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Turns out it means base, foundation, fundament etc.

Which reminds me of the sinister connection to Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov: http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/ft158.html

In a fantasy story, there is a mechanism of causation (or the results of such a mechanism), most commonly called magic, which is indifferent to, if not in direct violation of those rules of causation considered to be science. Theres a list of some sub-genres here. I remember reading interesting words written by Algis Budrys in F&SF about the difference between descriptive fiction and speculative fiction and the difference between science fiction and fantasy being not as great. I haven't found a link directly to those words, but I did find that you can buy them by following links from here. Be warned, however, that in these books, those particular words are collected among many others.

The Leaky Establishment, where the large engineering firm is the Atomic Weapons Establishment and the item to be smuggled back in is a physics package.

Turning off the internet will likely become necessary because of the basilisks.

"Freedom of Speech" means you can say whatever you want, however, it doesn't mean that you are exempt from the repercussions of what you say. You still must take personal responsibility for the freedom you take.

That's just stupid. It amounts to claiming that only prior restraint counts as censorship. By your 'logic', if the State were to pass a law prohibiting you from criticizing it on pain of death, it'd be just fine as long as they didn't stop you from saying it in advance. After all, you have to take personal responsibility for what you say.

If you are one of those who believes that "Freedom of Speech" should be absolute, think about these situations: ... [standard-issue excuses for fascism]

Frankly, yes, I do think all of those examples should be protected, and I'm saying that as one of those lesbian abominations your would-be politician wants exterminated. Unless you wish to claim that basilisks are real, bits never harmed anyone.

it is the BLIT, at http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html PLASHING for Humans.

...why am I not surprised?

To clarify:

The Lexicon website consisted for the most part of entries where the editors had gone through the books, chopped out the various bits describing the element at hand and plopped them in the entry. The amount of straight quoting was huge, the amount of barely reworded items possibly even larger. Let's go to Dave Langford for a typical wordcount: "When I checked, the on-line Lexicon's 1500 words on Albus Dumbledore had about 300 words of direct quotation from Rowling (which seemed risky) and linked to a page with some 3000 words of quotes (which seemed suicidal)." This is certainly very useful to fanfic authors, and as long as it was noncommercial, Rowlings quite kindly tolerated it.

Then in a perfect storm of stupidity, RDR Books decided that obviously this meant they could publish it at 24.95 a pop. Rowlings and her publishers said "uh, no". I'll note that they spent two months trying to get a manuscript out of RDR or Steve Vander Ark, and were informed that they should "just hit print on the website." Yes, the website that *mostly consisted of quotes and rewordings*. Eventually they realized how suicidal that was, and produced a hacked down manuscript that *still* took large amounts straight from her wording.

And like most bad lawsuits, it'll make bad law. If she wins, other publishers and authors will no doubt push the boundaries to claim that any kind of encyclopedia of their fictional universes is unlawful, even if the writers actually do their own work; and if she loses (highly unlikely, but if) other authors will feel like they need to be a bitch to every online effort of this sort, lest they be seen as authorizing similar publishings -- one of the claims that RDR/SVA made was that by tolerating it, she was authorizing it.

No way! Holodeck + AI = universal plot generator. Don't worry about a killswitch. If Star Trek has taught us anything, it's that all problems can be solved within 45 minutes if you just reverse the polarity of the photon warp field tachyon emitter array, which is way more interesting than just having an "off" button.

He probably means one of these...

(In fiction at least) The Subways Of Tazoo, Colin Kapp, 1964. In the story, it was strings rather than ribbons. The story involves an alien race that killed themselves by climate change. Tsk, what science-fiction twaddle!

Fredrick Pohl
The Midas Plague
http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/midaswld.html

Excellent story, looks like he did some followups - must checkout my local library

Your comments are valid and interesting. But note, though, that Diana Wynne Jones, the author herself, was reportedly very pleased with the movie.

The following quote comes from http://ansible.co.uk/Ansible/a210.html and refers to a personal screening of Howl's Moving Castle that Miyazaki hosted for Mrs. Jones near her home in Bristol:

`Miyazaki came in person, carrying with him a tape of the film, an interpreter and sundry other shadowy figures (all this was supposed to be secret for fear of the Japanese media, who then descended on me afterwards, so I couldn't mention it beforehand) and we had a private showing at the Watershed cinema. The film is goluptuously splendid with breathtaking animation. I had grown used to young ladies regularly writing to me to say that they wanted to marry Howl. Now, Howl in the film is so plain stunning and sexy that I think I have joined them. And after the showing and the scamper through Bristol I had a long talk with Mr Miyazaki and it began to seem that we were soulmates.'

I personally think that Sofie wasn't merely just any anime chick - she's a Miyazaki anime chick! Like Nausicaa, Fio (Kurenai no Buta/Porco Rosso), Shizuku (Whispers of the Heart/Mimi wo Sumaseba), and the other great Ghibli female leads, Sofie has more spunk, curiosity, complexity, and compassion than the vast majority of heroines of just about any genre.

As for the air raid scenes - this is a war we're talking about. Unfortunately, air raids on civilians are an inevitability of any modern war. But seeing it from the perspective of the victim in such explicit horrible detail really emphasis to the viewer that this war really really sucks.

I personally think that Miyazaki has a pretty good record of book/story adaptations:

  - Gauche the Cellist (Miyazawa Kenji) had a wonderful soundtrack, the right "feel", and is a very faithful adaptation.
  - Whispers of the Heart (Hiraagi Aoi) unfortunately removed a lot of poetic elements, and made some significant changes to the plot, but retains the overall "feel", while the character development of Shizuku is just wonderful. And the magic of the very last scene with the bicycle is beyond words.
  - Ironically, Miyazaki's most disappointing adaptation, in my opinion, is Nausicaa. For me, the manga was an extradordinarily complex landmark work. The movie, although wonderful, just couldn't compare. The entire environmental theme (can man ever live in harmony with nature?) was only scratched at in the movie.