Is that some kind of gay porn set in Nashville?

It's a nice idea to think that there won't be any inappropriate revelations but…

Because claiming certainty where this is none is an intentional deceit. Saying "I believe X exists" is a statement of truth. Saying "X exists" when there is no actual proof is a deceit because it implies a knowledge that is false.

@Persia - Are you deliberately taunting us?

No, Canada and New Zealand are the same place in two different locations. Well, three, really.

Yeah, I wonder what Rick would have done if he'd got to the counter first. I imagine it would be a variation on 'you snooze, you lose'.

But the idea of choice was bullshit. Jabob's intervention in the lives of the candidates helped create their misery. Saying that he chose them because their lives were crap after he had pushed them in that direction only creates the illusion of free will. These people were chosen and groomed, pure and simple.

They didn't need food in the womb, why would they need it outside the womb? And we know that because there was no umbilical cord on either of them.

His name is Hurley.

But why is Hugo Reyes called Hurley? That's the key to it all, I'm sure of it!

@Rowan - I think that many people would have apoplexy at your assertion that most fantasy is simplistic. Rowling doesn't write fantasy, she writes children's fantasy, so any comparison has to be in that genre. Ursula LeGuin's 'Earthsea' books, Scott Westerfeld's 'Uglies' books, and most notably Phillip Pullman's 'His…

This could make your fortune….

@Miller - I think that your idea that our civilisation's new archetype is the office drone may be the most depressing thing I have ever read, largely because it rings so true. You put me in mind of Elliot's 'Hollow Men' (http://poetry.poetryx.com/p…, or, with your Office reference, Betjeman's 'Slough (http://www.bbc.co…

Rowling has said that she wrote backstories for the majority of the characters, and that there is a wealth of material that never made it into the books, and never meant to. That said, I don't see what she did as world building in the sense that Todd meant because none of that really translated on to the page. The…

It depends in the author. Genre fiction is overly represented in this regard, and many authors have websites, their own or their fans, dedicated to cataloguing every part of the world in question. It can become quite tedious.

@Rowan - We'll agree to disagree then.

I think that it also highlighted the theme that technology holds absolutely no answers or solutions. There is a sense of fundamental despair at the heart of the novel, coming from the idea that the one technology that people are so desperate to rediscover is gunpowder. They don't want cars, or electricity, or…

The idea of our descendants piecing together our artifacts like some kind of cargo cult is one that seems to really resonate with people, and I'm not entirely sure why. I vary between thinking either that it provides amusement to think that we are so much smarter than both our ancestors and descendants, or it is based…

No, Mike, but it wouldn't be necessary anyway. Apparently the Alan Moore/Neil Gaiman run of Marvel Man/Miracle Man is set to be reprinted, and that covers that territory better than I could ever imagine.

That's a good question, and it got me thinking about what characters in popular culture really embody archetypes and yet can grow and develop and get reinvented, and the obvious answer is superheroes. I'm not sure whether Superman can survive that long as he is so good and suprememly powerful - two things that don't…