One of the resident geezers can attest that this is an unending battle. I can remember when Vonnegut, Dick, Ballard and other authors respected today were definitely not respectable when I was growing up.

I think this one should have had some Darwin application. This jackass might have really hurt or killed someone. What do people not understand about how a truck can severely limit a driver's forward vision.

I totally agree on His Dark Materials. The minute I heard Disney was doing it, I despaired. What a waste of a brilliant cast (here's the IMDB page with the cast ,http://goo.gl/kaSvDW) The movie completely missed the most important theme in the book, anti-authoritarianism. Given Disney's predilections, it was no…

I have been recommending this since I first read it in 2008. It is a 2008 paper for the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army. Think about what Williams is saying here about stability, sanity and power then add on the increasing evidence of global warming's primary, secondary and even tertiary impact on areas…

Charlie Jane, I'm not sure that either Vonnegut or Dick got stranger with age. Given how strangely weird and wonderful their works are, they both started out very weird. I remember reading them in the 50's. If you know anything about that decade, you know how far out of the mainstream their books and ideas were. True…

I'm inclined to recognize my own cognitive deficiencies without adding brain scans to it. If it goes too far, just shoot me, please?

Clarkson is entertaining (mostly) on Top Gear. He is an incredibly gigantic asshole in the rest of his tiny racist life.

As usual Annalee, an excellent post. Now for a few comments, ex cathedra from the geezer's bellybutton.

Darwin at work.

Maybe in my next reincarnation I'll figure it out. That does not stop me from feeling awe at this kid's talent. Someone should mark his name. I think we will be hearing from him sooner rather than later.

One of the best recent books on political propaganda is George Lakoff's "Don't Think About an Elephant". I always thought the title would have been even catchier if he'd used pink elephant.

Did you mean "I wouldn't mind if someone funded a full movie.."? It looks terrific and, I love the concept. ET with armament? Or, Iron Giant from outer space? What's not to like?

That one was so stupid crazy that I almost liked it. You have to admit that throwing an Ethernet cable from a 7X7 to a Ferrari with both supposedly going 200 mph is a pretty neat conceit. I laughed my aged butt off.

One more incredibly upsetting thing about the current "future": if anyone had told me in 1964 that half the people in this country would believe - more or less - that "God" created the world in 7 days 8,000 years ago, I would have called him or her absolutely nuts.

I'm 70.The first computer I worked with took up a little less than half a city block (New York City block). We had to shut it down for 18 hours to upgrade the ferromagnetic memory from 32 Kilobytes to 64 Kilobytes. The Samsung S3 in my pocket is somewhere between 5 and 7 orders of magnitude faster and has about the…

I wonder how many Teddy killed?

Wonderful review Charlie Jane.

I like them all but, I'm with Mastiff here. Vincze, can you at least identify any that are real? Please, pretty please?

First, Childhood's End <i>is</i> the book where the aliens are Lucifer-like.

Can you say Princess? Idiots have too much money too.