Something that struck me about the flashback to Kimmy's abduction: the implication that the reason she's a chunk younger than the other victims is that she was a 'freebie' and that the reverend's request for directions to the nursing college was genuine (for the purposes of kidnapping a nurse). That idea was so…

Intellectually, I absolutely agree with you. And yet…

One of the things I've loved about this series, is that it doesn't clearly section off the darker elements. The horrifying shit is scattered through, sometimes upfront and sometimes throwaway. Sometimes it's important to current day Kimmy and sometimes it's just stuff that happened. But the premise doesn't just come…

Coming from a broadly similar place, I'd like to second this so hard.

I really liked the Lost In Space film too. Though I also think Wild Wild West is due a cultural re-evaluation so maybe a) you don't want me on your side and b) I just like spider based film adaptations of family friendly sixties tv shows?

The third episode was the last one I watched, I think (Titus's play?). Glad to hear it improves. I'll definitely be coming back to it and watching the rest, just without the urgency I had in season one.

The third episode was the last one I watched, I think (Titus's play?). Glad to hear it improves. I'll definitely be coming back to it and watching the rest, just without the urgency I had in season one.

Yes! The weird overly defensive vibe this season has been so off-putting that I ended up stopping after a couple of episodes and saying I'd come back to it another day. I'm glad I wasn't imagining it.

There's a throwaway joke in one of her Vermont books that was so unexpectedly dark (and darkly honest) that it made me yelp with surprise/laughter on a crowded train (basically her inner monologue reflecting that she is a good mother, a besotted wife, who loves her perfect family and never *ever* idly daydreams about…

It's almost as if some non-binary form of human sexuality exists.

I'd argue that most (if not all) of the humour in The Midwich Cuckoos is deliberate, but otherwise I agree.

Oh there was, and there is. Remember, fandom didn't stop just because the show did (particularly as monthly novels were published during the gap between old who and nuwho) with demographics being what they are there was a significant usenet fan presence pretty much from the minute there was a usenet.

I have to confess, it took literal years of being nagged by a friend of mine before I finally picked it up. But it's so good! Clever and witty, and it races along at surprising speed.

Pretty much everything of his from the last ten years or so has been really great. My personal favourite is Swiftly: A Novel, which is a kind of psychedelic alien invasion novel set in a steampunk-ish 19th Century where a technological boom has resulted from the enslaving of the various races from Gulliver's Travels.…

How did it take so long for anybody to mention War With The Newts?? Just so, so, good.

Adam Roberts is a seriously underated author, and I feel like Yellow Blue Tibia was around the point where he started to go from 'interesting' to 'why is somebody as talented as this not life-limitingly famous?'

*solidarity fistbump* I don't think I'll ever shake off my extreme childhood fear of Close Encounters. Hearing/thinking of the five note greeting if I'm alone at night can still fuck me up for *hours*.

I had some dealings with Dean Friedman six or seven years ago and he is just really nice. That's it. That's the whole of my Dean Friedman Is Nice anecdote. It's not a good anecdote but, hell, it adds verisimilitude to your one so I might as well press post having got this far.

Corner Gas (the series or the film). It's got that Bob's Burgers style combination of loveliness and bite, and also lots of soothing shots of Saskatchewan to make you feel aired out.

The gameplay - this was the xbox version - wasn't bad, just a bit simplisitic (which was probably how it swept us all up in it). I've only played a bit of one of the fighting games, and the XBox360 volleyball. They didn't seem atrocious but neither were they particularly good, and without the group hysteria pulling…