One question remains: how do you celebrate finishing a 750,000-word novel? Moore pauses. "I'll probably have a bit of a lie down."

"So clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged."

"The thing is, magic is a branch of applied mathematics, and the inmates here are not only mad: they’re computer science graduates. That’s why they came to the attention of the Laundry in the first place, and it’s also why they ultimately ended up in the Farm, where we can keep them away from sharp pointy things and diagrams with the wrong sort of angles. But it’s difficult to make sure they’re safe. You can solve theorems with a blackboard if you have to, after all, or in your head, if you dare."

"Dubbed BookServer, the open platform is meant to provide a standard means for booksellers, publishers, libraries, and individual authors to serve texts onto laptops, netbooks, smartphones, game consoles, and specialized ereaders a la the Amazon Kindle. The Archive has already demonstrated an early incarnation of the architecture with the Kindle and Sony's Reader Digital Book."

"The biggest weakness of the entire genre is this: the protagonists don't tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances. The scriptwriters and producers have thrown away the key tool that makes SF interesting and useful in the first place, by relegating "tech" to a token afterthought rather than an integral part of plot and characterization. What they end up with is SF written for the Pointy-Haired [studio] Boss, who has an instinctive aversion to ever having to learn anything that might modify their world-view."

"There’s been lots of great stuff written about why singular they is acceptable, but every time I want to smash the arguments against it, I have to waste time jumping through old Language Log posts and books and whatnot, so I figured I’d finally go about summarizing it all. Without further ado, here’s the evidence for singular they, and why you ought to stop “correcting” it."

"People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings –– clearly they were motivated to find structure," said Proulx. "But what's more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did."

She poured a coffee, then touched the breakfast table. “Where are my shoes?” “Your sister borrowed them.” “Again? Where is Susan?” “She’s downtown now.” “Susan! Why did you swipe my favorite shoes again?” “Look at this dress.” “Oooh, that dress is darling.” “It would look even better on you.” “You’re right. Get it for me. You can’t have it.” “Trade you for these shoes.” “Let me check that with Henry. Yeah, okay.” Karen had another sip of fair-trade coffee. It tasted weird, but it was still hot.

"Perhaps, echoed the other part of himself, but that is not what was actually happening."

"Look, this may not be palatable, Gareth, and I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it, but the simplicity of things, at least from my perspective is this: George R.R. Martin is not your bitch."

"By taking LongPen instead of an airplane to this event, Conrad Black will save 1,764 lbs. of CO2 emissions," stated a LongPen poster. In reality, as a LongPen press release delicately put it, "legal complications" made it impossible for Black to appear in person."

"And if you read through the original book it's startling and a bit eerie how many opportunities Jane Austen left in her original work for ultra-violent zombie mayhem. You have this sharp-tongued character in Elizabeth Bennet - it's not that big a leap to put a sword in her hand and say she's now a slayer of the undead. "

"A heart-warming tale of same-sex love and parenting among New York penguins has topped the list of books most complained about in American libraries for the second year running."

Talks include; The Fork: Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture (Neal Stephenson), The overlap between Science Fiction and other genres, Horror motifs, Science Fiction in the Nineteenth Century, Modern British Science Fiction

"Average SAT (with margin of error) for the 100 most popular books on facebook."

"The Happy Ending Foundation is planning a series of Bad Book Bonfires for later this month, when parents will be encouraged to burn novels with negative endings."

"This "Wiki" is a catalogue of the tricks of the trade for writing scripts. We dip into the cauldron of story and place it in front of you to read."

"Anyway, here's a list of errors I (and some editors I know) see over, and over, and over again, ad desperandum. Plus a few that maybe just bug me."

Marain's principle symbols are based around a three-by-three grid, which is itself a diagrammatic representation of a nine-digit binary number, or byte, it being intended from the start that the language could be rendered into binary code as informational

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

An interesting list of books to check out.

Book regarding fanfiction from way back.

"GLORIFYING TERRORISM (Rackstraw Press) is, technically, illegal - because every SF/F story in this anthology breaks the current UK law that bans the glorification of terrorism. Whatever that is, of course."

"The books that I savor are full of brilliance and wit and wonder. Why people don't read science fiction and fantasy continues to baffle me."

Well duh.