Recent content by RealAlHazred

I really, really enjoyed the first book of the Belgariad. I enjoyed the rest, but the first one was excellent -- of course it was, he'd been shopping it around to publishers for years! Anything you work that long on will be a peak example of your skill; e.g. "1408", which was the story Steven...

Just @ me next time.

Listen, we are in an era where there are people who read Thieves' World, see the characters are basically telling you they're the bad guys, and then the reader asking, "Well, why can't I do that?"

My daughter started part-time preschool this week. She was there just about 3 hours Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday night she was breathing loudly while asleep. Yesterday she was stuffy and developed a fever by nighttime. I just got back from the doctor -- she has a virus. TWO DAYS! SHE WAS AT...

This is EN World! You can't tell me what to do! It's got to be safer than when I injected bleach a few years ago!

I will be giving my daughter several books to read at the same age I read them, like The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban and Charlotte's Web. These include mature themes, but they're still excellent children's literature. I want her to develop into an identical copy of me, after all! ;)

But have you considered the many benefits that capitalism provides you, totally free of charge? Like this keychain or a trucker's hat (good with ladies)? Totally free, plus $29.95 shipping! A steal! as you read this post, in the background you can, very faintly, hear a cash-register ching as...

Sci-fi and fantasy literature in the 80s was marginalized. For instance, there was a lot of splash in the Waldenbooks I frequented, but at least two-thirds of the shelves in the store were devoted to "real" literature -- biographies, modern dramas, etc. I frequented Waldenbooks because it had...

As I get older, I feel more and more like the might have been on to something...

Same here, except I was intrigued enough to buy the box set, so I have all three of them, sitting hidden behind another row of books that I actually like. Ah, the folly of youth.

The Thomas Covenant books were what convinced me that I needed to have a protagonist, where I cared whether they lived or died. Thomas Covenant, I did not, and while the worldbuilding was good, my distaste for the protagonist eliminated the enjoyment I might have otherwise taken from the books...

I seem to remember he did troops for all of the classes that get them in AD&D, and also for nonhumans, so that they would be appropriate. I also remember that the High Elf troop table included hippogriff-mounted elf sky-knights!

It's a real paradox!

I used to say there was a line of, uh, "prurience" in SF/F: on one end was Isaac Asimov, then it went for a ways to the middle, and then it continued on further to Piers Anthony, then Jack Chalker, and then John Norman at the opposite end from Asimov. Of course, Asimov was a lecher, but he kept...

But what about KSmall Beer Demon Hunters?