The same can probably be said anytime people play obsessively. It’s got to be mental illness that compels a person to take a dump in their own sock rather than leave WoW for two minutes. No game is that powerful just by itself.

Does the book mention that South Korean couple who let their baby starve while they were at the Internet cafe, or is it just about suicide?

Last time I was in the YA section, on every book there it said something like: “If you loved Hunger Games, you’ll love this!” Or “Move over, Hunger Games!” Or “This series is the next Hunger Games!”

I suppose some people don’t realize that Israel would vaporize Iran the second their missile-silo doors began to open.

I forbid you to say “cuts it” in this context.

This won’t have any effect. It would be like saying that if we expose how much the casino makes off of the schmoes who step through the doors, people will become disgusted and lobby for looser slots. No. The results would be ignored, because whether you run a casino or an investment firm, you know that if you have all…

Well at least this time there is a study to lend credibility to the claim. I remember as a kid hearing all kinds of nonsense about a particular isolated mountain village in eastern Europe full of centenarians who achieved their longevity by eating yogurt.

Are we sure we want to bring them back? Today it’s jesters, tomorrow it might be flatulists.

Makes sense to me. It’s a good example of enlightened self-interest, which is probably the closest thing to altruism we can expect from a multinational corporation.

You’re wrong about Oysters, Joanna.

Thank you. Yeah, it's a classic story of the heart being in conflict with itself.

I'm taking that as a sincere compliment, but what in my post make you think I was twisted?

he’s a really vocal homophobe,

I don’t believe in judging the quality of a piece of art based on how much of an asshole they are in real life. That’s the silliness of people boycotting Ender’s Game just because they don’t like the author’s (probably sincere) religious beliefs, even though they don’t flavor the movie’s content.

Octavia Butler’s publishers put a white woman on the cover of Dawn, the first book in her brilliant Xenogenesis trilogy, even though the protagonist is a woman of color. They didn’t believe the average SF fan would read a book with a black woman on the cover.

Most writers are (rightly) afraid of alienating editors. They talk amongst themselves, too.

Not taking sides here, but the agent might have had a different person sifting through the slush-pile that day who liked the manuscript more than the first one, and passed it along to the boss.

Is getting paid for your work as difficult for writers as Harlan Ellison describes in this profane, vitriolic rant he gives on the topic?

Becoming a writer is only the initial hurdle. Staying a writer- getting up every day and pulling the plow is infinitely harder, I’ve been told.

Those are also the only genres where diverse novels are valued and, as a general rule, YA and women's fic does not allow for higher level literary fiction.