That sort of reminds me of the apocryphal story of the college student who asks his professor why Shakespeare is considered such a great writer when his stuff is so full of cliches.

Well, I guess it's a good thing I gave up on literary fiction after getting that doctorate, then.

"Elsewhere, you've written of your admiration for John Updike's Rabbit tetralogy — are you aware how many cliches those books have spawned?"

I see the creepy. Still looking for the cute.

Forget it, Jack. It's Chinatown.

In the US, we have mainstream candidates for national office questioning basic, well-established principles of science, and they have millions of supporters. I don't think we're in any position to judge.

Perhaps they should get together with whomever wrote the new bullshit Shakespeare movie. They seem good at ignoring history just making things up.

I've never seen John Carpenter's The Thing. Or Thing from Another World. Or The Thing prequel.

Reminds me of a story I heard a few years ago. Someone thought she heard a doll saying, "Kill our mama," when what it was saying is "Te quiero, mama."

" 'If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.' "

I suspected that the problem was an uncorrected OCR scan. In one book I read, I thought I was dealing with two characters that turned out to be a single character; about half the time, the character was named one thing, and the other half, something else.

Since I got my iPad about a year and a half ago, I've read maybe three books on paper. I'm perfectly happy reading e-books, especially since a lot of the stuff I read is basically trash that shouldn't be taking up trees.

"Plus, if you fall asleep in bed while reading, a book is a lot less likely to break your nose than a tablet PC."

I've been thinking about it. To some degree, I think Mieville is talking about a work of fiction dealing with something truly alien, something that forces the reader out of his comfort zone, as opposed to it dealing with a setting and tropes and such that will be familiar and comfortable. He mentioned something about…

Disappointing. I thought the death-by-hair-dryer bit was just dumb. She couldn't get out from under the thing why, exactly? The death-by-nail-gun bit might have been interesting if we'd known who the guy was and cared that he was getting nailed in a port-o-potty.

I should probably be embarrassed to say it, but I have no idea with Mieville is talking about. What are "estrangement" and "recognition" in this context? Is estrangement just another term for "alienation," another literary term I never really understood? I'm afraid I'm totally lost, here.

"Media tired" is my new favorite catch phrase.

I believe it's a cultural thing. "Grim and gritty" has become what people think of as "realistic" — it isn't necessarily, it's just a different sort of fantasy. But it all feeds out of a distinct cultural malaise and cynicism that has been growing for the past 40 years or more. So, if "dark" is good, then "darker" is…

Something I always thought would be interesting would be if X-Files followed through on an idea raised in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose." In one scene, Scully gives in and asks Clyde how she will die. He just smiles and says, "You don't." I thought it would be interesting if what Clyde said was somehow true.