The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Andrew Plotkin:

Currently in a re-reading phase. Joel Rosenberg's _D'Shai_, and before that
_Howl's Moving Castle_, since there's a movie which may get to America
at some point. And the two Galen Sword books by J+G Reeves-Stevens;
remember those? They predate Anita Blake by three years -- I wonder
why they didn't catch on.

Before that, _Parasite Pig_ -- Sleator wrote a sequel to _Interstellar
Pig_, although it's merely passable. And Philip Reeve's sequel to
_Mortal Engines_, which I liked a lot (astonishingly grim series for
YA adventure fantasy).

I got plenty of despair, but I got nothing to add to the despair
you-all have got.

Here's what I've got beyond that. (Not much beyond, but...)

I've gotten through the past four years thinking "That isn't *me*." It
was a bunch of power-mad venal fools, and yes, they had a lot of
Americans on their side, but they didn't have *America* on their side,
really.

Now they unquestionably have America. I don't have the luxury of
saying my elected government doesn't represent me. Everything we do
from here on out is being done in my name. Last week I could deny it
-- maybe that was self-delusion -- but I can't now. We're all the
torturers and liars and defrauders now. Oh, and gay-bashers.

This is what I keep telling myself I can't forget. I know I am also a
fundamentally lazy shit, and I don't know what I will wind up doing
about it. I *do* know what I'll be if I do nothing.

(I'd say I'm not in a good state to decide what to do -- all I *want*
to do is curl up and play video games -- but that's laziness, not
burned-out-ness.)

Clute's speculation seems awfully, well, speculative.

I haven't read this thing yet, although I heard Robinson talking about
it (essentially the same speech as the book's introduction) at
Worldcon. Robinson may be overenthusiastic about it, but at least he's
talking about stories Heinlein actually wrote. "Lifeline", and the
next twenty or thirty years of Heinlein's writing, really did become
immensely popular and changed the face of SF.

Clute seems to be positing an alternate history where Heinlein wrote
different stuff and changed the face of literature. Based on radical
ideas in what, by most accounts, is a Not Particularly Good Book. Why
should I find this plausible?

As a bonus, Clute gets to portray Heinlein as a self-perceived
lifelong failure -- bitter about the wasted potential of his early
work, hopeless in his later efforts. I never met the guy. Does this
even remotely describe him?

I agree that using an RDBMS, *per se*, is not
evidence of any evil intent.

It's a general tool used for a specific purpose.
That's the history of computing. The software
is already running on a general-purpose computing
device, under a general-purpose operating system --
because that's a commodity platform which is
cheap, well-known, and well-supported. (I'll save
the Microsoft cracks for another forum.)

The only point worth noting is that an audit of the
device must include inspection of the RDBMS structure
and programming, in addition to the interface
software and operating system.

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