I’m going to be heading off to sunny North Carolina (what’s that, Sooty? It’s winter in North Carolina? It’s just going to be a load of rain and snow? I’ve been lied to? Oh)… I’m going to be heading off to North Carolina for a few days, so I’m probably not going to be blogging until Wednesday or more probably Thursday. Have fun while I’m gone!
PS If anyone’s been trying to comment and has been getting a strange error message about making “too many comments in too short a period of time”, I have no idea what the problem is, although I’m working on. Might be this pesky hosting service of mine which seemed to set the server to PST for a few hours this morning. Hopefully everything will all right in eight hours or so…
UPDATE: My diagnosis was correct and it’s all fixed, I hope. Comment away, if you so wish…
TMINE
Congratulations to Paul Simpson
A brief “Well done!” to my predecessor at Dreamwatch, Paul Simpson, who has returned to the exciting world of employment after a successful stint freelancing. He’s replacing John Freeman as editor of Titan’s Star Trek magazine. Best of luck, Paul!
Is three enough?
I’m getting worried. As you may (or may not) know, I do a “third-episode verdict” thing here. The general argument is that a pilot episode is always unrepresentative of a series, since it has a bigger budget, the format is still a bit fluid, characters might change or get recast and so on. So shows can often become completely different once they start their runs. Usually, though, the third episode is enough to see if the show is going to be worth sticking with.
Or so I thought. But now all the big new US shows are serials. They all have running themes. And they’ve all either got good or dropped off from around the fourth or fifth episode: Heroes, Jericho, Battlestar Galactica, even Men in Trees, apparently, although I’ve stopped watching, of course. Robin Hood, depending on whom you talk to, either got really good (a regular got killed) or really bad (Robin fires pies over Nottingham Castle’s walls) during the fourth episode.
What do you think? Should I change the system to “fifth-episode verdict”? It’ll be next to useless for British shows (“Here’s a show you should have been watching. You can catch the last episode next week”). There’ll be some delayed gratification. And it means I’m going to have to sit through possibly two additional episodes of rubbish for each new show, something I’m not exactly looking forward to if they’re all like Brothers and Sisters. But I’ll fall on that sword for you guys if you want me to.
The new, inadvertent six-word meme
As noted yesterday, Neil Gaiman and others were asked by Wired to compose six-word short stories. Now Marie has risen to the challenge with “Marie’s hand clutched his sonic screwdriver”.
So how about a new meme? Anyone else want to rise to the challenge? A short story composed of six words. Away you go!
UPDATE: Here’s mine: “The Earth moved… Archimedes’ fulcrum found!” Yes, a rubbish maths/physics joke. Now you know why I gave up writing fiction…
Six word short stories by some of the best writers around
Some of the top sci-fi and fantasy writers around were asked by Wired to write six-word short stories. Neil Gaiman was one of them and he highlights some of his favourites.