Sternhammer

To each his own, of course, but coy swearing is still swearing.

Actually I do sympathise. I swear too much (but not more than the average Aussie) and wish I could train myself to use some other intensifiers in my language but most of them lack intensity. By Jove! My word! Sweet zombie Jesus! Drokk!

Technically not ‘convicted’ until sentenced but that day is coming.

Yes, additive colour theory is based on red, green and blue (RGB). These are the colours you see if you look at your TV screen very closely.

Subtractive colour theory uses cyan, magenta and yellow. In printing black, abbreviated ‘K’, is added for contrast—CMYK. These are the inks used to print the dots you see if you look closely at a magazine photo.

I think people are confused by this because they’re taught a bastardised version of subtractive colour theory, using red, blue and yellow, at a very early age.

Tower Bridge has its own website which has a little information about what’s inside (though it’s mostly trying to get you to do a tour).

Yes, they’re good books. Ripping yarns. Their charm lies in seeing the underdog earthlings (humans and cetaceans) fight against the odds. There’s a strong vein of what you might call earthling exceptionalism running through the series.

I managed to get through the first book but it was embedded cultural mores like that that made it tough going for me. That’s probably a shortcoming in me more than any fault of the book—science fiction should take you to places that challenge you—but it wasn’t worth it for me personally.

Re: dickie for car boot (what Americans would call the ‘trunk’); some old two-seater cars had a third seat in the boot, known as a ‘dickie-seat’, at least in the UK, so perhaps it’s an old term that still survives in Indian English.

I wonder if doing the Moon Walk would get you burnt at the stake for witchcraft a few hundred years ago.

I re-read the trilogy and progressed through them at a good pace but got bogged down on the later books (which I haven’t read before). I think the writing shows its age and are a little longwinded at times.

Groundbreaking story in concept and scope, that hasn’t changed for me.

I’m not a coffee drinker but my partner is. She says she had two decent cups of coffee in Italy (two weeks in Rome, Bolzano, and Venice) but every day in Australia she has better. Australians are complete coffee snobs.

I was replying to Tekila’s comment about ‘real life’ cows which I think are best thought of as ‘sentient’ but I appreciate your point.

Sentient: able to perceive or feel things.

Sapient: 1. wise or wanting to appear wise 2. relating to the human species, of the species Homo sapiens.

I haven’t seen anyone else recommend Prospect (2918).

I think your daughter might really enjoy it because the lead role is a young female, played by Sophie Thatcher, and it has a terrific far-future, hard SF vibe and great production values for an indie feature. Also the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal is very good in it as well. Killer sound track too.

And yet it often leads to more satisfying narratives.

I use it constantly in city and rural areas and find it works pretty well for me.

To be fair, Kojima games are primarily vehicles for cut-scene delivery. Gameplay is a bonus.

Sorry, formatting error. Should be clear now.

I’m with you. I’m enjoying the Foundation series and, in a way, the departures from the book keep me guessing. But it’s not Asimov. When it stared I wondered how they were going to handle the constantly changing key characters but it seemed they just couldn’t so we have clones, uploads and hypersleep to keep people around for the long span of the stories. That’s disappointing but I’m still enjoying the ride.

Confession: I re-read the first three Foundation books last year but got bogged down in the fourth. The ideas are wonderful and changed science fiction with their scope but the writing is rather dated and, frankly, they are quite long-winded at times. Apologies for the sacrilege.

Have you read any Iain M Banks’ The Culture novels? Incredible writing. Most of his books have interesting twists in them, some of which will fuck you up. They are the type of books that you wish you could read again for the first time. The author died in 2013 so there are no more coming.

• Consider Phlebas
• The Player of Games
• Use of Weapons
• The State of the Art
• Excession
• Inversions
• Look to Windward
• Matter
• Surface Detail
• The Hydrogen Sonata

Other SF books by Banks:

• Against a Dark Background
• Feersum Endjinn
• The Algebraist

Indeed. I’m Australian and my partner and I did a round-the-world cruise for three months in 2018. We’re not rich, I used my long-service leave to take the time off work. It wasn’t cheap but no regrets, would do it again in a heartbeat.