read it at the '93
Chicago ComicCon. That was very cool.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
(Might have been the '94 ComicCon. No wait, that's not right. Gaiman wasn't a
guest at the '94 con. Although he did briefly crash a Harlan Ellsion panel.
Anyway...)
Simon Slavin
schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) wrote:
>If you've found a way to get past Walter Simmons (sp?, the nano-augmented
>FEMA chief) without killing him, I'm impressed.
When you're fighting him in the underground place it's possible
to dodge back down the previous door and make him follow you.
Then you just dodge back out again and keep running. He's not
clever enough to follow you all the way back to the surface.
There's a style of playing Doom called 'Quaker Doom' where you
try to finish the entire game without killing anyone (except
for the levels where you have to kill the boss or you can't end
the level). It's possible to play Deus Ex the same way.
By the way, did you know that it's possible to save your
brother's life and keep him alive all the way to the end of the
game ? If you do that you meet him later at an unexpected
place.
Deus Ex is one of my all-time favourite games. And I just got
a new computer with fast graphics so I'm about to reload it and
play it with good graphics quality for the first time.
ObRASW, ObRAB: Umberto Eco: _Foucault's Pendulum_. Good book.
Simon Slavin
na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>
>>Book titles _Go Like This_; short story titles (which may be also
>>book titles - short story album titles*) "Go Like This". Right?
>>
>Do you have a recommendation for series titles?
>
>I'm thinking about using colons (:A Song of Ice and Fire:) and seeing
>if I can influence general practice.
I've always used underlines for all titles. I tend to be vague
about which stories were published as books and which were published
inside compilations anyway.
Gerry Quinn
>> It's been quite a while but I recall enjoying NEVERWHERE too. At
>> the time I picked it up my reading was still restricted to what I
>> could find in the little B. Dalton bookstore at the mall. It was
>> decidedly different. The girl vampires were an interesting varia-
>> tion on the status quo, and the netherworld that existed inside
>> the normal one was well done.
>>
>> I've got AMERICAN GODS, but for a couple years now I've been
>> reading authors new to me.
>
>I thought either book would make an awesome movie, for folks who want
>to use CGI to bring something truly imaginative to the screen.
I thought _Neverwhere_ was *originally* a (BBC?) TV series. Quite good
too.
- Gerry Quinn
Luna
ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote:
Yes it was. And yes it was.
--
-Michelle Levin (Luna)
http://www.mindspring.com/~lunachick
http://www.mindspring.com/~designbyluna
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <%oCcb.33288$pK2....@news.indigo.ie>,
> ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote:
>
> > In article <62894d4c.03092...@posting.google.com>,
> > dlo...@earthlink.net (David J. Loftus) wrote:
> > >> It's been quite a while but I recall enjoying NEVERWHERE too. At
> > >> the time I picked it up my reading was still restricted to what I
> > >> could find in the little B. Dalton bookstore at the mall. It was
> > >> decidedly different. The girl vampires were an interesting varia-
> > >> tion on the status quo, and the netherworld that existed inside
> > >> the normal one was well done.
> > >>
> > >> I've got AMERICAN GODS, but for a couple years now I've been
> > >> reading authors new to me.
> > >
> > >I thought either book would make an awesome movie, for folks who want
> > >to use CGI to bring something truly imaginative to the screen.
> >
> > I thought _Neverwhere_ was *originally* a (BBC?) TV series. Quite good
> > too.
>
Not, however, a series that made use of much CGI. Aside from Dave
McKean's video-art title sequence.
I thought it was a wonderfully imaginative and vivid production, but I
can't say it looks high-budget or high-tech.
(Now available on DVD in the US.)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
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