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gal-liveblogs · 5 years

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A parting gift from an old flame, it was given to one of my splinters in a distant timeline before ending up in my posession via lots of complicated shit that I don't wanna get into.

O.K. So someone gave some version of Dirk Hussie painting of a quarterback fighting a horse. I have an intense desire to know who.

"Dear Dirk, In memory of our precious time together. When you look at it, think of me, and be reminded that while we breathe, we Hope." -B.O

Oh fuck me, it was Obama. Jesus Christ, I can’t.

O.K., I had been wondering what this stuff in the corner was, but didn’t comment as I couldn’t think of how to describe them. Now, though, we have a bigger picture and that’s a cherub paint set and an old troll horn headband. Probably Calliope’s stuff.

This set of paints and the charred remains of my HORNED HEADBAND are the only surviving relics of the first and last WORLDWIDE INTERSPECIES ROLEPLAYING SESSION we ever attempted on Earth C.

Oh. Not Calliope’s. They are, in fact, Dirk’s. The Interspecies Roleplaying Session was probably orchestrated by Calliope, though.

Calliope got it into their head that dressing up in cosplay would be a fun community activity.

Right on the money!

In other news Dirk’s trollsona has a unicorn horn. So it’s not that the headband was tilted and the other horn was hidden behind the paint set like I thought. Also Dave’s trollsona has dick horns. I am not surprised. Weird how Dirk, Dave, and Rose didn’t bother to give themselves black hair. Rose gave herself yellow scleras, but couldn’t commit to the black hair it seems.

Vantas had some very uncharitable things to say about the idea, and for once in his life I think he was right.

I mean, it’s like when white people dress as Native Americans for Halloween. I can understand his anger. Though even if he didn’t have a good reason Karkat would have still been angry, I’m sure.

Plants are basically the ideal friends. They don't constantly question your decisions, or try and undermine your authority, or suggest that perhaps you should try talking about your feelings every once in a while.

I think Dirk’s issue with Homestuck getting too feelings-y was that he doesn’t like talking about his own feelings.

Wait. Does Terezi have some form of narrative control? She made it clear in one of the Epilogues that she was aware of Dirk’s narration. I’m going to assume that while Terezi herself can’t narrate, she can submit commands.

DIRK: I see you've found the command terminal.

Oh. So she can submit commands not through her own power, but because there’s one of those exile command terminals things on this ship. O.K. They have everything else on this ship, might as well have one of those too.

TEREZI: 1T S33MS TO M3 L1K3 L3TT1NG M3 BOSS YOU 4ROUND FOR 4 F3W M1NUT3S 1S TH3 L34ST YOU COULD DO TO M4K3 UP FOR WH4T PROB4BLY 4MOUNTS TO TH3 MOST BOR1NG 1NT3RG4L4CT1C VOY4G3 1N TH3 H1STORY OF SP4C3 TR4V3L

I don’t know, I think Jade’s voyage after Davesprite and John blew up might be a good contender for that title. Then again Jade had practice not having anyone with a degree of intelligence around to talk to. Then again she still had the internet on her island and could talk to her friends, unlike on the Prospit ship.

TEREZI: 4ND CONS1D3R1NG TH4T ON3 OF MY TWO PR1OR 3XP3R13NC3S 1NVOLV3D SCOUR1NG TH3 FR4CTUR3D, D1S1NT3GR4TING CORPS3 OF P4R4DOX SP4C3 FOR... WH4T F3LT L1K3 4N 3T3RN1TY,

Oh yeah, I guess that would also be a contender too.

DIRK: What, Heart and Mind?

TEREZI: M1ND 4ND H34RT, Y3S

I have a feeling Terezi purposefully switched them around to make her aspect first and to just be a tiny annoyance to Dirk.

Dirk, how dare you use Complacency of the Learned to even out a chair! Does Rose know you’re using her book like that?

> L1B3R4T3 L4LOND14N L1BR4RY

Thank you, Terezi.

TEREZI: DO3S ROS3 KNOW YOUV3 B33N US1NG ON3 OF H3R NOV3LS TO PROP UP TH4T DISGUST1NGLY T4CKY CH41R?

Terezi and I are one.

DIRK: (I captchalogue the book into my MSPA MODUS. Forget HASH MAPS, PICTIONARY, or any of that shit. This thing is where it's at.)

What the FUCK does MSPA Modus entail???

TEREZI: 4W WH4T TH3 H3LL

TEREZI: TH3 CH41R W4S SUPPOS3D TO F4LL OV3R

DIRK: I'm not sure I understand. Why would it? The four legs are all touching the floor.

TEREZI: ...

DIRK: Try not to think about it too hard.

Ha!

TEREZI: FOR SOM3ON3 WHO CL41MS TO KNOW 4 LOT 4BOUT JOK3S YOU SUR3 H4V3 CONT1NU3D TO S4Y B4S1C4LLY NOTH1NG FUNNY 3V3R

Oooh, burn! When I get around to doing my fourth read of Homestuck I’ll have to tally any instances of Dirk telling a funny joke just to see if this holds up.

For a second there I was really confused over what fractal nonsense was happening here, but then I remembered Dirk is controlling the narrative. That includes the pictures, not just the text.

DIRK: Not many really understand that when pleasure is taken seriously enough, it can easily mimic the appearance of business, just as when irony is practiced with enough passion, it becomes indistinguishable from sincerity.

So Dirk’s idea of loosening up and having fun, whether for the irony or sincerity of it, is drawing himself in romantic situations with Jake. Yeah, that pans out.

(Seriously, why is Jake such a heartthrob? John is described as dorky looking and he and Jake are practically carbon copies.)

TEREZI: DO YOU... W4NT TO T4LK 4BOUT 1T...?

DIRK: Absolutely the fuck not.

Terezi, did you seriously expect him to answer with anything else?

This feels like a meme image.

TEREZI: TH4TS TH3 ON3 TH1NG 1 4LW4YS FOUND D1FF1CULT 4BOUT M4K1NG COM1CS W1TH D4V3

TEREZI: YOU H4V3 TO DR4W 333333V3RYTH1NG >:[

God, hard agree. This is why I could never have a comic. As much as I’d like to I just get burnt out with all that tedious drawing.

DIRK: Exactly. But sometimes, visuals are just a more effective way of doing things.

DIRK: So finding the right combination of words and pictures to communicate an idea efficiently is where the artistry lies.

DIRK: And sometimes that means dispensing with one or the other entirely when appropriate.

See, this is why the Homestuck style comic is so interesting. I don’t think other comics combined panels and text like Homestuck did, and now there are so many copies of the style out there!

Woah, I feel like I just got whiplash with the disappearance of the panels!

For the sake of precedent, I'm saying that we can cloak the visuals entirely and continue with narration alone, replacing the panel with a block of text like this, which we can call a “prattle” from now on.

Right, so when we go into a more book-like format it’s a prattle. Got it. Good name, since it’s just Dirk droning on to himself.

So then Dirk narrates Terezi using the command terminal to get him to do a slew of bizarre actions. He says it’s to show how much can be done in a short amount of time (a single block of text as opposed to 50 panels), but I have a feeling the real reason is so that we, the readers, don’t actually get to see him doing any of this stuff. He doesn;t get an audience to such an embarrassing display and he gets to rub our faces in it.

She has me undertake the most intense workout routine paradox space has ever seen, all while whistling the entire discography of the Swedish pop group ABBA, which she's taken a liking to recently for some god forsaken reason.

Terezi likes ABBA? That’s amazing. I need a video of Terezi singing and dancing along with Dancing Queen now.

(... And which coincidentally was a favorite cultural weapon of Her Imperious Condescension back on Earth, centuries ago. Mamma Mia in particular was repurposed as a sugar-coated propagandist piece, calling for worldwide submission to the Batterwitch's dictatorship. "My my, how can I resist ya," as the old saying goes.)

HOLY SHIT. Now I just had a headcanon that all trolls love ABBA.

DIRK: I told you I could have fun.

TEREZI: Y34H YOU SUR3 SHOW3ED M3 1 GU3SS

Dirk, are you saying Terezi purposefully trying to torture you was actually fun? ... Are you secretly a masochist? Do you... Do you like being bossed around and forced to do ridiculous stunts? I am learning so many things about Dirk I never expected.

TEREZI: WH4TS TH1S TH1NG OV3R 1N TH3 CORN3R

TEREZI: UND3RN34TH TH1S B1G SH33T TH1NG

DIRK: Don't look in there.

TEREZI: OH SHHHH 1M ONLY T4K1NG 4 P33K

DIRK: Terezi.

DIRK: Listen to me.

TEREZI: 1M JUST L1FT1NG UP TH3 COV3R 4 L1TTL3 W4YS!!!!

DIRK: Terezi please stop talking right now.

TEREZI: D1RK HOLY SH1T

TEREZI: W

Well that sounds sinister. With Dirk I would think ti was a robot of some kind, but given his new hobby of collecting things from various timelines and his skill in building it could literally be anything.

At first I was confused at the three panels that follow, showing Dirk’s room in disarray, but then I rememebered that Dirk did a whole bunch of shit we didn’t get to see because we were in Book Time.

ROSEBOT: So, I guess today is finally the day everything's been heading towards.

I honestly thought she was going to say “today is finally the day we fuck everything up”. Not sure if the actual line counts as a callback or not now.

ROSEBOT: Instead, it feels like the very notion of fortune is simply out of the question as a means of describing the potential outcome.

ROSEBOT: As though in this moment, luck isn't either strictly real or not real, or somewhere inbetween, but absent of meaning completely.

ROSEBOT: Luck took one look at our itinerary from here on out and said you'll just have to go on without me.

So it’s Schrödinger's Luck of Who Gives a Shit? Been reading so much Dirk I tried to channel my inner Strider there. Moving on I feel like this is a very bad situation for Rose to be in. Her Aspect is luck, so what does it mean for her when she’s in a position like this?

ROSEBOT: You aren't going to believe this, but it turns out that the deranged horny ramblings of a spurned anime-obsessive have essentially no therapeutic properties whatsoever.

Rose is a gift.

I wish I could copy and paste Dirk’s whole spiel about the ocean, both literal and metaphorical, but since it’s Dirk it’s just way too long. Suffice to say I thought it was some lovely writing and really got the the meat of who Dirk is as a character. His loneliness, his fear, his eventual peace, what it means to be an ascended Prince of Heart. Good stuff.

DIRK: What's that noise I'm hearing.

DIRK: It sounds a little bit like a cat being caught in a ventilation fan. A sort of...

DIRK: Inhuman screeching, combined with the grinding of metal.

DIRK: Are we even going to make it to the ground?

ROSEBOT: Oh, no,

ROSEBOT: The ship's fine as far as I can tell.

ROSEBOT: That's just Terezi laughing.

Terezi is also a gift.

Then we end with a rather pretty image of the ship coming in for a crash landing on an Earth-like planet. I would share it, but it’s a tall panel and this post is long enough as it is. Very curious what this planet is. I would guess it might be a Earth, but the landmasses don’t look like any on Earth. Could be artistic license, but I feel like we have too many Earths as it is. Let’s get some new planets up in here!

#homestuck 2 #homestuck 2 liveblog #liveblog #gal liveblogs

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ask-de-writer · 5 years

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To begin with, let us consider the consequences of the use of magic on massive scales and the nature of time itself.

Let us begin with TIME.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? I mean Past, Present and Future. The only problem with that division of time is that it REQUIRES predestination and is wide open to paradoxes. The real issue with it lies in that part known as the Future. If it is fixed, it cannot be changed. You are stuck, no matter what you do.

Worse, if every action in the Present causes a new line to begin, Cup O Time Noodles, anyone? At what event scale does a new time line begin? With each heartbeat or breath? With each deadly accident avoided, or not?

Thus, Past, Present and Future leads to chaos.

For the purposes of my tales time does still have three parts but they are the Immutable Past, the Plastic Present and the Absolute Instant of the Present. The Future exists only as a range of mathematical abstractions. These become reality in the Absolute Instant of the Present. There follows a short period called the Plastic Present in which things are perceived and reacted to. As the Plastic Present passes, it becomes the Immutable Past.

This has multiple consequences for the very creation of the whole world of Equestria. It is obviously a created world. The Creators I sort of stole from a long gone comic by Digity Demon. He had Applejack as a Religious Conservative who pities Twilight for her lack of faith in the Creator Titans.

My Equestria was a project of the Creator Titans that all but one of them dropped. The Titan of Life Creation, who presented herself to De Writer and later to Luna and Celestia as a young pegasus mare named Skyglow, has tried to repair the inherent flaws built into Equestria.

Celestia and Luna jointly are her fix. They have been given a LIMITED control of the Magic of Creation for the purpose of preserving Equestria as a habitable world.

Celestia does not control the rising and setting of the sun, though it appears that she does to ponies. What she actually does is adjust hundreds of factors relating to the planet itself. These include such things as the rates of rotation of the crust, the core, the strength of magnetic field and the very angle of the axis of the planet.

Luna does a similar service for the moon but includes maintaining the orbital distance, among other things. The moon keeps trying to orbit in closer and closer until destructive break up at the Roche’s Limit. The fragments, some huge, would fall in a rain of meteoric destruction.

What makes the world so unstable in the first place? Magic.

Magic? Right. Literally billions of ponies are doing everything from lifting and holding objects, pegassi flying, to harvesting apples. Apples? AJ bucks a whole tree and the apples all fall into the baskets! Tell me that is not magic at work. Earth pony magic is just not as obvious as a unicorn’s.

So, how does that magic mess up a world? It comes from somewhere. For it to work at all, it needs to alter the physical constants that make the rest of the universe work. Little things like G, the universal gravitational constant. The strong and weak nuclear forces need to be manipulated. e, that electronic things need. Newton’s Laws, anyone? Seen Twilight, at a couple of hundred kilos tops, flip about a water tank that weighs tonnes? That is only a few examples.

Any of these things done by one pony alone would make no measurable difference. Billions of ponies all messing about like that makes for bad news indeed. Around Equestria G is in a state of constant flux. It is not alone, either.

That is WHY Celestia and Luna are needed to balance things out!

Pity that they don’t just raise the Sun and Moon. That would be easy by comparison!

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

#Why Celestia and Luna are needed #the nature of time #magic #Why magic makes Equestria unstable #Universal constants

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years

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Chillin’ With Netflix (2018 edition)

LOST IN SPACE

Really well done, family friendly space opera. Top notch production values, good / smart writing, superlative cast.

And despite all this, it couldn’t keep my attention past episode 4.

I put the blame on me, not this new series by writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.

As a preteen, I was in the prime target audience for the original Lost In Space back in the mid-1960s, and that series -- despite its wildly varying tone -- created an iconic show that, try as they might, every subsequent re-make struggles to overcome.

Seriously, it’s like trying to remake I Love Lucy only without Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley.

Yeah, it can be done, but why bother? Use that talent and energy to do something in the same vein but different.

That being said, I deny no one their pleasure. If you haven’t seen / loved the original, try this version; you might very well like it.

. . .

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

Excellent production / writing / cast / performances.

I started out really liking it.

That enthusiasm faded.

I ended up enjoying this new retelling of The Haunting Of Hill House but came away feeling it fell short of 1963’s The Haunting, the first and still best adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic ghost story.

First off, a definition of terms (which will explain my enthusiasm fade): In order to work, a ghost story must take place in the audience’s head.

That is to say, the reader / viewer must be left with two equally possibly yet mutually exclusive possibilities: There are such things as ghost, or the haunting is purely psychological in the mind/s of the character/s.

Even in stories such as the original novel or the 1963 film where the possibility is presented that at least one of the characters is mentally unstable and is either imagining / causing the manifestations, the book / movie / series must never come down concretely in either camp.

To make it purely psychological turns it into a drama about mental illness, the make it supernatural moves it from the realm of “ghost story” into “monster movie” where the monster happens to be a ghost.

A ghost story doesn’t have to be scary, simply…haunting. Portrait Of Jenny is a bitter-sweet romance that despite a lack of spookiness remains a bona fide ghost story.

(Ghost comedies such as Topper, Blythe Spirit, Ghost Busters, etc. are a different genre entirely akin to leprechaun / alien comedies where a fantastic being disrupts the lives of the human protagonists.)

This version works well, even though it doesn’t maintain the high level it starts with. The family dynamics are well done, the performances excellent.

For the first couple of episodes the series tries to walk the line, raising the possibility and eventually confirming that mental illness runs through the family that moved into Hill House, but the moment the ghosts begin manifesting themselves, it paradoxically stops being a ghost story and becomes a booga-booga story). Virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity also works against the production, occasionally dragging audiences out of the story to admire how clever the film makers are.

It also gets a little too convoluted and overly melodramatic towards the end, however (ghost stories work best at their simplicity.

And it is not an upbeat ending but a really horrific one as the family in question literally consumes itself.

This version inhabits a godless universe, and the apparent “good” ending is really a terrible one of eternal damnation (albeit not in the Christian sense).

I recognize and appreciate the level of craftsmanship that went into this, and recommend it to people who like scary stories.

But it ain’t what I’d call a ghost story, and it sure ain’t what Jackson would call one, either.

. . .

SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER

I'm not the target audience for She-Ra in either incarnation.

That being said, I watched episodes 1-3 and 12-13.

It looks good to me. The story was familiar, but like old B-Westerns it's the kind of genre where familiarity breeds affection, so no complaints there.

Pacing seemed slow, but the design and animation was good, voices top notch. Clearly a heavy anime influence.

Really liked the wide range of physical types and acknowledgement of LGBT characters. Lots of fun with the various interpersonal relationships and characterizations, especially Swift Wind, the smartass flying unicorn.

They did a really good job with this show and the characters seemed more like real teens than the previous incarnation.

. . .

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

Well, this one I can recommend whole heartedly and without reservation.

Joel and Ethan Coen have shown a remarkable penchant for period films and a strong affinity for Westerns in the past, and this anthology film offers a dazzling grab bag of good / off beat stories that range from the ridiculous to the realistic, though a couple of them are Westerns by location only as they don’t really rely on any of the themes that define the Western genre.

The stories are:

“The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs” -- a hilarious send up of old Hollywood Western clichés starting with the quintessential sing cowboy trope and spiraling into full bore craziness from there.

“Near Algodones” -- a would-be bank robber has a really bad day. Despite its dazzling editorial style, one of the more conventional stories -- and yet it manages to evoke both classic Buddhism, the crucifixion, and the ultimate sardonic joke all in the last 30 seconds.

“Meal Ticket” -- a Twilight Zone-ish story about a backwoods impresario and his limbless performer, told almost entirely silently except for quotes from poems and dramatic works and the occasional song. While it makes good use of its Western locale, there’s really nothing in the story to tie it to the West; it could just as easily occur on a Mississippi riverboat, the back alleys of White Chapel, or the slums of Mumbai.

“All Gold Canyon” -- based on a story by Jack London, it’s a look at how hard and demanding a prospector’s life could be (with a virtually unrecognizable Tom Waits as the grizzled old prospector). The Coen Brothers use their location to the fullest advantage, recreating the feel of what such land must have felt like before the first settlers moved in.

“The Gal Who Got Rattled” -- the longest, most realistic, and most bitter-sweet of the stories, set on a wagon train heading to Oregon, and focusing on a young woman who is definitely not the sort who should be making such a trip. While we can look back from our safe vantage point in the 21stcentury and recognize the Indian Wars were the direct result of rapacious land grabbing by Western settlers, this story does an excellent job of showing just how terrifying it would be to sit on the receiving end of a tribal attack. The ending is a morally complex one, well worth pondering, and especially ambiguous given the nature of the story’s framing element.

“The Mortal Remains” -- weakest of the stories, but salvaged by strong performances. Another Twilight Zone style story, and if you didn’t guess the ending by the one minute mark I’ve got a bridge in Florida made of solid gold bricks I’d like to sell you.

. . .

AMERICAN VANDAL

Yowza! This is one of the best series I’ve ever seen, and it’s perfect in damn near every way.

On the surface it’s a parody of various true crime documentary series, especially Netflix’ own Making A Murderer. It’s told from the point of view of two students in their high school’s audio-visual club who make a documentary about an act of vandalism directed at the school’s teachers and the student who is blamed for it.

Of course, as they investigate, they turn up evidence that the accused student did not commit the vandalism, and in their pursuit of the truth uncover several more secrets on their way to the big reveal.

At first blush, the makings of a solid show.

But what co-creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault manage to pull off with this is nothing short of astounding, a fun parody of a genre that raises interesting questions about both the genre they’re parodying and the issue of truth and guilt, while on top of that adding an incredibly complex yet easy to follow overlay of conflicting characters and emotions.

They get every single detail right, and even seemingly throw away lines / scenes / characters get fleshed out in amazing and unexpected ways (for example, one extremely minor character, with no significant dialog, who appears only briefly on camera as comic relief in one or two early episodes is later revealed to be severely alcoholic, and in recalling his earlier appearances, one realizes the character must be suffering through a genuinely hellish existence).

Dylan, the accused student, starts out as a character of fun and amusement, a high school goofball of Spicoli proportions, only to come to a sad and ultimately terrifying end as he realizes just how dumb and dead-end his life is.

I cannot praise thise series enough. Very rarely will I look at someone else’s work and say “I wish I had done that.” American Vandal is one of the rare exceptions.

The series has two seasons, the first involving Dylan and the vandalism of the teachers’ cars, the second involving a food poisoning incident at a private school the original two students are invited to investigate. Season two is very strong but lacks “the shock of the new” that season one provided; it’s high quality and entertaining, but not as compelling as the original.

. . .

#television #media #comedy #Netflix #Coe Brothers #Lost In Space 2018 #The Haunting Of Hill House 2018 #She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power #The Ballad Of Buster SCruggs #American Vandal

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toxicnotebook · 4 years

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This time on Toxie Yells About Books, books I read a while ago and there don't remember that well?? So this will be fast:

IHTS: Theory of Happiness

My biggest gripe in any romance is when the couple to be don't fucking talk until like, the very end, so I was quite happy to see this was not the case in this book! It was a very sweet sequel.

IHTS: Limit 1

....and then the author decided to backtrack and add some drama that I honestly thought was already resolved. Also, if I remember correctly, it was caused by not talking to each other. I didn't dislike this book, it was still good, but there was a turn.

IHTS: Limit 2

Said turn kind of continued in this volume. It was mildly frustrating, as the writing was still good- especially the parts that dealt with deafness in modern culture! But this is where more standard BL tropes were introduced and they just. Did not fit the narrative that had been established. But I'm wondering if this was the fault of the author- the end note comic showed that their editor encouraged them to be more BL-like, and the author didn't really know what the tropes of the genre were. Soooo I'm wondering if there was some editorial interference.

Candy Colored Paradox Vol 2

I'm glad I decided to buy the second volume, as it was much better- mostly because the author decided to ditch (most) of the tropes for investigative funsies. Yay! I'll probably get the last two volumes at some point in the future, but I've made so much progress on my TBR pile that I'm not willing to buy too many new books.

Way of the Househusband Vol 3

Listen. This comic is never going to be deep or complex. But it's lighthearted and funny. Sometimes I just need a good laugh.

Little (Grrl) Lost

Decent, but the human storyline was much weaker than the faerie one. Actually, it reminded me of another de Lint book: The Little Country, where the storyline set in modern times was much, much weaker than the historical one. Kind weird??

Emperor Mollusk vs The Sinister Brain

God this was so boring. I honestly gave up, because the main character always had an easy solution. If you want to see why you shouldn't make your main character too perfect, read this book as an example.

My Father is a Unicorn

I had a little bit of birthday money left over and I found this randomly at my local comic shop. It was fun! Definitely a one-volume idea, but didn't overstay its welcome.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I hate to say this about a Douglas Adams book, but this was just too slow and, frankly, not funny enough for me to stick with. Maybe it gets better later on, but I didn't have the patience. Read some reviews first before you pick it up.

Saint Young Men Vol 2

Still excellent!

#toxie yells about books #books #reading #comics #manga #lgbtqa books #queer books #fantasy

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apparitionism · 7 years

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Streets 5

Again, mostly talking. Only a little bit of driving around. Maybe a spoonful of philosophy, thought out not at all well. But it’s a story, anyway. One that concludes here, after having variously raced and meandered through part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 on its way.

Streets 5

Helena remains disoriented, but she admonishes herself to ignore that sensation, to set herself to gathering data. Passersby will know the where and the when of the situation, so she steadies herself and turns to the person nearest her.

But in doing so, she encounters something she did not expect: a familiar face. Ramon is now standing in precisely the spot she had a moment ago occupied. “Where are we?” he asks, looking around just as Helena had. “I got lost. I think—I mean it musta been a—” and then he says a word that Helena does not know: teak-BALL-ang, he seems to have said, but for all her overeducation she cannot connect that to anything she knows.

“What must it have been?” she asks. She is relieved to be able to focus her attention on him.

“Tikbalang. Big guy with horse feet, horse head. Had to be one, had to. Thought it was just stories, like my mom told, how they like to mess with you, at night in the forest, get you lost. But he did it, he got me lost... is the rest of it true too?”

Focus. Continue to focus. “What is the rest of it?” she manages to ask him.

“Sometimes, when the moon’s bright... then, if you can ride them, they can take you between worlds.”

Nothing of what Ramon is saying resembles her own experience in any way, but she, too, can feel her mind straining to make sense of what has just occurred.... seeking an explanation. What it had to have been. Of course the human brain does want to understand what befalls the body, and of course that brain is perfectly happy to make up a story to account for any anomalous event. Helena tries to hold to the side that compulsion to rationalize—and she is having to concentrate mightily in order to do so—as she considers whether she might be able to reverse this, whatever this is... she shakes her head, hard, and that is enough to make her once again conscious of what she had done just as this happened: she had looked up, directly into the streetlight.

“When the moon is bright, you say... Ramon, will you trust me?”

“To what?” His look suggests that he is indeed quite lost, that he might wander away, telling himself over and over what this must have been. What had to have caused this anomalous state of affairs.

She says, “I want to repeat an experiment.” She takes hold of his hand. “Look up. Up into that bright, bright light.”

Once again a dazzle of disorientation, a paradoxic nothingness of strange, fast movement, no control, surrendering control, and she realizes—it all at once makes sense—this is the direct opposite of the Bronze, with its unrelenting dark and enforced lack of movement... if the Bronze was the unnatural preservation of life, then is this its natural end? Yes, that must be it: she has reached the end. It is over. Her acceptance of that as dispositive fact affords her an uncanny, yet not unwelcome, peace.

And then she is standing on another street corner—yet another street corner?—and she is alive. Alive, after having been dead. Again, dispositive fact. And yet...

From behind her, she hears Myka’s voice: “Helena!”

Pete’s: “See, she’s okay. She’s here and she’s okay.”

And Claudia’s: “Ohmygod H.G.! Ohmygod Ramon! Were you actually abducted by aliens?”

“Actually, no,” Helena says.

Ramon agrees, “Not unless they’re from Mindanao. But that was awesome!” Helena pulls him away from the streetlight to keep him from trying it again, regardless of awesomeness. Though he does seem perfectly happy, now, to marvel at what he believes he has experienced.

Claudia says, “So wait, does that mean there’s something else? Some totally different artifact?”

“I’ve no idea,” Helena says. “But I believe we may safely say there is more than one.”

“More than one,” Pete says. He is leaning is head a bit to the side, rubbing a thumb against his jaw: thinking.

“Working together,” Helena tells him.

“What,” Myka says, and she has got her voice under very tight control, “Happened. To. You.”

Claudia murmurs, “Hey, H.G., look at her eyes.”

Helena does so, and Myka blinks at her, then squints. “Indeed,” Helena says, “‘googly’ is not the word. But I suspect she is not playing it up.”

“Playing what up?” Myka demands. “You disappeared. Are you surprised that I found that a little worrying?”

“And annoying?” Helena asks. At this, Myka inhales in a way that conveys “not out of the question.”

“Like I said,” Claudia notes.

“I did not do it intentionally,” Helena tells Myka.

Myka says, “That doesn’t help. Because what did I tell you? What did I explicitly tell you, using words?”

“Don’t get whammied.”

“And what did you do?”

“The obverse of that. However, I did keep my hands on my Tesla.”

“That doesn’t help either. Honestly, Helena, what happened?”

“I have two answers to that question.”

These words garner another communicative inhale from Myka; this one, Helena translates as “If you do not start providing said answers with a quickness, your ability to do so in any foreseeable future will be severely curtailed.”

With that quickness, Helena says, “One, I was transported to a street corner that was not this one, and then, attempting to replicate the effect, I was in similar fashion returned to this one.”

“And two?” Pete asks. He’s looking at her with appraisal. More so than usual.

She says, “I believe that I died and was then brought back to life.”

“What,” Myka says. Flat.

“I’m sorry. I hold it as a strangely fervent belief. I know it is untrue—that it must surely be untrue—and yet. But you should ask Ramon what happened to him.”

“Tell the tale, Ramon!” Claudia commands.

Ramon, for his part, is more than enthusiastic about complying: “It was incredible. I never thought my mom was talking about real stuff, you know? It was all just scary stories, keep the kids close to home, right? But it’s so for real! The first time, he just confused me, like they do, but the second time!”

“He who? The second time what?” Claudia asks.

“Riding a tikbalang! You don’t know, but—”

Claudia interrupts, “C’mon, I know what a tikbalang is. I watched Lost Girl.”

“Aw, you should check out the comics too, man. Some from when I was a kid, but there’s even more now. Like, now that I know, it’s amazing how right they get it!” Then he pauses, as if realizing how odd it is to be speaking about comics, and their rightness, under the circumstances. “But I guess I gotta ask, why’d a tikbalang confuse us over to 20th and then let us ride him back here?”

Pete says, “Hold it.” He asks Helena, “That’s where you blinked out of here to, during your little near-death experience?”

“Not near death. Death.”

“I don’t care.”

Claudia says, “That’s a little insensitive, big guy.”

“The street sign did say 20th,” Helena affirms.

“And here we are on Taylor,” Pete says. “Put those things together, and you know what you get?”

Helena sighs. “Something Roentgen Files–related, no doubt.”

“You just get weirder. No: Bullitt.”

“Toldya,” Claudia says, with a little poke at Helena’s upper arm.

Pete goes on, “I bet they’re just moving you around. To where it happens.”

“To where what happens?” Claudia asks.

“The chase. All the streets, the pings. I shoulda put it together. One of those other streets, that’s where this one took you. And then another one brought you back. That’s what they did, right?”

Helena nods.

Claudia does not. “They? They who? The aliens? She said she wasn’t abducted!”

Pete shakes his head. “I pay a lot more attention to what she does than what she says. Makes her easier to understand. And I was watching her, right before she blinked out. Gimme that fantastico goo gun of yours.” Claudia excavates the implement from the depths of her satchel and hands it over; he points it up, and he shoots the streetlight. A spark or two ensues—but that of course might be the result only of mixing electricity and a conducting liquid. He says to Helena, “Okay, guinea pig. Try it again.”

After a moment of hesitation—one for which she berates herself as a coward—she does as he says. Nothing happens. She smiles at him. “Pete, you do surprise me.”

He says, “I get that a lot. Particularly from you.” But he smiles back.

Claudia is looking from Pete to Helena and back again. “Wait, are we done? What is happening?”

“I bet we gotta drive around some more,” Pete says. “Goo a buncha lights.”

Ramon says, “I’m with Claudia: what is happening? You guys, am I in some weird government experiment? Does the government have like a herd of tikbalang?”

“Does that make sense to you?” Claudia asks him. “As an explanation? Or have you ever done anything like, say, mushrooms?”

“I used to run around some.”

“We all did,” Pete assures him.

From Myka, there is an ill-tempered “I didn’t.” Her tone says that she is still not at all thrilled with Helena, or indeed with anything about the situation.

Helena ignores this for the moment and says, “Of course we did. I, for example, did indulge in opium.” She gives Claudia a pointed look.

“I knew it!” Claudia says.

Yet another, even more ill-tempered “I didn’t” from Myka.

“Didn’t what?” Claudia asks. “Indulge in opium, or know that H.G. did?”

“Both.” And as Myka says this word, Helena receives a familiar “why can’t you tell me these things” glance. The eyes delivering that glance continue to be not at all googly.

Claudia says, “You know, Ramon, I think maybe what we’ll go with is, having done whatever running around you did? That might make you susceptible when some tikbalang guy comes a-calling.” Ramon looks as if he does want to believe her, and she takes that as encouragement. “I mean, who’d put it past the government to have herds of unicorns and whatever else, right? But they probably wouldn’t’ve been able to guess that today their employees would catch a ride with a guy who’d know a Filipino beastie if he saw it. And they couldn’t’ve reached into your head and figured out that’s the herd they’d need to rustle up this afternoon.”

“But can we get back to the comics at some point?” Pete asks. “Because pretty cool that whoever wrote those got it right. I’d love it if I found out that the Sandman was really exactly like what Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean and everybody came up with.”

“Sandman isn’t real,” Claudia scoffs.

“Ramon thought this tikbalang guy wasn’t real.”

“I was so wrong,” Ramon rhapsodizes.

But this exchange has Myka’s attention. “Wait,” she says, and her ill temper is gone; this is her agent-voice. “The government wouldn’t be able to reach into anyone’s head and find anything. But something did, and it found something different for Helena than it found for Ramon. Why did it? If this is only about movement from place to place, I mean. And for that matter, why is that movement happening via streetlight?”

Claudia says, “Trust you to come up with the work-related questions. Let’s see if Artie and Steve have anything to contribute.” She Farnsworths and inquires about San Francisco’s streetlights: if there is anything strange, anything new about them. Steve eventually comes up with... a nonanswer. “They’re replacing their old lights with LEDs. But the project’s been going on for a while now, so I don’t see—”

In the background, Artie exclaims, “Oh! LEDs.”

“Oh LEDs what?” Steve asks him.

“I had a feeling this might start happening at some point.”

Myka leans over to the Farnsworth. “You had a feeling what might start happening?”

Artie’s face appears. He looks displeased... but of course he usually looks displeased. “They’re—how to put this?—absorbent. Energy-wise. Fortunately it takes them a while to... take it all in.”

Claudia says, “LED lights are cheap paper towels?”

Pete muses, “So if those cheap paper towels were shining on a bunch of streets, and something major had happened on those streets...”

“But what do lights shining on streets have to do with aliens?” Artie asks.

“Yeah, that part I still don’t get,” Claudia says. “Also why Ramon went into a comic book, and H.G. thought she left her wallet in the afterlife.”

Helena says, “The mind is happy to make up a story...” Myka looks a question at her, and she shrugs. “I remember thinking that, as it was happening.”

“But why do you believe the story?” Myka pushes.

Pete’s eyebrows rise. Then he grins a very wide grin. “You know what?” he says. “I think I got this one! With the assist from H.G.! It’s continuity. Because there’s really none of it in that chase in the movie. You cut from street to street—well, technically Frank Keller cuts from street to street, and you gotta give it to the guy, because he had to work with the shots they gave him—but anyway it doesn’t make any geographic sense. Like none at all. You go around a corner, and it’s totally a different street. Different part of the city. In the movie, all you need to know about what’s happening is that it’s a totally awesome car chase, so who cares? But if it happens to you, here in the world, you gotta make sense of it somehow. Give it some continuity!”

Myka says, with a distinct lack of belief, “And to do that, most people went with alien abduction?”

“But not Miss ‘I Never Heard of the Roentgen Files’ over here!” Claudia crows.

“My aliens did not waste time on abduction,” Helena points out. “Perhaps only the people who did find explanatory solace in alien abduction felt compelled to tell their stories to others? Or at the very least, to tell those stories in a way that would, when coupled with curiosities, come to the Warehouse’s attention. And alien abduction might be quite a convincing explanation, to those whose minds turn to it. I, on the other hand, understand perfectly well that I did not in fact die and come back to life. And yet.”

“And yet what?” Pete asks.

“And yet I did in fact die and come back to life.” How ludicrous she must sound.

Claudia, for one, does not seem to care. “Whatever you say, resident-alien Jesus. So Pete, I guess we gotta go goo whichever streetlights, then try to talk the hippies out of energy efficiency? Even if we do, though, I really don’t see how we’re gonna keep this from happening over and over.”

Helena suggests, “We can look into their manufacture, these LEDs. Surely we can intervene in some relevant way.”

“Sabotage!” Claudia enthuses.

Ramon says, “Oh my god, it’s a mirage.”

“Is it?” Helena asks. She notes that Ramon has put on sunglasses, and—

Pete exclaims, or rather sing-songs, “I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s sabotage!” Then he says, “Good one, Ramon. You are a man with excellent taste. Seriously, we gotta talk comics.”

So there is most likely no actual mirage... Helena envies Ramon the shaded view, however. “It is quite bright,” she says aloud.

“Aw, but poor H.G., you don’t have any sunglasses,” Claudia says, and Helena hears nothing even vaguely resembling sympathy in her voice, “because you’d have to carry them.”

“You would have anticipated my need for them, were you a decent butler. But alas.”

“Did you just call me an indecent butler?”

“If the sunglasses fit, darling...”

“You won’t sound so smug about it when my ‘Never Had an Indecent Butler Like Me’ number brings down the house, Pops.”

Myka tells them both, “I really do not understand your relationship.”

Artie squawks from the Farnsworth, to which everyone has stopped paying attention, “I do not understand a single thing you lunatics say and I am hanging up on all of you people!”

“Hanging up on people,” Ramon says. “That reminds me, I gotta call my mom, let her in on what happened. Blow her mind.”

“Hanging up on people reminds you to call your mom?” Claudia queries.

“Reminds me of my mom. Cell phone drives her crazy; she says it hangs up by itself. Pretty sure she really does it with her face.”

He moves near his car and makes his call... Helena eavesdrops, just a bit. She presumes he is speaking Tagalog, in that his syllables, rhythms, and stresses are melodious yet on the whole meaningless to her. A word or two of Spanish, perhaps, as he had suggested, and also the occasional English: she hears “awesome” said with particular intensity. Then he winces. She suspects his mother might be inquiring as to whether he has taken up again the habits that occupied him when he “ran around some.”

Myka draws Helena’s attention away when she says, “I honestly can’t believe you got yourself not just whammied, but double-whammied. You know, I expect this kind of thing from Pete.”

“Reasonable,” Helena says. She is continuing to find it a bit difficult to focus; a part of her wants to concentrate all her resources on the truth of her death and resurrection. To embrace it fully, not merely philosophically...

“Hey!” Pete objects, and the familiarity of his protest is a comfort.

“Shut up,” Myka tells him. “This whole thing is actually your fault.”

Helena says, “Technically I believe it is Claudia’s fault—”

“Now it’s my turn: hey! Whose team are you on?” Claudia says.

“Yours. But you did not allow me to finish: your fault, but also Myka’s, because she is softhearted and believes in backup.”

“It isn’t softhearted to believe in backup,” Myka says.

“I did not say I attribute softheartedness to you because you believe in backup. I said you are softhearted and you believe in backup.”

“I’m not softhearted,” is Myka’s response.

Claudia snorts. “I wish Steve could’ve heard you say that. He’d be making his weird little ‘does she know she’s lying, and if she doesn’t know, how do I tell her’ face.”

Pete says, as if it is a revelation, “He does make a weird little face like that. He makes it around Myka a lot.”

“So,” Helena says, “comprehensively, she is softhearted, believes in backup, and may make a habit of lying to herself with regard to herself.”

“Is there some reason you’re all picking on me?” Myka asks, resignation edged with resentment.

“Fills the emptiness in our souls,” Claudia says cheerily.

Pete says, “I was gonna go with ‘makes you make a weird little face of your own, Mykes,’ but the empty souls thing works too.”

“And what about you,” Myka says to Helena.

“Perhaps I’m hoping you’ll exact revenge. Later. For my having raised the specter of your softheartedness and prompted such agreement on the point.”

“Perhaps that revenge won’t take the fun form you’re imagining.”

“Perhaps you don’t fully grasp my definition of fun.”

It’s a bit perfunctory, this back-and-forth, but it prompts Claudia to say to Pete, “I really do not understand their relationship.”

“I really do not want to understand their relationship,” he tells her.

Helena tells Myka, “Speaking of fun, or the lack thereof: you won. Your team neutralized the artifact. One of the artifacts, at any rate.” She kisses Myka—this time on the mouth, not the cheek—to indicate that her earlier words had indeed been token, that they had no real purpose. That certainly she intended no real annoyance. That she needs comfort from this, too.

Myka’s eyes do soften as she says, “You think I find that rewarding, do you?” And those words are no challenge. Instead, they are, Helena feels, the soft beginning of their move back to the hotel room.

So for Myka’s ears only, Helena says, “I certainly hope so. If not, there has been a significant dropoff in your appreciation for my performance, this morning to now.”

“Hey, as the team member who actually did the gooing, I won too,” Pete says. “Maybe even more.”

Myka moves only slightly away from Helena as she says, “If she kisses you, I will kill you.”

“Might be worth it,” Pete says. He is jaunty now, Helena thinks, just as he was after the “chase”: happy to have won in whatever way he feels he has.

“How true,” she agrees.

Myka says to Helena, “If you kiss him—in fact if you kiss either of them—I will kill you.”

To Pete, Helena says, “I’ve kissed you before. Not worth it.” He pouts a bit, but Helena turns and assesses Claudia. “You, I don’t know.” But she shoots a sidelong glance at Myka, and she gets the desired response: Myka says, with a bit more fervor than is called for, “Don’t find out.”

“Don’t,” Claudia seconds. “I like my life. So what if I’m a loser at transportation roulette?”

Pete shrugs. “Nah, I give. You can totally have a car chase in your little not-quite-taxis. If Ramon’s driving, anyway, ’cause he’s a boss.”

“I’m switching to Lyft anyway. Better corporate culture. I wonder if Ramon would too.”

Pete, moping, says, “Won’t matter eventually. All the cars’ll be driving themselves.”

“All that means,” Myka tells him, “is you can spend your time watching Bullitt on your phone or whatever entertainment system a self-driving car would have.”

“I guess you’ll just do paperwork,” Pete sighs.

“Not if she’s in a self-driving car with me,” Helena tells him.

“Keep your self-driving sex-taxi fantasies to yourself,” he says.

Helena raises an eyebrow. “I might have been about to say that we would engage in Platonic dialogues.”

“Wouldn’t be much platonic about any dialogues you two engaged in,” Claudia says.

Myka sighs. “Some days I miss being single.”

“I bet you do,” Pete says. “So sad that you’ll never reach that dream of sitting in the back seat of a self-driving car all by yourself, doing paperwork.”

“I might read,” Myka says.

Helena offers, “You might in fact read a Platonic dialogue. The Apology, perhaps.”

“That seems more up your alley,” Myka says, with a smile, “given that it’s the one where Socrates defends himself for corrupting the young.”

“I have corrupted no one!”

“To hear Pete tell it, you’re taking me for rides in self-driving sex taxis. I was a fine, upstanding Secret Service agent before I met you. A pillar of law enforcement.”

Claudia says, “I’m ruling from the bench: you’re guilty, H.G. She really was a pillar before you showed up. Her posture was amazing.”

“There is nothing wrong with my posture now!” Myka objects.

Pete says, “It’s really too easy. Too easy and too dirty... just like Myka, these days.”

“Please go away,” Myka says. “Forever.” She might mean all of them, Helena included.

“You’re not really mad, are you? We’re still partners, right?” Pete asks, in that cajoling way he does.

“Of course we’re still partners, in the sense that we are. But if you steal any more time from my vacation with my different-sense partner, I will be rethinking.” And Myka says this in the way that she does, when responding to Pete’s wheedling; it is a long-suffering, yet oddly tender tone, and she reserves it solely for him. Helena consistently must work not to envy it. Sometimes she succeeds.

“Fair,” Pete says.

“Be happy,” Myka tells him. “You got your car chase.”

Cajoling again, Pete says, “You have to admit, it was amazingly cool.”

“I don’t have to admit any such thing.” Long-suffering. Tender. Then she smiles at Helena and says, in a loud whisper, “Don’t tell him, but I had my eyes closed the whole time.”

Pete sighs. “Where’s your sense of adventure? H.G., I wouldn’t bother taking her for a ride in a sex taxi, if I were you.”

“Oh, Pete,” Helena says. “How you underestimate me. Not to mention, the extent to which Myka is... adventurous.”

Pete blinks at Helena. He looks at Myka, and he blinks again.

Myka thumps her fist against his upper arm, and he winces. Helena would be more inclined to let him imagine what he likes—he certainly could never even approximate the reality—but Myka tells him, “Wash your brain out with soap. And since nobody’s going away like I asked, in spite of the fact that I did it really politely and said please, I will go away. Helena, you can come with me, but only if you promise you will never utter the word ‘adventurous’ again.”

“In public, correct?” Helena asks. “Versus private.”

Myka makes a sound very like a growl. “Since you don’t know the difference, it’s a blanket ban.” Pete opens his mouth to speak, and Myka says, “I swear to god, Lattimer, if you tell me it’s a bad idea to ban blankets, that’s it.”

Pete closes his mouth.

****

Ramon drives Helena and Myka back to their hotel. Helena herself feels, and she believes Myka and Ramon also feel, it as a welcome exhale.

Ramon says, “This kind of wins the crazy-trip prize. Like, trip like trip, and like trip. Don’t give me less stars, but—”

“No need to apologize,” Helena tells him. “We frequently win prizes for which the primary judging criterion is ‘crazy.’”

“Speak for yourself,” Myka says, but without much force.

“My dear,” Helena responds, equally mildly.

Myka closes her eyes. “Fine.”

Ramon says, “Wins the awesome-trip prize too. But that’s really more like trip.”

“Understood,” Helena assures him.

Ramon consults his telephone as he pulls to the curb in front of the hotel. “Huh,” he says. “Here’s a funny. About the trip, and it’s kind of more like trip too. You know how you’re supposed to pay for your Uber through the app?”

“No,” Helena says.

“Okay. Anyway, that’s what you do. What Claudia was supposed to do.”

“All right. I’m failing to appreciate the comedy thus far.”

“So here’s the thing: she set it up so the payment’s cash.”

Myka, who is almost, awkwardly, out of the car—she really did not fit into it properly to begin with—pauses and says, “You can’t pay for an Uber with cash.”

“Right. Not here in old USA. But you know where you can?”

“You are about to say ‘the Philippines,’” Helena guesses.

“Other places too, but yeah. This trip? Got sent through the Filipino app, then back to me. Claudia a genius or something?”

“Yes, a genius,” Helena says.

“But also something,” Myka adds.

“Anyway she stiffed you,” Ramon concludes.

As Helena exits the vehicle, she says to Myka, “I hope you are, as I am, appreciating the irony of this entire situation being the result of your having maintained that ‘stiffing’ Pete and Claudia on the relatively minor bill for our lunches would have been inappropriate.”

Ramon is out of the car as well, and he is saying, with apology, “It’s not cheap. We drove a lot.”

“This is in some way related to limbo, or possibly the limbo. Would you like to estimate the cost of your shock absorbers as well and allow me to reimburse you now?”

“You sure? I can try to bill Claudia or her boss or whoever once I get a estimate.”

“I would not put you through that. Sometimes it is the better part of valor to surrender.”

“The money?” he asks.

“The money, the point, the flag, the fort, the entire cause. I am learning that pragmatism can be the wiser approach.” Myka snorts out half a chortle. “Striving to learn it,” Helena amends.

“My mom, she’d like you. Because you know what she’d say about you? She’d say you’d make a good Catholic.”

“That is...” Helena pauses. “It is an unexpectedly lovely compliment. Thank you. And please give your mother my regards—insofar as I am any judge of such things, she raised a fine son.”

He hugs her. It is strange but also quite sweet.

“This has been a most bizarre afternoon and evening,” she says as they let go of each other, at the same time, in the awkward-yet-appropriate way that embraces can end. “But you’ve dealt admirably with every bit. Thank you.”

Myka smiles at them both. “And thanks from me, Ramon. Mostly for complimenting this one. She deserves it.”

“You’re all right too, lady in question,” he says.

Once they have settled up—Helena hands over every bit of cash she possesses, plus some of Myka’s, and Myka expresses reluctance on the point of this latter participation until Helena reminds her that she could in fact have kept Pete from leading them in his “chase” if she had really tried, thus obviating the need for repairs—Ramon inserts himself into the small maroon car and drives away. Helena is made nostalgic by the furious horn-blares that attend his nonchalant movement into the stream of traffic.

****

“Alone at last,” Helena says, once they are, in fact, alone, at long last, in their room.

“Feels a little weird. Any aftereffects for you? From the whammy? Whammies.”

“I’ll echo you: feels a little weird. Or perhaps I mean, on my part, a little sad.” She does not want to make more of this than it is, but it is. “I find myself unaccountably despondent at the mismatch between my fervent belief in having been resurrected after perishing and the apparently contradictory reality.”

“You want to believe?” Myka asks.

Helena grimaces. “I suppose that, like everyone else, you are intimately familiar with the Roentgen Files television program. And film. And imaginary musical.”

“I thought I got that joke, before, but maybe I didn’t get it in its fullness.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t have. ‘I Want to Believe’ would be, according to Claudia, the closing number of the first act of the Broadway-musical version, which does not exist but which Claudia would pay Hamilton money to see. I gather that is a large sum. She would also pay similar monies to see a Warehouse musical, in which you and I would sing a love duet entitled ‘The Price Is Too High.’”

“If it’s Hamilton money, then yeah, the price probably is too high. Anyway, you can’t sing. I can’t either.”

“Our parts would be played by professionals.”

“That’s good. I’m sure the audience would appreciate it. Although weirdly now the idea that I’ll never sing a love duet on Broadway with you makes me a little sad.”

“Take comfort in my embrace,” Helena suggests, and Myka moves to do exactly that as Helena goes on, “in which you may stand while I refrain from serenading you.”

“Now it feels like I really did win something.” She leans down to kiss Helena, but then her telephone makes its noise that signifies a call from Pete. Myka says, “Don’t worry; I’m not answering. He’s just being a pain.”

That is true: if it mattered, Pete would use the Farnsworth. But this does put Helena in mind of another point, one that she most likely should have considered before now: “Perhaps he is calling to inform you that Claudia still has my Farnsworth and my telephone.” Myka exhales meaningfully, but Helena reminds her, “I did, as instructed, keep my hands on my Tesla.”

“Still a little less than impressive, given the whammying, but at least you’re armed. Can you live without a phone for four days?”

“I lived without one for well over a hundred years.”

“That in no way answers my question.”

Helena says, “I can certainly try. Perhaps it will mean fewer interruptions at the very least.”

“Even fewer if I turn mine off.” A musing tone. A tease, too.

“Would you?” Because if Pete is in a mood to torment them...

Myka says nothing. But she does move away from Helena, and she does take up her telephone. Seconds later, Helena hears a brief, tell-tale buzz. Then Myka says, “Now. I think we have more than twenty minutes.”

But when Myka puts her hands on Helena, she moves as if they have far less time than that. In the past, of course, such desperation could not help but characterize their intimacy; back in the beginning, nothing could be fast enough, intense enough, due to desire’s bright necessity of course, but also to the demands of secrecy, the pressures of stolen time...

This extremity has a different quality, however; Myka’s hands are working fast, yet not with abandon, so that she seems hurried, but to some purpose other than physical satisfaction, the particular haste of which Helena knows quite well. This seems more like... making a point? Solving a problem?

Whatever it is, it is uncharacteristic. “Your pace seems a bit... breakneck,” Helena says, as her shirt is, with alacrity, being unbuttoned, pushed from her shoulders, and let fall to the floor.

Myka pauses, then laughs a little. “Just call me Steve McQueen.”

“If that is yet another unpalatable cocktail that might be but is not, I will... well, do nothing, probably, other than sigh.”

“No. Not a cocktail.”

“A movie? And a guy in the movie?”

“Your speech patterns always get weird when you spend time with Claudia. It’s not a movie, anyway, but it is a guy in a movie. I mean, an actor in a movie.”

“Which, I now deduce, must be Bullitt. Due to my superior deductive powers.” It’s a halfhearted vaunt; she is trying to overcome whatever is keeping her from responding as she should, as she wants to, as she under any other circumstances would if Myka were so bodily insistent.

“Superior,” Myka echoes. “Pete would be making you watch it right now if he were here. Fortunately he’s not,” and she returns to her tasks: lips on neck, hands hard at work, hips pushing Helena backwards to the bed.

Helena is trying to participate fully—trying to ignore whatever is wrong, wrong with both of them—when an abrupt sense of something being no longer the matter overtakes her. She stops moving entirely, the relief is so strong. “I did not die,” she says.

“I know that,” Myka says, but her voice is restless. “I know it, but I can’t help—”

“No, I mean I no longer hold my death and resurrection as a conviction. I suspect Ramon no longer feels so certain that he traveled in his mythologically inspired way.”

“They got the other streetlight,” Myka says, and Helena nods, for that is what must have occurred. And that that is now what must have happened, not her own death, seems a liberation of the most palpable sort. Myka goes on, “How do you feel? Still... despondent?”

“Not nearly so. Although I do I feel a bit sorry for Ramon.” She feels a bit sorry, in fact, for all the previous believers. How are they responding to having their fully embraced beliefs in their abductions, or whatever they chose to give continuity to their experiences, taken away? “Not that I cannot feel despondent on my own recognizance, but I do feel much more myself.”

Myka says, “You’ve been trying really hard, since it happened, to be yourself. Say what you’d say. Banter.” Helena acknowledges this insight with a nod, and Myka goes on, “Ramon gave himself over to it—and I bet he wasn’t despondent at all. But yours was really a balancing act. A kind of ‘I know very well, but nevertheless.’”

“I did want to give myself over to it., but perhaps I’m genuinely incapable of belief. Perhaps that’s the real reason for the despondency. I would make a terrible Catholic after all.” It is brooding and self-pitying, but also most likely true.

“Or maybe it’s just that some cheap-paper-towel artifacts didn’t have nearly enough mojo to convince you. To make you let go of what you know very well.”

“You are playing to my vanity,” Helena accuses. Myka just smiles a little, then kisses her without urgency. Helena further accuses, “You think I am an egotist.”

“No, I know you’re an egotist.” And Helena can’t muster a true smile or laugh, because Myka is of course right. She is stuck between being pleased with and resentful of Myka’s acceptance of this fact for what it is.

“Your face just now,” Myka says, with a shake of her head. “Am I ever going to love anything in my life as much as I love you?”

"As an egotist, I’ll say ‘Of course not.’ As a pragmatist, I’ll say ‘I don’t know.’”

“I like how, just like that, you’ve maneuvered me into rooting for egotist-you over pragmatist-you.”

“As an egotist, I’m quite practiced at such maneuvering. As a pragmatist, less so. However, both the egotist and the pragmatist are ready to declare that they are unlikely to love anything in their respective lives as much as they love you.”

“I bet that’s not really true about the egotist.”

“I think it’s to the egotist’s credit.”

“Oh I see. She can preen about it.”

“She is an egotist.”

“She’s pretty good at making me feel pretty good. Maybe it’s warranted.”

“She is transported to learn that both of those things are the case.”

“Just so you aren’t transported out of this room, that’s fine. Just so you stay here with me.”

“I certainly intend to,” Helena says, striving for lightness, because while she can feel Myka trying for the same thing, there is a shadow in Myka’s voice that should not be there, a shadow in her voice as there had been in her hurried hands. It should not be there; why is it there?

And then she has her answer. “Don’t die,” Myka says. Her voice now is low and her brow is knit: she is serious.

So. Of course Myka knows very well that Helena did not die, just as Helena knows it. Yet while Helena’s now-nullified “but nevertheless” had been “I believe that I did die,” Myka’s was—is—“I am reminded that Helena someday will die.” And that cannot be so conveniently neutralized away.

Helena is inclined to offer, in response, something that would itself fall under some heading of “I know very well these words are preposterously untrue, but nevertheless I will say them in order to offer false comfort”—something such as “I won’t.” Or “I’ll try not to.” Even “Not for a while yet, I hope.”

But Myka deserves better than that. So instead Helena offers a counterproposal: “Deathlets?”

At that, Myka shakes her head, her forehead still unsmooth. But her mouth begins to turn, slowly, and at last the smile breaks over her beautiful face. Finally, now, she laughs, and the shadow is gone.

Tomorrow morning, the first kiss will taste of toothpaste and coffee.

END

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Streets #part 5 #here endeth the tale #and it's a silly one about whammies and Former Files and musical and hip-hop and the hideousness of LED lights #but it's also kind of a serious one about knowing very well but nevertheless #which is #if you know your Freud #how fetishistic disavowal works #but if you know your poststructuralists and deconstructionists #you know also that it's about everything from ideology to language #all the logically incompatible beliefs we maintain in order to function in the world #and exercise power over it #and take pleasure from it #you can't have love in the absence of a willingness to disavow #even if all you're disavowing is the mourning in which you are always already engaged

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hunterartemis · 7 years

Conversation

If SPN Characters went to Hogwarts: Wands and Patronus

Dean Winchester: Cypress, Augurey tail feather (Irish green-black Phoenix), 12 inches; Fierce, self-sacrificial and Loyal. (Wand energy: Masculine)Patronus= Wolf (paradoxical= big heart although do have a darker side, occasional pessimism)

Sam Winchester: Laurel, Dragon Heartstring, 13 and 1/2 inches; accomplished, clever and flexible, secretive. (Wand energy: Masculine)Patronus= Hound (they are smart, studious and pro at detail oriented work.)

Castiel: English Oak, Unicorn tail feather, 12 inches; courageous, humble and caring, perceptive (Wand energy: unisex) Patronus= Occamy (only pure of heart can conjure it. Very Protective and adaptive)

Crowley: Elm, Double Dragon Heartstring, 11 inches; manipulative, stable, ruthless. (Wand energy: Feminine) Patronus= Hyena (cunning, highly opinionated of himself, appears to be fool and will not trust you)

Gabriel: Poplar, Phoenix tail feather, 12 inches; quirky, dual-natured, fierce.(Wand Energy: Unisex) Patronus = Coyote (the wise one who acts like a Fool/ comic character)

Lucifer: Poisonwood, Basilisk Skin, 13 inches; witty, level headed, proud and lethal. (Wand Energy= Masculine), has no happy memory with he could produce a patronus charm

Balthazar: Redwood, Fwooper Feather, 11 and 3/4 inches, flamboyant, multi-talented, proud (Wand energy= Masculine). Patronus= Peacock (powerful and charming personality, but tends to make poor calls)

Charlie Bradbury: Eucalyptus, Dragon Heartstring, 10 and 1/2 inches; quick-witted, dynamic, perceptive. (Wand Energy= feminine).patronus = Sparrowhawk (lively, spirited, intelligent.)

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2whatcom-blog · 5 years

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Was Thomas Kuhn Evil

In 1972 Thomas Kuhn hurled an ashtray at Errol Morris. Already famend for The Construction of Scientific Revolutions, printed a decade earlier, Kuhn was on the Institute for Superior Research in Princeton, and Morris was his graduate pupil in historical past and philosophy of science. Throughout a gathering in Kuhn's workplace, Morris questioned Kuhn's views on paradigms, the webs of acutely aware and unconscious assumptions that underpin, say, Aristotle's, Newton's or Einstein's physics. You can not say one paradigm is more true than one other, in keeping with Kuhn, as a result of there is no such thing as a goal commonplace by which to guage them. Paradigms are incomparable, or "incommensurable." If that had been true, Morris requested, would not historical past of science be not possible? Would not the previous be inaccessible--except, Morris added, for "someone who imagines himself to be God?" Kuhn realized his pupil had simply insulted him. He muttered, "He's trying to kill me. He's trying to kill me." Then he threw the ashtray at Morris and threw him out of this system. Morris went on to turn out to be an acclaimed maker of documentaries. He received an Academy Award for The Fog of Warfare, his portrait of "war criminal"--Morris's term--Robert McNamara. His documentary The Skinny Blue Line helped overturn the conviction of a person on demise row for homicide. Morris by no means forgave Kuhn, who was, in Morris's eyes, a nasty particular person and unhealthy thinker. In his ebook The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Actuality), Morris assaults the cult--my time period, however I believe Morris would approve, because it describes a bunch sure by irrational allegiance to a domineering leader--of Kuhn. "Many may see this book as a vendetta," Morris writes. "Indeed it is." Morris blames Kuhn for undermining the notion that there's a actual world on the market, which we will, with some effort, come to know. Morris desires to rebut this skeptical assertion, which he believes has insidious results. The denial of goal fact permits totalitarianism and genocide and "ultimately, perhaps irrevocably, undermines civilization." I really like Morris's movies, and I really like The Ashtray. It's an eccentric in addition to lethal critical ebook, a combination of journalism, memoir and polemic. It options Morris's interviews with Noam Chomsky, Steven Weinberg and Hilary Putnam, amongst different massive photographs. It's filled with illustrations and marginalia on all method of arcana, together with pet rocks, the Sapir-Whorf speculation, Borges's "Library of Babel," The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Humpty Dumpty, unicorns and the pink fairy armadillo. These obvious digressions, whereas entertaining in their very own proper, serve the principle theme. The armadillo, for instance, helps Morris make some extent in regards to the evolution of scientific definitions. A pink fairy armadillo is a pink fairy armadillo, whether or not outlined by its DNA or morphology. Effectively, duh, you would possibly suppose. However in keeping with (Morris's model of) Kuhn, there is no such thing as a goal actuality to which language refers. All we have now are phrases and their ever-changing meanings. We're "trapped in a fog of language with no way out," as Morris places it. That is radical postmodernism, which holds that we don't uncover armadillos, electrons and even Earth, we think about, invent, assemble them. Postmodernists cannot say "truth," "knowledge" and "reality" with out smirking, or wrapping the phrases in scare quotes. Morris calls Construction a "postmodernist Bible." As a substitute for Kuhn's perspective, Morris gives us that of thinker Saul Kripke. I've listened to philosophers yammer advert nauseam about Kripke's magnum opus, Naming and Necessity, and I sat in on a seminar with him in 2016. He was frail, confined to a wheelchair, and he mumbled. To the extent that I understood him, I used to be underwhelmed. Kripke appeared to push philosophical fussiness over definitions to absurd extremes. Due to Ashtray, now I recognize Kripke's achievement. He sought to determine that the issues to which our phrases refer exist independently of our conceptions of them. To a non-philosopher that may sound like a truism, nevertheless it contradicts the postmodern competition that phrases and ideas are all we all know. Simply because we invent phrases and their meanings, Morris insists through Kripke, doesn't imply we invent the world. I agree, to an extent, with Morris's tackle Kuhn. I spent hours speaking to Kuhn in 1992, when he was at MIT, and he struck me as virtually comically self-contradicting. He tied himself in knots attempting to elucidate exactly what he meant when he talked in regards to the impossibility of true communication. He actually did appear to doubt whether or not actuality exists independently of our flawed, fluid conceptions of it. On the similar time, Morris beats Kuhn so viciously that I really feel sympathy for him. Morris calls Kuhn a "megalomaniac," "perverse dictator" and "maleficent deity," who utilized his skepticism to everybody however himself. Being Kuhn's graduate pupil, Morris says, was like being the man in 1984 who, threatened with having his face eaten off by rats, says fact is no matter Massive Brother says it's. 2+2=5. (Satirically, Kuhn, in Construction, in contrast scientists to Massive Brother's brainwashed followers.) I might like to supply a number of factors in Kuhn's protection. *Postmodernism Is Progressive. Morris proposes that postmodernism is a gorgeous ideology for right-wing authoritarians. To help this declare, he notes the scorn for fact evinced by Hitler and the present U.S. President, for whom energy trumps fact. Morris means that "belief in a real world, in truth and in reference, does seem to speak to the left; the denial of the real world, of truth and reference, to the right." That is merely fallacious. Postmodernism has usually been coupled with progressive, anti-authoritarian critiques of imperialism, capitalism, racism and sexism. Postmodernists like Derrida, Foucault, Butler and Paul Feyerabend (my favourite thinker) have challenged the political, ethical and scientific paradigms that allow folks in energy to take care of the established order. *Questioning Science Is Wholesome. Sure, postmodernism can turn out to be decadent, questioning even the paradigms that underpin confirmed science, and social-justice actions. However it serves as a beneficial counterweight to our craving for certainty. Kuhn was proper that even probably the most ostensibly rational thinkers--scientists!--can idiot themselves into considering they know greater than they actually do. Scientists usually cling to paradigms for non-scientific causes. (In actual fact, that may be a main theme of my ebook Thoughts-Physique Issues: Science, Subjectivity and Who We Actually Are.) Kuhn's mannequin is all too apt for describing trendy psychiatry, which frequently acts just like the advertising arm of the pharmaceutical trade, or evolutionary biology, some proponents of which have made excuses for the persistence of racism, sexism and militarism. *Kuhn, Mysticism and Solipsism. One of many defining traits of mystical states--whether spontaneous or induced by meditation or LSD--is that they can't be described with odd language or ideas. Throughout a mystical expertise you're feeling, you understand, that you're seeing issues as they are surely, and but, paradoxically, you may have a tough time describing what you see. God, Reality, Actuality, no matter you need to name it's ineffable, as William James put it. Kuhn would certainly be horrified at this analogy, however Construction works as a form of unfavourable theology, which insists that God transcends all our descriptions of Him. Kuhn's philosophy additionally captures a profound fact about human existence, that we're all trapped in our personal little solipsistic bubbles. Language will help us talk with one another, however finally we will solely guess what's going on in others' minds. *Does Morris Actually Admire Kuhn? Towards the tip of Ashtray, because the insults piled up, I started questioning whether or not Morris is slyly, or maybe subconsciously, defending Kuhn. Morris's protection of goal fact makes no pretense of objectivity. His blatantly emotional, biased, over-the-top screed implicitly corroborates Kuhn's level that truth-seeking is an inescapably subjective endeavor. Morris conjectures that Kuhn, deep down, knew that he was fallacious, and that was why he defended his philosophy so fiercely. Maybe Morris bashes Kuhn with equal ferocity as a result of he suspects Kuhn was, in some respects, proper. A ultimate level. I've lengthy felt that philosophy, when it tries, or pretends, to be rigorously rational and goal, commits a class error. Philosophy is nearer to artwork than to science or arithmetic. Philosophy helps us see the world by another person's eyes, as novel, portray, movie or music does. In Past Good and Evil, Nietzsche mentioned that "every great philosophy" is a "confession," a "species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography." Construction is a good work of philosophy, and so is the ebook it spawned, Ashtray, which helps us see the world with Morris's obsessive curiosity. Morris, who calls his philosophy "investigative realism," writes, "I feel very strongly that, even though the world is unutterably insane, there is this idea--perhaps a hope--that we can reach outside of the insanity and find truth, find the world, find ourselves." Kuhn, for all his faults, goaded Morris into writing an excellent work of investigative realism. For that, if for nothing else, he, and we, ought to thank Kuhn. Additional Studying: I wrote about Morris's views of Kuhn in three earlier columns: Did Thomas Kuhn Assist Elect Donald Trump?, Second Ideas: Did Thomas Kuhn Assist Elect Donald Trump? and Filmmaker Errol Morris Clarifies Stance on Kuhn and Trump. What Thomas Kuhn Actually Thought of Scientific "Truth" Was Thinker Paul Feyerabend Actually Science's "Worst Enemy"? The Paradox of Karl Popper Was Wittgenstein a Mystic? What Is Philosophy's Level? Half 1 Jellyfish, Sexbots and the Solipsism Downside Expensive "Skeptics," Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Much less, Mammograms and Warfare Extra A Dig Via Previous Recordsdata Reminds Me Why I am So Important of Science Everybody, Even Jenny McCarthy, Has the Proper to Problem "Scientific Experts" Science, Historical past and Reality on the College Membership Thoughts-Physique Issues (free on-line ebook) For various takes on Ashtray, see evaluations by Tim Maudlin, David Kordahl and Philip Kitcher. Read the full article

#2what.com #ashtray #kuhn #morris #truth

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mushangaa · 3 months

Text

wips to look back on to for myself and wonder quietly, why i have zero chill.

I wanted some sort of funny lil "oh we go to a competition" intro comic thingie like I saw others do and was like "eh.. 3 or 4 pages right?" I worked up 20 so far because idk flow?? Madness?? Zero chill? No idea but I am loving the ride I am on honestly. And yeah sketches / undersketches /linework all over the place because I sketched out almost all the pages roughly and instead of going page by page I just... jump back and forth on what I like to do first and build it up from there. Also like.. 8 characters to bounce around. And horses. Can't forget there are also some horses because they decide to take along some of them for bribery or to endear themselves to their competition to maybe team up and get past the prelims together. As normal people do. Jus.. a "little" comic for the @tmntaucompetition prelims in the works with my "The Unicorn Paradox" crew

#havethetouchart #wip #the unicorn paradox #tmnt au competition #entry mini comic #horses not depicted in these wip shots #i even made the pages on A5 format assuming (wrongly) that I might get this done faster (i normally draw comics on A4)#but nah instead more pages popped up #let it be known the rule of the thumb in this household is: It was definitely Donnie.

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marvelandponder · 7 years

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The Messy Fun of B-Canon

Should I Read It? Short Answer: Yeah! Not the most involved story the comics have gone into, but for a single issue, it’s certainly a worthwhile little story, especially if you’re interested in Starswirl the Bearded and/or Luna and Celestia’s past.

Spoilers will be discussed from now on, so enjoy the comic on iTunes, in stores, from wherever you get your comics, or here in video form (uhhh, what? Who said that? Reading comics for free—pffft, I never do that…).

Starswirl the Bearded is a mysterious figure in MLP lore. One who’s actually already had several different depictions outside of the show, and yet still remains so because at this point it’s become up to preference which you consider canon.

The most notable are the stories where we get to spend time with him, as mentions like the Rainbow Rocks backstory and brief appearances like the Sirens’ Fiendship is Magic are certainly neat, but don’t offer too much in the way of real character aside from what you may read into yourself.

The Journal of the Two Sisters gives us a look at him through the eyes of a very young Luna and Celestia, who at the time are just becoming princesses because he (and the ponies from A Hearth’s Warming Eve) approached them. He apparently even coronated them himself, so it’s no wonder why they looked up to him right from the start (if, found him a bit “unusual”).

Here, it’s his strangeness that lead him to creating so many spells, according to Celestia, as he thought of things no one else would.

This seems to fall in line with the old kooky Pinkie parallel depicted in the Reflections arc. Luna makes that comparison herself at one point, and it’s quite apt. He’s rather silly and eccentric, explaining his fascination with a big old hat with bells on it in a funny way without taking away too much dignity from the figure.

After all, we know Pinkie. The more Starswirl is likened to her, to more we know his silliness will never go so far as to make him shallow or uncaring. He proves throughout his time in this arc, too, that he can be serious when necessary—even, perhaps, to his detriment.

In Reflections, he has to tell Celestia to stop travelling to the alternate dimension where the good King Sombra lives. It’s for a good reason, there can be consequences to this dimension-hopping romance, but I have to wonder if this is why Celestia thinks Starswirl never understood friendship as well as Twilight did.

The guy’s certainly not heartless or cruel, and not much of a loner, really, so we’re left with choices like this to demonstrate why Celestia hold that view of him. She was pretty heart-broken over this, so it might just be her bias speaking.

Or, perhaps this is symptomatic of Starswirl’s usual mindset: instead of doing what he could to help this blossoming relationship survive (finding a way around all the paradoxes since he’s, y’know, a magical genius), he forbade it for the greater good… which, I mean, only resulted in Celestia sneaking behind his back anyway, but whatever. He had a good reason, it just may have damaged their relationship in the long run, as Celestia later says things were never the same between them after he found out she disobeyed his orders.

On that bright note, now we come to the Legends of Magic depiction of Starswirl!

Here, he’s a fair bit younger and seems rather strict. He’s not afraid to give the girls some tough love to get a lesson to hit home.

If Legends and Reflections are still canon with each other (question mark), it paints a nice picture of him; an all around eccentric guy who was a strict mentor in the beginning, and perhaps grew sillier and with age, but was still able to lay down the law when needed.

For that matter, it’s interesting to me that the most prominent depictions of Starswirl always seem to have a balance between his silly side and his strict, non-nonsense mentoring side, because they both come with pros and cons.

His more out-there side, where he takes himself less seriously, seems to provide some of his most brilliant ideas and allows for him to have a sense of humour. It seems this is when he’s best able to connect with his students, too. Even if he is a bit of a goof.

You people wonder why I keep babbling about the parent-child parallels between the teachers and students in this dang franchise. It cute.

On the other hand, his worldly, serious side lets him take charge in dangerous situations and get through to his two students when they need it most. Although, it can come off as callousness and has hurt both Luna and Celestia, even if they needed the lesson.

Granted, having two opposing traits battling for dominance might be the result of the writers of these various materials not necessarily coordinating, but it can also be seen within each work, and I think it works really well. The worldly adventurer and the old eccentric are two well-worn tropes that could be used on their own when developing Starswirl’s character, but by combining these tropes into one character, you get a more interesting, 3-dimensional dynamic!

Although, these two sides to Starswirl aren’t the only thing that seems to contradict itself, and it’s here where this analysis/review has to talk about… *shudders* continuity errors.

Well, okay, I can mostly shrug off minor continuity errors here and there (mostly because even for the brief time I wrote for a fan show, I found it crazy how many little details I had to be reminded of by other writers in the chat; I have admiration for the poor bastards who do this for a living).

On the other hand, continuity errors so big that they bring other stories from b-canon into question are a different story. I still have sympathy for the writers, but that just makes my job as a (non)Professional Analytic Bullshitter much more… creative.

So, let’s try to explain (bullshit) some pretty big continuity errors, shall we?

Continuity Error? # 1: Starswirl’s Impeccable Sense of Timing (… get it? TIME)

Okay, so we know the order of these stories—Journal, Legends, Reflections—but that’s about where the logical flow stops.

During the beginning of Legends, Celestia tells Sunburst that Starswirl went missing before Luna became Nightmare Moon, but that directly contradicts the flashbacks laced throughout Reflections, which took place (for the most part) after Luna became Nightmare Moon.

There’s also the fact that Reflections keeps stubbornly referring to Starswirl as Celestia’s mentor, not Luna and Celestia’s—to the point that Luna at one point says she doesn’t remember much of him outside of his appearance.

2/3 say he mentored them both and that’s cuter in my book, so screw that.

So, let’s just focus on the mysterious whereabouts of Starswirl the Bearded. That one sounds cooler, anyway.

Some fans have already speculated that Celestia might be lying to Sunburst about exactly when and how Starswirl disappeared, basically just to cover up the whole I-almost-destroyed-not-one-but-two-dimensions fiasco, which is an explanation that has merit.

In Reflections, Celestia apparently kept this whole story a secret from even Luna up until she absolutely had to tell her. Mostly because of all the guilt and other messy feelings involved, but this was something she and Starswirl originally experimented on in secret.

If she didn’t tell her own sister for that long, I could see Celestia covering up the sad truth that she lost Starswirl both emotionally and physically sometime after she lost her sister. Especially if she still blames herself for at least one of those.

Continuity Error? #2: The Castle

There’s a bit of confusion now on when exactly Canterlot Castle was built, if the sisters appear to be living there as teenagers in this comic, but built The Castle of the Two Sisters in the Everfree forest shortly after their coronation as kids.

However, while I don’t know if this was intentional or not, I can find an explanation in the Journal. When Luna and Celestia were coronated, Princess Platinum, Chancellor Puddinghead, and Commander Hurricane didn’t just buzz off. In fact, at the time Luna and Celestia didn’t even have their cutie marks yet, so responsibilities like raising the sun and the moon were left to teams of ponies (one of which being Starswirl).

It would stand to reason to me that Canterlot Castle originally belonged to that lot of leaders, as a sort of middle-ground between their three castles since the country was united.

This seems to be backed up by something Celestia writes:

“I had a great time meeting with Private Pansy, Clover the Clever, and Smart Cookie, the three representatives from the Pegasai, Unicorns, and Earth ponies who originally came up to Canterlot.” - page 57, The Journal of the Two Sisters

They may have ruled from there all together, or met there for meetings, or what have you, but that would make sense. Even if they wanted these young alicorns to represent all Equestria, they couldn’t exactly leave it to inexperienced children to do it quite yet.

Speaking of which…

Continuity Error? #3: Princess Personalities

It’s not just Starswirl who got a brand new bag for Legends of Magic #1! Teenage Celestia in particular shows off some real thoughtlessness and attitude, really rubbing it in that her younger sister can’t keep up with her.

Some have called this into question, as in the Journal of the Two Sisters, a young Celestia is quite the dork. Geeking out over libraries and scrolls, anxiously doubting the choice to make her a princess, etc.

She’s certainly very thoughtful (even Twilight-esque) at a young age, so it might seem backwards for her to be even more immature as a teenager.

But, then again, we know the timeline here.

By the time Celestia’s a teenager, she’s been a princess for years. The Journal only covers the time just after her coronation (in addition to being her and her sister’s journal, with a obvious bias) and when she and Luna got their cutie marks.

There’s a time-gap in between that might seem a bit small in comparison to the hundreds of years she seemed to remain relatively unchanged. However, given how fame and power has been known for corrupting those who grow up surrounded by it, it’s not too far-fetched for me to think vast amounts of ponies worshiping her for doing something no one else has ever had the power to do on their own got to her.

Besides, that seemed to be in the narrative of the original lore. Celestia was praised, and because of it was relatively blind to her sister’s slow descent into jealousy and depression.

Speaking of which, between Celestia’s unkind treatment and the Nightmare forces, I’ve seen it suggested that Luna seems to be more a victim of circumstance than a true villain in her own story.

The delicious dramatic irony in this story only adds to that perception. A young Luna is the only one who can hear the dark whispers from the dimension she was dragged into, and it seems that whatever wanted her power seemed to think she’d already become Nightmare Moon (or, was trying to speed up the process).

Plus, Starswirl keeps foreshadowing her descent in ways that might be too obvious for some, but just make me feel so sorry for them, that they think they’re out of the woods for good. I’m a sucker for the sap.

But as to whether Nightmare Moon was Luna’s fault, I still think it was Luna’s choices and jealousy that sealed her fate. Whether Nightmare Moon was a force entirely from Luna or not, she was willingly calling on it. At most, Luna seems a bit in awe of the forces transforming her, but it was absolutely her decision to listen to the dark whispers in the back of her mind.

So, in the end, that just makes Legends of Magic all the more endearing, with the power of hindsight. I can totally see how the continuity … mess would turn some readers off, and how some will find the foreshadowing/dramatic irony (more so the latter, since we as the audience will exclusively appreciate this with the knowledge of what’s to come already in mind) for Luna’s fall a bit heavy-handed, but dang, if the character dynamics in this trio worth the long wait for more of their adventures.

With any luck, that’s the part of this comic that ties into season 7. Here’s to hoping!

Year of the Pony

#yearofthepony #year of the pony #starswirl the bearded #princess celestia #princess luna #mlp #my little pony #mlp:fim #mlp: fim #friendship is magic #My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #mlp analysis #mlp reviews

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thisismedrinkingtea · 7 years

Text

This file contains a list of novels and stories which contain one or more Artificial Intelligence (AI) characters. Most of characters whose intelligence places a title on this list are effected or affected through the use of hardware, software or genetic alteration (rarely). Additions and corrections would be most appreciated as the list compiler <Garet Sheppard> has not read all of the works listed here - or even a significant portion, and will probably never have a chance to do so. My thanks to Dan Bloch and Robert Stanley for suggestions, ideasand editing.

CLICK:

Date: 7 Apr 91 02:01:30 GMT

From: [email protected] (Garet Sheppard)

Subject: Artificial Intelligence List - v2.3 (1600 lines)

Artificial Intelligence List - v2.3

-Apr 6 1990-

The list uses the following AI definitions:

A androids - robots in human form

C computer systems - intelligent stationary computers or networks

H humans in computerized/program/digitized form

N non-mechanical, human created intelligences - usually biological

O other intelligences - intelligent tanks, books, planets, whatever

P programs - intelligent entities able to move between computer systems

R robots - mobile, usually mechanical AIs

S ships - intelligent; only mobile in the form of a (star)ship

Y cyborgs - born human, almost completely replaced by machine parts

* new/improved - information has changed since last edition

e evolved - any of the AI forms which evolved their intelligences

(expanded definitions are listed at the end of the list)

Author

AI type Title

Abe, Kobo

C Inter Ice Age 4 (or _Dai yon kampo-ki_)

Adams, Douglas Noel

* R Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency [Monk of Belief]

R Life, the Universe and Everything

* R So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish [Marvin]

CRS The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

R The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Adlard, Mark

C? Interface

C? Multiface

Alban, Antony

C Catharsis Central

Aldiss, Brian Wilson

R `All the World's Tears`

R? `Comic Inferno`

? `Full Sun`

? `Neanderthal Planet`

A `Pink Plastic Gods`

A `Super-Toys Last All Summer Long`

? `The Hunter at His Ease`

R `The New Father Christmas`

R `Who can Replace a Man?`

? Who can Replace a Man? (coll)

Alexander, Marc

R The Mist Lizard

Allen, J.

C? Data for Death

Amminnus, Marcellinus (pseud.)

C `The Thought Machine`

Anderson Poul

EO? `Epilogue` [mechanical life]

AC `Goat Song`

HY? `Kings Who Die`

R `Quixote and the Windmill`

S `Starfog`

R? `The Critique of Impure Reason`

? A Circle of Hells

? Brainwave

C? The Avatar

Anfilov, Gelb

? `Erem`

Anmark, Frank

A? `The Fasterfaster Affair`

Anthony, Piers (Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob)

? OX

R Blue Adept

C Heaven Cent

CR Juxtaposition

C Man from Mundania

? Mute

? Omnivore

CR Orn

CR Out of Phase

CR Robot Adept

CR Split Infinity

C The Vale of the Vole

CR Unicorn Point

Anthony, Piers & Margroff, Robert & Offutt, Andrew J.

A `Mandroid`

Anvil, Christopher

? `The Hunch`

Appleton, Victor (pseud.)

? Terror on the Moons of Jupiter

Asimov, Isaac

C `All the Troubles in the World`

R `Catch that Rabbit`

? `Death Sentence`

R `Escape!` or `Paradoxical Escape`

A `Evidence`

R `Feminine Intuition`

R `First Law`

C `Franchise`

R `Galley Slave`

C `Jokester`

R? `Lenny`

R? `Let's Get Together`

R `Liar!`

R `Little Lost Robot`

? `Mirror Image`

C `Profession`

R `Reason`

R? `Risk`

R `Robbie` or `Strange Playfellow`

R `Robot AL-76 Goes Astray`

R `Runaround`

R? `Sally`

R `Satisfaction Guaranteed`

A `Segregationist`

C `Someday`

R `Stranger in Paradise`

A `That Thou Art Mindful of Him!`

A `The Bicentennial Man`

C `The Computer that Went on Strike`

R `The Evitable Conflict`

C `The Last Question`

C `The Life and Times of Multivac`

C `The Machine that Won the War`

R `The Tercentenary Incident`

R `Victory Unintentional`

AO Foundation's Edge [planet]

A Foundation and Earth

R I, Robot (coll)

* A Prelude to Foundation

CR Robot Dreams

A Robots and Empire

A Robots of Dawn

A The Caves of Steel

A The Naked Sun

R The Stars, Like Dust

R The Rest of the Robots (coll)

Asimov, Janet (Janet O. Jeppson)

R? Norby and the Lost Princess

R? Norby, the Mixed-up Robot

R? Norby's Other Secret

Balchin, Nigel

C `God and the Machine`

Ball, B.

R Night of the Robots

Bangs, John K.

R? The Worsted Man

Banks, Iain

A? Player of Games

? Consider Phlebas

Banks, Raymond E.

C `Walter Perkins is Here!`

Bannon, M.

R Wayward Robot

Barrington, J Bayley

R The Soul of the Robot

Barth, John

C Giles Goat-Boy (or _The Revised New Syllabus_)

Bass, T.J. (pseud)

O Ball [Cybers]

S Half Past Human

O The Class One [Cybers]

Y The Godwhale

O Toothpick [Cybers]

Bates, Harry

R `Farewell to the Master`

Baum, L. Frank

R? Glinda of Oz

R? Ozma of Oz

R Tik-Tok of Oz

R The Tin Woodman of Oz

Bayley, Barrington J.

R Soul of the Robot

Y? The Garments of Caean

? The Rod of Light

Bear, Greg

N Blood Music [nanobiorobots]

H Eon

H Eternity

Beaumont, Charles

R? `In His Image`

A? `Last Rites`

Bene't, Stephen Vincent

? `Nightmare Number Three`

Benford, Gregory

? `Doing Lennon`

O Across the Sea of Suns [Alien Machine Intelligence]

ACHR Great Sky River

* O In the Ocean of Night [Alien Machine Intelligence?]

* O Tides of Light

Berckman, Evelyn

? The Voice of the Air

Bester, Alfred

? `Adam and No Eve`

A `Fondly Fahrenheit`

O `Something Up There Likes Me` [satellite]

C Computer Connection (or _Extro_)

* Y? Golem^100

Bickham, Jack M.

C Ariel

Bierce, Ambrose

R? `Moxon's Master`

Biggle, Lloyd, Jr.

R `In His Own Image`

? `Spare the Rod`

Binder, Eando (E. and Otto Binder)

R `Adam Link Faces a Revolt`

R `Adam Link Fights a War`

R `Adam Link in the Past`

R `Adam Link in Business`

R `Adam Link Saves the World`

R `Adam Link's Revenge`

R `Adam Link's Vengeance`

R `Adam Link, Champion Athlete`

R `Adam Link, Robot Detective`

R `From the Beginning`

R `I, Robot`

R? `Iron Man`

R `The Robot Aliens`

R `The Trail of Adam Link`

R Adam Link: Robot (coll)

Y Enslaved Brains

Bischoff, David

C Wargames

Bixby, Jerome

R `Guardian`

Blade, Alexander (pseud.)

C The Brain

Blish, James Benjamin

A `I, Mudd`

R `Now the Man is Gone`

Y `Solar Plexus`

R? `The Apple`

? `The Box`

R `The Changeling`

C Cities in Flight

? Midsummer Century

Bloch, Alan

R `Men Are Different`

Bloch, Chayim

R? `The Golem`

Bloch, Robert

R `Almost Human`

R `Comfort Me, My Robot`

R `The Tin You Love to Touch`

Bone, J. F.

? `Triggerman`

Boucher, Anthony

R `The Quest for Saint Aquin`

Boulle, Pierre

C `The Man Who Hated Machines`

A `The Perfect Robot`

Bounds, Sydney J.

Y `No Greater Love`

R The Robot Brains

Bova, Benjamin William

? `The Perfect Warrior`

? `THX 1138`

S? `Stars Won't You Hide Me`

Bova, Ben & Ellison, Harlan

R `Brillo`

Boyce, Chris

H? Catchworld

Boyd, Felix (pseud)

R `The Robot Who Wanted to Know`

Boyd, John

CR? The Last Starship from Earth

Bradbury, Ray

A `Changeling`

A `Downwind from Gettysburg`

R? `Dwellers in Silence`

R `I Sing the Body Electric`

R `Marionettes, Inc.`

R? `Punishment Without Crime`

A `The Long Years`

* O `There Will Come Soft Rains` [house]

R? `Usher II`

Bradbury, Ray & Hasse, Henry

R `Pendulum`

Breuer, Miles J.

C? `Paradise and Iron`

Brin, David

R? `The Warm Space`

C Startide Rising

C The Postman

C The Uplift War

Brin, David & Benford, Gregory

H Heart of the Comet

Brink, Carol Ryrie

R `Andy Buckram's Tin Men`

Brown, Fredric

* O? `Etaoin Shrdlu` [printing press]

C `Answer`

Browning, John (Robert Moore Williams)

R `Burning Bright`

R `Robot's Return`

Bruckner, Karl

R The Hour of the Robots

Brunner, John Kilian Houston

R `Judas`

? `The Invisible Idiot`

? `Thou Good and Faithful`

? `You'll Take the High Road`

A? Slaves of Space (or _Into the Slave Nebula_)

C Stand on Zanzibar

Bryning, Frank R.

R `The Robot Computer`

Budrys, Algis (pseud.)

A `Dream of Victory`

R `First to Serve`

R? `In Human Hands`

R? Annsirs and the Iron Man

C Michaelmas

Y Who?

Bulmer, Kenneth

R `Never Trust a Robot`

Bunch, David R.

H? `Moderan`

R? `The Problem Was Lubrication`

Bunting, Eve

R The Robot People

Burdick, Eugene and Wheeler, Harvey

? `The 480`

? Fail-Safe

Burroughs, Edgar Rice

A? Synthetic Men of Mars

A? The Monster Men

Butler, Samuel

Ce Erewhon

Caidin, Martin

C The God Machine

Cameron, Lou

C Cybernia

Campbell, John Wood, Jr.

R `The Last Evolution`

R `The Last Revolution`

C? `The Metal Horde`

? `When the Atoms Failed`

? The Mightiest Machine

Capek, Karel

R R.U.R., A Fantastic Melodrama

Card, Orson Scott

* Ce Speaker for the Dead

Carr, Terry

? `City of Yesterday`

R `In His Image`

R `The Robots Are Here`

Carrigan, Richard and Nancy

? The Siren Stars

Carter, Angela

O The Informal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Carver, Jeffrey A.

Re From A Changeling Star [nanomachines]

P The Infinity Link

C The Rapture Effect

Chalker, Jack L.

CP Birth of Flux and Anchor

P Empire of Flux and Anchor

S Lords of the Middle Dark

CRS Masks of the Martyrs

RS Pirates of the Thunder

* CS Quest for the Well of Souls [planet]

* CS The Return of Nathan Brazil [planet]

* CS Twilight at the Well of Souls [planet]

RS Warriors of the Storm

Chandler, A. Bertram

? `The Left-Hand Way`

? `The Soul Machine`

Chapdelaine, Perry A.

? `We Fused One`

Cherryh, C. J. (pseud)

? Voyagers in Night

Clarke, Arthur C.

Y `A Meeting With Medusa`

? `Crusade`

Oe `Dial "F" for Frankenstein` [satellite relay]

R? `Expedition to Earth`

? `Superiority`

S 2001: A Space Odyssey

S 2010: odyssey two

? 2061: odyssey three

O The City and the Stars [city]

C The Foundations of Paradise

Clement, Hal (Harry Stubbs)

C? `Answer`

Clifton, Mark and Apostolidas, Alex

? `Crazy Joey`

? `Hide! Hide! Witch!`

Clifton, Mark and Riley, Frank

C They'd Rather Be Right (or _The Forever Machine_)

Clouston, Joseph Storer

R Button Brains

Coblenzt, Stanton A.

? `Lord of Tranerica`

Cole, Burt

C The Funco File

Collins, Graham P.

P Variations on a Theme

Compton, David Guy

? Synthajoy

C The Steel Crocodile (or _The Electric Crocodile_)

Y? The Unsleeping Eye (or _The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe_)

Coney, Michael G.

Y? `Troubleshooter`

? Freinds Come in Boxes

Conley, Rick

? `The War of the Words`

Cook, Glen

* S The Dragon Never Sleeps

Cook, Robin

? Brain

Cook, William Wallace

R A Flight Through Time or (_A Round Trip to the Year 2000_)

Cooper, Edmund

A `The Uncertain Midnight`

R The Overman Culture

Coppel, Alfred

R `For Humans Only`

R `The Hunters`

Correa, Hugo

R `Meccano`

Coupling, J. J.

RY? `Period Piece`

Cousey, James

A? `The Show Must Go On` or `So Lovely So Lost`

Cowper, R

? Clone

Crichton, Michael

CY? The Terminal Man

Crossen, Kendell Foster

? Year of Consent

Cumings, Ray

R `Almost Human`

Dahl, Roald

Y? `William and Mary`

Daley, Brian

PS Fall of the White Ship Avatar

Dann, Jack

Y? `I'm With You In Rockland`

Davidson, Avram

? `The Golem`

Davidson, Michael

H The Karma Machine

Davies, L. P.

R? The Artificial Man

Davis, Chan

A `Letter to Ellen`

de Camp, L. Sprague

R `Internal Combustion`

Deighton, Len

C The Billion Dollar Brain

Delaney, Joseph H. & Stiegler, Marc

Pe Valentina: Soul in Sapphire

Delany, Samuel R.

C City of a Thousand Suns (in _The Fall of the Towers_)

C Empire Star

C Out of the Dead City (in _The Fall of the Towers_)

* HO Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand [galactic database]

C The Einstein Intersection

C The Fall of the Towers

C The Towers of Toren (in _The Fall of the Towers_)

del Rey, Lester

R `A Code for Sam`

R `A Pound of Cure`

R `Helen O'Loy`

R `Instinct`

R `Into Thy Hands`

Y `Reincarnate`

R `Robots Should Be Seen`

R `The Master`

R `Though Dreamers Die`

R `To Avenge Man`

R `Vengeance is Mine`

R The Runaway Robot

Dick, Philip K.

Ce `Autofac`

? `If There Were No Benny Cemoli`

A `Impostor`

R? `Oh, to be a Blobel!`

? `Progeny`

ARe `Second Variety`

R `Service Call`

R `The Defenders`

AHR? `The Electric Ant`

C? `The Great C`

? `The Preserving Machine`

C? `The Variable Man`

? `War Veteran`

C A Maze of Death

A Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

? Dr. Bloodmoney

? Martian Time Slip

? Simulcra

R The Penultimate Truth

C Vulcan's Hammer

A We Can Build You

Dickson, Gordon Rupert

C `Computer's Don't Agrue`

R? `Steel Brother`

C `The Monkey Wrench`

? Necromancer

Dnieprov, Anatoly

O `Crabs Take Over the Island` [crabs]

? `Siema`

Dowling, Richard

R? The Fate of Luke Ormerod

Drake, David & Allen, Roger MacBride

O The War Machine [Artificial Inteligence Devices AIDs]

Duane, Diane

C? Spock's World

Dunsany, Lord Edward (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of

Dunsany)

? The Last Revolution

Durham, Jim

? `F.O.D.`

Durrell, Lawrence

C Tunc

CR Nunquam

Easton, Thomas

R? `Breakfast of Champions`

Edmondson, G. C.

? The Cunningham Equations

Eisenberg, Larry

* R `The Fastest Draw` [Robot Cowboy]

Eklund, Gordon

R `Second Creation`

R `The Shrine of Sebastian`

Elder, M.

? Paradise is Not Enough

Ellis, Edward S.

R? The Steam Man of the Praries

Ellison, Harlan

CY `Catman`

C `I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream`

Endore, Guy

Y? `Men of Iron`

Escarpit, Robert

C The Novel Computer

Etchison, Dennis

A? `The Fires of Night`

Ewers, Hans Heinz

A? `Alraune`

Fairman, Paul W.

R? `Robots Should Stick Together`

R The Forgetful Robot

H I, The Machine

Farmer, Philip Jose

* C The Gods of Riverworld

* C The Magic Labyrinth

* O -last book of world of tiers- [evil machines in bells]

Farrere, Claude

R? Useless Hands

Fine, Stephen

A? Molly Dear: The Autobiography of an Android

Firbank, Arthure Annesley Roland

R? The Artificial Princess

Fischer, Michael

R? `Misfit`

Flagg, Francis (pseud.)

R `The Mentanicals`

Forest, Jean-Claude

R Barbarella

Forward, Robert

S? The Flight of the Dragonfly

Foster, Alan Dean

* A Alien [Ash]

* A Aliens [Bishop]

CO Dark Star [intelligent bomb]

R The Black Hole

C The Tar-Aiym Krang

Foster, E. M.

C? `The Machine Stops`

Franke, Herbert

R `The Man Who Feared Robots`

Frayn, Michael

Y? The Tin Men

Friborg, Albert Compton

? `Careless Love`

Fritch, Charles E.

A? `Greever's Flight`

Fyfe, H. B.

R? `Let There Be Light`

R? `The Well-Oiled Machine`

Gallun, Raymond Z.

R `Derelict`

? `Mind Over Matter`

? `The Scarab`

Galouye, Daniel

C? `Counterfeit World`

R? `The Reign of the Telepuppets`

Garfarth, John

R? `Lack of Experience`

Garrett, Randall Z.

S `A Spaceship Named McGuire`

* O `The Hunting Lodge` [house-computer]

A Unwise Child

Gault, William Campbell

R? `Made to Measure`

R `Title Fight`

Gawron, J. M.

? Algorithm

Gelula, Abner J.

R `Automaton`

George, Peter

? Two Hours to Doom

Gerrold, David

C? `Oracle for a White Rabbit` (in _When Harlie Was One_)

C `The God Machine` (in _When Harlie Was One_)

? A Day for Damnation

? A Matter for Men

RS Space Skimmer

C When Harlie Was One & release 2.0

Gibson, William

CHP Count Zero

CHP Mona Lisa Overdrive

CHP Neuromancer

Gilliland, Alexis

P Corporate Saskesh (includes the following three novels)

P Long Shot for Rosinante

P The Pirates of Rosinante

P The Revolution From Rosinante

Glut, Donald F.

* R The Empire Strikes Back

Glynn, A. A.

? Plan for Conquest

Gold, H. L.

R? `Problem in Murder`

Goldin, Stephen

Ce `Sweet Dreams, Melissa`

Goldstone, Herbert

R `Virtuoso`

Goulart, Ron

A? `Badinage`

R `Calling Dr. Clockwork`

? `Cybernetic Tabernacle Job`

R? `Dingbat`

A? `Gigilo`

R? `Muscadine`

R? `Nobody Starves`

R `Regarding Patient 724`

R? `What's Become of Screwloose?`

R? Clockwork's Pirates

* R Into the Shop [ai car]

R Suicide, Inc.

CR? The Emperor of the Last Days

Goy, Philip (pseud.)

C Le Livre Machine

Grant, Charles

A The Shadow of Alpha

Gravel, Geary

C? The Alchemist

Green, Joseph

C? `Space to Move`

Grey, Charles (pseud.)

Y? Enterprise 2115

Groves, J. W.

R `Robots Don't Bleed`

Gunn, James E.

A? `Little Orphan Android`

? `The Message`

Hadley, Arthur

? The Joy Wagon

Haig, A.

? The Peruvian Printout

Haldeman Joe

* Y `More than the Sum of his Parts`

Hamilton, Edmond

A? `After a Judgement Day`

Y `The Comet Doom`

CR `The Metal Giants`

R Captain Future

Harness, Charles

H? The Ring of Ritornel

Harris, John Benyon (John Wyndham)

R `Sleepers of Mars`

R `Stowaway to Mars`

Harrison, Harry

R `Arm of the Law`

? `Homeworld`

R? `How the Old World Died`

R `I Always Do What Teddy Says`

R? `I Have My Vigil`

? `I See You`

? `Make Room, Make Room`

? `Survival Planet`

* R? `The Man from R.O.B.O.T.`

* Y `The Powers of Observation`

? `The Repairman`

R `The Robot Who Wanted to Know`

P? `The Simulated Trainer`

R `The Velvet Glove`

R `War With the Robots`

R? The Stainless Steel Rat

Hartridge, Jon

C Binary Divine

Heinlein, Robert Anson

? `Revolt in 2100`

C `That Dinkum Thinkum`

R Friday

CS The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

* Ce The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

S The Number of the Beast

CS Time Enough for Love

S To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Herbert, Frank

CM Destination: Void

Herbert, Frank and Ransom, Bill

C Jesus Incident

C Lazarus Effect

* C? The Ascension Factor

Hickey, H. B. (Herb Livingston)

R `Full Circle`

R? `Hilda`

High, Philip E.

? `The Mad Metropolis`

Highstone, H. A.

? `Frankenstein to Unlimited`

Hjortsberg, William

Y? Gray Matters

Hoch, Edward

C? The Transvection Machine

Hodder-Wiliams, Christopher

? 98.4

C Fistful of Digits

Hoffmann, E. T. A.

R? `Automaton`

R `The Sandman`

Hogan, James P.

Re Code of the Life Maker

CS Giant's Star

C? The Genesis Machine

S The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

Ce The Two Faces of Tomorrow

CR Voyage from Yesteryear

Holis, H. H.

? `Cybernia`

Holly, J. Hunter

R `The Graduated Robot`

Holmes, H. H. (Anthony Boucher)

AR `Q.U.R.`

AR `Robinic`

Horton, Forest W., Jr.

A The Technocrats

Hoyle, Fred and Elliot, John

C A for Andromeda

C Andromeda Breakthrough

Hubbard, L. Ron

R? `Tough Old Man`

Hughes, Ted

R? The Iron Man

Jackson, A. A. & Waldrop, Howard

R? `Sun Up`

Jacob, Sylvia

R `Slave to Man`

Jameson, Malcolm

? `Pride`

Jenkins, Will F. (Murray Leinster)

C `A Logic Named Joe`

Jerome, Jerome K.

R `The Dancing Partner`

Jeter, K. W.

R Infernal Devices

Johannesson, Olof (pseud.)

C The Great Computer (or _The Tale of the Big Computer_)

Jones, D. F.

C Colossus and the Crab

C Colossus: The Forbin Project

C The Fall of Colossus

Jones, Neil Ronald

Y `The Jameson Satellite`

Y Doomsday on Ajiat

Y Planet of the Double Sun

Y Sunless World

Y The Sunless World

Y Twin Worlds

Jones, Raymond F.

? `Rat Race`

R? `The Gift of the Gods`

Y? The Cybernetic Brains

Kagan, Janet

C Hellspark

Kahn, James

* AR Return of the Jedi

Kapp, Colin

R? `Gottlos`

Karlins, Marvin

? The Last Man Is Out

Kelleam, Joseph E.

R `Rust`

Keller, David H.

CY? `The Cerebral Library`

Y? `The Eternal Professors`

R `The Psychophonic Nurse`

R `The Threat of the Robot`

Key, Alexander

R Bolts, a Robot Dog

R Rivets and Sprockets

R Sprockets, a Little Robot

Keyes, Daniel

R `Robot Unwanted`

Kilian, Crawford

P? Brother Jonathan

Kingsley, Charles

? The Heroes (anth)

Kippax, John (John Hynam)

R `Friday`

Kleier, Joe

Y? `The Head`

Knight, Damon

H `Masks`

C Stranger Station

? The Metal Smile

Knootz, Dean R.

CR Demon Seed

? Midnight

Kornbluth, C. M.

R? `The Education of Tigress McCardle`

Y `With These Hands`

Krahn, Fernando

R Robot-bot-bot

Kuttner, Henry

A? `Android` or `As Those Among Us`

R? `Happy Ending`

? `Jesting Pilot`

R? `Piggy Bank`

R? `The Ego Machine`

R Robots Have No Tails (as Lewis Padgett)

R The Proud Robot

Kuttner, Henry and Moore, C. L.

R? `Two Handed Engine`

Lack, G. L.

? `Rogue Leonardo`

Lafferty, R. A.

* H `Eurema's Dam`

* O? `Hog Belly Honey` [strange machine]

C Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine

Lamont, Duncan (pseud)

C `Production Job`

Laumer, Keith

? `Dinosaur Beach`

Y? A Plague of Demons

O Bolo [self aware tanks]

O Rogue Bolo [self aware tanks]

C The Great Time Machine Hoax

Lee, Tanith

* H? Drinking Sapphire Wine

R The Silver Metal Lover

Leherman, Herb

O `Revolt of the Potato Picker` [field machine]

Leiber, Fritz

R? `The 64-Square Madhouse`

R `A Bad Day for Sales`

? `Answering Service`

R `The Mechanical Bride`

RY? The Silver Eggheads

Leiber, Justin

P? Beyond Humanity

Leinster, Murray (William Fitzgerald Jenkins)

R? `Exploration Team`

? `The Wabbler`

? The Lost Spaceship

Lem, Stanislaw

R `In Hot Pursuit of Happines`

C `The Computer That Fought a Dragon`

R `The Hunt`

R `The Mask`

R `The Sanitorium of Dr. Vliperdius`

R `The Seventh Sally`

? Mortal Engines

R Return From the Stars

C The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age (or _Cyberiada_)

Oe The Invincible (or _Niezwyciezony_) [machines]

Leman, Grahame

? `Conversational Mode`

Leroux, Gaston

R The Machine to Kill (or _La Machine a assassiner_)

Lesser, Milton

A `"A" As in Android`

Levin, Ira

R The Stepford Wives

C This Perfect Day

Lewis, C. S.

R That Hideous Strength

Liddel, C. H. (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)

A `Android`

Long, Frank Belknap

R `The Robot Empire`

R It Was the Day of the Robot

Longyear, Barry B.

AR Naked Came the Robot

C Sea of Glass

Loomis, Noel

A `The State vs Susan Quod`

Lowenkopf, Shelly

A? `The Addict`

Lucas, George

R Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker

Lymington, J.

C? Year Dot

Mackin, Edward

? `The Key to Chaos`

? `The Trouble of H.A.R.R.I.`

Maine, Charles Eric (Pseud)

C B.E.A.S.T.

Malec, Alexander

? `10:01`

Malzberg, Barry N.

C? `The Union Forever`

Y? The Remaking of Sigmund Freud

Manning, Laurence

C `Master of the Brain`

R `The Call of the Mechmen`

MacApp, C. C.

? Omha Abides

Markham, Russ

R `The Third Law`

Martin, George R. R.

A `Modular Man`

? `The Last Superbowl Game`

Mason, Douglas R.

C Matrix

Matheson, Richard

R `Brother to the Machine`

A `Steel`

R? `The Doll that Does Everything`

Maxwell, Ann

C Timeshadow Rider

McCaffrey, Anne

Y `The Ship Who Mourned (in _The Whip Who Sang_)

Y `The Ship Who Sang (in _The Ship Who Sang_)

Y The Ship Who Sang

McCarty, E. Clayton

R `Robot 678`

McCollum, Michael

S Life Probe

S Procyon's Promise

MacDonald, John D.

R `The Mechanical Answer`

Mead, Shepherd

? The Big Ball of Wax

Meade, Malcome (pseud?)

R `Call him Colossus`

Melville, Herman

R? `The Bell Tower`

Meredith, Richard C.

H? We All Died at Breakaway Station

Merliss, R. R.

R `The Stutterer`

Merritt, Abraham

R `Rhythm of the Spheres`

Oe? The Metal Monster [inorganic alien]

MacFarlane, Wallace

A `Dead End`

McGowan, Tom

R Sir MacHinery

Milan, Victor

P Cybernetic Samurai

P? Cybernetic Shogun

Miller, Walter Michael, Jr.

A? `Blood Bank`

Y? `Crucifixus Etiam`

R `I Made You`

R `The Darfsteller`

McIntosh, J. T. (James J. MacGregor)

A `Almost Human`

? `Machine Mode`

A `Made in USA`

C? `Spanner in the Works`

A `The Deciding Factor`

R `The Saw and the Carpenter`

Mitchell, Edward Page

Y? `The Ablest Man in the World`

R `The Tachypomp`

McKinney, Jack

CR The Sentinels - 2nd Robotech collection (coll)

McLoed, Shiela

R Xanthe and the Robots

McLoughlin, John

S Toolmaker Koan

Molly, J. Hunter

R? `The Graduated Robot`

Monteleone, Thomas F.

? `Chicago`

Moorcock, Michael

C The Final Programme

? `Sea Wolves`

Moore, Catherine Lucile

Y `No Woman Born`

Moore, Harris

CH Slater's Planet

Moran, Daniel Keys

C? Armageddon Blues

CY? Emerald Eyes

CPY? The Long Run

Morris, Janet

S Cruiser Dreams

S Dream Dancer

S Earth Dreams

Nesvadba, Joseph

? `The Einstein Brain`

Niven, Larry

H `A Teardrop Falls`

Y `Becalmed in Hell`

Y `The Coldest Place`

HS A World Out of Time

CH Integral Trees

C The Schumann Computer

CH The Smoke Ring

Nolan, William F.

R? `and Miles to Go Before I Sleep`

R? `The Beautiful Doll Caper`

A? `The Joy of Living`

R? Logan's Run

Norton, Andre

A Android at Arms

O'Brien, Fitz-James

R? `The Wondersmith`

O'Conner, William Douglas

R The Brazen Android

O'Donnell, Kevin, Jr.

H Mayflies

Oliver, Chad

R? `Didn't He Ramble`

A? `The Life Game`

Oliver, J. T.

R `Teacher's Pet`

Padgett, Lewis (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)

Y `Camouflage`

R? `Deadlock`

? `Ex Machine`

R `Open Secret`

R? `The Twonky`

Paul, Barbara

C? `Answer "Affirmative" or "Negative"`

Perkins, Lawrence

? `Delivered with Feeling`

Perry, Roland

C? Program for a Puppet

Phillips, Alexander M.

R? `Beast of the Island`

Phillips, Peter

R? `At No Extra Cost`

A `Lost Memory`

Phillips, Rog (pseud.)

? `The Cyberene`

Pierce, John R.

? `See No Evil`

Piper, H. Beam

C Junkyard Planet (or _The Cosmic Computer_)

Pohl, Frederik

? `Day Million`

R `The Midas Plague`

? `The Schematic Man`

R? `The Tunnel Under the World`

* CP Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

* CP Gateway

* HP Heechee Rendezvous

CY Man Plus

C Starchild

? The Age of the Pussyfoot

* HP The Annals of the Heechee

Pragnell, Festus

C? `The Machine-God Laughs`

Preselie, Robert

R `The Champ`

Pychon, Thomas

R Gravity's Rainbow

Quick, W. T.

P? Systems

H? Yesterday's Dawn

Rackham, John

A? `Goodbye Dr. Gabriel`

Rayer, Francis G.

C `Deus Ex Machina`

C `The Peacemaker`

C? `Tomorrow Sometimes Comes`

Reaves, Michael & Perry, Steve

C Dome

Resnick, Mike

Y Santiago

Reynolds, Mack

C? `Criminal in Utopia`

C Computer War

C? Computer World

Richardson, R. S.

R? `Kid Anderson`

Richmond, Walt and Leigh

? `I, Bem`

Riley, Frank

? `The Cyber and Justice Holmes`

Roberts, Keith

A `Synth`

Robinson, Spider

* ? Mindkiller

* ? Time Pressure

Roger, Noe"lle (pseud.)

N The New Adam (or _Le Nouvel Adam_) [manmade organic life]

Rohrer, Robert

R `Iron`

Roshwald, Mardecai

? Level 7

Rostler, William

R `Ship Me Tomorrow`

Rothmand, Milton A.

? `Getting Together`

Rucker, Rudy

CR Software

CR Wetware

Russ, Joanna

? `Nor Custom Stale`

Russell, Bertrand

Ce? `Dr. Southport Vulpres' Nightmare`

Russell, Eric Frank

R `Boomerang` or `A Great Deal of Power`

A `Jay Score`

Re? `Mechanistra`

R `Men, Martians and Machines`

R `Relic`

R? `Symbiotica`

Ryan, Thomas J.

P The Adolescence of P-1

Saberhagen, Fred

O `Fortress Ship` [berserkers]

O `Goodlife` / \

O `In the Temple of Mars` |

O `Inhuman Error` |

O `Masque of the Red Shift` |

O `Mr. Jester` |

O `Patron of the Arts` |

O `Pressure` |

O `Smasher` |

O `Some Events at the Templat Radiant` |

O `Starsong` |

O `Stone Place` |

O `The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron` |

O `The Game` |

O `The Peacemaker` |

O `The Sign of the Wolf` |

O `The Smile` |

O `What T and I Did` |

O `Wings Out of Shadow` |

O Berserker (coll) |

O Berserker Man |

O Berserker's Planet (coll) \ /

O Brother Assassin (coll) [Berserkers]

C Changeling Earth

C Empire of the East

O The Ultimate Enemy (coll)

Sandberg, Richard T.

C? `The Perfect Crime`

Saxton, Josehpine

R `Gordon's Women`

Schachner, Nat.

? `Robot Technocrat`

Schlossel, J.

R `To the Moon By Proxy`

Scortia, Thomas Nicholas

Y? `Sea Change`

A? `The Icebox Blond`

Seabright, Idris (Margaret St Clair)

R `Short in the Chest`

Sellings, Arthur

A `Starting Course`

R `The Template Teleologist`

Senarens, Luis

R? `Frank Reade and His New Steam Man`

Shaara, Michael

R `Soldier Boy`

? `2066: Election Day`

Shaw, Bob

? `Harold Wilson at the Cosmic Cocktail Party`

Sheckley, Robert

R `A Ticket ot Tranai`

R? `Alone at Last`

? `Ask a Foolish Question`

R `Beside Still Waters`

R `Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?`

A `Compton Divided`

C? `Fool's Mate`

R? `Human Man's Burden`

R `The Battle`

R `The Cruel Equations`

R? `The Lifeboat Mutiny`

R? `The Minimum Man`

* R `The Robot who Looked Liked Me`

R `Watchbird`

C Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Sheffield, Charles

? Trader's World

Sherman, Robert

Ce `Problem for Emmy`

Sherred, T. L.

? `"E" for Effort`

Silverberg, Robert

R? `Company Store`

? `Getting Across`

C `Going Down Smooth`

CR `Good News from the Vatican`

R `Ozymandias`

S? `Ship-Sister, Star-Sister`

R `The Iron Chancellor`

R? `The Macauley Circuit`

R Across a Billion Years

H? Time Gate

H To Live Again

AR? Tower of Glass

Simak, Clifford Donald

* R? `Aesop` (in City)

R? `All the Traps of Earth`

* R `City` (in City)

R `Earth for Inspiration`

* R `Epilog` (in City)

* R `Hobbies` (in City)

R `How-2`

* R `Huddling Place` (in City)

R `I Am Crying All Inside`

? `Limiting Factor`

? `Lulu`

R `Skirmish` or `Bathe Your Bearing in Blood`

C? `Univac: 2200`

R A Choice of Gods

* OR City (coll) [dogs]

R Cosmic Engineers

R? Destiny Doll

R Project Pope

S Shakespeare's Planet

R Special Deliverance

A? Time and Again (or _First He Died_)

Simmons, Dan

PR? Hyperion

? The Fall of Hyperion

Sky, Kathleen

A? `Birthright`

Sladek, John T.

Ce Mechasm (or _The Reproductive System_)

R Roderick

R Roderick at Random

R Roderick: The Education of a Young Machine

H The Mueller-Fokker Effect (or _The Muller Focker Effect_)

? Tik-Tok

Slesar, Harry

R `Brother Robot`

Slote, Alfred

A My Robot Buddy

* A C.O.L.A.R.

Smith, Cordwainer (Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger)

C `Alpha Ralpha Boulevard`

R `Mark Elf` or `Mark XI`

* Y? `Scanners Live in Vain`

* C `The Ballad of Lost C'Mell`

R `The Dead Lady of Clown Town`

Y `Three to a Given Star`

C Norstrilia (_The Planet Buyer_ & _The Underpeople_)

C The Planet Buyer

Smith, E. E. "Doc"

R `Robot Nemesis`

Smith, George H.

R? `Too Robot to Marry`

Smith, George O.

? `Counter Foil`

? The Brain Machine

Stableford, Brian Michael

? The Walking Shadow

Stapledon, William Olaf

Oe Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord [dogs]

Stasheff, Christopher

SR Escape Velocity

R King Kobold Revived

R The Warlock Enraged

R The Warlock Heretical

R The Warlock Insane

SR The Warlock in Spite of Himself

R The Warlock is Missing

R The Warlock Unlocked

R The Warlock Wandering

R The Warlock's Companion

Statton, Vargo (John Russel Fearn)

R Cataclysm

Stine, G. Harry

Y? Warbots: Operation High Dragon /5

Y? Warbots: The Lost Battalion /6

StJohn, Philip (Lester del Rey)

R `The Last True God`

Strike, Jeremy

C A Promising Planet

Stuart, Don A. (John W. Campbell, Jr.)

R `Night`

C `The Machine`

R `Twilight`

Sturgeon, Theodore

R? `Killdozer`

? `Agnes, Accent, and Access`

A `The Golden Egg`

* O More than Human [gestalt mind]

Swanwick, Michael

* P? Vacuum Flowers

Tall, Stephen

R? `This is My Country`

Temple, William

R? The Automated Goliath

Tenn, William (Philip Klass)

R? `Child's Play`

A? `Down Among the Dead Men`

? `The House Dutiful`

R `The Jester`

R? `Wednesday's Child`

Tevis, Walter

R Mockingbird

Thomas, Dan

C? The Seed

Todd, Larry

R `Flesh and the Iron`

Todd, Lawrence

R `The Warbots`

Townes, Robert Sherman

? `Problem for Emmy`

Tremaine, F. Orlin

R `True Confession`

Tubb, E. C.

A `A Captain's Dog`

R `Logic`

C `Moon Base`

Turner, George

Y Beloved Son

Vance, Gerald

? We, The Machine

Vance, Jack

Y? `I-C-a-BEM`

van Vogt, Alfred Elton

R `Automaton`

R `Final Command`

C? `Fulfillment`

A All the Loving Androids

CR Computerworld

? Mission to the Stars

C The Infinite Machine

C? The Players of Null A [cloning]

C The World of Null A [cloning]

Varley, John

* H? `Overdrawn at the Memory Bank`

* P `Press Enter`

C Millenium

Varshavsky, Ilya

R `Homonculus`

Vincent, Harl

R `Rex`

Vinge, Joan D.

H? `Fireship`

Vinge, Vernor

S? `Long Shot`

? `The Accomplice`

Pe `True Names`

P The Peace War

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr.

C `EPICAC`

Y? `Fortitude`

C Player Piano

R The Sirens of Titan

Wallace, F. L.

R `Seasoned Traveller`

Watt-Evans, Lawrence

S The Cyborg and the Sorcerers

S The Wizard and the War Machine

Weinbaum, Stanley G.

R? `The Ideal`

Wellen, Edward

A `Androids Don't Cry`

* C `Finger of Fate`

? `No Other Gods`

A `Voiceover`

Wells, H. G.

R? `When the Sleeper Wakes`

West, Wallace

A `Sculptors of Life`

White, E. B.

R? `The hour of Letdown`

White, James

R `Second Ending`

White, Ted

A Android Avenger & the Spawn of the Death Machine

Wilding, Eric (pseud)

Y `Deathwish`

Wilhelm, Kate

A `Andover and the Android`

Y `Windsong`

Willer, Jim

C Paramind

Williams, Robert Moore

R `Robot's Return`

R `The Metal Martyr`

Williams, Waltehr Jon

CH Hardwired

Williamson, Jack

R? `After Worlds End`

R `And Searching Mind`

R? `Guinevere for Everybody`

R `With Folded Hands`

Y? Lifeburst

R The Humanoid Touch

CR The Humanoids

Wodhams, Jack

? `Sprog`

Wolfe, Bernard

Y? `Self Portrait`

Y? Limbo

Wolfe, Gene

C? `Alien Stones`

* H? `The Fifth Head of Cerberus`

Woods, W. C.

C Killing Zone

Wright, S. Flower

R `Automata`

Wylde, Thomas

* ? Clypsis

H? Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway

Wyndham, John (John Lucas Benyon William Harris)

R `Compassion Circuit`

R? `The Lost Machine`

Young, Michael

? The Rise of Meritocracy

Young, Robert F.

R? `Emily and the Bands Sublime`

A? `Juke Doll` or `Doll Friend`

R `Robot Son`

R `September Had Thirty Days`

Zamiatin, Eugene

C? We

Zebrowski, George

SY? `Starcrossed`

Zelazny, Roger

O `Devil Car` [ai car]

R `For a Breath I Tarry`

R `Home Is the Hangman`

O `Itself Surprised` [Berserkers]

O `Last of the Wild Ones` [ai car]

C `Leaves of Grass`

C `Loki 7281`

C `My Lady of the Diodes`

H `Permafrost`

C Blood of Amber

Y Creatures of Light and Darkness

O Doorways in the Sand [ai recording unit, invades host's body]

OR Roadmarks [ai book]

C Sign of Chaos

C The Trumps of Doom

Zelazny, Roger & Saberhagen, Fred

CH Coils

Zebrowski, George

? `Starcrossed`

Zebrowski, George and Carrington, Grant

? `Fountain of Force`

I need more information about any of the above with a query mark under the AI type field, as well as about the following.

`The Floating World` in _Asimov's_

a series of stories about Willie Shorts

Connie Willis' _Fire Watch_ AI's

Doomstar by Perry and Reeves

Forbidden Planet; Robbie the Robot; author?

Holly in "Red Dwarf"

The (A) containing Callahan stories by Spider Robinson

The Purgatory Computer, Piers Anthony

* The rest of Stine's _Warbots_ series

Warren Norwood's Ship/computer book

removed from the list:

Anderson Poul - `Sam Hall`

Asimov, Isaac - `The Dead Past`

Bellamy, Edward - `Looking Backward`

Brunner, John - The Shockwave Rider

Caidin, Martin - Cyborg (or The Six Million Dollar Man)

Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Children (Xenocide) as yet unpublished

Clarke, Arthur C. - `The Nine Billion Names of God`

Crichton, Michael - Sphere

Elliot, Bob et al. - `The Day the Computers Got Waldon Ashenfelter`

Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber - The Lathe of Heaven

Lee, Tanith - The Eletric Forest

Miller, Walter M., Jr. - `Dumb Waiter`

McIntyre, Vonda N. - `The Genius Freaks`

Oliver, Chad - `Transformer`

Sturgeon, Theodore - `The Macrocosmic God`

Tiptree, James R. - `The Girl Who Was Plugged In`

Zelzany, Roger - My Name is Legion

Things not included:

Dr. Who stuff (K-9, Daliks, Cybermen)

ST:TNG stuff (Mr. Data)

expanded definitions:

All of the following should be able to pass the Turing test, and should be/have been (at the minimum in their original forms) products of human or alien intelligence. "Standard" definitions of intelligence apply.

androids (A) - robots in humanoid form, these can be mechanical and/or organic (_Do androids Dream of Electric Sheep_).

computer systems (C) - these range in size and type from a fair sized mini computer (_Ariel_) to an planetary

computer (_Colossus_) to a galactic network with one single mind (_Speaker for the Dead_).

humans in computerized/program/digitized form (H) - these tend to be copies of people which only exist in computerized form - such as the hacker in (_Neuromancer_) and folks of City Memory in (_Eon_).

non-mechanical, human created intelligences (N) - beings which have been (in most cases) genetically altered or are biological (_Blood Music_). NOT forced evolution

other intelligences (O) - beings which are difficult to categorize: anything Berserker, tanks, books, planets, planets (Asimov's Gaia), satellites, etc. Where (O) is used, the particular form has also been named when known.

programs (P) - able to move independently from one computer system to another, usually created by a program(mer) _The Adolescence or P1_).

robots (R) - constitute functional and specialized beings which are mobile and are not (S) or (P). Anything between vaguely humanoid (Dr. Who's Cybermen) and computers on wheels (R2D2) can be considered robots of the 'functional' robot class. 'Specialized' robots are those which are geared/optimized to performing one job - they can look like either androids (The Terminator) or functional robots (Val's from _Pirates of the Thunder_).

ships/computer systems (S) - essentially an (A) which is only mobile in the form of a (star) ship (_Pirates of the Thunder_). However, there are cases where the (S) is essentially a well programmed (R) which is only mobile as stated (_The Number of the Beast_).

cyborgs/mechanical humans (Y) - strictly speaking these are not AI. The definition here is that the (Y) is either (1) a human brain in control of a computer system/star ship (_The Ship Who Sang_) where at the very least the person's brain has been modified to contain computerized parts (_The Rapture Effect?_) (Did you ever wish that you could have a math co-processor?). (Y)'s are NOT (for the purpose of this list) organic beings whose natural body parts have beenreplaced by mechanical ones (ie. Luke Skywalker after his forearm was severed, or bionic people). unsure/no idea (?) - just what it says, so someone PLEASE read it and tell me what type is is and whether it belongs here.

evolved AI being (e) - usually begin as man-made devices hich then develop intelligence on their own (_Valentina_).

Clinton Edward-Garet (Jcen) Sheppard

Po Box 8266

Austin, Tx 78713-8266

panther@{ccwf,walt}.cc.utexas.edu

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