Wanda Pedersen > Recent Status Updates

My body has been turning against me for a while now, acting like it's no longer happy to be here. The worst part is that my mind is still sharp. I am constantly aware of my body's rebellion.

Zoe watched the drive fly away and congratulated herself on a hostage exchange well done. Really. Ten out of ten. Would exchange again.

So he scanned the bank of the river and tried to think of all the ways it could be worse. It could have been raining. Or snowing. Kozlov could have sent someone who didn't work alone. Sawyer could have jumped overboard without the Go Bag strapped to his back. So at least he had three guns, six thousand Euros, four passports, two knives, and one half-dead and mostly naked amnesiac twin shivering in his arms.

THINGS THAT I DO KNOW
A list by Alex Whatsername

- my name is Alex
- I'm in Paris
- the hottest guy I have (probably) ever seen is after me
- He's not the only one

Then we got to a border and found the only option was to rent a ground vehicle and drive across two unaffiliated zones because both had zero mass trasport. Zero. Mass. Transport. This is supposed to be a civilized space station, in space, why the fuck am I driving a ground vehicle to get to a fucking port on a fucking--
(Emotion check: I am absolutely fine.)

Risk assessment just hit the roof.
I'm not sure I like having risk assessment be more accurate. It keeps scaring the shit out of me.

I used the various restraints to secure the hostiles to each other and the pod's safety rail. Hostile Two started to stir and I used the stun weapon on him.
(Emotion check: Feeling pretty good about this, actually.)

I said, "We're not sacrificing anybody." It just came out, I couldn't help it.
(Emotion check: Apparently there is an easier way to do things, but I wouldn't know. I like to do it the hard way, and take as much physical and emotional damage as possible.)

I hate a lot of things, but I didn't know I hated toruses until I got here.

It's stupid not to use logic when you're constructing flow charts and databases, etc. But it's not particularly helpful for threat and risk assessment. Priorities reorder too fast in high-threat percentage situations, humans exist, and so on.
(Save for later: Check wonky risk assessment module for excessive logic statements. That would explain a lot.)

People often express surprise at the idea of a historian like Ada writing science fiction, as if the past and the future are opposites. But there is nothing more like the future than the past: long spans of time with events happening, societies changing, technologies arriving and disrupting; both are spaces where history happens, and both hinge on the present.

Romance was the first part of the book market whose readers enthusiastically embraced the e-reader, making it the sphere that made publishers and electronics manufacturers take e-books seriously as a model. Romance readers were the perfect market, since they tend to read huge numbers of books fast and once.

Romance as a genre is concerned with the pressures of money, so the genre virtually always features it, just as fantasy basically always features magic, and science fiction virtually always features questions of physics or biology.

And, before we start thinking that it's a sign of a bad writer to struggle with writing the scene after the kingdom is saved, talk to anyone who's been involved in a production of Henry V and they'll tell you how hard it is, after the exciting victory at Agincourt is over, to get the audience to engage with the peacemaking and wooing-the-princess sequence at the end.

When the US split from England in the late eighteenth century, in addition to being separate nations, the two became rival centers of English-language publishing, and developed rival distribution networks, which evolved over time into why today North American rights and UK/Commonwealth rights tend to be sold separately.

Old SF works sometimes look very clunky, as if they're inventing the wheel--because they are inventing the wheel, explaining common SF concepts like telepathy or time dilation in plodding detail because they're writing for audiences who (unlike current ones) hadn't met these ideas before. Modern SF assumes we know the basics.

One big difference between genre fantasy and magical realism is that the genre fantasy contract promises that the consequences of the fantastic element will be deep and significant, consistent through the world, while in magical realism the fantastic element will not affect the larger world and serves mainly as an allegory to help character(s) undergo character development.

I began piling cups and saucers on to a tray. I suppose it was cowardly of me, but I felt that I wanted to be alone, and what better place to choose than the sink, where neither of the men would follow me?

"I eat as many birds as possible," said Mrs. Bone when we were sitting down to roast chicken. "I have them sent from Harrod's or Fortnum's, and sometimes I go and look at them in the cold meats department. They do them up very prettily with aspic jelly and decorations. At least we can eat our enemies."

Today the preacher was to be Archdeacon Hoccleve, a name that was unknown to me, and I guessed that he would be some old country clergyman who would certainly mumble. But I was completely wrong. He was an elderly man, certainly, but of a handsome and dignified appearance and his voice was strong and dramatic.

Nice to see the Archdeacon from Some Tame Gazelle!

"I shall look forward to hearing your paper," I said, feeling that some effort was required and that it was up to me to make it.
"Oh, you will find it deadly dull," he said. "You mustn't expect too much."
I forebore to remark that women like me really expected very little--nothing almost.

We might compare such novels to gymnastics, in which the mystery with a deeply original structure is like a uniquely choreographed floor routine, while the formulaic mystery is like the athlete doing a specific vault, fun because we are watching a master of the art perform a set of formulaic motions with outstanding excellence.

I had observed that men did not usually do things unless they liked doing them.