So this week we finished watching the first season of Pluribus, on Apple TV, and by “we finished” I mean “I finished”, because my wife checked out of Pluribus almost immediately. In fact she checked out before she even started, when I tried and failed to lure her in with the trailer:
It’s been quite a while since I did a Teaser Tuesday post, even though the whole reason I started posting on Tuesdays was that I discovered “Teaser Tuesday” is a thing and I figured I could fall back to it on weeks when I didn’t have anything else to write about, so I decided it was about time to trot one out ― not because the book I’m currently reading is any great shakes, but it has a couple of interesting things to recommend it. That book is a Skip Langdon mystery1 called Death Before Facebook, by Julie Smith; or at least, that’s what it’s called now.
So this week I was reading Burnt Worlds, a science fiction novel by S.J. Madill, in which the spaceship Borealis tests out a new hyperspace jump drive by leaping 35,000 light years away from home, whereupon said jump drive promptly explodes, leaving the ship facing a multi-year journey to get back. Of course, they only packed enough supplies for a day trip. Whoops.
I was fully prepared for Spelling Bee to reject the word “Ecotone“1. Imagine my consternation when it was accepted and (almost) ruined my scheme to get a quick-n-dirty post out of it.
So this week I decided to dip into my big pile of old papers that aren’t rejection letters, and as it happens, I’m still in the section that’s full of old Villains & Vigilantes NPC character sheets, and there at the top was a fellow will be familiar to anyone who used to participate in those games I ran, or who was writing on “Marvel Mania” at college back in the day: Magneto! Thunderbolt!
So this week I was reading The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis, a low-technology steampunk adventure where they fly around in zeppelins, but shoot at each other with muzzle-load muskets, cannons, and flintlock rifles. Because why not?
So this week I was reading Valley of the Lesser Evil, by Carl Dane, which is not (gasp!) SF, fantasy, or (despite the title) horror, but is, in fact, an honest-to-God Western. It’s even set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, as Westerns should be.
Riding into the sunset? Or riding out of the sunrise? 🤔
So if you use WordPress (which I of course do), you may have noticed a new “AI Assistant” section when creating a post. At the time of this writing (June 29th, 2024), the options available in this feature are as shown below:
Viscosity 