Rewatching Tomb of the Cybermen and it occurs to me that the cautionary tale of Eric Klieg has definitely been lost to time. Klieg would definitely be all for Flock cameras and AI.

Farringdon Road cyclists are likely to be my supervillain origin story.

Good morning! We’ve been enjoying ‘Legacy of Ash’ by @thetowerofstars.bsky.social 😼

In terms of getting me over the hump and actually putting metaphorical pen to paper, it was David Ashton’s excellent McLevy radio plays. It’s been a while since the results saw light of day, but you never know… (Yes, I know that’s not a book, but it’s the hand on heart truth.)

90% of writing is staring into space.

I love them sufficiently that I bought *new* paperbacks for hot tub reading 🙂

It’s because up until about 15 years ago they were just reprinting the same innards, having never updated them. I had that set and ditched it for chasing around after old paperbacks.

I’ve had good editors, great editors, asleep-at-the-wheel editors and I’m -sure-the-author-secretly-meant-this-contradictory-thing editors, but blind robot stupidity is new. Maclean deserves better. Proof readers are not expensive.

It’s a crying shame. Splendid books (greatest influence on my writing, bar none). But dear lord, the OCR typos. (Where the scanner guesses at a word, then throws up its hands & botches things). Net result? New errors, absent from the originals. Not on, @harpercollins.bsky.social

If it helps, I came to the conclusion about a year ago that pursuing various things to about 85% or perfect is precisely what makes me good at them. That extra 10% (nothing is 100% except assholery) would cast such a shadow of boredom that I’d never clear even 50%. And 85% is still great.

So far it's not X-COM good, but it's definitely solid.

Initial impression of Star Wars: Zero Company. Gameplay seems solid, but it continues the recent trend of Star Wars aliens just moving and sounding like Americans in costume.

Now I cast my mind back, I actually offered to reduce my advance on this series or pay for the production of the audio up front, precisely because I believed that it was important to do all or none. From the response, you’d have thought I’d asked for a slice of raw hippo.