Starship Fonzie

  When the story surrounding David A. Riley broke, I did my best to research thoroughly, but found very little regarding Riley's opinions over the last 40 years. Nobody, not even the big SF news sources, listed anything contemporary in terms of Riley's behavior. I then used my previous blog post to argue that we were basing too much conclusion on ancient history. But I also left myself a huge asterisk in place in case I was wrong. Well, I was wrong. That asterisk came in handy. If you haven't noticed, I've updated the previous post. I left things intact, but lined-out obvious mistakes and added annotations. That looks shoddy, and I'm embarrassed by it, but I felt that was the most responsible way for me to deal with the situation. But one frustrating thing came up repeatedly from my critics. They kept telling me that the information regarding Mr. Riley was easy to find. Bullshit! It really wasn't. If I could be satisfied with second-hand and third-hand accounts...

***NOTE*** In the research leading up to this article, I missed finding some key recent information which others were kind enough to show me. (Thanks Allyson Bird.) A lot of those other outlets cited something on Tumblr. As it happens, I almost never use Tumblr, and so I couldn't access that source. I've since unlocked my Tumblr account and found the information I should have seen right away. But even then, other helpful links, such as to Mr. Riley's Twitter account, are non-existent. (He may have deleted his Twitter account, I'm not sure.) He does still have a Facebook account. But I will say this in my defense. Examples of Riley's recent misdeeds were NOT, all arguments to the contrary, easy to find! And why not? Because nobody bothered to cite them. I got one recent quote, and that was all. But that was enough. But that one quote was like pulling teeth! It is irresponsible and bullheaded of people to say, "Oh, you should have just Googled it." It wasn...

Few people are as imaginative as Ursula K. Vernon, a.k.a. T. Kingfisher. Her dark fantasy novel, Nettle & Bone, is no exception to this rule. The story opens with a strange event. A dust wife (i.e., witch ) cobbles together the skeleton of a dog out of the bones of many other dogs. Having wired all the bones together, she spells the bones to life and the dog, not realizing it's made up of dead components, bounds away. And that's one of the least strange things that happens in this novel. Marra is a nun who isn't really a nun. That is, she doesn't take her vows. But she is sent to a nunnery, because she's of royal blood, and if her elder sisters die in childbirth, she will need to be a proven virgin in order to be wed to the prince and sire any offspring. Her life seems relatively carefree, until she observes that one sister has already died in childbirth, and the next-eldest sister, the one right ahead of her, keeps herself pregnant to prevent the prince from b...