Maybe this is too simplistic, but I could see a primitive society connecting filth with sickness (either causing it or resulting from it). Seems like disease would also have been linked to malign spiritual forces; people might have made the association that cleansing prevented the evil demons from making them sick, or…

Abel, but not Cain?

That's funny; I can understand the Ten Tribes explanation, but I'd never heard that one. Of course none of this has the slightest backing in scientific fact (advanced human civilizations living on earth 18 million years ago? sure, why not!) so I'm sure authors felt they had carte blanche to come up with whatever…

You'd wonder that the Nazis would want to be associated, even loosely, with a "progenitor race" that had been asserted to descent from hermaphroditic lemurs. And it's not really possible to separate the concept of Aryan from Blavatsky's theosophical wackiness; she categorized all of humanity as being descended from…

Don't forget the transfusions of human blood that will keep us True Believers young and dementia-free. Cthulhu f'tagn!

I personally use a mineral salt roll-on that smells like lavender, found at my local health food store. Most granola-type stores will carry at least one mineral-salt-type deodorant.

What would be deemed fit and unfit?

You know people would roll their eyes about it totally being a "YA remake of Cube" if this was made into a movie.

You know if they made this into a film Oscar wouldn't have a speaking role, and that would ruin everything.

I didn't realize this was written by the Hellraiser guy, but I'm not surprised. This book terrified the daylights out of me when I was younger. I think the artwork was at least partially responsible though.

Wonderful interview. To this day I still use examples from The Dispossessed when trying to explain certain points about gender relations.

We should mention that God purposely does things that endanger himself (like creating said offspring of an angel and a demon, which arguably is stronger than he is, and turning some poor dude into the Saint of Killers by completely ruining his life) simply because he wants to prove he can do so and get away with it.

My perception (and I think he may have said about as much at one point) was that Crichton didn't think science was evil, per se, but more that he felt there was massive potential for it to be abused by corporate interests. Cloning dinosaurs? potentially dangerous, but not necessarily a bad thing. Putting cloned…

Huh, and I assumed you meant to type "swatting". Thanks for expanding my vocabulary!

Off topic, but I'd never heard the word "cosh" before today and now this is the second time I'm hearing it. I gather it's a sort of club? is this British slang, or from someplace else?

I assumed the whole point of The Sims was to play God over a townful of tiny digital peons who exist solely for you to manipulate and conduct social experiments with. The notion that some people regard it as a straight-up Let's Play House sort of game is just so...odd. I make dinner and go to work every day in real…

I've been with my partner for about a decade, and when they're not around I realize that a large part of what I think I "know" is simply information I draw from them whenever it's needed. Thankfully we have nicely complementary areas of expertise.

I have read both Annihilation and Authority, and while I loved them both I'm going to be ever so slightly upset if the final book doesn't give us at least a partial explanation (or at least a sensible theory) for understanding Area X. And yet at the same time I'm wondering if the ambiguity isn't the point — why should…

I agree it's not as gripping as Annihilation, but there are some good surprises. The ending is really powerful though — it caught me by surprise, but I think that must have been intentional. Worth reading for that part alone.

When I was younger, there'd be plenty of times I was drifting off to sleep only to "hear" a loud ZAP, which always woke me back up. Didn't know that it was called 'exploding head syndrome' until recently, but yeah, it was irritating.