President Bush was at a meeting yesterday when one of his advisors told him that a Brazilian soldier had been killed in Iraq.
“OH NO!” he shouted, “That’s terrible!”
A silence fell over the room while everyone looked at him.
Bush looked back up the advisor with tears in his eyes and said “Just how many is a Brazilian?”
I considered blogging about Nova Scotia when it came out, but I decided I’d wait until I’d actually read it. Well, now I have, and I have to say it’s excellent. It’s a collection of short stories and vignettes; “speculative fiction” includes science fiction and fantasy, but also alternate histories, ghost stories, and fictions based on folklore. I know one of the editors, Andrew J. Wilson, through my friend Hannu, who is also a contributor, as are several others of the Edinburgh Writers Bloc group, including recent Hugo award-winning Charlie Stross; several Scottish Sci-Fi luminaries such as Ken McLeod are also contributors.
I found none of the stories disagreeable, and many of them were excellent. I’m not going to single particular ones out, because that would be … you know … like a proper review. But the styles and genres are very varied—yet there is a thematic unity (Scotland, Scottishness) that links them together—so there’s bound to be more than enough here to please most.
Highly recommended.
I spent the weekend in the Lake District celebrating the wedding on Saturday of Jon and Lizzie. Well done, you two. I’ll link later to wedding photos as and when they become available. Despite my views on the countryside (raze buildings, burn crops, plough the soil with salt, sell the population into bondage, etc.) I did reluctantly pursue “outdoor activities” on Sunday morning, and it transpires that I have a heretofore unknown talent in shooting things (don’t worry, only inanimate objects such as clay pigeons and targets were harmed in the making of this post). It must be all that Doom 3 I’ve played.
Ship of Fools ran a survey for the best and the worst religious (Christian, really) jokes. Read the 10 funniest and 10 most offensive.
The CulturePulp has a very good, long interview with Joss Whedon.
As I blogged previously, The Secret Of Eel Island, stars my niece Elysia Lukoszevieze. It’s being shown again, starting Saturday 17th September at 9:35am on Five.
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